by Erin Huss
“But still, a couple of times a day?” Camry said, gawking. “That’s nuts.”
I shot her a look.
“What?” she said defensively. “It is nuts.”
“It’s how she dealt with stress,” Carlos said. “Nothing nuts about it.” He took a step back and spit into the flowerbed again. “Does CinnaMann know you’re doing this?”
“We spoke with him earlier today,” I said.
The door to Carlos’ apartment opened and a cute brown-eyed toddler in a Moana costume poked her head out. “Daddy, can we play now?”
“Give me a second, princess.” He smiled down at his daughter. It was the first time I’d seen his teeth.
The little girl fell to the floor and kicked her legs. “I want to play now!”
“Whatever you want, princess.” He scooped his daughter off the ground and walked inside. “If I were you, I’d drop this before people start getting hurt,” he said and slammed the door shut.
Yikes.
Guess we’re done.
I was riding high on adrenaline but waited until we were in the car before I said, “Can you believe what just happened?”
Camry let out a yelp. “You were a rock star, Liv.”
I pulled my seat belt on. “Wow, okay. Hold on. Let’s take a moment to think about what we have.”
“What we have is a suspect.”
I gave Camry a look. “We must maintain journalistic objectivity for this podcast to be a success.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. That guy lives on a short fuse, lived directly beneath Amelia, and he basically threatened to kill us.”
“Let’s not be overdramatic. He said we should stop before people get hurt.” Which I suppose was a threat, the more I thought about it.
Hiccup.
“Which is basically the same thing. Also, he knows something.”
This I agreed with. Carlos Hermosa knew more than he was letting on. Did I think he killed Amelia? Or kidnapped her? Or...whatever happened. I wasn’t sure.
Camry buckled in. “And can we talk about Amelia running a few times a day? No wonder she was so thin.”
Richard said she was athletic. Carlos said she ran. This information coincided with her car being at a hiking trail, but why hike late at night in a mini skirt? Unless...
“What if she didn’t disappear on the tenth?” I was thinking out loud. “What if she disappeared early on the eleventh? She parked her car to run the Orcutt Hollow trail and didn’t return.”
“Why would she go for a run without her phone?”
“She had an old flip phone, it didn’t have music or a fitness app. What would be the point? Think about it, if you were going for a run what would you bring?”
“My iPhone, headphones, a barf bag, defibrillator, insurance card, my car...cause I’m not running.”
“She probably had an iPod and didn’t want to lug around anything else.” I cocked a thumb to the box sitting on the backseat. “When we go through Leon’s notes let’s see if there’s a list of items found in her apartment. Specifically looking for an iPod.”
Camry reached into the back seat, pulled a notebook from the box and flipped it open. “I hope he has a decoding device in there as well because this all looks like drunk writing.”
I glanced over and, yeah, she was right. It was written in illegible shorthand. And I had about a week to make sense of it.
Episode Four
The Warning
We were back at Hazel’s before sundown. After dinner, I set up a studio in the guest room closet, slid the door closed, and spent the next seven hours recording narrative and editing. I could no longer feel my legs, but it was worth it. The first episode of Missing or Murdered was done. I started with the intro music. An arrangement I mixed myself using audio clips from the YouTube video, a news report and an orchestral hybrid adventure melody I had purchased on Stock Music.
At the twenty-second mark, I introduced Amelia Clark, talked about the YouTube video, her case and why I chose to investigate. I talked about Leon, how he reached out to Cold in America but got me instead, and inserted snippets of our phone conversations I’d recorded when I was still in San Diego. I spoke about my quest for oomph, and gave a description of Santa Maria. At thirty-five minutes, I inserted part of Leon’s interview and ended it with me saying, “I don’t feel a pulse!”
I have a hyper critical ear, so of course I thought the whole thing sounded terrible. Which was one step above crap. Which were my exact sentiments after every episode of CIA I’d worked on. Episodes that have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times. Episodes that went on to win awards like the Peabody and the Scripps Howard.
Oh hell.
My heart hiccupped.
Why did I quit my job?
I could have continued to work on Cold in America and produced Missing or Murdered on the side. I could have traveled up to Santa Maria on the weekends to conduct interviews. I could have produced an entire episode before I presented the idea to Mara.
Stupid move.
A move fueled by pride. The need to prove myself. Why did I have to prove myself to anyone?
So what, my boss called me oomph-less? She also called me one of the best mix engineers she’d ever worked with. But nooooo, I had to hang my hat on the “oomph” remark and do something impulsive and completely out of character like quit my job. And what did I have to show for it?
Answer: A single episode and not enough material to produce three more. No sponsor or any source of income. And I may have inadvertently killed the only person willing to offer insight into the case.
Okay, I realized I didn’t kill Leon. But the stress of doing a podcast couldn’t have been easy on him. I could hear the struggle in his voice when I listened to the interview, and I felt awful about it.
Truth was, the situation would feel a lot less dire if I weren’t deliriously exhausted and sitting in a closet amongst dress-up clothes, boxes of naked Barbie’s, stuffed animals, and a creepy looking porcelain doll.
I slid open the door and stretched my sore back. It was nearly three in the morning and I was physically and emotionally spent. Camry was sitting cross-legged on her bed, surrounded by Leon’s notebooks, with her computer on her lap, iPad and phone beside her, face trained intently on her laptop screen.
I sat at the desk under the window, sinking into the chair slowly. Most of my limbs had fallen asleep. “What are you working on?”
“I’m reading a thread on the mom’s group,” she said without lifting her eyes. “A woman posted a picture of a bad manicure she got at a local salon. Then the salon owner came on and blasted this woman, saying she’s trying to sabotage the businesses. Then admin deleted the post. Then the salon owner reposted, and the thread continues. I have to keep up before admin deletes it again. It’s like a reality show, only better.”
“Did you look at Leon’s notes?” I tried not to sound as annoyed as I felt. Camry had every right to have fun. It was late. I was tired and wallowing in despair.
“You okay?” asked Camry. “You look like you’re going to pass out. Are you going to pass out? ‘Cause you look it.”
“No, just tired,” I said. “Did you find anything new?”
“A lot actually.” She tore her eyes away from the computer screen and referred to her iPad. “Leon mentions Carlos fifty-two times so far, but I’m only through four books. The short of it, from what I can decipher, is they suspected Carlos knew more than he was letting on. They brought him in on October 22 and questioned him for eight hours. He told them exactly what he told us. In one notebook Leon writes that Carlos willingly submitted a DNA sample to the police. Which he thinks is telling.”
Very. It was unlikely Carlos would submit DNA without a court order if he were responsible for Amelia’s disappearance. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t involved in some other way, or that he
didn’t know what happened, though. It just meant that he was confident his DNA wasn’t in her car.
“I also did some digging into Carlos’ past,” Camry said. “He has no record, a 675 credit score, works for a property management company, has three credit cards with zero balances, two baby mommas with zero marriages, fifty grand in a savings account and a Facebook page but no other social media accounts.”
“That’s a lot of money sitting in the...wait, why do you have his financial information?”
“You can tell a lot about a person from their credit score. I think he’s saving for a house.”
“Do I want to know how you found this out?”
“Probably not,” she said. “I’m looking for his email address so I can get more insight.”
“Camry, no hacking into email accounts,” I said. “It’s illegal.”
Camry rolled her eyes. “It’s not illegal, it’s frowned upon.”
“Frowned upon? Is that why you were kicked out of Stanford?”
“No, I was kicked out of Stanford because I hacked Phil’s new girlfriend’s account and sent an email to a professor.”
“An email saying she would perform sexual favors for an A,” I reminded her.
Camry waved her hand as if shooing away a fly. “Details are not relevant to what we’re talking about.”
“Fine. Anything else?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” She plucked a stack of pictures from the box. “I found photos of Amelia’s car. There were Christmas decorations on her passenger side seat. A plastic Santa head, an open box of candy canes, and some other cheap looking festive garb. All with tags on them. Weird, right? It was the beginning of October.”
That is weird. “Let me see them.”
She handed over the pictures. All were small 4x6, which wasn’t conducive for investigation purposes. Unless you had superhuman vision—which I don’t. “Can we blow these up without distorting the quality?” I asked, flipping through the stack.
Camry shrugged. “Probably not.”
She was probably right.
I squinted at the images, willing new information to jump out at me. The first picture was of the blood found on the steering wheel. There was a dark red smear, about a quarter of an inch long, across the leather stitching. The next picture was a close-up of the second spot of blood found. From what Leon had described, I thought the blood was directly under the driver’s side seat—hidden. But this spot was about an inch long and on the front part of the cloth seat. Not sure how or why this was relevant, but it seemed like something I should mention on air.
The third picture was of the inside of Amelia’s car. On the passenger seat were the Christmas decorations. I agreed with Camry, it was odd that Amelia would buy candy canes and plastic Santa heads at the beginning of October, but what grabbed my attention was the fact that all the decorations were stuffed into a plastic CVS bag. In 2008, Californian’s weren’t required to bring their own reusable bags to the store like they are now. So the chances were good that Amelia actually purchased these items at CVS. And since they were on her seat, chances were even better that she went to CVS right before she went missing.
Also, it proved that she planned to be around during Christmas.
If I tilted my head to the side, I could almost see the top of a receipt sticking out of the bag as well.
“Can you see how many CVS stores are in Santa Maria?” I asked Camry. “Starting with the stores closest to her apartment. I’m sure Leon already checked, but maybe there’s an employee who saw her and would be willing to speak to us.”
“Aye, aye.” Camry gave me a captain salute and started typing.
I had no idea how she has so much energy...oh, never mind. There was an empty Red Bull on the ground.
I placed the pictures back in the box. “Did you post on the mom’s group?”
“Yep, but no replies yet.”
Dang it.
“However,” Camry said, “the Missing or Murdered Facebook page is up to a thousand likes now. Woohoo!” She did jazz hands. “We’re practically Internet famous. Speaking of which, I checked out Oliver’s YouTube channel. He’s, like, a legit YouTuber and I’m just throwing this out there: I know he’s, like, older than me, but if he’s my grandpa’s, brother’s grandson then...”
“He’s still your cousin,” I said.
She pouted. “A shame because he’s hot. And I mean that in a total none incestual kind of way.”
“Obviously.”
“Guess how many subscribers he has?”
“I don’t know...ten million,” I said.
“I hate when you do that!”
“Do what?”
“When I ask you to guess something and you over guess making the number now seem insignificant.”
“When have I ever—” I was interrupted by a crash. Instinctually, I covered my face but not before I was blasted with tiny shards of glass.
Confused, I gazed up. The window above the desk had a hole big enough for a toddler to stand in. Camry was up on her knees on the bed with her mouth open.
We glanced around the room and find an...apple?
What the hell?
Camry and I rushed to the window, careful not to step on glass. No one was outside. Not a screech of a tire. Not the sound of feet against the pavement. Only the stillness of the night and the hum of a street lamp.
“Liv, you’re bleeding.” Camry pointed to my face.
I touched my cheek and marveled down at the blood coating my fingers. “Grab my recorder!”
“But there’s blood dripping from your face.”
“I don’t care. It’s in the closet plugged into my laptop. Hurry, hurry!” I was barefoot. Camry had socks on and was fueled by a Red Bull.
She danced through the glass to retrieve the recorder and handed it to me. I wiped the blood from my eye using the backside of my hand and pressed Record. “An apple just flew through the window, breaking it and spraying glass across the room.” I held the recorder up to Camry’s mouth. “Say ‘you’re bleeding’ again.”
“You’re bleeding,” she said robotically.
“No, say ‘Liv, you’re bleeding’ more concerned, like you did before.”
“Oh, okay.” She cracked her neck. “Liv! You’re bleeding!”
Dramatic, but better.
The door swung open and there stood Hazel in a long paisley-printed nightgown with curlers in her hair and a bat in her hands. “Oh my word, what happened?”
“Liv’s bleeding!”
“Oh you sweet thing.” Hazel grabbed my hand and pulled me down the hall into the bathroom. I tiptoed around the glass, still recounting the event into my recorder.
This was huge!
Not only would it make for an exciting episode and an even better teaser trailer. It meant we struck a nerve. Someone here knows what happened to Amelia, and that someone wanted to scare us out of town.
Hazel pulled an impressive first aid kit from under the sink and applied an alcohol compress to the cut above my cheek. I winced.
“Hold still, you’re a mess.” Hazel’s nose was an inch from mine. Camry joined her. I went cross-eyed staring at the two.
“You think she needs stitches?” asked Camry.
“No, but she could use a good waxing,” said Hazel.
“You’re right. Eyebrows, lip, chin.”
“You two know I’m conscious, right? And I’m recording this?” I stood and went to the mirror. There were two superficial cuts on my forehead. The one above my eyelid looked deep, and there was a gash going from my chin to ear. And, yeah, I could use a good wax.
When did I get chin hair?
Why do I have chin hair?
Hazel forced me back on the toilet and ripped open a package of gauze using her teeth. “How did this happen?”
&nb
sp; Camry passed Hazel a tube of Neosporin. “Someone threw an apple through the window.”
“Oh no, you sweet thing.” She dabbed at my forehead with a cotton swab. “It probably fell from a tree.”
“Do you have an apple tree?” I held the recorder up to Hazel’s mouth.
“Pffft. Of course I have an apple tree. Honestly. Who do you think I am? All my pies are made with fresh Granny Smith apples straight from my tree in the backyard. That Nancy Paloza down the street uses canned. Can you imagine?”
“What a poser,” Camry said and gave Hazel a cotton swab.
“Granny Smith apples are green, this one is red,” I said. “Also, an apple from the backyard is not likely to travel around the house and in through the front upstairs window.”
“That’s because someone threw it!” Camry was suddenly in hysterics. The Red Bull must have worn off. “If Liv wasn’t twisted around in her chair the apple would have smacked her in the head. She could have died.”
“I doubt it would have killed me,” I said. “But just in case, can you say that again?” I held the recorder up to her mouth.
“It could have killed you!”
“Now, now, now, girls. Calm down.” Hazel placed a butterfly bandage above my eye. “It was probably an accident. Who would go and do something like that on purpose, huh?”
“Carlos,” Camry coughed into her palm.
“We don’t know anything,” I said. “We talked to several people today, and Camry posted about the podcast on a Facebook page with over fifteen thousand members. Plenty of people know we’re in town.”
“Carlos,” Camry coughed again.
“Stop that.” I tossed a washcloth at her. “We don’t know anything.”
“Carlos said to stop the podcast before people start getting hurt.” Camry gestured to me helplessly. “Have you seen your face? You’re hurt.”
This was true. But I still wasn’t convinced it was Carlos. There were too many locals who knew about the podcast now. Plus, Carlos didn’t seem like the type to throw fruit.
Hazel continued to put me back together. Pouring—what felt like acid—into my gashes then covering them in soothing ointment and gauze.