The Caller

by Chris Carter

  First he checked under the pillows, the bed cover, and the bed sheet – nothing. He pulled his sleeves up and lifted the mattress to check the bed frame – nothing. He crossed the room to the dresser and tried the first drawer. It was full of lingerie, stockings, and socks; all of it neatly packed away in straight rows. He moved on to the next drawer – T-shirts, blouses, and spaghetti strap tops, again, perfectly arranged to maximize the drawer space. The third drawer was a repeat of the first two, only with sweaters and hot pants. The fourth and last drawer was packed full with a variety of accessories – belts, hair ornaments, necklaces, bracelets, sunglasses and so on.

  When Garcia was done looking through the drawers, he dropped to his knees and looked under the dresser. There was nothing there other than some dust.

  This is silly, he thought. If there was anything to be found in here, forensics would’ve done it already.

  As Garcia swung his body around on his way back up, his right knee slammed into the shoe rack to the right of the dresser. A downpour of shoes came down on top of him.

  ‘Crap!’ he said, bringing both arms up to protect his head. ‘I’ll be goddamned.’

  ‘Carlos, are you all right in there?’ Garcia heard Hunter call from the living room.

  ‘Yep,’ Garcia replied, finally getting back on to his feet. ‘All good. Just bumped into the shoe tower in here by accident and half of them came crashing down on me like a shoe rain.’ He paused, scratching his forehead. ‘Man, do you think she had enough shoes?’ he called out, turning to look at the mess on the floor. Shoes of all different colors and styles were absolutely everywhere. His next words came out as a murmur. ‘Why would anyone need this many shoes?’ He thought about his wife again, then nodded to himself before answering his own question. ‘Because she was a woman, that’s why.’

  Garcia began picking them up and placing them back on the rack. Judging by how well organized Karen Ward’s shelves and drawers were, he was sure that every pair had its specific place, probably arranged either by color or style.

  Out of sheer respect, he started grouping them as best as he could, and he wasn’t at all surprised to find that most of them looked like they’d never even been worn. And now probably never would be.

  Garcia was about halfway through the large pile when something that must’ve come down with the shoes caught his eye.

  He reached for it and paused.

  ‘Oh, shit!’

  Nineteen

  Fall in the City of Angels was a very elusive thing. There was no sting to the air, no characteristic cold bite at night, no typical shiver early in the mornings; on the contrary, autumn could bring with it some of the warmest days and nights, easily matching the temperatures reached at the height of summer, and today certainly was one of those days.

  Hunter had all four of his windows rolled down on his way to the Police Administration Building on West First Street, downtown Los Angeles, but in stop-start traffic he could barely reach enough speed to produce any sort of breeze. The still and stale air inside the cabin, combined with over 70 percent air humidity, made his car feel like a sauna and a steam room at the same time. As he and Garcia finally stepped into their office on the fifth floor of the PAB, the first thing Hunter did was blast the AC unit to full power. Garcia stifled a smile. He could see the long and thin wet mark running all the way down the back of Hunter’s shirt.

  ‘In this heat,’ Garcia said, as he fired up his computer, ‘having a car with no aircon is a bitch, isn’t it?’

  Hunter looked back at him sideways. ‘Don’t you start.’

  ‘I’m not starting anything, but you do understand that your car doesn’t even belong to this century, right? You really need to take that thing to a scrap yard, my friend.’

  ‘Why? It’s a great car?’

  ‘That’s not a car, Robert. That’s a rusty twenty-year-old bathtub with wheels. I know you like to call it a classic, but . . .’

  ‘No,’ Hunter interrupted him. ‘I just call it a car. It does its job, which is to get me from A to B, and it’s very reliable. What else could I ask for?’

  ‘Aircon,’ Garcia said, throwing more salt into the wound. ‘You could ask for aircon.’

  Without anyone knocking, the door to their office was pushed open and Captain Barbara Blake stepped inside.

  Captain Blake had taken over the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division’s leadership a few years back, after the retirement of one of its longest-standing and most decorated captains, William Bolter. She had been hand-picked by Bolter himself, which angered a long list of candidates, but angering people was something that simply came with the captain’s job, and Barbara Blake had absolutely no problems with it.

  She was indeed an intriguing woman – strong and resilient, but at the same time attractive and elegant, with long black hair and suspenseful dark eyes that never gave anything away. Despite being greeted by some hostility when she took over, she had quickly gained a reputation for being a tough-as-nails, no-nonsense captain. She wasn’t easily intimidated, took no crap from anyone – including her superiors in the police department – and had no reservations about upsetting high-powered politicians or government officials if it meant sticking to what she believed was right. Within a few months of her stepping into her new shoes, the initial hostility began to dissipate, and slowly but surely she earned the trust and respect of every single detective under her command.

  ‘OK,’ Captain Blake said, closing the door behind her. ‘What’s the story on this case that came in overnight? The report I read from Long Beach PD is as loose as a clown’s pocket, but it mentions something about the killer making a video-call to the victim’s best friend? What the hell is all that about?’

  ‘As crazy as it sounds, Captain,’ Garcia replied, stirring a single cube of brown sugar into the cup of coffee he’d just poured, ‘that’s exactly what happened. We just got back from talking to Tanya Kaitlin. That’s the victim’s friend who the perp called.’

  The captain leaned back against the door. ‘OK, I’m listening.’ Her inquiring eyes moved from Garcia to Hunter.

  They quickly summarized what Tanya Kaitlin had told them about the call she’d received from the killer.

  ‘Wait a second,’ the captain said, lifting a hand to interrupt them when they told her about the killer’s MO. ‘The killer called her to play a game?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Hunter replied. ‘Two questions, get them right and your friend lives. Get them wrong and . . .’ On his computer screen, he double-clicked the photo file he’d received from the forensics team. ‘Come see for yourself.’

  As Captain Blake positioned herself behind his chair, Hunter began clicking through the photographs.

  ‘Jesus!’ she exclaimed, unable to disguise her shock, but at the same time transfixed by the brutal images. The eighth picture in the sequence was a close-up of the injury to Karen Ward’s left eye. The one believed to have been the fatal one, with a long shard of mirrored glass protruding out of her eye socket. This time, Captain Blake looked away in disgust.

  ‘OK,’ she said, stepping back and away from Hunter’s desk. ‘I don’t need to see any more. What the hell is wrong with this world?’ She shook her head, trying to blink away the images. ‘That goes way beyond sadistic. Way beyond psychopathic.’

  Hunter understood the captain’s frustration well. He knew that, unlike what most people might think, killing wasn’t such a hard a task to achieve. Every human was capable of doing it.

  In the USA, a great number of homicides happened as a consequence of an error of misjudgment. All it really took was a moment of insanity. A second of someone losing his or her temper and it was done – a quick squeeze of the trigger, a push, a direct knock to the temple, a swing of a bat to the head, a sharp instrument to the right part of the body – there were hundreds of different ways to end a life in just a second. What took a specific type of individual – cold, calculated, sadistic, devoid of emotions – was preceding the murder with torture. Being
able to deliberately inflict tremendous physical pain on another human being and getting a kick from it was something that not many on this earth were able to do.

  ‘It gets worse,’ Hunter said. ‘He forced her to look.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Captain Blake replied. ‘You just told me.’

  ‘No.’ Garcia this time. ‘Not her best friend, Captain. The victim.’

  A look of confusion came over Captain Blake.

  ‘The killer forced Karen Ward to look at her reflection after each head slam. He forced her to watch her own disfiguration.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In our first visit to the crime scene,’ Hunter said, taking over, ‘something in Karen Ward’s living room bothered me, but I couldn’t really pinpoint it. I should’ve realized what it was when I checked her bedroom for the first time, but there was so much wrong with it that it escaped me, pure and simple.’

  ‘And what was it?’ Captain Blake asked.

  ‘The mirror.’

  ‘What mirror?’

  Hunter pulled his chair closer to his desk and clicked his mouse a few times until he found what he was looking for.

  ‘These are the crime scene pictures of Karen Ward’s living room.’ Once again he pointed at his computer screen.

  Captain Blake returned to Hunter’s side.

  ‘See this?’ He indicated the full length mirror positioned between the dining table and the sitting area. ‘What’s a dressing mirror doing in the living room?’

  The captain shrugged. ‘That’s not that uncommon, Robert. Maybe she lacked space in her bedroom. Plus, a lot of women like to have one last quick look at their outfit just before walking out the door.’

  Hunter nodded, acknowledging the captain’s point. ‘The problem is: the space is there, Captain.’ A few more clicks. ‘This is a picture of her bedroom. See the space between the clothes rack and the dresser? I checked the floor. There were four small rubber marks, which exactly matched the rubber feet on the dressing mirror. It was moved, Captain.’

  ‘Tanya Kaitlin also told us that the killer kept on telling her to look,’ Garcia offered, ‘and she couldn’t understand why, because she was looking, and she kept on telling him so.’

  ‘That’s because the killer wasn’t really telling her to look,’ Hunter again. ‘He was telling Karen.’

  Captain Blake pressed her lips tightly together. One of her ‘worried’ telltale signs.

  ‘He wanted to torture her in every possible way,’ Hunter said. ‘Physically and psychologically.’

  No one said anything for a long while.

  ‘How about this mask the killer was wearing?’ Captain Blake finally broke the silence. ‘Was the witness able to give you some sort of description of it?’

  ‘She was,’ Garcia replied. ‘We’re getting a sketch artist to her by this afternoon. If the killer hasn’t created this mask himself, there’s a slim chance that we might be able to identify the supplier.’

  Captain Blake nodded to herself. ‘And how did the killer get access to the building? To her apartment? Does anyone know?’

  ‘Security at the victim’s building was pretty basic and easily breachable,’ Garcia told her. ‘Just a dated intercom entry system with a door buzzer, nothing more. An earth magnet against the door’s weak locking mechanism and, boom, you’re in.’

  ‘How about her apartment?’

  Garcia sipped his coffee. ‘There were no signs of a struggle . . . no signs of a break-in, so the speculation is that the victim could’ve buzzed the killer in herself, either because she knew him, or because he came up with a believable enough story when he rang her apartment. Either way, she would’ve opened her front door for him herself.’

  ‘There’s also the possibility that he was waiting for her inside when she got home,’ Hunter added.

  Captain Blake’s forehead creased. ‘How would he have gotten in?’

  ‘That we’re not sure yet, but we know that he’s done it before.’

  The captain’s interest visibly grew. ‘What? He’s been inside her apartment before? How do you know?’

  Hunter leaned back on his chair. ‘When we first attended the scene,’ he explained. ‘We found several tell signs that hinted that Karen Ward lived in fear. Our suspicions were confirmed earlier this morning by her best friend.’ Hunter proceeded to tell Captain Blake what Tanya Kaitlin had told them about the stalker-type notes Karen Ward had received.

  ‘And she told you that one of these notes was left on the victim’s bed?’ Captain Blake asked.

  ‘That’s correct,’ Garcia confirmed, taking over again. ‘But it doesn’t end there. After we left Ms. Kaitlin’s apartment, we decided to drive back to the crime scene to have another look.’

  ‘And . . .?’

  ‘And while checking her bedroom, I bumped into the victim’s shoe rack by accident. Half of her shoe collection rained down on me and, let me tell you, Captain, there were enough shoes there to open up a shop.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as enough shoes,’ the captain shot back. ‘But go on.’

  ‘Well, after the shoe rain stopped, I found this. It had slipped out from inside one of them.’

  Garcia pointed to a see-through evidence bag that was sitting on his desk. Inside it was a white, eight-by-five-inch sheet of paper. Captain Blake hadn’t noticed the evidence bag until then. She stepped closer to have a better look and her eyes instantly widened. The scrap of paper was actually a collage of letters and words that had been cut out from a magazine to form a note.

  A stalker’s note.

  Twenty

  Cassandra left her cul-de-sac house in Granada Hills, San Fernando Valley, about an hour after Mr. J. It was Thursday morning, and every Thursday she volunteered at one of the several charity shops for ‘WomenHeart’ – the national coalition for women with heart disease.

  Her mother, Janette, with whom she had been very close, had passed away eight years ago, victim of coronary thrombosis, caused by a severe spasm of the left coronary artery. Her father wasn’t home at the time, and Janette, who was outside, attending to her garden, didn’t manage to get to her phone in time. She died in her backyard, surrounded by roses and sunflowers, but the real shock was that no one saw it coming. Cassandra’s mother had never showed any symptoms related to heart disease – no upper-body discomfort, no chest pains, no shortness of breath, no dizziness, no nausea, no sleeping problems – nothing. In fact, she was a fairly fit sixty-one-year-old woman, who exercised regularly and ate a well-balanced diet. The reason for the coronary artery spasm was never identified.

  After her mother’s death, Cassandra decided to dedicate some of her time to helping people with heart problems. At different times she volunteered at different heart disease organizations. WomenHeart was her favorite one.

  Cassandra checked her watch as she locked her house’s front door behind her. There was no need to rush. She had plenty of time to get to the shop before it opened at 11:00 a.m. She jumped into her silver Cadillac SRX, which was parked on her driveway instead of on the road, and switched on its engine. She shifted the transmission into reverse and checked her mirrors.

  ‘Huh?’ she murmured to herself, narrowing her eyes at the interior mirror before turning around to check her rear window. There was something caught between the window and the rear wiper. It looked like a white piece of paper. More rubbish advertisement, she thought.

  Cassandra flicked on the wiper to get rid of it, but instead of disposing of the piece of paper, it simply dragged it along from left to right a couple of times.

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud!’

  Cassandra undid her seatbelt and opened her car door. As she got to her rear window she realized that it wasn’t a piece of paper, but an envelope. She reached for it. There was no stamp and no recipient or sender’s address. All she could see was the name – Cassandra – across the front of the envelope, but it hadn’t been handwritten or typed. Someone had cut out each individual letter from a magazine page and glu
ed them together to form her name.

  ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ she said out loud, her tone of voice immediately breaching the threshold into ‘anger’ level. She quickly swung around, throwing her gaze up and down her street. There was no one there, and the only cars she could see she recognized as belonging to her neighbors.

  She kept her eyes on the street a moment longer, before bouncing them back to the envelope in her hands. She knew that inside it she would find another note.

  This one made it three in total. The first two had been left on the counter in the Women’s Heart shop where she had been volunteering for the past seven weeks. Just a white envelope with nothing more than her name across its front, formed by a collage of individual cut-out letters.

  ‘I think you have an admirer, Cass,’ Debora, a senior fellow volunteer worker, had told her as she handed Cassandra the first envelope almost two months ago. But the note inside it was no admiring one. The clear intention of the message was to frighten her; but it actually made Cassandra chuckle.

  Cassandra asked Debora if she had seen who had left the note on the counter, but Debora said that she had no idea. She said that the note had been left by the cash register, and she only saw it when she rang in an item.

  The second note, delivered four weeks later, was pretty much a repeat of the first one, also left by the cash register. This time the message it carried didn’t make Cassandra chuckle, it made her angry. In her mind, the notes had clearly been the handiwork of some ‘idiot’ trying to be funny and maybe scare her, but failing miserably at it . . . but who?

  Unfortunately the charity shop she volunteered at had no CCTV camera, or else Cassandra would’ve worked her way through the footage until she had identified the culprit, and the next time he or she stepped into the shop, she would have given the person a piece of her mind.

  Despite everything, Cassandra didn’t give the notes much importance, so much so that she had completely forgotten about them. In fact, she had never even mentioned any of it to Mr. J, or anyone else.