The Caller

by Chris Carter

  ‘And you think she wouldn’t consider this to be?’

  ‘Oh, c’mon, Detective.’ Mr. J looked back at Garcia. ‘Don’t be naive. You find a note that looks like it came out of an old Kojak episode.’ He nodded at it. ‘Written by putting together a few cut-out letters and words from a magazine, with a cliché scary line like this one, and what do you do, freak the fuck out? Believe that your life is at risk?’

  Garcia didn’t reply.

  ‘Well, I can tell you that Cassandra wouldn’t. It would take a hell of a lot more than something like this to scare someone like her.’ He paused and for a quick second looked like he was searching his memory. ‘In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her sacred. She was strong like that. She probably laughed at this when she got it. Dismissed it as a hoax or something, which is what I think most people would’ve done. She would’ve never called me on a business trip to tell me about a note that looks like it was put together by a four-year-old.’

  ‘I’d have to agree,’ Hunter cut in. ‘Most people would’ve discarded this note as a hoax, a very bad practical joke, and that’s why I would like to ask your permission to properly search the house, more specifically, your wife’s belongings.’

  Mr. J knew that the use of the word ‘properly’ meant that they had already searched the house and Cassandra’s belongings. They just haven’t done it meticulously enough.

  ‘What for?’ he asked.

  ‘For other notes similar to this one. Notes she might’ve received previously.’

  ‘What?’ Mr. J studied both detectives’ faces, but found nothing. ‘You think she received other notes like this one?’

  ‘I do,’ Hunter admitted it.

  Mr. J chuckled anxiously. ‘And what makes you think that?’

  ‘Because this note,’ Hunter said, pointing at it, his tone firm and confident, ‘unlike what you might think, Mr. Jenkinson, certainly scared your wife.’

  Another intrigued frown. ‘And you know that how?’

  Hunter scratched his chin. ‘Because she never threw it away, Mr. Jenkinson. We didn’t find it in a trashcan, tucked away in a drawer, or under a sofa. We found it inside her handbag, together with her car keys and her purse. If she had thought that this note was nothing more than a silly prank, why keep it? And better yet, why keep it in her handbag?’

  Mr. J hadn’t thought of that. He had actually forgotten that Hunter had told him that the note had been found inside Cassandra’s handbag. And the detective had a point. Mr. J knew Cassandra better than anyone did. She would never have paid any attention to something like this, unless she had received enough of them to either test her patience or scare her.

  It was while pondering that idea that the reason why she had kept the note in her handbag came to him – she wanted to show it to him, get his opinion on it, ask him if she should be worried about something like that.

  Of course, he thought. It must’ve been. She was waiting for me to get back from my ‘business trip’ so she could show it to me. Talk it over.

  That thought drove a new spike of guilt right through Mr. J’s heart. His eyes closed instinctively and he pressed his lips tightly together, as if an unforeseen wave of pain had taken over him.

  ‘Mr. Jenkinson?’ Hunter said, legitimately concerned. ‘Are you all right?’

  He reopened his eyes and for a second lost grip of his cool. The anger in his voice painted the room red.

  ‘My wife was tortured and murdered inside my own house while I was away, arguably by some psychopath who had been tormenting and stalking her with stupid notes like this one.’ He stabbed his finger at the evidence bag. ‘Which I knew nothing about. How “all right” would you like me to be, Detective?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Jenkinson,’ Hunter replied, his eyes low and apologetic. ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

  ‘Please,’ Mr. J said, lifting a hand. His cool was back, and so was his perfect acting. ‘If you have no more questions, could I be left alone now?’

  Hunter exchanged another troubled look with Garcia.

  ‘Unfortunately, we can’t allow you to stay in the house, Mr. Jenkinson. Not tonight.’

  Mr. J glared at Hunter. He knew fully well that he would never be allowed to stay, but he needed to play his ‘oblivious citizen’ part.

  ‘What do you mean – you won’t allow me to stay? This is my house.’

  ‘We understand that, Mr. Jenkinson.’ Once again, Hunter’s voice was calm and composed. ‘And the only thing I can do at the moment is apologize, but unfortunately your house is now also a crime scene, and for reasons I’m sure you can imagine, we need to keep it isolated until it’s given the “all clear” by us and the forensic team. We’ll be back here in the morning to go over everything again with fresh eyes, looking for anything we might’ve missed tonight.’

  Retaining the angry look on his face, Mr. J remained silent, pretending to consider Hunter’s words.

  ‘I can promise you that we’ll work as fast as we possibly can, Mr. Jenkinson. With a little luck, we’ll be able to hand the house over to the crime and trauma scene decontamination team by tomorrow night. After that, the house is yours to do with as you please again.’

  Still silence.

  ‘I’m very sorry about that,’ Hunter restated.

  ‘Could I at least grab some fresh clothes?’ Mr. J asked, being sure to keep some of the anger in his tone of voice.

  ‘Of course. Take as long as you need. We’ll wait outside.’

  Fifty-Five

  This feels all wrong, Mr. J thought as Hunter and Garcia exited his office.

  Despite feeling exhausted and emotionally drained, his brain was still able to ponder basic facts, and four of the most basic ones, when it came to this investigation, simply weren’t adding up.

  One: He had been conveniently away at the time of his wife’s murder. Two: No signs of forced entry had been found, which meant that the investigation would have to consider the possibility that the perpetrator had a key to the house to start with. Three: The video-call he claimed he had received could never be properly verified. Even the detectives had confirmed that. And four: The note that was found inside Cassandra’s handbag could’ve easily been planted there to create the illusion that she was being stalked and to try to drag the investigation down a different path.

  Considering those four facts alone, Mr. J knew that he was supposed to have been grilled like a rack of ribs at a fat men’s barbecue, but that just didn’t happen.

  As he left his hotel late last night, he had begun thinking about what sort of questions would be coming his way. Questions about alibis to corroborate any of his stories. Questions about what sort of business or meetings he was supposed to have had back in Fresno. Names, phone numbers, schedules, addresses . . . everything. As the interview started, with questions about his last two trips and who had keys to the property, he thought that he was well en route to the expected grilling but, to his surprise, the line of questioning quickly moved on to something he could never have predicted. Neither detective seemed too interested in digging any deeper into his business trip.

  To Mr. J, that was problem number one. Problem number two was that Cassandra had been murdered inside their own home without an apparent motive. No burglary. No obvious sexual assault. When Mr. J added problem number one to problem number two, and he was sure that the detectives he met had already done so, the main result was a big and shiny ‘crime of passion’, blinking right at the top of the list, but the interview hadn’t gone down that route either. They never asked him if he and Cassandra had been arguing a lot recently, or if he had any indications that she could’ve been involved in an extra-marital affair. They never asked him if he was involved in one himself, or even if any of them had talked about, or considered, a divorce. In fact, there had been no questions whatsoever concerning the state of their marriage after twenty-one years. What the detectives seemed really interested in was the video-call, and in as much detail as possible.

 
; Why? he asked himself.

  If they believed that the video-call had been fabricated, maybe it was because they were trying to catch him on a lie, make him contradict himself, but still . . .

  Mr. J’s breath hitched within his throat, because that was when he realized the mistake he had made.

  Fifty-Six

  By 8:30 a.m., Garcia was back at the Jenkinsons’ house together with two uniformed officers. He was studying the photographs on the mantelpiece when Hunter finally got to the house, almost two hours after him.

  ‘How are you guys doing?’ asked Hunter. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nada,’ Garcia replied. ‘We’ve been through everything in the bedroom, everything inside Ms. Jenkinson’s wardrobe, every pocket, every pair of shoes, every box we could find, every drawer.’ He shook his head Hunter’s way. ‘No other note, or anything else to indicate that she was being stalked.’

  The honest truth was, Garcia was just going through the motions. After what Mr. J had told them in the early hours of the morning, neither detective was really expecting to find another stalker’s note inside the house. They both had figured out the same thing that Mr. J had – the reason why Cassandra Jenkinson had kept the note they’d found inside her handbag was because she was waiting for her husband to come home so she could show it to him. That had been the note that had either scared her or tested her patience. The note that had made her decide that she’d had enough. Even if she had received other notes previously to the one they’d found, and neither Hunter or Garcia doubted she had, according to what Mr. J had told them about the kind of woman his wife was, she probably did discard them as a silly prank and threw them away.

  Garcia reached for another picture from the mantelpiece. In the photograph, Mr. J was standing behind his wife with his arms wrapped around her waist. He seemed to be whispering something into her ear.

  ‘Do you think that this was how the killer got the idea for his final question?’ Garcia asked, putting the picture down and facing Hunter.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Hunter replied. ‘But if these pictures were what made him think of the wedding question in the first place, then the killer has been in this house before. And I mean, before last night.’

  Garcia nodded. ‘That was exactly what I was thinking when you got here. Just like he did with Tanya Kaitlin, the killer knew beforehand that Mr. Jenkinson wouldn’t be able to answer the “big” question. This guy does nothing by chance.’ He looked at the picture frames again. ‘It would be naive of us to think that this prompted the wedding date question on the spot, just like that.’ He snapped his fingers.

  ‘Too great a risk for him to take,’ Hunter agreed. ‘If you put it all into perspective, this was an even easier question than the one he asked Tanya Kaitlin.’

  In his head, Garcia ran through both questions using himself as a subject. If he were asked for his wedding date, he wouldn’t hesitate half a second. If he were asked for Ana’s cellphone number . . .

  Right then, a guilty feeling punched him square in the face. In all the years they’d been married, he had never memorized his wife’s number. Then guilt turned into shame because he realized that he had never even tried to. He had always relied on his cellphone memory not only for her number, but also for every number in his contact list, including Hunter’s. The only number he knew by heart was his own. Silently and ashamed, Garcia made himself a promise right there and then.

  ‘But I think that that is exactly what he wanted us to believe,’ Hunter said, dragging his partner back from his thoughts.

  ‘Believe that these pictures were what made him come up with the wedding date question?’ Garcia asked.

  Hunter nodded. ‘Think about it, Carlos, the killer doesn’t know that we’ve figured out that the questions he asks aren’t simple or random at all, though they are designed to look that way, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, so just for a moment let’s pretend that we know nothing about this killer. We get the call. We work the crime scene as we always do. We notice the wedding pictures on the mantelpiece, but they don’t jump out at us because there’s no real reason for it. Then we interview Mr. Jenkinson and he tells us about the video-call and the questions he was asked. We might’ve made a connection then, but even if not, there’s always the second look at the crime scene. Not to mention all the scene photographs that we’ll be looking at, over and over again.’

  Garcia jumped into Hunter’s threat of thought. ‘So unless we were either blind or stupid, we would’ve seriously considered the possibility that his second question had been a spur of the moment thing, triggered by these wedding photos.’

  Hunter agreed again.

  ‘And that,’ Garcia continued, ‘at least for a while, would’ve caused us to lose track of what to really look for, which is the fact that the killer already knew that Mr. Jenkinson would get the question wrong. The fact that, just like you’ve said, he has probably been in this house before.’

  ‘Exactly. I’m thinking, maybe that’s how he first picks his victims.’

  ‘Very possible,’ Garcia accepted it. Garcia was about to say something else when Hunter’s phone rang.

  ‘Detective Hunter, Homicide Special.’

  It was Dr. Carolyn Hove, the Chief Medical Examiner for the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner. She had just finished the autopsy on Cassandra Jenkinson’s body.

  Fifty-Seven

  After Mr. J left Hunter and Garcia, he checked himself into a cheap motel in Porter Ranch, not that far from his house in Granada Hills, but that had been just for show in case the LAPD came checking. He didn’t even see the inside of the room. As soon as he got the keys from the stick-thin night attendant who smelled of grease and fried cheese, he jumped back into his car and drove straight to the apartment he kept down in Torrance, South Los Angeles. The apartment, which absolutely no one knew about, had been rented under a completely bogus name several years ago and it was paid for in cash at the beginning of every year – always a full year in advance.

  Mr. J needed to make a few phone calls, but he knew that until the sun had once again recolored the LA sky, there was very little that he or anyone else would be able to do. He felt exhausted and his brain kept on telling him that his best option was to try to recharge and get some much-needed rest, even if only for an hour or two, but sleep never came. The turmoil inside his mind simply wouldn’t allow it. Every time he closed his eyes, he was bombarded by images of Cassandra covered in blood.

  In the living room, Mr. J poured himself a healthy measure of bourbon – enough to take the edge off and slap his nerves back a few notches, but not enough to cloud his thoughts. Drink in hand, he switched off the lights and dumped himself into the compact sofa that faced the large window on the east wall. The view from it was nothing spectacular, but when the sun was up, it did manage to catch a sliver of Redondo Beach and the Pacific Ocean beyond it, and that alone had a tremendous calming effect.

  Staring at the city lights, Mr. J had a sip of his drink and let the intense alcohol, which carried notes of sweet oak and caramel, linger in his taste buds until it started burning his tongue and the inside of his cheeks. Only then did he allow the golden liquid to finally flood his throat. Usually his body would immediately begin warming up from inside, but Mr. J doubted that could ever happen again. He felt as if his soul had frozen and all that was left inside of him was hatred, shadowed by an insatiable desire for revenge.

  He got himself comfortable on the sofa and his mind took him right back to the moment he had re-entered his home and met the two detectives who were in charge of the investigation.

  Mr. J had crossed paths with more cops and detectives in his lifetime than he had friends. To him, they were all potatoes from the same sack, but there was something about one of the two detectives that had intrigued him. Unlike every other detective he had ever met, who seemed to be always on edge and fighting a losing battle against his/her own demons, this one seemed to be right at the other end of the
spectrum. There was something about the calm in his eyes, about his composure, about the degree of confidence with which he spoke, that made him stand out. Right then, Mr. J was unsure if that was a good sign or not.

  He had another sip of his bourbon, pulled out his wallet and reached for the card the detective had given him:

  Robert Hunter, LAPD Homicide Special Section.

  Mr. J would have to ask Brian Caldron to send him a complete dossier on Detective Hunter.

  By the time Mr. J had finished his second drink, cracks of blue light had begun sliding through the dark sky. He put his glass down and checked his watch. It was time to make his first call.

  Mr. J made his way into the apartment’s only bedroom, opened the wardrobe door and kneeled down by the heavy-duty, fingerprint biometric safe that sat where his shoes should’ve been. Thumb scanned and six-digit security code entered, the safe opened with a muffled thud. He grabbed one of the several brand new prepaid cellphones he kept locked in there, unwrapped it and dialed a number he knew by heart. The phone number belonged to someone else who worked for the same cartel as Mr. J. Someone at the very top of it and who he knew only as Razor.

  The phone rang twice before it was answered by someone with a smooth crooner’s voice.

  ‘Razor, it’s Mr. J.’

  ‘Mr. J?’ Razor replied, his tone intrigued and inquisitive. He certainly wasn’t expecting to get a call from Mr. J, let alone at that time in the morning. ‘Is everything all right? Have you run into any problems in Fresno?’

  ‘No. Fresno went as smoothly as it could’ve gone. No glitches.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear.’

  ‘I do have another problem, though.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I have to step back for a while.’ Mr. J’s tone was decisive but calm. ‘I can’t take any more contracts for the foreseeable future.’

  There was a short, thoughtful pause.

  ‘How long is “a while”?’