Alex Barclay - The Caller

A breeze rose from nowhere and Joe was forced to turn away; Artie always smelled of his last meal. Sadly for Joe, none of them ever had been.

‘Creepy name too: The Caller…’ said Artie. ‘Does the perp make a phone call to his victims before he shows up?’

Joe rolled his eyes. ‘No. Under the bright lights of the cameras, the Chief got flustered and said “caller”. And some… journalist thought it sounded creepy enough to freak the public out. I could think of a lot of other names for the guy…’

‘Like what?’ said Artie.

Joe stopped. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘You got anything for me?’ said Artie.

‘Unless you want to do a nice three-way with the DCPI, no.’

‘I could do that.’

‘Come on, Artie. You know I’m not in a position to say shit. OK? Now, I’m coming into work a very contented man this morning, so please

…’

‘Just something that no-one else’s got. Throw me something.’

Joe looked at him like he had lost his mind. ‘Why are you even here?’

Artie shrugged. ‘I was in the neighborhood.’

Joe laughed.

Artie had to jog to keep up with him. ‘Have you made any further progress on the Duke Rawlins investigation?’

Joe spun around. ‘That’s not an investigation I’m directly involved in,’ he said. ‘And you know that, you-’ He paused. ‘Go talk to the FBI. Just go, find out who the hell you’re supposed to talk to. Goodbye, Artie.’

Joe sat at his desk with Aneto’s file in front of him. He spread out the photos of the hallway and the close-ups of the blood stains, looking for anything about him that made him the reason why the killer started here. There were no guarantees he was the first victim, but it was unlikely he wasn’t. All the squads knew to look through their files for anything similar – nothing had come up – and the chances of a body lying undiscovered in a New York apartment for over a year were non-existent. He went slowly through the images. He had seen them before, but he was looking for another angle and he had a fresh cup of coffee to back him up. Six photographs in, he stopped.

It was taken in the hallway – a close-up of Aneto’s torso, nothing remarkable, except for a dark spot at the edge of the photo. He looked closer. If it was what he thought it was, it was totally out of place. He pulled a magnifying glass out of his drawer, looking around quickly before he held it over the photo. He was right. It was a dermestid beetle. Joe had spent two years studying entomology before he dropped out to become a cop. His father was a professor in Forensic Entomology.

Joe turned back to the photo. Dermestid beetles weren’t there for William Aneto – nothing on his body would interest them yet. They came to corpses at the end. After the flies had arrived to lay their eggs and the maggots had crawled off into the dark to pupate, dermestids showed up to feed on the dried tissue. William Aneto didn’t have any dried tissue. The body was found within twenty-four hours of his murder with eight hours of night time in between when insects would not have been active.

Joe laid out all the photos of William Aneto’s apartment looking for anything else that could have attracted a dermestid beetle – they also fed on hide and hair. A bad taxidermy job could have brought them out, even the horse hair from a violin bow. Joe studied the apartment, but it was modern and minimalist, lots of plastic and chrome and smooth shiny new surfaces. There was no mounted stag’s head on the wall near the body, nothing that Joe could find that would account for the dermestid beetle. The only thing he could think of was another dead creature in the house, a mouse or a rat. But then there would have been more beetles and there were none in any of the other photos.

‘You’ve got mail,’ said Rencher, holding up a white envelope with Joe’s name on it.

Joe looked at the envelope. ‘He strikes again.’ He pulled a pair of gloves out of the drawer and put them on. He sliced the letter open: more pages, squashed into an envelope made to take only two or three. Rencher hovered by the desk.

‘I’ll let you know,’ said Joe, tilting his head towards Rencher’s desk.

Rencher shrugged and walked away. Joe walked over to the copier, made a copy of the letter for everyone, then put the original in an envelope. They hadn’t got prints from the first one, so he was hoping for better luck this time. He sat down with his copy and read through it, marking parts as he went along. When he had read it three times, he called everyone over.

‘Reminds me of school,’ said Rencher. ‘Getting a letter was the highlight of your day.’

‘You went to boarding school?’ said Martinez.

‘Yes I did,’ said Rencher. ‘Got a problem with that?’

‘Relax,’ said Martinez.

‘OK,’ said Joe. ‘Letter two, same kind of envelope, same writing, mailed around the same time from the same post office. Similar kind of shit: talking about going to some gallery, going to the park, being spiritual, baking cookies in someone else’s kitchen – whatever the hell that’s about.’ He flicked through more pages. ‘There’s a lot of stuff about forgiveness here and redemption. And good and evil. And then we come to the case: “ It strikes a chord with me. I’m not sure why. I follow The Caller investigation with interest when I get the chance.” Then: “ But I know that somewhere inside me I, personally, wish you luck.” And it’s signed off – “ God be with you. May angels rest on your shoulders and lighten your load.”’ Joe shrugged.

‘And can you feel God with you right now?’ said Martinez.

‘I look at you guys and I think “Jesus Christ”. Does that count?’ said Joe.

Rencher shrugged. ‘“ I wish you luck ” because I want to stop, maybe? Is this the perp wanting to get caught?’

‘I don’t think I could bear the cliche if it was,’ said Danny.

Joe laughed. ‘Nah. He’s been so careful all along.’

Rencher shrugged. ‘Well could it be the perp and he doesn’t want to get caught?’

‘Then why engage us at all?’ said Joe.

‘For a mind fuck,’ said Rencher.

‘To me,’ said Danny, ‘the letter reads like your neighbor trying to give you some friendly advice

– the kind of advice that’s useless because really, you know he’s an EDP.’ ‘Your neighbor’s the one should be worried about living next door to an EDP,’ said Rencher. ‘I see where you’re coming from, Danny,’ said Joe. ‘“… somewhere inside me I, personally, wish you luck”. This could be someone who knows The Caller,’ said Rencher.

‘Or has witnessed the crime,’ said Bobby.

‘Or has been the victim of a crime,’ said Rencher.

‘Or has been a victim of The Caller,’ said Joe.

They looked at him. ‘Woo,’ said Danny.

‘It doesn’t sound like some sick twisted psycho,’ said Joe. ‘But I can’t make up my mind if it’s one of those harmless loser psychos who lives with Mom.’

‘Maybe the guy doesn’t know who or what he knows,’ said Bobby.

‘And maybe, just maybe…’ said Danny. ‘This is all just a load of bullshit.’

They stood in silence, their eyes moving between the letter and the photos still laid out on Joe’s desk.

Bobby spoke first. ‘We worked this case, don’t know if any you guys saw it – the mugger who was targeting those Columbia University girls? We got in touch with the papers, fed them some stuff and within, like, a week, we had our guy.’

‘No,’ said Joe. ‘I’m not going to do that. We don’t know enough about-’

‘Do you know the case I’m talking about?’

‘Yeah,’ said Joe, ‘but it doesn’t matter.’

‘What do you mean it doesn’t matter?’