Chris Carter - The Night Stalker

Instinctively Garcia looked around. ‘No.’ Confusion started to settle in. ‘Why do you need her clothes?’

‘I don’t, I’m just trying to establish that they are missing.’ Hunter returned to the studio and motioned towards the easel holding the uncovered and unfinished painting. ‘It looks like Laura was last working on this canvas. Now check this out.’ He indicated a paint palette thick with crusts of different dried colors. It was casually lying on a wooden unit next to the stand. To its right was a jar containing four different-sized brushes. The water in the jar was muddy with oil paint residue. Resting on the palette, and now sticking to it as if glued, was another brush. Its tip was dry, hard and caked in bright yellow paint. ‘Now look around her studio,’ Hunter continued. ‘She seemed to have been pretty organized. But even if she wasn’t, painters don’t just simply leave the brush they’re working with laying around thick with paint to dry out. It would be just as easy for her to drop it into the cleaning jar.’

Garcia thought for a moment. ‘Something caught her attention while she was working, maybe a sound, a knock on the door…’ he said, following Hunter’s line of thought. ‘She put the brush down to go check it out.’

‘And the probable reason why we can’t find her working clothes and shoes is because she was wearing them when she was abducted.’

Hunter paused next to several finished canvases arranged against the back wall. Something about the long one on the far right called his attention. It displayed an astonishing gradient variation moving from yellow at one end to red at the other. He took a few steps back and tilted his head sideways. The canvas was leaning tall against the wall at a sixty-five-degree angle, but it was supposed to be looked at horizontally, not vertically. From a distance, the color combination became almost hypnotic. Laura certainly had talent and an astounding understanding of colors, but that wasn’t what had caught Hunter’s eye.

He approached the painting, crouched down next to it, and studied the floor around the canvas for a moment before looking behind it.

‘Now this is interesting.’

Whitney Myers got to her office in Long Beach to find Frank Cohen, her assistant and expert researcher, flipping through computer printouts. He looked up when Myers closed the door behind her.

‘Hey there,’ he said, pushing his glasses up his long and pointy nose. ‘Any luck?’ He knew Myers had spent most of the day going over Katia’s penthouse apartment in West Hollywood.

‘A few clues.’ She dumped her bag on the chair behind her glass-top desk and reached for the jug of freshly brewed coffee that perfumed the entire office. ‘Whoever abducted Katia…’ she poured herself a cup and stirred in a teaspoon of brown sugar, ‘… did it from inside her apartment.’

Cohen leaned forward.

‘Just as her father said, I found the towel in the kitchen. The smell on it was very faint, but it matched the hair conditioner in her bathroom upstairs. Both of her suitcases were at the end of her bed.’

‘Suitcases?’ Cohen frowned.

Myers walked to the large window that overlooked West Ocean Boulevard. ‘Katia Kudrov had just returned from her tour with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She had been away for two months,’ she explained. ‘She didn’t even have time to unpack.’

‘Did you find her purse, cell phone?’

Myers shook her head. ‘Only her car keys, as her father had said.’

‘Any signs of forced entry?’

‘None. All locks intact. Doors, windows, balcony.’

‘Struggle?’

‘None, unless you count a towel on the kitchen floor and a bottle of white wine sitting out of the fridge as one.’

Cohen twisted his lips from side to side. ‘Was she in a relationship?’

‘Not with anyone who’d be waiting for her in her apartment if that’s what you’re thinking. Katia had started seeing the Philharmonic’s new conductor, a guy called Phillip Stein. Apparently he was just a fling, though, nothing serious.’

‘Did he feel the same?’

‘Oh, he fell for her. Her father said it’s always just a fling with her. Katia doesn’t do heavy relationships. Music is her real love.’

Cohen pulled a face. ‘Deep.’

‘Katia and this Phillip guy were on the same tour together, and before you ask, there were no signs that he’d been home with her that night. She broke everything off a few days ago, just before their last concert.’

‘I bet he didn’t like that at all.’

‘Not one bit.’

‘So where is he now? Better yet, where was he on the night they got back to LA?’

‘In Munich.’

‘Munich, Germany?’

A quick nod. ‘He was that upset. Never came back with the Philharmonic after their last concert. Flew directly to Germany. That’s where his family is from. He couldn’t have done it. No matter how much motive he had.’

Cohen paused and tapped the top of his pen against his teeth. ‘Aren’t those flashy apartment blocks in West Hollywood packed with security – CCTV cameras and all? If someone took this Katia woman from her apartment, it must’ve been picked up somewhere.’

‘You would’ve thought so, wouldn’t you? You’re right, there’s a camera inside the elevator, two at reception, one on the penthouse landing and one in the underground car park. Conveniently, there was a power surge that blew the fuse box on the night Katia returned from her tour. All the cameras were down for a few hours. We’ve got no footage.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Nothing. Her father never thought to ask the building’s concierge about cameras. That’s why he never mentioned anything when we met.’

Cohen pulled a face.

‘I know. This thing screams professional kidnapping, doesn’t it?’

‘Has anyone got in touch with the family yet? Ransom request?’

Myers shook her head and returned to her desk. ‘Nothing, and that’s what gets me. Everything so far points to a professional job. Professionals are always after money. Katia and her family are rich enough for the ransom to be in the millions. She’s been gone for over forty-eight hours and nothing, no communication of any sort.’

Cohen tapped the pen against his teeth again. He’d been working with Myers for long enough to know that in a professional kidnapping, communications between the kidnappers and the ransom party were usually established quickly, if possible, before the party had a chance to involve the authorities. If the abductor wasn’t after money, then Cohen knew they weren’t dealing with a kidnapper, they were dealing with a predator.

‘But this gets worse,’ Myers said, sitting back in her chair. ‘Our kidnapper likes to play.’

Cohen stopped with the pen tapping. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There was an answerphone in her kitchen.’

‘Yes, and…?’

Myers allowed the suspense to stretch. ‘The machine was full to capacity. There were sixty new messages.’

Cohen’s left eye twitched. ‘Sixty?’

Myers nodded. ‘I listened to every single one of them.’ She paused and took a sip of her coffee. ‘Not a word, zip, absolute silence, not even heavy breathing.’

‘They were all blank?’

‘It sounded that way. I thought there was something wrong with the phone or the machine, until I got to the last message.’

‘And…?’ Cohen’s eager eyes widened.

‘Have a listen yourself.’ Myers searched her handbag for her digital voice recorder and tossed it over to Cohen.

He quickly placed it in front of him on his desk, readjusted his glasses on his nose and pressed play. Several silent seconds went by. Then a low-pitched white noise oozed out of the tiny speaker. It lasted a few seconds.