Chris Carter - The Night Stalker

‘Garcia is right, Captain,’ Hunter said, sitting at the edge of his desk. ‘We can’t discard James Smith simply because the room we found didn’t have anything about Kelly Jensen.’

‘And has he been sighted anywhere yet? Have the phone lines produced any useful tips?’

‘Not yet.’

‘That’s just great, isn’t it?’ She pointed to the street outside. ‘Over four million people in this city and no one seems to know who this James Smith really is. The guy has simply vanished.’ She crossed to the door and opened it. ‘We’re chasing a fucking ghost.’

When Hunter got back to his office, he found an email from Mike Brindle in Forensics – the lab results from the fibers found on the wall behind the large canvas in Laura Mitchell’s apartment were in. They had been right in their assumption. The fibers had come from a common wool skullcap. That meant that whoever had hid behind that canvas was somewhere between six foot and six four.

The results for the faint footprints were also in, but because they were set on house dust, and therefore smudged, they weren’t 100 per cent accurate. The conclusion was that they’d probably come from size eleven or twelve shoes, which was consistent with the height theory. The interesting fact was that they had found no sole marks. No trademark imprints, or grooves, or anything. A completely flat sole. Mike Brindle’s take on it was that whoever had waited in Laura’s apartment had used some sort of shoe cover. Probably handmade. Probably soft rubber or even synthetic foam. That would have no doubt also muffled the perpetrator’s footsteps.

After analyzing the entire studio floor for any more size eleven or twelve foot imprints, Brindle arrived at the same conclusion as Hunter and Garcia had. After hiding behind the large canvas resting against the back wall, Laura Mitchell’s attacker had somehow diverted her attention and very quickly gotten to her with a strong sedative, probably an intravenous one.

‘I’ve got the personal info on Kelly Jensen from research,’ Garcia said as he walked through the door, carrying a green plastic folder.

‘What do we have?’ Hunter asked looking up from his computer.

Garcia took a seat behind his desk and flipped open the folder. ‘OK, Kelly Jensen, born in Great Falls, Montana, thirty years ago. Her parents haven’t been notified yet.’

Hunter nodded.

Garcia continued. ‘She started painting in high school… At the age of twenty, against her parents’ wishes, she relocated here to Los Angeles… She spent several years struggling and being rejected by every agent and art gallery in the business… blah, blah, blah, your typical LA story, except she was a painter, not an actress.’

‘How did she get noticed?’ Hunter asked.

‘She used to sell her work on the oceanfront – a street stall. Got noticed by none other than Julie Glenn, New York’s top art critic. A week later, Kelly got an art agent, a guy called Lucas Laurent. He was the one who reported her as missing.’ He paused and stretched his arms high above his head. ‘Kelly’s career took off quickly after that. Julie Glenn wrote a piece about her in the New York Times, and within a month, the canvases Kelly couldn’t give away at the beach were selling for thousands.’

Hunter checked his watch before grabbing his jacket. ‘OK, let’s go.’

‘Where?’

‘To see the person who reported her missing.’

The traffic was like a religious procession and it took Garcia almost two hours to cover the twenty-three miles between Parker Center and Long Beach.

Lucas Laurent, Kelly Jensen’s agent, had his office on the fifth floor of number 246 East Broadway Street.

Laurent was in his thirties, with olive skin, dark brown eyes and neatly cut hair that was starting to gray. The wrinkles that already surrounded his lips came from heavy smoking, Hunter guessed. His navy blue suit was well fitting, but his tie was a masterpiece of bad taste. A Picasso-style monstrosity of chunky color pieces that only someone with enormous amounts of confidence could wear. And confidence Laurent certainly had – the quiet kind that came with wealth and success.

He stood up from behind his twin pedestal desk and greeted Hunter and Garcia by the door. His handshake was as firm as a businessman’s ready to close a large deal.

‘Joan told me you’re detectives with the LAPD?’ he said as he eyed Hunter. ‘I hope you’re not actually artists and this was just a trick to get you into my office without an appointment.’ He smiled and deep crinkles appeared at the edges of his eyes. ‘But if it was, it certainly shows you’ve both got creativity and ambition.’

‘Unfortunately, we’re the real thing,’ Hunter said, showing Laurent his credentials. The agent’s smile faded fast. Only then did he remember he’d reported Kelly as missing a couple of weeks ago.

Hunter told him only what he needed to know and watched as the color vanished from his face. Laurent slumped back in his chair, his eyes catatonically looking through Hunter.

‘But that’s just ludicrous… murdered? By whom? And why? Kelly was an artist, not a drug dealer.’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

‘But she had an exhibition scheduled in Paris in less than two months’ time… it could have made us close to a million.’

Hunter and Garcia exchanged a quick, concerned glance. Strange time to be thinking about money.

Laurent ruffled inside his desk’s top drawer for a pack of cigarettes. ‘I don’t usually smoke in my office,’ he explained, ‘but I really need this. Do you mind?’

Both detectives shrugged.

Laurent brought a cigarette to his lips, lit it up with a shaking hand and took a drag as if his life depended on it.

Hunter and Garcia sat in the two salmon-colored armchairs in front of Laurent’s desk and began asking him about his relationship with Kelly and his knowledge of her personal life. From Laurent’s answers, just like from his comment about making millions a moment ago, they quickly gathered that Laurent’s relationship with Kelly had been 99 per cent business.

‘Did you have a set of keys to her apartment?’ Garcia asked.

‘God, no.’ Laurent had one last drag of his cigarette, walked over to the window and stubbed it out on the ledge before flicking the butt onto the street below. ‘Kelly didn’t like having people in her apartment or her studio. She wouldn’t even allow me to see any of her pieces until they were completely finished, and even then I almost had to beg her to show them to me. Artists are very self-centered and eccentric people.’

‘Her apartment is in Santa Monica and her art studio in Culver City, is that right?’ Garcia asked.

Laurent nodded nervously.

‘Am I right in thinking you and Miss Jensen attended some social engagements together? Dinners… receptions… exhibitions… awards, things like that?’

‘Yes, quite a few over the three years I’ve been representing her.’

‘Have you ever met anyone she was seeing? Has she ever taken a date to any of these engagements?’

‘Kelly?’ He laughed tensely. ‘I couldn’t think of anything that’d be farther from her thoughts than a relationship. She was stunning. She had men throwing themselves at her, but she just didn’t wanna know.’

‘Really?’ Hunter said. ‘Is there a reason why?’

Laurent shrugged. ‘I never asked, but I know she was really hurt by someone she was in love with a few years ago. The kind of hurt that never goes away. The kind of hurt that makes you wary of every relationship you have from that day on. You know what I mean?’

‘Do you know if she had casual relationships?’ Garcia asked.