Chris Carter - The Caller

‘Have you been waiting long?’ Hunter asked as he stepped out of his car.

Garcia, who was leaning against the driver’s door of his Honda Civic, consulted his watch — 8:16 a.m.

‘Not even a couple of minutes.’ His words were followed by a half-curbed yawn.

‘Did you manage to get any sleep at all?’

‘Very little.’ Garcia’s reply came with an awkward head-tilt. ‘I decided to sleep in the living room so I wouldn’t wake Anna up for the second time in the same night. Bad move. My couch just wasn’t made for sleeping. At least, not for someone who is six-foot two.’

Hunter could perfectly relate.

‘By six o’clock I had enough of the tossing and turning, so I thought that I might as well get some work done.’ Garcia’s eyes dropped to the blue file in his right hand. ‘How about you? What time did you get out of there?’

‘About an hour or so after you, once the body was taken to the coroner’s, just before dawn.’

‘So asking if you got any sleep would be a silly question, right?’

Hunter looked back at his partner.

‘Yep,’ Garcia agreed with himself. ‘Silly question.’

‘So what’s in the folder?’

‘Victim’s basic profile.’ Garcia shrugged. ‘Well, some of it, at least. Operations is still working on it. This is all the info they managed to gather on her in such short notice.’

‘OK, so what have we got?’ Hunter asked, as they crossed the road in the direction of the blue and white apartment building.

Garcia flipped open the folder. ‘Karen Ward, twenty-four years old, born March seventeenth in the city of Campbell, Santa Clara County, where her parents still live. No criminal record. No substantial debts. Clean driver’s license. She came to Los Angeles four years ago to study esthetics and makeup at the Academy of Beauty LA.’

They paused as they reached the building. ‘And where’s that?’

‘Culver City.’

Hunter acknowledged it and Garcia carried on.

‘She was a dedicated student, graduating a year later in the top five percent of her class. The Academy has a placement program, helping graduates find work. They got her an internship in a beauty spa called...’ Garcia turned to the next page. ‘Trilogy Day Spa, in Manhattan Beach.’

‘Where did she live then?’

‘Umm...’ Garcia quickly searched through the file. ‘She shared a house in South Bay with...’ His eyebrows bobbed up and down once. ‘None other than the person we’re here to see — Tanya Kaitlin.’

‘OK.’

‘Karen Ward was with Trilogy Day Spa for a year before taking a new job with a different beauty salon — Glique, located in Monterey Park.’

Hunter looked a little surprised. ‘Monterey Park? That’s quite a way from South Bay.’

‘No doubt,’ Garcia agreed, ‘but she didn’t commute. She relocated to Alhambra.’

‘Sharing again?’

Another quick scan of the file. ‘It doesn’t say, but I guess Tanya Kaitlin will be able to clear that for us.’

‘True.’

‘She spent another year with Glique, before changing jobs once again.’ Garcia locked eyes with Hunter. ‘You guessed it. New job. New part of town. New address.’

‘Where this time?’

‘Back to the Westside — Santa Monica. The new job was with a high-class beauty salon called... Burke Williams, on Third Street Promenade.’

‘And her new address?’

‘Appleton Way in Mar Vista.’

Garcia read on in silence for a moment before frowning.

‘What?’ Hunter asked.

‘Very fast change. She stayed with Burke Williams for only four months before moving on to a new spa, a place called True Beauty in Long Beach, on East Second Street.’

‘Her last job before she was murdered,’ Hunter said. He remembered Sergeant Velasquez mentioning the address.

‘That’s right,’ Garcia confirmed.

‘Anything about any relationships?’ Hunter asked. ‘Anybody she was seeing?’

Garcia leafed through the file pages. ‘Nothing.’

‘How about her reasons for any of the employment changes, does it say? Has any of the spas she worked at shut down? Was she laid off?’

More page flipping. ‘Nope. I’ve got nothing here, but I’d also be very interested to know. She’d been in LA for four years. One of those she spent studying, and in the next three she changed employment three times. OK,’ Garcia admitted, ‘not really unheard of, but she wasn’t skipping from odd job to odd job. She was trying to establish a career, and in the case of a cosmetologist, I’m sure that she would’ve been working hard to try to secure a regular clientele. Hard to do that when you’re moving around as much as she was and in a city as big as LA.’

Hunter agreed. ‘Same job, different employers, which indicates that she probably wasn’t being let go. If she were, she wouldn’t have found a new job so quickly because she’d lack references.’

Garcia agreed. ‘The decision to leave came from her, not her employers.’ He pressed his lips together in thought. ‘Looking at her employment history, I’d say that her first two job changes look pretty normal. First job — fresh out of the academy and an intern at Trilogy Day Spa. Internship over, it’s natural to go looking for growth, more money, better opportunities, whatever... cue her next employer, Glique. Location-wise — not great, but when you’re trying to kick-start a career you tend to make sacrifices. She spends a year in her new job before securing a position with a high-class beauty parlor in Santa Monica. Probably what she’d been striving for since qualifying as a cosmetologist.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Hunter added. ‘She stays with them for only four and a half months before moving on again.’

‘Barely a probation period,’ Garcia admitted. ‘But this time it doesn’t look like a step up the ladder. Why would she do that?’

Hunter made a ‘who knows’ face. ‘Running from something or someone?’

‘Could be.’

Hunter faced the building. ‘Maybe Tanya Kaitlin will be able to shed a light on more than just this crazy video-call thing.’

Similar to what Hunter and Garcia had encountered at the front door to Karen Ward’s apartment block, security to Tanya Kaitlin’s building was also provided exclusively by a dated intercom entry system.

Hunter pressed the button to apartment 202 and was greeted by total silence. No clicking sound. No hiss. No beep. Nothing.

‘Is that thing working?’ Garcia asked.

‘Not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t.’

Hunter moved a little closer, bringing his right ear to a couple of inches from the intercom speaker, and tried it again. Still he heard nothing to suggest that the system was working properly. As he took a step back and regarded the locking mechanism on the door, they both heard a static click come through the tiny speaker. It was followed by a barely audible female voice.

‘Yes?’

‘Ms. Kaitlin?’ Hunter asked. ‘Tanya Kaitlin?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Detective Robert Hunter with the LAPD, we spoke earlier over the phone?’

A couple of silent, memory-searching seconds went by.

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Her voice sounded tired and defeated. ‘Please come in.’

A strident buzz rattled the heavy door before unlocking it with an even louder click. As they pushed it open, it screeched at the hinges.

‘Damn,’ Garcia commented. ‘It sounds like the door is being tortured. Somebody should put some oil on that.’

Once inside, access to all three floors was gained solely via a concrete stairwell that led to long, narrow, and poorly lit corridors.

‘Do we have anything on her?’ Hunter asked, his chin jerking upwards as they took the steps going up to the second floor.