Chris Carter - The Caller

Garcia paused and looked back at his partner.

‘Something tells me that he didn’t just guess that time frame,’ Hunter added.

‘He clocked the response time.’

‘That’s what I would’ve done,’ Hunter conceded. ‘And to be absolutely sure, I would’ve done it at least three times, probably more.’

Garcia allowed that thought to run free inside his mind for a few seconds.

‘But that would still give him no guarantees, Robert,’ he said. ‘Police cruisers aren’t fire trucks. They don’t sit at the station’s parking lot waiting for a call. They cruise the streets. A black and white could’ve been just around the corner when dispatch sent out the call. That eight-to-ten-minute response-time could’ve easily been reduced to one, less even.’

Hunter agreed with a head nod. ‘And I’m sure he knew that too. But as I’ve said, this guy seems to be very cautious, calculating, and he likes to plan ahead. Someone like that would’ve wanted to know the actual average police response time so he could factor it into his plan. The risk of a cruiser being just around the corner was something he could do nothing about, that’s just the law of probability, so he tackled it from a different angle.’

The inquisitive look was back on Garcia’s face.

‘And what angle is that?’

‘By making sure Tanya wouldn’t even contemplate calling the cops. With no call, it didn’t matter if twenty cop cars were parked right in front of the building. No one would’ve disturbed him.’

‘OK,’ Garcia agreed. ‘But to do that he didn’t actually need to know the correct response time. He could’ve just made one up. Isn’t that a known psychological principal? Say something with enough conviction and most people will believe you, even if it isn’t true. He could’ve thrown any number at Tanya and I’m sure she would’ve bought it.’

‘Yes, you’re right, and that would’ve worked for a lot of people, but not for someone who seems to be very methodical, someone who looks to have been planning this for some time, because this sure as hell wasn’t a spur of the moment murder.’ Hunter shook his head. ‘No, people like this are usually either OCD or bordering it. For his own peace of mind, this guy would’ve dug for the correct answer.’

‘OK,’ Garcia said. ‘So what do we need?’

‘Tell Operations that we’re looking for bogus calls. Wild-goose chases, but logged as high-priority ones — gunshots heard, life-threatening violence, something along those lines — where the address given would’ve been either Karen Ward’s apartment block or immediately surrounding areas. The time of the call would’ve also been fairly close to the time of the murder, give or take a couple of hours. There’s a chance that he would’ve used his real voice while making the calls.’

‘And depending where the call originated from,’ Garcia offered, ‘and if it was made from a pay phone or not, we might get lucky with CCTV footage.’

Hunter agreed once again.

‘We should also get started on a warrant to retrieve whatever we can from either Tanya or Karen’s cellphone network about this video-call,’ Garcia suggested. He knew that Tanya had done her best to remember and recount the call with as much accuracy as she could, but even a person in a clear state of mind wouldn’t have been able to remember every word, every detail, never mind someone as shaken and as traumatized as Tanya was.

‘There’s no point,’ Hunter said. ‘The networks won’t have the data.’

‘How come?’

‘No network in US territory is allowed to keep video-call logs in the same way they do regular call ones,’ Hunter explained. ‘They’re already struggling with all these new privacy laws as it is. Retaining people’s personal images or videos without their consent would mean a whole new dimension of war for them. One I’m sure they’re not keen to fight.’

They finally exited the building.

‘How about the audio or a transcript of it?’ Garcia asked.

A new headshake from Hunter. ‘They still won’t have it because the audio doesn’t get split from the video when the call is made.’

‘So if they can’t store one,’ Garcia concluded, ‘they can’t store the other.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Are you sure? How do you know all of this?’

Hunter gave his partner a shrug. ‘I read a lot.’

‘So how long do you think you’ll be this time?’ Cassandra asked, as Mr. J finished his last piece of toast.

‘Not long. Two, three days at the most.’

‘That’s exactly what you said last time.’ Cassandra had a sip of some dark-green drink she’d just blended. ‘And yet, you were away for almost a week.’

‘Yes, and I’m sorry about that,’ Mr. J conceded. ‘But sometimes things get delayed, people get delayed, and business takes a little longer than expected.’ He used a fabric napkin to dab the corners of his mouth. ‘But I don’t think there will be any misfortunes this time. I’ll call you and let you know if anything changes. If not, I shall be back on Sunday at the latest.’ He looked at his wife and frowned. ‘Cass, what the hell are you drinking? It looks... revolting.’

‘Trust me,’ she replied, finishing the rest of her juice, ‘you don’t want to know. But it tastes a lot better than it looks.’

‘I sure hope so, because it looks like you just drank a glass of... baby’s diarrhea.’

‘You are so disgusting sometimes, do you know that?’

Mr. J laughed. ‘Me? I’m not the one drinking it. You look beautiful, by the way.’

Cassandra was charmingly dressed in a dark pencil skirt with a plum blouse and shiny black shoes. Her hair was loose, falling past her shoulders, but the sides were held back over her ears by a couple of dainty hair clips in the shape of butterflies. Her makeup, though she’d applied it herself, looked professionally done.

Mr. J checked his timepiece — 8:17 a.m. ‘OK. I’ve got to go.’ He got up, drank the rest of his coffee in one gulp, collected his plate and cutlery, and took everything to the sink.

‘You can leave it there,’ Cassandra said, before he had a chance to switch on the faucet. ‘I’ll wash it up later.’

‘Are you sure? I can quickly do it. It’s not a problem.’

‘No, it’s all right. I’ll do it later. You get going.’ She walked over to him and gave him a peck on the lips. ‘Where are you going again?’

‘Frisco,’ he lied.

‘Oh yeah, that’s right,’ she lied back. She didn’t really remember him telling her before. She placed her empty glass in the sink together with the rest of the dishes. ‘Well, drive carefully, and call me once you get there, OK?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Mr. J gave his wife another kiss and grabbed his suit jacket, which was resting on the back of his chair. His dummy briefcase, the one he had packed in front of Cassandra the night before and which contained a change of clothes and a small bag of toiletries, was waiting for him by the door. His real briefcase, the one which contained what he really needed, he would pick up on his way to his hotel, from a storage unit he had rented years ago under a different name.

With mid-morning traffic in full flow, it took Hunter and Garcia over forty-five minutes to cover the almost fifteen miles between Tanya Kaitlin’s apartment in West Carson and Karen Ward’s one in Long Beach. They both wanted to have a second, undisturbed look at the crime scene before it was handed over to the CTS Decon team — crime and trauma scene decontamination — the team responsible for cleaning up and disinfecting the aftermath of crime and accident scenes.

With the exception of the victim’s body and several forensics agents walking around in white coveralls, the apartment was exactly how they encountered it in the early hours of the morning. The pool of blood that covered part of the living room floor was still there, but it had by then dried up and clotted, which exacerbated the strong metallic smell that blood acquired once it came into contact with oxygen. With every window shut and locked to avoid the influx of insects that pooled human blood inevitably attracted, and with the temperature outside already getting up to seventy degrees, the eye-watering, rusty-like smell that lingered in the air had intensified considerably and spread into every corner of every room in the apartment.