Chris Carter - The Caller

MALE VOICE: ‘Umm... She’s not breathing. I don’t know what to do. She’s not breathing and it’s all my fault.’

The nervous voice was full of trepidation and strangled on tears. Once again, its tone differed greatly from the previous two calls. This time it was low and husky, as if the caller were on the last stages of a bad sore throat. The accent had also changed completely, moving from a typical Angelino to a very distinctive Southern Texan twang.

DISPATCHER: ‘Can you tell me your name, sir?’

MALE VOICE: ‘Todd. Todd Phillips.’

Keyboard clicks.

DISPATCHER: ‘And who is the person we’re talking about here, Todd? Who did you say isn’t breathing?’

MALE VOICE: ‘My girlfriend. Her name is Kelly Dixon. You have to help us. Please.’

DISPATCHER: ‘That’s what I’m here for, Todd, but for me to be able to do that I have to ask you a few questions, OK? You said Kelly isn’t breathing. Are you sure? Can you feel a pulse at all?’

MALE VOICE: ‘No, no I can’t.’

More keyboard clicks.

MALE VOICE: ‘You have to send someone to help us. Please, send help.’

DISPATCHER: ‘Help will be on its way very soon, Todd. Now what you need to do is stay calm and give me a few more details, OK? Can you quickly tell me what happened?’

MALE VOICE: ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t. I swear it. I love her.’

DISPATCHER: ‘That’s fine, Todd, I believe you, but you need to tell me what happened, OK?’

MALE VOICE: ‘I don’t know. We had an argument about something silly and I lost my head. I held her. I squeezed, and now she’s not moving. She’s not breathing. You must send help. Please. You must.’

DISPATCHER (she typed as she spoke) : ‘OK, Todd. What’s your location?’

As soon as the caller gave the dispatcher the address, he put the phone down.

‘Nine-one-one tried calling the number back,’ Garcia read from the email. ‘But “surprise, surprise” — no reply. Nevertheless they have to follow protocol, so a black and white unit, together with a paramedic team, was dispatched to the location, which took them to one of the buildings across the road from Karen’s. Needless to say that they found no one by the name of Todd Phillips or Kelly Dixon. The apartment in question belonged to an elderly couple, who had lived there for over twenty-five years.’

‘What was the response time for this call?’ Hunter asked.

‘Just under ten minutes.’

Hunter wrote the time down on his notebook.

‘The GPS location recorded for the call,’ Garcia added, ‘matched the address given by the caller, so once again he was probably standing right in front of the building when he made the call.’

‘Because he knew the call would be traced,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘And if he’d made the call from a payphone down the road or from anywhere else, the location wouldn’t match his story. He was supposed to be with his girlfriend, who wasn’t breathing, remember?’ Hunter scratched his chin. ‘No slip-ups.’

Garcia place the cursor over the last attached file. ‘Shall I?’

Hunter gave his partner a single nod.

‘I wonder what kind of bullshit we’ll get now.’

The fourth and last call was received exactly five weeks after the third call, and a week before Karen Ward’s murder. It was time-stamped — 11:19 p.m.

DISPATCHER [female voice]: ‘Nine-one-one, what’s the location of your emergency?’

FEMALE VOICE: ‘Two-three-one Loma Avenue — Long Beach.’

Garcia looked at Hunter with wide eyes. ‘It’s a female voice,’ he said. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

Hunter was also caught off guard, but he decided to reserve his comments until he’d heard the entire recording.

FEMALE VOICE: ‘Could you send someone to my house, please?’

The voice sounded scared and filled with emotion.

DISPATCHER: ‘What’s the problem there, ma’am?’

FEMALE VOICE: ‘My ex-husband has just broken into my house. He’s screaming and raving like a lunatic. He’s out of his mind, and he’s a violent man.’

DISPATCHER: ‘OK, and where is he now?’

FEMALE VOICE: ‘Right outside my door. Please, send somebody.’

DISPATCHER: ‘Outside your door? Where are you, ma’am?’

FEMALE VOICE: ‘I’ve locked myself inside my bedroom.’

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Hunter and Garcia heard what sounded like three loud knocks to a door.

DISPATCHER: ‘OK. Has he been drinking? Do you know?’

FEMALE VOICE: ‘Probably. That’s what he always does.’

DISPATCHER: ‘Has he hit you?’

FEMALE VOICE: ‘No. He hasn’t had the chance yet. As soon as he broke through the front door, I ran and locked myself in here. But if he gets in here...’

DISPATCHER: ‘OK, ma’am, what’s your name?’

FEMALE VOICE: ‘Rose Landry.’

DISPATCHER: ‘And your address is 231 Loma Avenue — Long Beach?’

FEMALE VOICE: ‘Yes, that’s right.’

Hurried keyboard clicks.

DISPATCHER: ‘OK, a unit is on its way to you now. They won’t be long. Can you stay on the phone with me, Rose?’

FEMALE VOICE (sounding desperate) : ‘No, I can’t. I can’t. I’ve got to go.’

The call ended.

Garcia sat back on his chair and ran a hand over his mouth and chin, as if smoothing down an imaginary goatee.

‘This time the address given was to a house just around the corner from Karen’s apartment building,’ he said. ‘Less than thirty seconds away. It belonged to a retired schoolteacher and his wife — John and Judith Marble.’

‘Response time?’ Hunter asked.

Another scroll down on the email. ‘Eight minutes. The fastest time of them all.

Hunter wrote the time down.

‘Now, let me repeat myself here.’ Garcia said. ‘What the fuck is going on? It’s a female voice. Is he working with someone, or was this just a coincidence?’

‘No, not a coincidence, Carlos,’ Hunter said, checking his notes. ‘All four bogus calls were made inside the same thirty-minute interval — between ten-fifty-five p.m. and eleven-twenty-five. Do you remember what was the time logged for Tanya Kaitlin’s nine-one-one call?’

‘Not from the top of my head,’ Garcia replied. ‘But I’m guessing somewhere inside that half-hour bracket.’

‘Eleven-nineteen p.m.,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘All four bogus calls were also made on a Wednesday evening. Karen Ward was murdered two nights ago, on a Wednesday evening.’

Garcia’s gaze jumped back to his computer screen. All four calls had been date-stamped in the usual format — month/day/year. He hadn’t yet worked out that they had all fallen on a Wednesday.

‘If you average the four response times,’ Hunter continued. ‘You come to nine and three-quarter minutes. Round it up, and that’s exactly the average response time the caller told Tanya over the phone.’ He shook his head. ‘This was no coincidence, Carlos. Our killer made all four calls.’

Garcia thought about the last call for a moment.

‘A voice modifier?’ he half stated, half questioned.

‘Audio forensics will confirm it,’ Hunter replied. ‘But with the right equipment, changing a male voice into a female one is just a question of sliding a few faders up and down, that’s all.’

‘He probably also thought that a female voice would be a nice touch,’ Garcia accepted.

‘Certainly less suspicious,’ Hunter agreed. He knew that about 70 to 75 percent of all bogus 911 calls in the USA were made by men, not women. ‘Remember, Carlos, he’d already made three fake calls prior to that one — all using a male voice, all directing Long Beach PD to the same exact area. This was the last call before the actual murder. He wouldn’t want to risk it.’