Chris Carter - The Caller

‘How are you guys doing?’ asked Hunter. ‘Anything?’

‘ Nada ,’ Garcia replied. ‘We’ve been through everything in the bedroom, everything inside Ms. Jenkinson’s wardrobe, every pocket, every pair of shoes, every box we could find, every drawer.’ He shook his head Hunter’s way. ‘No other note, or anything else to indicate that she was being stalked.’

The honest truth was, Garcia was just going through the motions. After what Mr. J had told them in the early hours of the morning, neither detective was really expecting to find another stalker’s note inside the house. They both had figured out the same thing that Mr. J had — the reason why Cassandra Jenkinson had kept the note they’d found inside her handbag was because she was waiting for her husband to come home so she could show it to him. That had been the note that had either scared her or tested her patience. The note that had made her decide that she’d had enough. Even if she had received other notes previously to the one they’d found, and neither Hunter or Garcia doubted she had, according to what Mr. J had told them about the kind of woman his wife was, she probably did discard them as a silly prank and threw them away.

Garcia reached for another picture from the mantelpiece. In the photograph, Mr. J was standing behind his wife with his arms wrapped around her waist. He seemed to be whispering something into her ear.

‘Do you think that this was how the killer got the idea for his final question?’ Garcia asked, putting the picture down and facing Hunter.

‘I’m not sure,’ Hunter replied. ‘But if these pictures were what made him think of the wedding question in the first place, then the killer has been in this house before. And I mean, before last night.’

Garcia nodded. ‘That was exactly what I was thinking when you got here. Just like he did with Tanya Kaitlin, the killer knew beforehand that Mr. Jenkinson wouldn’t be able to answer the “big” question. This guy does nothing by chance.’ He looked at the picture frames again. ‘It would be naive of us to think that this prompted the wedding date question on the spot, just like that.’ He snapped his fingers.

‘Too great a risk for him to take,’ Hunter agreed. ‘If you put it all into perspective, this was an even easier question than the one he asked Tanya Kaitlin.’

In his head, Garcia ran through both questions using himself as a subject. If he were asked for his wedding date, he wouldn’t hesitate half a second. If he were asked for Ana’s cellphone number...

Right then, a guilty feeling punched him square in the face. In all the years they’d been married, he had never memorized his wife’s number. Then guilt turned into shame because he realized that he had never even tried to. He had always relied on his cellphone memory not only for her number, but also for every number in his contact list, including Hunter’s. The only number he knew by heart was his own. Silently and ashamed, Garcia made himself a promise right there and then.

‘But I think that that is exactly what he wanted us to believe,’ Hunter said, dragging his partner back from his thoughts.

‘Believe that these pictures were what made him come up with the wedding date question?’ Garcia asked.

Hunter nodded. ‘Think about it, Carlos, the killer doesn’t know that we’ve figured out that the questions he asks aren’t simple or random at all, though they are designed to look that way, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, so just for a moment let’s pretend that we know nothing about this killer. We get the call. We work the crime scene as we always do. We notice the wedding pictures on the mantelpiece, but they don’t jump out at us because there’s no real reason for it. Then we interview Mr. Jenkinson and he tells us about the video-call and the questions he was asked. We might’ve made a connection then, but even if not, there’s always the second look at the crime scene. Not to mention all the scene photographs that we’ll be looking at, over and over again.’

Garcia jumped into Hunter’s threat of thought. ‘So unless we were either blind or stupid, we would’ve seriously considered the possibility that his second question had been a spur of the moment thing, triggered by these wedding photos.’

Hunter agreed again.

‘And that,’ Garcia continued, ‘at least for a while, would’ve caused us to lose track of what to really look for, which is the fact that the killer already knew that Mr. Jenkinson would get the question wrong. The fact that, just like you’ve said, he has probably been in this house before.’

‘Exactly. I’m thinking, maybe that’s how he first picks his victims.’

‘Very possible,’ Garcia accepted it. Garcia was about to say something else when Hunter’s phone rang.

‘Detective Hunter, Homicide Special.’

It was Dr. Carolyn Hove, the Chief Medical Examiner for the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner. She had just finished the autopsy on Cassandra Jenkinson’s body.

After Mr. J left Hunter and Garcia, he checked himself into a cheap motel in Porter Ranch, not that far from his house in Granada Hills, but that had been just for show in case the LAPD came checking. He didn’t even see the inside of the room. As soon as he got the keys from the stick-thin night attendant who smelled of grease and fried cheese, he jumped back into his car and drove straight to the apartment he kept down in Torrance, South Los Angeles. The apartment, which absolutely no one knew about, had been rented under a completely bogus name several years ago and it was paid for in cash at the beginning of every year — always a full year in advance.

Mr. J needed to make a few phone calls, but he knew that until the sun had once again recolored the LA sky, there was very little that he or anyone else would be able to do. He felt exhausted and his brain kept on telling him that his best option was to try to recharge and get some much-needed rest, even if only for an hour or two, but sleep never came. The turmoil inside his mind simply wouldn’t allow it. Every time he closed his eyes, he was bombarded by images of Cassandra covered in blood.

In the living room, Mr. J poured himself a healthy measure of bourbon — enough to take the edge off and slap his nerves back a few notches, but not enough to cloud his thoughts. Drink in hand, he switched off the lights and dumped himself into the compact sofa that faced the large window on the east wall. The view from it was nothing spectacular, but when the sun was up, it did manage to catch a sliver of Redondo Beach and the Pacific Ocean beyond it, and that alone had a tremendous calming effect.

Staring at the city lights, Mr. J had a sip of his drink and let the intense alcohol, which carried notes of sweet oak and caramel, linger in his taste buds until it started burning his tongue and the inside of his cheeks. Only then did he allow the golden liquid to finally flood his throat. Usually his body would immediately begin warming up from inside, but Mr. J doubted that could ever happen again. He felt as if his soul had frozen and all that was left inside of him was hatred, shadowed by an insatiable desire for revenge.

He got himself comfortable on the sofa and his mind took him right back to the moment he had re-entered his home and met the two detectives who were in charge of the investigation.

Mr. J had crossed paths with more cops and detectives in his lifetime than he had friends. To him, they were all potatoes from the same sack, but there was something about one of the two detectives that had intrigued him. Unlike every other detective he had ever met, who seemed to be always on edge and fighting a losing battle against his/her own demons, this one seemed to be right at the other end of the spectrum. There was something about the calm in his eyes, about his composure, about the degree of confidence with which he spoke, that made him stand out. Right then, Mr. J was unsure if that was a good sign or not.