Chris Carter - The Caller

‘OK,’ she began. ‘Every human bone has a certain elasticity to it. The skull is no different. So, with a forceful traumatic impact, the skull bone depresses in the shape of the striking instrument.’ She brought her hands together, fingertips against fingertips, and slowly moved them downwards to simulate a bending effect. ‘With that, two things happen. One: You get parallel break lines on the surface of the bone; these are called terraced fractures. Two: On the interior of the bone, you get a deep depression fracture. In other words, a dent. It can happen to any bone, but when it happens on the inside of the skull, this dent causes a fracture called a pyramid splinter. As the name suggests, this is simply a pyramid of splinters, moving from top to bottom. The top splinter moves down, creating another splinter, which in turn moves down, creating yet another one, and so on. Are you still with me?’

Garcia nodded.

‘So, if the impact is forceful enough, these splinters will keep on projecting downward through the interior lining of the skull until they propel themselves deep into the brain tissue, like a bullet, causing instant termination of brain function and death.’

Garcia grinded his teeth as if he could feel the pain.

‘That’s what happened with the third and last puncture we have here.’ She indicated the wound right at the center of Cassandra’s skull. ‘The splinter fracture from this particular wound ripped through the precentral gyrus and the central sulcus of her brain, ending its trajectory at the postcentral gyrus.’ The doctor drew in a deep breath before locking eyes with both detectives. ‘She never had a chance.’

‘How about the other two wounds?’ Garcia asked.

Hunter looked down at the floor with sad eyes, as if he already knew the answer.

‘They both were forceful enough to also produce splinter fractures,’ Dr. Hove confirmed. ‘And though they did reach her brain, they didn’t travel deep enough to cause instant death.’ The tone in which Dr. Hove’s next few words were delivered practically froze the air. ‘But if she had lived, they would’ve produced irreversible brain damage.’ She went quiet for a few seconds while her eyes rested on Cassandra’s alien-looking face. ‘Though it took three fractures for her to perish, her life as she knew it was over from the very first hit.’

As soon as they got back to their office, Garcia went straight to his desk and fired up his computer. Something had begun nagging at his brain halfway through Dr. Hove’s postmortem explanation. Something he desperately wanted to crosscheck.

Hunter left his partner to it, stepped outside, and placed a call to Cassandra Jenkinson’s husband. The phone rang only once before Mr. J answered it.

‘Hello!’

From his exhausted and full-of-gravel sounding voice, Hunter knew that he hadn’t slept a single second.

‘Mr. Jenkinson, this is Detective Robert Hunter with LAPD Homicide. We met at your house?’

Mr. J remained silent. At his request, Brian Caldron had already compiled a very comprehensive dossier on Detective Hunter. A dossier he had just finished reading, and he couldn’t deny that he was impressed.

Robert Hunter grew up as an only child to working-class parents in Compton, an underprivileged neighborhood of South Los Angeles. His mother lost her battle with cancer when he was only seven. His father never remarried and had to take on two jobs to cope with the demands of bringing up a child on his own. A child who turned out to be a prodigy.

From a very early age it was obvious to everyone that Hunter was different. He could figure things out faster than most. School bored and frustrated him. He finished all of his sixth-grade work in less than two months and, just for something to do, sped through seventh, eighth and even ninth-grade books. After being put through a battery of tests and exams, Hunter was transferred to a special school for gifted children, but even a special school’s curriculum wasn’t enough to slow his progress. Four years of high school were condensed into two and, with recommendations from all of his teachers, Hunter was accepted as a ‘special circumstances’ student at Stanford University. By the age of nineteen, he had already graduated in psychology — summa cum laude . At the age of twenty-three, he had received a Ph.D. in Criminal Behavior Analyses and Biopsychology. His thesis paper — titled An Advanced Psychological Study In Criminal Conduct — had become mandatory reading at the FBI’s National Center for the Analyses of Violent Crime (NCAVC) and it still was to this day.

The FBI had tried recruiting him several times, first as a profiler then as an agent, but for some reason, not mentioned in Brian’s report, Detective Hunter had politely declined each and every offer, choosing to stay with the LAPD. The FBI’s NCAVC Director had once said that Robert Hunter was the best criminal behavior profiler the FBI had never had.

After joining the police force, straight after his Ph.D., Hunter had moved through its ranks at lightning speed, becoming the youngest officer to have ever made detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. Since then, his track record had been second to none. He had closed almost every investigation he had ever led. The ones he was unable to were brought to as near completion as humanly possible.

Robert Hunter was now the lead detective for the Ultra Violent Crimes Unit of the LAPD Homicide Special Section. Inside the LAPD, the UVC Unit was also known as the Freakshow Unit, not because of its team of detectives, but because of the kind of criminals they chased. It was the type of unit most detectives would give their right arm not to be assigned to.

‘I was wondering if I could maybe ask you a quick question over the phone,’ Hunter said, seeing no point in trying to make any small talk.

‘Yes, of course, Detective. Whatever I can help with.’ Time to become the clueless Mr. Jenkinson again.

‘Could I ask you,’ Hunter began, ‘have you had any work done to your house recently?’

‘Work?’

‘Yes,’ Hunter clarified. ‘Renovations, paint jobs, quick fixes, plumbing, installations, anything at all where a stranger had to visit your home?’

It took a couple of seconds for Mr. J’s fatigued brain to fully engage. The photos on the mantelpiece, he realized. Cassandra’s killer didn’t get the idea for that damn question right there and then... he’d been to the house before. Not only that, but he knew I wouldn’t know the answer to that question. That whole game was a farce. The gears inside his mind started spinning faster. Any work done to the house? Any installations? Anything at all where a stranger had to visit your home? Think, goddamnit, think.

‘Mr. Jenkinson?’

‘Cassandra was the one who usually dealt with anything like that,’ Mr. J finally replied. ‘But she’d always let me know for budget purposes and all.’ Another short pause. ‘I can’t recall anything, Detective. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s fine,’ Hunter replied. ‘At the moment we’re just speculating around the little we have, really.’

‘I understand, and I’m very sorry.’

‘There’s no need to be, Mr. Jenkinson.’

Hunter knew that in addition to being completely exhausted, Mr. Jenkinson’s head would be a total mess of emotions, and memories, and images, and everything else, not to mention the overly destructive feeling of guilt that Hunter knew had already settled in. Right now, for anyone in Mr. Jenkinson’s shoes, trying to recall simple memories — like a repairman coming to the house for whatever reason — would be a monstrous uphill battle.

‘If anything comes to mind,’ Hunter said, ‘anything at all, please call me straight away, no matter the time of day or night.’