The Caller

Twelve

Hunter and Garcia listened to Tanya’s account of events in almost complete silence. They only interrupted her a couple of times, either to clarify a point, or to try to calm her down during the moments when the memory had become so vivid in her mind she had come close to becoming hysterical.

As she told them about how the call had ended, Tanya once again found herself fighting the urge to be sick. She reached for the cigarette pack on the table, and with a trembling hand brought its very last one to her lips, but even with the combined calming effect of sugary water and nicotine, Tanya’s nerves managed to get the best of her and she once again broke down into a fit of tears.

Hunter handed her a new paper tissue.

Throughout the nearly twenty minutes that it took Tanya to recount the details of the video-call she’d received, Hunter had been paying close attention not only to her words, but also to her body and eye movements, together with her facial expressions. Yes, she did have tell signs: the nervous hand up to her face every so often, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear; the uneasy shake of the head every time she related something that she found hard to believe — and there were many of those — and the picking of the fingernails; but those weren’t lie tale signs, they were fear ones. What she had experienced had truly petrified her.

Garcia brought Tanya a new glass of sugary water, and this time she needed no incentive, finishing the whole glass in three large gulps.

When she looked like she had calmed down enough, Garcia asked the first question.

‘You told us that when the caller reached for Ms. Ward’s phone to end the call, the phone panned upwards intentionally, and you got to see the caller’s face, is that right?’

Tanya sucked in another lumpy breath.

‘Yes, but it wasn’t a face.’

Garcia frowned.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It was a mask. Some sort of sick horror mask.’

Garcia quickly glanced at Hunter before scooting up to the edge of his seat. ‘I know this is going to be hard for you, Tanya, and I apologize for having to ask you to try and bring those images back into your mind, but do you remember any of its details? Could you try to describe this mask to us?’

Tanya locked eyes with Garcia. ‘Remember it? I’ll never be able to forget it for as long as I live.’ She brought her right index finger up to the right corner of her mouth. ‘There was this large open cut on the side of his face, going from here to here.’ She dragged her finger from her mouth, across her cheek and all the way up to her right ear. ‘Like a lopsided, horror-clown smile, and you could see his teeth through it, but they weren’t like human teeth. They were these enormous, sharp, pointy teeth, with blood smeared all over them. It was smeared all over his mouth and chin too.’

She paused for breath, clearly struggling with the images her memory was throwing at her.

‘The other corner of his mouth wasn’t cut, but it was all droopy and deformed out of shape.’

Hunter noticed that Tanya’s hands were trembling again.

‘He had no nose either,’ Tanya added. ‘Just a stump, as if it had been bitten off, or ripped off his face, or something. And his eyes were like a devil’s.’

‘Like a devil’s?’ Garcia asked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Their color.’

‘What about their color?’

‘They were red. And I don’t mean just the iris.’ She pointed at one of her own eyes. ‘I mean everything. There was no white to them at all. They looked just like two blood-filled holes.’

Her breathing had once again become labored. It took her a moment to get it back to normal.

‘The rest of the skin on his face, including his head...’ Tanya gestured as she explained, ‘... was lumpy and leathery, as if his face had been burned.’ Another nervous shake of the head. ‘Look, I know it was just a mask, but it was the most evil-looking thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never been so scared in my life.’

Hunter wasn’t surprised. After hearing Tanya’s story, he was sure that she felt exactly the way the killer wanted her to feel — vulnerable and terrified.

‘So it was a full-head, rubber-type mask?’ Garcia asked. ‘Not one of those with an elastic band or a ribbon that you fix or tie around the back of your head?’

‘Oh no, it was definitely a full-head mask. I’m sure of it.’

‘Do you mind if we ask one of our sketch artists to get in contact with you?’ Hunter enquired, grabbing Tanya’s attention again. ‘A composite drawing of this mask could help us.’

Tanya breathed out while pulling her robe tight around her body again. A typical sign that she was feeling vulnerable.

‘Yes. Of course.’

Hunter thanked her with a smile before continuing. ‘You also referred to the caller as “him”. But you said that the voice had been electronically altered to sound like a demon’s voice in a horror film, right?’

Tanya agreed.

‘Was there anything that gave you a clear indication that the caller was male?’

She took a second. ‘The mask was one thing. As horrific as it was, it was of a male’s face, not a female one, but there was also the shoulders and the body type. Too wide. Too strong for a woman’s. Whoever that maniac was, he was dressed all in black, and the clothes were tight-fitting. I couldn’t see all of him, but what I saw was definitely too muscular for a woman.’ For a moment Tanya looked a little confused. ‘Are women even capable of doing something like that? Of that sort of violence?’

‘Some are,’ Hunter replied.

Confusion mutated to shock.

‘How long have you and Ms. Ward been friends for?’ Garcia took over.

‘Umm... about three and a half years. We met during our cosmetology course at the Academy of Beauty and instantly became best friends.’

‘Was Pete Ms. Ward’s boyfriend?’

Tanya’s left eyebrow lifted slightly as she looked back at Garcia.

‘You said that for a moment during the call, you thought that Karen and someone called Pete were playing a joke on you. Who’s Pete? Was he Karen’s boyfriend?’

‘Oh, no.’ Tanya smiled as she shook her head. ‘That would be Pete Harris. He’s not into women at all. He’s a makeup artist and a very good friend of ours. He does a lot of “on location” makeup for film studios, so he’s always traveling. The last I heard he was in Europe working on-set with Tom Cruise or some big name. I thought that maybe he was back and he and Karen had decided to punk me with some sick joke. Pete’s got a very weird sense of humor, if you know what I mean.’

Garcia wrote something down on his notebook.

‘OK... do you know if Ms. Ward was romantically seeing anyone?’

‘Pfff, not even close,’ Tanya replied in a tone that suggested the implication was bordering on the ridiculous. ‘Not with all the...’

All of a sudden she paused, holding her breath.

‘Oh, my God.’ Her eyes widened, but they seemed to be focusing on nothing at all again. ‘I never thought of that.’ She blinked once. ‘I had completely forgotten about that.’

Hunter and Garcia eyeballed each other for a split second.

‘Forgot about that, what?’ Garcia asked.

Tanya’s gaze slowly crawled back to the detectives sitting in front of her.

‘Karen’s stalker.’