The Caller

Twenty-Five

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.’

‘Well, he certainly knew how to fake these calls,’ Garcia said. ‘Because I’ll tell you this, If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought that they were all legit — sometimes tense, sometimes frightened, sometimes anxious, and absolutely no hesitation in his voice. Every question he was asked by the dispatcher, he answered it in character. I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy has trained as an actor.’ Garcia rethought his words. ‘Then again, half of this city has trained as an actor.’

Hunter said nothing, but right at the back of his mind, something else began bothering him.