The Caller

Four

Guided by a gust of autumn wind, which had strengthened considerably in the past couple of minutes, the cluster of heavy clouds above them had thickened, and as Hunter, Garcia and Velasquez began walking towards the terracotta building, the first drops of rain splashed against their heads and the dry asphalt.

‘The victim’s name was Karen Ward,’ Sergeant Velasquez announced, picking up the pace to escape the rain and leading Hunter and Garcia up the few concrete steps that led to the building’s entrance door. Instead of relying on memory, he reached for his notepad and flipped it open. ‘She was twenty-four years old, single and worked as a cosmetologist in a beauty spa on East Second Street.’ Instinctively he indicated east. ‘Not that far from here, actually. She’d been living in this building for only four months.’

‘Rented?’ Garcia asked as they entered the building.

‘That’s right. The owner and landlady is one...’ He flipped a page on his notepad. ‘Nancy Rogers, resident of Torrance, in South Bay.’

‘Burglary?’ Hunter this time.

An uneasy shake of the head from Velasquez.

‘Nope, and the perpetrator didn’t even try to make it look like one. No apparent sign of a break-in or a struggle either. Her handbag was found on the sofa in the living room. Her purse was inside it with two credit cards and eighty-seven dollars in cash. Her car keys were also inside her bag. Her laptop was in her bedroom, where we also found a few pieces of jewelry on top of a dresser. Wardrobes, drawers, cabinets... nothing seems to have been touched.’

At the building’s front door, the only security the place seemed to offer its residents came in the shape of an old intercom entry system. There were no CCTV cameras.

‘Did she live alone?’

‘That’s correct,’ the sergeant replied with nod.

With the building offering no elevator, Hunter and Garcia followed Velasquez up a second set of stairs and then a third to the top floor.

‘I’ve had cops on every floor doing a door-to-door,’ Sergeant Velasquez informed them. ‘Nothing.’ He made a not very surprised face. ‘Nobody saw or heard anything.’

‘Not even her next-door neighbor?’ Hunter asked.

The sergeant shook his head. ‘Her next-door neighbors are a middle-aged couple,’ Velasquez explained. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Santiago. They both have hearing problems. I talked to them myself, but even with the loud knocks, it took Mr. Santiago almost an hour to answer the door, and he only did it because he got up in the middle of the night to take a leak, that was when he heard us knocking.’

The stairs led them to a long and narrow corridor, now brightly lit by powerful forensics spotlights. Karen Ward’s apartment was number 305, the last one on the right. Nicholas Holden, one of the CSI team’s fingerprint experts, was kneeling outside her front door, busy dusting it for latent prints.

‘You mentioned that she was single,’ Garcia said as they made their way down the corridor.

‘She was,’ Velasquez confirmed.

‘Do you know if she was seeing anyone? Had a boyfriend?’

The sergeant knew exactly why Garcia had asked that question — a young woman is brutally murdered inside her own apartment without any apparent motive and no signs of a break-in, and the names that will comprise the initial ‘person of interest list’ will belong mainly to the people with whom the victim might’ve had any sort of romantic involvement in the past few years. In the USA, so called ‘crimes of passion’ account for over half of violent homicides committed against women.

‘Sorry, Detective, but we didn’t have time to gather that sort of information.’ The sergeant clarified, glancing at his watch. ‘The truth is, we were able to find out very little about the victim and what happened in her apartment before it was confirmed that this investigation was to be passed on to the LAPD’s UVC Unit.’ He paused and turned to face both detectives. ‘Frankly, those kind of decisions usually piss me off. This is our jurisdiction, so this should be our investigation, comprendes? We’re not “little league” over here. But this case had Violent Crimes Unit written all over it from the get-go, so we were all expecting it anyway.’ He showed Hunter and Garcia his palms in a surrender gesture. ‘And in this case, you’ll get no complaints from me, or any of my men. You want that evil in there... you won’t have to ask twice. It’s all yours.’

Hunter and Garcia were now frowning at Velasquez.

‘Hold on a sec,’ Garcia said. ‘What do you mean — “this case had Violent Crimes Unit written all over it from the get-go”?’

The sergeant’s stare moved from Garcia to Hunter and then back to Garcia. ‘You weren’t told about the phone call?’

The reply from both detectives came in the form of inquisitive silence.

‘Oh, man!’ Sergeant Velasquez looked down at the floor while shaking his head. ‘OK,’ he began. ‘Nine-one-one received a call from a semi-hysterical woman at around eleven-twenty last night. The woman was making very little sense, but she was screaming the word “murder”. As we all know, that’s a “red flag”. The call was transferred to our precinct and then to my desk.’

‘So you talked to her yourself?’ Garcia asked.

The sergeant nodded. ‘And she was indeed hysterical, claiming that someone had murdered her best friend right in front of her eyes.’ He paused, lifting his right index finger as he clarified. ‘Well, not exactly right in front of her eyes, but she was allowed to... or better yet, forced to watch it via a video-call.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Garcia’s unsure look had quickly turned into a confused one.

‘You heard right, Detective. The woman was yelling down the phone, claiming that some psycho had called her from Miss Ward’s cellphone, and forced her to play some sort of game, in which her friend’s life depended on it.’

‘A game?’ Hunter this time.

‘That’s what she said, yes. Look, I don’t know the specifics because, as I’ve said, the woman was going hysterical. The first thing I needed to do was follow protocol and send a black-and-white unit down here to check on the alleged murder victim, a Miss Karen Ward. A couple of uniforms drove by just before midnight and guess what? The door was unlocked. They walked in to check on her and... you guys being here is the result.’

‘You said that this hysterical woman claimed to be the victim’s best friend?’ Garcia asked.

Velasquez nodded. ‘Her name is Tanya Kaitlin. I have her details back in my vehicle. I’ll get them all to you before you go.’

As Hunter, Garcia and Velasquez finally reached apartment 305, Hunter greeted the CSI fingerprint expert. ‘Hey, Nick.’

‘Hey guys,’ the agent replied robotically.

After signing the crime-scene manifesto, Hunter, Garcia and Velasquez were handed a disposable white Tyvek jumpsuit each, together with a pair of latex gloves. As they began suiting up, Hunter noticed the fire exit door at the end of the corridor, past Karen Ward’s apartment.

‘Where does that lead to, do you know?’

‘Metal stairs that will take you down to an alleyway at the back of the building,’ Velasquez explained. ‘Go left and you’ll come out on Newport Avenue. Go right and you’re on Loma Avenue.’

Before zipping up his jumpsuit, Hunter walked over to the exit door to have a better look at it. The internal push bar on the fire resistant door indicated that it could only be opened from his side. It would offer no access into the building, but coming from apartment 305 it would’ve provided a much faster exit route than tracking back down the corridor all the way to the concrete staircase at the other end.

Hunter pushed the bar down, unlocking the door. Not a sound. The door wasn’t alarmed. As he turned to face the door to apartment 305 again, he noticed the CSI agent tilting his head to one side first, staring at the door, then tilting it to the other side and staring at it again.

‘Find something, Nick?’

‘Just checking against the light,’ Holden replied without deviating his attention from his work, his nose mask bobbing up and down as he spoke. ‘But I’d say that so far we’ve got about three different sets of prints here, and I’ve just got started.’

Hunter nodded his understanding. ‘Could you do us a favor and also dust the fire exit door when you’re done there? I’d like to run a comparison test between the fingerprints found on both doors.’

Holden glanced at the fire exit. ‘Sure. No problem.’

Both detectives finished suiting up and pulled the hoods of their coveralls over their heads; a second later they stepped into apartment 305.