The Caller

Fifty-Two

Hunter peeked at the clock on the wall just behind Mr. J — 2:03 a.m.

‘Mr. Jenkinson,’ he said, his voice smooth and cordial. ‘We don’t need to do this right now. It’s perfectly OK for us to wait until the morning. I understand you’ve been driving for hours—’

‘And you think I’ll be more rested in the morning?’ Mr. J interrupted Hunter again. ‘You think I’ll be able to sleep?’ Hunter didn’t reply. Mr. J had a point.

‘I’m guessing you’ve either heard a recording of the nine-one-one call I made, or you were told how I came to know about what happened here. You know about the video-call I received.’

Hunter gave him a sympathetic nod.

‘So if it’s all the same to you,’ Mr. J continued, his tone calm and rhythmically perfect. ‘I’d rather talk about it while everything is still fresh in my head. Sleep, if I were to get any, would bring dreams... nightmares... visions... images... whatever. Some of them would be real memories of what happened, but some would no doubt be just my mind going crazy on me. Things that weren’t really there. Things that I didn’t really see. Things that I should’ve said, but didn’t.’ He paused for a second, as if his last few words pained him too much. ‘The problem then is, in my head, there’s no way I’ll be able to discern between what really happened and what didn’t. All of it will seem as real to me as the people in this room.’ His gaze bounced from Hunter to Garcia to Dr. Slater and finally back to Hunter. ‘The longer we wait, Detective, the greater the risk of reality and fantasy getting mixed up in my head.’

Though no one could ever say with total confidence how a person’s brain would react after such a traumatic episode, the nightmares and the images that Mr. J had mentioned would come, of that Hunter had no doubt. As a psychologist, he just couldn’t fault Mr. J’s logic. At the same time, everyone in that room was astounded and intrigued by how composed Mr. J appeared to be.

‘I understand,’ Hunter said, allowing his eyes to quickly circle the room. ‘Would you rather we talk down at the station?’

‘Why?’ Mr. J asked. ‘Is that necessary?’

Everyone’s intrigue intensified.

‘No. Not at all. I just thought that maybe...’ Hunter left the suggestion floating in the air.

‘The room would pose a distraction?’ Mr. J picked it up, his gaze repeating the same movement as Hunter’s, except he chose not to look back at the chair and the pool of blood underneath it. ‘You’re right,’ he admitted. His eyes focused on a random spot on the floor in front of him and his composure finally faltered. ‘I don’t think I could do it in here.’

Again, Hunter gave him a moment.

Mr. J at last looked back up.

‘We don’t have to go downtown, Mr. Jenkinson,’ Hunter proposed. ‘We could use a local police station, or even one of the police vans parked outside if you prefer.’

Mr. J considered the suggestion before throwing a new question back at Hunter.

‘Has any other room in the house been disturbed?’

Hunter’s reply came with a slight lift of the eyebrows. ‘You’re the only person who’d be able to tell us that with any degree of certainty, Mr. Jenkinson, but as far as we can tell, this seems to have been the only room used.’

Looking thoughtful, Mr. J nodded. His answer came several seconds later. ‘We could use my office, if you don’t mind.’ He indicated with a hand gesture.

Seeing no reason why not, Hunter exchanged a quick look with Garcia.

‘Yeah, sure,’ Garcia said, padding his pockets over his Tyvek coverall. ‘I’ve got my notepad with me and I can use my phone to record everything. We’re set.’

As Mr. J turned to lead the way, his gaze brushed against the photographs resting on the mantelpiece and he froze in place. The bottomless pit inside of him that had threatened to swallow him whole came back with the fury of a tornado. Right there, staring at the photographs in those picture frames, he felt his soul abandon him. The question asked by the demonic voice roared inside his ears like a new thunder.

Your wedding anniversary, when is it?

For a long moment, no one moved.

‘Mr. Jenkinson, is everything OK?’ Hunter asked.

No reply.

He looked to be pondering something inside his head.

‘Mr. Jenkinson?’

‘There’s something I need to ask. Something I need to know,’ he finally said, his gaze struggling to meet anyone else’s.

Everyone waited.

‘My wife, I know that she was undressed.’ A new long, emotional pause. ‘I need to know. Was she...’ he stumbled on his next word and decided to start again. ‘Did this psycho...’ Still he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

‘Mr. Jenkinson,’ Dr. Slater said, taking a step forward and pulling down the hood of her white forensic coverall. Her blonde hair had been bunched up into a disheveled bun at the back of her head, but it didn’t distract from how attractive she was. On the contrary, the messy look added a certain charm to it.

Mr. J’s attention moved to her.

‘I’m Dr. Susan Slater.’ She kept her voice quiet and collected. ‘I’m the lead forensic agent assigned to this crime scene. I’m the one who was in charge of thoroughly examining your wife’s body before authorizing it to be transported to the coroner’s office. All I can tell you is that her body showed absolutely no external signs of having been sexually assaulted.’

Mr. J breathed in that information. ‘No offense, Doctor, but that’s not exactly one hundred percent guaranteed, is it?’ He pinned Dr. Slater down with a gaze that could cut diamonds. ‘I’ll need to wait for the autopsy report to be certain, won’t I? Because technically speaking, this psycho could’ve still—’

‘This killer is not a sexual predator, Mr. Jenkinson,’ Hunter intervened, his voice firm and confident. ‘He’s not after sexual gratification.’

‘And how can you be so certain, Detective?’ Mr. J came back.

‘Because I’ve encountered hundreds of them before,’ Hunter said resolutely. ‘Their incessant quest for sexual pleasure is always the ultimate driving force behind what they do. The sexual act is never subtle. Never hidden. Always violent. It’s one of the first things that’s noticeable as we enter a crime scene.’ Once again, Hunter allowed his gaze to move about the room. ‘We have nothing like that here, Mr. Jenkinson. Given the fact that this killer was alone with your wife for who knows how long, if sexual gratification was what he was after, there was nothing to stop him from gaining it.’

‘That’s precisely my point, Detective,’ Mr. J countered. ‘We won’t know that for certain until we get the autopsy results.’

Hunter didn’t want to reveal that now, with Cassandra Jenkinson, a non-sexual aggressor pattern had been established, because the ‘video-call’ killer had already claimed his first victim less than sixty hours ago. A victim he had also shown no sexual interest in whatsoever.

‘Mr. Jenkinson.’ Dr. Slater was the one who interposed this time. ‘In over twelve years as a forensic agent, I know of no sexual assault case where the victim has shown no external physical signs of it. Not one. There would’ve been something — dermal abrasions, traumas, bruises, scratches... something. There was nothing. Not even a tiny scuff. I promise you, your wife was not touched in that way.’

Mr. J looked away as if he needed time on his own to go over every single word Hunter and Dr. Slater had said. His eyebrows lifted ever so slightly and that caused the light wrinkles on his forehead to deepen, forming a series of ridges that carried on halfway up his shaved head.

From the quick report Garcia had given him outside, Hunter knew that John Jenkinson was forty-eight years old, but at that particular moment, he looked at least twenty-five years older. His eyes looked tired, with dark circles and heavy bags under them. His skin, dull and yellowish, gave everyone the impression that he’d spent half of his life sitting inside a locked room under strong fluorescent lighting. And the worst of all was that from now on every year would count for two, maybe more. Hunter had seen it happen before countless times to spouses, parents, siblings, partners, children, whoever. People who had lost someone dear to them in an overly violent way tended to lose their path in life easier than most, and the years were never kind to those. People who had unfortunately witnessed that violent death for whatever reason usually suffered a great deal more, but Hunter could barely even begin to imagine the sort of physical and psychological devastation that people in Mr. Jenkinson’s shoes would have to endure for the rest of their lives. People like Tanya Kaitlin. People who were forced to watch a loved one being brutally murdered. The images they saw, Hunter was certain of it, would haunt their every living second until their last day.

Mr. J finally looked back at Hunter and Dr. Slater. Their words from just seconds back at last seemed to have their desired effect. Before guiding Hunter and Garcia into his office, his eyes glassed over and he was only able to utter two simple words, but they came out full of meaning.

‘Thank you.’