The Caller

Sixty-One

Garcia had just finished making a brand new pot of coffee when Hunter stepped back into their office. The mouthwatering smell of the strong Brazilian brew Garcia had used had completely intoxicated the air and Hunter found it impossible to resist. Not that he wanted to, anyway. He walked over to the machine and poured some into his mug. As he began stirring his coffee, Garcia chuckled, sat back in his chair and crossed his legs.

‘Why do you do that?’ he asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Stir your coffee? You drink it black. No sugar. No cream. No milk. There’s nothing for you to stir into the coffee, so why do it?’

‘I like the noise it makes,’ Hunter replied with a shrug, deliberately hitting the metal spoon against the side of the porcelain mug.

‘Yeah, I bet you do. You know, that’s just like putting water inside a shaker, adding absolutely nothing to it, shaking it vigorously, then drinking it. It’s still just water.’

‘Yes,’ Hunter replied. ‘But that would be water shaken, not stirred.’

‘Oh, hell, no,’ Garcia said, half laughing. ‘You didn’t just make a double-oh-seven joke, did you? That was absolutely awful, Robert.’

‘You laughed.’

‘That wasn’t a laugh.’

‘Yes it was.’

‘No it wasn’t... Anyway. Any luck?’ Garcia asked, referring to Hunter’s phone call to John Jenkinson.

‘No,’ Hunter replied, placing his mug on his desk. ‘He can’t remember any sort of work being done to their house recently. No technicians either, but he said that his wife was the one who took care of things like that.’

‘Just like we thought,’ Garcia agreed.

As they’d left Mr. Jenkinson’s house that morning, before getting to the coroner’s office, Hunter and Garcia had asked Operations to run a search, backtracking all of Cassandra Jenkinson’s credit-card transactions in the past five years. The idea was to flag any sort of home improvement or home repair company she might’ve used, including electronic repairs, plumbers, gardeners, gutter cleaning, even delivery people who might’ve had to walk through her living room — a new sofa, new rug — anything. The same was also being done to Karen Ward’s credit cards. The lists would then be cross-referenced. If Karen and Cassandra had used the same company, or even the same tradesman at any time, they knew that they were probably on to something.

‘While on the phone,’ Hunter said, sipping his coffee. ‘I thought of something else. Let’s add John Jenkinson’s credit cards to our search. Maybe his wife used one of his to pay for something and forgot to tell him. If he’s not tight with his finances, he could’ve easily missed it.’

‘Good point,’ Garcia agreed, reaching for the phone on his desk.

Hunter finished his coffee and consulted his watch. ‘There’s something I need to go check with the forensics lab, but can I ask you a favor?’

‘Sure. By the way, this something you need to check doesn’t happen to be called Dr. Susan Slater, does it?’

‘What?’

‘Just saying. Anyway, what’s the favor?’

Hunter shook his head. ‘Remember how you came across the probable way in which our killer found out about Tanya Kaitlin not knowing Karen Ward’s cellphone number by heart?’

‘Of course, the entry on their friend’s social media page. Pete Harris. The brainlazy fun chart thing.’

‘I was thinking,’ Hunter said, ‘if the killer really used social media to gain that sort of information on Tanya Kaitlin, why wouldn’t he have tried the same thing to gain information on Cassandra Jenkinson’s husband?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that myself,’ Garcia admitted. ‘Don’t worry. I’m on it.’