The Caller

Eight

Hunter, Garcia and Sergeant Velasquez followed Dr. Slater through the short hallway that led deeper into apartment 305. The corridor offered three new doors — one on the left, one on the right, and one at the far end of it. She guided them into the door on the left.

The apartment’s only bathroom was of a comfortable size and tiled all in white. A beige ceramic bathtub hugged the south wall, with a showerhead directly above it on the right-hand side. A see-through shower curtain, which had been pushed to one side, dropped down from a metal rail. No explanation was needed. As soon as they entered the bathroom they immediately understood what Dr. Slater had meant when she’d said that she knew where the glass had come from. The entire south wall, spanning all the way from the ceiling down to the edge of the bathtub, was a huge wall-to-wall mirror. It had been completely smashed. Most of it was now gone. All that was left were a few shattered pieces still stuck to a couple of corners.

‘The supply was vast and plenty,’ the doctor said. ‘The killer didn’t have to look far.’

From the bathroom door, Hunter and Garcia regarded what was left of the mirror before stepping forward to have a look inside the bathtub. Nothing. It was completely clean. Not even minor splinters of mirrored glass had been left behind. The killer had either been very meticulous while collecting the pieces of broken mirror that had surely fallen into the bathtub, or had very carefully lined it with some sort of protective sheet.

Garcia took a step back and studied the rest of the bathroom. The washbasin was positioned to the right of the door, the toilet to the left. A six-shelf unit, which held a multitude of toiletry items and perfume bottles, sat between the bathtub and the toilet. A digital scale was propped against the unit. A pink bathrobe hung from the single hook behind the door.

‘Any guesses as to the time of death?’ Hunter asked.

‘The first signs of rigor mortis are just beginning to set in,’ Dr. Slater answered. ‘So I’d say more than two and a half hours ago, but less than four.’

Hunter consulted his timepiece — 2:42 a.m. ‘Has her cellphone been found?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Doctor Slater replied. ‘Inside the microwave, nuked to high heaven.’

‘How about a computer, or a laptop?’

‘Her laptop was found on the sofa in the living room. We’ll take it to IT forensics when we’re done here.’

Hunter acknowledged it, but he suspected that IT Forensics wouldn’t really find anything. Why would the killer destroy the victim’s phone, but leave her laptop intact? He walked over to the washbasin and pulled open the cupboard mirror above it. Inside it he found all the usual suspects — toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, Band-Aids, eye drops, and a couple of boxes of strong headache pills. There was also a full bottle of sleeping tablets. The trashcan to the left of the toilet was empty. With the exception of the broken wall mirror, nothing else inside the bathroom seemed to have been touched.

Hunter stepped back into the corridor and tried the door on the right-hand side. Just a small storage room where the victim kept several miscellaneous items, together with various house-cleaning products. He closed the door and moved on to the one at the far end of the hall — Karen Ward’s bedroom.

The room was spacious enough, with a low queen bed, a black fabric armchair, a four-drawer dresser, and an eight-shelf wooden shoe rack. Instead of a wardrobe, Karen Ward had preferred to have her clothes hanging from an extra-wide chrome clothes rack. Despite one of the room’s two west-facing windows being partially covered by the clothes rack, the room would still get enough sunlight during the day.

As Hunter’s eyes carefully circled the room, something began bothering him. He walked over to the bed, which had been positioned against the east wall, stopped and turned to face the clothes rack all the way across the room from it.

This doesn’t feel right, he thought.

The clothes rack was flanked on one side by the armchair and on the other by the dresser. The shoe rack was to the right of the door, against the north wall, every inch of space on it taken. There was only one bedside table, on the near side of the bed. On it Hunter found a reading lamp, a digital alarm clock, and a dog-eared paperback. He pulled open the bedside table’s only drawer and paused.

‘Carlos, come have a look at this.’

Garcia walked over to where his partner was standing.

From inside the drawer, Hunter retrieved a thirty-eight caliber, Colt 1911, Special Combat pistol.

‘Whoa,’ Garcia said, lifting both hands in surprise. ‘That’s one hell of a gun to have by your bed.’

‘She’s got a permit for it,’ Hunter announced, indicating the official document inside the open drawer. On the pistol, he thumbed the catch to release the magazine. If the gun had surprised them, its ammunition took it a step further. The clip was full to capacity with nine thirty-eight Special, Flex Tip bullets.

Hunter and Garcia exchanged a concerned look.

The Flex Tip bullet was a patented design by Hornady Ammunition, and it was part of its Critical Defense range. Both detectives were very familiar with it. It was an extremely destructive round; upon entering soft tissue, its flexible tip would swell up, distributing equal pressure across the entire circumference of the bullet cavity. The result was total bullet expansion and maximum damage. Flex Tip bullets weren’t the type of round used for target practice.

Hunter slotted the magazine back into the pistol and returned it to the drawer. Other than the gun permit, there was nothing else inside it.

‘You mentioned that the victim’s handbag was found on the sofa in the living room,’ Hunter said, addressing Sergeant Velasquez.

‘Yes, that’s correct.’

‘Anything interesting inside it?’

‘No.’

Hunter scratched the underside of his chin and took a slow stroll around the room, his eyes roaming everywhere. He paused momentarily as he reached the space between the clothes rack and the dresser before returning to the side of the bed. His attention went back to the bedside table.

‘This feels all wrong.’

‘What does?’ Garcia asked. ‘The gun?’

‘That too,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘But I’m talking about this room.’

With an unsure look, Garcia looked around the space.

Hunter saw Dr. Slater and Sergeant Velasquez do the same.

‘What do you mean, Robert?’ Garcia queried.

‘If this was your room,’ Hunter said, ‘and these were your things, would you arrange it this way?’

Garcia took a moment, allowing his gaze to pause over each furniture item for a few seconds. ‘Well, I... probably wouldn’t need the shoe rack, or the dresser with all the makeup paraphernalia.’

‘No, that’s not what I mean, Carlos. I’m talking about the position of the bed, the clothes rack... everything you see in here. If this was your room and this was your furniture, would you arrange it like this?’

Once again, Garcia regarded the room and its contents, this time paying more attention to their positioning. ‘Well, it does feel a little too crammed in here.’

‘Exactly,’ Hunter agreed.

‘But it’s not because of lack of space,’ Dr. Slater cut in, her gaze moving from floor to ceiling then from wall to wall. ‘This is a large enough room. The problem here really is the furniture placement. If you just move a few things around, the room would feel much bigger.’

‘OK,’ Hunter went with it. ‘So what would you change? What would you move around?’

Everyone looked like they were thinking about it for a short moment.

‘I’d probably swop the bed with the clothes rack for starters.’ Garcia was the first to reply.

Dr. Slater nodded. ‘For sure. Just look at this. The bed’s footboard is just a few feet from the door, practically blocking your path as you enter the room. Take your attention away from it for just a second, and you’d bang your leg against it every time. There’s also no real need to block half of that window,’ she added, gesturing towards it. ‘If you just swop the bed and the clothes rack around, the room wouldn’t only feel a lot more spacious, it would also become much brighter during the day.’

‘Maybe it’s an energy thing,’ Sergeant Velasquez proposed from the door. ‘You know... like that feng something.’

‘Feng shui,’ Garcia said.

‘That’s it. Maybe she was going for that kind of feel.’

Hunter shook his head. ‘No. The principle of feng shui is that energy should flow unrestricted and uninterrupted. In this case, the energy from the door would cut across the bed and the energy from the window would be blocked by the clothes rack. There’s nothing feng shui about this room.’

Dr. Slater and Sergeant Velasquez looked at Hunter curiously.

‘I read a lot,’ Hunter explained with a shrug. ‘Could you do me a favor?’ he addressed Sergeant Velasquez, taking a step closer to the bed. ‘Could you stay right outside the door and close it for me, please? Just for a second. I want to have a look at something.’

The sergeant frowned at the request, but complied.

Hunter’s eyes moved from the door, to the bed, and then the windows.

‘It’s OK, Sergeant,’ he called out after a couple of seconds. ‘You can open the door again.’

‘Pardon my curiosity,’ Velasquez said as he re-entered the room. ‘But what does how the victim arranged the furniture in her bedroom have to do with her murder?’

‘Maybe nothing,’ Hunter conceded, getting down on his knees to check under the bed. He found nothing. ‘But there’re too many things in this apartment that just don’t feel right, like this entire room, and I don’t think that that’s just a coincidence. There must be a specific reason why.’

‘OK, and what do you think that reason would be?’ Velasquez asked.

Hunter got back on to his feet. ‘I think it was because she was scared.’

The sergeant hesitated for a moment. ‘Scared? Scared of what?’

‘Not of what?’ Hunter replied. ‘Of who.’ He indicated as he clarified. ‘By placing the bed right here, she could sleep facing the door. That’s why she slept on the left side of the bed, and we know that because of the bedside table. If she left the hallway lights on, which I’m sure she did every night, she’d be able to see shadows under the door — footsteps of anyone approaching her room. Just like I saw yours while you were standing outside.’

Instinctively Velasquez looked down at his shoes.

‘There’s also a reasonably new sliding lock on the inside of the bedroom door,’ Hunter continued. ‘I bet it wasn’t there four months ago when she moved in. She put it there herself, and the scratch marks on both, the lock and catch, suggest that she used it regularly.’

Sergeant Velasquez checked the lock. He had to agree that it did look fairly new.

‘Then there’re all the other telltale signs around the apartment that tell me that she was definitely scared of someone.’

‘And which signs are those?’ Velasquez asked.

‘Well, we’ve got a thirty-eight Special Combat pistol in her bedside table, loaded with “extreme prejudice” rounds.’ He drew everyone’s attention back to the bed. ‘We also have a low platform bed, close to the floor, so no one could hide under it. A clothes rack, not a wardrobe, so no one could hide inside it.’ He made his way back to the door. ‘In the bathroom there’s a clear, see-through shower curtain, so no one could hide behind it. She had trouble sleeping but she refused to take her sleeping tablets. There’s a full prescription inside the mirrored cabinet in the bathroom from nine months ago. In the hallway, inside the storage room, there’s a dark-red curtain packed away. I’m guessing the curtain belonged to the sliding balcony doors in the living room. She took those down, replacing them with a somewhat unattractive chimed beaded curtain. Similar to the one at the front door. I don’t think she did it because she liked the way they looked.’

‘The noise,’ Sergeant Velasquez said, picking up on Hunter’s line of thought.

Hunter agreed again. ‘If any uninvited guest gained entry to this apartment, either through the front door or the balcony, she’d get a warning.’

‘The balcony?’ the sergeant questioned. ‘She’s three floors up.’

Hunter nodded. ‘And still, for some reason, she didn’t feel safe. Not even in her own home.’