‘In most cases, yes.’
‘But not in hers? Why?’
‘Because the guilt that she has placed on herself would’ve triggered a toxic defense mechanism response that would’ve pushed her brain into selective post-traumatic amnesia.’
Garcia kept his eyes on Hunter for a couple of silent seconds. ‘OK,’ he finally said. ‘So just for a moment, let’s pretend that I don’t have a Ph.D. in psychology like you do, Robert, and tell me all that again.’
Hunter smiled before clarifying. ‘Tanya feels guilty for Karen’s death because she believes that she should’ve known her number. She thinks it’s her fault her best friend is dead. Because of that, as a defense mechanism to lessen her pain, there’s a chance that her brain will choose to let go of any memory that it somehow associates with that guilt. The more she thinks about it, the more her brain will push the memories away because remembering will make her feel even more guilty.’
‘OK, now I get it and that’s not good.’
‘I’m still keeping my fingers crossed, though,’ Hunter added. ‘Everyone reacts differently to traumas, so you never know. I’ll give her another call later tonight.’
Garcia reached for his notepad. ‘By the way, I got off the phone with forensics just minutes before you got here.’
‘Anything new?’
‘They just finished analyzing the collage note we found inside Karen’s bedroom,’ Garcia said, sitting back on his chair. ‘As we were expecting, they drew a blank. It’s completely clear from fingerprints or DNA.’ He looked up from his notes. ‘Who goes through the trouble of cutting out letter by letter from a magazine to hide his handwriting, only to forget to wear gloves while piecing the note together, right?’
Hunter said nothing because, as crazy as it might sound, he’d seen it happen before. Most killers out there had a below-average IQ and were categorized as ‘disorganized murderers’. Movies and books sometimes portrayed some of them as cunning masterminds, but in reality, most of them would struggle with a fourth-grade math exam. They were labeled ‘disorganized’ because they didn’t really set out to kill their victims. They usually did it out of an uncontrollable violent impulse, which could have been initially triggered by a number of factors — shame, insecurity, anger, jealousy, low self-esteem, under the influence of mind-altering substances — the list was long and very personal. The problem was, the reverse of the coin, the killers who were categorized as ‘organized murderers’, tended to be highly intelligent, organized, and very, very disciplined.
‘The piece of paper used as a backdrop for the note,’ Garcia continued, ‘came out of a common white-paper pad, nothing special about it either. Easily found in any supermarket or stationery store.’
‘How about the shoes?’ Hunter asked.
Garcia shook his head. ‘They’ve been cleaned... bleached, actually. Forensics found absolutely nothing inside them. No skin cells whatsoever. Not even from Karen herself.’
That didn’t surprise Hunter. ‘How about the mask, any luck with it?’
The sketch Tanya Kaitlin had worked on with the police artist had already been sent to every costume and party shop in the greater Los Angeles area.
Garcia breathed out. ‘So far, no matches. Apparently no one has ever seen anything like it. No score over the Internet either. This mask wasn’t bought from a shop, Robert. He created it himself.’
Hunter had no doubt that that had been the case, but they still had to try.
‘But it’s not all bad,’ Garcia announced. ‘We’ve got one positive result. One you were one hundred percent right about.’
‘And what is that?’
‘The nine-one-one calls.’
On his screen, Garcia clicked and scrolled a couple of times until he found what he was looking for.
‘In the past three months there were four bogus, high-priority, nine-one-one calls made, concerning the general area of Karen Ward’s home address. Two of the addresses given by the caller were to the same apartment block, the other two to neighboring ones.’
‘Any luck when it comes to CCTV camera locations?’ Hunter asked.
Garcia laughed. ‘You would hope so, wouldn’t you? You called it right, Robert — this guy is anything but dumb. He stayed away from payphones, choosing to use four different pre-paid cellphones — no chance of a trace.’
‘Do we have the audio files for the calls?’
Garcia sat back on his chair and gave Hunter a quirky smile. ‘We do now. I just got the email.’
Twenty-Four
Hunter got to his feet and walked over to Garcia’s desk. The email showing on his screen had four different audio file attachments. The first one dated back three months, almost to the date. The last one was dated nine days ago.
‘Let’s go through them chronologically,’ Hunter suggested.
Garcia nodded and double-clicked the first audio file. The time logged for the 911 call had been 10:55 p.m.
DISPATCHER [female voice]: ‘Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?’
MALE VOICE: ‘Well... I think I just heard gunshots coming from one of the apartments down the corridor from me.’
The voice carried a somewhat pronounced Southern accent, but what caused both detectives to exchange a worried look was the youth of its tone. The voice sounded like it belonged to someone in his early twenties.
Keyboard clicks.
DISPATCHER: ‘Gunshots? Are you certain, sir? Could it have been just a loud bang, maybe?’
MALE VOICE: ‘No, I don’t think so.’
A short pause.
DISPATCHER: ‘OK, could you describe exactly what you heard?’
MALE VOICE: ‘One thing is for sure, they were arguing again. They argue a hell of a lot, you know. Always at night. Always screaming at each other. But tonight it sounded like they were going mad. I’m quite sure the whole building could hear it. Then suddenly — bang, bang, bang — three loud pops. And now everything has gone church quiet in there. I’m telling you, something isn’t right in that apartment.’
DISPATCHER: ‘OK, sir, what’s the address?’
The address the caller gave the dispatcher would’ve taken the police to the apartment directly below Karen Ward’s.
More keyboard clicks.
DISPATCHER: ‘A unit is on its way now, sir. Could I have your—’
The caller put the phone down.
‘It took around eleven minutes for a black and white unit to respond,’ Garcia said, reading from the email he had received. ‘Their report says that they were quite surprised when a woman, apparently in her mid-twenties, answered the door holding a baby in her arms. The woman, Donna Farrell, shared the apartment with her boyfriend, who works as a night security guard, so he wasn’t in. The officers asked her about any loud bangs or any neighbors who seemed to argue frequently, but she told them that she hadn’t heard any loud noises, or voices, or anything. She also told them that she had never heard any arguments coming from any of the neighboring apartments. Before logging it in as a bogus call, the officers knocked on several other doors. The reply was always the same. No loud bangs. No known arguing neighbors.’ Garcia scrolled down on the email. ‘The call was made from a pre-paid cellphone. Untraceable.’
‘Did they get a location?’ Hunter asked.
Garcia scrolled down a little more. ‘Yeah. The call came from the general location of Karen Ward’s apartment building. He was probably standing right in front of it when he made the call.’