by Kate Gable
I ask Mrs. Ossap to see if she has any surveillance of later that day. We scroll through. Neighbors come and go but none of them are Karen or Robert.
"Is this the only exit out of the building?”
I scroll through again just to make sure that I didn't miss anything, but neither Robert nor Karen seem to enter or leave the building.
“Yes, but I don't have any cameras out there.”
I bite my lower lip. That could be a problem.
I keep scrolling and then suddenly, in the corner, I see a figure. I pause and then slow it down. It's shadowy, but it resembles Robert. I look at the time. Four p.m., right around the time that he was supposed to come back home, but when I look closer, I realize that it's not him at all. This guy has long hair and for a moment, he comes into full visibility. He doesn't look anything like him.
"What are you looking for exactly?" she asks, sitting back in the executive chair. "You think that he killed his wife and dragged her body out the front in daylight?"
"I don't know. Maybe. What do you think could have happened?"
"I didn't hear any sounds, so if he did kill her, he must have done something quiet. Did you check his apartment?"
"No. Not yet."
"Why?"
"Probable cause. I don't have any."
"What do you mean?" she asks.
"I need to get a warrant, or he needs to let me do it, but so far, at least when I was there, I didn't see anything too glaring that would draw my attention that would allow a judge to give me a warrant."
"Well, sorry that I couldn't be more helpful," she says.
Before leaving, I ask her to send me these recordings to my email address just so they don't get erased. I want to go through them again and see if maybe there was anything that I could have missed. Maybe the forensics team would spot a detail that I overlooked.
She agrees and then makes me promise that she can take my picture for her portrait gallery. She starts to show me some of her work, but I glance at the time and say that I can't stay.
"Okay. Well, I'll be in touch," she says, holding up my card in between her fingers. "Don't think that you'll get away so quickly."
"I don't even know why you want to take my picture," I say. "I'm not exactly model material."
"Oh, that's what you think, huh? That's not what photographers want. Photographers want a face with character, someone who expresses their discontent with life, and you can clearly see it."
"Is that what I express?" I ask, furrowing my brow, not sure if I should take it as a compliment or an insult.
"You got something to say. Let's put it that way," she says.
"What?"
"I don't know yet. I haven't taken your picture."
I walk back out to the parking lot with the weight of the world on my shoulders and then, just as I'm considering whether or not to call Robert in for somewhat of an informal conversation at the precinct, I see him.
He parks the car in the back lot and walks up the stairs, carrying about ten bags of groceries, five in each hand. He's not making another trip if it breaks his back.
I walk up to him and offer to help, but everything is balanced in his hands and if he lets go of one thing, everything else might fall as well. So, instead, he just asks me to grab the keys out of his jacket pocket and open the door.
"So, I guess you didn't find her yet," Robert says, putting all of the grocery bags onto the linoleum floor, checkered in alternating black and white.
"No, we didn't, but I've been making the rounds, asking a lot of questions, and I actually have some things to follow up with you."
He opens the refrigerator and starts to unpack his groceries. He seems completely unbothered by the fact that his wife is gone. As a detective, you sometimes fall into the trap of trying to read body language for clues as to what might have or might not have happened, but time and time again, various professionals and psychologists have concluded that body language experts and body language science in general is nothing but fake science.
The thing is that there is no one way that people react to situations. We all know this, but we still expect people to have certain reactions to certain news. The people who study this sort of thing conclude that body language is impossible to read mainly because it is so culturally specific.
Certain cultures encourage expression of emotions. Others don't. Furthermore, people grow up in different families. In some families, emotions are freely talked about and in others they are repressed and tucked away, never to be spoken about. That's what makes it such a difficult thing to do and therefore, it is not a scientific body of influence at all but rather filled with people just making statements for the sake of making statements.
I stand in Robert's kitchen and he continues to ignore me. After a few minutes, I start to feel physically uncomfortable. I'm waiting for him to say something in response to my presence, but he doesn't. He just focuses himself on this mindless task of putting away groceries and that's it.
"Tell me about your girlfriend," I say to snap him to attention and his spine immediately becomes rigid. I watch the back of his neck and see little hairs stand up on end.
"There, I got his attention," I say silently to myself.
"What girlfriend?" he asks, after relaxing his face. He doesn't look perplexed or upset but rather indignant.
"You know, the one who Karen caught you with in her house in Reseda."
His face turns white. He swallows hard, then clears his throat, avoiding eye contact with me the whole time.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm looking for your wife."
"Yeah. Well, she's not in this apartment, is she?"
"I need answers to these questions, Mr. Kaslar."
"I told you to call me Robert," he snaps.
"Okay, Robert. I need answers."
"I didn't do anything," he mumbles.
"What happened in Reseda?"
"Nothing. That was just nothing. That was just a friend."
"You were swimming naked with her in her pool when your wife came in."
"That was a setup."
"How was that exactly?" I ask.
"She wasn't supposed to be there. It was a one-time thing."
I realize that he's going in circles and now I suddenly wish that he were at the precinct, being recorded saying all of these things. The problem is that I'm not sure if I could get him to admit any of this in that formal environment. The whole thing is that I have the element of surprise.
He hesitates, shifts his weight from one foot to another, but I wait. I can feel that the silence is now uncomfortable for him and that's good. That's exactly what I want.
"Listen. I have no idea what this has to do with anything."
"Did you have an affair or not?"
"Yes, so what? It was a one-time thing. She caught me doing it. Whatever. Do you know how many guys in my department have slept with their teaching assistants? You don't even know what it's like to be married to Karen. She's anal about everything. She is completely obsessive."
"What about the baby?"
"What about the baby? What baby?" he slips.
He first asked what about the baby and then followed up with what baby. That pregnancy was supposed to be a surprise, but clearly, it's not.
"You knew about the pregnancy?"
"No, of course not."
"She took seven pregnancy tests, and she didn't tell you once? You guys were trying to have a baby."
"We were not."
"Were you using protection?"
"She told me she was on the pill."
I walk over to the bathroom.
"Where are you going?" he asks while following behind me.
I open the medicine cabinet and he looks inside.
"What?"
"Most women either carry their pill boxes with them or leave them here in the medicine cabinet. What does she do?" I ask him.
"I don't know. I'm never here. I work all the time."
"Well,
according to her friend, you two were trying to have a baby. In fact, she’d even discussed IVF, in vitro fertilization."
"What? No. No. There's no way. That causes you to have like twins and triplets. We can't afford that."
"So, that was the problem in your marriage? Finances?"
"No, of course not. Stop putting words in my mouth," he says, throwing his hands up. "Why don't you go find my wife, okay? What about her phone? Were you able to trace anything?"
"No. Her phone doesn't ping anywhere," I say, remembering what the crime scene tech team told me a few hours ago. "No evidence. They traced the number and they couldn't find it anywhere."
"What does that mean?" he asks.
"It must be off, but you probably know that already."
"What are you even talking about?"
"What happened to Karen?" I ask, pushing forward.
I stand close to him. I realize that I'm not the most intimidating figure, but I hope that my job title is enough.
He doesn't take the bait though. Sometimes people don't, but you have to try.
"I had nothing to do with Karen's disappearance. I already told you that. I came home. She wasn't here. What more do you want me to say?"
"Okay, Mr. Kaslar. I'll be interviewing some more people and I'll be in touch. Meanwhile, I got some video footage from your neighbors, so I'll be going over that as well."
His face drops. It's like all the blood in his face rushes away from him and he turns an unusual color of blue-green. I wait for a moment for him to say something, but he just clears his throat and looks away.
I walk out, knowing that he's worried about possibly being on that camera footage.
There’re a few more people that I have to interview who weren't home earlier, but I have to get back to the precinct and file a report about everything that I've found so far.
I look at the time. It's running out.
14
I get back to the precinct late that night. Most people have already left, but I stay at my desk for a while, trying to get everything done that normally would take two days. I need to be in Captain Medvil’s good graces before I ask him for more time off to go back home and search for my sister.
Every day feels a little bit like a twilight zone. I split my time between LA and the small mountain town where I grew up, only there's nothing bucolic or wonderful about it this time. I'm not a visitor. I'm not trying to get away from the traffic or the hustle and bustle of the Southern California valley below. This time I go there to search for ghosts. When I get home, I decide to take a bath. I haven't taken one in years, but something about it calls to me. I light some candles, a birthday present from Sydney from only a month ago, but it feels like it was years.
In addition to the candles, Sydney had presented me with a bamboo table big enough to fit a phone and an iPad to go over the bathtub, one of those things people always have in movies at fancy hotels where you get into a large soaking tub and forget all of your problems.
My apartment is a lightyear away from that life, but when I put the shelf over the tub, throw in some bath bombs, lower the lights, grab my iPad, and open a book I have been reading for close to two weeks, the world falls away. For a good half an hour, I find myself somewhere in another world, worried about a duke and his bride with a disapproving father who refuses to let them marry. I like stories like these, set in lands far away in other worlds where murders don't happen, where DNA doesn't exist, and where people have problems that are very dissimilar from my own.
I let my body relax and I lay my head against a towel folded up into a makeshift pillow. I let my eyes slowly close and my mind drift away. I don't know how much time has passed when I wake up, but I get somewhat of a rude awakening when my nose drops below the level of the water and I breathe in and choke. I splash some water on my face and then lather up some shampoo and wash my hair. Bubbles fill up the tub, mixing with the old ones from the bath bomb. I rinse it out, trying to get the last bit of the shampoo without much success when my phone rings.
It's Captain Talarico from Big Bear Sheriff's Station.
"Any news?" I ask, knowing fully well that he wouldn't be calling me otherwise. It's after midnight and I wonder if he's on his way home, tucked into bed, or still at the office.
"The search found nothing out of the ordinary," he says.
My mom had already messaged that to me, but I wasn't fully convinced until I heard it from him.
"Nothing at all? Not even like a shirt or-"
"Nothing," he says. "Volunteers have turned in a few things, but none of them belonged to her according to your mother and nothing out of the ordinary was found."
"This could be good news or bad news," I say.
"Yes."
"What about Natalie?"
"Bad news. No one has seen her in twenty-four hours. Due to the circumstances under which she has gone missing and the fact that they match your sister's, we are getting the FBI involved. Tomorrow morning, they'll be here."
"So, she's gone, too?"
"Yeah, conducting a search tomorrow around her house as well, same time as your sister's. You'll be here, right? Noon?"
"Yeah. I'll be there."
"Okay. See you then." He hangs up before I can say goodbye.
I stare at my phone. I tuck my legs up to my chest and wrap my arms around them, trying to make the tepid water last a little longer.
Natalie's missing and so is Violet. Now that the FBI's involved, I can't help but wonder which one of the girls is going to get more attention.
Natalie is from a prominent family, lives in a big house with married parents and two brothers who are probably all stricken with grief; and then there's my mom, in her little seventies bungalow, in her old car, and her inability to even appear on camera to showcase her grief publicly in order to get people to care about her daughter.
Sometimes, I hate the way the world works. Sometimes, I hate that certain people, just by the virtue of who they are, get more attention, but the problem is that there's a competition for resources on achieving attention.
I'm going to focus on the positive. Since Natalie is missing now, there's more of a reason to search for both of them. There'll be more media attention and perhaps more answers.
I climb out of the bath and pull out the plug, wrapping myself in a towel and feeling colder than I ever did before I got in. I see that I have a missed call from Luke and I'm tempted to call him back, but I don't know him well and the person that I'm going to be on the phone with him right now is not going to be pleasant, sweet, or someone he'd want to take on a second date.
I climb into bed and try to get a few hours of shuteye before embarking on another long day and seeking answers to questions that may not have any.
I get to the office a little bit after six a.m. and fuel myself with a donut and coffee. The sugar speeds up my heartbeat and gives me a fake jolt of energy that I know is going to wear off in a few hours and make my stomach growl, but when I see it, I can't resist.
When I get to my desk, I see that the lights in Captain Medvil's office are already on. He likes to get here early and usually leaves a little bit early to get home and spend some time with his wife.
I walk by and say hello. He immediately asks me for details on the Kaslar case. I have submitted a report, but I go over the details verbally. It's faster this way.
He nods while listening and asks what the plan of action will be.
"I want to invite him in. I want to do a proper interview. He admitted to the affair. He somewhat admitted to the pregnancy, but if we can get him on tape and maybe get him to admit a few more things, that will be ideal."
"You still have no body."
"I have no idea where she is."
"What about the videotapes?" He still calls them that, even though they have long been digital recordings.
"The ones I got from Mrs. Ossap downstairs, they were useless. I led him on to think that maybe we had something and I'd like to keep that to myself or b
etween us, but there was nothing on them. There was a guy that looked like him, but then there was a close-up. It turned out to not be him at all."
"Are you sure it's not just him in disguise?"
"Yeah. I have it in my email. I'll forward them to you and to the tech team, but I'm pretty sure it's not him."
"So, no body, still missing, two days now, friend worried, concerned that he might have done something, but when and how? We wouldn’t be able to get a warrant with what we have so far," he says, thinking out loud. "So, unless he admits something in the interview, we don't have much to go on, but you seriously think that this guy could have done something to her?"
"No, I didn't say that. I mean, he's very shady, cruel, and crude, but it was daytime, and they live in an apartment building. There were no gun shots fired, and there’s still no body."
"He could have strangled her."
"Yeah, but then what? What did he do with the body?"
"We have to check those cameras."
"There's another exit," I say with a heavy heart.
"What do you mean?"
"There's another exit to the apartment building, one that goes out back. There are no cameras there."
"Ugh," he growls.
When I get to Big Bear the following morning, I get there just in time to go to the search. Much to my surprise, Luke is there, along with Captain Talarico running the show. Captain Talarico introduces us, but I tell him that we have already met without going over any of the details.
When he told me last night that they were going to get the FBI involved, I had no idea that meant that it would be Luke Gavinson.
When a deputy comes up to the captain to ask him a few things, his attention is diverted and I pull Luke aside.
We're standing under a makeshift tent. There are picnic tables, laptops, and a generator set up even though these are the outside headquarters of the search.
The local veterans’ hall was kind enough to give us the space to set up a makeshift headquarters for the search. There are tables all along the wall with volunteers. Luckily, my mom was involved enough to organize some aspect of this, even though she had trouble with going on the actual search. She had big posters made of the missing sign, along with blown-up photos of Violet smiling, laughing, and having fun.
