by Chris Carter
Hunter drew a deep breath and his expression hardened. ‘And if she was taken by the killer . . .’ He didn’t complete his thought, allowing the gravity of his suggestion to simply hang in the air.
‘Shit!’ Garcia said in realization. ‘She was killed yesterday. If the same person who killed her also kidnapped her, it means he kept her hostage for two weeks.’
Hunter walked towards the sleeping area.
‘Have Missing Persons been through here?’
‘Yes, Detective Alex Peterson, from the West Bureau was in charge of the investigation,’ Hunter confirmed, opening the drawer on the bedside table – a sleeping eye mask, two cherry-flavored Chapsticks, a small pen flashlight and a packet of Tic Tacs. ‘I’ve already got in touch with him and explained that the case has now escalated to a homicide investigation. He said he didn’t have much, but he’ll send us everything he’s got. He found her laptop on the sofa in the living area. They’ve processed it but got only her fingerprints.’
‘How about the files in the hard drive?’
Hunter tilted his head to one side. ‘It’s password protected. The computer is with the Information Technology Division, but there was no urgent request until I talked to them a few minutes ago, so nothing yet.’
They checked her wardrobe – several dresses, a few of them designer, jeans, T-shirts, blouses, jackets and a substantial collection of shoes and handbags. In the kitchen Hunter checked the fridge, the cupboards, and the trash can. Nothing out of the ordinary. They moved to the living area and Hunter spent a few minutes looking through the photos and the book titles on the shelf unit next to the sofa before making his way into the studio.
Laura Mitchell was a lyrical abstractionist painter, and her work consisted mostly of collections of colors and shapes loosely applied to canvases. The studio floor was littered by a rainbow of paint splashes – almost a work of modern art in itself. Tens of finished paintings were organized against the west wall. Spread around the main working space were three canvas stands, two of them covered by once-white sheets. The third one, occupying a center position, held a thirty-six-by-twenty-four-inch semi-completed painting. Hunter studied it for a few moments before lifting the sheets from the other two stands. Both paintings also appeared unfinished.
Garcia took his time looking through some of the completed canvases resting against the wall.
‘I never understood modern art, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’ Hunter asked.
‘Look at this painting.’ He stepped out of the way so Hunter could take a look. It was another thirty-six-by-twenty-four-inch canvas displaying pastel green and orange colors surrounded by vibrant red and a touch of blue and yellow. To Garcia the colors seemed to have no co-ordination.
‘What about it?’
‘Well, this is named “Lost men in a forest of giant trees”.’
Hunter raised an eyebrow.
‘Exactly. I see no men, there is no forest and nothing on it resembles a tree.’ He shook his head. ‘Go figure.’
Hunter smiled and walked over to the large window on the left of the studio. Locked from the inside. He looked around the studio again before frowning and returning to the bedroom where he rechecked Laura’s wardrobe.
‘Did you find something?’ Garcia asked while he watched Hunter move purposefully into the bathroom.
‘Not yet.’ He searched through the dirty laundry basket.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Her painting clothes.’
‘What?’
‘In her living room you’ll find three photos of Laura taken while she was working. In all three she’s wearing the same old greenish shirt and track pants, both covered in paint splashes.’ He checked behind the door. ‘And an old pair of tennis shoes. Have you seen them anywhere?’
Instinctively Garcia looked around. ‘No.’ Confusion started to settle in. ‘Why do you need her clothes?’
‘I don’t, I’m just trying to establish that they are missing.’ Hunter returned to the studio and motioned towards the easel holding the uncovered and unfinished painting. ‘It looks like Laura was last working on this canvas. Now check this out.’ He indicated a paint palette thick with crusts of different dried colors. It was casually lying on a wooden unit next to the stand. To its right was a jar containing four different-sized brushes. The water in the jar was muddy with oil paint residue. Resting on the palette, and now sticking to it as if glued, was another brush. Its tip was dry, hard and caked in bright yellow paint. ‘Now look around her studio,’ Hunter continued. ‘She seemed to have been pretty organized. But even if she wasn’t, painters don’t just simply leave the brush they’re working with laying around thick with paint to dry out. It would be just as easy for her to drop it into the cleaning jar.’
Garcia thought for a moment. ‘Something caught her attention while she was working, maybe a sound, a knock on the door . . .’ he said, following Hunter’s line of thought. ‘She put the brush down to go check it out.’
‘And the probable reason why we can’t find her working clothes and shoes is because she was wearing them when she was abducted.’
Hunter paused next to several finished canvases arranged against the back wall. Something about the long one on the far right called his attention. It displayed an astonishing gradient variation moving from yellow at one end to red at the other. He took a few steps back and tilted his head sideways. The canvas was leaning tall against the wall at a sixty-five-degree angle, but it was supposed to be looked at horizontally, not vertically. From a distance, the color combination became almost hypnotic. Laura certainly had talent and an astounding understanding of colors, but that wasn’t what had caught Hunter’s eye.
He approached the painting, crouched down next to it, and studied the floor around the canvas for a moment before looking behind it.
‘Now this is interesting.’
Twenty-Five
Whitney Myers got to her office in Long Beach to find Frank Cohen, her assistant and expert researcher, flipping through computer printouts. He looked up when Myers closed the door behind her.
‘Hey there,’ he said, pushing his glasses up his long and pointy nose. ‘Any luck?’ He knew Myers had spent most of the day going over Katia’s penthouse apartment in West Hollywood.
‘A few clues.’ She dumped her bag on the chair behind her glass-top desk and reached for the jug of freshly brewed coffee that perfumed the entire office. ‘Whoever abducted Katia . . .’ she poured herself a cup and stirred in a teaspoon of brown sugar, ‘. . . did it from inside her apartment.’
Cohen leaned forward.
‘Just as her father said, I found the towel in the kitchen. The smell on it was very faint, but it matched the hair conditioner in her bathroom upstairs. Both of her suitcases were at the end of her bed.’
‘Suitcases?’ Cohen frowned.
Myers walked to the large window that overlooked West Ocean Boulevard. ‘Katia Kudrov had just returned from her tour with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She had been away for two months,’ she explained. ‘She didn’t even have time to unpack.’
‘Did you find her purse, cell phone?’
Myers shook her head. ‘Only her car keys, as her father had said.’
‘Any signs of forced entry?’
‘None. All locks intact. Doors, windows, balcony.’
‘Struggle?’
‘None, unless you count a towel on the kitchen floor and a bottle of white wine sitting out of the fridge as one.’
Cohen twisted his lips from side to side. ‘Was she in a relationship?’
‘Not with anyone who’d be waiting for her in her apartment if that’s what you’re thinking. Katia had started seeing the Philharmonic’s new conductor, a guy called Phillip Stein. Apparently he was just a fling, though, nothing serious.’
‘Did he feel the same?’
‘Oh, he fell for her. Her father said it’s always just a fling with her. Katia doesn’t do heavy relationships. Music is her real love.
’
Cohen pulled a face. ‘Deep.’
‘Katia and this Phillip guy were on the same tour together, and before you ask, there were no signs that he’d been home with her that night. She broke everything off a few days ago, just before their last concert.’
‘I bet he didn’t like that at all.’
‘Not one bit.’
‘So where is he now? Better yet, where was he on the night they got back to LA?’
‘In Munich.’
‘Munich, Germany?’
A quick nod. ‘He was that upset. Never came back with the Philharmonic after their last concert. Flew directly to Germany. That’s where his family is from. He couldn’t have done it. No matter how much motive he had.’
Cohen paused and tapped the top of his pen against his teeth. ‘Aren’t those flashy apartment blocks in West Hollywood packed with security – CCTV cameras and all? If someone took this Katia woman from her apartment, it must’ve been picked up somewhere.’
‘You would’ve thought so, wouldn’t you? You’re right, there’s a camera inside the elevator, two at reception, one on the penthouse landing and one in the underground car park. Conveniently, there was a power surge that blew the fuse box on the night Katia returned from her tour. All the cameras were down for a few hours. We’ve got no footage.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Nothing. Her father never thought to ask the building’s concierge about cameras. That’s why he never mentioned anything when we met.’
Cohen pulled a face.
‘I know. This thing screams professional kidnapping, doesn’t it?’
‘Has anyone got in touch with the family yet? Ransom request?’
Myers shook her head and returned to her desk. ‘Nothing, and that’s what gets me. Everything so far points to a professional job. Professionals are always after money. Katia and her family are rich enough for the ransom to be in the millions. She’s been gone for over forty-eight hours and nothing, no communication of any sort.’
Cohen tapped the pen against his teeth again. He’d been working with Myers for long enough to know that in a professional kidnapping, communications between the kidnappers and the ransom party were usually established quickly, if possible, before the party had a chance to involve the authorities. If the abductor wasn’t after money, then Cohen knew they weren’t dealing with a kidnapper, they were dealing with a predator.
‘But this gets worse,’ Myers said, sitting back in her chair. ‘Our kidnapper likes to play.’
Cohen stopped with the pen tapping. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There was an answerphone in her kitchen.’
‘Yes, and . . . ?’
Myers allowed the suspense to stretch. ‘The machine was full to capacity. There were sixty new messages.’
Cohen’s left eye twitched. ‘Sixty?’
Myers nodded. ‘I listened to every single one of them.’ She paused and took a sip of her coffee. ‘Not a word, zip, absolute silence, not even heavy breathing.’
‘They were all blank?’
‘It sounded that way. I thought there was something wrong with the phone or the machine, until I got to the last message.’
‘And . . . ?’ Cohen’s eager eyes widened.
‘Have a listen yourself.’ Myers searched her handbag for her digital voice recorder and tossed it over to Cohen.
He quickly placed it in front of him on his desk, readjusted his glasses on his nose and pressed play. Several silent seconds went by. Then a low-pitched white noise oozed out of the tiny speaker. It lasted a few seconds.
‘Static?’
‘That’s what it sounds like at first, doesn’t it?’ Myers replied. ‘But listen again – like you mean it this time.’
Cohen reached for the voice recorder, rewound it, brought it close to his right ear, and listened carefully to it one more time – very attentively this time.
His blood ran cold.
‘What the fuck?’
Covered up by the static-like sound there was something else, something that sounded like a whisper. Cohen listened to it a couple more times. There was no denying it; the undecipherable murmur was definitely there.
‘Is somebody saying something or just trying to catch his breath?’
‘Not a clue.’ Myers shrugged. ‘I did exactly what you just did. Listened to it over and over again. I’m still none the wiser. But I’ll tell you something. If the intention of whoever left that message was to scare Katia, that would’ve done it. It sounds like a poltergeist ready to come through the phone. It freaked the hell out of me.’
‘You think this could be the abductor’s voice?’
‘Either that or someone with a very sick sense of humor.’
‘I’ll get this to Gus at the studio.’ Cohen jiggled the voice recorder in his hand. ‘If we transfer this into his voice analyzing program, we could clean it up and slow it down. I’m sure we’ll decipher whatever it is that he’s saying. If he is saying something, that is.’
‘Great, do it.’
‘Does her father know about this?’ Cohen knew that Myers was in constant contact with Leonid Kudrov, but with nothing of significance to report back, it was fast getting frustrating.
‘Not yet. I’ll wait and see if Gus can make something out of it before giving Mr. Kudrov another call.’ Myers ran her hand through her hair. ‘Now are you ready for the next twist?’
Cohen’s eyes shot in Myers direction. ‘There’s more?’
‘When I was listening to the messages, for no specific reason, I kept looking at the clock in Katia’s kitchen.’
‘OK.’
‘Suddenly, I realized that there was a common factor that linked all of those messages.’
‘What factor?’
‘A time signature.’
‘A what?’
‘I know it sounds crazy, but I went over every message twice. It took me a while.’ She moved to the front of her desk and leaned back against its edge. ‘They’re all twelve seconds long.’
Cohen’s eyes narrowed. ‘Twelve seconds? All sixty of them?’
‘Precisely. Not a second more, not a second less. Even the last message with the noise and the creepy murmur – twelve seconds exactly.’
‘And that’s not a fault with the machine?’
‘Nope.’
‘Did anyone set the message recording time to only twelve seconds?’
Myers looked at Cohen inquisitively. ‘I didn’t even know you could do that.’
‘I’m not sure you can, but I’m just trying to cover all angles.’
‘Even if that’s possible, who’d set a message recording time to only twelve seconds?’
Cohen had to agree. ‘OK,’ he said as his stare returned to the voice recorder. ‘Now that’s officially messed up, and I’m officially intrigued. There’s gotta be a meaning to it. No fucking way the twelve seconds thing is a coincidence.’
‘No fucking way,’ Myers agreed. ‘Now we’re just going to have to find out what it means.’
Twenty-Six
‘What?’ Garcia asked, facing Hunter and moving towards the canvas. ‘What have you found?’
‘We need to get the Forensics guys in here, now.’ He paused and looked up at his partner. ‘Someone was hiding behind this canvas.’
Garcia crouched down next to Hunter.
‘Look at this.’ Hunter pointed to the floor just behind the canvas base. ‘Can you see the dust marks?’
Garcia squinted as he moved his face so close to the floor it looked like he was about to kiss it. Moments later he saw it.
Since it had been placed there, regular house dust had settled on the floor around the canvas edge. Garcia saw a long, dragging dust mark.
‘The canvas was moved forward,’ he finally admitted.
‘Enough for a person to get behind it,’ Hunter noted.
Garcia bit his bottom lip. ‘Laura could’ve moved it forward herself.’
‘She could’ve, but check this out.’
Hunter pointed to a spot further behind the canvas, closer to the wall.
Garcia squinted again. ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’
Hunter reached for his pen flashlight. ‘Look again.’ He handed it to Garcia.
Garcia directed the light beam to the spot Hunter had indicated. This time it didn’t take him long to see it.
‘I’ll be damned.’
Just a few inches from the wall, he identified the faint outline of foot imprints left in the dust. Clear indications that someone had been standing there.
‘Look at it one more time,’ Hunter said. ‘See anything that strikes you as odd?’
Garcia returned his attention to the imprints. ‘Nope, but you obviously have, Robert. What am I missing?’
‘The amount of variation on the imprints.’
Garcia looked for a third time. ‘There’s barely any.’
‘Exactly. Isn’t that strange?’
It finally clicked. When standing in a confined space for even a small amount of time, it was natural for anyone to fidget and shift his or her weight from foot to foot, to try to move into a more comfortable position every time the old one becomes uncomfortable. That shifting should, in theory, leave behind several different onionskin imprints. There were none. And that could only mean two things – either the killer didn’t wait long, or – and the thing that really bothered Hunter – the killer was preternaturally patient and disciplined.
Hunter’s cell phone rang in his pocket.
‘Detective Hunter.’
‘Detective, it’s Pam from Operations,’ said the voice at the end of the line. ‘I’ve emailed you all the information we managed to get on Patrick Barlett. At the moment he’s out of town.’
‘Out of town?’
‘He’s been away at a conference in Dallas since Tuesday evening. He’s flying back tomorrow – mid-afternoon. Everything checked out.’
‘OK, thanks, Pam.’
Hunter disconnected and returned his attention to the space behind the large canvas and the faint foot imprints. A strong and fast perpetrator could have covered the distance between there and where Laura would have been standing in a flash, too fast for her to react. But Hunter didn’t believe her attacker had surprised her in that way. If he had, there would have been some sort of a struggle, and there were no such signs anywhere. If someone had crept up behind her and sedated her in some way, Laura would have no doubt dropped her paint palette and brush, not placed it on the unit next to the stand. The surrounding floor area where Laura would have stood while working on her canvas was covered in small speckles and splashes of paint, not blotches and smudges caused by a palette hitting the ground.
