Hunter checked his watch again.
‘At night,’ Garcia continued, ‘not even Superman could have spotted the body from this distance. There’s no way a cyclist saw her all the way over there from here.’
‘Especially when that call wasn’t even made from here,’ Hunter said.
Garcia’s forehead creased. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s something missing from the recording, Carlos.’
Garcia’s stare became more purposeful and he instinctively looked at the onboard computer screen and the sound file icon again.
A Boeing 767 began its run up the runway and Garcia realized what he had missed.
‘There are no background airplane noises,’ he said.
They were next to LAX, the third busiest airport in the USA with an aircraft either taking off or landing every forty to sixty seconds, day and night. The roar of jet engines was practically constant. Even with the windows shut, they could still hear it. Hunter had timed it — the call had lasted one minute and forty-two seconds. Even during the night, when air traffic was reduced, they should’ve heard at least two planes either landing or taking off.
‘There are no airplane noises,’ Hunter confirmed.
‘Sonofabitch,’ Garcia said, switching off his car stereo.
‘Like you’ve said, this guy is very confident.’ Hunter tilted his head to one side. ‘And he wants to play.’
‘The killer made the call. We need to get a copy of this recording to audio forensics.’
Hunter agreed.
Garcia regarded him for a couple of seconds. ‘But we’re not going to get anything from it, are we?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Hunter replied. ‘If we do, it will only be because the killer wants us to.’
Seventeen
After leaving the green wooded area by LAX, Hunter and Garcia drove to Nicole Wilson’s abduction site — Audrey Bennett’s house in the Hollywood Hills. Hunter had no intention of bothering Ms. Bennett for another interview. He knew that there was nothing else she would be able to tell him that she hadn’t already told Missing Persons, and Hunter had thoroughly read the interview transcript twice over. What he really wanted was to have a look at the outside of her property and its grounds. He wanted to understand how easy it had been for the killer to gain access to it, break into the house and take Nicole from inside without being noticed. And as Hunter had expected, it’d been particularly easy.
One didn’t actually drive up to the Hollywood Hills as much as crawl up. The roads were steep and twisty with so many abrupt changes and so few signs that even residents who’d been living there for years found it easy to get lost. The beauty of it, some said, was that it was exactly that sort of confusion that made Upper Laurel Canyon and Hollywood Hills so desirable to the people who lived there. Who’d need a gated community when few could find their way around anyway?
Audrey Bennett’s house was located just off an elbow bend on Allenwood Road and, like all the other houses on that side of Upper Laurel Canyon, there was no gate, wall, or even a decorative fence protecting any part of her property. No surveillance cameras either. Any visitor, known or unknown, could very easily walk on to the grounds of the house and, if so desired, all the way around to its backyard without being restricted by even the flimsiest of doors.
After asking Ms. Bennett’s permission, Hunter and Garcia took their time studying the house, grounds and backyard before taking to the road. As they started walking, they saw two little girls dressed in pink ballet outfits come running out the door of one of the neighboring houses. A short and plump woman followed. The three of them jumped into a blue SUV that was parked on their driveway. As they drove off, both girls waved at Hunter and Garcia from the back seat.
Slowly, both detectives walked from Allenwood Road all the way down to Laurel Pass Avenue. On their way back up to the Bennetts’ house, they also walked the length of Carmar Drive, which branched out to the left of the main road. Twice they passed a group of kids on skateboards, none older than thirteen years old, who were making the most out of the steep hills and tight bends.
‘Who needs to go to a gym?’ Garcia said, wiping his brow with the palm of his hand. With the sun high in the sky, the temperature at that time of the day had hit 82˚F. ‘Just go up and down these roads once a day and you’ll be as fit as an athlete. Just look at this.’ He pointed at his face. ‘I’m sweating like a pig.’
Hunter paused and watched the kids skate for a few moments. As they reached the bottom of the long hilly road, collected their skateboards and began the long walk back up to the top, a new thought entered his mind. He quickly returned to Garcia’s car, picked up the files that Missing Persons had sent over to the RHD and started flipping back through them.
‘Something wrong?’ Garcia asked.
‘I’m looking for the report on the door-to-door Missing Persons conducted around the area at the beginning of their investigation.’
Reflexively, Garcia’s eyes scanned the house across the street from them, then the one next to it, before going back to Hunter.
‘Why?’
‘They drew a blank, didn’t they?’ Hunter asked. ‘No one remembered seeing anything out of the ordinary on the night Nicole was abducted. No vehicles that didn’t belong. No conspicuous characters lingering around. Nothing.’
‘Yeah, that’s correct,’ Garcia confirmed it. ‘But this is a very quiet road. We’ve been here for almost an hour and we’ve seen one car drive by, the one with the ballet girls. Do you find it surprising that the killer managed to get in and out of here without anyone seeing him?’
Hunter carried on flipping through the pages. ‘No, not really. But I just need to check on something.’
Hunter finally found the file he was after and quickly reread it before handing it over to Garcia.
‘Check this out,’ he said, tapping his index finger twice at the top of the page.
Garcia read it, made a face, looked up and down the road one last time, then read it again.
‘Oh, man,’ he finally said. ‘We’re going to have to get some uniforms back up here again.’
Eighteen
The Missing Persons investigators had knocked on every door on Allenwood Road and questioned everyone in the houses, including staff if there were any. No one had seen anything. But, up on those hills, that was hardly surprising.
Hollywood Hills might have given out the impression of being a laid-back neighborhood, but the truth was it was more like a secret society with unspoken rules. The reason why so many actors and musicians loved those hills so much was because no matter what happened up here, people tended to keep their mouth shut and to mind their own business. Up on those hills, nothing ever seemed excessive. No one, no matter how odd they looked, no matter how flamboyantly or minimally dressed they were, ever seemed suspicious or out of place. Over the years, Hollywood Hills’ residents had been practically conditioned to look the other way.
The mistake that Missing Persons had made was that they had only questioned people about the night of the abduction.
So far, from the little they had, Hunter and Garcia had already deduced that this killer was very meticulous, and though he could’ve abducted Nicole Wilson from a multitude of locations, he had chosen to do it from inside the Bennetts’ house. Why?
Other than the killer wanting to show off how bold and arrogant he was, the obvious answer was because Allenwood Road was a very quiet street, which severely reduced the risk of the killer being spotted as he dragged his victim out of the house and into a vehicle. But the twist was — neither detective had known how quiet the road really was until they had driven up there.