Girl, Missing, page 11
“I think…” Ella began, but before she could finish, Ethan’s computer screen pinged, lit up, the black monitor springing to life. All eyes darted in its direction. “Did someone just touch that?” she asked.
The chief shook his head. The other two officers shrugged.
“Nowhere near it,” the chief said. “Maybe he left a program running or something?”
Ella moved closer, inspecting the error message that had popped up.
She blinked repeatedly in shock.
MAX RECORDING TIME ELAPSED.
Behind the message, she saw an overview of pressure waves. Mostly a flat line with a few spikes at the start followed by a long period of maximum volume.
The recording began at four-twenty, finished at five-fifty. A ninety-minute duration.
Ella applied new gloves, barely able to control her shakes. She reached for the mouse.
Ripley asked, “Dark, are you sure you want to touch that? That’s for forensics and the tech guys.”
“No. We need to hear this.”
“The hell you talking about?” Chief Sawyer asked as he came closer. “Ripley’s right. Probably best not to mess with that thing. Our perp might have..”
“Trust me. You’re going to want to check this out.”
“Why?” the chief asked.
“Because I think we have this whole murder on tape,” Ella said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In her temporary office, Ella played the recording for the fifth time. An hour ago, she, Ripley, and the chief had listened to it in Ethan’s basement, but a tech analyst had isolated the recording, converted it to something more manipulable and uploaded it to a flash drive.
Ella skipped the first ten minutes, which indicated someone – likely Ethan Harlow – playing piano. Then it went silent for another five minutes before the recording spiked with heavy thuds, like the sound of someone kicking the microphone or lugging furniture.
Or hauling a phonograph around. Placing it securely on a table, loading a vinyl inside.
“Dark, either we analyzed this guy’s approach completely incorrectly or he’s changed things up for this murder.”
“There’s no way of knowing which one, not until we find him.”
The tape emitted a deep, guttural groan, threatening to stretch out but being abruptly stopped. Then followed a series of nauseating squelches, followed by a heavy thud.
Or, the killer plunging his blade into Ethan Harlow’s stomach, then the famous composer dropping dead.
For the two previous murders, the agents had assumed that the killer used a blitz approach to make his way into the victims’ homes. Then after he’d killed them, he fetched the record player he’d stashed outside and brought it to the scene. Judging by the audio evidence, he hadn’t done that here. He’d snuck into Ethan’s home with the record player already in tow, then set it up, waited for Ethan to appear, then struck.
Then came the encore. The ritual of the ritualist. Twelve minutes of blaring, classical music. A piece none of the investigators had yet put a name to. Ella prayed it would be another ninth symphony, because then she could dig further into the bizarre ninth curse that she’d read about the night before. Unlike the other compositions, this one had a lot more energy to it. It was a fast, high-spirited piece driven by frenzied piano playing.
But perhaps the most disturbing piece of the recording came at the twenty-six minute mark. A shrill, piercing scream out of the mouth of a now-widow.
Ella turned off the recording before it got to that point. She couldn’t listen to that sound again.
Ripley said, “So, he’s bringing these record players inside prior to the murders. That’s a whole other level of riskiness.”
“Unnecessarily risky,” Ella said. “Or over-confidence. Do you remember what I was saying back at the scene? About the chances of our killer pulling this off in a home like Ethan’s?”
“Yeah. That thing was a labyrinth. But the garden backed onto farmland and the rear door was unlocked. It would be pretty easy for someone to slip in there, providing they had the balls to do it.”
“Not just balls,” Ella said, “but the prior knowledge.”
“Come again?”
“We profiled this guy as stalking his victims for at least a few months beforehand, learning their schedules, knowing when they’re gonna be home.”
“Right.”
“But he struck Vicky and Grayson within seconds of them answering the door. That meant he knew they’d be home, but he wasn’t comfortable breaking into their homes like he did here. That’s why he went for the cold approach. He didn’t do that with Ethan. He added a whole new layer to his M.O. here.”
Ripley nodded, caught on to Ella’s train of thought. “But if he knew Ethan’s schedule, then he’d know his wife would have been home too. He wouldn’t have risked knocking on the door with another person in the house. That could be why he went the home invasion route.”
Ella heard it, noted it. “Could be, but how would he know that Ethan left the back door unlocked? Navigating a new space, vinyl player under one arm, hoping that luck was in your favor? Doesn’t that seem a little optimistic, even for this guy?”
Ripley scratched her neck and said, “So what are you suggesting?”
“I think our killer has been in that home before.”
***
Sheila Harlow clutched her coffee cup tightly, her knuckles white as she lost herself in the depths of the steaming liquid. Her hands trembled as though an earthquake was running through the precinct floor.
Ella and Ripley kept their distance. The woman had only discovered she was a widow around ninety minutes ago.
“Mrs. Harlow, would it be okay if we asked you a few questions?” Ella said.
Sheila gave a shallow nod, not taking her eyes off the dark brown coffee.
“Would you be able to talk us through what happened? We hate to be so blunt.”
Sheila broadened her shoulders and pressed her lips together in a thin line. After a second of contemplation, she said, “I can’t remember.”
Ella gave her a moment. “Take as long as you need.”
The grieving woman swished her coffee around, placed it to her lips, then brought it back without drinking. “Middle of the night,” she said. “I heard Ethan rummaging around downstairs. I thought nothing of it. Tried to get back to sleep, but then I heard this music. Thunderous, stupidly loud.”
Ella nodded along, not wanting to interrupt her flow. Likewise, she wanted to keep the specific questions minimal so that Sheila could guide her own recollections.
“So I went downstairs to ask him to turn it down. It wasn’t unusual to hear music coming from the basement every night. I just thought he’d, I don’t know, turned it up loud because he was really excited about something. He got like that.”
“Ethan regularly worked through the night?” Ella asked.
“Yes. Pure insomniac. He’d sleep three, fours a night. Usually from about six ’til nine in the morning.”
“Got it. But the music you heard wasn’t his?”
“No,” Sheila said as she blinked away the tears. “The only music I ever heard down there was Ethan’s piano or violin. I never heard someone else’s music, you know? That’s what shook me about it because I knew it wasn’t one of Ethan’s pieces. It was like an alarm. Like, someone else is down here.”
Ella didn’t want to go into the details of Sheila’s discovery. That would just flood her head with unwanted images. She took a different route. “Did you see or hear anyone else in the house?”
Sheila shook her head, her hair swishing around her shoulders. “See? No. I might have heard someone, but I just assumed it was Ethan.”
Ripley asked, “Was there anything different about Ethan’s studio? Anything that looked out of place?”
“No. Apart from that God damned record player.”
“Can you tell us about your husband? Seems like a very accomplished guy,” Ella said.
Sheila fought back the tears again. “Amazing man. So kind, generous, creative. Took wonderful care of me, my kids, my grandkids. He took them all on as if they were his own.”
Another knife to the gut. Somewhere out there, some kids would have to learn that their grandfather was no longer around because of some homicidal psychopath. Ella went past rage to an absolute disdain for this unsub. She’d take great pleasure in holding him down, cuffing him, securing him a lifelong residence in the crowbar hotel.
“What was his job, exactly?” she asked.
“Producer. That was his official title, anyway.”
“But he did more?”
“Very much so. He was basically a mentor for the artists he worked with. He made their songs better, ghostwrote parts for them. Quality is never an accident, he always said.”
Ella needed to go deeper, and it always came with a risk. “Tough question, but did Ethan have any enemies? Anyone that might want to see him fail?”
“Take your pick,” Sheila said. “The people that liked him really liked him. But the ones that didn’t…”
Ripley asked, “Anyone in particular? Could you give us names?”
“Do you have any idea how many people wanted Ethan’s services? He got daily calls from agents and managers and whoever else. He rejected pretty much all of them. He handpicked the artists he wanted to work with.”
“And that resulted in some bad relationships?”
“Relationships?” Sheila asked. “No. Not really. But he definitely pissed a few people off by just saying no.”
Artists’ temperaments were known for being on the sensitive side. She’d known a few people who fancied themselves as musicians or actors or writers, and none of them took rejection very well. The sting of having artistic efforts spurned was like a heavy blow to the soul. She hated to generalize, but thick skin was sorely lacking in the fields that required it to excel.
“Did Ethan ever invite people over? Had many people in his field seen the inside of your home before?”
“Tons. Countless. People came and went all the time. A lot of his artists recorded their whole albums in our basement.”
A double-edged revelation. It gave more weight to her theory that this person had been inside the victim’s home before, but didn’t do much to narrow down the suspect pool. Ella made a note to look into Ethan’s client list, although when she factored in managers, agents, session musicians and the like, she might as well just investigate every musician in San Francisco.
“Ethan wasn’t the first one, was he?” Sheila continued through tears. “There’d been others? One of the police guys said so.”
Ella and Ripley held each other’s stare. As a general rule, sharing confidential information about ongoing cases was frowned upon, but if anyone could make connections between victims, it was the people who knew them best. Ella decided to give a little.
“Ethan was not the first. There’ve been two others.”
“Who?” Sheila asked, not beating around the bush.
Ripley added, “We can’t say.”
“Why not? I’ve heard the rumors about this guy. Leaving record players at crime scenes. What’s that about? This guy got something against musicians?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Ella said. “I imagine Ethan was well-connected, right?”
“Very much so. He was close with everyone. Artists, managers, reviewers, tour operators, venues, you name it. If Ethan didn’t know someone, he had a friend who did.”
Musicians, reviewers, Ella thought. She gave Ripley the look. The one that said we could get something here. Ripley tapped her fingernails on the table then nodded her partner forward. By the looks of it, the prospect of a new lead outweighed Ripley’s hesitation.
“Sheila, the other two victims were Vicky Haben and Grayson Miller. Vicky was a violinist, Grayson was a reviewer. Do those names mean anything to you?”
Sheila was quick to give a firm headshake. “No. Never heard those names in my life. But try checking Ethan’s call list. He did most of his work through the phone, rarely email or anything like that.”
That was a task for the tech team back at HQ, if they were permitted to do so. Privacy laws usually kept the phone contents of the deceased under wraps in the modern age unless specific circumstances allowed it. Not to mention that clearance – if any came – had to go through several legal channels, so the victims’ phones would be off-limits for a while yet.
“We’ll check it out, Sheila, thank you,” Ella said. She felt the conversation nearing completion and didn’t want to grieve the poor woman any further. “Just one more question, if that’s alright.”
“Okay.”
“That phonograph. It didn’t belong to your husband, did it?” Ella couldn’t quite shake the image of this killer skulking through the night with a record player under his arm. Placing it down, opening doors, picking it back up, sneaking through the house. It just wasn’t a viable approach to her.
“Phonograph? Oh, you mean the old record player? God no. Ethan was a modern man. Nobody has those things anymore anyway.”
Ripley asked, “They don’t?”
Sheila caught her breath, drank her coffee. “No. I’ve seen a ton of musicians’ houses. Ethan was always dragging me along to parties. Never once saw a record player. Classical fans are kind of snobs to be honest, so they always have the latest equipment, you know?”
Ella leaned back in her chair, a new idea suddenly taking shape. So far, this killer had left three vintage record players behind at his crime scenes. From her quick inspection of each device, they were all genuine, traditional players manufactured thirty, forty years ago. They weren’t modern reproductions or knockoffs. They were the real deal.
So she had to ask herself an obvious question.
What kind of person had one vintage record player, let alone three?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ripley returned from the evidence room and said, “I’m now an expert in vintage record players. Have you found out much about Ethan?”
She’d spent some time with their assigned classical music expert to learn more about the phonographs. Ella had been at her laptop, piecing together fragments of Ethan Harlow’s life to form a clear picture of the man behind the music. The acclaimed producer had endless accolades to his name and had worked with artists that even Ella recognized, despite her preferred fondness for music in four-four rhythms. Ethan’s connections ran deep, as his wife had claimed, so filtering by people in his circle and investigating them individually would not be the most time-sensitive method of locating suspects.
“I can’t find any link between Ethan and Vicky Haben. He never worked with her, nor any of the groups she played in. She only really played in orchestras, while Ethan dealt with more commercial outfits. Nothing in common, at least professionally,” Ella said.
Ripley cast a wary eye over Ella’s laptop screen. She was looking through Grayson Miller’s website. “And victim number two?”
Ella held out her palms in defeat. “Nothing. He briefly mentions one of Ethan’s clients, but certainly no mention of Ethan himself. Plus, Grayson’s style didn’t really dig deep enough to slate producers or production values. He mostly kept it to exaggerated analogies.”
“So we’re coming up short,” Ripley said.
“Yeah.” Ella had sadly expected no less. “Anything on the phonographs front?”
“First of all, the music playing at Ethan’s death site was a piece by Richard Wagner called Parsifal. Well, it wasn’t the whole piece because apparently it’s about two hours long. It was just a snippet from it.”
“Another amateur recording?”
“Yup. And before you ask, no. There’s no meta data in vinyl records. We can’t isolate the places where they were recorded. It doesn’t have the ID tracking that digital recordings do. For that, we’d need to get our hands on the master copies.”
Ripley had read her mind. Ella said, “You weren’t lying. You really are an expert.”
“Told you.”
Ella said, “What if we figure out where he’s getting these record players from? There can’t be many places that sell them. We can check retailers or online stores for mass purchases in recent weeks.”
“Sounds like a tech job. I’ll get the guys at HQ on it pronto.”
Chief Sawyer suddenly peered around the door, eyes bulging with red circles, face as pale wax. “Ladies, do you have a minute?” he asked.
Ripley said, “What’s wrong?”
“We got something you might want to see.”
***
“This is footage from Ethan Harlow’s doorbell camera,” the chief said. The screen displayed the home’s driveway, Ethan’s Lexus and Land Rover parked out in the front. “Just it got from the technical guys.”
Ella watched closely, breathing deeply to keep her pulse rate in check. If they had a shot of the unsub, it could be the breakthrough they needed. “We got him on tape?” Ella asked.
“Watch this,” the chief said. He clicked the play button and the scene sprang to life, trees whistling in the distance, a gentle breeze whooshing over the camera’s microphone. The footage was timestamped nine-fifteen pm.
A few seconds of nothingness, then a pair of bright lights crept in from the right hand side. A vehicle – an old, battered Mitsubishi with slightly-tinted windows – slowly rocked into view, parking right at the base of the driveway but obscuring itself behind Ethan’s cars.
The lights died out.
A figure emerged, brown box in hand.
Ella leaned closer, adjusted her glasses, consumed every detail of the hurried, grainy figure. He was short, around five-five, cap over his face, gray t-shirt, couldn’t have been more than one-twenty pounds. Early to mid-thirties.
It fit the profile.
The chief hit pause at the moment of purest clarity. “This is the best shot we got. Take a look at him,” he said.
Ripley offered her insight, “Small stature, physically limited. Tattoo on his left arm. Can’t make out hair or eye color. Ataxic walking gait. Might have some kind of physical disability. A leg issue. Looks about thirty-three.”
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