10:41:03P.M.-Unidentified male with Spanish accent calls 911, says a woman has been shot at the Sherman Market and needs help. Does not stay for police. Illegal alien?
10:41:37P.M.-Gloria Torres is shot to death, according to store’s security video time clock.
10:42:55P.M.-Good Samaritan enters store and helps Gloria, according to security video time clock.
10:43:21P.M.-Ellen Taaffe uses her car phone to call 911 dispatch to report sound of possible gunfire. She is told the shooting has already been reported. Her name and number are forwarded to detectives.
10:47P.M.-Paramedics arrive, transport Gloria to Northridge Medical Center. Chan Ho Kang pronounced dead.
10:49P.M.-First police arrive on scene.
He read it all again. He knew homicide was an inexact science but the timeline bothered him. According to the first homicide investigation report, the actual shooting was determined by the detectives to have occurred during the sixty seconds between 10:40 and 10:41P.M. In deciding this, the detectives had used the one source of time they knew to be exact and unassailably correct-the time log at the department’s emergency dispatch center. The first call reporting the shooting-from the Good Samaritan-had come in at 10:41:03 to a 911 operator. Using that time and the report by motorist Ellen Taaffe about hearing the shots sometime after the start of the KFWB news report led to the conclusion that the shooting had to have been after 10:40 but before 10:41:03, when the Good Samaritan made the call.
This time frame, of course, was in contradiction to the time of 10:41:37 shown on the store’s videotape at the start of the shooting.
McCaleb looked through the reports again, hoping he had missed some page on which there was an explanation of this discrepancy. There was nothing. He drummed his fingers on the table for a few moments while he thought about things. He checked his watch and saw it was almost five. It was unlikely any of the investigators would still be around.
Again he studied the timeline he had constructed, searching for an explanation for the anomaly. His eyes held on the second call to the dispatch center. Ellen Taaffe, the motorist who had heard the shooting, had called on her mobile phone at 10:43:21 to report the shooting and was told it had already been reported.
He thought about this. The detectives had used her hearing of the shots to set the murders within the minute of 10:40, the very start of the news program. Yet when she called 911, they already knew about the shooting. Why had she delayed more than two minutes to make the call? And was she ever asked if she saw the Good Samaritan?
McCaleb quickly flipped through the stack of reports until he located the Ellen Taaffe witness statement. It was one page, with her signature beneath a statement typed below a two-inch information block. The statement said nothing about how long she had waited between hearing the shots and calling the 911 dispatch center. The statement did say she believed that there were two cars parked in front of the store but she could not identify the type of vehicles they were or remember if there had been any occupants.
He looked at the information box. It said Taaffe was thirty-five years old and married. She lived in Northridge and was an executive with a headhunting firm. She had been driving home from the movies at Topanga Plaza when she heard the shooting. Her home and work phone numbers were contained in the witness information box. McCaleb went to the phone and dialed the work number. A secretary answered, corrected his pronunciation of Taaffe and said he had just caught her on her way out the door.
“This is Ellen Taaffe,” a voice said, rhyming the name with waif.
“Yes, hello, Mrs. Taaffe. You don’t know me. My name is McCaleb. I’m an investigator working on that shooting a couple months ago on Sherman Way. The one you heard and talked to the police about?”
He heard her breath going out in a way that indicated she was being put out by the call.
“I don’t understand, I already talked to the detectives. Are you with the police?”
“No, I’m… I work for the family of the woman who was killed there. Is this a bad time?”
“Yes, I’m on my way out the door. I’d like to beat the traffic and… and, frankly, I don’t know what I can tell you. I told everything to the police.”
“This will only take a minute. I just have a few quick questions. This woman had a little boy. I’m just trying to catch the guy who took her away.”
He heard the breath go out again.
“All right, I’ll try to help. What are the questions?”
“Okay, one, how long did you wait between hearing the shots and calling nine one one on your car phone?”
“I didn’t wait. I called right then. I grew up around guns. My father was a police officer and I went with him to the range sometimes. I knew that what I heard was a gun. I called right away.”
“Well, I’m looking at the police records and they say you thought you heard the shooting around ten-forty but didn’t call it in until ten-forty-three. I don’t-”
“What they don’t tell you in those reports is that I got a tape. I called right away but I got a tape. All the nine one one lines were busy and I was put on hold. I don’t know how long. It was aggravating. But when my call finally was put through, they said they already knew about the shooting anyway.”
“How long do you think you were on hold?”
“I just said I’m not sure. Maybe a minute. Maybe more or maybe less. I don’t know.”
“Okay. The report says you heard a shot and looked out your window at the store. Then you heard another shot. You saw two cars in the lot. The next question is, did you see anyone outside?”
“No. There was no one there. I told this to the police.”
“It seems like if the inside of the store was lit, you might be able to see if there was anyone in the cars.”
“If there was anyone in either of the cars, I don’t remember seeing them.”
“Was one of the cars a sports utility vehicle, like a Cherokee?”
“I don’t know. The police already asked that. But my attention was on the store. I looked right past the cars.”
“Would you say they were dark or light colored?”
“I really don’t know. I just told you that and I’ve been over this with the police. They have every-”
“Did you hear a third shot?”
“A third? No, only two.”
“But there were three shots. So you don’t know if you heard the first two shots or the last two.”
“That’s right.”
He thought about this for a second, deciding that it was probably impossible to decide for sure whether she had heard the first two or last two shots.
“Mrs. Taaffe, that’s it. Thanks a lot. You’ve been a help and I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
The brief interview helped answer only the question he had about the delay in her 911 call but it still left the discrepancy between the timing of the Good Samaritan’s 911 call and the time on the store’s surveillance tape. McCaleb checked his watch again. It was now after five. All the detectives would be gone but he decided to call anyway.
To his surprise he was told when he called West Valley Division that both Arrango and Walters were in and asked which one he wanted. He decided to try Walters, since he had seemed sympathetic to his situation the day before. Walters picked up after three rings.
“It’s Terry McCaleb… The Gloria Torres thing?”
“Right, right.”
“I guess you heard I got the books from Winston over at the sheriff’s.”
“Yeah, we’re not too happy about that. We also got a call from the Slimes about it, too. Some reporter. That wasn’t cool. I don’t know who you’ve been talk-”