An Easeful Death Read online

  ‘We’re looking for a man with an average to large build,’ she continued. ‘Strangulation requires upper-body strength, especially the kind capable of cracking the hyoid bone as indicated by the Royce autopsy.’

  ‘Possible age?’

  ‘Twenty to forty.’

  ‘The super’s going to love that.’

  ‘He can’t narrow it down until we have proof of his other crimes. A young man with a lot of experience can have the same level of sophistication as an older, less experienced killer.’

  ‘Fair enough. Anything else?’

  ‘The homicidal triad.’

  ‘Bed-wetting, arson, cruelty to animals?’

  ‘Cruelty to animals and/or smaller children; he may also have been a bully at school.’

  ‘Want any more rice?’

  Stevie shook her head.

  Monty piled a second helping onto his plate and mashed it in with the remaining sauce.

  ‘He’s cold, controlled and calculating,’ Stevie continued, ‘and above all he has a tremendous grudge against the police. He also has a great deal of insider knowledge. Could be an excop, a wannabe cop whose application was turned down, or even a serving cop. Anyone who has a close association with the police, really.’

  Stevie began to scrape the leftovers into a single bowl.

  ‘Weren’t the security guards ex-cops?’ Monty asked after some thought.

  ‘Yes, but James is sure that a single individual committed this murder. Besides, the guards confirm each other’s stories.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean one hasn’t paid the other off. I still want you to have another look at them. Go into their personal histories this time.’

  ‘James suggested polygraphing them.’

  ‘Arrange it, then.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll set it up.’

  ‘Does De Vakey think this guy’s only targeting women?’

  ‘He says women are definitely part of the equation. If not he probably wouldn’t have taken such care with the provocative posing. This man probably had a domineering mother who made him feel inferior.’

  ‘So this is a double whammy: grudge against the police and a grudge against women?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, scrutinising the list further. ‘Oh and here are some more gems for you to take as you will. He drives a dark van that he keeps meticulously clean, and he might own a German shepherd.’

  Monty looked incredulous. ‘You’re pulling my leg.’

  ‘It makes sense when you think about it. Apparently compulsive individuals are attracted to dark cars. This was a compulsively neat crime. The van would be clean and tidy, so would his home. If you remember, we did discuss the van at this morning’s brainstorming session. It would be a sensible way to transport the body.’

  ‘The dog?’

  ‘Many of these guys are wannabe cops,’ Stevie shrugged. ‘A German shepherd is a classic police dog.’

  Monty rinsed their plates at the kitchen sink. ‘So what’s next?’

  ‘James is going back to the crime scenes tonight. He wants to be alone, to feel the vibes, listen to the spirits talking.’

  Monty’s face fell. ‘I thought he had you convinced? He’s certainly given us something to work on, you have to admit that.’

  ‘I’m just stirring. I think bringing him in now was the right thing to do. He’s just a little...’ she shrugged, ‘I don’t really know, odd I guess. One minute he’s cold and unfeeling, the next he’s quite personable. I have no idea how he’s going to behave from one moment to the next.’

  ‘If he couldn’t detach, he’d probably go mad,’ Monty said, wiping his hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Or be lured to the dark side,’ Stevie let out an evil laugh.

  Monty flicked the tea towel at her. ‘I’d better be going.’

  ‘Thanks for bringing dinner.’

  He bent down and offered his cheek for a chaste kiss. ‘Security guards tomorrow?’

  Stevie gave him the thumbs up. ‘Got it.’

  ‘Good.’

  She heard Monty’s car leave the curb, the headlights a soft glow through the fabric of the Bambi curtains as she pulled the covers over Izzy’s shoulders. Toys thrown back in the toy basket, Izzy’s favourite pink and mauve tracksuit ready on the chair for tomorrow and now some time for herself. She moved into her own bedroom, climbed onto a chair and heaved a box from the top of the wardrobe and placed it on the bed. Undoing her ponytail she shook her hair loose. There had been moments during the day when she had been almost torn apart by her own anxieties, but the food and the company tonight had worked, and it had ended well. With a small sigh of satisfaction, she ran her fingers through her hair and contemplated her DVD collection.

  9

  The victims will share common characteristics. The killer needs to choose a type that will help him re-enact his own unique fantasies.

  De Vakey, The Pursuit of Evil

  With a stack of lever arch files in his arms, Monty took the concrete steps up to his flat two at a time. At his front door he discovered a note jammed in the flyscreen and juggled with files and keys to extract it. It was from Mrs Nash, his neighbour. In her italic script she explained how she’d used his spare key to open his flat for a plumber who needed access to work on an emergency in the flat below, but there was nothing to worry about now, all was fixed.

  His cop’s antenna was twitching. On entering he made a cursory inspection of his Spartan accommodation, relieved to see that nothing appeared to have been touched: the TV was still there, the sofa and his books—what more did a bloke need?

  He dumped the files on the coffee table and rubbed his hands. A heater might be a good addition, he thought as he filled the kettle, the place was like an igloo. But at least it was clean, thanks to his cleaning lady.

  While waiting for the kettle to boil he fed Mulder and Scully, the goldfish the squad had given him for his birthday in May. He made smacking noises with his mouth as he watched them dart and splash their way to the food through green-tinged water, promising to clean them out as soon as he’d finished with the load of files.

  Coffee made, he settled onto the sofa to refresh his memory of the Park Killer murders. He flicked open the file of the first victim, nineteen-year-old prostitute Kitty Bonilla. Her body had been discovered at first light by a gardener. She was posed on a park bench, naked from the waist down with an empty beer bottle rammed into her vagina. The cause of death was strangulation, the violation occurring after her death. Toxicology tests showed high levels of Rohypnol in her system. Scuffmarks in the dirt around the bench suggested that the murder could have occurred nearby, but no footprints could be isolated because of the sandy texture of the dirt. Her long dark hair had been hacked off and it was assumed the killer took it with him for a trophy.

  Monty knew about the posing, but the hacked hair was news to him. Perhaps it was something the investigating officers had wanted to keep from the media. Linda Royce’s head had also been shaved. The similarities were close enough to indicate a link. His pulse quickened.

  He turned to the index at the front of the file and traced a finger down the alphabetical listings until he came to the material evidence section. Some strands of long dark hair that matched the victim’s were found at the scene. A shorter hair that did not belong to the victim had also been indexed, along with the bottle and clothing.

  Monty checked through it again to make sure he hadn’t misread the notes and then riffled through the pages until he found the lab report. A DNA test had been carried out on the foreign hair’s skin tag, but the results had not been tabled. A side note said, ‘It is to be concluded that the second, unidentified hair sample was a contaminant from the previous occupant of the used body bag, present due to insufficient cleaning by the coronial staff. Disciplinary action has been taken.’

  Inspector Peter Sbresni, the lead detective in the investigation, had signed the note.

  Monty remembered the gossip about the sacking of the lead detective. The grapevine
had suggested it involved missing evidence, though Monty couldn’t recall hearing anything about hair contamination. His eyes drifted over to the fishbowl on the breakfast bar. Mulder was sticking his nose against the glass, gazing out at him with googly eyes.

  ‘What do you reckon, Mulder, mate? Is the truth still out there?’

  Monty stared at the list again, lingering over the clothing and personal effects heading. Red and black lace panties found beside body, black stockings and suspenders found near body, denim miniskirt found near body, red and black bra on victim, white silk blouse on victim.

  After staring at the list for several moments he realised what was missing. Jewellery. He’d never known a working girl to go out with less ornamentation than a Christmas tree, but none was listed here. How could any experienced dee not notice this anomaly? Christ, he hadn’t worked Vice for years and even he’d noticed. Could the jewellery as well as the victim’s hair have been taken for trophies? Was this just another of the investigating officers’ negligent omissions?

  His finger traced the list of officers’ names. A combined task force of Vice and SCS officers had been involved in the interviews. The names of the two detectives who’d conducted the initial interviews weren’t familiar and he wrote them in his notebook to follow up. He wondered if Tye Davis had also been involved, but found no mention of his name. This must have been about the time Stevie had blown the whistle on him; perhaps he had already been dismissed.

  Monty tapped his teeth with his pen and contemplated calling Michelle. She’d feasted on the details of Tye’s sacking and written a scathing report for the local paper, demanding that he be jailed. But the evidence against him had proved too slim for a conviction and after his dismissal he’d escaped up north to work on the mines.

  His mind flew to the scene at the Excalibur yesterday. Michelle had hinted she knew a lot more about the KP murders than she chose to reveal—what the hell did she know that he didn’t?

  Thinking he might give her a ring he looked at his wrist only to remember that he’d left his watch on his desk at Central. The glowing green of the VCR clock said it was ten already. Damn, Michelle would be asleep. She was an early riser, so many exercise regimes to get through before work; he could almost hear her martyr’s sigh.

  Ah, Michelle, fastidious to a fault, how it pained you to live with me—

  Monty you drink too much.

  Monty you smell like an ashtray.

  You’re putting on weight.

  You can’t wear that shirt again; you’ve already worn it twice this week.

  He hadn’t cared about all that so much, but he’d drawn the line at mandatory condoms on clean sheet nights.

  He scowled and headed towards the fridge, ripped off a can from the six-pack of beer and selected a crystal pilsner glass from his cupboard of mostly recycled honey jars. The expensive glass was one of the few souvenirs he’d kept from his marriage, one of a set of six. He’d only taken the one, knowing how a set of five would irritate Michelle. She’d probably tossed the others; she tended to do that with things that weren’t symmetrical, things that didn’t match or fit into her perfectly ordered life.

  He poured the beer slowly, lost for the moment in the rising bubbles and the soft fizz, breathing in the scent of hops until he had to tear himself away. It was good to know he could still resist it, but maybe he was taking the control exercise too far. He put the glass down and reached into the fridge for a carton of tomato juice, poured some into an empty honey jar and sprinkled it with ground chillies.

  Back on the sofa he lit up, inhaled and tried to blow his bitterness away with the grey cloud. Close eyes, count to ten, open. After a while he was able to turn his attention back to the files on the coffee table.

  Kitty Bonilla’s face stared back at him with the complexion of a freshly pulled beetroot—even the tufts of hacked hair resembled wispy roots. He checked her small ears and saw the peppering of empty holes.

  He looked carefully at the anterior, posterior and lateral shots of the body, unable to see evidence of anything written on the victim. No Easeful Death on this body.

  Turning to the witness section, the gardener’s statement told him little. There was slightly more in the statements of a young couple who’d parked at a lookout near the bench on the night of the murder. They’d claimed that a late model, dark-coloured Commodore had driven past them several times while they were busy finding romance on the back seat of their car. Thinking it was a peeping tom, they’d relocated their horizontal acrobatics to the other side of the park. The police, it seemed, had been unable to go further with this lead.

  Two other people had come forward, co-workers of Kitty Bonilla. The women said they had seen Bonilla arguing with a man on a Northbridge street corner on the night of her death and that he’d driven off angrily in an old VW beetle.

  Monty paused and rubbed his chin. Easing out of his sofa, he went over to his bookshelf and removed a copy of one of De Vakey’s paperbacks. It didn’t take long to find the index entry he was after and soon his eyes were scanning the print until they locked onto the letters VW.

  He read aloud. ‘Statistics recorded in the seventies and eighties show the VW to be the preferred vehicle of the serial killer.’ I’ll bet Volkswagen weren’t too pleased with that news, he thought. He shook his head at the absurdity and settled back onto his sofa to continue his reading.

  The girls had wondered why their friend would turn down a customer and when they’d asked, Kitty told them that the man had a badly managed colostomy bag. She’d serviced him before and found him repulsive, didn’t think she could cope again.

  Monty wrinkled his nose. Poor guy.

  The man was identified as Reece Harper, owner of a VW beetle, later the prime suspect in both murders.

  Wondering about Harper’s alibi, Monty turned to the section where it should have been and found two pages missing. Must have been put in the wrong place, he thought, working his way from one file to the other.

  The search proved fruitless. He became aware of a cold feeling in his chest. Contaminated evidence was bad enough, but deliberately removed documents? That was something else. Michelle’s allegations of a cover-up were looking more likely by the minute. All he could do now was hope to find the relevant information on the computer database. Once information had been transferred from hard copy to the computer it was almost impossible to erase. The only way it wouldn’t be there was if it had never been entered in the first place.

  He pushed aside his glasses for a moment and rubbed his eyes, aware of how tired he’d become. He resolved to go back to the Bonilla file in the morning with fresh eyes.

  Unable to call it a night though, he turned to the file of the second victim, twenty-one year old prostitute Lorna Dunn. She was found near the Pioneer Women’s memorial by an old man out for an early morning stroll. She’d been stripped naked and posed provocatively under a tree. She too had been violated post mortem by a bottle and had a large amount of Rohypnol in her system. Her hair had also been hacked. Some hair was found at the site, but no fibres, no prints and no foreign DNA. There was no documented evidence of anything written on her body and no jewellery listed among her personal effects.

  Her estranged father was serving ten years in prison for armed robbery and had not been interviewed by police at all. Her alcoholic mother had known very little about her daughter’s lifestyle, but an unnamed streetwalker friend had told police that Lorna Dunn had turned a client down earlier that evening.

  Monty paused and sucked his pen. Why wasn’t the friend named? Was this another blunder or a deliberate omission?

  He shook his head in exasperation when he saw that the nameless woman had identified Lorna’s rejected client as Reece Harper.

  Not having enough evidence to charge Harper, police had instigated round-the-clock surveillance. Reece Harper died in a car accident three months later and the case was officially closed.

  The ringing phone broke into his reading and he hauled him
self to his feet, swaying with exhaustion. He really should be calling it a night.

  ‘Monty.’ It was Wayne. ‘Sorry to call so late, but I thought you’d want to know the latest.’

  ‘Go for it.’

  ‘I ran a background check on the hobby shop guy, Thompson, like you said. I also spoke to his boss and it looks like we can rely on him.’ Wayne’s voice on the end of the phone was obscured by background noise.

  ‘Wayne, I can hardly hear you,’ Monty said. ‘Where are you and what the hell’s that racket?’

  ‘I’m back at Central, sorry, the cleaner’s vacuuming the incident room. Wait a minute, he’s in your office now.’ Monty heard a bang as the door was kicked closed. ‘Is that better?’

  ‘Much. So I suppose it’s too much to hope that the man paid for the paint with his credit card.’

  ‘Jeez, aren’t you the optimist.’

  ‘The guy’s smart, but even the smart ones slip up sometimes,’ Monty said.

  ‘True. The hobby shop man, Thompson, ended up being very helpful, we went through it again with him, but he hasn’t remembered anything new. I organised a session with the artist and we now have a composite sketch. Problem is, the guy was wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses. Thompson said it was the glasses that made him memorable—it wasn’t exactly sunglass weather.’

  ‘What about the paint?’

  ‘He gave me a sample of bronze from the batch he sold to our mystery man. I’ve dropped it to the lab but it’ll be a few days before they can tell us if it’s the same stuff on Linda Royce.’

  ‘I’ve a hunch it’ll match. I’ve been looking at the KP files; I’m convinced we’re looking at the same perpetrator.’

  There was a beat of silence from the other end of the phone. ‘We’ve been told to drop that—you after an early retirement?’

  ‘If that’s what it takes.’ Monty decided to keep his discovery of the missing documents from Wayne for the moment. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions until he’d checked the computer records for himself.