The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim Page 18

  ‘Ah, ha,’ he said, ‘now that’s something you’d have to hear.’ He pulled a typed page from the manilla folder. ‘When surgery was performed on her anus, the surgeon who did the operation noticed that, and let me quote this, “the anus has slightly keratinised edges, and on close inspection, appeared to be chronically abraded”. This woman was used to having things inserted in her anus. I’d say she was involved in passive anal intercourse.’

  I knew keratin was a fibrous protein found in hard skin from my biology study at university. Unless Teresa Wilson had a serious constipation problem, Dr Larousse had to be right about her fetish for anal intercourse.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘you’re convinced Teresa Wilson has inflicted all those injuries on herself?’

  He looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Well, I’m not a medico-legal expert, and I certainly wouldn’t want any of my comments to be used in a court of law, so officially, I’d have to get a second opinion for you from a forensic pathologist. A clinical pathologist just wouldn’t serve the purpose. Problems in criminal investigation differ from problems in clinical work. You know as well as I do that writing up a report to be presented in court is not the same as writing a report for a medical colleague. The last thing you’d want is my testimony thrown out of court on the basis that I’m not qualified to comment. But between you and me, those injuries have got her signature all over it.’

  ‘Do you think you could arrange a forensic pathologist’s report for me?’

  ‘Not a problem. You can nominate your own pathologist if you want, and I’ll do the leg work. I can have a report for you within a week.’

  ‘There’s no way to speed up the process?’

  He raised both eyebrows as if to say it’s out of my hands. ‘I’m doing the best I can. In fact, I’ve spent more time on this patient than can be justified. But after I heard you came back to visit Teresa Wilson a few times after our initial discussion, her case kept nagging me. Something didn’t ring true. I knew I had to see you and talk this over.’

  I thanked him for his time.

  Just when I was about to leave his office, he said, ‘Oh, and another thing. I got the opinion of a gynaecologist regarding the abrasions in Teresa Wilson’s anus, and he didn’t think it was the kind of marks a squash ball would leave. He said they were marks left by women’s fingernails.’

  I turned around, surprised. ‘How could he know it was woman’s fingernails?’

  ‘The cuts were short and steeply arched, just like the tips of a small manicured hand.’

  When I got home, I took a long, hot shower to compose myself and remain level-headed.

  I had suspected on and off that Teresa Wilson had killed her husband. But now, there was strong evidence to believe she did.

  Or that she had deliberately dramatised the rape by inflicting excessive injuries on herself.

  If Walter did rape Teresa, she obviously wanted the end result to look worse than what he did to her. Come to think of it, her actions were not as uncommon as I initially thought. When a rape victim felt the rapist hadn’t left enough evidence on her body, she often highlighted the rape with creative evidence, such as self-inflicted scratches and wounds. This was common since so many rape cases never ended up in court because of lack of physical evidence. Rape victims failed to realise that wounds can also tell a story.

  As I shampooed my hair, I realised I had to overcome two major problems. The first was to explain to Trevor Mitchell why I continued investigating the Wilson homicide when I’d been barred from it.

  The second, a problem of a much graver nature, was telling Frank the full story. The thought of it made me sick. There he was, lodging a probable psychopath under his roof for the last two weeks or so and becoming infatuated by her when she was probably planning her next victim.

  And more likely than not, it would be him.

  I shivered at the realisation that I might find Frank in the same state as I had found the other bodies, all, I presumed, the artwork of Teresa Wilson.

  I stepped out of the shower and dried myself with a white bath towel. The bathroom was filled with steam, so I opened the small window above the bathtub. The air was cool, but it cleared the moisture. I could see the sky outside, covered in white clouds.

  As I slicked my hair back, my thoughts drifted to Claire Kendall, Jeremy’s secret lover.

  Surely if Walter Dunn was a good friend of Jeremy Wilson and the lover of Teresa, he must have told Teresa about Claire. By jealousy, Teresa killed Claire.

  But why would she have killed Jeremy when she, herself, was cheating on her husband by having an affair with Walter? And why did she kill Walter?

  The only consistency I had established so far was that Teresa killed the two men she slept with. And if that was anything to go by, I began to feel an all-consuming fear regarding the safety of Frank Moore.

  I could have gone straight to the police and had her arrested. But to do so I needed a warrant. That would have taken a lot of explaining. In addition, the evidence I obtained to date might be inadmissible in a court of law because I had followed improper procedures. The defence would argue that since I was unauthorised to investigate the Wilson’s case, then my findings would be worthless. This would earn a big cross over my name at the VFSC and the CIB. I would seriously have to consider a life as a private investigator instead.

  But my main reason for refusing to get police participation was that I felt it might have been better to accumulate more evidence before Teresa got herself a lawyer. The amount of evidence was mounting up as I went along. This gave me faith to push a bit further. I knew if I persisted a bit longer, I would dig up many more secrets, enough to give her three life sentences. After all, in spite of how personally involved I felt to this case, my focus was to get her to court, not help her slip through the legal system. Once I’d found enough evidence, I’d pass it on to the detective in charge of the investigation, anonymously of course, and let him follow up my leads legally.

  I knew I was pushing my luck by not getting police involvement immediately, but lawyers could be really cunning. We needed more than just suspicion. Someone out there would go over all the evidence we had accumulated since the beginning of this case with a fine tooth comb, and question the validity of every single test we’d done. Our legal system was increasingly becoming Americanised. You had to be involved in the system to realise what a bunch of losers some lawyers were. They were not interested in their clients guilt or innocence, but just how much money they could extract from them. A pretty lame way to provide justice in a country where seriously dangerous offenders, such as rapists and killers, were given lighter sentences than white collar criminals.

  For a person to be found guilty of a criminal offence, the law required that the prosecution proved the matters alleged beyond reasonable doubt. If enough evidence was brought forward by Teresa’s defense lawyer, the case would fall apart.

  So far, I had accumulated enough circumstantial evidence, that is evidence which comprised details which pointed to the key fact proving a crime was committed.

  At best I could prove Teresa Wilson lied. This could be backed-up by medical expert evidence regarding the injuries found on her body.

  However, I had no direct evidence indicating she killed anyone.

  And that was a stinker of a problem.

  My best chance was to get it out of her through a confession. To do so, I needed to be very tactful and diligent in my investigation.

  I knew if I handed everything over to the police, they would arrest her immediately and botch up the investigation. Like myself, they would only be able to prove she’d self-inflicted her injuries, but would not be able to pin her with the murder of her husband and Walter Dunn.

  I blow-dried my hair and stepped out of the bathroom in my bathrobe.

  I crossed the hallway to the kitchen. While water was boiling, I scooped a spoon of instant coffee in a mug.

  What I needed was an evidential glut, enough to have every intellig
ent lawyer refusing to even try mounting a proper defense. At this stage, the chance of losing my contract with the VFSC seemed completely irrelevant. I was going to nail the bitch even if it cost me my career. I had a deeper respect for the truth than for a job title.

  And if Teresa did kill those two men, I also had a personal vendetta against her for humiliating me with her lies.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was in my study with my mug of black coffee in one hand. I removed a copy of the original report from the crime scene of the morning of the 20th of February at the Wilson’s place and looked for the name of the neighbour who called the police when he heard Teresa screaming.

  Lionel Payne was a seventy-three year-old pensioner who had moved into the same block of units as the Wilsons two years prior.

  I dressed in my Levis, a clean white tee and a wool sports jacket.

  Within twenty minutes I was in Port Melbourne.

  Like many people of his age, Lionel Payne was at home, looking out the window of his second-floor apartment, waiting for time to pass, for a friend to drop by, for family to visit, for his time to come.

  I could tell he was glad to see me by the over-zealous smile on his face.

  He had short, grey hair with a matching beard and seemed quite underweight for his height. His dark brown eyes sat deep inside his skull. A fine mist covered them, as if he was still looking in the past and was incapable of accepting reality. I could read thousands of stories in them, most of which he had lived through before I was even born. Lonely, old people scared me because I knew one day I would become one of them.

  His five-dollar, K-Mart, chequered flannel shirt hung loosely on his body frame.

  I sat at his kitchen table while he made coffee for two from an old aluminium saucepan. I was certain I would start convulsing if someone suddenly cut out my caffeine intake. More of the stuff ran through my veins than blood.

  Two pigeons were making a nuisance of themselves on the window’s ledge, which was covered in droppings. Because the window could only be pushed open from the inside, and we were on the second floor, it was impossible to wash the dropping infested glass panel. I had to drink my coffee while glancing through bird shit.

  Disgusted, I circled the room with my eyes.

  Three flying, ceramic ducks, the type I had seen thousands of times in other people’s homes, in Copperart catalogues and in television commercials, hung on the opposite wall. Last I heard, these were worth a small fortune and sold as antiques.

  It always amazed me how much rubbish from the sixties and seventies had suddenly become antiques or collector’s items, and were sold for ten times the price they were originally bought for. It made me want to keep every tin, book, magazine, container, nail, overworn clothes and teddy bear, and pack-seal them until the year 2050. If I had been unwise with my savings, I’d be able to pay the mortgage off by selling collector’s items in mint condition at the Sunday market.

  The table I was sitting at was made of a pink, Formica-like surface, with metal legs, and a collection of stains from the last forty years.

  An aroma of sweetness and recent cooking filled my nostrils.

  I asked Lionel what he did all day.

  His eyes lit up as he elaborated on his life.

  Lionel Payne was the caretaker in the building. He swept the staircase, arranged the rubbish bins for collection, and mowed the grass around the building. His other duties included minor plumbing repairs, changing burnt-out globes in the hallway, and maintaining harmony between neighbours.

  ‘That was a terrible thing that happened next door,’ he said, while opening a white tin of International Roast with the back of a spoon. ‘How do you have yours?’

  ‘Straight black. No sugar, no milk. Yes, it was quite horrific.’

  He nodded as if he approved but was still shocked by the whole incident.

  I wondered for a brief moment if anyone had offered counselling to the old man. ‘How well did you know the Wilsons?’ I asked as he poured water into two stained mugs.

  ‘They kept to themselves. Well, sort of in a way. I never got to speak to them because they were so busy all the time. Busy bees, they were. In and out as if the world was about to end. I’m home most of the time, so I can see what’s going on around me. And you could never keep up with them. Irregular hours. A crazy couple like all those young people out there. You never now whether they’re coming or going. Too much violence on television. It’s this world we live in. You watch the news, and you see all the violence. No wonder our children get affected. No respect for anyone. We never had crimes like that when I was young.’

  Oh, yes, you did, I thought, but you never read about them.

  ‘Is there anything you can tell me about the Wilsons?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure. They used to fight all the time. Terrible screams, throwing things at each other. Since they moved in, there wasn’t a week that went past without her screaming her head off. She was a pretty girl, come to think of it. I’m sure I once heard her threaten to cut his thing off.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘His thing, you know.’ He blinked down where his zip was so I knew what he meant.

  I smiled as he placed the two stained mugs of coffee on the table and went on, ‘Of course, that’s all talk. I mean, how many of us have made threats during our lifetime and never carried them out?’

  I nodded as I took one sip from my mug, wondering if I was going to catch a disease. The coffee was too strong, but at least it would keep me on my toes.

  I found it interesting that the Wilsons had been having violent arguments for so long.

  ‘Do you know what they were arguing about?’

  ‘I’m no snoop. Don’t go around listening to other people’s conversations. But I did hear them fighting over who could park the car in the garage.’

  ‘They both have a car?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She drives a Mercedez Benz, an older model, black, two doors, don’t know the name. I was never really good with cars. Don’t have a driver’s license. Don’t want one. What for? I don’t go anywhere. He drives a BMW or a Volvo, one of those expensive cars, you know, yuppie cars. Yellow, I think it is. Yeah, that’s right, just like a lemon.’

  I swallowed half the content of my mug and said, ‘Where’s their garage?’

  ‘Down the back. You mean you didn’t know?’

  I said no with my head.

  He went on, ‘I can show you if you want. I mean it’s really none of my business, but... You’re a cop or something, aren’t you?’

  ‘I work with the Victorian Forensic Science Centre. A bit like a cop,’ I lied. I was a consultant and not a sworn member of the police.

  ‘Okay, then, I’ll show you around.’ He grabbed a chocolate-brown cardigan from the back of his chair and keys from the kitchen bench. ‘Just follow me.’

  I gulped the rest of my coffee in one go.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  As soon as Lionel Payne opened the up-and-over Wilson’s garage door, I recognised the smell. Being the caretaker, he had a key to every door in the building, which made my job easy. I didn’t have to get the lockpicking kit from the car and play burglar in broad daylight.

  ‘I think you better wait out here,’ I ordered the old man.

  He pursed his lips and played with his beard, obviously disappointed he would miss out on all the action. Then, ignoring my demand, he stepped forward.

  ‘And I’m not kidding,’ I added matter-of-factly.

  He tucked his hands in the pocket of his brown slacks and glared at me coldly. I tried to avoid imagining what was running through his mind.

  I entered the garage while he remained by the door.

  A yellow BMW was parked right in the middle of the garage. The duco was shining like a polished fifty-cent piece. Jeremy Wilson loved that car once. He had had the final word on who was going to park their car in the garage. Was that why she killed him? For something as trivial as who would occupy the garage space?

  Against the ri
ght wall was a workbench and a large variety of tools in good condition. A grinding and cut-off wheel, a unit drill, several types of cables and leads, and a cordless weed trimmer.

  I glanced at the far end of the garage. I spotted garden tools, including a hay fork, a cottage fork, two lawn racks and a trowel, neatly lined up against a wall, ready for some kind of military inspection.

  Reluctantly, I moved closer to the bench where the smell was strongest.

  ‘Anything in there?’ I heard the old man yell out. ‘Do you need some help?’

  ‘No, thanks. Just stay where you are.’

  He muttered foul language to himself.

  Moving in.

  Perspiration dripped down the small of my back.

  I circled the car and noticed the black garbage bag at the end of the work bench. The stench was unbearable, but I knew that if I stayed another minute, my olfactory nerves would go numb, and I would no longer be able to smell the odour. If I went out in the fresh air, and came back in again, I would have to start all over.

  I whined as I took in a deep breath, feeling a warm, unpleasant sensation in my tummy.

  I made my hands into fists, not looking forward to having to open the bag. If I found what I knew I would find, I’d be restless for many nights to come. I was tough, but still human.

  I had to be careful with fingerprints or any other forms of contamination. The last thing I wanted was to leave my body blueprint behind and have someone drag me in a court for breaking a law I wasn’t aware of.

  At this stage I was undecided on what to do if the content of the black garbage bag was in fact the body of Claire Kendall. I’d seen so much horror in the last month, my mind was becoming desensitised. But I knew one night I would wake up, shaking all over, throwing up my dinner, taking in what I’d experienced months, sometimes years ago. Like many crime-scene investigators, who were exposed to so much horror over the years, I was a walking, psychological time-bomb.