The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim Page 23

  ‘Frank mentioned you went to the gym. When I asked him which one, he said Terry Bennetts’. I looked it up in the phone book.’

  When she stepped under the light, I noticed her facial wounds and bruises had vanished completely with the help of make-up. One could not have guessed she’d been beaten and raped a month ago.

  And that was because she never had been, I thought.

  ‘Should you be doing exercises in the state you’re in?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m easing back into it. Don’t want to start in a year’s time and find my body can’t cope with it. You know what it’s like. You stop working out for two weeks, and it’s like starting from scratch again. I hate that feeling of having to readjust to a new life. You know, it’s a bit like living without Jeremy. Such a shock.’ She said that in a neutral tone, making me wonder if she was poking fun at me for some unknown reason.

  I walked to the bench press and felt a cold sweat. What the hell was Teresa really doing here? I wasn’t that great company.

  ‘Hey, you gonna show me how to do these things?’ Teresa asked, casually following me. ‘You’ve got a great body. You come here often?’

  I felt like she was trying to pick me up. ‘Three to four times a week. It helps me sleep.’

  I did a set of bench presses, and she said, ‘My turn.’

  I took a gulp of water from my Coca-Cola drink bottle and stood behind her while she lowered the forty-pound barbell to her chest twelve times.

  ‘How’s Frank doing?’ I asked.

  She pulled the bar up to the rack and said, ‘He’s fine. Never been better.’

  ‘You guys really have something going, don’t you?’

  ‘I guess we do. Hey, you wouldn’t be trying to take it away from me?’

  I was taken back by her comment. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Just that you were really close, that’s all. I knew he had a crush on you. He told me.’

  Great, I thought, now I’m the other woman.

  After I finished my second set of bench presses, I felt exhausted. ‘One more set and I’m going home,’ I said. ‘I’m buggered.’

  ‘Sure,’ she answered as she began her second set.

  I swallowed the rest of my drink bottle.

  When Teresa finished her set, I lay on the bench and placed my hands parallel on the barbell. I doubted I would be able to finish the set, but Teresa was watching me, and I hated her thinking I was a wimp.

  I pushed the barbell up and lowered it to my chest.

  Suddenly, my head began to spin. I pushed hard on the barbell, but it wasn’t moving an inch.

  ‘Give me a hand here,’ I commanded to Teresa who was just standing behind me.

  No response.

  ‘Hey, lift the damn bar! It’s getting heavy.’

  I rolled my eyes back and saw her smiling. ‘You’re not such a tough little bitch after all,’ she said, injecting her tone with sarcasm. ‘What’s the matter? Not enough iron in your diet?’

  And then she laughed a crazy laugh, and I knew I had been right for the last few days. She was a textbook-case psychopath.

  ‘Feeling a bit tired?’ she went. ‘Have another drink.’

  And she laughed again.

  My chest was hurting as I realised she’d spiked my water with Valium. I should have known. She must have spiked my drink bottle while I was in the washroom passing water. Now that I was laying on the bench, I did recall the water tasted kind of salty, but at the time I just shrugged it off.

  ‘Get this fuckin’ weight off me,’ I screamed.

  My eyes were getting heavier. The thirty-pound barbell began to feel like one-hundred pounds.

  Teresa circled the bench and picked up a large circular weight from the floor. Casually she added it to the right side of the barbell, crushing my right breast.

  ‘Christ, what are you doing?’ I muttered.

  She didn’t say a word, but added another weight on the left side.

  ‘You killed them, didn’t you?’ I asked, my chest crushing under the weight.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ she said, dryly. ‘I killed them both.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘Why?’

  ‘Because all men are bastards. You know that anyway. You told Frank when you left my apartment that night I killed Jeremy. You said men were responsible for all the mess in this world. And you were right.’

  What was Frank doing? Screwing her or telling her every minute of his life?

  ‘Why did you kill them?’

  ‘Jeremy cheated on me.’

  ‘And you cheated on him.’

  ‘But he didn’t know that. Walter told me Jeremy was going to divorce me and marry Claire.’

  ‘So what? You didn’t care about him anyway.’ I struggled with the weights.

  ‘That’s right. But the bastard had been bleeding our savings and joint accounts to another account without telling me. He was going to dump and leave me penniless.’

  ‘What about Walter?’

  ‘He was going to dump me, anyway.’

  I tried hard to push the weights up. ‘Please, Teresa, take the bar off my chest. This has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘I agree on that last point. But your actions don’t reflect what you’re telling me.’ She circled the bench again and added more weights on the barbell. ‘You’re a sneaky little bitch. If you’d just dropped everything like you’d been told, all of this would have never happened. In fact we might even have become good friends. I meant it when I said I enjoyed talking to you at the hospital. Cross my heart, I really thought I’d found a friend.’

  And so did I for a little while.

  I felt contractions in my chest. I could hardly breath.

  Teresa went on, ‘Anyway, like I said, Walter was going to dump me. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell by the look in his eyes. The bastards were going to leave me loveless and without a cent to my name. Walter took me to a restaurant one night and told me it was over. I felt miserable. I went to the doctor to get some Valium to O.D. myself.’

  ‘You went to eight doctors,’ I managed to say.

  ‘You’ve done you’re homework, I see. Well, you know, some doctors won’t give you what you want on request. So I had to try a few of them until I got the amount of Valium I needed.’ She stood behind me and placed both hands on the barbell. ‘Feeling a little chest congested? Don’t worry, you’ll be asleep any minute now. Won’t feel a thing. Everybody’ll think it was an accident. Dr Melina thought she was Arnold Schwarzenegger.’

  ‘And how come you didn’t go ahead with killing yourself?’ I muttered, struggling for some air.

  ‘I thought, fuck it, why should I die? They fucked me up, and I’m going to kill myself? Had a change of heart. I planned it two weeks ahead of time.’

  ‘How could you do it?’

  ‘I don’t know. You know, sometimes you think about killing someone, like some jerk in the car next to you at the traffic light, but you never end up doing it. Well, it started like that, but I went one step further. They fucked me up, so I didn’t have any choice. I killed Walter first. Easy as hell. I never knew it was so easy to kill someone. But you’d know about that. You’d see a lot of dead people in your line of work.’

  I tried to answer, but no words came out of my mouth. I knew I wouldn’t last another minute.

  ‘Then I got Jeremy. Got him to fuck me first to make it look like a rape, spiked his hot chocolate with Valium, and when he tried to take his socks off, down he went to sleep for the last time.’

  An image of Jeremy’s decapitated body, wearing bloody socks, came back to mind.

  Teresa went on, ‘I messed up the place pretty badly, and it kind of broke my heart, cause I chose all the furniture and decor, being a set-designer, you know, I had an eye for this type of thing. And then I worked on myself. I know it looked really bad when you found me, but I had built myself up to it, and when I did it, it was almost pleasurable, a masochistic experience. And I thought the squash ball was a nice
sadistic touch. Would make the whole thing much more credible.’

  But you never thought about the forensic evidence, you little shit.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, as if she read my mind. ‘I never thought about the forensic stuff. But I’m a set designer. What you see is what you get. I didn’t give a shit whether I’d get caught or not. I just wanted to kill the three of them. Jeremy, Walter and that fuckin’ little bitch, Claire Kendall. That was all I ever wanted. Whatever happened after, I didn’t give a shit.’

  She pushed the bar down to my chest, and I felt one of my ribs crack.

  The last thing I remembered before passing out was Ken appearing behind Teresa and whacking her on the head with a twenty-five pound dumbbell.

  EPILOGUE

  It’s Easter Saturday morning, and I have been sleepless all night once again. My breasts are killing me. There’s little traffic outside my bedroom because of the long weekend.

  I stayed at St Patrick’s Hospital for three days before being discharged with two fractured ribs and a bruised chest. Dr Larousse said my injuries would heal with time if I didn’t strain myself. The only reason I go to the gym now is to talk to Ken and thank him over and over for saving my life. I hated not being able to workout. I feared becoming overweight and lazy, especially when I’d gotten used to going to the gym at least three times a week.

  Ken passed Teresa on High Street on his way back from the gym the night she tried to kill me. When he saw her going inside the gym, he knew who she was.

  ‘I’d never seen that person before, but I knew she wasn’t a member. You and I are the only two people who workout between nine and twelve at night. I went back upstairs and listened to your conversation. I have to admit it took a bit of doing to walk up to her and hit her on the head with a dumbbell. I never hit anyone before, let alone a woman.’

  Teresa pleaded guilty at her trial and seemed in no way overwhelmed by the three life sentences with no parole handed down by the Supreme Court. Teresa’s defense made no application for an appeal.

  Dr Charles W. Main wanted me charged for stealing documents from his office, but Trevor Mitchell talked him out of it.

  Frank had in fact gone on holiday for a week when I got assaulted. He’d been so confused about what I told him about Teresa that he left for Sydney by himself without telling anyone.

  I’ve begun a relationship with Garry Wood.

  Michael and I have booked each other a full day every week to make sure we wouldn’t miss out on the more valuable parts of a mother-and-son relationship.

  My contract with the VFSC and the CIB is re-instated, and they threw in a bonus as well. From now on I’m the only unsworn member of the VFSC who’s not a police officer, but licensed to carry a weapon.

  When Frank came to see me in hospital, he brought in twelve red roses and a brand new silver .380 semiautomatic pistol.

  I’m now sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of black coffee. In one corner of the kitchen is Claire Kendall’s plant, which I begged Frank to get for me. The plant is fully restored now and looks glad to be alive, just like I am.

  This afternoon I will go and deliver it to Louis as an Easter present and a thank-you for all the trouble he went through for me.

  I think about my future a lot and wonder if I want to continue working for the police or set myself up as a private investigator instead. It’s a difficult choice either way.

  I take a sip of coffee from my mug and think about people for a while. But Teresa’s voice and laughter keeps ringing in my ears. I only saw her yesterday at the prison. She got away with an undisplaced skull fracture. We had a little chat. She seemed perfectly calm and aware of her situation and surroundings. For a moment, while talking to her, I forgot I was having a conversation with someone who tried to kill me. She was the same friendly Teresa I met weeks ago at the hospital.

  When I was about to leave her in her tiny prison cell for the rest of her life, she said, ‘If I had to do it again, I would do it again. I recommend it to other women out there. Get the bastards before they get you.’

  SECOND CUT

  CHAPTER ONE

  The frail body of a young girl lay in a pool of mud alongside Albert Park Lake, next to one of the few remaining elm trees.

  Over a thousand elms and pre-settlement native gums had been removed to make room for the Grand Prix track three summers ago, not without causing a wave of protests from greenies, conservation groups and concerned local residents. The removal of those trees had caused the loss of wildlife habitat and the disappearance of bird life in the area. In addition more than one-hundred-and-fifty homes had been damaged during construction work, which required dynamic compaction of the unstable landfall foundations.

  Late December is always hot in Melbourne, and even at 6.24 a.m., it’s hard to stay in bed because of the bright daylight and the twenty-seven-degree temperature. But on Wednesday the 17th, I didn’t get the chance to enjoy a long cool shower to get the day under way. The call had come through half an hour earlier, giving me just enough time to slip on a business skirt and a white blouse, and slick my auburn hair back with extra-hold mouse. I grabbed a can of Dr Pepper from the fridge on my way out of my second-floor apartment on Chapel Street.

  The crime scene looked as if it had already been contaminated by on-lookers. As I’d anticipated, Channel Seven and Channel Ten news crews had set up camp not less than twenty meters from the little girl in a blue floral dress and white school socks, just off Lakeside Drive. The cream-coloured Carlton Cress building was visible opposite the lake when I glanced around. Back to the scene, I noticed one ambulance, blue and red lights beaming, and two marked police cars sealing off part of the area. Not enough to keep curious minds away. Three unmarked cars were parked near the scene, one a grey Lexus which I recognised but couldn’t immediately place.

  A sickness rose from my stomach. I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish the can of Dr Pepper I held in my hand. There’s nothing quite like the murder of a child to stuff up your morning.

  ‘Here we go,’ I said to my partner, Senior Sergeant Frank Moore, ‘the same circus all over again.’

  Frank Moore was head of the Crime Scene Division at the Centre. He joined the Forensic Branch in 1975, straight out of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) with a Bachelor in Criminal Justice Administration. He was one head taller than me and maintained a neatly brushed dark moustache on a gaunt face. His thin, brown hair was receding, revealing a large bald spot at the top of his cranium. His green eyes sat too far apart from one another, and he wore a white shirt too small and too old for my taste. His mannerism was that of someone nervous, the type of person who couldn’t stay still for one minute without clicking the back of a pen or flicking another cigarette. When we first began working together, he got on my nerves, but his genuine concern for my well-being during my two-week induction program at the Victorian Forensic Science Centre (VFSC) forced me to see him in a different light. Frank wasn’t a bad person, just lonely and misunderstood like most people I knew in this line of work.

  Only recently, I’d found out Frank had had a crush on me for years. When he announced his infatuation in the comfort of my own living room, I was unsure how to react. Finally when I told him there’d be no chance of a relationship between the two of us in this lifetime, it left a bitter taste in his mouth. But after I nearly got killed during a recent homicide, we became good friends again. The passing of time and the regularity of personal and professional crises between colleagues were always good yardsticks to measure the depth of a friendship.

  I was the first civilian to conduct both the duties of crime-scene examiner and investigator. And as recently as six months ago I was also licensed to carry a .380 semi-automatic, one of those guns designed to eject one cartridge and chamber a new one without manual intervention of the shooter after each shot is fired. Frank bought me the Mustang Plus .380 stainless frame, featuring a blue slide and adjustable sight, as a present after I nearly got myself killed
in a murder investigation the previous Easter. I wasn’t really into guns, but since Frank gave me the piece, I found myself sleeping with it and carrying it everywhere I went. After being involved in homicides for over five years, I knew there were some really sick people out there, and the older I became, the more I lost faith in my fellow man.

  We parked near a group of police, ambulance and various forensic experts, I felt a pain at the back of my skull. The scenery reminded me of a child we found in a water drain a few years back. Everybody looked, but no one knew what to do. Was the girl still alive? Was she dead? Whose child was she? And who would have the burden of announcing to the parents that their dearly-loved daughter would no longer be coming home? It took months before I managed a full-night’s sleep. I’d not been myself since then. In spite of all my training, I couldn’t understand how a human being could do such a thing to another, especially a child. I remembered when I was a young girl, when I didn’t know there was such a thing as really bad people out there, when I placed my trust in whomever was willing to listen or be interested in me, the child found in the drain could have been me. It could have been anyone’s child. I realised how most people lived in a delusional world where they thought having a home in the suburbs meant security. But the reality was that no one was safe, not even in the confines of a family home.

  For a while, I truly believed I was going to give up this job forever. But my sense of justice always got the better of me, and I reasoned that if I refused to solve child murders with passion and integrity, maybe no one else would bother putting in the effort.

  But that was years ago.

  We stepped out of the white Ford Falcon with government plates, and clipped our Ids to our breast pockets. Frank’s was blue, indicating he was a member of the Victoria Police. Mine was light green, with a computer strip allowing access to various restricted places, such as the Police complex on St Kilda Road and the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM) in South Melbourne, which incorporated the city mortuary.