The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim Page 24

  As I paced alongside Frank, him carrying a Physical Evidence Recovery Kit (PERK) - the necessary scissors, scalpels, brushes, tweezers and packages needed to recover evidence at a crime scene - I knew this time things would be different. I gripped my briefcase filled with photographic and video-recording equipment.

  ‘I don’t want to do this investigation,’ I whispered, almost to myself.

  Frank didn’t turn around. ‘We’ll talk about later, Kristina.’

  It was really Kristina Oliveira Dos Melina, but I’d dropped the middle names of my Brazilian ancestors when I moved from my parent’s home. And the DR stood for a PhD in Criminal Justice which I earned while I was still wet behind the ears. Although I didn’t like using the DR in front of my name, it served its purpose. It gave me the confidence I needed when others thought I was nothing more than a good-looking chick with a gun.

  ‘There’s not going to be a later,’ I went on. ‘We’ve already talked about this a thousand times before. I refuse to get involved in child-murder investigations, that was the deal.’

  ‘Tell Goosh, not me.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, good one. You know what the sonofabitch thinks of me ’

  Frank’s mouth shifted to a cocky, conceited smile. I hated the way he could be my best friend one minute and a distant colleague the next.

  Goosh, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, had initially opposed the idea of having a civilian conducting a sworn officer’s duty, but after being pressured from all sides, he gave in. A short, fat man with an arrogance to match his puffy face, Goosh had temporarily succeeded in suspending my contract for a few weeks the previous year. But he knew now that I wasn’t the type of person to give in easily, and only extreme cunningness and deception would get me out of my job, which I believed he was capable of. He even went as far as writing a personal letter to the Victorian Director of Public Prosecution, detailing that my capacity as a civilian crime-scene investigator would water-down the State’s ability to make out a satisfactory case. Without a shred of evidence, he tried to demonstrate the prosecutor’s usage of unsworn members to investigate serious homicides as a move the defence would relish. I knew his argument was weak since the force was already using civilians for fingerprinting work. Little by little, sworn officers were being pulled off fingerprinting, and public servants trained instead. Fingerprinting was only the beginning of an overhauling blue-print which placed more police officers on the streets and allowed civilians to conduct forensic analysis. The model had been a success in several U.S. states, and, as a result, the Minister for Police and Emergencies in Victoria had pushed for reforms at the Senate, where she obtained the necessary votes to implement the program.

  Nothing ever came out of Goosh’s letter to the Victorian Director of Public Prosecution.

  I knew if I refused to conduct a child-murder investigation, Goosh would insist on having my file reviewed and argue my incompetence in my present position. Since he hadn’t succeeded in getting rid of me to date, this was a chance I was willing to take.

  I took control of the crime scene, as per my job description. As a crime scene examiner, I was concerned with physical evidence, including cataloguing the area by means of photography, video-recording, note-taking, and collecting evidence for further analysis and court presentation. But my primary duty was to contain the crime scene and get rid of unwanted visitors without delay.

  My eighteen-month stint at the FBI in Quantico had taught me well. In fact, I was the only investigator in Australia who had undergone such vigorous training, giving me the ability to contract out my services for a fee which provided me with a financial lifestyle with little to complain about.

  Everyone around the body of the young girl turned eyes on me when I pushed my voice as if someone was trying to beat the crap out of me. The one thing I’ve learned over the years is that authority is often measured by how loud one can bark.

  ‘I want everybody out of the area. And I mean everybody.’ Pointing at a few heads. ‘You, you and you, go stand down the other side. Who got here first?’

  A uniformed officer stepped forward.

  ‘I did, Dr Melina.’

  Without me asking, he passed me a copy of his log book. I skimmed through the two pages, where he had diligently recorded the time of arrival at the scene, the type of area, some names of people present, weather conditions and details of the body found.

  I said, ‘What are all these people doing here?’ Preservation of the crime scene was critical at this stage. The more people present, the greater the potential for contamination and destruction of evidence. Large numbers of people at a scene also tended to distract and hinder photography and examination.

  ‘I was just about to clear the scene.’

  ‘Do it now, and I want police tape all around the area. I want you to organise a group of officers to conduct a line search. Use natural boundaries whenever possible, the edge of the water down there, right up to those trees up this side. We’re looking for anything that doesn’t belong near a lake. And that includes rubbish, food wrappers, absolutely anything. Don’t use your fingers to pick up the stuff, and yell out if something looks suspicious. And I want no one smoking, eating or drinking in the area.’

  ‘Are we doing the line search before recording of the crime scene?’ He was referring to photography and video-taping.

  ‘Senior Sergeant Moore and I will take care of that now.’ Then: ‘Now, before anyone else disappears, I want a list of all the people present. Those who can’t justify a reason for being here, get their names and addresses, and send them back where they came from. Others, tell them to wait a few minutes while we establish whether we need them or not. You got that?’

  He nodded.

  I gave him my half-emptied Dr Pepper and his log book, and moved on.

  As we approached the body, the crowd began to dissipate outwardly. On-lookers had covered the area with footprints. There was a good chance they’d just destroyed the most valuable piece of evidence: fresh sets of shoe prints in mud. There’d be no chance of making casts for further analysis and comparison tests.

  We began with a preliminary examination, sometimes referred to as a general survey of the crime scene. Hands in our pockets, we moved in towards the body. I was looking for latent footmarks, tyre marks, fingermarks or anything which indicated how the girl might have gotten here.

  The weather had been hot in the past few days, and the mud present by the edge of the lake was due to water overflowing and not rainfall. The air was fresh and clean, but soon it would be filled with carbon monoxide from traffic moving city-bound for a hard day’s work.

  The palms of my hands were clammy from the heat or from being nervous, I couldn’t tell.

  ‘What do you think?’ Frank asked, kneeling close to the body.

  ‘Could be a rape-and-kill scenario.’

  ‘She’s still wearing her underwear.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘If someone raped her, do you think they’d put her underwear back on?’

  I didn’t answer. He knew as well as I did that anything was possible. With the amount of forensic material made available to the general public in the form of books, videos, courses and websites, it was easy for a killer to seed false clues at a crime scene to set investigators off-course. As the years were rolling past, killers were getting more educated, gaining knowledge on every damn procedure conducted during an investigation. I had no doubt that some criminals knew more about criminal procedures than people in the force. Fact was, as our means of catching criminals was becoming highly sophisticated, involving all sorts of advanced forensic detection, and as recently as last year DNA analysis on fingerprints, criminals knew they had to do their homework if they wanted to succeed. Fortunately, the majority of petty crimes were conducted by people who never put much thought into their task. It was the serious crimes, like the one I was facing on that Wednesday morning, which could turn life into hell.

  I circled the area, trying to figure out how
the body got there. Did someone drag her from a car or carry her to where she was now resting? With all the footprints left by the on-lookers, it was hard to identify any trail marks. We’d have to rely on eyewitnesses and collection of trace evidence. Since the killer had to come in contact with the girl, there would have been a transference of material, no matter how small. This could come in the form of direct transfer, that is one which is transferred directly from one person to another, or from indirect transfer, that is material collected by one person, such as grass or dirt from a backyard, and deposited into another area where such material is rare or non-existent. Still, there was a chance that much of the trace evidence we’d find would be accounted for by the media vultures and the public who had preyed around the body before we’d arrived at the scene.

  ‘Someone had to drive her here,’ I commented. ‘The nearest house is half a kilometre away. I doubt the killer carried his load in a bag-pack.’

  From the silver briefcase I had with me, I removed a Minolta SLR camera and checked for batteries. I loaded the SLR with colour film and began shooting the body. I made copious notes in my log book of camera settings, including film speed, shutter speed, and frame numbers. I knew any photography I would undertake from this moment might one day end up in court, and my expertise with a camera cross-examined. I used a photographic tape measure and two stainless steel markers to provide visual references concerning size and distance. This was a hell of a slow way to conduct photography, but when at a crime scene, attention to detail was imperative.

  The girl’s blond hair was painted with mud. There were no visible lacerations on her legs or any other parts of her body. She was still face down. I shivered at the thought of what we would find once we flipped her over. She looked between nine and twelve, but it was hard to tell at this stage without seeing her face. There was no yardstick to measure how fast some children grew, especially in a city boasting one of the world’s largest ethnic diversities.

  I shot five thirty-six-exposure films of the body and its surrounding area, including two black-and-white rolls.

  I’d visited the area before, only because it was less than five minutes from where I lived. Albert Park was an amazing place, set only a few kilometres from the city centre. Established in 1862, Albert Park was permanently reserved as a public park in 1876. It is recognised as one of Melbourne's most popular parks and as the home of amateur sports in Victoria. It includes a golf course and more than twenty grounds for various field sports, including tennis and bowling clubs.

  The addition of the Australian Grand Prix track made the park world-famous for one week a year, to the dismay of the Save Albert Park group which wanted the race closed permanently and the park restored. Save Albert Park had the support of the Australian Conservation Foundation, the peak Victorian trade union council and all three opposition parties - Australian Labor Party, Australian Democrats, and Greens. In a short time, the group had become recognised as both the strongest defender of parks and an inspiration to other groups for the defence of Melbourne's heritage, rights of citizens and democratic principles.

  When I finished photographing the surrounding area, I returned to where the body lay. ‘God, Frank, I really have a bad feeling about this one,’ I said, kneeling down to closely examine the girl.

  Frank removed his pen and log book from his bag and began scribbling details. ‘You’re taking this too much to heart,’ he said, his eyes focusing on his task.

  The impact was similar to a mild blow at the back of the head. ‘What am I supposed to do? Distance myself from the fact that I’m standing here taking pictures of a dead girl at seven-thirty in the morning? Jesus, Frank, no wonder you’re still single.’

  He pursed his lips for a few seconds, shot darts with his eyes, and said, ‘That was uncalled for. Just because you’ve been sleeping with this clerk guy for the past six months, it doesn’t give you the right to consider yourself an expert on people’s marital status.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever. And he’s not a clerk, he’s a communications officer.’

  ‘No, shit.’ He shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Frankly, he can even be Bozo the Clown, I don’t give a horse’s arse. Can we just get on with this? If you’ve got a problem with this investigation, go and complain to your superiors. I’m tired of your whining.’

  I swallowed hard, feeling tears well in my eyes. No way I was going to let myself break down in front of him. Since I began going out with Phillip Wood six months ago, a guy I met while doing some investigative work for a telecommunications company, Frank had been acting the jealous guy.

  But what really bothered me was how could he be so insensitive to the girl who was lying in front of us? Was I being unreasonable? Was it so wrong to feel for other people’s pain?

  I slipped on a pair of surgical gloves, feeling the smoothness of talc powder against my fingers, and placed one hand on the girl’s thigh.

  ‘She’s still warm. Bastard must have dumped her less than ten hours ago.’

  When I finally turned the body around, I was surprised at the lack of blood. I looked up to Frank and said, ‘No wounds of any sort. Could be poisoning. Doesn’t give us much to work with.’

  ‘The lab will come up with some hard evidence.’

  It took us two hours to photograph and video tape the entire area. Most of the on-lookers had now vanished, and the only people present were police officers and forensic experts, which I had summoned to the crime scene. Traffic had built up on Princes Highway, and the temperature climbed five notches on the Celsius scale. My blouse was sticking to my back, making the whole process even more unbearable. I wanted to slip my jacket off, but there was no where to put it down.

  Frank looked as if he’d just stepped from under a shower, his bald spot covered in perspiration beads. Two large sweat patches had formed under his arms, extending past his rib cage.

  I slipped off my surgical gloves and moved to the officer whom I first spoke to when I arrived at the crime scene.

  ‘Any witnesses?’ I asked, my pen and log book ready.

  ‘Yeah, well, sort of, the guy who found the girl. He’s standing over there.’ The officer pointed to a man with a white bichon frise by his side.

  ‘Has he seen anyone?’

  ‘Nope. I asked him if he could wait around in case you wanted to talk to him.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What do I think what?’

  ‘Did he do it?’

  ‘Hey, I wouldn’t have a clue, that’s you’re job.’

  ‘Just asking, that’s all. No harm in asking someone else’s opinion.’

  I paced to the man, who seemed preoccupied with his dog sniffing something invisible in the grass. At first glance, I guessed he was in his mid-thirties, probably unemployed or in between jobs. He wore jeans and a white polo shirt with that famous penguin logo. His hair was brushed neatly to one side, but he wore a five o’clock shadow. He could have looked terrific with a regular workout, if only someone bothered telling him.

  ‘Hi, how’re you doing? I’m Dr Kristina Melina, and I’m in charge of this investigation. You don’t mind if I talk to you?’ I extended my hand, which he shook firmly.

  ‘No, sure, go ahead.’

  ‘You understand you don’t have to answer any questions, and you can get a solicitor?’

  ‘I don’t need a solicitor, I only found the girl, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Just doing my job.’ I removed a small tape recorder from my right breast pocket and pushed the recording button. ‘Don’t mind if I tape this? Saves me writing illegible notes at a hundred miles an hour.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, but seemed slightly uncomfortable, his hands digging inside the pockets of his jeans.

  I repeated the beat about his rights, just to make sure we had it on record.

  ‘Wanna tell us exactly what happened?’

  ‘Sure. As I told the other police officer, I was walking my dog Lucy, as I do every morning, and have been doin
g for the past five years, and there she was. Nothing else to it.’

  ‘Did you see anyone?’

  ‘Usual morning traffic, nothing which looked out of character.’

  ‘I’m going to be blunt here. Would you have had any reason to kill that young girl?’

  He hesitated for a few seconds, absorbing the impact of my question. ‘You’re nuts. You think I’m going to kill someone and wait for your guys to show up, and then hang around with my dog to give you a two-minute story? What the hell’s wrong with you?’

  ‘There’s no need to be offensive. It’s very common for killers to be the ones who find the victim—it puts them in a situation where no one thinks they’ve done it.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t done shit, and that’s that.’ He pulled the dog’s leash in anger, almost strangling the poor thing, and added, ‘I’ve got better things to do than talk to the lot of you. No wonder this town is in the state it’s in. Christ, if you did you job properly, shit like that would never happen.’

  Oh, great, I thought, now we’re not only responsible for finding those who kill, but the reason why they kill in the first place.

  Okay, next time I wouldn’t try the blunt approach. It worked well on television, but in real life it wasn’t very effective.

  I watched the man walk away, realising I hadn’t even had time to ask him his name, but reassured myself that the officer who got to the crime scene did gather the list of names I’d asked him to.

  I walked back to where the girl had been lying. She had been whisked to the mortuary, awaiting her turn for an autopsy, which I dreaded having to attend.

  ‘What did he have to say?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Saw nothing, did nothing.’

  ‘That was rather quick.’

  ‘We’ll need to talk to him again. I think I’ve hit a nerve.’

  Frank’s mobile phone went off. The traffic had built-up ten-fold since we arrived at the scene, and Frank had to scream into the mouthpiece to get a word in.