The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim Page 6

  After years of studying the criminal mind, years of interrogating hundreds of criminals and repeat offenders, I was convinced some men could never be rehabilitated, no matter how many years they had been institutionalised, how much medical and psychological therapy they’d received, or how willing they were to better themselves. Their sociopathic attributes were eternally entwined in their general make-up. Recent US research even suggested that their DNA structure could in fact have been altered over a time-period, supporting the long-time hypothesis that everything is mind over matter.

  As soon as I walked into Teresa Wilson’s room, my heart sank. Her face was puffed up and covered with cuts and bruises. Her complexion was bluish-green, making it difficult to see the person behind the mask. Monitors were used to watch heart and lung function, that is ECG, blood pressure, pulse and respiratory rate. Tubing was attached to various parts of her body, helping to control her urine production and drain output. Her head was maintained high with the help of three pillows. I couldn’t help feeling Teresa Wilson was in no condition to answer our questions.

  My stomach churned as I tried to comprehend why someone would hurt another person so badly. I surprised myself with that question, especially since I have dealt with hundreds of homicides in the past fifteen years and had already come to some hard-edged conclusions.

  Evil bred in and invaded the minds of desperate souls.

  We introduced ourselves briefly, and Frank and I promised we’d take little of her time.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, her bruised lower lip quivering. ‘I don’t mind helping out. There’s so much I need to tell you. It’s happened so suddenly.’

  ‘We’re going to be taping this,’ Frank said matter-of-factly, as he removed the Sony recorder from his jacket. ‘It’s easier if we do. It means we don’t have to ask you the same questions over and over again. Is that all right with you?’

  Teresa nodded, and Frank switched the tape on.

  ‘Also,’ he added, ‘I have to inform you that you don’t have talk to us if you don’t want to. Anything you tell us from now on can be used as evidence in court.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  I would be asking all the questions since Frank was a crime-scene examiner and not an investigator. In fact, he wasn’t even supposed to be in this room, and since I was told to stop working on the Wilson’s case, neither was I. Both of us would be in serious trouble if this thing leaked out.

  ‘You’re also allowed to have a lawyer present,’ I said, doubting she would need one. But her rights were covered under the Crimes Act, and I had a legal obligation to tell her that.

  ‘I don’t need a lawyer,’ she said.

  I agreed by nodding.

  Frank placed the small Sony recorder, which had been running for about a minute, in front of Teresa Wilson.

  The humming of the tape was all we heard for the next ten seconds.

  I sat next to Teresa and tried hard not to hold her hand, even though I had the urge to do so. I wanted to give her a hug and let her know I understood how difficult this was for her. I wanted to tell her she was not alone, that we would do anything to help her get through this. I wanted her to know that if she ever needed a friend, I would be there for her. But I felt it was a bit early to move in so fast. I couldn’t help it. Part of me was nothing but raw emotions. Maybe I would wait until the end of the interrogation.

  ‘So, can you tell us what happened?’ I began.

  ‘It’s all confusing in my head, but I’ll do the best I can.’

  ‘It’s okay. Take your time. If you need to rest or compose yourself, let us know. If you want to do this tomorrow morning or another day, we can do that. Sergeant Frank Moore will turn the tape recorder off, and we’ll start again later.’

  ‘We might as well get it over and done with,’ she said, before hesitating for a few seconds. ‘I’m not sure where to start. I haven’t done this kind of thing before.’

  ‘Tell us what you remember,’ I said, finding Teresa amazingly courageous to be willing to go through the entire ordeal again.

  ‘My husband Jeremy is an electronics engineer.’ She used the present tense as if he was still alive. It would probably take her a while to realise she would never see him again. ‘He works from home, which is great, because we see each other all the time. He is under contract with lots of companies.’

  ‘How long have you been together?’ I asked.

  ‘We tied the knot five years ago and moved to Port Melbourne eighteen months ago because of his work. It’s much closer to the city and easy for him to find work. He hates wasting time driving.’

  ‘Can you tell us about the night of the attack?’

  ‘I’ll try.’ She glanced at Frank and then at myself. ‘It was late, and Jeremy was finishing a plan he had been working on all day for a company. His deadline was coming up soon, and the project had taken him more time than he’d first anticipated. I was watching television, waiting patiently for him to finish so we could go to bed. When he finally did, I made two cups of hot chocolate, and we had them in the kitchen. A nightly ritual. Warm milk made us sleep better. Really, it was an excuse because we are both chocoholics.’

  I smiled at her comment.

  She smiled back and went on, ‘We made small talk while drinking our chocolate, working out what was ahead of us for the following day. Bedtime was the only time we really got to talk, to spend some quality time together. We were both very busy. After the hot chocolate, we went straight to bed.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I was almost asleep, and I think Jeremy was too because he was snoring when I heard some kind of noise in the hallway. At first I didn’t know what the hell it was, but after listening attentively, I thought it sounded like someone trying to break into the apartment. I woke up Jeremy, and he heard the noise too. It sounded like cracking wood, and Jeremy said someone was breaking in through the front door. I’d never been so scared in my life. Jeremy jumped out of bed completely naked. He raced down the hallway without bothering with his dressing gown. I panicked and reached for the telephone. The line was dead.’

  I remembered the telephone cable in the hallway of the Port Melbourne apartment had been ripped from the wall.

  Teresa went on, ‘Then I heard Jeremy scream his head off, so I jumped out of bed, put on my dressing gown, and grabbed a stout metal ruler from Jeremy’s drawing tools. He always kept some tools in the bedroom in case he came up with an idea overnight and wanted to do a quick sketch. Always had work on his mind.

  ‘I rushed into the hallway, and this tall man came crushing on me. He lifted me from the floor and threw me back in the bedroom. I knocked my head against the lower edge of the dressing table and passed out.’

  ‘How long were you unconscious for?’ I asked, now totally absorbed by Teresa’s story.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. Ten minutes. Maybe half an hour. It’s hard to say.’

  ‘What happened when you regained consciousness?’

  ‘The overhead light of the bedroom was turned on. The man who attacked me was kneeling on the floor in front of the bed, making broad sweep movements with one hand while holding something down with the other. I looked up from the bed and felt this terrible pain at the back of my neck. I thought I was going to pass out, but I forced myself to stay awake. I looked down my body and saw the same man who attacked me in the hallway. He was bent over and cutting something. It took me at least fifteen seconds to realise the thing he was cutting was Jeremy.’

  She stopped for a few seconds, waiting for our reaction. But we said nothing, so she went on, ‘He had this huge knife, and the noise was dreadful, like chalk hissing on a blackboard. It sent a jolt through my entire body. A hissing and squelching sound filled my ears. The weird thing was that Jeremy wasn’t trying to fight back, as if he was already dead.

  ‘I managed to get on my feet, but the pain at the back of my head was unbearable. I felt dizzy, and I thought I was
going to pass out once more.

  ‘I moved closer to the man, and then I saw Jeremy’s neck opened like a horrible red mouth. I swear to God, it was the most horrid thing I had ever seen in my life. Less than half an hour ago, he was this person that I knew, and now he had become this bloody mess. I still can’t believe it was him. I don’t know if I want to remember...’

  Teresa lost her composure as tears began cascading down her face.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s over now,’ I said, finally holding on to Teresa’s hand. ‘Nothing’s going to happen any more. You’re safe now.’ I made a gesture for Frank to stop the tape recorder.

  ‘No wait,’ Teresa sobbed, ‘the worst thing is that I knew him. I knew the man.’

  My whole body went on red alert as my eyes met Frank’s.

  He too had been taken by surprise. He kept the tape recorder going.

  ‘Who was it?’ I prompted.

  ‘Walter Dunn. He used to work with Jeremy once. But then, as soon as Jeremy’s business began to pick up, he sort of disappeared from our lives.’

  I wrote the name down in my notebook.

  ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘No, no, we lost track of him a while ago. In fact, we didn’t want to see him any more. So, I was kind of surprised when I saw him that night. He was the last person I’d expected to see.’

  ‘What did he do to you?’ I asked, knowing I should let her rest, but she was on a roll, and it was better to get it over and done with in one go while the story was still fresh in her mind.

  She locked her eyes into mine and said, ‘He turned around with the knife in his hand. It was covered in blood, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. I thought, oh, my God, he’s going to cut my neck like he did to Jeremy. I was so scared. I’d never been so scared in my life, like you know, you’re going to die, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But he didn’t. Instead he threw the knife away. For a moment, I felt relieved knowing he wasn’t going to use the knife, but my relief was short-lived. He threw himself on top of me, grinning all the time, in a horrible kind of way, his eyes filled with anger, as if he was evil or something.’

  I pressed her hand to encourage her to go on.

  And she did. ‘I’d never seen Walter this way before. He grabbed me with one hand between my legs and the other at my nightgown and threw me on top of the bed. I knocked the back of my head on the edge of the bed, exactly at the spot where I hit the dressing table earlier on. I thought I was going to pass out again. But I didn’t because of the pain.’

  I wanted to tell her to take a break if she felt like it, but she seemed too engaged in her story, so I didn’t bother.

  She was moving her free hand as she continued, ‘He was muttering something like, “You sonofabitch, motherfucker, two-timing piece of shit”, and then he went for me. I tried hard to fight back, but he was much stronger than me. I had not a hope in hell. He tore my underwear and opened me up with his fingers before pumping himself into me. I swear to God, I never thought I was going to come out of this alive. All along, he was groaning in anger and pleasure, beating me across the face with the back of his hand.

  ‘When it was over, he tossed me around and shoved something in my backside. The pain was horrific, like something I’d never felt before. I thought I was going to die. I found it so hard to understand what was going on. So hard to understand why...’

  Teresa broke down in tears.

  I retrieved my hand from hers and wiped her tears with my thumb. ‘All right, that’s enough,’ I said, ‘You’ve done well.’

  I nodded to Frank, and he turned the tape recorder off.

  I took Teresa’s hand again and added, ‘You’ve been very brave.’

  ‘But maybe I could have saved him,’ she said with a coarse voice. ‘If only I didn’t let him leave the bedroom. Maybe he’d still be alive. Maybe everything would have turned out fine. ’ With the tears, the bruising and the cuts, Teresa Wilson was not a pretty sight.

  A rage built up inside me. I had never been so angry in my life.

  ‘It’s not your fault Teresa,’ I said. ‘It never was your fault. Don’t you dare think for a minute that this had anything to do with you. You couldn’t have done anything. You did the best you could. You couldn’t have known what he was going to do to Jeremy.’

  She nodded in silence, but I could tell my comments didn’t make her feel better. She’d been the victim, but also the survivor. She was experiencing a normal post-traumatic reaction. Survivors of an ordeal who’d lost a partner always blamed themselves for not having done enough, even though there was absolutely nothing they could have done.

  Sometimes the blame hung around for days.

  Sometimes for weeks, months, years.

  Sometimes forever.

  ‘What if he comes back to get me?’ she sobbed. ‘What if he knows I’m not dead and decides to finish me off?’

  ‘We’re going to catch him, Teresa,’ I said, determined to do what I had just promised. ‘We’re going to get the sucker and make him pay for everything he’s done to you.’

  She looked into my eyes and my heart sank, like it had when I first walked in the room.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Walter Dunn didn’t have a prior criminal record, but his name was listed with Vic Roads, and as a result we had no problem tracking down his address.

  Of course, neither Frank Moore, nor myself expected to find Walter Dunn sitting comfortably in front of his television, watching re-runs of old American television series at two o’clock in the morning. For all we knew, he was already half way across Australia or on a 747 flight to America or Europe.

  The proper thing to do would have been to inform the detective in charge of the investigation about the current situation. But as it was, both Frank and I were too enraged to wait for someone else to catch the bastard. We could always argue later with the detective that Teresa Wilson was in danger, and there was an urgency in stopping the killer of her husband.

  Walter Dunn’s residence was listed in Caulfield, not far from Monash University, just off Grange Road.

  We drove straight there from the hospital.

  I checked the time on the dashboard: 2.16 a.m. This was the second time in a week I’d be up all night. But my mind was clear and alert. The rage inside me fuelled me as if I’d just swallowed ten cups of black coffee.

  When we left the hospital, Teresa slipped into a state of shock. She stared at the empty space in front of her, and for a moment I worried that she’d might have slipped back into some sort of coma. I expected her behaviour to become hysterical in the next few days unless she somehow accepted the reality of what had happened. What was strange was that it was all clear in her mind. Some victims of violent crimes sometimes chose not to remember on a conscious level. But Teresa Wilson remembered everything. She had trouble accepting the truth, but she remembered it clearly.

  I passed Monash University’s Caulfield campus. Streets were dark and empty, except for the odd taxi driver desperately working all night for less than a hundred dollars.

  ‘What do you think the chances are that he’ll be home?’ Frank asked as he passed a hand over his thinning hair. I glanced at him quietly, trying to keep my eyes on the road. He seemed slightly concerned about our actions.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ I said, giving my full attention back to the road. ‘I don’t know why he didn’t kill the girl. Don’t you find him silly, leaving someone behind as a witness?’

  Frank shifted on his seat. ‘Yeah, but when you consider he’s left virtually every imaginable piece of evidence behind, it would have only been a matter of time before we tracked him down, even if he did kill the girl.’

  Frank was right of course. We found a piece of fabric that was probably from his wardrobe; a knife with no fingerprints but covered in blood; and hair specimens all over the place.

  As I left Princes Highway and took a right turn into Grange Road, I realised this was not only one of the most heart-wrenchin
g cases I had been involved in, but also the easiest one to solve.

  And yet something at the back of my mind disturbed me.

  If Walter Dunn had premeditated the attack, then why had he been so careless? Could he have been so enraged that he never paid attention to what he was doing? Did he really think he could carry out what he did without getting caught? Most murderers left enough evidence behind for us to work with. But it looked as if Walter Dunn hadn’t even tried to conceal his presence at the scene, as if he really wanted to get caught. I wished I knew what was going on in his mind before proceeding. We had no idea what we were up against. And if Teresa’s testimony was anything to go by, we were about to deal with a raging lunatic.

  The only way we were going to find out why he snapped was by asking him.

  I stopped the car in front of Walter Dunn’s Victorian house. Suburbia gave me the creeps, mostly because I grew up there. I kept associating suburbia with normal, everyday, boring life, which was probably an accurate description of the majority of people’s lives who lived there.

  For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had a fear of blending in too much with the rest of the world. I feared if too plain and common, I would drown in a sea of ordinary people living monotonous lives.

  Back at high school, I tried hard to look different. An easy task, since my parents were of Brazilian origin, and my birth name was Petera Oliveira Dos Melina. My hair was down to my buttocks and darker than charcoal. My bronze skin gave the impression that I was tanned all year round. I wasn’t tall, but slim enough to get lustful stares from boys and hatred looks from girls.

  My friends were far and few, so I concentrated on working hard. The only thing I had full control over. I knew I could become whatever I wanted to become by using my head. And yet, in spite of my love for studying, I hated school, and the way most teachers taught us without care or compassion. A hidden agenda fuelled my crave to be different. Like most people who have a built-in desire to succeed, I kept secret the details of my dysfunctional family until I turned sixteen, when it became impossible to hide the truth any longer.