The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim Page 7

  The lights at Walter Dunn’s home were turned off.

  A greyish Honda Prelude occupied the driveway. Because of the darkness, I couldn’t quite make out the colour. Everything seemed to be in shades of grey.

  ‘We better watch ourselves,’ Frank said as he checked the nine-shot clip of his 9mm semiautomatic pistol, a gift I bought him from one of my visits to the USA. To get it past customs had been a nightmare. I had to apply for a special license, and they grilled me with every question in the book. I remained cooperative because I was aware of the increasing number of concealed weapons finding their way outside the USA.

  Frank loved the gun, but he wasn’t happy with the fact that he had to release and re-depress the trigger every time he used it, a standard feature of semiautomatic weapons. The pistol was also fitted with a safety mechanism to prevent accidental discharge.

  ‘You stand behind me,’ he ordered, as if I had a choice.

  I wasn’t licensed to carry a weapon, which was the most ridiculous situation to be in when you’re an investigator. But the paperwork was in someone’s tray, and soon, I was told, even though I’d been waiting nearly a year, I would be authorised to carry my own killing machine.

  As we sat in the Lancer, darkness surrounding us, I began to have a really bad feeling about our situation. I knew it was wrong. I shouldn’t have been here at all since I’d been barred from the Wilson’s homicide. Nor should Frank. His job description as a crime-scene examiner did not entail making arrests. But he could always argue later that he was operating under section 459A of the Victorian Crimes Act. As a sworn member, the act gave him the power to enter any premises and arrest a person who had committed a serious indictable offence in the State of Victoria. And Walter definitely fitted the description of such a person. I would have to defend my actions as exercising my rights of citizen’s arrest. We had already talked it over on the way from the hospital. We were both willing to cop flack if anything went wrong.

  We stepped out of the car and eased ourselves into the front yard. The grass was in bad need of attention. A cool wind sent a shiver down my spine as I illogically wondered why in the world we never called for backup. It was pretty obvious why. We weren’t meant to be there, full stop.

  ‘Do you think this is wise?’ I whispered, now doubting our reckless move.

  ‘Tssss.. this is not the time to change your mind.’

  Frank’s bald spot was shining in the street light. Although he was probably the best crime-scene examiner in this country, I felt completely unsafe. We were out of boundary. Frank wasn’t trained to jump in on criminals in the middle of the night, especially those who took a delight in cutting your head off or inserting a squash ball up your arse.

  ‘Shit,’ I muttered, ‘Maybe we should get some help. What if he’s got a gun?’

  ‘If he had a gun, he would have blown Jeremy Wilson’s head off, not cut it off.’

  That was as convincing an answer as I wanted to hear.

  ‘So we’re doing the right thing?’ I was beginning to lose my cool, which surprised me, and probably Frank because I had always been self-assured in previous homicides.

  Frank turned around and breathed right down my neck, ‘If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to. Frankly, I don’t care either way. I’m gonna get that sonofabitch with or without you.’

  I was taken back by the intensity of his anger. I never noticed at the hospital, but Teresa Wilson’s injuries must have affected him deeper than I first realised. My main motivation for trapping Walter Dunn was Teresa’s safety. Frank seemed to be fuelled by hate and revenge for the person who had committed such a disturbing crime.

  ‘All right, let’s do it,’ I said, not feeling I had a choice in the matter.

  Frank stood in front of the door, loudly knocked twice, and stepped aside. He pulled the slide on his 9mm semiautomatic to bring the first bullet into firing position. He was ready to perform.

  I listened attentively.

  Nothing.

  ‘Maybe he’s not home,’ I whispered, wanting to get back into the safety of my car, call for back up, and let a Special Operations Group do its job.

  ‘His car’s here.’

  Frank knocked again, this time louder.

  Nothing.

  ‘Fuck,’ Frank said, ‘let’s go through the back. He could be asleep.’

  We circled the house and landed in a big yard with washing on the line. It smelled like grass and dog droppings. And yet, there were no dogs around. Maybe it was the neighbours.

  ‘He’s house-trained,’ Frank joked, pointing to the clothes-line with his pistol.

  Under the circumstances, I found his joke rather lame.

  Perspiration was dripping down the small of my back as we closed in on the back door.

  The flyscreen creaked when Frank pulled it towards him.

  We both froze like statues, waiting for someone to burst out of the house with a cook’s knife, chase us around the backyard, and have the time of his life separating our heads from our bodies.

  Nothing.

  Frank placed one hand on the knob of the back door, turned it, and pushed the door open.

  A wosh of foul air smacked me in the face, sending me two steps backwards.

  Frank turned his head, grimaced, looked straight at me and said, ‘Shit, this smells awfully familiar.’

  We found Walter Dunn with a gunshot wound to the head. He’d shot himself in the temple with a Smith & Wesson .38 service revolver.

  Insects were crawling around and inside the body, and fluid was leaking from the nostrils and mouth of the dead man. A putrid odour of decomposition filled my lungs.

  Walter’s face was almost unrecognisable and had turned greenish-red. I found it horrid, but I had the stomach for it, making it easy for me to do the job I did.

  Looking back at the way I felt before we entered the house, I realised I was more at ease coming face to face with a dead Walter Dunn than one who was still alive.

  We went back to the car to collect our overalls, boots and other protective equipment. Frank carried the PERK in two separate dark briefcases, while I carried a metal briefcase with two SLRs and enough film to shoot an entire issue of Vogue. Frank had called for backup, not that we really needed it at that point in time.

  Prior to collecting evidence, we videotaped the entire crime scene and its vicinity. Videotaping was now the norms for any crime scene where murder or suicide had occurred.

  Passing the front yard, video camera rolling, I suddenly realised why the lawn was so overgrown. While Walter Dunn had been busy fermenting his body and turning it into a haven for maggots and insects, nobody bothered maintaining his surroundings.

  As I began taking a photographic record of the body, I asked Frank, ‘And how the hell are we going to write this one up in the report?’

  He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other while making a sketch of the room. ‘It’s all right,‘ he said, ‘I’ll take care of it.’

  I took two shots of Walter Dunn’s temple with a colour film, and two with a black & white infra-red film.

  ‘You’ll take care of it. I’m involved in this as much as you are, and I’d like to know how it’s going to come out. You knew we weren’t supposed to be here in the first place. We should have got backup.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it, I said.’

  ‘I know you will. But people are going to ask questions. This is no small investigation. The damn thing’s been all over the papers for the last few days. The media is going to ask how we got to the killer, and why we decided to move in on him without following the proper procedures.’

  Frank threw his pen on the bloody carpet. ‘Jesus, Melina, give me a break. You seem to forget that we decided to come here together. We both made the decision. You’re the friggin’ crime-scene investigator. I’m only a crime-scene examiner. Why is it that suddenly this whole thing falls on my back? I’m no more responsible than you are.’

  Heat rose to my face. Frank w
as right, and I felt foolish. I’d been working with him for years now, and I should have known better than questioning his every move.

  I reloaded a new film in the Minolta and muttered, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s been a difficult week, and I wasn’t expecting this.’

  Frank bent down and grabbed his pencil. ‘Well, at least we got the bastard. Nothing more is going to happen now. It’s black and white. There won’t be any prosecution or manhunt. There’s no need to rush. This is going straight on file as soon as we’re through.’

  I felt a sense of relief that this investigation was over in less than a week. The Sheree Beasley homicide dragged on for months before we got the killer. It drained us, especially when we had so little to go on with.

  With Jeremy Wilson’s murder, there was enough trace evidence and even a witness. It would have been only a matter of time before we would have caught up with Walter Dunn. But we got lucky, and things went our way in less than a week.

  It took us a couple of hours to record everything at the crime scene and collect as much physical evidence as possible. A waste of time, if you asked me. Nobody was going to bother with forensic tests since the case would be classified solved and filed away in the next forty-eight hours.

  Nevertheless, we took our time and did our job properly.

  The detective in charge of the investigation was not going to be impressed by our procedures. We’d just cost him an additional notch on his resume.

  When I tried to collect firearm discharge residue from Walter Dunn’s hands with scanning electron microscope (SEM) adhesive stubs, I was unsuccessful because of the level of decomposition on Walter’s skin, and the damage done by maggots and insects. This was a bit of a setback since the firearm discharge residue collected from Walter’s hands would have confirmed the Smith & Wesson .38 service revolver had been discharged by him.

  I reassured myself this incident was a tiny problem since other evidence collected so far at the Wilson’s apartment would clearly indicate Walter Dunn was the killer.

  I found no firearm discharge residue on Walter’s clothing.

  Half way through the collection of evidence, we called the SES to provide us with additional lighting. Working in the dark, even with all the house lights turned on, was difficult.

  When it came to the wound on Walter’s temple, I cut his skin beyond the blackened area surrounding the bullet hole and identified the ‘12 o’clock position’ with a suture. I placed the sample in a glass jar filled with a ten percent formalin mixture. This would help us determine an accurate firing distance and angle for the crime-scene report.

  I also took various hair samples from Walter’s body to be used against reference samples, that is known samples collected at the Wilson’s apartment, and compared with those of the suspect.

  I plucked thirty hairs from the pubic area, and thirty hairs from his scalp. All hair samples were stored in folded paper and inserted in clearly labelled plastic bags. The hair samples would confirm the colour, sex and race of the person, as well as the areas of the body from which the evidence came from. Although we knew where the samples from Walter Dunn’s house came from, comparison tests would confirm those samples matched those found at the Wilson’s apartment.

  Sixty to eighty insects were collected from and under the body, and 90 to 150cm away from the body. I stored them in 70 percent ethyl alcohol per volume in distilled water. They would be forwarded to an entomologist for identification.

  I also collected two samples of maggots containing sixty to seventy individuals, and placed one of the samples in a phial with flesh to ensure their survival. The second sample was stored in a glass bottle filled with formalin.

  Meanwhile, Frank was busy collecting saliva, soil, tools, tool marks, vegetation, fibres and blood samples. He also found the jacket which matched the piece of cloth found on the window frame of the Wilson’s apartment.

  The paramedics came ten minutes after I called them, just when we finished taking the final details of the crime scene.

  They placed the corpse in a body bag and whisked it to the mortuary in Southgate.

  Frank and I drove back to my place since it was less than fifteen minutes away.

  ‘You know,’ I said, as we were climbing the stairs to my apartment. ‘It’s hard for me to believe this is all over. I’m not used to solving homicides in four days.’

  ‘I have to admit this is the easiest case I’ve been involved in for quite a few years,’ Frank replied, his voice strained from lack of sleep.

  Normally, homicides took months, sometimes years to solve.

  I opened the door to my apartment and turned to Frank. ‘You don’t have to go home. If you’re tired, you can sleep on the couch. It’s big, comfortable, and frankly I could do with someone in the house tonight.’

  ‘What about Michael?’

  ‘What about Michael?’

  Frank had a oblong smile on his face.

  ‘And no, it’s not what you think,’ I said defensively before he had time to utter a syllable.

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ he protested, his hands up in the air. ‘You’re the one who’s invited me in.’

  ‘Just making sure we understand each other.’

  I made him a cup of tea while he showered.

  At 5.23 a.m., he was snoring on the couch, and I got to bed.

  I was restless. My mind was turning endlessly. Flashes of what I had seen in the last few days haunted me. I kept thinking about Teresa and saw myself in her place.

  Thank God I was no longer married. If someone had decapitated my husband, they would have had to send me to an asylum and throw away the keys.

  I tried hard to close my eyes and escape reality, but when I heard the first tram travelling down Chapel Street, I knew daylight was just around the corner.

  And then someone knocked gently on my bedroom door.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes, Michael.’

  He poked his head in the room. ‘There’s a man sleeping in the lounge room.’

  ‘I know. Don’t wake him up. He’s on our side.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ he said, as if we were the dynamic duo.

  When he closed the door, I felt like a rotten mother. I didn’t spend enough time with Michael.

  At around six a.m., I closed my eyes and slept for twenty hours straight.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On Tuesday the 25th of February, the weather was kind of strange. The day began with a cool wind sweeping in from the ocean. After lunch, it was too hot to even wear a jacket. And that’s what I loved about Melbourne weather. Totally unpredictable. This was also why I kept nursing a chest cold which had been close to an end for almost two weeks now. I was seriously wondering if my chest cold wasn’t some form of asthma. I knew Australia held one of the world’s highest number of asthmatics, and nobody knew why. After all, Australia was one of the least polluted countries on the planet.

  I made a mental note to see a specialist, but I knew I would put it off forever. I seldom went to a doctor, and it would take more than a cough to get me there.

  Straight after lunch, I got a call from the telephone company asking me how I was going with a case involving a person who was stealing coins from telephone booths in the City of Port Phillip. I told them I’d been busy with a homicide and had little chance to look into it. After hanging up, I decided to do some research in the afternoon. They’d given me the job two weeks ago, and I hadn’t done a thing.

  Because of the small amount of serious homicides in this state, I supplemented my income by doing private investigative work for financial institutions, large corporations and various government departments.

  I spent most of the day shopping on Chapel Street, indulging at Black Whale and Checkerboard, two second-hand book shops, two hundred meters apart, on the same side of the street. Both owners of the bookshops knew me well since I purchased a ton of books from them at least three times a week. They often gave me a discount on
multiple purchases. But I found no information in either shop on stealing money from telephone booths.

  I ate a vegetarian souvlaki for lunch and washed it down with a Dr Pepper.

  By the time the evening came, I was still restless. I had a vague idea of visiting Teresa Wilson in hospital, but it didn’t feel right. She wasn’t a relative of mine, nor a friend. And yet, not acknowledging what she had gone through seemed cruel.

  I sat on my balcony with The Rainmaker, a second-hand hardcover legal thriller by John Grisham. Although the story was well-written and captivated my interest, my thoughts kept drifting back to the Wilson investigation, making it impossible for me to fully emerge myself in the adventure. The past week kept trotting in my mind, and I wasn’t going to deny I was now sightly anxious about my future after the Deputy Commissioner of Police would find out I’d deliberately disobeyed a direct order and persisted with the Wilson case.

  When Michael came back from god-knows-where, I asked him if he knew anything about people stealing coins from telephone booths.

  ‘Sure, it’s on the Internet,’ he replied, as if this should have been the first place to look. He was wearing the same Michael Jordan T-shirt he had on all week. I was seriously considering going shopping with him for some new clothes. ‘You can get anything from the Internet,’ he added, flipping his blond fringe away from his face.

  ‘The Internet?’

  ‘Yeah, some guy name Jolly Roger wrote an entire manual on how to do illegal stuff. You know, basically everything wrong you can do. Fraud, murder, absolutely anything.’

  ‘Jolly Roger? Is that his real name?’

  He gave me a look that implied I had no brain left. ‘Do you really think someone is going to write all this stuff on the Internet under his real name?’

  ‘Show me.’

  I took him to my study, flicked on the computer and logged into the Internet.

  Michael accessed one of the most popular Internet search engines.

  In less than thirty seconds, Michael located a web-page on how to torture, how to kill with your bare hands, how to make dynamite, how to make bombs, how to break into a house, and how to do another one hundred and one illegal things.