The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim Page 9

  And then Frank holding her hand.

  It just seemed so sudden.

  So calculated.

  Thoughts crossed my mind.

  Silly thoughts.

  Thoughts which made no sense.

  For a while I thought Frank might have had something to do with the death of Jeremy.

  But as I slid inside my car, I realised I was being completely out of character.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When I finished lecturing my class of Introductory Crime Scene Investigation at Swinburne University of Technology, the temperature had suddenly risen to the mid-twenties. I drove the Lancer with the sunroof open, letting the wind blow in my auburn hair, a change from my natural black hair.

  Somehow, I did manage to give a worthwhile lecture in crime-scene contamination. Students seemed satisfied with what they’d been taught, and that was all which really mattered to me.

  The traffic on Glenferrie Road was hectic, and other drivers seemed to be driving worse than usual. Maybe it was me who was becoming impatient with the world.

  I got to my apartment forty-five minutes later. The red light on my answering machine flashed three times, indicating that there were three messages. Two were from Tim Simons, my Herald-Sun media contact, asking me to call back, and one from Frank.

  I played Frank’s message twice.

  Hey, it’s me. Just thought I’d call to see how you’re doing. You didn’t look too good this morning. Is anything wrong? You can call me if you want...oh, and by the way, I need you on Friday at 10 a.m. The director wants to talk to both of us regarding the other night. I did my best with the report, but we both knew he was going to raise questions. I just need you there for formalities. I’ll do my best to get us off the hook. Just make sure you’re there on time if I don’t hear from you. The last thing we need right now is to make a bad impression.

  The answering machine beeped twice at the end of the message.

  I showered and wondered if I felt anything for Frank. If not, then why had I felt so odd that morning at the hospital? Jealousy? I tried to brush the thought aside, knowing there was no way I could fall in love with Frank Moore. He wasn’t my type. On the other hand, I didn’t know what my type was any more.

  As I stepped out of the shower, I recalled I hadn’t gone out with anyone for five years. This realisation frightened me. I couldn’t see myself spending the rest of my life alone. And yet, I couldn’t see myself spending the rest of my life with someone.

  I married in 1982 to a young man I met at university while doing a Bachelor of Applied Science in Biology. I was twenty-one then and rushed from one thing to another. I wanted everything. A career, a family, a home and a life of my own. I was naive and thought I could change the world. It took me six years, a pregnancy and a divorce to understand that the world couldn’t be changed. I had to change. I had to decide what I wanted from life.

  After my divorce, I held a grudge against men for a few years. It seemed they had it easy. Their lives reeked with career opportunities. But I had to either chose a career or become a wife again, somebody’s right hand. And since I had already been somebody’s right hand for six years without much success, I decided a career was the way to go. But with Michael around, it had been rather difficult. He’d been shuffled from baby-sitter to baby-sitter since the divorce, and now I only had myself to blame if he was slowly turning away from me.

  But that was eleven years ago, and now I doubted if I’d made the right decision. As the years went by, I felt increasingly lonely. If not deeply involved in a homicidal investigation, I spent a lot of time reading fiction and non-fiction alike.

  For hours, sometimes days, I sat on the balcony of my apartment, overlooking St Kilda and the Port Phillip Bay, and wasted too much time drowning in my loneliness.

  Now and then, I thought of placing an ad in Single Life magazine, but I felt uncomfortable with the idea. What man would want a self-righteous, assertive woman like me? And now that Michael was twelve years old, I also had to consider him. Bringing a new person into the family was a decision we both had to make. Michael would have to get on reasonably well with his new father. I’d be miserable if they were on each other’s backs all the time. And anyway, I held this long-held belief that it was only desperate people who advertised for a relationship. Of course, deep down I knew this was untrue, and only an excuse for me to back out of any emotional commitment.

  I had a friend a few years back who placed an ad in Single Life. She was a model, but also a single mother. She ended up marrying a psychiatrist who replied to the advertisement. The last time I saw them, she was pregnant with his child, and they were the happiest couple I had seen. She took a gamble and it paid of.

  But I hated gambling because I never believed in chance.

  I decided to wait for the right moment and the right person instead.

  Maybe I would have to wait forever. Most people considered me ill-tempered, making it difficult for me to find a compatible partner. My childhood had been verbally and physically abusive, and because of it, I learned to become extremely defensive, to the point of coming across as arrogant.

  With all these thoughts running through my head, I wondered if I was happy. But my mind had been in such turmoil during the last few days, I couldn’t trust my own logic.

  Michael came home at around 8.00 p.m. I tried my best to be nice to him, but I could sense that he knew I was up to something. I made him dinner, but he decided to eat it in his bedroom. When I requested that he has dinner with me, he asked me what was wrong. I gave up and let him get on with his life.

  When I went to bed later that night, I stayed awake for hours. Flashes of Jeremy Wilson’s decapitation kept coming to mind.

  And then I thought about Teresa.

  When I finally went to sleep, I woke up in a frenzy only minutes later. I had a nightmare in which I was Teresa. Walter Dunn came towards me, beating me with his hands, entering me savagely and finally inserting a squash ball up my anus. The pain was so terrible that when I woke up, I rubbed my backside thinking the dream had been reality.

  Only the next morning I realised how badly I was dealing with the situation. Maybe I needed some counselling. But I was scared that if the VFSC and the CIB found out, they would find me inadequate to be contracted for their investigations.

  Finally, over a cup of black coffee, scanning the headlines of the Herald-Sun and the Age, I concluded a holiday might be the answer. I hadn’t had a real holiday for as long as I could remember. All my life had centred around my career. And although I was happy to have gone that far, I felt the need for some kind of break. I needed to stop for a while, reassess my priorities, figure out what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life. I needed to put it all behind for a while.

  At 9.32 a.m., I stepped into my car and decided to see Teresa one more time, just to get the load off my mind and help me to cope with reality.

  When I arrived in Teresa’s room at St Patrick’s Hospital on Thursday morning, she looked healthier than the previous day. She even smiled. I was amazed at the speed of her recovery. The way she had been battered and raped, one would have thought she’d be staying in hospital for months.

  ‘I’m surprised you came back,’ she said, her lovely emerald green eyes sparkling as if she was glad to see me.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you a lot.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, looking genuinely intrigued.

  For a couple of seconds, I wondered what lie I was going to come up with. And then I decided the truth was as good as anything. The investigation was over, and there was no need for me to be one-dimensional. I felt a need to let my feelings show, to just be myself.

  Slightly anxious, I locked my eyes into hers and said, ‘To be honest with you, I don’t think I’m coping with this too well. But don’t go and tell Frank Moore, or it could be the end of my career.’ I knew Frank would say nothing, but I abhorred gossip, especially if it landed on the wrong set of ears.

  ‘He wouldn�
��t tell anyone even if I’d told him. I don’t think he’s that way inclined.’

  I was surprised at her confidence in Frank. After all, she’d only known him for a few days.

  Then I noticed a bunch of red roses on her side table. I knew they were not the same ones that I’d seen the other day, because there were much more of them, and the others would have been dead by now.

  ‘These are from friends, I gather?’ I asked, pointing at the roses and feeling heat on my cheeks.

  She glanced at the roses, looked at me suspiciously and said quietly, ‘They’re from Frank, actually. He came to visit this morning.’

  I remained speechless for fifteen seconds. Goddamn it, maybe I hadn’t imagined things the previous day, after all.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Teresa asked, a concerned look crossing her face. ‘You seem drained. Would you like a glass of water or something?’

  I held on to the edge of the bed. ‘It’s stuffy in here,’ I lied, trying hard not to display the confusion which was boiling in my mind. Quickly, I changed conversation. ‘So what do you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m a set designer.’

  ‘Really? What does that involve?’

  ‘I design sets for theatres and plays. I was working at the National Theatre when the incident happened.’

  ‘That’s just down from where I live.’

  ‘Well, there you go. Maybe we’ve even crossed each other in the street and didn’t even know.’

  We laughed lightly at the coincidence.

  ‘So,’ she muttered, ‘what’s going to happen from now on?’

  I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know, with the investigation.’

  ‘Oh, that. It’s finished, of course. Well, almost. Just have to tie up a few ends. Paper work mostly.’

  A concerned look crossed her face.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ I added.

  ‘No, not at all. I just didn’t expect everything to be all over so soon. It’s just happened so fast.’

  I smiled. ‘Neither did I. It’s better that way, I guess.’ I took her hand in mine and squeezed it gently. ‘You’re a very brave woman, Teresa. I don’t know if I could have survived what you’ve just gone through.’ And I meant it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered as tears came rolling down her cheeks.

  I didn’t know why I was being emotional about the whole thing. But seeing her there, putting on such a brave face after having lost her husband, being raped, and having her beautiful face scarred made me shiver.

  As I held on to her hand, I wondered if my empathy was just an excuse because I was desperate for friendship. And Teresa was here at the right time, and looked as if she needed friendship as well. Was it so wrong?

  I moved forward and kissed her on the forehead, wishing I could help her overcome the suffering she was going through. I wanted to hug her, but didn’t want her to think it was more than friendship, although I was myself confused as to what I really was after.

  Her tears brought tears to my eyes, and we ended up crying and laughing at the same time, like two teenagers sharing some forbidden secret friendship.

  By the time I left the hospital, I felt much closer to Teresa. I would have loved to see her again, but I didn’t think the timing nor the occasion was appropriate

  And this thing with Frank was troubling me. I hoped he wasn’t flirting with her. Really, it was probably none of my business, but it would look bad on his record. Well, at least that was the excuse I made to myself to rationalise my jealousy.

  I stopped at McDonald’s for lunch, and within half an hour I wished I didn’t. Junk food caused an uneasiness in my stomach, but I was hungry and had to eat immediately.

  I spent the rest of the day getting mentally prepared for the next morning’s meeting at the VFSC and wondering how I was going to track down the phone booth coin stealer. I hoped nobody was going to give me the third-degree at the VFSC because I was unprepared. Right now I felt extremely vulnerable, and it would have taken little to send me over the edge.

  In the evening I went to the Astor Theatre, just a block from where I lived, for a double-feature - ‘The Brady Bunch Movie’ and ‘A Very Brady Sequel’, both very forgetful.

  I fell asleep at 1.10 a.m. on Friday over one of Garry Disher’s Wyatt novels.

  Frank and I were sitting on the other side of the mahogany desk, in Trevor Mitchell’s office at the VFSC.

  I glanced at the piles of paper work neatly stacked in the IN and OUT trays on top of the desk. My eyes circled the room and caught a framed, black and white photograph of a group of men lined up next to each other, all in business suits, smiling as if they’d just graduated from university. I recognised a younger Frank Moore, when he had more hair and no moustache. Trevor Mitchell was next to him, also looking a few years younger. I couldn’t identify the rest of the men.

  I’d been in Trevor Mitchell’s office before, but I never noticed the photograph. My guess was that it had been put there recently.

  I could feel tension in the air, and I clearly didn’t want to be there.

  Although Frank said nothing when I met him at the Liaison Office earlier on, I knew he’d rather be somewhere else as well. He fidgeted with his hands, and beads appeared on his forehead. I hoped he was well-prepared, because I felt devastated and not in a mood to argue.

  The Director of the VFSC wore his usual dark suit and white shirt, with a yellow-and-white stripped tie, as if he meant business. His grey cropped hair made him look like an army officer. We were never called up to his office unless it was a serious matter.

  And I hoped to God this morning wasn’t going to be all that serious.

  Trevor Mitchell retrieved a cream-coloured manilla folder from the top of his IN-tray.

  ‘I’ve read the report on Walter Dunn, and I understand you were concerned about the safety of Mrs Teresa Wilson. However, you should both know better than breaching this department’s regulations.’ He stopped a few seconds so that we could absorb the full impact of his words. It sank in like the Titanic at the bottom of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

  He then turned to me. ‘I understand you were self-appointed scene coordinator and were in control of the crime scene. I also understand that you’ve chosen to work with Frank. What I don’t understand is how neither of you had the god-damn sense to call for backup or authorisation to proceed with this investigation. Investigating Jeremy Wilson’s death beyond the duties you were assigned by this department is unacceptable.’

  Frank leaned forward. ‘Believe me,’ he said in an assertive tone, ‘it was all my doing. Dr Melina insisted we call for back up, but I told her I would take full responsibility for the outcome.’

  I couldn’t help feeling uneasy. What he had just said was true, but it made me look incapable of making decisions, which was why I was being paid in the first place.

  Trevor Mitchell tilted his head back and forth and added, ‘I really don’t want to know the exact politics of who’s been ordering who. The facts remain that your duties as forensic examiners for the VFSC are clearly assigned, and you’ve both been in the field long enough to know that.

  ‘You have acted on personal values when making the decision to enter Walter Dunn’s premises, regardless of whether you felt Teresa Wilson was in danger or not.

  ‘You know very well that you should have called a detective or at least obtained authorisation to proceed into the suspect’s home.’ He waited a few seconds, enough time to make my stomach churn. ‘And as for you, Dr Melina, you had been barred from this investigation. I thought that was made clear the other day.’

  ‘I thought the Deputy Commissioner said until the end of this week,’ I replied foolishly. ‘And as I understand it, I’ve got rights under Section 462A of the Crimes Act to make a citizen’s arrest in order to prevent a homicide by a person who was already suspected of killing someone. I don’t need authorisation from anyone to exercise this right, and neither does Fra
nk.’

  He shook his head in disbelief. ‘It’s not your case, Dr Melina. Don’t give me this hogwash with the Crimes Act. You’ve only been invited on probation at this stage. You’re no longer an investigator in the Wilson’s homicide. We all know you understood that clearly the other day. Don’t make this more difficult than it is.’

  I gave up. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Trevor Mitchell shifted in his swivel executive chair, smiled and went on, ‘However, since you did find the killer, I guess I’ll have to let this one go. But, and a big but here, my leniency towards this incident is not a green light for you to cross the line again in the future. Right now, the Deputy Commissioner of Police and the CIB are bitter about the way this whole thing has been handled. You knew Frank Goosh was opposed to the idea of having an unsworn contractor acting as an investigator in the first place. This is going to give him plenty of ammunition.’

  ‘He certainly made it clear that he wanted me out of the job,’ I said, unable to control my loose tongue.

  Trevor Mitchell ignored my comment. ‘We’re having a hell of a time with the media. And thanks to the Shadow Minister for Police and Emergencies, every time we make a slip up, someone is jumping up and down. You do understand there will be an independent inquiry on this matter?’

  We both nodded.

  ‘You also understand I’ll do my best to explain your actions but cannot guarantee heads won’t roll.’ He then turned to me. ‘As for you, Dr Melina, I hope it won’t come to the termination of your contract with the lab. I would be wasting words emphasising the vital role you’ve played in this department for the past five years.’

  I lowered my eyes for a few seconds, wondering if I cared after all.

  For obvious reasons, I felt as if I was back at secondary school, being called up at the principal’s office for participating in some prank with a couple of girlfriends. We promised never to do it again and meant it while we were in god’s office.

  Standing behind Trevor Mitchell’s desk brought back to mind the nauseous sensations of my teenage years when I felt more like committing homicides than solving them. I hated structured organisations, not so much because of what they did or didn’t do, but because of the bureaucracy attached to them.