Fatal Liaison

by Vicki Tyley

  Yours truly,

  Joe Renmark.”

  If Megan didn’t feel like a right bitch before, she certainly did now. She’d left the poor guy standing in her driveway, undoubtedly completely bewildered by her outright rudeness. Talk about getting the wrong end of the stick. His behavior had been beyond reproach. The same couldn’t be said for hers.

  She read the card again and replaced it in the envelope. At the very least, she owed him an explanation, if not a full-blown apology. Promising herself she would call him as soon as she got home, she clambered out of her car.

  Less than twenty minutes later, she was back in her kitchen reboiling the kettle and pouring milk into the bottom of a large white breakfast cup. She finished making the tea and, with The Sunday Age tucked under her arm, carried it over to the oak table.

  Her grandmother’s cure-all worked wonders. Sipping the hot tea and browsing through the newspaper, she almost felt human. Although she wasn’t quite sure if she knew what that was anymore.

  The newspaper laid out in front of her, she finished her tea and was steeling herself to phone Joe, when the headline “Call for Witnesses to Warehouse Sexual Assault” caught her eye. Megan scanned the article, her pulse quickening as she read how a Melbourne woman in her thirties had been lured to a vacant warehouse, where she’d been sexually assaulted. The police were calling for people who may have seen a man acting suspiciously in the area on the day of the incident.

  Megan’s immediate thought that the police were looking for Robert Lockwood, the ginger-mustached bastard who’d assaulted Brenda the day before she disappeared, was cut short as she read on. The man they were seeking was described as being dark-haired, thin, wearing workman's pants and worker’s boots and a dark jacket. Robert Lockwood’s hair matched his moustache and no one could ever accuse him of being thin.

  The phone rang while she was in the throes of tidying up and folding the newspaper.

  Greg’s smooth voice greeted her. “I hope I haven’t woken you.”

  How little he knew.

  “Thought you should know that Lawson Green was released late last night.” No pleasantries, no beating around the bush, just straight out with it.

  “Excuse me? Did you just say what I think you did?” It would certainly explain Pauline Meyer’s mightier than thou attitude on the phone that morning.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Trevor Smith left the rough gravel bush-track and battled his way through the dense undergrowth. His camera hung free around his neck, his hands occupied with brushing aside vines and tree fern fronds. Dappled sunlight filtered through the treetops, stopping short of the damp leaf mulch strewn across the earth, the rising clammy cold seeping through his jeans.

  For a second he lost sight of his target, the flash of scarlet that’d drawn him into the bush, vanishing and then reappearing high in the branches of one of the national park’s majestic Mountain Ash trees. Intent on capturing the perfect photographic shot of the brilliantly colored male Australian King Parrot, he ventured deeper into the undergrowth, stumbling over rocks and fallen branches, rotting timber giving way under his feet.

  The parrot flitted from branch to branch, taunting him. Straddled across the broad trunk of a fallen tree, Trevor bided his time, camera at the ready. The bird eventually alighted on a branch directly above him. As stealthily as possible, he swung his left leg behind him and slid front first down the other side of the fallen trunk. He felt the ground yield beneath his weight.

  Before he could stabilize his foothold, the putrid stench of decaying flesh enveloped him. He screwed up his nose, instinctively looking down at his feet. Gagging, he reeled backwards. He kicked his feet out, repulsed by the bits of long-dead animal and live maggots clinging to his boots. A kangaroo or a wombat perhaps.

  Using leaf litter and a frond he had stripped from a tree fern, he managed to remove most of the muck from his boots. The parrot was long gone, along with his appetite for photography. Now all he wanted to do was get back on the track and return to his four-wheel-drive. Looking around him at the dense bush, he knew he’d no other alternative but to return the way he had come. That meant climbing back over the remains of an animal that had crawled under a log to die. The same log where minutes earlier he’d been sitting, blithely unaware of the rotting carcass beneath him.

  Pinching his nostrils closed with his fingers, he approached the tree trunk from an angle. He tried to keep his eyes averted, but a flash of red caught the edge of his vision. Puzzled, he looked down, crying out in horror at the sight before him.

  The red he’d seen wasn’t another parrot. The red he’d seen was the painted fingernails of a bloated and flyblown human corpse. From the fingernails and the matted long black hair, he assumed it was a woman. But he couldn’t be sure, the features too disfigured to tell.

  Lurching back, he fell against a large branch. Clinging to it, he vomited and kept on vomiting until there was nothing left to bring up. Even then the stomach spasms didn’t stop.

  CHAPTER 27

  Greg Jenkins felt numb. His worst nightmare had become reality and all he could think about was how he was going to break the news to his mother.

  Operating on automatic pilot, he let himself into his sister’s home. His nose twitched as he inhaled the cold, dusty air. Heading down the hall, he paused in the doorway to Sam’s bedroom. The room’s lived-in look – the thrown together bedding, the open book facedown on the bedside table, the black handbag on the floor – painted a mirage of normality. He closed his eyes, hearing Sam’s contagious giggle in his mind.

  With his head hung low, he turned away and continued down the hall to the bathroom. He’d insisted on being the one to fetch the toothbrush and hairbrush the pathologist had requested. This was one last thing he could do for her. The police would trample all over Sam’s home and personal belongings soon enough.

  Careful not to touch any surfaces, he used one of the plastic bags he had brought with him to collect Sam’s orange and white-handled toothbrush. The hairbrush, however, was proving elusive. He wasn’t exactly thinking straight, so it wasn’t until he came across the wide-toothed comb in the vanity drawer that he realized Sam might not own a hairbrush. The curly locks they both had inherited from their father didn’t respond well to brushing unless, of course, the look you were after was a frizzy afro. Although he didn’t see the point, he bagged the comb anyway, adding a couple of strands of curly black hair he’d found loose in the drawer.

  He didn’t need DNA to confirm that the decomposing corpse that the amateur photographer had uncovered in the Yarra Ranges National Park was his sister. The police’s description of the body’s height and hair had been more than enough. But the clincher had been the sterling silver MedicAlert bracelet around her wrist with “ALLERGIC TO PENICILLIN” engraved on the reverse.

  The authorities had been strongly against Greg viewing Sam’s body. He felt cheated, but at the same time relieved. He didn’t want his last image of his sister being like the grotesque purple and green bloated and maggot-infested carcass of a sheep that had broken its neck tumbling into a ravine on his parents’ farm.

  He’d pressed the police and the pathologist for details of Sam’s death, but had only received vague answers. In frustration, he’d enlisted Neville Crooke’s help. That was over an hour ago and he’d yet to hear from the private investigator. Every few minutes, he checked his BlackBerry on the off chance he might have missed the call.

  The sight of Sam’s yellow rubber ducky perched on the side of the white enamel bath next to a bottle of honey-colored bubble bath and a trio of partially melted pink candles winded him. He couldn’t breathe. To him, those few personal items embodied the essence of his sister. Sam was a sensuous woman, whose childlike exuberance never failed to captivate. Greg wasted no more time loitering in the tiny louvre-windowed bathroom and headed for the front door, the two plastic bags containing the toothbrush and comb clutched firmly in his right hand.

>   Halfway down the front steps, his BlackBerry rang. In his haste to extract the vibrating smartphone from his pocket, he dropped it on the concrete. It bounced twice before coming to rest in the unmown grass next to the path. Amazingly, it continued to ring.

  He lunged for the phone, the ringing stopping the instant his hand closed around it. Not bothering to confirm the caller had actually been Neville Crooke, he hit the redial button.

  Neville answered immediately.

  “Afraid I didn’t have much more luck than you did prying information out of our esteemed pathologist. He’s never been one for speculation and so far, they’ve only done a preliminary examination. That’s scientists for you – they only deal in facts. Which is probably a good thing. Anyway, what I can tell you…” Neville coughed.

  Greg’s grip tightened on the phone, his knuckles turning white.

  Neville started again. “What I can tell you is that at this stage they don’t suspect a sexual assault. It seems her underwear and, in fact, all her clothes were relatively intact. Of course, they’d deteriorated being out in the elements like that, but…” He paused, his voice dropping as he continued. “I’m sorry, Greg, but there’s something else you ought to know.”

  Greg clamped his eyes shut, not knowing if he really wanted to hear what was coming next.

  Neville coughed again. “The cause of death has yet to be confirmed, but a plastic cable tie was found around her neck.”

  His legs began to wobble. “Like the other woman?” Greg croaked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  “Afraid so. Nothing definitive yet, but it’s certainly looking like we might have a serial killer on our hands.”

  Somehow in the time they were talking, Greg had managed to make his way over to his BMW and open the door. Slumping into the driver’s seat, he opened his mouth to speak, but was lost for words. There were none to describe what he was feeling.

  Knowing that Sam might not have been sexually defiled was small consolation. Nothing could bring his sister back. Some murdering bastard had stolen part of him. And if it was the last thing he did, Greg was going to make sure the son of a bitch paid for it.

  But first, he had to see his mother.

  CHAPTER 28

  “Brenda, sweetie, wake up.”

  Her father’s voice reached through the fog. She felt his strong reassuring hands on her shoulders, gently shaking her.

  Her savior.

  She tried to speak, but her parched mouth was incapable of forming the words. Her eyelids fluttered, but remained closed. She groaned, shivering violently as cold and pain enveloped her.

  Brenda’s grasp on reality was slipping. Her father had been dead for more than ten years.

  CHAPTER 29

  Though the television was on, Megan wasn’t paying much attention to it. At least not until she heard the words “grisly remains,” “murder,” and “Jenkins” in the same sentence. Her head snapped up and she grabbed the remote control from the side table, stabbing at the volume control button with her finger. The image of the dark-haired woman on the screen vanished, but not before she recognized it as the same one posted on the missing persons’ website.

  That’d been days ago. Hearing the news from the media and not directly from Greg had taken Megan aback. How many times since then had she picked up the phone to call him but never carried through? She knew from experience how the death of a loved one left you reeling. But what if that loved one had been murdered? It was too distressing to begin to imagine. There was no doubt in her mind that the anguish and grief Greg and his mother must be suffering would be all encompassing, leaving no room for outsiders.

  The morning newspaper lay unopened on the table. Turning it over, she flicked through the back pages until she found the funeral notices. Halfway down the page, she spotted it. The funeral for Samantha Rose Jenkins was to be held at 10 a.m. that coming Wednesday. Her body had finally been released to the family. That was something at least. Would it provide some sort of closure for them? God, she hoped so.

  A swell of emotion surged in her chest. There was nothing she could do to stop it. She sank onto a dining chair as loud gut-wrenching sobs racked her body. Her tears weren’t for the Jenkins’ family, but for herself.

  The discovery of Sam Jenkins’ body had shocked Megan. Not because of what it meant to Greg, but because of what it augured for Brenda.

  Dead.

  One killer.

  Two murders.

  Or was it three?

  The not knowing was the hardest part. If Brenda was alive, where was she? And if she was dead, God forbid, where was her body? At least Greg had closure. She had nothing. The funeral notice had just brought it all flooding back. It was as if the last small screw holding her body and soul together had fallen out.

  Brenda had been missing for fifteen days and the police were no closer to finding her than they had been on day one. How was that possible? The detectives continued to utter false reassurances about following leads, none of which actually led to anything. To them Brenda was just another case; to Megan she was her dearest friend. She’d never felt so alone.

  In her distress, she’d reached out to Joe Renmark. It only happened the once. She’d called him, wanting someone to talk to you, looking for a soft shoulder. When he’d suggested meeting for a drink, she’d resisted.

  “It’s just two people in a bar having a drink,” he countered. “It’s not like I’m asking you to sleep with me or anything.”

  “No, but—”

  “No buts about it. You need to get out of the house and where better than over a couple of drinks at The Elephant and Wheelbarrow. They do a great nachos. No pressure. What do you say?”

  Maybe he was right. Another evening at home alone with her thoughts was the last thing she needed. “Give me an hour to shower and change.”

  By the time she realized her mistake it was too late. Once again, he began to inundate her with flowers, cards and SMS messages. He means well, she told herself repeatedly. Regardless, she found herself constantly checking over her shoulder

  The torrent of tears gradually abated. Still sniveling, she pushed back her chair and shuffled to the bathroom. The cold water she splashed on her face failed to revive her. Confined in her small en suite, she suddenly felt claustrophobic. The room closed in on her. She needed air, but her feet remained rooted to the tiled floor.

  Light-headed and panting, she gripped the sink edge with both hands. What was happening to her? With her breathing still labored, Megan somehow found the inner strength to fight whatever it was that had hold of her.

  Back out in her bedroom, she felt like a captive animal that’d been released, but then once out of the cage, freezes in fright. She stood in the centre of the room trembling. Now what? Her body craved fresh air and exercise. But it was more than that. The fine line between sanity and madness was becoming terrifyingly blurred. She had to get out of the apartment before she lost the plot completely.

  Goaded into action by her own fears, she scrabbled about in the bottom of her wardrobe searching for a pair of sneakers, before grabbing a lightweight tan jacket and a canvas rucksack from the hall closet. Midway through a circuit of the apartment collecting wallet, tissues, mobile phone, keys and anything else she came across that she thought she might need, she was confronted with the newspaper lying open on the table.

  She faltered, took a breath, stepped forward and tore out the funeral notice for Greg’s sister, leaving a ragged hole in the newspaper. She pressed the scrap of paper against her chest, her need to talk to Greg intensifying. He was the only one who could really understand what she was going through. Sure, everyone else pretended they knew how it felt, but how could they? Only someone who had suffered through it could possibly understand.

  CHAPTER 30

  Dark clouds gathered, threatening rain. A chill wind whipped at his exposed face and hands. Standing head bowed, his arm around his mother’s shoulders, Greg listened to the priest’s low voice as he intoned a bles
sing. It seemed all too familiar.

  Under his arm, he felt his mother hiccup. Instinctively, his arm tightened around her, drawing her in close to his body. Even through the thickness of their coats, he could feel her trembling. Greg didn’t know if his mother was strong enough to cope with the loss of her only daughter. Not on top of the death of her husband and youngest son. He squeezed her shoulder, resolving to be there for her every step of the way. They could only survive this tragedy together.

  The priest concluded his prayers and stepped back. As the highly polished coffin was lowered into the cold, hard earth, Greg and his mother edged closer to the grave. Hunched forward, Mrs Jenkins scattered handfuls of red and white rose petals over her daughter’s final resting place. She made no sound. But Greg knew that deep inside her, she was wailing like a banshee.

  “Good night, sis. Sleep tight,” he whispered, blowing one final kiss. “Tim and Dad will be waiting for you.”

  Friends and well-wishers stood in small huddles back from the gravesite, waiting to offer their condolences. Some of the faces he didn’t recognize. Some he did. Murmuring reassurances, he guided his mother over to the nearest cluster. His great-aunt, his father’s Aunt Merle, doddered forward on her cane to meet them, her papery face wet with tears. Following close behind, hobbling at the same speed, was her husband, Albert. Their offspring, more reticent, hung back waiting their turn.

  Greg released his mother into their midst, taking comfort from their genuine and heartfelt compassion. Maybe they weren’t as alone as he’d thought.

  He rolled his shoulders back and then forward. Turning his head from side to side helped ease the crick in his neck. A flash of movement in the shadows of one of the cemetery’s gum trees caught his attention. He squinted into the distance, trying to make out more detail. As the silhouette under the tree came into focus, he gasped, then rubbed at his eyes, convinced they were deceiving him.