by Tara Moss
She noted the ugly odour of stale smoke hanging in her hair as she opened the door from the street and stepped inside. Wearily, she stomped up the steps, intent on the thought of her warm bed.
Wait—I didn’t leave the lights on.
Makedde backed up, nearly tripping over her feet, then froze flush against the wall. Someone was in her flat. She could hear movement. Silently, she covered her mouth, as if it would somehow silence her breath. She listened.
Someone was in there.
Killer.
Who? It didn’t take long to decide that she didn’t want to meet her intruder alone and she tip-toed back down the creaking stairs as quietly as she could manage. What if the intruder heard her? What would he do to her? Did he expect that she’d be out this time of the night, or did he want her to be at home, sleeping?
She started to run.
Makedde burst out onto the street and ran full tilt towards the public phone booth. When she reached it she decided it was too close, and she kept on running.
At the far north end of Bondi Beach, Mak nervously dialled Detective Flynn’s mobile number. She didn’t feel like explaining her life story to some triple “0” operator, or perhaps she enjoyed having an excuse to wake Flynn up in the wee hours. Either way, after two rings his phone was answered. For a moment there was no voice, then a coarse, sleep-fuggy sound filtered through the line.
“Flynn.”
“Detective Flynn, I’m sorry to wake you,” or not, “ I have an emergency. Uh, the detectives didn’t come back to search some more, did they?”
“What? No.” He paused. “This is Makedde, right?”
“Yes. I didn’t think they’d come back at such a weird hour,” she said stupidly. “Someone has broken into my flat. They’re in there right now.”
He suddenly sounded more awake. “Where are you? Are you OK?”
“Yes. I didn’t go inside. The lights were on when I came home a few minutes ago. I ran to a phone in the street.”
“You did the right thing. Tell me where you are and I’ll have someone there in a few minutes.”
Mak explained her location and hung up. She slid down the booth wall and sat on the cold, concrete floor. Her dark stockings had a long gash up the thigh. Smoky grit seemed wedged under her fingernails and embedded in her skin.
Within minutes a police cruiser pulled up. The driver was a sharp looking female cop with short blonde hair and thin lips. Her partner was a beefy young officer with a face like a meat lover’s pizza. He looked like he would be quite tall and foreboding when he stood up, which made Mak feel safe under the circumstances. She climbed into the back and the officers asked her what happened. Briefly, she explained the situation and mentioned her involvement in the Gerber murder case.
Makedde scanned the road. The streets were deserted, as one would expect after 2 a.m. on a Monday night in the middle of winter. She nestled deep into the back seat as they drove towards her building, and when they got close she saw that the lights were still on.
“Which flat is yours?” the male officer asked.
“The only one with the lights on. Number six.”
“Could we have your keys, Miss?”
Makedde handed them over, and the officers locked the car and walked across the street while Mak sunk herself as deeply as she could into the seat. She rested her nose against the window and stared out, watching the two uniformed cops enter her building. The lit window revealed no figures, and she could hear no sounds of struggle. Eventually, the street door opened and the female officer stepped out. She came up to the car while Makedde got out.
“There’s no one in the flat, Miss. It may have been rifled through, though. It’s hard to tell.”
Makedde was almost sorry that they hadn’t found anyone. She felt a bit embarrassed, as if she might have been tired enough to forget whether she had left the lights on or not. She was sure she’d heard movement. Wasn’t she?
Exhausted, she climbed the stairs, aware that the run in her stockings had ripped up another few inches. Door number six was open, and just as she was about to chastise herself for overreacting, Makedde caught a glimpse of the flat.
The place had been turned upside down.
All the bags of clothes she’d packed up were emptied out on the floor. The beds were ripped apart and every drawer and cupboard was open. Catherine’s jewellery box was overturned, and it looked broken. Sweaters, jeans and underwear were scattered everywhere, strewn about with papers and jewellery.
“You weren’t sure if I’d been broken into?” Mak asked in disbelief.
The blonde cop turned to her and said, “We couldn’t be sure. You’d be surprised the way some people live.”
CHAPTER 12
When Detective Flynn arrived, Makedde Vanderwall was sitting on the floor of the flat. She was in a miniskirt, her legs splayed slightly in a totally unselfconscious position. She was leaning against the wall, eyes closed, with a small jewellery box in her hands.
“Miss Vanderwall?” he asked tentatively.
Her eyes snapped open at the sound of her name, and he noticed the dark, smudged make-up. She didn’t appear as untouchable as she had at the police station on Sunday. Sitting there in the ransacked flat, she looked vulnerable and lonely. He regretted treating her so flippantly. Maybe his partner Jimmy was right; his wife was making him an arsehole around women.
“Hi,” she said in a rough voice. “I’m sorry to have dragged you out of bed, but I wasn’t expecting all this when I got home. I guess I panicked.”
“No, no. You were right to call me. Tell me what happened.”
She explained the evening’s events in a resigned and dispirited tone.
“Have you noticed anything missing?”
“I couldn’t say at the moment.”
“You know, we can’t assume this is related to your friend’s death—”
“Murder.”
“What?”
“She didn’t just die, she was murdered.”
“Right. Well, we can’t assume the two are related. There are a lot of break-ins around here, especially in these older buildings.” He didn’t want her panicking any further. It was unlikely that the killer would come after her.
“Well, they didn’t take the television or anything. Then again, I would have left that heap of junk too.” She cracked a tight-lipped smile, then looked down at the ornate box in her lap.
He noticed that she was wearing a thick diamond ring on her thumb. He couldn’t remember seeing it at the station. “Nice ring,” he said. “Where did you get it?”
She eyed him suspiciously, and he had the odd feeling that she was evaluating him, deciding something. When she didn’t speak, he said, “I want to apologise if I was flippant with you on Sunday.”
She gave him a hard look. “Yes, you were flippant.”
She was so direct, he didn’t know what to say for a moment. “You look tired. Do you have somewhere else to stay the night?”
“No. I’ll stay here tonight. They wouldn’t return with cops crawling all over. They probably have what they want anyhow.” He raised an eyebrow at her. What did she think they had? “They were either burglars or souvenir hunters after a piece of Catherine.”
Flynn was a little surprised. She was probably right, but he hadn’t expected her to understand that.
“We could help you—”
“No, I don’t want your help,” she said suddenly. “I’ll stay here tonight.” She glanced at her watch. “Or rather, I’ll stay here the rest of this morning. I was planning on getting up in less than four hours anyway.”
“Well, we’ll send someone over to speak to you tomorrow. We might need to dust again.”
“I doubt they would have left prints.”
Andy looked at her curiously. She was reacting strangely. Did she know something? “Why is that, Miss Vanderwall?”
“The place is obviously coated in powder. Anyone with half a brain would wear gloves. You don’t have to be a dete
ctive to figure that out.”
“You’re assuming this person has brains.” He turned and started towards the door. “We’ll see you in the morning.”
She surprised him by saying, “Have a good sleep.”
“You too,” he replied, and he meant it. He was slightly unnerved by her fortitude. Or was she simply being stubborn because of how he’d treated her?
Whatever the case, it was already past 3.30 a.m. and it was time to leave the girl in peace.
Detective Flynn arrived at the office the next morning to find a huge, sixteen-by-twenty photograph of Makedde Vanderwall, dressed in nothing but a brief aqua-blue bikini, pinned to the bulletin board. Someone had circled her breasts and drawn nipples in bright red felt pen. Andy stopped and stared at it through puffy eyes. He heard restrained chortling behind him.
“Well, that’s…” he was at a loss for words, “that’s art.” He admired the unbridled display of immaturity for another moment, and then began untacking it.
“No, no.” Jimmy got up and walked towards him. “She stays.”
Jimmy Cassimatis was Andy’s partner of four years. He was also a friend. The “Stiletto Murders”, as the case had now been dubbed, was one of the biggest either of them had worked on in their careers. With three murders so far, Jimmy’s delinquent sense of humour was a welcome respite from the pressure. He was known for doing the most appalling things at the morgue, so doodling on photographs was nothing.
Andy Flynn was more serious about his career in the police force. He was more ambitious. He had been raised in the safe suburbs of Parkes, where residents possessed only the most abstract concept of crime. The main concern on his block was kids nicking your tricycle if you left it on your front lawn. Like most of the public, it didn’t occur to anyone that there could be a killer next door, or a paedophile teaching at the primary school.
The local cops may not have been under pressure to control any soaring crime problem, but Andy sure noticed the small town appreciation. There was a pretty girl who worked in the corner deli, and she always had the biggest smile for Sergeant Morris. All the kids wanted to catch a glimpse of his gun, and his uniform commanded respect. By then, the police already appealed, but it wasn’t until a sensational case in 1974, however, that Andy’s dream of joining the police force really took form. Three men were murdered and Scottish-born Archie “Mad Dog” McCafferty was brought to trial. He claimed that the voice of his dead six-week-old son had told him to kill seven men so that he could live again. People were fascinated and repelled by the case, and all that interest wasn’t lost on eleven-year-old Andy. It seemed to him that the cops and the killers were playing at a different level. There was so much at stake, and such importance placed on their actions. He wanted to be part of it. He joined as soon as he graduated from school, and eventually found his way to the city, where the real action was.
“I hope you weren’t planning on entertaining yourself with that for long,” Flynn warned, with one finger poking at Makedde’s navel. “Because the real thing will be walking in here at some point, and I’m quite sure she’d castrate me on the spot if she saw that.”
“Ah, ya pousti! Don’t ya like girls?” Jimmy laughed, blocking Andy’s half-hearted attempts to take the photo down.
“She had quite a night with that B and E.”
“Tell her next time, she can call me in the middle of the night. I’ll help her out.” He winked. “Actually, Angie would have lost it. Especially if she knew it was that model.”
She would have. Angie Cassimatis was a bit touchy about that sort of thing, but then, she had reason to be. Jimmy was no Brad Pitt, far from it, but he had still managed to get it on with a young constable in the not-so-distant past. It had filtered through the grapevine and Angie found out from a friend of a friend, who just happened to be the cousin of the girl he was having the affair with. It was like a game of telephone gone wrong. Big trouble. They smashed plates at their wedding, but Andy could bet that a helluva lot more was broken when Angie had found out. The young lady in question was somehow transferred to Melbourne after that, and Jimmy arrived at work with a mysterious bruise on his cheek the size of Angie’s hand.
Jimmy read his thoughts. “Skata! Once, OK? Once. Are you saying you’re some fucking saint? Cause I know you’re not.”
“No I’m not. Let’s drop the subject. Just promise me you’ll take the photo down before the wrong person sees it.”
Jimmy didn’t answer him, but a mischievous smirk flickered across his lips.
“Where’d you get it anyway?”
“The film confiscated from the photo shoot.”
Andy shook his head.
“I’ve just been to forensics,” Jimmy began, getting back to business. “They’re satisfied we’ve got the same killer in all three cases. No copycats. So maybe we’re finally gonna get somewhere with Kelley.”
Detective Inspector Kelley had rejected their request for more backup, even after Catherine, the third victim, was discovered. Luckily, all three fell into their jurisdiction, so the connection between the crimes was made early. Once a pattern was established, the added resources could be more easily rationalised. Inquiries were still being made in search of similar offences in other states, but so far, nothing conclusive had come up.
“Same hammer type. Plus, as you said, same signature. We all agree, at least unofficially, that we’ve got some serial psycho on our hands,” Jimmy said.
Andy nodded and paused. A serial psycho. All the DNA evidence in the world wouldn’t help if the killer was random, as signature killers often were. He had to hope there was some relationship between the girls, some common link.
“Roxanne Sherman; eighteen, prostitute. Cristelle Crawford; twenty-one, prostitute and stripper.” Andy looked at the victims’ photos as he spoke, and their eyes stared back at him in a silent communication that he could not decipher.
“What were they like?” he said to no one in particular. “Aggressive? Passive? What turned him on?”
Andy had the habit of talking to himself from time to time, and it was a bit of a joke around Homicide. He supposed it had started with sleeptalking and an active imagination as a kid, but in brain storming sessions like these, when major crimes needed to be solved, he found that verbalising his mental gymnastics worked well. Sometimes a detective would take him to task on a theory he wasn’t even aware he’d said aloud.
“Attractive,” he mumbled under his breath, still staring at their images. Pretty, smiling photos of each girl contrasted with their gory crime scenes—photographs of blood and mutilation. Decomposition. Wasted flesh. Wasted lives.
“Some would have wanted to take them under their wing, but our guy wanted to violate them.” He thought about that. The victims were practically kids. Kids in heavy make-up. He spoke aloud as much for his own benefit as that of his partner. “The ages and professions are all similar. Late teens-early twenties. Then he goes for an overseas model. Does this blow your hooker-hater theory out of the water?”
“We haven’t found the clothes, apart from the shoes,” Jimmy replied. “The model one could’ve been dressed sexy and he thought she was for sale. She rejects him, and whammo,” Jimmy slammed his thick palms together to illustrate one of his favourite words, “the malaka grabs her.”
Andy considered the scenario. “He gets her alone without anyone seeing anything suspicious. The other two might have gone somewhere with him willingly if they thought he was a legitimate John, but not this one. Plus, she was young and healthy. If she put up a fight someone might have seen or heard something. She had no defensive wounds, only the ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. So it appears he got her into those binds without much trouble. Maybe we’re looking for someone in a position of trust.” He reached for a steaming cup of black coffee; his second of the morning. “Or a charming Bundy type. Did Colin find anyone at the dump site?”
“Ah, just a few residents, people walking their dogs, nothing unusual.”
He was
disappointed. They had hoped the killer would return to the site to relive the murder.
“Let’s say they’re strangers,” Jimmy suggested. “What makes him choose them over all the other birds walking around?”
“The shoes?”
“Lots of ’em wear heels,” Jimmy pointed out.
“Contact the model agency and find out if Catherine frequented any nightclubs, bars, anything like that. Maybe he spotted the girls in a common area, followed them home, waited for the right moment. Maybe he hunts in a certain patch and Catherine walked down the wrong street.”
“My guess is the Cross. That’s where The Space is.”
“Possible.”
Jimmy scribbled in his notebook, then looked to Andy, his face unusually serious. “Do you think there are more?”
“The violence has escalated, the mutilation has escalated, and there doesn’t seem to be a pattern for the dates that he kills. He could be on a spree, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s killed before but he covered his tracks better. There are more than a few missing persons that fit his victim type.”
“He won’t stop.”
Andy nodded his head in sad agreement. “Not unless we catch him first.”
CHAPTER 13
Makedde shifted on the bed. Not in it, but on it. She hadn’t slipped between the sheets, and she hadn’t slept a wink. Since the cops left hours earlier, she had sat on top of the bedclothes, practically motionless, fully-dressed, and unable, or unwilling, to rest.
She’s dead.
It seemed at that moment that there wasn’t a single safe place in the world. Not a fortress, not a room, not a corner, not one single square inch of security.
If it isn’t a killer, it’s a disease. Your own body killing itself off. Eating itself up.
Perhaps that was why she didn’t feel the urge to go home, or move. What would it change? The world would still be the same, wherever she was. She had decided not to tell her father about the break-in. He would be worried enough as it was. Like the cops said, it was unrelated. An unfortunate coincidence. Just another attempt by the world to rip her away from her carefully preserved sanity.