Private Oz

by James Patterson

  Chapter 73

  DR. CAMERON GRANGER was wearing an open-neck shirt, loafers and an expensive suit. I knew because I’d seen it up-close in Armani the week before.

  He was tall, broad shouldered, strong jawed. He had a big house in the Eastern Suburbs, probably a million-dollar yacht moored somewhere exclusive and used maybe twice a year.

  He indicated a plush suede sofa, sat one end, me the other. He looked suitably morose.

  “I’ve been to the morgue. Been briefed. Given my report to the cops.”

  “You seem very calm and collected.”

  “What can you do? I’ve had some time to absorb it all. After Jennifer failed to show up with her friends, I assumed she’d either run off with her lover or she was dead.”

  I appraised the man again. Was he using bravado to overcome his grief?

  “You had no idea your wife was having an affair?”

  “Oh, right … What more traditional motive for murder is there than being cuckolded?”

  I held his eyes and he looked away.

  “Strikes me as odd,” I said provocatively. “Why would a wife risk losing such a lavish lifestyle by messing around?”

  Granger surprised me by simply shrugging. “You tell me, Mr. Gisto. Maybe she thought she’d never be caught.”

  “When did you see your wife last?”

  “I went through this with the police.” He sighed. “I kissed her goodbye in the hallway of our home. Waved as she got into her car. She was leaving for the airport – apparently – to see her girlfriends in Melbourne.”

  “Then, later, you got a call from one of them.”

  “Yes, Helene Fromes, over thirty-six hours later actually. She’d tried and failed to reach Jen by phone … got worried … Stupid bitch.”

  “You sound pretty angry. Wasn’t this Helene Fromes doing you a favor?”

  “Oh yeah! The sisterhood keeping my wife’s infidelity a secret … Great. I’m touched!”

  “Right,” I said evenly, thinking about all the times men had closed ranks and kept their buddies’ secrets to themselves. “Well, you obviously would like the killer brought to justice … you’ve doubled the reward.”

  “I doubled it again earlier this afternoon.”

  “Is there anything you can think of that might help us … and the police?”

  “Look, Mr. Gisto, I’ve told the police everything I know. I saw Jennifer leave the house. I assumed she was doing what she said she was going to do and meet her mates in Melbourne. I didn’t hear a thing until Helene called. That was three weeks ago. Maybe you should speak to the guy Jennifer was seeing.”

  “We’ve only just tracked him down. My colleague is with him as we speak.”

  “Oh, do wish the man well, won’t you …”

  Chapter 74

  JUSTINE STUDIED THE man sitting in front of her and wondered how any woman could find him attractive. Nick Grant was Jennifer Granger’s lover. He was tall, thin, in a vest and shorts, his left arm a full-sleeve tattoo. He’d agreed to meet on neutral ground – a pub on Napoleon Street, Bondi.

  “Look,” he said, fixing Justine with a confident gaze. “Me and Jen … it was a casual thing, right? She was getting quotes for an extension on her house in Bellevue Hill. Took a shine to me right off.” He gulped his beer, gave Justine a faintly flirtatious smile. Then his expression turned serious. “I was sorry to hear what happened …”

  “She was with you the weekend she was murdered?”

  “No! That’s just it. I hadn’t seen her for weeks. As I said, it was casual. I think we only did it three, four times. She’d arrange everything – swanky hotels in the city, call me up with half-an-hour notice. Tell me to put on something clean … that she was in Room 131 at the Four Seasons, or Room 42 at the Hyatt, wearing nothing but high heels.” He grinned stupidly. “Well, what do you do?”

  “And the weekend of December 14th/15th? You were in Sydney?”

  “No.” Nick Grant shrugged. “I wasn’t.”

  “So where were you?”

  “In Melbourne.”

  “Melbourne?”

  “Yeah … you look surprised.”

  “No, no go on.”

  “Rugby piss-up. Me and the lads. We went to see the Waratahs at the AAMI Park. Fantastic game … and afterwards! Sunday … whoa!… a complete blur. Took Monday off. Went back to work Tuesday. We’re on a big job in Mona Vale.” He nodded toward the Northern Beaches.

  “So when did you hear that Jennifer Granger had gone missing?”

  “One of her friends called me out of the blue. I didn’t know what the woman was talking about at first. She was another stuck-up bitch … Sorry. I mean she was … Oh fuck! You know what I mean!”

  Justine simply stared at the man.

  “This woman,” he went on. “Helene? She said Jennifer hadn’t shown up for a girls’ weekend. Why you telling me? I said. Apparently, Jen had mentioned my name and the company I worked for and this Helene tracked me down. Cheeky bitch. I got a bit pissed off with her. Told her she’d better not tell anyone where to find me, especially Jen’s bloody husband.”

  “And nothing else happened?”

  “No. Not another word ’til this morning.”

  “So when was the last time you saw Jennifer Granger?”

  Nick Grant took another gulp of beer and pondered the table top. “Well, let me think … Must have been two weeks before the Melbourne weekend. Yeah … early December … at the Sheraton.”

  Justine shivered. “What a terrible mess some people create for themselves,” she thought, recalling the gruesome photographs of the woman’s shallow grave.

  Chapter 75

  THE PARTIAL PRINT from Jennifer Granger’s body appeared two feet wide on the flat screen. Darlene studied the lines, what analysts called “whorls” and “loops”. Darlene remembered a stat from college – a one in sixty-four billion chance of any two people sharing fingerprints.

  The partial on the screen looked completely unremarkable. It was perhaps two-thirds of a full print, limited in value, but better than nothing.

  Darlene double-clicked the mouse and highlighted the image, then moved the picture to an icon on the screen. The file disappeared and a box came up with the words: “Global Database Analysis in Progress.” Beneath this, a line, a tiny red dot to the left and the words: “Estimated time remaining: 42 minutes” – the time it would take for the powerful computer system at Private to compare the partial print with every database it was linked to throughout the world, some two billion records.

  She pushed her chair back, ran her fingers through her hair. She felt incredibly frustrated. Here she was with some of the best forensics equipment in the world and she’d spent three days drawing a blank on four connected murders. At the back of her mind something was nagging her. It’d been needling her for at least twenty-four hours, but she couldn’t pinpoint it.

  She got up and walked across the lab to a bench. She’d filed away every piece of data she had on the four murders. Most of the info was on the computer and there were a few written reports kept in a filing cabinet. Here on the bench stood ninety-six test tubes in a dozen racks. Each one was carefully labeled. Each contained something from the murder scenes.

  She scanned along the racks. There were slithers of cloth, particles of soil, fragments of body tissue, blood-soaked fabrics, hairs. Hairs! She moved the racks forward, one after the other, taking care to keep everything in the correct order. Then she saw what she was looking for … a test tube containing a single whitish-blonde human hair.

  Darlene felt her heart pounding. She strode over to a powerful drive that stored all crime scene photos. Tapped the mouse. Brought up the photo collections from the past three days. Clicked a folder entitled: “Yasmin Trent.” Scrolling down, she stopped over Image No. 233. A smile spread across her face.

  Chapter 76

  DARLENE WENT STRAIGHT from her lab to the house in Bondi where Jennifer Granger had been found. She knew the Police Forensics team
would still be there and she wanted one more search around the place herself.

  A cop Darlene recognized met her at the front door, gave her a warm smile. “Darlene,” he said. “Back again?”

  “Can’t keep me away from a good murder scene, Sergeant Tindle,” she quipped, reading his ID badge. He was young and good-looking, she’d spotted him at the earlier murder sites and knew that he’d definitely noticed her too.

  “It’s Howard,” he said leading her through the hall. They stopped at the door to the bathroom splattered with blood.

  “The murder was committed here,” the sergeant said.

  “You don’t say!” she laughed. “So, I heard you got tipped off by a vagrant who slept in the front room last night.”

  “That’s what we thought at first. A young guy called us early this morning. We followed up. He’d dropped his driver’s license would you believe! Turns out he’s an eighteen-year-old schoolboy. He and his girlfriend snuck in here for a quick one. They’re both respectable kids from good families. But they picked the wrong spot. They’re in a lot of trouble with their parents now!”

  “Poor things.”

  They emerged from the dark interior into the blazing afternoon sun. Darlene saw four men in boiler suits digging up the lawn and the overgrown flowerbeds to the rear of the house. Two CSOs were sifting through the soil searching for further clues.

  Darlene heard a cry from one of the diggers and ran across the yard.

  Two of the men were bending over an opening in the ground. Darlene skirted the edge and crouched down. Decayed human bones. Patches of white caught the light of the sun – a forearm protruding from the dirt.

  The forensics guys ran over, saw the bones and settled down beside Darlene. “Keep digging, but gently,” one of them said to the men with shovels and started to clear the soil near the arm with smaller spades.

  The grave was shallow, barely two feet deep and soon the outline of a large man could be seen. A few patches of gray-brown flesh remained on his dead bones, strands of red hair clung to his skull.

  Chapter 77

  IT HAD PASSED 6 pm and Johnny was leaving the office when the phone rang. A young female voice told him she was calling from Bonza Records and inviting him to a “VIP concert” starring Micky Stevens starting at 8.30 that night.

  He just had time to get home, get changed and get a cab to the venue – a rather macabre place called the Old Quarantine Station near Manly.

  The cab pulled into the lot, Johnny paid and walked toward the noise. He knew this place from when he was a kid. For over a century since it was built in the 1820s, it was the place where visitors to Australia were quarantined before being allowed into the country. Thousands had suffered terribly in this place. Decades ago it’d been turned into a national park novelty: “The Most Haunted Place in Australia.”

  Close to the old shower block and the mortuary, the original boiler house had been converted into a swish restaurant and conference center. Johnny emerged onto a cobbled courtyard lit up by massive lights on rigs. Directly ahead stood a stage strewn with musical equipment, men in black jeans and T-shirts testing mics. There were perhaps a hundred people milling around in front of the stage. Most were wearing suits, drinking champagne, chatting animatedly.

  Johnny strode over to a waiter carrying a tray, took a glass of orange juice. A leggy blonde approached with a clipboard. Johnny gave her his name.

  “Ah yeah!” she said. “I was the one who called you earlier. Mel …” She extended a hand.

  “So what’s this all about?”

  “Promo for the suits. Even stars as big as Micky need to lay on a show for the execs and the sales guys.”

  I nodded. “Weird choice of venue.”

  “Oh, we like to be a bit different!”

  There was a sudden hush as the strains of a famous classical piece Johnny couldn’t put a name to flowed from the speakers either side of the stage. A man wearing a cream linen suit and a Micky Stevens T-shirt walked out stage right, radio mic in hand. It was Graham Parker.

  “Ladies and gentlemen … welcome.” His voice was deeper and softer than Johnny had imagined. He smiled at the crowd, pointed at someone at the front, laughed good-naturedly. “Thanks for coming along. It’s a sort of celebration of Micky’s birthday tomorrow, but the real party’s at The Venue – and, of course, you’re all invited. Now … Micky’s well and truly wired and he is RARING TO GO! So, please, give it up for my boy … Micky Stevens.”

  The lights died, the entire stage turned black. A drum rhythm started and a bass guitar came in. Then the lights burst on, thousands of watts of color. And there was Micky Stevens dressed entirely in white, crouched, microphone in hand. He screamed and the music came crashing in.

  The crowd, lubed on expensive champagne and free cocaine, went wild. The song rocketed along, growing more and more powerful as it went.

  Johnny had seen videos of Micky Stevens of course. His latest song already had a million hits on YouTube, but seeing him live and only fifty yards away was something else. He looked round and saw Mel nodding appreciatively. Then he turned back to the stage, hardly able to believe how the demure shy character he’d met at Private could transform himself into this massive personality, this rock god parading in front of them.

  Chapter 78

  I’D NEVER SEEN Darlene so excited. “What’s happened? The latest copy of Forensics Now arrive early?”

  She gave me a phony smile and tilted her head to one side. “Just got back from the house in Bondi. There’s a second body in the garden.”

  I stood up. “Really?”

  “A man. From the level of decomposition I’d say he’s been dead two maybe three months. Severe facial disfigurement, multiple stab wounds. Sound familiar?”

  “But it’s a totally different MO … a male victim. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I’ve taken samples. Police Forensics are all over it. There must be some link. Has to be the same killer.”

  I must’ve looked shocked, or at least deeply concerned because Darlene said, “There’s some other news.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I think I have something on this killer.”

  I came round my desk and we sat on the sofa. Darlene had a file in her hand. “Something was niggling me about these crimes.”

  “Yeah, you said something in Sandsville … Yasmin Trent’s murder.”

  “It came to me a couple of hours ago.” She pulled a test tube from the pocket of her lab coat and held it out.

  I took it and lifted it to the light.

  “A strand of hair?”

  “Specifically, bleached blonde hair. Found on Elspeth Lampard’s blouse.”

  “Not one of hers? She was blonde.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve just had it under the scope. A particular bleach was used. Every brand is very slightly different. This is a cheapie, slightly higher peroxide level than the more up-market dyes. Doesn’t sound like the sort of stuff a woman like the victim would use. Also, see how a good third of the hair is dark? The woman this hair came from doesn’t keep up with her color. She let it grow out. Again, doesn’t fit Elspeth’s profile.”

  “I don’t see …”

  “Okay … the thing bothering me was that when I first arrived at the scene of Yasmin Trent’s murder I ran off a couple of hundred shots on my camera and must have subconsciously noted a strand of blonde hair lying across the dead woman’s arm. I was distracted by something and had to talk to one of the cops for a couple of minutes. By the time I got back, the Police Forensics guys were packing up, and I set to work.”

  “You’d forgotten about the hair?”

  “I don’t think I really registered it consciously.”

  “But the camera did.”

  Darlene pulled a photo from the folder. It showed a magnified white-blonde hair lying on a piece of dark fabric.

  “And Yasmin was a brunette,” I said.

  “She was.” Darlene took back the photo. “I ca
lled forensics straightaway. One of the guys there, Martyn Gofner. He’s okay, seems to like me. He checked their files. Sure enough, they have a blonde hair from the Yasmin Trent murder scene.”

  “Wow!” I exclaimed.

  “Yep … They profiled a DNA sample from the hair. Couldn’t match it with any database. They sent the profile over.” She pulled a piece of paper from the folder and held it out. It was a chart showing the analysis of the sample. “And this,” she said proudly, “is the profile I have from the hair I had, taken from Elspeth Lampard’s body.” She handed me a second sheet. The two charts were identical.

  “Hair from the same person.”

  “Absolutely no doubt … and the DNA does not match either blonde victim, Stacy Friel or Elspeth Lampard.” She flicked a glance at the sheets of data I held in each hand. “There’s one more thing … the DNA, and therefore the hair, is definitely from a female – no Y chromosome in the profile. Our killer is a woman.”

  Chapter 79

  DARLENE HAD GONE back to her lab and out of the corner of my eye I noticed Mary walking along the corridor from reception to her office. I hadn’t seen her or heard from her all day. But Johnny had told me what’d happened to her at the Triad place. I pulled up from my desk and tapped on her open door. She looked up and knew I wasn’t happy, followed me over to my office.

  “I’m really pissed with you, Mary. What the hell were you thinking?”

  She sat down, kept her bandaged hand just out of sight deliberately. “Information gathering, Craig. I went into places worse than that friggin’ Triad dump all the time in the force.”

  “You could have gotten yourself killed. Besides, you might as well have put up a billboard on George Street … ‘Triads … We’re after you’!”

  “They knew already. Word travels fast in this city. Besides, that’s exactly the desired effect, Craig. I wanted to give them the shits!”