by Candice Fox
I didn’t linger on Ruben for long. I was half-listening to the specialist team commander giving an ‘all units alert’ for the suspect. We had her name, but the commander gave a pause when it came to description. We still didn’t know what Tara looked like. Tara would be flagged if she used her credit card, any transport tickets or cars registered in her name, but from all indications she didn’t have any of those things. While I listened to the team members trying to come up with points to look out for to broadcast to our colleagues, I walked into the attic room and beheld the display around me. The thousands of defaced faces, the mesmerising Joanie Harper in all her stony beauty. It was a visual punch. The crowded faces all seemed to howl at once, a noise I could hear in my brain, an angry, despairing noise, the noise animals make in final grisly moments of being eaten alive. In this room full of mouldy plates, Tara had erected an inescapable moment in which, multiplied infinitely, her mother howled at her, squealed, the hateful, accusatory pleading of a mother at a bad child.
My Googling before the raid had told me that Joanie Harper had slipped peacefully away over a couple of bottles of wine and some sleeping pills. It was so gentle, so easy, that the coroner hadn’t been able to determine if it was suicide or not.
I had the feeling, standing there, that Joanie’s delicate exit from life hadn’t been what her daughter wanted.
Hooky hit the ground with her shoulder and rolled twice. Her body took control as the terror overcame her, flattening against the bottom of the grave, a strange carpet of damp earth and rotting detritus, now and then the hard, sharp edge of a buried toothbrush, a sliver of plastic, the rim of a can. The grave had been dug neatly into the already acidic, degrading layers of waste, and as she lay panting short breaths she heard, with bursts of bladder-clenching horror, Eden walking around the grave and mounting the huge digger. Hooky knew she should move, should make a last shot at life, but her body was paralysed at the shuddering visions of the darkness and pressure that would come in seconds, the sickening weight of the dirt and rubbish as it piled onto her.
The machine started with a hideous roar. Hooky heard the clattering and grinding of the rubbish and soil as it started to move. The initial tumble of objects onto her legs was so gentle it made her sick. This was how her death would be. Gentle and slow and smothering, an excruciating fight against rock solid limbs that would not struggle against the tape, that would not roll her, that would not shift towards the edge of the pit out of sheer animal fright at what was being done to her. She was powerless to do anything but let out a long howl through her nose, her teeth biting down against her tongue as the rubbish rolled over her.
The digger stopped. Its engine cut, neatly and clearly, leaving ringing silence in its wake. Somewhere beyond her grave, Hooky could hear dogs barking. She lay and shook against the dirt and listened to the night.
It took a long time for her limbs to respond. Only her legs were covered. She turned her face against the ground and saw that the pile at the side of the grave, the weight that would have smothered her, was still very much intact. What had happened? Had the engine stalled? She curled in a ball and wept hard, the sobs now and then breaking into panicked snuffles that racked her entire frame, awakened what were surely cracked ribs down her side.
She was feeling pain. That was good. If she could bring herself out of shock, perhaps she could push the ordeal towards whatever end was meant for it – whether it was the restarting of the engine and her smothering, choking death or, and she could not yet imagine it, her climbing out of the grave. She rolled onto her good side and groped at the ground with her fingers, picked up a square of some ancient discarded thing, poked and pricked at the tape between her wrists. When the sobbing interrupted her bid for freedom she was forced to stop. She tossed away the square when the back of her wrist brushed against something better, a sharp twist of glass. She broke the binds and tore her wrists apart.
Hooky grabbed at the gag. The sounds, when she released them, were repetitive gasps and cries. She rolled and pulled the tape from her legs, tears pouring down her filthy cheeks.
It seemed an age getting up the slope of rubbish to the top of the three-metre-deep grave. By the time she scrambled onto the living earth again her crying had subsided into a morbidly quiet tremor in all her limbs. Her teeth chattered. There, some metres away from the grave, stood Eden and the old man, a squat, menacing creature sitting on the curve of an old tyre. The terrifying skeleton dog was there, wagging its brown tail enthusiastically. Eden looked bemused, her arms folded as she surveyed Hooky where she slumped against the ground.
‘Are you sure that took long enough?’ Eden drawled.
‘Imogen. Imogen –’
‘We know,’ Eden said. ‘We worked that one out by going through your things.’
Hooky scrambled to a crouch and surveyed her injuries. She was sure both wrists were at least sprained, if not fractured. Her right foot was numb. The shaking would not stop. She wondered if she would vomit in front of them both.
‘You stupid bitch,’ Hooky said. Her voice was a hellish rasp. ‘You stupid fucking bitch.’
The old man laughed, turned his cane so it dug a hole in the ground.
‘She’s got you worked out,’ he told Eden cheerfully.
‘Why didn’t you kill me?’ Hooky pleaded. She looked at the hole in the ground and felt hot tears at the corners of her eyes. ‘Why. Why did you –’
‘You’re a child,’ Eden said. She jerked a thumb towards the old man. ‘This one here’s got a sort of … philosophy about it.’
‘I came to warn you.’
‘I realise that,’ Eden said. She gestured to the grave. ‘Now we’re even.’
‘We’re not even,’ Hooky snarled. ‘We’re not done.’
‘Oh no, this isn’t over, no. I completely agree,’ Eden said. ‘This grave will always be here waiting for you. You’ll never, ever be much farther from where you were just a couple of minutes ago. No farther than a heartbeat really. You should take a moment to remember what it was like down there. Cement it in your mind. Because I’ll be keeping it warm for you, little girl.’
Hooky breathed. She didn’t doubt the older woman as she stood silhouetted against the orange sodium lamps that lit the tip, the trash mountain range behind her, an apocalyptic wasteland of discarded things.
‘My parents were murdered too,’ Hooky said. She scrunched her eyes against the childish sound of her own voice. Her trembling hand tapped, flat, against her own chest. ‘I came to you because I understand you.’
Eden twitched at the words, as though startled by a whistle on the wind. Something in the woman looked hurt, Hooky thought, or frightened. It was only an instant of vulnerability, a flash of some past assault, the breeching of the walls by an enemy long defeated, put aside from concern. The woman laughed harshly to cover it, but Hooky saw a glimmer of that fear remaining in Eden’s eyes. A nervous curiosity. Her lips sneered but the rest of her beheld Hooky with the interest a lion takes in the shimmer of movement in the grass near his pride.
‘Stop talking shit,’ Eden snapped. ‘Get up and get out of here.’
‘No,’ Hooky said. Even the old man laughed at that one. She tried to unlock her gritted teeth. ‘I said we weren’t done.’
Caroline Eckhart had my number from the obscene number of times I’d tried to ring her to get her to call off the running festival. When I saw her number flash up on my mobile at the Harper house crime scene, I was sure she was calling me to offer some bullshit apology couched in a bunch of backhanded clues that it was all my fault. I was holding a coffee in one hand and the phone in the other, and Ruben Esposito’s dead head was at my feet. All around me, forensics specialists snapped pictures, dabbed fingerprint powder, laid out little measurement stickers and exhibit numbers alongside interesting bits and pieces. I was waiting for Eden to get back to me, or for one of the squads to tell me they’d pulled over a white van, perhaps the one that I was hoping was missing from the empty garage. I would prob
ably have taken a call from anyone at that moment, so tense was my entire body with longing to hear something about the monster that had obviously flown this very room only minutes before we arrived.
When Caroline called, I was overcome with distaste for her. I couldn’t imagine her helping me comb my hair let alone helping me solve this case.
So I cancelled the call. It’s possible I contributed to what happened to her when I pressed that button. I was lucky, when she called a few seconds later, that curiosity overcame my prejudice and I answered.
‘Detective Be–’
The call ended. I looked at my phone. She sounded puffed, like she was on a run, though her one-and-a-half words were on a higher octave than she usually spoke. I felt a little queasy and called her back immediately. The phone was off.
I stood thinking about the voice. Running it over and over in my mind. Detective Be. Detective Be. Why would she call me in the middle of a run? So that I could be impressed with her? Caroline Eckhart only has time to field calls from nobodies when she’s improving her blood-oxygen saturation capacity and when she’s on the john. Sounded about right. What hadn’t sounded right was the background. It didn’t sound as if she was outside. Was she on her treadmill? Why hadn’t I heard the machine in the background, thrumming away as she plodded towards perfection?
I sucked air between my teeth, clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. Was I really prepared to leave my current crime scene to make sure Caroline Eckhart of all people hadn’t fallen down the stairs while she was on the phone to me and was now lying in a pile of taut, cellulite-free limbs at the bottom of a fire escape somewhere? I tried calling her three more times. Then I gave the biggest sigh in human history, drawing the attention of three forensics freaks nearby.
‘I’m popping out for a minute. I’ll be back,’ I said. Of course I didn’t let anyone know where I was going.
Caroline lived near the end of the Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf, arguably Sydney’s most envied address. There was nowhere else a creature like Caroline could live – she needed to demonstrate the success, the prestige, the perfection that her public image was all about, so it was here that she took interviews with magazine journalists, doing crunches under the gaze of the cityscape. It was here that she shot ‘Caroline at Home’ spreads for Woman’s Day, lounging on her pristine white leather couches – both she and the furniture hard as stone and constructed with all the care of a master sculptor. She breakfasted here on egg white and kale omelettes with her neighbours – the few ridiculously powerful shock jocks and Hollywood actors Australia boasted of – when they were home.
I parked on Cowper Wharf Road between a Porsche 911 Turbo and a Bentley Mulsanne, with an arm over the back of the passenger seat and sweat beading in my hairline, pretending it wasn’t the most important reverse park of my life. Harry’s Café de Wheels hotdog stand was crowded with late-night drinkers with the munchies, a series of young, pot-bellied men who dropped their papers and cardboard boxes when they’d had their fill for the seagulls to swoop up.
Two suited goons on the door stopped me as I tried to enter the huge open cavern of the wharf, once a wool factory and a migrant processing centre. I imagined the scared refugees milling and huddling around the postmodern sculptures that adorned the glossy foyer, children in blankets, barefoot. I flashed my badge and the goons parted. I glanced back and saw the valet scrambling for his phone. The media would be on speed dial, the apartment I accessed noted for the next edition of TheTalk.
It was eleven. When I pounded on the door of Caroline’s fourth-floor apartment, a man in the flat next to hers popped out of his front door, a weathered zombie-creature kept alive on fame alone. He shouted some abuse, fluffed his wispy white hair. I glanced at him, still knocking.
‘Caroline!’ I smacked the door with an open palm, the sound echoing about the huge hall. ‘Oi! Car-o-line!’
I stood at the door and called her phone another three times. I tried the door and found it locked. Then I turned and started to leave, the old guy glaring at me with his sagging lizard eyes and snarling with wet lips. I’d only turned on my heel when I heard a double thump from inside Caroline’s apartment.
I drew my gun and the old man clambered inside his apartment.
In my policing career, I’ve kicked down about three doors. Two of them were very successful, dramatic knock-downs that got me plenty of cheers at the station afterward, and on the third, I went crooked at the last second and sprained my ankle.
I knew the old man was at least listening, so I didn’t want him to hear me (a) having to have multiple shots at the door or (b) howling in agony on the floor after I’d snapped my Achilles tendon. Equally as threatening was the possibility that Caroline Eckhart was fine in there, that she’d simply overdosed on whey protein and was lying paralysed watching me trying to get into her apartment. I didn’t want her telling Woman’s Day what a pussy I was. In the three seconds I prepared for the shot, I reviewed all my academy training on doors and their tenuous relationship with feet. And then I gave it my best.
The door slammed open, knocking over a huge ornate vase, which shattered on the spotless cream tiles. I was overwhelmed, momentarily, with self-admiration.
All the lights were on. I stood in the doorway and dialled the Officer Assistance number on my phone, then put it back in my pocket. My colleagues would triangulate me via GPS and send a team, probably the same team that had crawled all over Tara Harper’s house at Centennial Park. I actioned my weapon and listened. A deep, gravelly voice said, ‘Close the door.’
I did what I was told. A small hall led off the front door. On the left was what was probably a bathroom door, and to the right was a huge living area with a glass wall that looked out over the navy ships docked at Garden Island. A frigate was directly across from us, lit gold with a hundred yellow lights. To the left, another glass wall looked out over the black harbour. I had seconds to take in the view before I assessed the scene in front of the huge balcony.
Caroline Eckhart was flopped like a rag doll on the floor by a weight machine. I could see that she’d taken a good knock to the nose and forehead. Her lip was split in the front and her forehead was just beginning to work on a huge blue egg right near her hairline. She was lying as though on a bed with her head on a pillow that was much too high. The pillow was a set of black steel weights on the bottom of a pulley exercise machine. On either side of her face, two chrome bars kept the weights in line as they slid up and down. Above her head were suspended six weights all in a row, solid blocks of steel I guessed weighed about thirty kilos together. The line pulling the weights ran up through a pulley, down through another pulley, and up into the hand of a woman standing by the machine.
The Sydney Parks Strangler was indeed a woman, but I could only see that because I was standing seven metres from her and I’d heard her voice. From the shape in the black tracksuit, there was no telling her sex. The hood was pulled up around her face, so that I could only see two brightly twinkling eyes in a mass of black shadow and a widely stretched mouth. She stood with one hand by her side and one arm outstretched, fist gripping the rubber handle of the steel-weave line holding the weights.
‘Step any closer and I’ll let go,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘Put the gun down.’
I did. I even kicked it away a little out of good faith so that the weapon slid under a side table stacked with dozens of Caroline Eckhart’s ten-week weight-loss program DVDs. The woman in the hood and I stood in silence for a minute or so, each carefully examining the options. I was trying to recall a list of poorly written checkpoints I’d seen on a whiteboard more than a decade earlier in an overheated classroom in Goulburn while the crisis negotiation specialist prattled on about hostages he’d rescued over the years.
Step one: Prolong the situation.
Step two: Ensure the safety of the hostages.
Step three: I couldn’t remember. I was probably checking out the female recruits.<
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Step four: Foster a relationship between the hostage-taker and the negotiator, and the hostage-taker and the hostages.
‘That weight’s going to get heavy in a minute,’ I said. The wide smile in the hood remained rigid. I was beginning to notice a lopsidedness to it, a kind of menacing Joker quality to its edges that seemed to curl too high, as though the skin from the top had been folded and tucked and now shadowed that on the bottom. A puppet smile. ‘Why don’t you put it on the hook and we can talk without me worrying about you crushing Caroline’s head like a watermelon?’
The woman in the hood laughed. ‘What a pretty image. The broken edges of a green skull. All that red-pink mush.’
‘I wouldn’t rely on there being too much mush in there.’
‘Good tactic. Badmouth the victim. Try to relate to me.’
‘It wasn’t intentional.’ I bit my tongue. There was sweat on my brow but I didn’t want to make any sudden movements to wipe it away. ‘She’s not my favourite person in the world, but that doesn’t mean I want to see her squished.’
I took a step closer. The woman took a step back. The line twanged in the pulley, a sickening sound.
‘It’s been a long time since I did this, but I think we’re supposed to introduce ourselves first.’