The Stalk Club

by Neil Cossins

“I gave my statement to a Detective Robards at Parramatta station yesterday. My name is Jennifer Nolan.”

  It took Nelson’s brain several moments to play catch-up. He hoped he didn’t look too stupid, standing in the doorway, speechless, but he took his time anyway. He soon joined the dots and realised who he was talking to, another member of the so-called Stalk Club, Jennifer Nolan, the girl that Robards had browbeaten into tears the day before.

  “Can I come in please Miss Nolan?” Nelson said, trying to buy himself more time to think and work out his next move.

  “Look, no offence Detective but I think I’ve answered enough questions for the time being and I want to speak to a solicitor before I answer anymore, ok?”

  Nelson quickly searched for a reply that would stall her but nothing came immediately to mind as the door was closed in his face. Nelson stood there for a further thirty seconds before making his way back to his car.

  ***********

  On the drive back to Headquarters, Nelson’s earlier smugness evaporated. He now regretted telling Robards to push Jennifer Nolan so hard in her interview, which had only resulted in putting her offside and in no mood to talk to him. He was also annoyed at himself for being startled at finding Jennifer Nolan when he had expected to find Kylie Faulkner and for having failed to sufficiently regain his composure before she shut the door in his face. As he gunned his car through a set of orange lights he smiled tightly and resolved to start looking very hard at Jennifer Nolan upon his return to HQ.

  Chapter 36

  It was the end of Kylie Faulkner’s final year of school. She had been planning on leaving Cooma and all its not so fond memories for a long time, but after finding the letter addressed to her aunt from her dead parents’ solicitor, her escape plans rapidly accelerated into reality. Before she did however, she knew she couldn’t leave without saying a special goodbye to someone she had come to know intimately. It had to be done.

  While the other kids at her school prepared for their graduation ceremony and made shallow plans for their summer break and their lives beyond, Kylie bought a suitcase and quietly packed the very few belongings she felt were worthy of taking with her into her next life. She had declined the invitations she’d received to attend the graduation ceremony and the after-party, saying that she had an unavoidable family commitment. This had disappointed a number of her male classmates who had begun to realise that she had developed nicely into adult womanhood. On that mild, early December night she went to bed smiling and excited, knowing that the end was near and the next day, if all went according to plan, she would be on her way to a better place.

  Of all the friends and enemies she’d made in her time at Cooma it was Lester who had come to hold a special place in her heart and she wanted to give him something to remember her by. As regular as drunk clockwork, Lester noisily traipsed home at around one a.m.. She had timed her departure with her aunt’s monthly road trip and for the first time ever was pleased she would have Lester to herself.

  He entered her room, as was his way, but to his great surprise he found the light was on and that Kylie was sitting on the end of the bed wearing only a pair of panties and bra, as if she was waiting for him. He went and stood before her, coming to the obvious conclusion that she had finally succumbed to his natural charms.

  “Makes a nice change. About time too.”

  “Come here Lester, I’ve got something for you,” she said coolly.

  He approached her and let her loosen his pants and drop them to the floor. He looked down at her. Normally her eyes were pinched so tightly closed that crows feet were visible at their corners, but on this occasion he was surprised to see them open, green, and staring flatly up at him. If his mind wasn’t dulled with enough alcohol to make the average man comatose he would have realised something was desperately wrong. Before he could think further on these developments Kylie reached for a steak knife she had hidden under her leg and slashed it across his unprotected testicles. Lester screamed wildly as pain lanced through him. He looked at his torn and bleeding testes and then at his attacker.

  “You crazy fucking bitch,” he yelled, his voice high, enraged and broken.

  She stood there ready with knife in hand, the anger and rage that had built up from all the humiliation and abuse finally erupted and turned her into a savage animal ready and willing to fight to the end.

  “Come on,” she taunted him. “Come and get what you deserve you sick bastard.” The look on her face was enough to force him into action and he ran from the house and into the street despite the blinding agony he felt between his legs.

  In hindsight Kylie was glad that Lester’s wounds were relatively superficial even though he deserved to be punished further. She realised that if she had killed or seriously injured him it may have resulted in jail for her or maybe a lifetime on the run. That wasn’t what she wanted. That wouldn’t have been justice. After she calmed down she washed her hands and put her clothes on. As she hefted her luggage she smirked at the blood on her bed and the floor and wondered if that, combined with the several stitches that would be required to hold Lester’s nuts together would be sufficient proof for her aunt.

  “Probably not,” she said to herself as she walked out the door.

  She spent the remainder of the night sleeping at the bus station and in the morning caught the first bus to Canberra. After what had seemed a lifetime but was in fact two years and one hundred and forty-nine days Kylie Faulkner made good her escape.

  *********

  The next day Kylie met with the trustee of her parents’ estate. He was surprised to see her turn up unannounced at his office, as although he had managed her estate for over two years he had never bothered to meet her or ensure that the money being paid to her aunt was in any way benefiting her. He was pretty much as Kylie had expected, middle aged, well presented and confident, but Kylie saw him as a fat, lazy tick that made a living from siphoning off the proceeds of people like herself. She felt a cold malice towards him because he too had played his part in her misery. She contemplated handing out a similar punishment to him, but decided against it, for the time being at least. It took her only ten minutes to convince him that it was in his best interests to hand over the remaining estate money to her. She calmly explained to him that she was her parents’ only child, she was eighteen and for the last two years her aunt’s boyfriend had been molesting her in any way he saw fit while he was effectively being paid thirty thousand dollars per year to do so. She also said that if he didn’t hand over the remaining money she would have no qualms in making life very difficult for him in any way that she could. Something in the implacable stare of her eyes convinced him of the wisdom in complying with her request.

  After subtracting the money he had paid to Kylie’s aunt and his own generous management and administration fees there was only one hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars left of her parents’ initial two hundred and seventy thousand dollar estate. Although he was sad to see the money go, he cut her a cheque which she took straight to the bank and deposited. In addition to the nine thousand dollars she had saved from working, she had enough to start her new life. That same day she caught the bus for Sydney.

  Chapter 37

  Slowly but surely Kylie Faulkner tried to put the previous few years of her life out of her mind. She enrolled at the University of Sydney, worked part time as a waitress and purchased a unit with the proceeds of her trust money. After she graduated she travelled and worked and attempted to lead what she perceived to be a normal life.

  And yet the more she tried to escape her past the more it seemed to doggedly cling to her and remind her who she was and the tainted soil she had grown from. She had few if any close friends and found it difficult to form long term relationships with men. Adding to her misery were the flashbacks of the day her parents died that continued to haunt her nights.

  In the period immediately after the car accident she had remembered little of it. However, as time slowly progressed, horrific gli
mpses of the past would sometimes rush through her mind as she was on the verge of falling asleep. Visions of swimming through cold dark water and the white lifeless faces of her parents would shake her violently awake and leave her unable to sleep for hours thereafter.

  Unlike most memories that fade and blur around the edges with time, the memories from the accident grew sharper and more vivid each passing year and plagued her with their insistent nature. Unbidden, fragmented pieces slowly knitted themselves together in her mind and revealed to her more and more of what happened that night. The stress resulting from the flashbacks caused her to consult doctors, psychologists and even hypnotists in an effort to calm her mind and reduce their effect, but none of them were successful in easing her torment.

  Twelve years after the accident, Kylie Faulkner’s life was steadily falling apart. The dreams and flashbacks harassed her to the edge of exhaustion and insanity. In a final and desperate effort to save herself she decided to embrace her memories and try to understand their nature and meaning. She wrote down everything she remembered from the accident and as the flashbacks raced through her mind she grabbed snippets of extra information from them and slowly built a fuller, more complete picture of the event in her conscious mind. She remembered the night more clearly, including that the other car involved was a large battered 4wd and that it had appeared around the blind corner, driving in the middle of the road with headlights and two bullbar mounted spotlights blazing in the direction of her parents’ car. The flashbacks also revealed that her father had instinctively tried to shield his eyes from the glare and in an effort to avoid the collision had swerved to the left. He had tried to steer the car back onto the road but it was too late. The car slid off the shoulder and speared into the river. She remembered escaping from the car and swimming frantically upwards through the darkness as her lungs screamed for air and then crawling up onto the riverbank through the mud and reeds as the pain from her broken ankle sent raw jagged pain shooting up her leg.

  In time, Kylie began to believe that there was a greater force behind the flashbacks and that perhaps they were a sign, perhaps a plea from her long dead but unresting parents, crying out for justice beyond the grave. It made sense to her and became her focus and her passion. She spent time investigating the accident during her waking hours and filled scrapbook after scrapbook with newspaper cuttings, photographs of the accident and her own notes. She contacted anyone who had been at the scene of the accident, the paramedics, the holiday park manager, the tow truck driver, and unashamedly drilled them in search of extra information. She contacted the Sergeant who had attended the scene of the accident. Armed with her new memories of the accident she hoped to convince him to reopen the case and ultimately identify the driver of the car that caused the accident and bring them to justice.

  She sat in Sergeant Soward’s office and told him about what she remembered from that night and implored him to reopen the investigation. He pulled the case file and scanned through it, but despite her enthusiasm and his sympathy for her he was unmoved.

  “I’m sorry Kylie, but we’ve got enough work to keep us going for a year to come and seeing that you don’t have any real evidence, I just can’t approve the reopening of a twelve year old case.”

  “But there must be something you can do? I’ve remembered so much more now. I can help you. I could even work with you.”

  Sergeant Soward studied her face. He was moved by her plea but the harsh reality of running an understaffed country police station remained absolute in his mind. If he relented for her, then other, more current work would not get done.

  “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do unless you have something certain to go on.”

  She tried to read him and turn him to her way of thinking, like she had successfully done with many men before, but could find no weakness in his character, no extravagance of pride or ego to exploit. She tried to flatter him but he shrugged it off. She stretched back in her chair, slowly and languidly, and then leaned over his desk, to show him some of her notes, suggestively revealing her cleavage, but he kept his eyes on the paper and didn’t even glance in her direction. After half an hour of discussing, cajoling and pleading to no avail, she thought of a new tack and slumped forward in her chair, complaining of nausea and a migraine. Her act was convincing and Sergeant Soward rose and offered to get her a glass of water and a wet towel. As soon as he left the office she sprang up like a startled cat and rifled through the case file on his desk.

  She quickly scanned the pages and tore out just one that related to the suspects that had been questioned over the case. By the time Sergeant Soward returned, Kylie Faulkner was back in her seat with her hand held to her face, shielding her sensitive migraine eyes from the light.

  ************

  Obsessed and energised by the new information snatched straight from the case file, Kylie threw herself into trying to succeed where the police had failed and work out who was driving the other car in the accident. According to the file there had been five people who had been questioned over the accident. She ignored all calls on her mobile that day as she poured over the notes made by the investigating officer on each of them. She searched for any possible link between the new evidence and what she already knew about the accident. After a long and exhausting day she fell asleep on her lounge.

  Again she dreamed of the accident as she had so many times before. It always began in the same way, always with her parents singing in the car as they started the trip to the south coast. As the dream played forward she saw the fateful corner looming ominously in the distance. She floated above the car in her dream and watched herself as she dozed in the back seat. As her parents’ car rounded the bend, light filled the cabin, her mother screamed, Kylie snapped awake and her father wrenched the steering wheel to the left.

  And then, just for the barest of moments, there in between the confused miasma of bright lights and screaming and screeching of tyres she saw something she had never before remembered in her dreams. She looked up from her seat and saw a young face in the other vehicle turning towards her parents’ car. His hair was light brown, long and lank, his eyes blue, wide set and unfocussed, his full mouth parted in laughter. Kylie awoke from her dream with a physical jolt but tightly clutched the new image, savouring it, touching it over and over in her mind and burning it into her memory. It would be a face she would never forget. The field had been narrowed to one.

  Using the internet, it was a simple enough task for her to track down the five main suspects from the list stolen from the police file. One by one, like a black cat, she quietly crossed their paths, searching for the man of her dreams. After finding that the first four were not a match, she was beginning to think that the man from her dreams might just have been a creation of her own desperate mind seeking closure from the pain of the past.

  She tracked the fifth suspect down at his work in a store specialising in selling security equipment in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. According to the case notes she had lifted from Sergeant Soward’s desk, he had been a suspect, the main suspect, because he had been arrested for drunk driving just twelve kilometres from where the accident had occurred and only ten minutes after the time of the accident. The car he had been driving was a 4wd. It was a neat fit. He had been visited and questioned the day after the accident and his car was checked, but his tyre treads hadn’t matched those found at the crime scene. He had also denied that he was had driven along the road in question at the time of the accident and without any hard evidence, the investigating officer had not been able to pursue the suspect any further.

  Kylie entered the shop and browsed through its merchandise while surreptitiously studying the faces of the staff working there. She discounted the short, solid, dark haired assistant who was completing a transaction with a customer and focused on another who had his back to her as he stocked shelves. She watched him from a distance and waited patiently, hoping. He turned his head to the side as he answered a question from his co-w
orker and Kylie audibly gasped as she saw his face, the face from her dream. Older now, less carefree, more creased, but the same unmistakable face nonetheless. A mixture of emotions assailed her. Her hands started to shake and beads of perspiration erupted on her forehead. She wanted to confront him and scream at him for the parents he had taken from her. She wanted to tell him about the years of hell he had put her through and the nightmares and the pain she had suffered. But her rage was soon replaced by a cold and bitter anger and as she walked away, her anger focalised into one small hard point, with one thought repeating itself in her mind. Justice.

  Kylie pondered her next move. As she still had no tangible evidence that this man was responsible for initiating the accident that killed her parents she thought it unlikely that Sergeant Soward would show any further interest in reopening the case. He had made his position quite clear to her. She considered buying a gun and extracting natural justice with her own hands and although the thought held some attraction, she decided that a quick and easy death would not be sufficient punishment for him and would not result in justice being served. She calculated that he owed her thirty years of life for each of her parents. To this debt she added her own suffering at the hands of Lester and the years of trauma that followed. At that stage, she wasn’t sure how she was going to extract this debt from him.

  His name was Craig Thoms.

  Chapter 38

  On the drive back to HQ Nelson again played the case through his mind, weighing each piece of information he could recall and tried to fit them together. The loose ends taunted him, but their only effect was to make his resolve stronger and his urgency greater to tie them up neatly and solve the case. He decided his next move would be to put Kylie Faulkner’s and Jennifer Nolan’s lives under the microscope and work out what the connection between them and Emilio Fogliani was. He knew there was a link, but the form and nature of it eluded him for the time being. Once he had found the link he would bring Jennifer Nolan in for another interview, with her damn solicitor and she would not be let off as lightly as she had been today.