‘Is there a good time? I’ve just finished a sixteen-hour shift.’ She looked from Dave to Ed, then rolled her eyes. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’ She opened the screen door and stepped to one side to let them pass.
‘First door on the right,’ she said.
They filed down a narrow hallway and turned into a small lounge room. Beth closed the door behind them with a loud thud, cutting them off from the world outside. The furniture was minimalist to the point of being clinical — a white leather couch and a matching chair with a glass coffee table. A black-and-white geometric rug was the only soft furnishing in the room. There were no curtains, no cushions and no knick-knacks. If people’s houses matched their personalities, then Ms Crowley was all angles and ice. Against one wall was a glass display cabinet. Neatly arranged on the glass shelves was an extensive collection of knives and saws.
Ed looked across at Dave who was already looking at him.
‘Sit down.’ She gestured at the couch and took the chair.
They sat. Ed wasn’t surprised to find the couch was rock hard.
‘Impressive collection,’ Dave said, pointing at the cabinet.
‘I collect antique surgical instruments. Why are you interested in my father all of a sudden? When I reported him missing, I couldn’t get anyone to take me seriously.’
‘Over ninety per cent of missing persons turn up in the first two weeks. I’m sure the officers who came to see you were hoping your father would turn up of his own accord,’ Dave said.
Ed had to suppress a smile. Dave wasn’t even bothering with the charm routine. He was probably worried she’d eat him alive.
‘Well, they were wrong, weren’t they? It’s been nearly a month and he’s still missing. So why now?’
‘We found some remains recently. Your father and a number of other missing persons match the age and general description, so we’re reviewing case files and collecting DNA to help with our investigation. Can you tell us a little about your father?’ Ed said.
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’ve already told the other officer all there is to know. He was a difficult man, and he was suffering from dementia. I’m an only child and my mother died years ago, so it was up to me to look after him.’
‘I see. And that wasn’t something you wanted to do?’ Ed said.
‘Have you got a parent with dementia, Detective?’
Ed shook his head.
‘Then don’t judge me. I put my career on hold to look after him. I made sure he was clean, clothed and fed. His periods of lucidity were diminishing. When he was still living by himself, he used to go for days without eating or washing. It was either take him in or put him in care.’
‘And that wasn’t an option?’ Ed asked.
‘It costs a fortune.’ She pressed her lips together. The effect was alarming.
‘What sort of doctor are you, Dr Crowley?’ Ed asked.
‘I’m registrar in the orthopaedic unit at Adelaide Hospital.’
‘Tell us what happened the day your father disappeared,’ Dave said.
‘I went to the shops. He was up in his room. I was only gone for about an hour. And when I came home he was gone.’
‘Had he done that before?’
‘No, I always deadlocked the door when I went out.’
‘And this time you forgot?’
‘No, he worked out where I kept the spare key. He took my loose change and some food and left.’
‘Did he take any clothes or personal belongings?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘Is there anywhere he might have gone?’
‘I checked with the new owners of his house, and the neighbours. No one had seen him. Only a handful of his RSL buddies are still alive and none of them had seen him either. I even checked in with some of the aid agencies and charities to see if he’d gone to one of them. He just walked out the door and disappeared.’
Ed studied her face, trying to work out if there was any sorrow beneath the frown. Her expression didn’t waver.
‘Did he have his own bank account?’
‘No, I had medical and legal power of attorney and I controlled all his finances.’
‘So he never left the house unless it was with you, and he had no money of his own,’ Dave said.
‘Correct.’
Ed was beginning to feel sorry for Len Crowley. Dementia or not, he’d been living in a virtual prison with his daughter as his keeper. It wasn’t much of an existence. Part of Ed was secretly hoping the guy had escaped and found a better life for himself somewhere. It didn’t seem likely though, without any means of support.
‘Do you have any of your father’s possessions that we could take a DNA sample from? A toothbrush, perhaps?’ Dave asked.
‘Yes. I’ve packed away all his things so it’ll take me a moment to get it. Wait here.’
She strode out of the room. Ed and Dave exchanged another look.
‘She’s packed up his things already? That’s harsh!’ Dave whispered.
Ed nodded. It could also be an indication that she knew he was dead. She might be worth looking at more closely, but that wasn’t a sentiment he was prepared to voice while in her sitting room. He couldn’t help wondering if she kept an ice-pick under her bed.
They sat twitching on the couch for another five minutes before she came back into the room holding a toothbrush in a plastic sandwich bag.
‘Here you go.’
‘Thanks. We’ll compare your father’s DNA to the remains we’ve found and let you know as quickly as we can.’
She looked at her watch.
They took the hint and stood up to leave. For the second time that day Ed felt like he needed to gulp in fresh air when he stepped outside.
‘Don’t orthopaedic surgeons use bone saws?’ Dave said.
‘I guess so. What, you think she chopped her dad up?’
‘Maybe. She sounds tighter than a fish’s arse. Maybe he died of natural causes and she decided to chop him up with some of those antiques and dumped the remains to save on funeral costs.’
‘Jesus, Dave, I worry about how your mind works.’
‘Hey, don’t tell me you haven’t come across weirder shit than that, because I know you have. And you can’t tell me it’s normal for a woman to have a cabinet full of blades and saws in her living room.’
‘True, but usually people don’t go to those kinds of extremes to save a few thousand bucks. Especially when they earn over a hundred grand a year.’
‘All right, maybe she just got fed up with him holding her career back and decided to bump him off.’
‘That sounds more likely. There’s just a couple of problems with that theory.’
‘Which are?’
‘What did she do with the rest of his body? Assuming whoever did this dumped the hands, feet and head as a way of trying to disguise the victim’s identity, where’s the rest? Why haven’t we found it? And more importantly, why the second victim?’
‘I dunno. Maybe the rest of the body’s in the dump too and we just haven’t found it yet. She might have known the other victim too. We won’t know till we identify him.’
Ed’s phone chirruped a message. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at it.
‘It’s Janice. She wants me to call in.’
‘No need, we’ll be back there in fifteen minutes. You can see her in person,’ Dave said.
Ed shoved his phone back into his pocket. His mind wandered to Cass again. He’d call her when he got back to the office. Hopefully a couple of days with her family would have put her in a better mood and she’d be ready to come home. The threat of Brian Jenson on the loose might also make her keen to have him around. Or not. Who knew?
CHAPTER
20
I stood, stunned into immobility, the gunshot still roaring in my ears. Jenson lay slumped in his chair. His head had fallen forwards, his chin resting on his chest, and his hands hung limply at his sides. Blood was spreading in an ever-widening circle in the
middle of his shirt and running down his arms and fingers till it dripped onto the floor.
My arm was still raised, the gun pointed at him, but as the initial rush of adrenaline subsided the pain of holding it aloft kicked in and I dropped my arm to my side. Was he dead or just pretending? I didn’t want to risk going over to check. I studied his chest for a few moments, looking for any signs of life, but saw none. Finally I let myself look at Mum, then Gran. They were both unconscious. There was a puddle of blood underneath Mum’s chair and the front of her shirt was almost completely red.
‘Mum?’ She didn’t move or answer.
Gran was on the floor. She looked lifeless. Keeping Jenson within sight and beyond arm’s reach, I sidled around him and stooped over Gran, searching for a pulse. It was faint, and I could see the blue of her veins through the tissue-paper skin on her face and neck.
I needed to get them help, but the phone was in the hallway and I didn’t want to risk leaving them with Jenson unless I was sure he wasn’t going to rouse anytime soon. I scanned the room for a solution and my eyes came to rest on a broom propped behind the door. I crossed the room, grabbed it and stood in front of Jenson, still careful to stay out of his reach.
The gun was still gripped in my right hand so I raised the broom with my left and poked him in the chest. He didn’t move. I repeated the process, prodding harder this time. His body shifted slightly on the seat. His head fell to one side and now I could see his eyes. They were open and staring blankly into nothingness. He was dead.
I darted into the hallway and plucked the phone off its cradle. My legs could barely hold me up. I went to dial emergency but remembered Phil’s parting words. Her card was still in my pocket.
She answered on the second ring. The sound of her voice was enough to snap me out of my daze. Suddenly the enormity of what I’d just done hit me like a physical blow.
‘Hello?’ Phil sounded irritated as she repeated her greeting, and I knew she was only nanoseconds from hanging up.
‘Phil?’ I croaked.
‘Yes? Who is this?’
‘It’s Cass.’
‘Cass?’ The anger dropped from her voice in an instant. ‘What’s wrong?’
I slid my back down the wall and sank onto the hallway floor.
‘We need help. He forced me to drive back here …’ I started to cry.
‘Shit. Jenson? Is he still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is anyone hurt?’
‘Mum’s been shot. Gran’s collapsed. She’s hardly breathing.’
‘Where’s Jenson?’
I said nothing, looking back towards the kitchen door.
‘Cass? Are you there? Where is he now? Are you still in danger?’
‘No, no danger.’
I heard her sigh with relief.
‘I killed him.’
I was barely paying attention to the paramedic fussing over me, taking my pulse and checking my blood pressure. My attention was riveted on the team busy working on Mum and Gran. Mum was being hooked up to a drip and loaded onto a stretcher. She had an oxygen mask on. Gran was still unconscious and was also on a stretcher. The white façade of our Cape Cod-style house was glowing red and blue with the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles.
‘I’m fine.’ I focused on the young woman tending to me. ‘Not a scratch. I need to go with them.’
‘You’ve had a shock, your blood pressure’s all over the shop and you’ve got a nasty bump on the head, but I think you’ll be all right. I’d still like to have a doctor check out your head though, just to be sure. You can ride in one of the ambulances with your mother or grandmother if you like.’ She smiled at me.
‘I can’t do that. I’ll drive.’
‘You can’t drive. There’s nothing to worry about. Ambulances aren’t really that scary …’
A wave of exhaustion swept over me. I couldn’t summon the energy to explain the effect that riding in the back of an ambulance would have on me. How many people had met their ends in those vehicles? I’d experienced multiple visions in an ambulance once before. It wasn’t something I wanted to do again in a hurry.
Thankfully, Phil chose that moment to stride over to me. She’d arrived at the same time as the ambulances and had come bursting into the house like the cavalry to find me slumped in an untidy heap in the hallway, the phone clutched in one hand and the gun in the other.
‘How is she?’ The question was addressed to the paramedic, not me.
They discussed me like I wasn’t there, with the paramedic reporting my strange refusal to get into an ambulance as though I was some kind of phobic.
‘That’s fine. If she’s well enough she can ride with me. I’ll take her to the hospital and make sure she gets herself checked out.’
I looked at her gratefully.
‘Your mum is going to be fine,’ Phil said, turning her attention to me.
‘What about Gran?’ I asked.
Phil looked over to the stretcher where Gran was lying.
‘Cass, she’s not so good. The paramedics are worried about how weak she is. They can’t find any obvious injuries. What happened to her?’
I looked over at the ambos looking after Gran. They’d loaded her into the back of an ambulance and were ready to go. Mum’s ambulance was already moving off down the road.
‘Gran hates ambulances.’
‘She isn’t aware she’s in one. It’ll be OK.’
I dragged my eyes away from the frenetic activity surrounding Gran. ‘Can we talk in the car?’
‘Let’s go.’
I stood up to walk and found my legs were still wobbly. The paramedic opened her mouth to say something, but Phil cut her short.
‘I’ll make sure she sees a doctor as soon as we get to the hospital.’
The young woman left reluctantly and we moved off towards Phil’s dark blue sedan. She tucked me into the passenger seat and we were on the road a minute later. The ambulances were already out of sight.
‘So, tell me what happened with your gran,’ Phil said.
‘She tried to heal him.’
‘Jenson?’
I nodded.
‘Was he injured?’
‘No, she can ease emotional pain as well.’
Phil’s mouth dropped open. ‘Let me get this straight, your grandmother was trying to fix whatever the fuck was wrong inside that nut-job’s head?’
‘Yes, something like that.’
‘Wow. I’m guessing it didn’t go so well?’
‘I don’t know. I could see the effort was sucking the life out of her. I had to do something. I managed to get the gun off him while she was healing him. He stood up and told me he felt fantastic, and I just lost the plot and shot him.’
She shot me a fierce look, complete with beetled brows and lips of string. ‘Don’t repeat that to anyone. No one needs to know. All they need to know is that he was threatening you and your family, you managed to wrestle the gun off him and you shot him in self-defence, OK?’
I didn’t respond.
‘Telling people about what your grandmother can do will only confuse the issue, especially if people believe she actually fixed him and you shot him anyway.’
‘He was a monster,’ I said.
‘He was.’
We lapsed into silence and I rested my head against the back of the seat and tried to block out the barrage of images replaying on the backs of my retinas like some internal cinema. There was a knot in my stomach that wouldn’t go away. What was going to happen to Mum and Gran? It was all my fault. Once again, my talent had brought pain and trouble to my family. Two years earlier I’d decided to try and use it to help the police and ever since, our serene, happy existence had been repeatedly torn apart. All psychic gifts came at a price, but the price of mine was just too high.
‘Cass?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Do you want me to call Ed? He’d want to know what’s going on.’
My eyes flew open as a fresh wave of
guilt hit me. I’d been so wrapped up in my own pain I hadn’t even thought of Ed. That was a new development. Normally when I was in trouble he was the first person I turned to. Why had that changed? I tried to work it out but I just didn’t have the mental energy.
‘He’ll want to come down here,’ I said.
‘Of course he will. He loves you.’
The tears finally came, buckets of them, drowning my cheeks and making my nose stream. Phil reached into the back seat and handed me a box of tissues.
‘Sorenson has probably told him about the call-out to your place. I’d be surprised if he isn’t already on his way. I’ll call him when we get to the hospital and give him an update while you’re being checked out by a doctor.’
‘I don’t think I need a doctor.’
‘I don’t really care what you think. You’re seeing a doctor. I would never forgive myself if something happened later. Besides, you need to be strong for your mum and gran and you can’t do that if you’re sick. Fix yourself so you can be there for them.’
Phil threw a look in my direction.
‘What?’
‘Hospitals are a bit of a problem for me.’
‘Why? Oh … right.’ The realisation dawned on her. ‘I’ll get them to see you in the maternity ward. No deaths there.’
I managed a half-smile. It was a good idea but I wasn’t sure how she was going to explain my presence, or convince an emergency doctor to visit me in the birthing suites. I also didn’t have the heart to remind her that women and babies still died in childbirth occasionally. That wasn’t something I was keen to experience. And I’d still have to navigate the hospital to see Mum and Gran. I closed my eyes again.
CHAPTER
21
‘Jesus Christ, Dyson, don’t you check your messages?’ Crackers half spat, half yelled the words at Ed the minute he spotted him back in the office.
‘I was just going to see Janice now,’ Ed said. ‘We were on our way back and I thought it could wait fifteen minutes.’ The very act of having to explain himself sent his blood pressure up a few notches.
Missing (The Cass Lehman Series Book 3) Page 15