Noah's Law

by Randa Abdel-Fattah

  She took a step towards me. ‘I told you to let it go. Casey’s going to tell your aunt. Your aunt is cool but when it comes to clients, she is psycho. Be prepared for her to throw a tantrum over this.’

  ‘Come on, Jacinta. We’re talking about a woman who was murdered. There’s something really dodgy about the case. But Casey’s got too much pride to listen to me.’

  Jacinta laughed. ‘Noah, listen to yourself. I thought you didn’t care about anything except chocolate and having a laugh.’

  ‘Ouch. Anyway, I can still eat chocolate and think there’s something screwed up about it all.’

  ‘Maybe if you had more solid evidence Casey would listen. So far, it’s pretty much speculation and intuition. Go back to the basics. What would you tender as evidence in court? It wouldn’t be a just-friends versus girlfriend kiss theory or Bernie’s walking habits.’

  I hated to admit it but she was kind of right. I’d been going about this the wrong way. My naivety was embarrassing.

  ‘I’m going to the scene of the crime.’

  She frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m going to Jenkins Storage World. I need to see where she was killed. Let’s start from the beginning. Come with me?’

  She raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond immediately.

  ‘Please,’ I pleaded. ‘This case is the only thing making my time here bearable. I can get through the next weeks if I know you’ll help me. Otherwise, I’ll just be stuck at the photocopier counting the seconds until five o’clock.’

  ‘So a dead body is the only exciting thing about this place. And I thought it was my charm.’

  ‘Yeah, that too,’ I said. ‘Come with me, okay? We could reenact the murder.’

  She snorted. ‘Like a D-grade current affairs program?’

  I smiled. ‘Yeah. Crappy acting and all.’

  ‘Give me one good reason why I should agree.’

  ‘I’ll give you three.’

  She leaned back against the photocopier and smirked. ‘This should be interesting.’

  I flashed her a brilliant smile. ‘First, whether you admit it or not, this case has got you thinking and you actually don’t know what to make of it all. So going to the scene of the crime and seeing it for yourself might help you tie up some loose ends or confirm that maybe I’m the one in the wrong. So it’s a chance to see who’s right, you or me, and that’s pretty tempting.’

  ‘Is this still the first reason?’ she asked, her lip curled pleasantly.

  ‘Yes. Don’t interrupt. The second reason is that you can treat the experience as a case study and use it in one of your essays at uni. That gives you a competitive edge against all the other first-year students who, unlike you, spent their summer sunbaking in Bali or selling schooners at a pub in London instead of working at a law firm trying to build up their CV.’

  She laughed loudly. ‘And finally . . .?’

  ‘Let’s see, number three . . . An opportunity to spend more time with me, which is, in and of itself, justification enough.’

  She hit me on the shoulder. I loved the look on her face. I knew she was in.

  The midnight Harbour Bridge fireworks were spectacular. A random happy drunk threw herself in my path and planted a slobbery kiss on my cheek. ‘Happy New Year!’ she slurred and then sat down on the kerb and started to cry.

  Hakim, Luke and Amit burst out laughing.

  ‘Wouldya look at the ladies’ man!’ Amit joked.

  We mucked around for a while; walked among the masses of people celebrating; had a laugh at all the idiotic things people were saying and doing. We were also enjoying the fact that people were probably having a laugh at our expense too (what did we expect given that Luke had dressed up as a clown, Hakim as Shrek, Amit as Gandhi and me as an alien?).

  I debated whether to send Jacinta a text message. Amit thought I should call her but there was no way I was going to look that desperate. I decided against any communication that night. She already thought I was some immature high school kid. She didn’t need to know I was thinking about her while I watched the fireworks. God knows how she’d interpret that message. I’d grown up with females. I knew the way their brains attacked text messages: like vultures over a carcass. It was a mental feeding frenzy. I could just imagine her talking to her flatmate. ‘He must have the hots for me. He sent me a message just after the countdown. He was thinking of me at the most symbolically romantic time of the year.’

  The scene played in my head and I cringed. So I waited until the next afternoon, New Year’s Day, to send her a two-in-one text message, perfect for just these kind of scenarios.

  Hey Jacinta. How about we visit JSW on Sat? HNY by the way.

  Noah

  Half an hour later she sent her reply:

  Okay fine. Send me when/where details. HNY 2 U 2.

  Amit agreed to come with me to Jenkins Storage World because he wanted to meet Jacinta (‘Let me be the judge of how hot she is’) and he was ‘beached out for the week’ (talk about rubbing it in) and didn’t mind spending his Saturday morning at the scene of a murder. Hakim and Luke were headed to Bondi so we arranged to hook up with them in the afternoon.

  Jacinta, Amit and I met in a café across the road from Jenkins Storage World.

  Jacinta stared at me incredulously as I scoffed down a choc chip muffin and washed it down with an iced mocha. ‘You really love your chocolate, don’t you?’

  ‘Five females in the family,’ I said, in between bites. ‘What choice have I had?’

  ‘You should see him when it’s that time of the month,’ Amit joked and Jacinta shot him a puzzled look. Amit smiled in response.

  ‘I won’t bother with introductions, then,’ I said. ‘Amit, you pretty much left me with nothing after that comment. You’re on your own, mate.’

  Jacinta chortled. ‘So, Amit, you’re the insecure goofball who can’t resist sexist jokes so long as you get a laugh?’

  ‘That’s one theory,’ he said brightly. ‘Now let’s try mine. You’re the smart, bossy, take-no-crap-from-anybody-especially- guys sidekick?’

  ‘Sidekick?’ she repeated, horrified.

  He grinned and nodded.

  ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ I added.

  ‘Well, let’s see,’ she said. ‘A sidekick’s basic stereotyped role is to support the leading act. If female, looks are essential. If male, one-liner comments fit the bill.’

  ‘You definitely don’t have the looks,’ Amit said.

  ‘And you definitely don’t have the one-liners.’

  ‘Great, you’re even,’ I said.

  Jacinta crossed her arms. ‘Well, as sidekicks go, I think I’ve surpassed expectations.’ She leaned over and took a piece of paper out of her bag. Dangling it in front of us, she said: ‘You owe me a week’s worth of coffee runs.’

  ‘Why is there no such thing as a tea run?’ Amit asked no-one in particular. ‘I mean, people order tea all the time.’

  Not wanting to encourage Amit, I ignored his comment. ‘This better be good,’ I said, reaching out and taking the paper from her.

  Amit leaned forward, reading with me.

  ‘The police report!’ I exclaimed. ‘But it wasn’t in the file. I’ve gone through the whole thing.’

  ‘I’ve been working on a matter for John and I found it mistakenly filed in the miscellaneous documents for that folder. He usually does his own filing so he probably picked up the wrong mail from Jill.’

  Beaming at her, I read the report.

  Case Number: HOM 08/07/02/6354

  Incident: Homicide

  Reporting Officer: Constable Dominic Thompson

  Date of Report: 02 July 2008

  At about 1730 hours on 2 July 2008, I received a dispatch of a 000 notice about a suspected homicide at 129 Paisley Road. I called for back-up and immediately proceeded to the crime scene.

  I was the first police officer to arrive on the scene. I arrived at the scene at about 1740 hours. Constabl
e Patterson, Constable Walters and Constable Singh arrived within approximately five minutes of my arrival. There was a huddle of five people in the car park, pointing to the corner of the car park. I went to the corner and found a body on the ground. The body was positioned between a large garbage bin and a vehicle. I approached the body. The victim was Caucasian, female, between thirty-six and forty years old. Her skull had been bashed in and although there was brain matter on the ground I felt for a pulse to conclusively determine that she was dead. Based on a visual examination of the injuries sustained by the victim I suspected that she had been bashed over the head with a heavy, blunt instrument, possibly a brick or rock. I also observed that one of her shoes was missing. I took a photograph of the victim’s other shoe.

  The following is a diagrammatic representation of the crime scene:

  I conducted a survey of the crime scene. I did not find a weapon. The deceased’s handbag was thrown approximately two metres from her body. Her wallet was in the bag. I found a set of keys beside the rear left wheel of the vehicle. I surveyed the area to determine if there was any security surveillance equipment. There was none.

  During the course of my examination of the immediate vicinity of the body, my colleagues had sealed the crime scene with police tape. I approached Constable Patterson and enquired whether any witnesses had come forth. He replied in the negative.

  However, when the crowd of people dispersed and I was supervising the forensics team which had arrived at the scene, a male witness approached me. He worked in Stir Fry Noodles, a shop directly adjacent to Jenkins Storage World. He said the following:

  ‘Between five and five thirty a guy ran through the shop. He must have entered from the back door. He ran out the front. I was out front with the deliveries truck so I didn’t get a good look at him. All I remember is that he was wearing black.’

  ‘I feel sick,’ Amit said quietly.

  ‘Me too,’ Jacinta whispered.

  ‘She didn’t stand a chance,’ I said.

  ‘Why on earth would the killer steal her shoe?’ Jacinta asked. ‘What a sicko.’

  ‘How do we know he stole it?’ I said. ‘The report doesn’t say that.’

  ‘Well where else would it be?’ Jacinta said.

  ‘Lost?’ Amit suggested, adding, ‘Under the garbage bin? Under the car?’

  ‘The report would have said that,’ Jacinta said. ‘Forensics would have done a search for evidence all over that car park. So why steal it?’

  ‘Don’t some criminals keep mementos?’ Amit said. ‘Although, they’d be the more twisted, pathological type. Because it was a robbery, the missing shoe would be harder to explain.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, it’d all be pretty quick, wouldn’t it? Bash her, grab the cash, run away. You wouldn’t stick around to get a piece of memorabilia.’

  ‘Unless there was evidence on it,’ Jacinta speculated. ‘Maybe a fingerprint or hair, and the criminal didn’t have time to wipe the prints off or remove the hair. Safer to just take the shoe. Actually . . . that’s a pretty dumb theory. If you’re in the middle of killing someone then you wouldn’t exactly notice a stray hair.’

  ‘Okay, forget the shoe,’ Amit said. ‘What else? We know there was one witness.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘that guy from Stir Fry Noodles wasn’t a witness. He just saw a guy run through his shop.’

  ‘But that must have been the killer,’ Jacinta protested.

  I shrugged. ‘We don’t know that for sure. We should check out the crime scene first.’

  ‘There were no witnesses to the actual murder,’ Jacinta said, pointing to the police report. ‘But look across the road. The car park is behind the shops. It’s directly next to that block of flats. The flats overlook the car park. Surely somebody saw or heard something?’

  ‘The cops arrived at around five forty so they would have got the call just before then,’ Amit said.

  ‘So, if I remember correctly,’ Jacinta said, ‘Maureen left the store just after five—’

  ‘No, five sharp,’ I corrected her. ‘Webb said she left at five sharp so she could make it to her gym class.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Jacinta said. ‘Well, that means she was murdered between five and around five thirty. So why are there no witnesses?’

  ‘Good question,’ Amit said. ‘That’s not exactly the dead of night, is it?’

  ‘She would have been screaming, wouldn’t she?’ Jacinta said. ‘Somebody must have heard something suspicious.’

  Amit shrugged. ‘Well how many times have you had a funny feeling about something you’ve heard and just ignored it?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Jacinta conceded.

  ‘Also,’ Amit said, ‘the view into the car park is pretty much blocked from the main road by the fencing along Paisley Road.’

  ‘The weapon wasn’t found,’ I murmured as I scanned the report.

  ‘Nope,’ Jacinta said. ‘Murderer must have taken it with him.’

  ‘Or her,’ Amit said. ‘Equal opportunity.’

  ‘Nah, it was a man. Most killers are men,’ Jacinta said grimly.

  ‘That’s not fair!’ Amit said.

  Jacinta shrugged. ‘You can’t argue with stats.’

  I jumped up. ‘Okay, let’s leave the which gender is worse argument for later.’

  We walked across Paisley Road and into the car park. I noticed the cross street, High Street, to our left. That was where the shops’ entrances were.

  The car park was fairly small, with spaces for about twenty cars. To the right and back was an L-shaped brick wall shared with the block of flats next-door, just as Constable Thompson had drawn. To the left were the shops’ back doors. Constable Thompson’s report said that Maureen’s body was found in the corner near the garbage bins. But from the footpath on Paisley Road, the garbage bins were not in view.

  ‘She was murdered in the corner of the car park,’ I said. ‘You can’t see the garbage bins from the main road. So maybe there really were no witnesses.’

  Despite the fact that there was nothing to indicate that there had been a murder there, I felt shivers down my back.

  We noticed a back door that opened out onto the car park. The first shop’s back door had a small sign printed near the door handle: CHICKIN’s LICKIN’.

  Further down from it was another door. The sign on top read STIR FRY IN THE NOODLES.

  On top of the third door was an old sign, some of the letters scratched out by vandals: DELIVERIES: JERK S STORAGE WORLD.

  ‘Maybe the staff from the other two shops heard or saw something?’ Jacinta said.

  ‘Let’s go and speak to them,’ I said, ‘while Amit checks if Rodney Marks is inside.’

  Because Jacinta and I didn’t want to bump into Rodney Marks, in case he recognised us at another meeting between the two sides at work, we had all agreed that it was best if Amit went in alone, armed with a description of Rodney.

  Jacinta and I walked to the front of the shops on High Street.

  We entered Chickin’ Lickin’ first. A man and woman were behind the counter serving a couple of customers. We waited for the first to finish. The woman turned to us and asked us for our order.

  ‘Do you know anything about the murder that took place out back last year?’ I asked.

  The woman looked at me suspiciously. ‘I read about it,’ she said briskly. ‘But we only bought the shop two months ago, so we can’t help you.’

  We thanked her for her time and went next door to Stir Fry Noodles.

  ‘What can I get you?’ the young guy at the counter asked.

  ‘Do you know—’

  ‘We’re doing a school assignment on safety and policing in the area,’ Jacinta interrupted me, stepping on my foot to shut me up. ‘We’re looking at the case of the woman who was murdered out back in the car park. She worked next door at Jenkins Storage World. Did you know her?’

  The guy raised his eyebrows. ‘We have regular customers but I don’t a
lways know their names. When it’s busy you take orders and get the food out. There’s no time for small talk.’

  ‘But you knew her?’

  ‘I recognised her whenever she came in.’

  ‘Were you working the night she died?’

  ‘Yeah. So what’s the assignment?’

  ‘The failure of the policing system to reassure small business owners of their safety and security.’

  I shot an approving look at Jacinta, impressed by her smooth response.

  ‘Yeah, well, that may be so. But I guess you can’t have police manning every corner. There used to be security cameras out back but kids smashed them up.’

  ‘When?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, ages ago. Before that lady died.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear anything?’ I pressed. ‘She was bashed. There must have been screams.’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t hear any screaming.’

  ‘Might another worker have heard something?’ Jacinta asked.

  ‘I was on my own for the afternoon shift. It’s quiet after three. I had the vegetable and meat delivery around five so I must have been out the front, on High Street, signing for it when she was killed. But sometime after five a guy ran through my shop and out the front door. He must have entered from the back door.’

  ‘So, you don’t know exactly when he ran through?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope. But it was while I was out with the deliveries and that took about fifteen, twenty minutes tops.’

  ‘Did you get a look at him?’

  ‘No. I just saw his back as he ran out. I was busy with the delivery guys. I assume he entered from the back door because when I went back inside the shop the back door was wide open and I know it had been closed. I’d closed it after I had a smoke earlier.’

  ‘Was he tall? Short? Fat? Skinny?’

  He shrugged. ‘The best I could tell the police was that he was dressed in dark clothes. But I couldn’t give any other details. It all happened really quickly.’

  ‘Well that’s obviously the witness who spoke to Constable Thompson,’ I said as Jacinta and I walked back to the car park. ‘That guy who ran through must have been the killer. But how does that help us?’