The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim
Page 35
‘To make sure we’ve covered every angle,’ I suggested.
‘But...’ Malcom went on, moving two step towards us.
‘Back off!’ Frank ordered and gave him a push back towards the kitchen. ‘One more step and I’ll arrest you for assault and obstruction.’
The young man looked as if he was going to need an ambulance any minute. Blood had drained from his face, and his hands were shaking. He moved back to the kitchen, muttering to himself. ‘I didn’t do it. Oh, God, you know I didn’t do it.’
The whole scenario sent a chill down my spine. It would have been better if we’d done the search when Malcom wasn’t around.
Mrs Sternwood stood there the whole time without saying a word. She didn’t try to defend her son, nor did she try to stop us from arguing with him. She knew there’d be no point. Or maybe she knew we were wasting our time, and that we’d walk out of here empty-handed.
Malcom’s room was what I remembered, except that his bed had been slept in. I could understand his frustration. At his age, and living at his parent’s place, the bedroom was his sanctuary, the only place in the world where he felt at home. And now we were going to invade his private territory. But at the back of my mind I had the face of Tracy Noland, and if it meant turning the whole damn street upside down, then I was willing to do it.
Frank shut the door, not wanting Mrs Sternwood to stand there and watch us throughout the operation.
I unzipped one of my soft bags and removed various packaging - brown paper, vinyl bags, cardboard boxes, plastic containers and vials of different sizes. I also pulled out five sheets of continuity labels to mark the packaging.
We both slipped on a pair of surgical gloves, just to make sure we wouldn’t leave our prints everywhere.
Frank begin searching the obvious places, such as the inside of the wardrobe, under the bed, in the grey cardboard boxes where the photographic albums were hidden.
I looked through his study desk, but came up with nothing but books on photography, slides and various writing pads. Then I noticed a stack of black computer diskettes next to his computer. The computer was an older Standard model, probably a 486DX2 or similar. I flicked through the diskettes, but none were labelled. I counted them. Twelve in all.
Meanwhile Frank had turned the wardrobe inside-out. Clothes were thrown on the floor, and books and papers scattered around. Frank was on his hands and knees, searching every item of clothing, looking through the pages of every book and magazine, trying in vain to find evidence which would point to Malcom as the killer.
‘Damn it!’ he said to himself without elaborating. I guessed he’d found nothing, and his frustration was mounting. He obviously didn’t want to go back to the office and report we made an error.
And neither did I.
I flicked the computer on, waited for the system to boot up and inserted one of the small black diskettes in the A-drive. The system was still running on DOS 5.0 and using Windows 3.1 at a speed of 50MHz. As far as computer technology was concerned, this was already a dinosaur, even it had been the latest model two to three years ago. By the end of this year, they were talking about all computers operating at a speed of no less than 400MHz. It was mind-boggling how far we come in so little time.
I went to DOS and typed: a: [enter] followed by DIR [enter]. The black screen shot back a list of ten files with a .gif-extension from jen0.gif right through to jen9.gif. The volume number was CHILDREN_001. Apprehension crept at the back of my neck. I knew I’d found Ali Baba’s cave.
The gif-extension was a graphic file. And jen kind of spoke for itself. The name of the girl on the graphic files was probably Jenny or Jennifer.
I removed the disk from the drive, and inserted another one. I typed DIR [enter] and watched the screen spill back a new list of gif files, but this time they were from sue0.gif to sue9.gif. under volume CHILDREN_002.
It tried the next four diskettes. I found sha0.gif to sha9.gif, mic0.gif to mic9.gif, kar0.gif to kar9.gif under volume number CHILDREN_003, CHILDREN_004 and CHILDREN_005. and finally what I had been hoping for, tra0.gif to tra9.gif. under volume number CHILDREN_006.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ I heard Frank say behind me, still, battling with the wardrobe contents. ‘There’s fuck all in here.’
Without taking my eyes off the screen I muttered, ‘Get over here. I think I’ve got some stuff you’d like to see.’
He shifted his weight behind me and responded in a dead-pan voice, ‘What?’
‘See these files?’ I pointed to the computer screen:
A:>DIR/P
Volume in drive A is CHILDREN_006
DIRECTORY OF A:
.
..
TRA0 GIF 112304 07-28-97 7.32P
TRA1 GIF 115627 07-28-97 7.34P
TRA2 GIF 126782 07-28-97 7.34P
TRA3 GIF 117967 07-28-97 7.35P
TRA4 GIF 104564 07-28-97 7.36P
TRA5 GIF 128765 07-28-97 7.38P
TRA6 GIF 128990 07-28-97 7.40P
TRA7 GIF 127767 07-28-97 7.41P
TRA8 GIF 119980 07-28-97 7.42P
TRA9 GIF 107865 07-28-97 7.42P
12 file(s) 1190611 bytes
209567 bytes free
He stared for a few seconds, but the look on his face indicated he didn’t know what he was looking for.
‘Look at that,’ I went on, indicating the first two columns on the left side of the screen. ‘All those files are graphic files. You can tell by the gif-extension. There’s about twenty other formats of graphic files, but gif, along with bmp and pcx are the most commonly used. Now you see this file,’ I pointed to tra5.gif, ‘the first three letters stand for a name. And tra is...?’
‘Tracy?’
‘Correct. The number simply indicates what picture it is, and the extension that it’s a graphic file. My guess is this is the fifth picture of Tracy Noland collected by photographer/computer whiz Malcom Sternwood.’
Frank puzzled over my finding for few seconds.
‘Oh,’ I added, ‘and it’s not just this one.’ I grabbed the stack of diskettes. ‘These are full of them as well, not the same girl, but same file formats. He classifies each diskette with a volume number that has the letters C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N, children, and follows it up by a three-number digit, so he knows the number of diskettes under his collection.’
He eyes followed the diskettes then returned to the screen.
‘Ingenious little devil,’ he said.
‘Actually, this is quite basic stuff. The way these files are labelled, he never thought someone else than himself was going to check those diskettes. I mean, if you’re going to collect child pornography on computer files, you wouldn’t label the volume number CHILDREN. That’s kind of obvious. You’d label the disks under numbers only, or something which looked like part of an operating system or a file-utility program.’
‘Okay, so, you’re telling me all these files are pictures of some sort?’
‘Yep. According to their sizes, they’re quite small and poor in quality, but large enough to view and get excited over. It’s unlikely they’re in colour, since colour graphics take a lot of space. You’re barely be able to fit a picture on a three-and-a-half-inch diskette.’
‘Can we bring these pictures up on the screen?’
‘As long as he’s installed software that can read gif-extension files, then we can do it right here.’
I returned to the C-drive, and typed the command WIN [ENTER] to access windows. Since Malcom had diskettes with graphic files in them, I excepted him to have a program on his computer that would be capable of reading those files.
The Microsoft 3.1 window came up followed by a series of icons. I looked for any icon which looked like the key to a graphics program. There was one labelled WinGif, which told me straight away it was a windows program designed to view gif-files.
‘This is it,’ I said, pointing the mouse on the WinGif icon and double-clicking the left button.
When I entered the program, I chose FILE and OPEN, conducted my search in the A-drive, and a list of the gif-files on the diskette I had inserted earlier in the drive came up. I double-clicked tra0.gif.
Before the picture came up, I knew what I was going to find, but I wasn’t sure how bad it was going to be. Maybe these would be the same pictures I’d seen in his photo-album collection, but he’d decided to store them in digital format.
Inch by inch, a black-and-white picture of Tracy Noland came up, her head first, then her bare chest, then the rest of her body.
We froze, staring at the picture.
I recognised the picture as one of those from the photo album, except that in the album, Tracy Noland was wearing white cotton underwear, while in this picture she was stark naked.
‘Holy shit!’ Frank said.
But something else about the picture wasn’t right. The pubic section of the girl was covered with a dark bush. When I attended the autopsy, I remembered clearly that Tracy Noland had not grown pubic hair yet in spite of her being twelve-years old. But I knew this was normal. Puberty happened at different ages for different people.
‘Something’s not right here,’ I commented.
‘What?’
I explained what I noticed during the autopsy, and how it compared with what we had on the screen.
‘So?’ he asked, obviously wondering what point I was trying to make.
‘Well, it means Malcom didn’t actually take naked pictures of Tracy Noland. He probably wanted to, but she refused. So he had to settle for her wearing underwear, and then, to complete his fantasy, he transferred the pictures to computer graphics so he could manipulate them and do whatever he fancied.’
‘And how did he do that?’
‘A graphics program such as PhotoShop let’s you transform pictures. He could have got the pubic section from somewhere else, maybe scanned from a magazine, and super-imposed it on Tracy, making sure to match her original skin tone and border lines. Or he could have simply used Paintbrush and zoomed in close enough so that he could work on one pixel at a time. That’s the way computer game graphics are designed. It’s a long process, but it works. Newspapers tend to do that these days, so sometimes pictures don’t tell a thousand words, but a thousand lies.’
Frank shook his head. ‘Well, new-age, child pornography.’
‘Easy to produce. Hard to detect.’
‘Sonofabitch!’
‘Welcome to digital technology.’
We packed, sealed and labelled the diskettes as evidence.
Frank thought the evidence was as good as gold, but deep down he must have known as well as I did that it didn’t mean Malcom killed the girl. We needed something more concrete, evidence that would stand in a court of law.
For the next half hour we ransacked the rest of the bedroom and found such evidence.
CHAPTER TEN
Mrs Noland wanted the body of Tracy cremated. This was cause for concern for the investigative team, knowing that once the body was cremated, there’d be no chance of performing further forensic tests or searching for trace evidence originally overlooked.
It was straight after the search of Malcom Sternwood’s bedroom that I found out what the funeral arrangements were. Jason Harvey had the courtesy of giving me a call on my mobile phone while Frank and I were on our way to the VFSC to deposit the evidence we’d collected from Malcom’s room.
When Frank and I arrived at the funeral home in South Melbourne, I found out that the paper work had already been done, and there was little chance of changing Mrs Noland’s mind.
The funeral home lobby resembled a five-star hotel in the City, with plush carpet; courteous and well-dressed staff; a waiting room which seemed more like a lounge; and everybody looking glad to see us. For the dearly departed, this might have been the nicest place they’d stayed at for a long time.
Prior to the service, I spoke to the funeral director, Mr John Stanley, an overweight man with dyed brown hair and a friendly face. His dark suit was impeccably cut, and his white shirt and black tie crease-less
‘It’s her decision,’ he said in a relaxed, low-voice, as if he was scared of waking someone up. ‘Cremation is becoming more common every day.’
‘But you do understand my concern as an investigator?’ I protested.
‘Sure, I do. But it makes no difference.’
John Stanley went on discussing the history of cremation, and what happens to a body when it is cremated. I never asked for the details, but he seemed glad to deliver his speech, which he must have memorised line-by-line for curious people like me.
‘Once the casket is rolled into the cremation chamber,’ he explained, ‘incineration occurs at a temperature of 1800º Fahrenheit or higher. Natural gas is commonly used to produce the heat desired, but we prefer to use electricity for safety reasons.’
‘Do you ever incinerate two people together?’
‘Can’t do it. The combustion chamber is only big enough to hold one coffin at a time. To do so would mean placing two bodies in the one coffin, which has never occurred as long as I’ve been working here.’
I only asked the question in the hope that whatever remained of Tracy Noland would be kept separate for further analysis if required.
‘So, we could still use the remains of the body if the need occurred?’ I asked.
‘You wouldn’t be able to conduct any worthwhile examination once the body has been subjected to such temperature. All that remains are ashes and pieces of bones, weighing six to seven pounds, depending on body weight. Bone fragments are collected and pulverised in a grinding machine. The remains are then placed in an urn and ready for the funeral. The combustion chambers are not kept at the funeral home. We keep them at another location, once again, for safety reasons.’
‘And how long does the process take?’
‘Sixty to ninety minutes, once more depending on the weight of the body. She was only a little girl, so it took just over fifty minutes.’
‘You mean Tracy Noland has already been cremated?’ There was genuine surprise in my tone.
‘Of course. I thought you knew. The ashes were delivered to us two hours ago, ready for the funeral.’
The funeral ceremony was uneventful, and not many people attended it. Jason Harvey, Linda Coleman and Susan Griffith, the first person I interviewed at Vincent Court, were present. I left half way through, unable to digest the whole procedure. I surprised myself by being too weak to sit with mourners, crying at the loss of the young girl.
Frank stayed behind, chatting to people with the hope of developing further leads. Three photographers, pretending to be relatives taking pictures, were taking records of everyone present at the funeral. Later on, Frank and I would analyse the photographs and interview people whom we hadn’t interviewed to date.
The Forensic Biology Unit began in the 1960s as a small team at Melbourne University in Parkville, then moved to a small laboratory in Spring Street, in the city’s CBD. In the mid-1970s, the Spring Street building was too old and too out-of-date to accommodate the ever-increasing need for accurate and dependable forensic testing. Scientists had to work in dreadful conditions, especially in summer when the temperature indoor swelled to forty degrees Celsius and above. It took until 1986 before the unit moved to newly-built labs at the current VFSC building under the watchful eye of State Premier John Cain.
The biology unit was arguably the third best in the world with every staff member holding a degree, which hadn’t been the case ten years ago when people could walk straight in from secondary school. But this was about to end since all forensic services were currently being shifted away from the police force and moved into the private sector or other government departments. I was a product of this gradual change, working for the Crime Scene Unit at the Centre, which was overlooked by Directors, the Business Manager and the Quality Ma
nagement Branch, a section of the Centre also dedicated to training new and current staff.
John Darcy was a forensic biologist and branch manager at the VFSC Forensic Biology Unit. John looked younger than his fifty-three with his blond locks and sparkling blue eyes. He bore a straight, small chin with a neatly-trimmed beard, and would look more like a beach bum than a scientist if he wasn’t wearing a lab coat.
Like me, John hated office bureaucracy and was also willing to help a fellow scientist whenever the need arose. But last year, while investigating another murder, John had disappointed me. Just when I needed him the most, and when Goosh and his mob were putting pressure on everyone, he gave up on me. I’d forgiven him after the case was over, but one never forgets. I tried not to hold a grudge against him because he was my eyes and ears to test results conducted at the centre. Being on the inside and working all day in the building also gave him the opportunity to befriend anyone in the Centre and access documents by friendly request.
He was playing with a Bunsen burner and a rack of test tubes when I walked into the lab. John was forever conducting tests which dealt with fibres, blood grouping, DNA and any other matter classified as of biotomy. He was proud that his unit was the only one in Australia which attended crime scenes, and that all his staff were trained to conduct DNA testing.
‘Come in, Katrina,’ he said, acknowledging my presence. He had a pair of safety goggles on and a thousand and one pens sticking out from the pocket of his lab coat, which was now stained with various ink colours.
I circled the room with my eyes, observing with interest the hundred-thousand-dollar scientific equipment, including serology, liquid and gas chromatographers; mass spectrometers; four or five compound microscopes with a wide range of power; laboratory ovens; and various other optical and analytical instruments. Galvanised benches were hugging the walls around the room. Near a sink, glassware was waiting to be washed. Tens of hexagonal, yellow containers made of cardboard, approximately thirty centimetres tall, and labelled with a biological-waste-hazard symbol, were scattered around the benches. The ceiling was a multitude of fluorescent tubes.