The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim

  Ken was right, of course. Making hasty decisions out of revenge was never a good idea, not from my experience, anyway. I wasn’t the kind of person who would go out of my way to get even with someone. To begin, I had little time to play these type of games. And then, I didn’t have the heart. Deep down, I liked Frank despite the fact that some people thought he was vastly unattractive and not very impressive as a cop. His policing methods were questionable at times, and I wondered how he had lasted so long without getting his fingers burned. But many times he pulled through when I was feeling weak. He’d been like a big brother to me. During my first year at the VFSC, he showed me all the ropes and office politics, and was patient as hell. And although his kindness might have been the result of him wanting to get into my pants, the point is he treated me right when others wanted me to sink. But from the moment I informed him I wasn’t interested in having a relationship with him, our lives had turned into a tug-of-war. I had no idea how I was going to win him back. All I wanted was our friendship to remain honest and respectful, but incidents like the one which took place at the St Kilda Road police complex did not facilitate the process.

  While struggling with my leg extensions, I wondered if Malcom was really the killer. It was obvious from the video recording that he’d been pushed into a corner. The point was that the recording of the interrogation would never be shown as evidence of his admission to the killing of Tracy Noland. The only way Malcom would get convicted was if we charged him with something concrete, or if he signed a full confession, which I wasn’t aware he had done to date. There was enough circumstantial evidence to place him under arrest, but little to convict him.

  I eased into some stretches before farewelling Ken and leaving the gym.

  When I got home at 5.32 p.m., I threw my gym bag in the hallway, letting it slide on the polished wooden floor, and headed straight to the kitchen for a glass of water. Automatically, I glanced towards the answering machine and noticed it was flashing. One message. The glass of water in one hand, I circled the kitchen bench and walked to the lounge room. I punched the PLAY button on the answering machine, next to the floral couch. It was Goosh asking me to call him back on his home number at my convenience.

  I dialled the number he left on the answering machine immediately, reluctant to have him occupying my thoughts for longer than necessary.

  He answered on the first ring.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll admit to being relieved you’ve found the killer. Frank Moore told me what a wonderful job you’ve performed and wants you commended.’

  ‘Just doing what I’m being paid for,’ I said, wondering if Frank was sucking up to me so that I wouldn’t file a complaint about his interrogation techniques. ‘There’s still a lot of work to be done. We need to arrange a meeting with the prosecutor and supply the relevant evidence for a court hearing. I don’t know if we’ve got enough to prosecute. I have to look into it.’

  ‘And I’m sure you’ll handle it just fine, like everything else. You’re extremely fortunate to have someone like Frank working with you.’

  ‘I know,’ I answered for lack of knowing any better.

  When he hung up, I felt a tightness in my throat. The bastard lacked diplomacy so much, he couldn’t give me full credit when it was due. Maybe I was taking all this too much to heart. It was time to swallow my pride and move on. This whole investigation was now almost behind me, and I wanted to make the most of what life had to offer instead of dwelling in my own self-dramatised purgatory.

  On Friday evening I rang up Jason Harvey and asked him if it was okay to come and see him on the weekend.

  ‘Michael is fascinated by your magic tricks. He said you promised to show him how you did them.’ I was calling from my home office, feet propped up on the desk, overlooking the traffic on Chapel Street, feeling myself again after having done nothing other than shopping for clothes at Prahran Central and catching a two-o’clock movie to kill the afternoon.

  Jason’s voice sounded cheerful. ‘I’m glad he’s interested. The only things kids want to hear about these days are computers.’ Then he changed subject without warning. ‘Did you arrest him? Has he been charged with murder?’

  It took me a few seconds to realise he was talking about Malcom Sternwood. I explained to him how Malcom made a full confession on tape.

  ‘Really?’ He sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I never thought he’d just go ahead and admit to it. Especially when he denied everything to begin with. Jeez, well, it shows you can never tell.’

  I‘d also been surprised by Malcom’s confession, but I never told Jason how Malcom came to admit he killed Tracy Noland under pressure from Frank.

  He went on, ‘I’m just glad you’ve arrested him at last. People like him don’t deserve to live.’

  I didn’t feel like getting into a capital punishment debate with Jason, who seemed to have strong viewpoints on every topic in the universe. I told him I wasn’t at liberty to discuss anything about the case while the investigation was still being carried out.

  He sounded disappointed.

  I farewelled him and told him we were looking forward to seeing him on the weekend.

  I spent the rest of the evening doing some paper work and billing the VFSC for my services.

  Sunday, Michael and I had lunch at Jason’s. His cuisine hadn’t improved since the last time I’d been there. He treated us to freshly cut tomato-and-cheese sandwiches, which I found hard to swallow.

  During lunch, Jason Harvey made it quite clear he was delighted Malcom got caught. ‘Just to think he was living in this street. It makes my skin crawl.’

  We were eating in the backyard, around a white, round plastic garden table with matching injection-moulded chairs. The sun was high in the sky, making it one of the nicest days we’d had so far in December. My guess was that the temperature had stabilised at around twenty-five degrees Celsius, pleasant weather to be indoors or outdoors just the same.

  After lunch, Jason was showing Michael some magic tricks while I was making coffee for two. Michael was too young to drink coffee, I felt, because of all the caffeine it contained. Of course, I was aware my fears were being ridiculed by the amount of Coke and other caffeine-enriched soda drinks he consumed during the day.

  I could hear them chatting next door.

  Jason: ‘No, no. You do the knot clockwise, not anti-clockwise. See, you pass it around your wrist. ‘

  Michael: ‘Like this.’

  ‘Hold on. I’ll show you again.’

  Pause.

  Michael again: ‘Wow, that’s so cool.’

  Jason: ‘Wait until I show you the trick with the coin.’

  ‘The one you did at the market?’

  ‘You remember?’

  ‘Sure I do. It’s my favourite.’

  It was great to hear them getting on so well with one another. I always felt guilty that Michael didn’t have a father, although there was little I could do to remedy the situation. Phillip tried hard to be friendly with Michael, but to date I hadn’t seen Michael taking to him too well. The problem was that they had absolutely nothing in common other than me and the fact they were male. But with Jason Harvey, Michael acted differently. Jason was young at heart, taking time to play and enjoy the few years he had left in front of him. He possessed a zest for life, a rare quality in this day and age.

  I walked into the living room with two mugs of coffee, one in each hand, just when Jason was showing Michael an act where he made his lucky coin vanish by rubbing it on the back of his forearm. He dropped the coin a few times, but on the third go, he did it perfectly, and when he unclenched his hand slowly, the coin had vanished.

  ‘Wow,’ Michael said, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

  ‘It’s that lucky coin again,’ I commented.

  Jason turned to me and smiled. ‘Yes, the one everybody should have.’

  The rest of the afternoon was spent qui
etly, discussing each other’s life stories.

  Jason told us he was married once, but she left him without warning.

  ‘Our opinions differed too much,’ he told us, a sad look in his eyes. ‘She was conservative, always wanted to stay indoors and never see people. Me, I love people. Friends used to come over on the weekend, and she’d get really cross with me because I never told her when someone was coming over. One morning, she just left. Never heard from her again.’

  ‘Did she leave a note or something?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing. Didn’t even take her stuff with her.’

  I looked at him for a few seconds and said, ‘So, how do you know she left? Maybe she got abducted or had an accident.’

  He puzzled over my question, searching for something which he had buried somewhere deep in the past. ‘Got a call from her sister two weeks later. She told me Elizabeth was okay, and that there was no need to track her down. She’d just had enough, full stop.’

  ‘Mmm...’

  The whole incident didn’t surprise me. People had strange ways of coping with situations they hated and, all of a sudden, gave up on everything. Tens of thousands of people went missing every year, and nobody knew where they were. It was always difficult for family and friends, not knowing what had happened to their loved one. At least Jason had been lucky that his wife passed on some form of message to let him know she had disappeared by choice. I’d met people whose sons or daughters, or even parents, vanished without a trace and were never to be seen or heard of again. For years, the ones left behind held on to the hope of seeing their loved ones again. But time never solved the mystery, only concealed deep wounds of betrayal or frustration. Did the person run away? Was she abducted? Had he died in a accident, and no one had been able to identify the body?

  Those with money hired private detectives who charged a hundred dollars an hour, sometimes to do nothing but type a report that the person had vanished and can’t be found. Some private eyes were sincere to their customers, but others lied and told them their loved one would be found soon, but a little more money was needed. And within a few years, sometimes less, the family home would be sold and all savings drained with no resolution in sight.

  Jason Harvey never bothered tracking down his wife. ‘She left of her own accord,’ he explained. ‘Never gave me the chance to talk things over. I don’t see why I was going to waste my time running around chasing after her when she knew exactly where I was.’

  And who could blame him, especially if the flame of their marital vows had burned out years before she vanished.

  The weekend had been such wonderful bliss that on Monday the 29th December, I found it difficult to get out of bed and get things moving. Outside my bedroom window, the sky was clear, and I could hear the heavy beginning-of-the-week traffic building up near the intersection fifty metres from my apartment. Many people were on holidays, but somehow there seemed to be more cars on the roads.

  I hadn’t heard from Phillip since the last time he stayed over. In fact, I was surprised he hadn’t called or visited during Christmas. As I propped myself up to check the time on the alarm clock on the side table, I wondered if he was angry at me. I felt a certain coldness towards him, but I wasn’t sure whether it was because I wanted more time for myself, or whether deep down I felt his commitment to me was less than genuine. Was it freedom I wanted, or being loved to death?

  The time on my clock radio read 7.32 a.m. Noise in the kitchen told me Michael was having breakfast. I told myself I should get up to greet him before he left for the day on one of his unknown destinations with his friend Chris, whom he had arranged to meet at eight o’clock.

  Unwillingly, I stepped out of bed and on to the woven Indian rug I bought at IKEA two years ago. I slipped on a white bathrobe and, slowly, made my way to the kitchen, yawning, and scratching the back of my neck all at once.

  Michael was at the kitchen table, rubbing the back of his forearm with a twenty-cent piece.

  ‘Look, mum. I can do it.’

  I wasn’t that interested but hated to upset him, so I said, ‘Show me.’

  He rubbed and rubbed, and dropped the coin on the table.

  ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘It’s kind of tricky.’

  And he tried again, and dropped the coin on the table.

  ‘Hold on, hold on. One more time.’

  This time, he rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, and suddenly he lifted his hand and the coin had vanished.

  ‘Very good,’ I said, wondering where the hell the coin had gone to.

  He was about to do it again when the telephone interrupted us. It was not even eight o’clock, making me wonder why people rang up so early.

  Before I snatched the receiver, I said to Michael, ’You better get ready, or you’re going to make Chris wait for you.’

  He twisted his mouth and went on practising his trick anyway.

  Dr Charles W. Main was at the end of the line. He kind of surprised me because I was expecting either Frank or Phillip.

  He greeted me and said, ‘Are you too busy to get over here?’, referring to the mortuary.

  ‘Something important?’ I was hoping to have another few days to myself.

  ‘Let’s just say I’d like to talk to you in person.’

  I agreed to meet him at 9.30 a.m.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I parked my Lancer at the VIFM at 9.25 a.m., finger-brushed my hair and straightened up the collar of my white blouse. On the way to Southbank, I wondered what was so important that Dr Main wanted to see me in person. I sort of guessed it might have something to do with Tracy Noland, but the fact that he wanted to see me face to face told me it was more than just routine stuff.

  I reported to the reception, where I was advised to go straight through to Dr Main’s office. I knew exactly where that was since I’d been there twice already, once last year when I broke into his office, and the other day regarding the Tracy Noland autopsy. I walked down the corridor, my feet sinking into the blue carpet, feeling the coldness of the place in my bones.

  Dr Main looked as if he was expecting me. His grey hair was stylishly brushed back, and he wore a white shirt with a red neck-tie and a gold tie-pin. Although I had noticed in the past, today he looked even more handsome, his chiselled face tanned as if he’d just spent a month in the Bahamas, and his nails were short and clean. He had lovely hands, with long, thin fingers which seemed to dance every time he shuffled something on his desk.

  ‘Take a seat, Dr Melina.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  His tone was formal, forcing me to remain business-like.

  ‘I’ve got some toxicological results, which I have no doubt you’d be interested in.’ He opened a manilla folder and skimmed through the first couple of pages.

  ‘Was she poisoned?’ I asked, trying to read over the table and guessing he was talking about Tracy Noland. His citrus aftershave whisked past my nostrils, sending a shiver of delight down my spine.

  ‘No, not as such. Certainly no traces of arsenic, cyanide or strychnine.’

  ‘So what have you found?’

  He locked his eyes into mine. ‘Swabs and scrapings from the mouth and nasal areas came up with traces of zinc stearate.’

  I creased my brows. ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘A compound of zinc oxide.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘To my knowledge, combined with stearate and palmitic acid, it can be used as a smooth, dusting powder.’

  I puzzled over this fact for a few seconds. ‘And why would anyone use it to smother another person?’

  He raised both hands to the ceiling, like a priest giving a sermon at Sunday mass. ‘Wouldn’t have a clue. And that’s why I thought you might be interested.’

  It certainly did raise possibilities. Maybe zinc stearate was a chemical used in photography. I was a competent photographer in my field of work, but darkroom techniques were not my speciality. However, as ignorant as I might have been, I knew for a fact I’d never he
ard of zinc stearate being used to develop a film. On the other hand, the only way I was going to get a clear idea of what the chemical was used for was to ask an expert.

  On my way out of the VIFM, a copy of Tracy Noland’s toxicology report tucked under my arm, I retrieved my mobile phone from my handbag and punched some numbers.

  Forty-five minutes later, I was on the third floor of B-block at the TAFE (Tertiary and Further Education) division of Swinburne University in Hawthorn, where I taught Introduction to Forensic Investigation on Wednesday afternoons.

  The university offered a Certificate IV in Applied Science with a major in Forensic Science to anyone interested and preferably working in the field. With over three hundred and fifty applicants for forty full-time positions the previous year, it certainly was competitive. The second year of the course, which was accessible only to members of the police force working in investigation or fingerprinting, led to a Diploma in Forensic Science. It was the first and only course of its kind offered at TAFE-level anywhere in Australia, and drew people from overseas. Last year, I taught a student named Stacey, who travelled all the way from New Zealand to do the course.

  The academic year had ended last November, and the new one wouldn’t start until the second week of February, and, as a result, when I walked down the corridor to room 306, where Basic Photography and Forensic Photography was usually taught, not a soul was in sight.

  I peaked through the window of room 306, but no one was there.

  I made my way to the other end of the corridor where the staff canteen was located. Deborah Klarner, the Forensic Science course coordinator, was sipping from a mug while reading an article from New Scientist. No one else was in the room.

  ‘Hi, Deb,’ I said, bringing attention to myself.

  She looked up and smiled. ‘Oh, hi, Katrina.’ She wore a Cleopatra cut and a dark-blue power suit with a yellow shirt. Her expression was always cheerful, no matter the level of stress she was under. She had an expression which radiated friendliness and enthusiasm and was the most people-oriented person I had ever met. It didn’t matter what she was doing, she always stopped to help a person in need.