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

by Laurent Boulanger

  When I walked back into the interrogation room with the camera, Malcom looked surprised. ‘What’s that for?’ he asked, staring at the camera.

  ‘Evidence.’

  And he understood immediately.

  I went on, ‘If you’re telling the truth, then I want to make sure you have enough evidence to prove what you’re telling me. I don’t believe in the bashing of witnesses or probable suspects.’

  I made him take his shirt off. There was light bruising around the stomach area, confirming what he’d told me about Frank punching him just above the belt.

  I shot from different angles with the help of a hand-held flash. I zoomed in on the wounds because I knew once they’d be blown-up, it would impress any jury. As much as I now was reluctant to take Frank to court, at least I had something to fight with if I felt I was dismissed unfairly. That and the video tape of the interrogation I kept at home.

  I shot the entire thirty-six exposures.

  I had the film developed at E.6 Plus, a professional photo lab in Bangs Street, Prahran, and the best shots blown to A4-size at Photo Production House at 245 High Street, just around the corner from the photo lab. The whole job was done in under three hours.

  The A4-size shots of the bruising looked fantastic. I got home excited and filed them for future usage in my three-drawer filing cabinet. I felt it my duty to defend Malcom’s rights, even thought I didn’t know if he was or wasn’t the killer of Tracy Noland. What Frank had done was not only illegal, but down-right immoral.

  Later in the evening, Frank agreed to meet me at my place. On the phone he seemed more relaxed and less certain of himself than when I saw him that morning.

  ‘What do you mean you took photos?’ His voice was edgy.

  ‘That’s right. I saw Michael and took an entire film of your handy work.’

  Pause.

  ‘Katrina, there must be a way we can talk about this. We got on each other’s nerves this morning. I’m sure we can straighten this thing out.’

  ‘The only way we’re going to straighten anything is by tearing up this fake confession you got out of Malcom and mounting a proper investigation.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that!’

  ‘Oh, yes, you can.’

  ‘But I already told Goosh we had the confession on paper.’

  ‘That’s not my problem. You’re the one who lied.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Goddamnit, Katrina, you make everything so difficult. Why don’t we get together and talk about his? I’m sure we can work something out.’

  I didn’t feel like seeing his face right now, but didn’t want to be unreasonable like he’d been with me.

  ‘Sure, you can come for dinner.’

  ‘You don’t have to make me dinner.’

  ‘I want to. Just like old times. We’ll pretend we’re still friends.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll see you soon.’ He hung up without adding anything.

  Ten minutes later, Michael came home. At first I thought it was Frank, and I don’t know why I thought it was him since he didn’t have the keys to my apartment.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I asked, the photos of Malcom Sternwood’s bruising, which I’d already retrieved from my filing cabinet, spread all over the coffee table in the lounge room. I glanced at my watch which read 7.43 p.m. and quickly gathered the pictures into one pile. But it was too late. Michael had already seen them. ‘I was expecting you hours ago. Don’t you live here any more?’

  He gave me a look which implied I was getting on his nerves. ‘Mum, why are you asking me all these questions? Where do you think I was? Don’t you trust me?’

  I felt kind of foolish, but it seemed that my questioning was not completely out of line. He was only thirteen and the only person I could call family.

  ‘I was just worried, that’s all. It has nothing to do with trust.’

  ‘That’s cool.’ His smile meant my answer had been validated. ‘I was with Chris. We went to Jason’s. He showed us these other cool tricks. I can show you if you want.’ He began to unzip his back pack.

  ‘Don’t bother. I’ve got Frank coming here any moment.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He went straight to the kitchen, opened the fridge and poured himself a Dr Pepper.

  ‘Why don’t you buy Coke like everyone else? I hate this stuff. It tastes like cough syrup.’

  I wasn’t focusing on what he was telling me. Instead, I wondered if it was a good idea that he’d spent so much time with Jason Harvey when the old man was still an important witness to the Tracy Noland murder. Having my son visiting one of the witnesses four or five times a week might give some ammunition to the defence. Could the witness be totally impartial in his opinion if he’d been a good buddy to the investigating officer’s son? Someone would without doubt ask the question. I was certain everyone would see some conflict of interest when I knew there was none whatsoever.

  I stood from the floral couch and said, ‘You should spend less time at Jason Harvey’s and more at home.’

  ‘There’s nothing to do here.’

  I was about to reply, but there was a knock on the door.

  ‘That’ll be Frank,’ Michael announced as if I didn’t know. It gave him the perfect excuse to grab his back pack, his much-hated Dr Pepper, and disappear to his room where he would remain until tomorrow morning.

  When I opened the front door, Frank stood there, looking awkward and uncertain. He wore jeans and a dorky-looking blue-and-white stripped shirt.

  We stared at each other for a few seconds, but neither of us said a word.

  And then something strange happened. Without warning, we both stepped forward and hugged.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me.’

  ‘It’s okay. We’re all getting stressed by this investigation.’

  The hug was short and sharp but showed us how badly we wanted to remain friends. Maybe if we managed to push our dignity aside, our friendship would come out intact.

  I walked him to the kitchen and poured him a glass of water.

  ‘Why did you hit him?’ I asked, avoiding eye contact.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m just so sure he did it. You know how sometimes you know something, and it just annoys the hell out of you when it takes so long to prove. it. I guess it’s a gut instinct.’

  ‘But you didn’t have to hit him.’

  ‘That’s just the way men are.’

  The hormonal excuse was too pathetic for my liking. ‘Frank, you’re not a psychopath who can’t control his temper. You’re a cop. And you should know better than bashing suspects in a crime investigation.’

  ‘You’re right. It won’t happen again.’

  We circled the kitchen bench and walked to the lounge room where Malcom Sternwood’s photos were still stacked up on the coffee table.

  ‘So, they’re the photos?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Why did you take them?’

  ‘Just in case there’d be a need to use them.’

  He twisted his mouth and sat on the couch. ‘You’re not going to use those?’

  ‘Not unless I have to.’

  His voice lost its momentum. ‘Okay, look, we’ll retract the signed confession and start from scratch. Goosh is not going to like that.’

  ‘Have you told him about the written confession yet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what are you going to tell him now?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have a damn clue. I guess I’ll have to take it as it comes.’

  Frank must have concluded that the outcome of me filing an official complaint about his harassing a suspect would have been more damaging than putting up with Goosh and his attitude from hell.

  ‘You know,’ he added, ‘I’m not just saying this, but I want us two to work together again. Like the old days. I’m tired of having to fight with you. What you said this morning made me think. We used to be a team once. And that made the job bearable. But n
ow, everything is becoming an argument, an excuse to jump at each other’s throat.’

  I stood from the couch and said, ‘I want nothing more than to solve this damn case and get on with our lives. You don’t actually think I enjoy having arguments with you?’

  ‘I know you don’t. And the feeling is mutual.’

  We said nothing after that, so I moved back to the kitchen and put some water on the boil for pasta. I promised him dinner, but I had nothing ready. He would have to eat what I could dish up in twenty minutes.

  ‘So what’s this thing about zinc...?’ he asked across the room.

  ‘Zinc stearate.’

  ‘Yeah, that thing. Did you find what it was used for?’

  ‘Not for photography, which makes me wonder where it comes from. If Malcom killed her, where did he get that stuff from?’

  Frank didn’t answer.

  I emptied a can of peeled tomatoes in a pan with sliced capsicums and onions. I threw in a good measure of pepper and mixed herbs. I wasn’t much of a cook and ate more pasta and sauce than a hot-blooded Italian.

  ‘Okay,’ Frank went on. ‘If Malcom didn’t do it, then who did?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’m looking for something solid. Maybe it’s Mrs Noland.’ I stirred the tomato sauce with a wooden spoon Michael bought me for mother’s day when he was eight.

  ‘I thought we’d covered that ground already.’

  I walked back to the lounge room, licking the sauce off the spoon. ‘I want to check her out thoroughly. I don’t like the way she immediately took on a defensive attitude when I questioned her.’

  He nodded without agreeing.

  I continued, ‘I’m going to look into her affairs tomorrow. Financial history, credit rating, debtors, creditors. Nobody has bothered with that so far.’

  ‘You’re wasting time. We’re better off concentrating on Malcom.’

  ‘Why don’t you do that since you’ve gone a step ahead without me. Just make sure you don’t cause too much bruising this time.’

  He shook his head as if I was being unreasonable.

  ‘I tell you what,’ I went on, ‘why don’t you look into Mrs Noland, and I’ll find out about the zinc stearate?’

  He agreed with a non-committal expression.

  We continued to make small talk about the case without expanding to anything new. I was actually enjoying talking to him. It had been a while since we’d sat facing each other without trying to discredit everything we shared. For the first time since we’d worked together on this case, I felt like he was my partner again, as if we had the same goal of solving this case and nothing else mattered.

  Half an hour later, we were sitting at the kitchen table with a plate full of pasta and sauce.

  Michael ran into the kitchen to grab a plate and flew back to his room.

  ‘Is he always like that?’ Frank asked with a mouthful of pasta.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Graciously sociable?’ Sauce dripped from his fork to his striped shirt, but he didn’t notice, and I wasn’t in a critical enough mood to let him know.

  ‘He’s at that age.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said as if that explained everything.

  When he left I felt a huge weight being lifted off my shoulders. Now that I knew I didn’t have to fight Frank as well as having to figure out what the hell was going on with the Tracy Noland investigation, my mind was clear to work things out.

  At 9.30 p.m., I went to Terry Bennetts’ for a workout, but returned home within an hour because of lack of energy. And since Ken wasn’t there, I missed out on the delight of one of his entertaining conversations, which gave me one more reason not to hang around the deserted gymnasium. The fact was that I needed some sleep, even though I had a thousand-and-one worries on my mind.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  On Friday the 2nd of January, sunlight filtered through the yellow drapes of my bedroom window and landed on my face. I tossed and turned a couple of times, trying hard to remain in the land of dreams. Finally, when all I saw was blood circulating behind my eyelids, I turned my head and checked the digital alarm clock on my side table. It read 6.22 a.m. in a red fluorescent display, and, in spite of it being early, I felt the weight of the day dragging me down. I decided to fight back.

  Half an hour later I was showered, dressed in my usual skirt, blouse and jacket, and reading the Herald-Sun at the kitchen table, while washing down a multi-vitamin and an e-supplement with a mug of virgin black percolated coffee.

  The Tracy Noland story was on the front page of the paper again, as it had been for the past two weeks. The middle spread of the newspaper featured a background story on Malcom Sternwood, the prime suspect in the investigation, so the feature writer kept on telling us. There was a small, dated black-and-white photo of myself in the right bottom corner. My hair was longer then, cut just below my shoulder blades, and I couldn’t see bags under my eyes. A two-inch side-bar told how I was unwilling to talk to the media while the case remained unsolved. There was mention about my involvement in the Wilson murder the previous year, where a man had been found decapitated in his South Melbourne apartment. Goosh was quoted as saying, ‘We’ve put the best team together to work on this investigation. Dr Kristina Melina is working around the clock on the case.’ The kind journalist who covered the story must have purposely removed any nasty comments Goosh might have said about the unsuitability of an unsworn investigator leading the case.

  I emptied my mug of coffee and flipped the pages to the comics to read Robotman and Monty, the only comic strip I bothered with.

  Just then, Michael came out of his room, his hair out of place, rubbing his right eye with his fist. He wore blue-chequered pyjamas, continually pulling the bottom half up to his waist because the elastic had stretched. I made a mental note to get him a new pair at K mart on the weekend.

  We greeted each other and made small talk about the forthcoming school year, while he prepared breakfast, which consisted of three times the recommended daily allowance of Coco Pops and half a litre of full-cream milk. Good for your taste buds, I thought, and the rest I closed one eye over. He was still young, and I could only hope one day he would become more sensible about his diet.

  After breakfast, while Michael was getting ready for another day’s outing with Chris, I switched on the laptop and modem in my home office, overlooking Chapel Street. I connected into the easily-accessible Medicare database. There was no such thing as privacy. This was a word used by the government to make us believe everything they kept on federal and state databases was inaccessible to the average computer hacker. Fact is anyone with a computer, a modem and half a brain has access to information kept in most government and privately-owned databases, be it medical records, electoral rolls, traffic infringements, outstanding warrants or credit ratings. Teaching yourself the techniques is as easy as tapping into the Internet.

  However, accessing the Medicare central database proved next to useless since pharmaceutical prescriptions were not kept on record, only medical attendances.

  I shifted in my chair, closed the database and looked up another telephone number in my address book. In less than thirty seconds, I was connected to the Department of Health and Family Services. I was hoping to find someone in the Albert Park area who might have bought zinc stearate from a chemist. To begin, I conveniently assumed the person who bought the chemical was entitled to a Health Care Card, issue by Centrelink for people who were on one form of welfare or another. I drew a blank. No one had ever sold the damn thing for as long as records had been kept.

  I yawned and stretched my legs, overlooking the traffic from my second-floor apartment. A line of cars were banked up at the traffic light because of a tram, which was letting commuters in and out. The first driver in line was revving up the engine of his green Corolla, ready to stamp on the accelerator as soon as the last person stepped on the pedestrian walk or on the tram. One day someone was going to get killed, and everyone would play dumb and innocent.

  T
he building adjacent to mine, which caught on fire the previous year, and as a result made the front page of the paper, was undergoing a major renovation. The constant beeping of a crane, which began its tune at around six-thirty in the morning, had become part of the cultural pot pourri of exotic city-living noises. Even when the beeping on the crane stopped, it was still ringing in the four corners of my skull for the next two hours.

  The tiny units and bedsitters were being sold as ‘exclusive St Kilda cosmopolitan lifestyle’ apartments. Never mind that to date they’d been occupied with backpackers, drug addicts and small-time gangsters. That was all buried under freshly varnished floor boards and painted walls, with all the previous residents being evicted faster than I could blink an eyelid. I wondered if real estate agents had an obligation to tell prospective buyers that the previous occupant died crucified on a needle, or got butchered to death by a live-in-lover who snapped from crack frying his brain. Had they been told, maybe the buyers would have negotiated an additional ten-thousand-dollar discount. But in a world where money ruled and profits were the ultimate bargaining chips, we were only told what we needed to know.

  I turned off my laptop and scratched the back of my neck. I was in awe as to what to do next about locating zinc stearate. Logic told me I should visit a local chemist and ask if he knew anything about the chemical compound.

  The Amcal Chemist on High Street, just past Punt Road, was open twenty-four hours a day.

  The pharmacist was a man in his late forties or early fifties with a grey crown and not much hair left on top.

  ‘You wouldn’t be able to get it unless you signed for it,’ he explained when I mentioned zinc stearate.

  ‘Do you need a prescription to obtain this stuff?’

  ‘Absolutely, unless someone sold it under the counter, which is illegal. It’s classified poisonous, so yes, you’d need authorisation, ID and a signature.’

  I thanked the chemist and decided to try other chemists.