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

by Laurent Boulanger

  Just then the door of the conference room was pushed open without warning. Goosh, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, came in the room. He held a clipboard in his right hand. His lips were tight and his eyes showed now expression whatsoever. He looked like a pallbearer who’d just attended a funeral.

  Goosh was against the idea of having civilians performing sworn officers duties. When I left the VFSC a few months back, he’d been relieved. After all the insults we had traded over the past three years, he surprised me by giving me a top-notched reference. My guess was that he did it in the hope that I would find a fascinating job somewhere else and would never re-consider being contracted to the VFSC.

  But here I was as if I’d never left.

  Goosh had a round face and small dark eyes. His suits were expensive, but because he was short and shaped like a pear, it was a waste of money as far as I could tell. He would have looked better in a dress. Today, he wore a two-piece, black, cotton-blend suit. His tie was yellow laced with pale brown stripes and his shirt plain white. While he took a seat, I realised I had never seen this man smiling and wondered if he was in fact capable of doing so.

  Frank turned around and said, ‘Commissioner.’

  ‘Okay, let’s get on with this,’ Goosh said. He glared at me before I even opened my mouth. ‘I don’t make it a habit to get involved in every homicide investigation. I’ve called you up because I want to know what she,’ pointing at me, ‘is doing here.’

  I rolled my eyes and said, ‘She has a name, sir.’

  ‘Kristina, shut up!’ Frank said.

  I felt heat on my face, wondering where the hell that was coming from. I tried to say something, but no words came out.

  Frank turned to Goosh: ‘Trevor Mitchell wants her on the team.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘Because she has the experience, the knowledge and the background. You know that as well as I do. We haven’t had time to find someone else, and frankly I’m not sure we need someone else.’

  ‘Right, so what does Dr Melina have to say about that?’

  He turned to me.

  ‘Dr Melina said yes,’ I said.

  ‘You said yes? But I thought you never wanted to work another homicide? Weren’t you going through some kind of nervous breakdown six months ago? Aren’t you on some sort of medication?’

  ‘This case is different.’

  ‘And how’s that?’

  ‘I knew the victim twenty years ago.’

  Goosh formed an O with his mouth. He rubbed the back of his neck and passed one hand through his hair. ‘So, this is a personal quest for revenge?’

  ‘Not really, sir, I’d just want to do my job. I believe in justice. Is that so hard for you to understand?’

  ‘But this is not your job.’

  ‘I was offered the job, I’m taking it.’

  Thirty seconds of silence followed.

  Goosh turned to Frank. ‘And you said Trevor Mitchell authorised this?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t make the decisions. Like I’ve already pointed out, Kristina is the best in the business. Her track record is impressive. Surely, I don’t have to give you details.’

  ‘Looks like I’m going to have to have a word with him. I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding. Dr Melina will be relieved from her duty ASAP. I don’t see how she can be impartial to the investigation when the victim is someone she knew. If this ever goes to trial, the defence is going to have a field day pointing out Kristina’s past relation to the victim.’

  I shook my head, ready to say something, but Frank threw me darts with his eyes.

  ‘I’m sure Trevor Mitchell had good reasons to assign Dr Melina,’ Frank said. ‘I certainly don’t have any problems working with her.’

  Goosh was scribbling god-knows-what on a white pad attached to his clipboard.

  I stood there, grinding my teeth, angry at not being able to express myself. I hated being talked down to, but I hated even more the inability to say what was on my mind. This was absolutely ridiculous. I was the one in charge of the investigation, but everyone else had something to say about me. I wondered if things would have been the same had I been a man.

  ‘And what’s the name of the victim?’ Goosh asked.

  ‘Evelyn Carter,’ I said, refusing to sit quietly like somebody’s pet.

  ’Evelyn Carter?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Did you know her?’

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  ‘Why in the world would I know an Evelyn Carter?’

  ‘So, you didn’t know her?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know her, Dr Melina. It seems the only person who knew her so far is you, which is why I’d like you to pack your bags and forget about the investigation. I don’t think that your grounds for working on this case are legitimate.’

  ‘Well, yes, sir, I understand you don’t like me, but if we keep this meeting at a strictly professional level, maybe we won’t have to get too personal.’

  His face picked up colour.

  Frank took over. ‘So, we found the girl at the back of an alley. It looks as she’s been beaten to death at this stage. We still have to confirm her identity, but a Saab registered to her name was left not far from the body.’

  ‘Any suspects?’ Goosh asked.

  ‘A witness saw the girl arriving by cab. We’re tracking down the cab company. The dispatcher was Black Taxi-cabs.’

  Goosh fiddled with his silver pen. ‘Okay, I don’t want any of this to go to the media yet. I’d like someone else to handle the case. I’ll be ringing Trevor Mitchell this afternoon to make suitable arrangements. In the meantime, let’s not get Kristina too involved. Anything she handles right now might jeopardise investigation.’

  My hands were shaking. He was talking to Frank as if I wasn’t in the room. I pictured myself stabbing Goosh in the eye with my pen.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Frank said. ‘You do what you have to, but Trevor Mitchell seemed determined to have Dr Melina investigating this homicide. And at this stage, I’m all the way behind him. I’ll continue to work with her until I hear any different from Mitchell.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can to get rid of her. Don’t burden yourself with this problem. I’m sure you’ve got enough to keep you busy at the moment. You leave it to me.’

  I stood from my chair and threw both hands on the table.

  ‘You guys are a real bunch of arseholes!’

  Goosh dropped his jaw, but no words came out. I thought his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets.

  Frank said, ‘Kristina, sit and shut up!’

  I screamed louder than him, ‘No, you sit and shut up, you stupid fuck! I’m not going to take any more shit from either of you! Listen to yourselves talking. It’s like I’m part of the furniture. What about me? Aren’t I the one who should be making the decision?’

  Goosh and Frank looked at each other like a married couple trying to cope with a juvenile delinquent.

  ‘And for your information,’ I went on, ‘the crime we’re dealing with happens to be the handy work of a man, if witnesses are correct. So, since your guys are of the same gender as the arsehole who killed Evelyn Carter, you’re really not in a position to open your mouth. You’re all the same. You’ve only got one thing on your mind.’

  Goosh raised his hands and turned to Frank. ‘Do I have to listen to this? And then you’re wondering why I don’t want her working for us. She needs a doctor. She’s clearly insane.’

  I threw my pen at Goosh with all my force. The pen hit him just above the eyebrow. He brought his hands to his face, and for a spilt second I thought I got him in the eye. Too bad, I missed.

  ‘Ah, Jesus,’ Goosh whimpered.

  Frank stood from his chair. ‘Kristina, calm down!’

  ‘Fuck you too,’ I said.

  I grabbed my notes and headed for the exit.

  Just as I slammed the door behind me, I heard Goosh scream, ‘I want her out of th
e building now! Get rid of that woman. She’s more dangerous than the killers she’s chasing.’

  I stood in front of the mirror of the women’s lavatory on the ninth floor of the complex. I wasn’t crying. I was just so damn angry that I needed to gather myself before I hit someone else. I’ve never felt so much rage coming out all at once. The fact that the victim of the crime I was investigating happened to be someone I knew long time ago didn’t help. Maybe that was the real reason why I lost my self-control in the conference room.

  I turned on the cold water and splashed my face.

  And then I began laughing out loud. I tried to imagine what happened after I left the room. Goosh had probably screamed at Frank, telling him how incompetent I was, explaining how women had no respect for men nowadays.

  I laughed myself silly even more as I pictured someone walking in the wash room and seeing me laugh like a lunatic.

  Tears came rolling down my cheeks.

  Tears of joy and pain.

  And grief.

  God had to have a sense of humour, I thought, because from up there, this must have been the best show on the planet.

  I dried my hands with a paper towel and headed for the door.

  Half an hour later I was back in the conference room. This time it was only Frank and me.

  ‘You shouldn’t have spoken to him that way,’ he said, fidgeting with his fingers.

  ‘And why not? Did you see the way he talked about me?’

  ‘Yes, but you know what he’s like.’

  ‘What he’s like? What about you? How dare do you tell me to shut up in front of someone else, especially Goosh? What’s the matter with you? We’re suppose to be partners. I thought you respected me. I never treat you like shit in front of other people.’

  ‘You called me a stupid fuck.’

  ‘That’s because you deserved it.’

  ‘I was just trying to smooth things out. I knew how you were going to react.’

  ‘How I was going to react? So, it’s okay for Goosh to be himself, to insult me in front of you, but it’s not okay for me to be myself? I have to be nice and docile. Listen to yourself. You’re as pathetic as he is.’

  There was a pathetic look on his face. His eyes were sagging, and he reminded me of a cocker spaniel.

  ‘Kristina, you know I care about you. I’m the one who called you to be on the investigation. If I didn’t care about you, you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘You only want to get into my pants. You know it and I know it. So, don’t try to make it sound like you’re the nice guy.’

  He shrugged. ‘Is it so wrong that I want to be with you?’

  ‘Frank, I don’t give a damn. I just want to get on with our work. You’re not my type, I would never, never sleep with you. You might as well get that inside your thick skull.’

  What a bitch!

  For the next thirty seconds he stared at an empty spot in space.

  ‘Okay,’ he finally said. ‘I’m ugly, bald, chauvinist and a pain in the arse. I can take it, I’ve lived with it all my life.’

  ‘Frank—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s what you want to hear. Okay, so, I’ll admit. I don’t like myself. I hate what I see when I wake up every morning. I hate being single. I hate going bald. I don’t like the way I dress, the way I try to save money on everything, the way I repulse women. I want to be loved, I want someone I can take care of, someone who loves me in return. But I might as well face the fact that I was destined to be unloved for the rest of my life. On one side you have the beautiful people, you, and then you have the rest, me. There’s a line which cannot be crossed, and I’m stuck behind it. I can face it, Kristina, you’re physically superior to me. I’m a specimen below you’re minimum standard, and for that I can only blame myself.’

  I hadn’t expected such self-depreciating verbal diarrhoea.

  ‘Frank, I’m not going to hold your hand and say how sorry I am. Your looks don’t have much to do with why you’re single.’

  ‘I know, it’s my personality.’

  Here we go. The maturity of some grown men really astounded me. I felt like I was talking to a five-year-old kid. The man sitting across me was forty-six years old and begged to be pitied. What he needed a good kick up the backside to set him back on track.

  ‘Frank, I’m really angry at the moment. I’m angry at Goosh, and I’m angry at you for making such a dick of yourself. Can we just leave it for another time and get on with what we’re suppose to be doing?’

  He hesitated for a few seconds and said, ‘Sure.’

  He lowered his eyes as if he’d just received a blow on the side of the head.

  I did my best to ignore his martyred mentality by spreading the contents of my crime scene material on the desk.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘We’ve got one suspect so far. The girl is so black and blue, I reckon it was someone who knew her.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘If someone wanted her dead, he would have just killed her. She was savagely beaten. This wasn’t just a straight murder. You ask yourself, why would someone beat another person so badly?’

  ‘Punishment?’ He shuffled through the photographs on the desk.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe even anger, and then you ask yourself why.’

  ‘She didn’t do what she was suppose to.’

  ‘Okay, so she’s a prostitute, and someone paid her to do a sexual act of one sort or another. Either she refuses, or she takes the money and refuses to do what she’s been asked. The guy gets angry and beats her to a pulp.’

  ‘You think that’s what happened?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Common scenario. So far it’s only speculation, but given her work as a prostitute, it’s a very likely sequence of events.’

  ‘Where do we go from here on?’

  ‘I have to attend the autopsy this afternoon. If you can track down the cab driver who dropped her off this morning, that would be helpful. Next I’ll be going around to her place and see if I can find anything. Talk to her neighbours, see if she has any relatives she visited recently. We can only take it one step at the time.’

  ‘What about Goosh?’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about him right now. Let’s try to get as much done as we can while I’ve got a green light.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  We both scribbled details in our log books.

  ‘Have you arranged for the Saab to be tested for trace evidence?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s at the Centre this very minute.’

  ‘How long will it take for the car to be processed?’

  ‘You know it’s a big job. If I can get someone on it immediately, maybe a couple of days.’

  I locked my eyes into his. ‘That long?’

  ‘It’s not just a matter of recovering evidence. The car has to be tested for fingerprint, and forensic evidence analysed. Don’t forget there are other cases running as well.’

  We resumed our notes and closed our log books.

  ‘I’m heading back home to get ready for this afternoon,’ I said.

  ‘Okay. I’ll see you at the mortuary.’

  I was just about to leave the room when he said, ‘Kristina?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I arrived home at 1.32 p.m., aware that I only had just under a couple of hours to burn before being present at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM) in Southbank, home of the mortuary.

  I got to Craigieburn via the West Ring Road, exited at Tullamarine Freeway, took the next exit at Mickleham Road, turned right at the next traffic light, and drove all the way down Craigieburn West Road. I lived on the edge of suburbia and vast empty spaces of rural land where cattle and sheep spent the day just existing. Why couldn’t human beings behave in the same manner? It was a wicked world, and at the age of forty, I still hadn’t figured half of it out.

  As I unlocked the front door of my three-bedroom veneer home, I wondered how my fourteen-year-old
son Michael was going. The previous year, he had been involved in one of my investigations. A violent incident had left him emotionally disturbed. Since that day, we hadn’t been able to communicate openly. I missed the bond we shared prior to the incident. It was hard enough watching him become introverted, aware of all the confusion he was experiencing as a teenager, but seeing us gradually growing apart made me feel like the worse mother in the world. Being both the mother and father in his life hadn’t been easy. I single-handedly brought him up from birth, and yet felt that I had spent too much time focusing on my career. When I was contracted full-time with the VFSC and the CIB, he often complained about the little time we spent together. His lament had been the main reason why I decided to work as a private investigator. Having my business based from home would ensure that I would be around him so often that he’d probably tire of me rather than complain that I wasn’t there.

  I made a light lunch of fibre-enriched cracker bread and low-fat cheese. I washed it down with a glass of bottled water. Dr Pepper was out of my diet. I drank too much of the stuff for too long, and although it tasted god-sent, all that caffeine and sugar couldn’t have been all that good for me. After my last homicidal investigation, my butt had blown into one the size of a brontosaurus’s, no thanks to a diet of soft drinks, chocolates and treats from the Cheesecake’s Shop. I was determined to get back into shape, and aimed at joining the gym in the next few days.

  After lunch I sneaked into Michael’s room to snoop around as I often did. Unlike his other bedroom when we lived in St Kilda, this one was neat and tidy. The usual single bed, study desk and computer were there, like in every fourteen-year-old’s bedroom. Apart from an X-Files calendar pinned above his desk, the walls were bare of posters or decorations usually associated with teenagers. I knew he was going through a phase, but it wasn’t the phase I had seen with other kids. Michael was quiet and withdrawn when he used to be loud and self-opinionated.

  Sitting on his bed, I tried to figure out what was going on in his head. I concluded that I needed to talk to him if I didn’t want our relationship to deteriorate to a point of no-return. At least, whatever the outcomes, I would live with the knowledge that I had tried to improve the situation.