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

by Laurent Boulanger

  I logged into the search facility of my address book and entered EVELYN CARTER, after which I hit the SEARCH button with the icon and a click of the mouse.

  The search took a while to process. I sat there for a full two minutes, playing with the tips of my hair, hoping to God I was on the right track.

  I thought about Michael, wondering if he ever was going to talk to me again. Since he disappeared into his room last night, I hadn’t seen a glimpse of him. Today was Wednesday, and he should have been at school. But I was in no mood to harass him and get insulted in the process. I had already decided to let it be and trust fate to take care of everything.

  Suddenly the video display unit spilled the result of my search. There were ten people by the name of Evelyn Carter who had an email address. I run down each name with my index finger:

  Evelyn Carter

  Evelyn Carter

  Evelyn M. Carter evelyn.carter@mailplus.com

  Evelyn Carter

  Evelyn Carter

  Evelyn Carter

  Evelyn Carter

  Evelyn Carter

  Evelyn Carter

  Evelyn Carter

  The third listing seemed to be a match. The middle name of the listing was an M, in fact the only M in the list of ten names. I knew Evelyn’s middle name was Maree, so there was a good chance this way her. There was also the chance that this was just a coincidence and that I would be hitting a blank.

  Now that I had found her email address, I had to have access to it. I recognised the extension of her e-mail, mailplus.com, as one of the man free email services for people who used the Internet.

  I logged into the Internet using Netscape Explorer 4.0 and typed mailplus.com at the URL section. In no time I was faced with a screen which asked me for my name and password. I typed in Evelyn. Carter at the name box, and racked my brain for the password. I hadn’t seen Evelyn for a very long time and trying to figure out what she was using as a password seemed like an impossible task. I tried all the obvious things, like her birth date, her middle name, the brand name of her car, her street number, her phone number, but none of those were successful.

  Frustrated, I kept returning to the sign-on screen, wondering what in the world she could have used as a password.

  After another half hour of trying prospective passwords, I gave up.

  Standing from my office chair, I headed for the kitchen where I made myself a cup of coffee to let the frustration out of my system. There had to be some word, something which was easy for her to remember, something which I could figure out. But there was also twenty years of life separating us - now even death—and maybe she choose a word which had nothing to do with my life.

  Over my cup of black coffee, I tried hard to remember the things which were important to Evelyn when we were still friends. But nothing came to mind. We didn’t share little secret words or expressions that other girls did when we were young. And even if we did, I remembered none. This was another time, another place, another world.

  Back behind my desk. I was about to give up when Evelyn’s cat came to mind. I wondered if it had returned home, only to find an empty, ransacked house. I still felt a tinge of guilt for not having taking it with me on that day when we first entered Evelyn’s apartment.

  I typed O-S-C-A-R and pressed the enter button.

  Bingo!

  Evelyn’s missing cat was the access code to her email.

  There were only two new messages waiting to be read. Both were from Celia Pressly, Evelyn’s friend in the USA.

  I opened the most recent:

  Dear Evelyn,

  What’s happening? Have you received my last e-mail? Haven’t heard from you yet. Send us a message, okay? You’re getting me worried.

  Chao,

  Celia.

  I checked the message prior that one.

  Dear Evelyn,

  Got your e-mail. I’m glad you found a boyfriend. What does he think of your job? You know, if he’s not happy, then just remember it’s your life You don’t have to put up with anyone’s bullshit. But why am I telling you that, I know you wouldn’t.

  Okay, let me know the dates for when you get to the States. I can’t wait to see you again.

  Chao,

  Celia.

  The last e-mail was dated two days after we found Evelyn’s body. All I learned was that Evelyn hadn’t answered her last e-mails, let alone read them, and that she was supposedly on her way to the USA in the not-to-distant future. Fact one: she never answered her email because she was dead. Fact two: because she was dead, she would never make a trip to the USA.

  I wondered who the boyfriend was. The cab driver did mention something about a boyfriend, and at first, we didn’t want to believe him, but now that Celia had mentioned the mysterious boyfriend again, it was something I had to look into seriously. I wondered if Evelyn had worked for an escort agency prior to setting herself up. She probably had to at the beginning, to just ensure a constant flow of work. But since an escort agency was taking fifty percent of her earnings, she only had to work half the time if she worked for her self to make the same money. I had no idea what kind of money we were talking about, but based on the car she was driving and the furniture in her house, I knew it was a serious income. Also, if she did work for an escort agency, it could have been years ago. I wasn’t sure what I would learn from people who worked with her that far back, but I nonetheless made a mental note about checking her past employers. It that type of industry, I assumed, friends probably lasted a lifetime.

  I scanned down the other messages. Most of them were from Celia. Nothing serious, just mindless chit-chats about every day life, which no one would give a damn about. It didn’t look as if Evelyn was using her e-mail for business correspondence. This was a bit of blow given that I had hoped for a major breakthrough by illegally accessing her email.

  But all was not over yet. I decided to check her address book. When the address screen came up, it came me a choice of three folders to chose from—‘friends’, ‘customers’ and ‘black book’.

  I nearly flipped backwards in my chair.

  And all this time I had been looking for a three-dimensional address book, not a digital book. Judith Kingman had even described the size of the address book, as if she had seen it. Maybe she did, and maybe this was only a cyberspace back-up copy of the real thing. Whatever the case, I was glad I’d finally found the goddamn thing. I pat myself on the back. Ingenuity always wins in the end.

  There were quite a few email numbers in the folders, most of them too secretive to figure out who they belonged to. What was I suppose to do? Send an e-mail to all these people asking them their names, address and contact number and hope they would reply back?

  Many people chose nicknames for their e-mail address for privacy. I could more or less understand why. I didn’t trust the internet or anything associated with it. As recently as last week, one of the largest free e-mail providers through the internet had been broken into by a hacker. If I was considering becoming a career criminal, the first thing I would do would be to get myself a solid education in computer programming, preferably to a higher degree level. After all, it was safer to break into a major bank database and transfer a few millions dollars to a secret account in the Cayman Islands than storming into a bank at gunpoint and watching yourself in full action on Australia’s Most Wanted the following week.

  I sipped from my mug, scanning the e-mail addresses.

  One of them almost jumped out of the screen and slapped me in the face:

  sg@vicpolice.au.gov.

  I checked my wallet for a business card from Goosh, which I kept in a clear plastic holder among tens of others. I found it between a business card from David’s Bookshop and one from Cee Bee Cleaning. The e-mail address read:

  fmoore@vicpolice.au.gov.

  I looked at the screen and back at the card. Judith Kingman mentioned that some of Evelyn’s clients worked for the Police.

  Two police officers broke into Evelyn’s
apartment.

  Her body had vanished from the morgue.

  My brain was kicking into high gear.

  I checked the screen and Frank’s business card again.

  The extension on both email addresses was the same.

  @vicpolice.au.gov.

  There was no doubt in my mind.

  I knew who the bastard was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Two hours later I was at the Victoria Police St Kilda Road building complex in the conference room with Frank. My body was tensed, filled with panic and anger all at once. Every time I thought about the e-mail address I found in Evelyn’s address book and its owner, I wanted to throw up. It all began to make sense. All the answers were not there yet, but it would only be a matter of time.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Frank asked for the second time. He wore heavy bags under his eyes, and his shirt could have done with ironing. If his mind was ticking like mine, he would have had little sleep since the beginning of this investigation. Even though today was clearly not the case, Frank had this amazing way of looking as if nothing was getting to him, but on the inside he was no different from me. I knew he woke up in the early hours of the morning and worried about the case he was working on, worried about where his life was heading, worried whether the work we ever did really made any difference at all. I knew what he was going through because that’s exactly how I and thousands of other law enforcement people felt. Unlike other jobs where you could just switch off at the end of the day, we were taking our work home with us. The mental strain of working on a homicide was beyond what anyone out there could imagine. No matter how many times I’d gone through it, it never ceased to amaze me what humans did to one another. And even on days when I was preoccupied doing something else, the back of my mind was always itching with details of the homicide I was working on.

  ‘Of course, I’m sure,’ I said, pushing a printed page of Evelyn’s e-mail address book under Frank’s nose, ‘There, I’ve even made a copy for you.’ I had highlighted the suspicious e-mail address with a yellow marker.

  Frank stared at the printed page and shook his head. ‘Oh, boy, and you’ve come to ask me for advice? What can I tell you? Maybe you were right after all. This is... this is...’

  ‘Go on, say it.’

  ‘This is a fuckin’ nightmare.’

  The fg in fg@vicpolice.au.gov stood for Goosh. Frank pulled a business card from his wallet and threw it on the desk. The e-mail number on the print-out matched that of Goosh’s business card.

  ‘That probably explains why he sent police officers to Evelyn’s place,’ I said. ‘That sonofabitch was probably using Evelyn’s services, and when he realised she’d been killed, he knew his name would be linked to her murder.’

  Frank seemed at a lose as to what to say. He waited half a minute before commenting. ‘I don’t know, Kristina. Maybe this has nothing to do with nothing.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that?’

  ‘No, but, I think we should take it one tiny step at a time. Like, I wouldn’t exactly go and burst into Goosh’s office and start pointing a finger. We don’t know how much he knows, and the last thing we need is to be on someone’s hit list.’

  I took back the printed copy of Goosh’s e-mail number.

  ‘You already told me you wanted out of the investigation,’ I said. ‘What about now? Now that you know your boss could be involved in the tempering of an on-going murder investigation, do you still think you can just walk away?’

  ‘I say let’s keep it quiet for a little while. You don’t want to get yourself into more trouble than you already are. Especially with Goosh. He’s already working hard on getting you off the investigation. If you snap at him and start making wild accusations, that might just be what he needs to have you suspended indefinitely.’

  ‘Or that might just be what I need to get him to tell the truth. He’d know that if I go to the press with this, it’d be the end of his career.’

  ‘True. It could also be the end of life as you know it.’

  ‘I’m certainly not going to stand there and pretend I found nothing. Jesus, Frank, I can’t believe you’re taking all this with a grain of salt.’

  Frank played with a button on his shirt sleeve. ‘Do you think he has something to do with the body gone missing at the mortuary?’

  ‘More likely than not,’ I said, certain Goosh was capable of anything just to cover his own arse. ‘You know how this thing is going to go down with the media. And Judith Kingman’s already told us how other people in power were using Evelyn’s services. We still don’t know who killed her. It could have been anyone of her clients. It could even have been Goosh. It could have been Goosh and other dick heads with fat cheques and too much free time on their hands.’

  ‘You don’t seriously believe he could have killed her?’

  ‘No, but he seemed eager to get his name cleared before we even linked it to Evelyn’s murder. The way these people see it is that she was only a prostitute, so there’s no point in a thorough investigation. Why do you think Goosh wants me off the case so fast? I was Evelyn’s friend, so he knows I will do everything in my power to find the killer. He’s seen me working in the past. He knows I never fail. What does that tell you?’

  ‘It doesn’t tell me he killed her.’

  ‘I never said that. He probably didn’t. He’s just looking after his own back. No one knows who killed Evelyn and why. I certainly don’t, but I am as hell going to find out.’

  Frank shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  ‘Let it go for the time being,’ he said. ‘Let’s find out who are the other people in Evelyn’s address book. Maybe they’d be easier to front up than Goosh. Maybe he has nothing to do with, and it just happened that he was using Evelyn’s services.’

  Suddenly I realised that no matter how much I was going to say, it would make no difference to Frank. He had already decided to back off and take the easy approach. It looks as if I was going to have to take the part of the lone ranger once more.

  ‘Okay, we’ll wait,’ I said for not wanting to disagree and ending up strangling him.

  But another idea crossed my mind.

  When I got hack home, there was one of those red-on-white card from the post office telling me to pick some registered mail. I wasn’t expecting anything, so it kind of took me by surprise. Registered mail only meant two things - bad news or legal matters, or something in the form of both. As reluctant as I was to go and pick up the registered mail, curiosity got the better of me. Before the engine in my car got a chance to cool off, I backed up from the driveway and headed for the Craigieburn shopping centre.

  When I signed for the registered item at the post office, the woman at the counter gave me an envelope with the name of a solicitor on the top right corner. I knew now it meant trouble.

  On my way back to the car, I grabbed a copy of the p.m. edition of Herald-Sun and an Aero chocolate bar from the local newsagent. There was something on the front page about a gas explosion which was to deprive Victorians from gas supply for a least two weeks. No hot shower, no stove cooking, no central heating. Welcome to the twenties century. With all that was happening in my life, that was the last thing I needed.

  Back in the car, I slid the envelope to remove an official looking document which looked like a court summons. Peter Perezzia, the cab driver who took Evelyn Carter on her last drive to destiny, was suing me from battering and abuse of power. Someone said once that bad news come in three. I was now scared to go home and find out what the third deed of the day would be.

  Back home, I studied the summons where the alleged victim claimed he had been not only battered, but forced into custody when we had nothing against him. He claimed I tried to make him sign a confession and tricked him into answering questions which would make him look guilty. He also claimed that I never told him he was legally entitled to speak to a lawyer.

  I felt rage building up. That sonofabitch was lying through his teeth. I remembered clea
rly asking him if he wanted a lawyer. And since the interview had been videotaped, it would be easy to prove.

  Immediately, I rang Frank on his mobile and told him the news.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘We’ve just received two summons on this side. He’s also me and the Victoria Police. This guy’s after money. He must be working on his retirement fund.’

  ‘We don’t deserved this, Frank. Why are people such arseholes when you’re trying to do the right thing?’

  ‘Hey, I don’t know. Everyone tries to get something for themselves these days. Greed is the way of the world.’

  ‘Well, the way of the world sucks.’

  After I hung up, I felt like I just swallowed a bucket of sand.

  I snatched my car keys from the table and headed back to my car.

  I needed to know I wasn’t alone on this.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  David was writing in an A4 pad when I walked into his bookshop. The air outside was cold, and the heating from inside the bookshop was most welcome. The warning bell at the entrance got his attention.

  He looked up and said, ‘Kristina? What a surprise. I didn’t expect you.’

  ‘I wanted it to be a surprise.’

  ‘Well, it’s a surprise, all right.’ He moved from behind the counter. ‘Hold on a sec.’

  He locked the door of the bookshop and turned around. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ah, come on, Kristina, you look like you’ve seen someone being amputated.’

  Reluctant, but too weak to fight it back, I told him what I found out about Goosh.

  ‘Oh, boy,’ he said, stepping back behind his counter. ‘Yes, I can see why you’re worried now. This is starting to sound like a John Cleary novel. But you know you have to do what’s right. It doesn’t matter who these people are, they can’t get away with murder.’