The Shadow Maker

by Robert Sims

  The worst mess and the worst smells were in the kitchen. It looked like the work of mindless vandals. Smashed crockery and shards of glass seemed to litter every surface, mixed in with droppings and paw prints and spilt liquid. The room was thick with flies, and maggots crawled over rotting food. A pool of congealed blood lay beneath the knife rack where the hapless rabbit had skewered itself.

  The bathroom was still intact because the killer had closed the door. The knobs were grimy with dust from where the crime scene detectives had collected more of his prints. There was only one bit of slight damage. A wall bracket was dislodged where the towel rail had been removed. Surfaces here were also smudged with fingerprint dust, along with the bathroom mirror and cabinet.

  The last room she entered was the back bedroom. This was where Cathy Lentz had been murdered. The floor was bare. Sheets, mattress, bed and carpet had all been shipped off to the crime lab.

  But her business studies books still lined the shelves, her clothes still hung forlornly in the wardrobe and the ashes from the killer’s fire still lay in the hearth. Despite the heat, Rita shuddered as she relived in her mind what had happened here. The sequence was becoming clearer.

  She took the mini-disc recorder from her bag but decided it was too stuffy in here to record her impressions, so she unlocked the back door and went out. The yard had been converted into an oversized rabbit hutch with wire mesh coating the side gate and fences. There was a shed, a stack of packing crates, a lemon tree and the mauled remains of a garden plot. What had once been a lawn was now more dirt than grass, and it was pockmarked with holes and burrows.

  Watching carefully where she walked, Rita took a plastic crate and set it down in the shade of the lemon tree. She sat there quietly for a few minutes, calming her breathing and letting her thoughts drift. This was something else she’d picked up from a profiler at the FBI - the value of meditation. The house and yard seemed to exhale an unnatural hush. Few sounds reached her through the torpid midday heat. No human voices. No traffic noise. It was as if the surroundings were deserted - like an outpost on an abandoned planet. Overhead a hostile sun blazed in an empty sky. Its fierce light glinted on the shed roof. The distant hum of an airliner vibrated through the air. Then, as if to reassure her of normality, the sound of a blackbird singing came from the branches of a gum tree in the garden next door. She held the microphone to her mouth, pressed Record and started speaking.

  ‘Naked apart from your bronze mask, which is your other face, and brandishing the metal rail as a weapon, you go into her bedroom.

  You see her naked body in the firelight, the prisoner restraints on the bed, the flames casting shadows around the room, just as you require because these are the rules of the cave. If she screams or pleads or tries to win you over, you are implacable, you are on a mission. But your aim is not to kill her. It’s to render her unconscious for sex. That makes it rape, which is what you need. Then you inflict the mutilation. Why? To punish her? Disable her? Disarm her? In a way, you’re branding her. And there’s nothing new in that.

  It’s been done over the centuries by those wielding power. Marking her with an indelible stamp. Just as the Scalper did to his victims before you.’

  She paused for a moment, breathless. The parallels were more striking than ever.

  ‘Could it be that you both have a common cause? That you’re following the same pattern? That you’re acting from the same template, as it were? Is it possible that you both draw your inspiration from the same secret dreamland?’

  Rita clicked off the recorder, a savage look in her eyes, startled at her power of empathy. Where did that come from? Some fugue into her own zone of otherness? Not that it mattered. Because now she had found a fresh approach that was desperately needed. To narrow the focus on this killer she needed to look more closely at the trail left by another.

  The first thing Rita did when she got back to her desk in the squad room was to call up all the Scalper files from the database. They provided details of predatory pick-ups in bars and clubs - the four victims single women, living alone, all with long curly hair. He drove them back to their apartments, rendered them helpless with a date-rape drug and hacked off their hair - along with some of their skin.

  With the last two, he chopped off their heads as well. Unlike the current killer, the Scalper came armed with his own weapons - cut-throat razors and hatchets. Then he performed oral sex on his victims, and left. That was all more than a year ago. No fresh attacks since.

  But there was also the car. A black Mazda MX-5. Just like the current killer’s. Of course it could be a coincidence, as others had argued, but what if it wasn’t? What if there was some undetected parallel?

  She scrolled through the interview notes with the Scalper’s two survivors. They described what he looked like - not a clone of the Hacker, but in the same general mould - tall, dark-haired, well-dressed, articulate, with a photofit likeness showing another smooth thirty-something. The women had outlined how he’d behaved, the way he looked, what he’d said - teasing comments, like, ‘Ever hear the voices of the gods?’ That sounded a little too convenient - but if he meant it, the phrase qualified him for schizophrenia. Then there was the curious line of flattery he’d used on both of them about their curly hair - ‘wild as a hatful of snakes’. At the time the women had laughed. Afterwards it haunted them. The words had been a psychotic warning, but they’d ignored it.

  To her profiler’s mind the two sets of crimes committed by the Scalper and the Hacker were like separate configurations from the same puzzle. But Rita needed to prove it one way or the other, not least to herself, even if it meant spending the rest of the afternoon going through all the evidence boxes, hard-copy files and paperwork generated by the Scalper taskforce.

  For the next two hours she sifted through printouts, stacks of notes, crime scene photos - much of the material summarised on the database - without finding anything to confirm her suspicions.

  But as she scanned a handwritten list of names, something jumped out at her. She stared at it, confounded by what she saw . It didn’t appear on the computer file because it was next to a name that had been crossed off the list. It read: ‘Ormond Keppel (Xanthus Software) - Deceased’ .

  As Rita looked at the words her brain went into hyperdrive. The odds against Xanthus Software appearing by chance in the Scalper hunt must be astronomical. It also raised the possibility that Barbie’s company concealed more than one dirty secret, and that Martin Barbie was himself more degenerate than she had imagined. She could certainly believe it. Beneath that polished persona was a twisted soul she’d seen at first hand. Add to that Flynn’s outburst over moral corruption, and Josh Barrett’s heavy hints of the same, and perhaps she’d underestimated just how evil Barbie was.

  The thought made her gasp. She sprang up from her desk. One way or another she had to find out. She had to know if she’d uncovered a link to serial crimes, or if it was nothing more than a huge coincidence. The initials on the list were Bradby’s. She rushed across the squad room to his desk. He was on the phone, talking in a bored monotone. She paced up and down in front of him until he got the message and cut the call short.

  ‘Okay. What’s up?’ he said.

  She thrust the piece of paper under his nose and demanded breathlessly, ‘Tell me what you know about Ormond Keppel.’

  ‘Hey, slow down.’ He scanned the list without immediately recognising it. ‘What is this, anyway?’

  ‘It’s from the Scalper files, a year ago. You compiled this list of people to question. But Keppel’s name isn’t on the case file in the computer.’

  ‘Obviously because I didn’t question him. Like it says here: Deceased.’

  ‘Come on, Bradby,’ she said impatiently. ‘Don’t you remember anything about him?’

  He sighed and thought for a moment, then clicked his fingers.

  ‘Shit. Yeah. He was the guy who drowned.’ He spun around to his screen and did a search on the name. One item came up from the
database - a conviction for a minor assault on a female clubgoer. It was from three years ago. ‘That’s right. He pleaded guilty. The court decided there was an element of provocation. The victim was high on ice. Keppel got a suspended sentence.’

  ‘That’s why he was on your list?’

  ‘That and he was a Kiwi. Came over here to do a university course …’

  ‘Which university?’ she snapped.

  ‘Hell. Um … let me think.’

  ‘Monash?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. Why? What have you got?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. What else do you remember?’

  ‘Well one of the Scalper’s victims thought she’d detected a New Zealand accent. I checked with the Auckland cops and sure enough Keppel was known to them for beating up girls as a teenager. Nothing serious, but he sounded like a promising candidate. That’s as far as I got. I didn’t have his current address, just his place of work. When I phoned they broke the news to me. He’d drowned in a rip off Portsea. What the stupid mullet was doing I don’t know. People on the beach saw him being dragged out but by the time a rescue attempt was made he’d vanished. Body never recovered. If he was our boy then he was shark bait. So I had a name - but no one to question.’

  ‘And no body - no DNA,’ said Rita quietly. Then she asked, ‘This is important: did he drown before or after the last Scalper attack?’

  Bradby put on a cheesy smile. ‘I was just thinking the same thing.

  It was definitely after.’ Behind the smile was a searching look. ‘So why are you digging into another case? What’s pulling your chain about Keppel?’

  ‘Xanthus Software,’ she said distractedly.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Sounds like a very bad place to work.’

  She left Bradby with a puzzled expression on his face, hurried back to her desk, grabbed her mobile phone and called Josh Barrett’s number.

  As soon as he answered she said, ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Marita Van Hassel. What do you know about an Ormond Keppel?’

  ‘And hello to you too,’ Josh said sarcastically.

  ‘Josh, please. He worked for Martin Barbie till a year ago.’

  ‘I know that he drowned.’

  ‘Did you work with him?’

  ‘Hardly. I’m the guy Barbie hired as a replacement.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘But I could ask Maynard and Flynn -‘

  ‘Don’t mention this to anyone,’ she cut him short. ‘I just need to check out his background without going through Xanthus. Maybe the university can help.’

  ‘As I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted,’ Josh came back at her, ‘Maynard and Flynn were fellow recruits with Keppel. Barbie headhunted half a dozen of the best postgraduates out at Monash. They were doing research for a professor they all hero-worshipped.’

  A sinking feeling hit Rita in the pit of the stomach as she asked,

  ‘What’s the professor’s name?’

  ‘Byron Huxley.’

  Rita sat at her desk, hesitating, with Byron’s phone number displayed on her mobile’s screen. She realised there was so much she didn’t know about him - the man she’d contacted for expert advice, the man who’d become her lover, the man now linked to a murder investigation. She’d put her trust in him, and yet his entire background was unknown to her. When she called him this time, it would be to question him formally about what he knew.

  She clicked on his number.

  ‘Rita, hi!’ he answered, whispering. ‘Can’t talk at the moment, I’m in the middle of an honours seminar.’

  ‘Byron, I’ve got to ask you something. It’s important.’

  ‘Okay, go on.’

  ‘What’s your connection with Xanthus Software?’

  ‘The computer games company? I don’t have a connection, apart from it poaching some of my best students.’

  ‘Have any of them been out to Monash recently?’ she asked.

  ‘Only Bruce Maynard. Look, I’ve got to go,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll call you later.’

  Maynard was the gangling nerd with an unhealthy interest in sex crimes. Rita got his home number and called it. His mother answered.

  She said Maynard was at a comic book convention and wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours.

  As Rita hung up the phone, an alert flashed onto her computer screen from the live message service. She clicked on it automatically and read the greeting:

  shadow maker says:

  Hello at last!

  She frowned at it, mystified, but decided to respond: van hassel says:

  Who are you?

  A moment later came the reply:

  shadow maker says:

  I’m the one that you want!

  It looked like a wind-up but, her curiosity aroused, she continued with the online dialogue:

  van hassel says:

  Is that so?

  shadow maker says:

  Yes, the man in the mask.

  van hassel says:

  What colour mask?

  shadow maker says:

  Bronze, of course. It’s my other face.

  Rita yelled across the squad room, ‘Erin! Erin!’

  Erin Webster dropped what she was doing and rushed over. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got the Hacker online!’ she shouted. ‘Get the computer mob on it, now!’

  ‘Shit!’ said Erin, scrambling for the nearest phone.

  ‘I’ll keep him on as long as I can,’ said Rita.

  van hassel says:

  So who is behind the face?

  shadow maker says:

  At first I thought it was the Fire Tracer or Flame Stalker, but now I know it’s the Shadow Maker - someone just like you!

  van hassel says:

  Why am I the Shadow Maker?

  shadow maker says:

  Because you’re a killer.

  van hassel says:

  Is that what it means?

  shadow maker says:

  The Shadow Maker is a death warrior. His touch is the touch of death. He takes life from those he cuts down and in their place leaves only shadows. Just like you.

  Erin rushed back, breathless. ‘They’ve traced him,’ she said. ‘He’s in an internet cafe at the southern end of Elizabeth Street.’

  ‘The nearest cops are in Flinders Lane,’ said Rita. ‘Tell them to seal off the cafe, let nobody in or out. I’ll keep him online.’

  van hassel says:

  How can you compare our actions?

  shadow maker says:

  Because I’ve sensed an empathy between us. I feel at home in your personal space.

  van hassel says:

  So it was you who broke into my home. Why?

  shadow maker says:

  I needed to be sure about you, and fate has proved me right.

  We are Platonic heroes sending the shades of the dead to the Underworld.

  van hassel says:

  You’re talking about Plato’s Cave, aren’t you?

  shadow maker says:

  Of course.

  van hassel says:

  Where is Plato’s Cave?

  shadow maker says:

  Everywhere. The world we inhabit. It’s where we live, work, play and die.

  van hassel says:

  Then why does it need a smartcard to access it?

  (shadow maker cannot answer because he appears to be offline)

  ‘Damn it!’ shouted Rita.

  ‘They’re on their way,’ said Erin.

  ‘He’ll be gone before they get there.’

  The Hacker eluded capture by five minutes.

  By the time Rita joined detectives and uniformed police at the cordoned-off internet cafe, it was obvious that he’d slipped the net.

  The customers and manager were all checked and eliminated as suspects. None of them had paid any attention to the person who’d used the terminal in the corner, other than to say he looked like a nerd in his hooded black anorak and mirror glasses. The cafe’s
grainy CCTV footage confirmed the description without providing a clear view of him, simply showing a stooped figure shuffling in and out with his face averted from the camera.

  The terminal used by the Hacker was isolated, and crime lab scientist Dale Quinn dusted it for prints.

  ‘Yep, they’re a match,’ he said.

  ‘We nearly got him,’ Rita breathed. ‘Any chance of enhancing the video footage?’

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ said Quinn. ‘But I doubt you’ll get a clear shot of him. He’s deliberately disguised his appearance. What about his email login? Have you got onto the internet service provider?’

  ‘The Computer Crime Squad’s already done that,’ she answered.

  ‘The name supplied is fake, and the address given is in Abbotsford.’

  ‘Isn’t it worth checking?’ asked Quinn.

  ‘I don’t have to. The address is mine.’

  Rita commandeered Quinn and his crime lab van, asking him to follow her as she drove to Maynard’s address. She took the freeway that skirted the southern edge of the inner city and crossed the Bolte Bridge high over the docks before driving past the wholesale markets lining Footscray Road. As she headed away from the city she went through a mental checklist of what she knew about Maynard. He certainly had the prerequisites for a personality disorder. There were signs of maladaptive behaviour, the characteristics of a social isolate and a brief display of unhealthy interest in the mutilation of prostitutes. She remembered that from her first encounter with him. On the other hand, to describe him as well-dressed and articulate would be a stretch.

  Maynard’s mother’s house occupied a corner plot at the end of a side street. It was a drab postwar home that was a brick-and-tile clone of its neighbours. Rita parked outside, waited for Quinn to join her with his kit, and walked up to the porch. It took several rings of the doorbell before a middle-aged woman answered. She had red cheeks and beer on her breath.

  ‘Mrs Maynard?’ Rita asked.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Marita Van Hassel and this is my colleague Dale Quinn. I phoned a while ago. Is Bruce here?’