by Diane Wood
“What are you talking about?” whispered Nat, still holding the offending book in front of her. “What does this mean?”
“Just do what I tell you, Nat, or I’ll be destroyed. It’s not what you think.”
Speechless, but shaking her head, Nathalie felt an overwhelming sadness. This could have no happy ending.
“You’re not going to leave it alone, are you?” Bella asked wearily, her shoulders slumping. “I just want you to…shit, Nat…please…please let’s get a drink and I’ll explain.”
There was no threat in her voice, just total resignation.
Bella led the way and Nat followed dutifully but cautiously—aware that if Bella was responsible for the deaths of four women, she could be in danger herself.
Sitting so that she could move quickly if she had to, Nathalie watched Bella’s every move.
“It was Jackie,” Bella explained, seating herself opposite Nat. “It was Jackie who killed Young, Djanski and Cameron. When I found out, she tried to kill me, but I overpowered her and the gun went off and shot her in the chest.”
“That’s a nice, neat explanation,” replied Nat, moving into interview mode. “And, of course, Jackie’s not here to deny it.”
“That’s exactly how she planned it, only she didn’t expect to die,” Bella stated desperately. “She was setting it up to make me look like the killer. That’s the truth, Nat, I swear.”
“Why, Bella, why would she do that? Why would she kill all those women just to make you look bad?” The sarcasm came from emotional exhaustion; she regretted it immediately.
But Bella was too rattled to notice. “No,” she replied intently. “Pinning it on me was probably an afterthought. She hated them, hated us all, but mostly she hated me.”
“Start from the beginning,” demanded Nathalie. “How did you find out Jackie was the killer?”
“I came home early one day and decided to try and sort some of the stuff in that spare room. I hadn’t seen Jackie for days and suspected she might have dumped me for good. I started with the boxes on the floor and then decided to sort the wardrobe. I pulled out some old coats and a heavy object wrapped in cloth dropped from the pocket of one of them. It was a handgun. I’ve never owned a gun in my life, other than my issue one. So I was stunned.”
“How did you think it got there?”
“I didn’t know. I couldn’t figure it out. Some of the stuff in the wardrobe had been there for years. I never went in there. I just kept looking at it and trying to imagine where it had come from. Then I decided to see what else was in there. It only took me a couple of minutes to find the address book. It was in the pocket of another jacket and with it was my police ID. Even then, my mind couldn’t take in what I’d found. That was when Jackie walked in.”
“So you hadn’t seen Jackie for days, but she just happened to walk in when you’d found the stash?” Nat couldn’t help but articulate her disbelief.
“She assumed I was at work because it was lunchtime, and my car was out of sight in the garage. I’m telling you the truth, Nat. She was like a different person. She looked and sounded different, as if she’d only been pretending to be the dumb blonde waitress. She was…attractive.”
“Did you know your ID was missing?”
“Yes, of course, but not immediately. I thought I’d misplaced it somewhere in the house, which was partly what inspired the cleanup. In the middle of that I won the inspector’s position. I planned to report it missing once I was confirmed.”
“Jesus, Bella, what were you thinking?”
“I wanted a career, Nat,” she replied tiredly. “I didn’t want an Internal Affairs inquiry over the missing ID to interfere with this promotion. Surely you can understand that?”
Nathalie didn’t answer.
“So then what happened?” she asked finally, after trying to absorb what she’d been told.
“Jackie started laughing,” Bella recalled. “She stood in the doorway and laughed. Suddenly she looked quite insane, but I didn’t know what she was laughing at because I still hadn’t opened the address book. At that stage, I didn’t know the connection. She asked me what I was doing home, and I actually answered her.”
Bella looked exhausted, puzzled and beaten, and a part of Nathalie wanted desperately to believe her story. But it would be too easy.
“I was sitting on a corner of the bed,” Bella continued slowly. “Jackie walked over and picked up the gun and then took the address book from my hands. I didn’t even attempt to stop her. Then she was pointing the gun at me. ‘So much for the great police inspector,’ she said, grinning. I asked her what she’d done and she held out the book. ‘It’s the fabulous Renee Young’s address book,’ she bragged. ‘Full of all the names and addresses of the stuck-up tarts she’d been screwing since she left me behind in nowhere town.’
“She explained then that she’d followed Renee to the city, followed her to let her know that she wasn’t the dull, boring little girl she knew at school. She found her in the club with the Cameron woman, but when she approached her, Renee told her that she should move on and make her own type of friends.”
“Jackie was so angry,” Bella continued. “I hardly recognized her. Then she started repeating the words ‘my own type of friends,’ over and over, like some sort of chant. Then just as quickly she calmed down. But she still held the gun pointed at me. I asked her what she’d done, and she sat down on one of the boxes facing me.”
Bella shook her head. “She’d waited for Renee for years, she told me, sounding very bitter. Since they were at school together. She’d always loved her, but Renee acted like she was so much better than her. She’d thought it was because they were just kids, only it wasn’t that, she decided. Renee just didn’t like her, didn’t think she was up to her high standards. So Jackie had decided to show her that her standards meant nothing.”
Sighing, Bella continued. “She told me that she’d waited for Young to return to the club. Then waiting outside until she left, she’d walked up to her as she took the road back to her car. She supposedly told Young that she was returning home and wanted to say goodbye. Then she pulled the gun and held it to Young’s head. She told me that she wanted her to know what it felt like to be disposed of like rubbish. Then she shot her. She found the address book when she went through Young’s pockets for a memento.”
“She told you all this?”
“She didn’t intend for me to leave the house alive, so she wasn’t worried about what I knew,” answered Bella quietly. Pouring herself another drink, she continued. “I don’t know when she decided to go after Cameron, but she said that Young had introduced her to someone called Stephanie in the club the night they argued. When she started looking through the address book she found Stephanie Cameron and decided she should be taught a lesson as well. Jesus, Nat, she was actually gloating about it.”
“Cameron wasn’t having an affair with Young, they were just old friends,” stated Nathalie, remembering the interviews she’d done with friends of the couple. Then thinking about their investigation so far, she asked, “Did she say how she got into Cameron’s house or why she killed Stephanie’s partner, Linda Djanski?”
“She bragged about using my police ID to gain entry when Djanski was home alone. She thought Cameron might remember her from the club, so she waited until it was just Djanski. She used the pretext of asking questions about Renee Young. Djanski let her in and arranged for her to come back the following evening to see Cameron. At some stage she went to the bathroom and I gather she unlocked a door or window and jammed it so that it would close but not lock. Apparently they locked automatically if fully closed. She let herself back in during the early hours and shot them while they slept. She actually told me that she wanted to wake them first, but lost her nerve.
“When she left after the killings, she did so by the same way she came in, but removed the obstacle so that when the window shut. It automatically locked, leaving the house locked from the inside.”
&n
bsp; “Bella—”
“I know it’s unbelievable,” she interrupted. “I know how it looks, but it’s the truth. I kept thinking that she was lying, that the gun was some sort of replica and that she hated me enough to want to scare me. But I couldn’t move—I guess deep down I knew she was telling the truth.”
Nathalie’s head throbbed with the exertion of trying to assimilate Bella’s words.
“Nathalie, she was going to kill you and then set it up to look like it was me,” Bella stated emphatically.
“Kill me? Why? Surely she didn’t think you and I were…”
“She said you’d treated her the same way Young had—like she was garbage. She kept asking me what Alex had that she didn’t, but I didn’t understand what she was talking about. Then she started ranting about educated idiots and how snobbish we all were. Apparently she hated me so much that she wanted me to live but to lose everything. She wanted me to go to prison. That was how coldly she’d planned it. You were going to be her next victim and I was going to be the suspect.”
“But then you found the gun, ID and address book?” Nathalie murmured, deep in thought.
“Nathalie, I knew she was going to kill me. Suddenly I just knew she was going to pull the trigger…and I lost it. She must have seen something in my face because she went to move away, but she tripped, and then we were struggling. Suddenly the gun discharged and she moaned. She didn’t move. She just stood there looking at her chest where the blood was seeping through her top. Then she started crying and she held out her arms to me. ‘I don’t want to die, Bella,’ she cried. ‘Help me.’”
Bella was visibly shaking as she spoke.
“I grabbed hold of her and she collapsed. Then she closed her eyes and was gone. I was so horrified I didn’t know what to do.”
“Why didn’t you call an ambulance or the police?” queried Nathalie, unable to hide her skepticism. “It was self-defense and you’re a trained officer.”
“I went to, Nat, I swear. But it looked so bad. I didn’t know what else she might have been keeping at my house to incriminate me and I just panicked. I took her body out of the house late that night and dumped it and then came home and cleaned up. I assumed you’d think it was part of the killings.”
Somehow Nathalie couldn’t imagine Bella panicking, but did that make her story a lie? Trying to clear her head, she began moving around the small room. Something was missing from the account, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “We have to call this in now,” Nat stated assertively. “I can call Josh so that it’s dealt with as discreetly as possible, but you know I have to do this.”
“I’ll go straight into custody, Nat,” she begged. “They have to charge me with Jackie’s death, and because of suspicion regarding the other murders they’ll never give me bail. Please don’t do this. It was a bloody accident and the murders have been resolved. There’s nothing to be gained by me going to prison or being humiliated and losing my job. It’s all I have, you know that.”
“Bella, you killed someone, disposed of her body and hid evidence relating to other crimes. I’m sorry, but you know we don’t have a choice.”
Bella just kept staring at Nathalie, shaking her head. “You know, if I did kill all of them, then I only have to kill you as well to keep my involvement secret. And it would hardly be difficult. You’ve left yourself very vulnerable. You haven’t even asked what I did with the gun.” It was just a statement of fact.
“Is that what you plan to do?” Nat responded as calmly as she could.
“I want until lunchtime to sort out my finances and to organize someone to look after the house, then I’ll hand myself in and do it with some dignity. I don’t want to be led from here and into the station in handcuffs.”
“I can’t give you that time, Bella, but I can phone Josh and ask him to meet us at the office. Then you and I can go there together with no fuss.”
“But it won’t just be Josh, will it?” she asked needlessly. “Internal Affairs will be involved at a senior level and everyone will know within twenty-four hours.”
“Bella—”
“No, it’s all right,” she declared, raising her hand. “I know…I know…that’s my problem.”
Again there was silence.
“Then that will have to do,” she stated coolly, rising from the chair. “I guess I’ve run out of choices, and so have you. But I want to shower. It will be hours before I get another one.”
“Where did you put the gun?”
“The river. I’ll show the divers. You ring Josh and I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
Nat knew she should go with her—watch her. But she couldn’t be the one to inflict that first indignity. After this, Bella would be searched, booked in, questioned, charged, fingerprinted, put in a cell and then sent to a place where nobody on the planet hated police more. Even if Jackie’s death was found to be accidental, Bella would have lost everything. She couldn’t bring herself to be the one to start that process.
* * *
Josh was worried. When Nathalie called and told him the story, he ordered her to remain in sight of Bella Pittolo at all times. He wasn’t convinced that the gun had been disposed of—after all, the incriminating address book hadn’t been. He desperately wanted to send a car around to the house immediately, but Nathalie begged him.
“Please, let her do this,” she argued. “If she’s got the gun and wanted to hurt me she would have done it before I rang you. I gave her my word. We’re leaving in a few minutes, and we’ll be in the office ten minutes later. I don’t want mob-handed cops coming to the house.”
She’d hung up and was on her way to the bedroom she’d been using when she heard the shot. For a split second she expected pain. Then she knew—and in an instant was bounding toward Bella’s bedroom. Pushing open the door she flicked on the light—everything her police training had taught her not to do. But the room was empty.
She found Bella on the bathroom floor, clothed in her dress uniform. She’d started out with her back against the bathtub but had toppled sideways in death. The gun was lying loosely in her hand and blood was seeping from the wound in her forehead.
That’s when the world crashed in on her and Nathalie sunk to the floor opposite her dead friend. Strangely, she was feeling nothing except overwhelming exhaustion.
Josh waited fifteen minutes after he arrived at work before he rang Nathalie. The superintendent from Internal Affairs was forty minutes away, but the uniformed duty officer had joined him to receive Bella. When he got no reply, they dispatched uniforms to the house urgently. It was the worst five minutes of his life before the radio crackled into life, conveying the information that Nathalie was safe.
She’d refused to go in the ambulance. The numbness had worn off and weary resignation had taken its place. It was too soon to analyze what she’d done wrong, but deep down she knew that the final outcome for Bella would have been the same no matter what. Bella would never have survived the humiliation.
* * *
When the death of a female commissioned officer and the involvement of a second officer were reported on the TV and radio the next morning, Bella eventually was named, but not Nathalie. However, there was a media clip of Nat leaving the house with Josh’s arm around her waist.
Alex knew instinctively she’d been involved and a terrible fear gripped her. What if it had been Nathalie in the body bag?
When the press found out Bella was a lesbian, they immediately began connecting her death to the other lesbian killings, inventing wilder and wilder scenarios. However, the police statement told them only that “a senior police officer, Inspector Bella Pittolo, has died in her house as a result of a gunshot wound, and a second female officer was present at the death. Until police have the opportunity to investigate further, no statements will be forthcoming.”
“I have to go to her,” Alex told her mother tentatively, when she rang that morning. “I can’t let her go through this alone. But I don’t want to upset you.”<
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“You won’t,” her mother said quietly. “But you should be prepared that Nathalie might not welcome you with open arms. She might see it as pity.”
“I love her,” Alex confessed. “And I have to let her know I’m there for her, even if she rejects me.”
It took a lot of phone calls before she got put through to Josh’s office, and in the end she had to leave a message. Meanwhile she’d tried Nathalie’s home and mobile, but she got answer machines both times. For now, all she could do was wait.
Chapter Twelve
Reconciliations
The questions went on forever. Josh had been forced to remove himself from any part of the investigation into Bella’s death. He and his team had been mustered into a conference room and instructed that nothing was to be spoken about outside that room until official statements had been issued. His team was in shock—unable to comprehend that perhaps a senior police officer had been responsible for four murders.
Nathalie was making a statement to Internal Affairs. She’d been dusted for gunshot residue and forced to hand over all of her clothing, changing into a tracksuit she kept in her locker. When she finally emerged white-faced and exhausted, Josh guided her straight to his office.
“I’m taking you home, and you’re on leave from now,” he told her gently. “And while I’m sorry about Bella, I have to ask if you think she was telling the truth?”
“I don’t know, Josh,” Nat answered flatly. “I really wanted to believe her. Jackie was strange, but then so was Bella.” For a moment there was tense silence before Nat offered, “I think there’s a possibility they were in it together and then fell out. I’m just too drained to think about it now.”
“Internal Affairs will deal with Bella’s death, but we’ll continue our investigation into the other four. Hopefully we can clear Pittolo, but it doesn’t look good.”
Josh hadn’t wanted to leave Nathalie on her own after he drove her to the apartment, but she insisted that all she wanted was to sleep. It wasn’t until after he’d returned to the office that he saw the messages from Alex. Curious, he dialed her number.