“I think she could tell us a lot. She was intimate with him, the only person to really get close. I’d like to see what Max can get from her. People’s habits don’t change too much over the years, even you know that, Davis. And if she’s dead, she could have been Grant’s first victim. Either way, I think there’s enough to be gained to make it worth checking out.”
Munro regained control of the briefing at that point, putting out the simmering fire between the two detectives before it got out of control. There were a few more minor details presented to the group, and individual assignments handed out, before the team dispersed.
As he and Quinn stood waiting for the lift to take them back to their regular floor, Cooper struggled to understand why Fraser Grant’s neighbours had hardly noticed him at all.
“How can people live on top of each other like that and yet never see one another? It doesn’t make sense. How can you live on the other side of a wall to someone for years and not even know their name?”
“You’ve never lived in an apartment, have you, boss?”
“No, and if that’s what it’s like, I don’t think I want to.”
Quinn was amused. “It’s not always the case, but it is very common. When you think about it, it does actually make sense. In a house you spend a lot more time outside — mowing the lawns, gardening, stuff like that. There are more chances to run into your neighbours and have a chat. In apartments, the most you tend to do is take out the garbage. Limits your opportunities for meeting to just your general coming and going, when people are usually in a hurry. Plus, apartment living is less permanent than houses. People are always moving in and moving out. Makes it harder to establish neighbourly relations.”
Cooper looked at him sideways, eyebrows raised. “You’ve put a lot of thought into that, haven’t you?”
“I’m a detective, boss,” he replied with a big grin. “It’s my job to put thought into all kinds of things.”
“Get in the lift, Mr Detective. We’ve got work to do.”
Back at their desks they discussed the missing hours in Andrew Fox’s timeline.
“It doesn’t put him in the frame for his wife’s kidnapping,” said Quinn. “We’ve got Grant on tape leading her away.”
“No. But it puts him top of my list for Fraser Grant’s murder.”
“You think he came back from Wagga early, found Grant, and killed him? If that’s the case, where’s Amanda? Surely Fox wouldn’t have killed Grant without first finding out where his wife was?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to know where she is. Or maybe she’s dead already. Remember, Fox has been hunting the Adultery Killer as long as I have. What if Fox found Grant, and offered up his cheating wife on a platter? The killer gets another victim, while the journalist gets rid of his wife and gets the ultimate story for his book in the process.”
“Jesus, boss, that’s pretty full-on.”
“Who knows what lengths a guy like that might go to for a bestseller? Anyway, it’s just a theory, Joey. Did you go through those articles last night?”
“I did. Nothing stood out, but it was late. I want to have another look today when I can concentrate better.”
“Okay, do that now. I’ll give our Mr Fox a call and see if he can come in for a little chat.” Cooper reached for his mobile, but before he could make the call another one came in. It was Zach Ryan, his main contact in the computer forensics lab. They’d finally broken through the encryption on Grant’s desktop computer. There were thousands of photographs, not just the ones that had been sent to the victims’ husbands and the press. But that was not what interested Cooper the most. Zach had found a journal; a simple word document that appeared to contain the killer’s movements and thoughts up until the day he died.
“Email it to me, and copy Quinn. Max, too.” Cooper couldn’t believe his luck.
“Already done. Check your inbox,” replied the technician.
“Cheers, Zach. I owe you one.”
He ended the call and opened his email, found the message from Zach, and navigated his way to the end of the attachment — the diary entries of the Adultery Killer around the time Amanda Fox was kidnapped. Quinn, who had overheard enough to check his own email, was doing the same. Cooper scanned the document quickly, then went back over it with greater care. It was clear this was the killer’s work, but he found nothing that could immediately identify where Amanda might be.
Quinn was shaking his head, obviously reaching the same conclusion. “Shit, now what, boss?”
“He’s sent a copy to Max. Call him and tell him we’re on our way. He might be able to see something here we can’t. I’ll still get Andrew Fox in. We can interview him this afternoon.”
23
Andrew walked into Eva’s room when visiting hours began at exactly ten o’clock. Eva had called him an hour earlier, saying that they needed to talk. After this morning’s discussion with her father it had seemed like the next logical step, but now that he was here she wasn’t at all sure if this was a good idea.
“Hi,” she said, hoping the nerves she felt weren’t evident in her voice. She wished Taylor would hurry up and get here, having called her in for moral support.
“Thank you for getting back to me, Eva. I want to apologise again,” Andrew said. “I didn’t think before I barged in on you yesterday and told you things no-one would want to hear. My mouth gets too far ahead of my brain sometimes.” He managed a half-smile.
“It was pretty confronting, I won’t lie. But I guess you had your reasons. I… I’m sorry I threw you out like that last night. I wasn’t ready to hear any of what you had to say.” Eva paused, and an awkward silence consumed them both. “Hey, do you want a coffee or something?” she asked to break the tension. “The stuff from the machines in the hall is almost drinkable, I’m told.”
Andrew looked toward the door but didn’t have time to answer before Taylor walked in, clutching a tray with three takeaway drink cups.
“Morning team,” she said as she put them down and walked over to the basin. “Washed your hands yet, reporter boy?”
“Oh no, sorry.” He joined her at the basin and she gave him a quick lesson.
“Infection control. Our girl hasn’t got much of an immune system left after all the anti-rejection medication, so we need to keep the risk of infection down. It’s transplant one-o-one dude, surely you know that much?”
“I do, sorry. Still not thinking straight.” They dried their hands and took seats either side of Eva’s bed.
“Don’t worry, the nurses are always going off at me. Technically, I’m not supposed to bring these in here,” continued Taylor as she handed out the drinks, “but they come from the café inside the hospital so where’s the risk? And besides, Eva is a shocker without her chamomile tea in the morning. Here you go. Keep the lid on that stinky stuff.”
“Yeah, right,” Eva countered. “I’m the one who can’t do without my herbal tea. Nothing to do with your caffeine addiction, is it?”
Taylor ignored her friend and focused on Andrew. “I figured you’d be a latte. There’s sugar there if you need it. Now, I assume since you’re here they haven’t found your wife. Amanda, isn’t it?”
“Yes, her name is Amanda. And thanks for this,” he said, adding sugar to his coffee.
“Andrew,” said Eva, “why don’t you start from the beginning and tell us what happened to Amanda.”
“Okay. But first, how much do you know about the murders?”
Eva was thrown by the question. “Enough to know I really didn’t want to get stuck with the heart of the guy who committed them.”
“Shit, sorry. What I mean is, I’ve been writing about this case since the beginning, since the very first murder. The killer, Fraser Grant as we now know, wrote a letter to my paper saying he was going to rid the city of adulterous women. He claimed to have kidnapped his first victim, and was going to kill her. It wasn’t taken very seriously, we get crank letters all the time from people wanting their fifteen
minutes, and as the most junior reporter on the team I was told to contact the police and follow it up. After no story ran for two days, he actually called the paper to find out what was going on. They put him through to me. The police had found no evidence of any threat, to my knowledge, so I just humoured the guy. After that phone call he sent me a bunch of photographs, and he sent the same ones to the victim’s husband. This is when we all finally got that he was for real, but it was too late. The cops traced the call to a phone booth not far from our office, but they didn’t get any further than that. I never received any more calls or letters, but I did get the photos. Every year, another victim was kidnapped and murdered, and pictures of the whole thing arrived at the paper, addressed to me personally.” Andrew paused, and took a sip of his coffee.
“And you wrote about it?” asked Taylor.
“I wrote the stories of the murders for my paper, yes. If I didn’t write them, someone else would have.”
“But you were the one he kept sending the photos to.”
“Yes.”
A long silence followed, as they all tried to digest the importance of what Andrew had told them. Eva didn’t know how to react. She knew the main points of the Adultery Killer story, who didn’t? No bodies had ever been found, but the news reports always said that police had little doubt the victims were dead. When Andrew came into her room yesterday, he’d said he was a journalist, but she had no idea he had this much of a connection to the killer. What the hell was happening here?
Taylor was the one to break the silence. “So, you had some kind of macabre rapport with this killer, and now he’s taken your wife?”
“That’s putting it bluntly, but yes. I don’t know why he took Amanda. The police think maybe he was pissed at me because we haven’t run a story on him since last year. Maybe that’s true, I don’t know. But I did find out yesterday that she was having an affair.”
Andrew placed his empty coffee cup on the side table and rubbed his face with both hands. He stood and walked the two steps over to the window.
Eva exchanged glances with her friend. She drank the last of her tea and Taylor took all three cups to the rubbish bin outside the room, hiding the evidence as she did most mornings. After a few silent moments, they both sat back down beside the bed.
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said again, “but I thought you deserved to know the whole story.”
Eva considered it all. There was a lot to take in. Here was this man, a stranger to her only yesterday, asking for her help when he really had no right. He’d delivered possibly the worst news of her life, with little regard for how it would affect her, instead asking her to help him. She still wasn’t sure what he expected of her, given that he didn’t know about the dreams yet. She appreciated that he’d been honest, telling her about his connection to the killer, and although she didn’t trust him yet, she could read the desperation in his eyes. Maybe it was time to get down to the reason she’d asked him to come back.
“I’ve read your colleague’s article on cellular memory,” Eva began. “I’m not saying I believe it, necessarily, but I may have been a little too quick to dismiss the idea before my transplant. There were too many other things to worry about back then.”
“So what’s changed your mind?”
Taking a deep breath, and with an encouraging nod from Taylor, Eva told him about the nightmares. To his credit, Andrew let her talk without interrupting. It took a while, she had to stop twice to rest, but eventually Eva made it to the nightmare she woke from early today.
“They’re getting worse,” she said. “The last one, this morning, I felt physically sick once I woke up.”
Andrew listened closely as she described her experience, and how she felt when she had attacked the woman. Eva was crying again by the time the story was finished, and the three of them were silent for a long time. It was Taylor who eventually spoke.
“Geez, Evie, this is getting bad. Does your mum know about this?”
“I mentioned the dreams to her yesterday, before we knew where the heart came from. She thinks it’s the drugs, but she doesn’t know about the latest dream. I talked to Dad about it this morning, and he agrees we should look into cellular memory as a possible explanation. The thing is, I can’t live with these nightmares. I can’t recover, and get on with my life, while this is happening.”
“I had no idea you were going through this, Eva.” said Andrew. “When I came here yesterday it was because I couldn’t think of what else to do. It was a wild idea. I don’t think I really believed you could help me. I was desperate. But listening to you now, my God, it is actually a possibility, isn’t it? I’m having trouble processing this.” He scratched his head and stepped over to the window again. He seemed to do that a lot.
“You’re having trouble? Try being me for a moment.”
Andrew came back to the bedside. “Of course. Sorry.”
“Forget it. What do we do now?”
“I have no idea. But I know someone who might. I tracked down Georgie Silvester after I left here last night. Again, I didn’t know what to do. I told her the story, and she said, if you agreed, she’d come see you. I’m not sure what she’ll be able to do, but it could be a good place to start. What do you think?”
Eva took a sip of water from her bedside cup. She was getting tired again.
“Alright,” she replied. “Bring her in. It will be good to talk to someone who’s gone through this, anyway.”
Andrew’s mobile phone rang and he stepped into the hall to take the call.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Taylor. “It’s a lot to handle.”
“You’re the one who brought him back in here yesterday.”
“I know, but remember we just met this guy, Evie. You want to help him, I get that, but we didn’t know he was connected to the killer like that. Plus, he’s a journalist. Who knows how much of this could become public down the track? I’m concerned, that’s all. Someone has to look out for you. That’s still my job, kiddo.”
“It’s not that I want to help him, necessarily,” Eva said, “but how else am I supposed to work out why I’m having these nightmares? And what if it is his wife I’m seeing? Or someone else, for that matter? Whoever it is, she needs help. I can feel that, I can see her pain. I have to do something.”
Andrew re-entered the room, putting his phone back in his pocket. “I’ve got to go. That was the detective in charge of the case, he needs me to go down there and talk to them again. I’ll be back with Georgie as soon as I can. Thanks, Eva,” he said as he touched her lightly on the arm. Then he was gone.
24
Quinn was driving. It was good for the kid to get used to the city, having come from a Local Area Command in the suburbs. And it gave Cooper time to check in with the other teams.
“Surveillance tapes turn up anything yet?” asked Quinn as Cooper hung up and put the phone back in his pocket.
“Nothing. Seems they vanished into thin air. The only camera that would have given us a good look at them has been erased already. Pull into this driveway here.”
Dr Christie spent most of his time in Melbourne, but for the last five years he was in Sydney often enough to have been allocated a small office at the Department of Forensic Medicine. The DOFM was on Parramatta Road, next to the Office of the NSW State Coroner in Glebe. Cooper instructed Quinn where to park and, after signing in, the two detectives made their way through the building to Dr Christie’s office. Their route took them past the autopsy suites, and Quinn lingered at the window.
There were two autopsy suites at the DOFM — the main suite with its twelve stainless steel tables, and the high risk suite, where Cooper was used to watching. For any death in which homicide was suspected, a detective from the case always had to watch the autopsy for chain of evidence purposes. The forensic pathologist took samples of the different organs to send for testing, and the cops had to make sure the samples were sealed and labelled correctly so they weren’t compromised between t
he morgue and the lab. Along with bodies that may carry infectious disease, all homicide and suspicious death autopsies were carried out in the high risk suite. The police could observe proceedings through a viewing window, and a microphone and speaker system allowed the detectives to hear the pathologist’s findings and converse with him if necessary. Cooper had watched many autopsies over the years. Forensic evidence from a body was more often than not the key to solving a homicide case. But the Adultery Killer had left no bodies, no forensic evidence. It was ironic that the killer himself ended up on one of these slabs.
Cooper straightened himself and lightly slapped the younger guy’s back.
“Ever seen an autopsy, Joey?”
“Just on the training videos, not for real.”
“Stick around in homicide long enough and you’ll see your fair share. Come on, Max is this way.”
* * *
Dr Christie stood as they approached, clearing the books and magazines from two chairs so the detectives could sit.
“What have you got for us, Max?” asked Cooper, skipping the pleasantries.
“I’ve had a quick look through the whole thing,” he began, indicating a printed copy of the word document that was the Adultery Killer’s journal. “It will probably give me nightmares, and that does not happen easily, I can assure you, but it has yielded no secrets as far as the location of the killing ground, I’m afraid.”
He’d come to the same conclusion himself, but even so Cooper felt his frustration rising. “Is there anything that could help us? What about the last couple of paragraphs? Any idea what he’s on about there?”
Max nodded, and turned to the last page of his printout. “At first I thought these referred to the victim, Amanda, like the rest of the entries. But now I’m not so sure.”
Cooper picked up the page and read the passages out loud.
“‘After all these years, you found me. I knew you’d look for me. You must have been searching a long time. But you had your chance. I don’t need you anymore. This one last time, we’ll have one last time together, and that will be the end of it.’” There was a gap on the page before the second paragraph — only one short line:
The Dark Series Page 21