by JT Lawrence
While the evidence is being processed in the lab, Blom arranges for David Shaw’s car—a silver Audi—to be searched. The report comes back clean. Devil orders a second search. Again, the report is clean.
“Anything on the DNA of that hair yet?” De Villiers yells into his phone, then shakes his head. After he ends the call, he slams his phone on his desk. "Blood is hers," he shouts, and the office goes quiet; an unintended minute of silence for the victim. Robin doesn’t feel the usual cold wash that accompanies these murder cases. Perhaps the pile of bodies has simply grown too high.
“The mother just called,” says Khaya. “The vic’s mother. Said that Megan and David had an argument the night before she disappeared.”
Blom chips in. “That’s what the neighbour said, too. Said she heard them shouting at each other. Said it happens often and they don’t even call the cops anymore.”
“Had she ever laid any charges against him?” asks Robin. “Domestic violence?”
“No,” says Khaya, “but the vic’s mother said she’d often have bruises. Always had an excuse for them, though. Mother says that the vic’s father never approved of the marriage. So maybe she felt like she couldn’t tell them about the abuse.”
“But no evidence, right?” says De Villiers. “No broken bones or hospital records.”
“Right,” said Khaya. “Just a mother’s opinion.”
“We could put her and the neighbour on the stand,” says Susman. “But it’s a bit patchy.”
“Is the blood spatter enough to charge him with?” asks Blom, glancing at his watch. “We’ve got an hour left before those clerks start packing up.”
“Oh,” says Khaya, scratching his head with the back of a cheap yellow pen. “She also said to check his bakkie. A Ford Ranger.”
“His bakkie?” asks Blom, unfamiliar with the South African slang.
“His pickup truck,” says Khaya.
“You should know that by now,” says Devil. "You bloody Dutchman."
“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” says Robin.
“Who are you calling black?” jokes Khaya.
They laugh, but not for long.
“Okay,” De Villiers says. “Khaya’s checking on the bakkie. Blom is going to nag the lab.” He drums his fingers on his desk so hard they all stare at him. “Go on,” he says to Khaya and Blom. “Get lost. I need to think.”
Once the officers leave, Robin gets a faraway look in her eyes. “It would explain the heavy makeup. And the scarves.”
Devil rubs his temples. “What?”
“You can hide bruises with scarves.”
Devil watches as Robin’s fingers unknowingly travel to her collarbone. They’d had to pin it back in place, if he remembers correctly, and it hadn’t been the only surgery she had required. He tries not to wince. His phone rings, making them both jump. He barks his name and then listens intently as he scribbles notes on the back of a sheet. Robin stands up and moves to look over his shoulder, trying to decipher his awful handwriting.
Cross, Hailey.
Nurse.
Knew vic.
Deal.
Immunity.
The last word was underlined, but Robin couldn’t tell if it said witness or mistress.
“Uh-huh,” he says. “Uh-huh. Show her to the interview room. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
Hailey Cross is waiting in the grey room. She wipes her hands on her jeans before shaking Devil's hand. She's petite, moderately attractive, and has cascading blonde hair. She frequently swigs from a bottle of water she's brought along. Dry mouth, clammy hands. She's not even trying to hide the fact that she’s as nervous as a cat in a cage. Her attorney sits, stone-faced and silent, beside her.
“Thank you for coming in to talk to us,” says De Villiers. “I realise you don’t get much time off—as a nurse—so we really do appreciate it.”
Robin stares at him. She’s never heard him be so polite in his life. Maybe the tranquillisers are working. Or maybe he was working on his manipulation technique.
“I heard that David’s getting out this afternoon.” Hailey’s eyes dart nervously between them.
“Yes,” says Susman.
She chews on her lower lip; her eyes have dark crescents beneath them. She hasn’t been sleeping. “You can’t let him go.”
“We don’t have enough evidence to charge him,” says Devil.
“He did it,” she says. “He murdered Megan. In their bedroom. He wrapped a jersey around her head and then smashed it with a baseball bat.”
Robin shuddered. She gripped her knees in an attempt to silence her body’s reaction to such brutality. Devil took the pen out of his mouth and blinked at the nurse. “How do you know this?”
Hailey Cross blew her fringe out of her eyes. “Because I was there.”
“Why did you wait so long to come in?”
“I didn’t want to be implicated,” she says, looking at her attorney. “Accessory to murder? Obstruction of justice? But then I heard he was getting out—”
“—and you knew he’d come for you, next,” says Susman.
“Yes.” Hailey lifts a hand to her eyes and begins to cry. “I can’t get it out of my head,” she says, rubbing her forehead. “I just keep seeing it happen over and over again. And I know he’ll do the same thing to me.” She begins to unbutton her blouse, and the captain instinctively looks away. When his gaze returns to Cross, he sees a large bruise across her chest. She also shows them what looks like a cigarette burn on the inside of her forearm. “He is a vicious man.”
By the time she has buttoned up, she has stopped crying.
“You were having an affair?” asks Robin, thinking of the long blonde hair they had found at the house.
Cross nodded. “We met a year ago. He wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. When I found out about his wife, I tried to end the relationship. That's when he started beating me. I tried to leave, but he'd always find me. He enjoyed it." Her lips pulled to the side with emotion. "He enjoyed hurting me. Said if I ever went to the police, he’d kill Peggy, and I knew it was true.”
“Peggy?”
"My Jack Russell. She's missing a leg," the nurse says, as a way of explanation. Devil looked confused, but Susman knew the common nickname for pets missing a leg. Peg-leg. Three-leggy Peggy.
“I knew he would do it,” Hailey says.
“You were trapped,” says Susman.
“I knew he would do it,” she says again. “He’s done it before.”
“Killed an animal?”
“At the cabin,” she says. “We’d go there, in the beginning, so that his wife wouldn’t find out about us. It used to be romantic, but then it got scary. He knew he could do whatever he wanted to me in that cabin, because it’s in the middle of nowhere, so—”
She doesn’t have to say the rest. So that no one could hear her scream.
“God.” Susman didn’t mean to say it out loud. Her skin turns to braille.
“Why didn’t we know he had a cabin?” asks Devil. “It would have been the first place we searched.”
“It doesn’t technically belong to him,” said Cross. “I don’t know the details—he was evasive—but as far as I know, it belongs to a friend of his. There’d be no paper trail.”
“Tell us about Megan Shaw,” Devil says. Susman looks at the clock on the wall. They have twenty minutes left to submit the charge sheet, and that’s if the clerks don’t take off early.
Hailey Cross takes a sip of water. “David wanted me to kill her.”
There is silence in the grim, grey room as they process the information.
Devil frowns at her. “Why?”
“He said she was getting suspicious of us. He found out she was preparing to file a restraining order before starting divorce proceedings. David was furious that she was doing this behind his back, said she had betrayed him. He said she was going to take all their money and disappear. But if we killed her, we’d get all the money. And we could move so
mewhere and start again, and be happy.”
“He wanted you to kill her?” Devil says.
"The neighbours knew they had a rocky relationship," she says. "If his wife was going to disappear, he needed an alibi. He said that they—that you, the cops I mean—always suspect the husband. And he wanted me to prove myself to him. Prove my loyalty.”
“What my client is failing to mention,” says the attorney, finally breaking his silence, “is that she was under severe emotional strain and manipulation by a cunning and violent man. He told her he’d kill her dog if she stepped out of line.”
“We understand that,” says Devil.
“So before we continue, I’d like to make a deal for her immunity from prosecution in this case.”
De Villiers rubs his stubble. “We’re not charging her.”
“Yet,” says the attorney, not breaking eye contact. “But if you find her DNA in the Shaw house—”
“Whether or not we charge her will depend on her culpability,” says Devil.
“Screw culpability,” the attorney says. “She practically had a gun to her head.”
Devil grinds his teeth and looks at the clock, then transfers his gaze to Hailey. “He’ll be released today unless you start talking.” Susman doesn’t know why he’s playing hardball. Maybe it's because he doesn't trust her. She'd witnessed a brutal murder, and it had taken her two weeks to come in. Susman, on the other hand, could see the desperation in the woman’s eyes. Cross wasn’t lying about the abuse, and that was enough for her.
“Make the deal,” Susman says. She thinks Devil will glare at her for overstepping the mark, but he doesn’t. Without hesitating, he affirms the deal with Cross’s attorney. He phones it in, as well as a call to Khaya to file the charges against David Shaw. “Eye-witness account,” murmurs Devil into his phone. Soon a flurry of papers arrive. He and the nurse hurriedly sign them. They get submitted just in time to keep Shaw behind bars, and Hailey Cross crumples in relief.
The sun sinks, and boxes of cold takeaway pizza lie in the middle of the table. De Villiers had ordered dinner for them at his own expense, but no one is hungry.
“I was supposed to spike her coffee,” Hailey says. “Make it look like she took an overdose. Then tape a plastic bag around her head in case she woke up. I got the pills from the pain clinic where I work.”
De Villiers scrawls in his scuffed notebook.
“David said I should buy her a takeaway coffee and stop by, to introduce myself as a new neighbour.”
“Did you do that?” asks Susman.
“I took her the coffee. We spoke. But I didn’t put the sedative in it.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not like that.” Cross clasps her hands together. “I like to help people, not hurt them.”
“That bruise on your chest,” says Susman. “That was because you didn’t kill her that day?”
“David said I was disloyal. That he couldn’t trust me anymore. He hit me with the baseball bat and then gave it to me, said now I’d have to do it the hard way, or he’d kill Peggy, and then he’d kill me.”
“What did you do?” asks Robin.
Their eyes meet, and time seems to stutter between them. Then Hailey blinks, breaking the tension. “I took the baseball bat.”
“I went to her house on the 22nd of May,” says Hailey. “I was scared of David, and I wanted his approval, but I just couldn’t go through with it. I left the bat there, at the front door.”
Robin can’t put her finger on it, but it seems to her that something changes in the way Hailey is talking. Perhaps being a victim of abuse had caused her to disassociate to a certain degree on the day of the murder. Either that, or she was lying.
“I gave Peggy to someone I trusted and then called David to tell him it was over. He went ballistic. A few hours later he told me to meet him at his house.”
“Why?” asked Susman.
“He said because I hadn’t done my job, he’d had to do it. And the least I could do was clean up the mess.”
That’s why the room was so clean, thought Robin. A nurse would know how to clean up blood.
“It was horrific. It took hours,” said Hailey. “It was everywhere. He asked me … to find a tooth.”
“What?” Susman clutched her knees again to stop from shuddering.
"Her tooth. He had knocked out one of her teeth but couldn't find it."
“And did you?” asks Susman. “Find the tooth?”
“Yes,” says Cross, swallowing hard. “An incisor, with roots.”
Silence again, as they process the grisly detail.
Devil clears his throat. “So you cleaned up the evidence. Where was David?”
“He took the body. Wrapped it up in the bloody bed sheet and got rid of it.”
“How?”
“I haven’t spoken to him since then,” says Hailey. “But I can tell you the original plan—with the drugged coffee—was to take the body out to the cabin. I'll give you the address. He planned to burn it there and dump the ashes in the river. I don't know if he did that, but I'm guessing he would have. Not that there'll be any evidence."
“There’s always evidence,” says Devil.
The recently admonished forensic team arrives at the cabin before dawn and knuckles down, searching every square inch of the cabin and its surrounds. The autumn air is cold and makes their breath look like cigarette smoke. The backdrop is tall, black-barked trees and yellow leaves, and the ground is soft. The cabin has been searched twice already and found to be clean.
“If you don’t find anything,” the Devil yells. “You’re all fokken fired!”
Susman laughs into her polystyrene cup, forcing a cloud of steam into the air.
Devil’s phone rings. The Caller ID says Sgt Sithole.
“You’re on speakerphone,” says Devil.
"Hiya, Boss," says Khaya. The man was always in a good mood. Susman doesn't know how he does it. "We found the bakkie.”
“And?”
"Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
Robin feels the wash of water inside her then, but not the cold flush that usually means the missing woman is dead. It’s more like a slow dripping. Tap, tap, tap.
De Villiers rolls his eyes. Silhouettes of birds dart across the dawn sky. “Jesus, Sithole, just get on with it.”
“I was only kidding,” he says. “There’s no bad news. We found something.”
“We’re listening,” says Robin.
“A tooth. An incisor, with the root and everything, like you said. It was wedged in the crevice of the seat.”
“Good,” says Devil. “Good. Very good.”
Just in case one "good" is not enough, thinks Robin. She pictures the crevices of couches and sofas and car seats the world over and wonders what treasures lie buried therein. Coins and toys and murdered women’s teeth. Tickets to convict killers.
Devil ends the call. “So Hailey Cross is telling the truth.”
“It looks like it,” says Susman. She drains her cup and throws it in the nearby black plastic bag, a makeshift bin. His walkie talkie, which has been whispering to him all morning in static and garbled comments, blinks green.
“Captain,” says the man on the other side of the two-way radio. “Captain. Come in. Over.”
De Villiers snatches the radio from his belt. “I’m here.”
“We’re around five or six hundred metres down the river. The vegetation is quite thick. Difficult to navigate. But there’s a metal trough here. Burnt. The river has done a good job of rinsing it out—it’s been two weeks—but it might be something. We’ll bring it up. Any sign of ash is long gone. Over.”
“All right,” says Devil. “But keep looking. All we need is one bone fragment.”
How dreadful, thinks Susman. To be reduced to a single sought-after bone fragment in a rushing river. How sickening. She feels her heavy cloak pull down at her shoulders, but before Robin can give in to her despair, she spots the junior forensic str
iding towards them. When their eyes meet, he waves at her, a small evidence bag in his hand.
“Hey!” she says, happy to see him. If she were still on the force she would have snatched him up as part of her A team. She knows talent when she sees it.
He’s out of breath, and there is perspiration on his forehead despite the cool air around them.
“The scarf Shaw was wearing that day,” he says. “The day she went missing. It was green, right?”
Susman nods. He passes the sealed bag to her. Inside is a small swatch of fabric, green, silk, and burnt at the edges.
THREE MONTHS LATER
Devil offers to pick Susman up from the airport, but she decides to drive up from the farm instead. It was only for one day, to watch the court proceedings of the state versus David Shaw for premeditated murder and obstruction of justice. De Villiers had kept her up-to-date via WhatsApp throughout the trial, and he was confident that Shaw would be convicted. Hailey Cross had held up her side of the deal and had been a star witness, remembering small details and never straying from her original gruesome testimony.
Relatives, officers and journalists filed in and a buzz of anticipation crowded the courtroom. Susman and De Villiers sat down on the wooden bench together, just behind the prosecutor. Susman notices Hailey Cross standing right at the back of the room, as if still afraid of David and ready to flee. When they lead the accused in, he looks like a broken man, and Susman doesn’t feel an ounce of empathy for him. For the last three months she had been haunted by the CRACK! of a baseball bat connecting with a feminine skull. Hitting it so hard that a whole tooth fell out. That, and the imagined smell of the fire in the blackened trough. How very coldblooded you have to be to burn your own wife’s body in a sawn-off steel barrel.
Susman didn’t have to be here. De Villiers would have let her know the verdict—he may have even splashed out and used a happy emoji in the message—Looks like we caught our wife-killer ( : —but something had told Susman she should come through, and so here she sits, looking around at the eager faces around her.