Desert Demon (Foley & Rose Book 7)

by Gary Gregor

  Having refuelled his vehicle, he entered the roadhouse, paid for the fuel, a take-away coffee and a fast-food snack, all with cash—leaving a credit card trail was not an option—and then returned to his vehicle. He sat for a few moments before pulling away from the pump and thought about the young girl at Chambers Pillar. She reminded him of Anneliese, his girlfriend back in Hamburg. Like the Chambers Pillar girl, Anneliese was pretty and about the same age he guessed. Would Anneliese be waiting for him when he returned? Probably not, he decided. Probably already moved on with someone else. She was not happy when he said he was going to Australia. It was not the going to the other side of the world that concerned her so much, it was the going without her that had pissed her off.

  Anneliese had not even bothered to call or text him since he was gone; he supposed that might have something to do with the fact that he had made no attempt to contact her since he left her crying on her doorstep. Perhaps there was something of his father in him after all. When it came to domestic disagreements, his father expected his mother to apologise and make things right. That was the sort of man his father was. He was not a man given to admitting he could be wrong and subsequently apologising. There was very little about his father that Adalhard liked, virtually nothing in fact, but he had to admit that his attitude in relation to who wore the pants in a relationship was worthy of at least a modicum of respect.

  It didn’t really matter, he supposed, if it was over between himself and Anneliese; if it was, it was. He was not nearly as heartbroken as Anneliese; in fact, when he thought about it, he wasn’t heartbroken at all. She would find someone else. Perhaps he would too. Maybe someone in Australia. He shrugged with indifference, started the engine and pulled away from the pump.

  He didn’t know exactly where he was going next, only knew it would not be north. Alice Springs was north, and he did not want to be in a city. Too many people in the city. He hated large crowds. In the bush, at least deep in the bush, he was alone. No one would bother him. No one would find him. He could rest for a few days, re-group and think about when and where he might find his next victim. Was it possible he was developing a desire for the act of killing? He pulled out onto the Stuart Highway and turned south.

  7

  At Alice Springs Police Station, Russell Foley and Sam Rose, along with a small team of fellow detectives, stood crowded around a large map posted on a wall at one end of the Major Crime Squad’s incident room. The map depicted the isolated central Australian area south of Alice Springs, covering the south-eastern desert area to as far south as the South Australian border.

  A number of photographs displaying the crime scenes of the Watson family and the Susan Chambers murders were pinned to the wall on either side of the map—the Watson family on the left and Susan Chambers on the right. There were two cut-out arrows stuck to the wall, leading from each set of photographs to the point on the map where each murder was discovered.

  Detective Superintendent Cameron Yap Yap Barker pushed through the small throng of casually chatting detectives, moved to the front and stood with his back to the map and the grizzly photographs. He raised his hand, calling for quiet from his team of investigators.

  “Good morning, everyone,” he said. “Thank you all for coming in early, and particularly those of you who were enjoying your rostered day off. I’m sure Russell and Sam would have brought you all up to speed on what we are faced with here,”—he thrust a thumb at the map on the wall behind him—“and this is not going to be easy. The victims in these murders are the Watson family from Mount Dare Hotel in the far north of South Australia,” he pointed at the arrow indicating the location of the Watson murders. “And Susan Chambers from Adelaide,” he indicated the arrow pointing at Chambers Pillar.

  “It appears, and I stress that it is early in our investigation, that the Watson family and Susan Chambers were unknown to each other. It also appears they were all killed with the same weapon. Further forensic tests, particularly ballistics examinations, are being carried out as we speak to confirm that, but it looks like we are searching for the same killer in both cases.” He paused for a moment, turned and looked at the display on the wall behind him, and then turned back to face his team of investigators. “If these murders are random, opportunistic killings, the perp has made our job that much more difficult. We are looking to find any connection between the Watsons and the girl at Chambers Pillar, but it’s not looking good at this stage. If we confirm there is no connection, it would tend to support the random, opportunistic theory and that the killer was unknown to any of the victims.

  “It has been raining heavily south of the border and the South Australian police at Marla have been unable to get out to Mount Dare to make enquiries from that end because all the access roads are closed. They have spoken to the resident caretaker-manager at the hotel by phone and he has indicated that the Chambers girl was not at the hotel anytime in the last few weeks. The OIC at Marla says he knows the caretaker well and has vouched for his character and integrity, which further adds to the theory that the Watsons and Chambers did not know each other.”

  “I can add more to that, boss,” Russell Foley interrupted.

  “Go ahead, Russ.”

  Foley addressed the small gathering. “Sam and I searched the vehicle belonging to Susan Chambers and found a road map with a proposed travel route highlighted with a coloured marker pen. It suggests that she travelled up the Stuart Highway, through Marla, and crossed the border just south of Kulgera. Moose McKenzie, the OIC at Kulgera, is checking the local roadhouse CCTV footage to see if she stopped there for fuel, or maybe even stayed overnight. If she did, it reinforces what the boss has mentioned regarding the Watsons and Chambers never having met.

  “Moose is also checking the CCTV footage looking for a lone male, in a four-wheel-drive vehicle who might have travelled east across the Kulgera/Finke Road, and subsequently brought him into contact with the Watsons, who were traveling north along the Old Ghan Railway Heritage Trail from the South Australian border.”

  “There’s got to be thousands of lone males traveling all over the Northern Territory in four-wheel-drive vehicles,” one of the detectives commented wryly. “Like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “You’re right, Tom,” Yap Yap Barker agreed. “And we don’t even know if we are looking for a lone male; the killer might not be alone. We don’t know what sort of vehicle he is driving. However, given the terrain out that way, we are assuming he is driving a four-wheel-drive.” He turned to the map on the wall and, with a pen, he indicated the location of Chambers Pillar. “We don’t know which way he went from Chambers Pillar … west along the Finke Road back to the Stuart Highway via Kulgera, or north towards Alice Springs.

  “We know the Watson family were killed first, around mid-morning two days ago. Susan Chambers was killed yesterday, around dawn. If the same perp is responsible for both, he would have travelled north from the Watson murder scene, past the Kulgera/Finke Road intersection, to Chambers Pillar where Susan Chambers was killed almost twenty-four hours later. That suggests he intended to travel north and from there his options would seem limited, but as you can see, they are not.” He moved his pen up and down the length of the Old Ghan Railway Heritage Trail from the South Australian border to Alice Springs. “He may have turned back south and cut across the Kulgera/Finke Road or, if he continued travelling north, and if he is well prepared and has the right vehicle, he could have cut across country and accessed the Stuart Highway at any number of places.”

  “What about roadblocks?” someone asked.

  “As Tom said,” Barker responded. “There are literally thousands of four-wheel-drives on the road at any one time here in the Territory. We don’t have a description of the perp’s vehicle, make, model, colour … nothing. Stopping every four-by-four on the road would be logistically impossible. If he headed north, he could be laying low here in Alice Springs; he could be halfway to Darwin, or halfway across the Barkly Highway, heading for Que
ensland.”

  “Or heading south down the Stuart Highway into South Australia,” Foley added. “He could be heading up the Tanami Track to Western Australia. Or simply parked under a tree somewhere out in the bush. “There’s your needle in a haystack, Tom.”

  “Wherever he is,” Barker said grimly. “He has had a twenty-four-hour head start. You can see how difficult it is going to be tracking this guy down.”

  “Motive?” another voice asked from the middle of the small throng.

  Barker shrugged. “We just don’t know, Harry. The Watson family had money on them, and the Chambers girl had her handbag containing a little travelling money. It appears nothing was stolen from the Watson or Chambers vehicles. We haven’t completely ruled robbery out, but we strongly believed it was not a motive in either case.”

  “So, why is he doing this?” the same detective asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Harry,” Barker answered. “But nothing stolen tends to support the random, opportunistic theory.”

  “He’s doing it because he can?” Harry posed.

  “Or he likes it,” Barker said solemnly. “Maybe he gets off on it. We are checking with our interstate counterparts for similar cases in their jurisdictions. Maybe the Watsons and Chambers were his first victims.” He turned to Sam Rose. “Anything you want to add, Sam?”

  “I don’t think he is done,” Sam stated. “If the Watsons and the Chambers girl did not know each other, and we confirm they were all simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, our perp will think he has got clean away with four murders. He didn’t steal anything from any of the victims. He simply shot them and drove away. I get the impression he is a well organised and confident individual. If he feels he has gotten away with it, what’s to stop him doing it again? And, if the victims were in fact randomly chosen and he does do it again, who will it be, and where will it be? I think he does enjoy it. He tried it with the Watsons, liked it, and moved on, looking for his next victim. I’m betting he will do it again if we don’t find him first.”

  “I hope you are wrong, Sam,” Barker said, eyeing the small team of investigators. “I will be conducting a press conference with the media later today. As usual, like flies on shit, the press is buzzing around, looking for news. If we don’t bring them up to date with the latest, they will make shit up, and that’s counterproductive.”

  “Unfortunately, there’s not a lot more you can tell them other than what they have already managed to learn on their own,” Sam frowned.

  “I know,” Barker nodded. “I hate fuckin’ press conferences. You wanna do it for me?”

  “Shit, no! Not me, boss,” Sam answered with a shake of the head. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks. I would end up decking some smart-arse reporter and you’d be bringing me dinner in the cells.”

  “At least, you’d eat better than you do at home,” Foley joked. His gibe set off a burst of laughter throughout the gathering.

  “Okay everyone,” Barker said, calling for quiet. “Eyes and ears open. Draw up a contact plan for all the roadhouses up and down the Stuart Highway. Divide it up between you and hit the telephones. This dude has to stop for fuel; he has to eat. If he is camping out, he might be carrying camping equipment. If he lives in the Territory, he may have been missing from his home for a few days, so check with Communications for any recent missing person reports. If he was in the area on work-related business, he might be overdue returning to his place of employment. He will probably be driving a four-wheel-drive. He had to have been down the south of the Territory for some reason. Someone has to know something. This dude is not a phantom. He’s real. He exists and he’s out there somewhere, maybe contemplating his next victim.

  “I’ll be asking the public for assistance at the press conference later today. I will ask the lads and lasses in General Duties to be extra vigilant. This prick is out there and, as Sam has suggested, he might kill again. We have to find him before he does.”

  Russell Foley and Sam Rose faced each other across the span of their respective desks, pushed together in the Major Crime squad room. The bane of most investigators was the paperwork associated with any criminal investigation. Foley and Rose were no exception.

  Detailing the progression of events in an investigation in accurate, chronological order was an integral part of the criminal prosecution process. If there was to be any hope of success in any future legal prosecution of the matter under investigation, the details had to be meticulously documented, should they be required to be submitted in evidence. “Dot the I’s and cross the T’s” was the rule. There could be no ambiguity that a half-smart defence lawyer could exploit to the advantage of his client: the accused. History would show there were too many legal precedents where some guilty-as-shit defendant escaped conviction because a cop got sloppy and inconsistent with the facts presented as evidence.

  “Fuckin’ paperwork,” Sam growled. “We should be out there looking for this prick!”

  “You have been moaning about paperwork since you and I met at the Training Centre all those years ago. You ought to be used to it by now.”

  “I am used to it,” Sam said with a wry smile. “I just like to grizzle about something at least once a day. Today, it’s paperwork. Besides, I’m fuckin’ tired! We never got back here until after midnight last night and then Yap Yap had us back in here at 6:00 am!”

  “I slept like a log,” Foley told them.

  “Yeah? Well, I had three or four beers and cooked a steak before I went to bed. Never slept a wink!”

  “With all that beer and red meat in your guts, I’m not surprised.” Foley smiled.

  “I was hungry and thirsty,” Sam muttered.

  “What?” Foley asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “We have got to document the events of the last couple of days,” Foley advised. “The sooner we do that, the sooner we can get back out there and look for our perp.”

  “I might just shoot the prick when we find him,” Sam said.

  “You won’t shoot anyone, Sam,” Foley said sternly. “You’re all piss-and-wind.”

  8

  Lara McKenzie walked to the Kulgera Roadhouse, less than two-hundred metres from her home, behind the compact Kulgera Police Station building. She preferred to walk to the local roadhouse when she needed something from the limited supply of grocery items they carried in stock. It was a short walk, but it seemed silly to take the family vehicle on such a short journey when she much preferred the exercise. Besides, walking had to be good for her, she guessed.

  Lara was fifty-three-years-old and was shocked and horrified when, in her early forties, she noticed the “love handles” beginning to develop around her middle. Now, they were fully fledged “grab-rails”. It was time to take some positive action and get back into shape

  Lara was not a particularly vain woman but she liked to look as nice as possible given her advancing years and, after thirty years of marriage, the well-proportioned twenty-three-year-old body she displayed on her wedding day was long gone, perhaps never to return. Now, determined to retrieve some small resemblance of her wedding-day shape, it was important to her to maintain at least some degree of fitness and, hopefully, the body shape would react accordingly.

  She was not a fitness fanatic and walking up to five kilometres at least three days a week was about the limit of her exercise regime. But at least she was doing something, and the occasional short walk to the roadhouse and back was a good top-up to her longer walks. There was something about the benefits of walking in the vast expanse of open, pollution-free air in the country that far outweighed those of the smog, noise, and traffic of the city.

  Being a wife and a mother was a tough assignment for any woman, anywhere, but being the wife of a “bush” cop in a “two-man’ station in a remote, isolated location elevated the difficulty to a much higher level. In tiny communities like Kulgera, which was nothing much more than a roadhouse offering passing travellers fuel, take-away food, a small sele
ction of grocery items, an Australia Post agency, and the police station, life could be very lonely, particularly if your husband was the town cop and was away on a job somewhere.

  It helped if the “second man” at the station were married; there would be a like-minded woman living close by to talk to, have coffee with, or just shoot the breeze about the sorts of things ladies loved to talk about—like kids, grandkids, recipes, and their husband’s shortcomings.

  The 2IC at Kulgera Police Station, Colin Palmer, was a single man. He lived alone in a second residence provided by the Northern Territory Police Force, located close to the home Lara shared with her husband, Mathew. Colin was nice, Lara thought. He was polite, funny, and more than obliging when it came to washing dishes following one of the regular dinners she invited him to share with her and Mathew. He seemed ambitious and more than willing to learn everything he could from his OIC.

  Old hands like Moose McKenzie were a valuable asset to the police force, not just for the knowledge they had acquired over their years in the job, but for the way they mentored and guided the younger brigade, the “old hands” of the future, coming through the police system.

  While Colin was good company for her and Moose when he came to dinner, the men talked mostly about their work, stuff that held little interest for Lara, and she missed the company of another woman. She missed the idle chit-chat and gossip which was so much a part of ladies socialising with one another. But it was what it was. She was the wife of an Outback police officer and there were only two options—stick it out or walk away. Lara loved her husband way too much to leave the marriage and, if meaningless short-on-substance girl talk was all that was missing in her life, she had very little to worry about, she thought.