Desert Demon (Foley & Rose Book 7)

by Gary Gregor

  “There, just above his right eye,” Sarah pointed.

  “All I can see is blood and pieces of bone,” Martin said.

  With her thumb, Sarah wiped gently at a spot on the man’s forehead. “Take a closer look. What do you make of that?”

  Martin leaned in even closer. “It looks like a hole,” he replied. “Just like all the other holes all over his face. It’s a mangled mess of blood and bone.”

  “It’s too neat,” Sarah announced.

  “Neat?”

  “Yes, look closer.” She wiped at the spot again. “It’s a nice, neat hole.”

  “A bullet hole?” Martin suggested.

  “Maybe. Help me turn the woman. I want to look at her face.”

  Together, Martin and Sarah turned the woman’s head sufficiently to see her face.

  “Jesus, what a mess,” Martin said again.

  “She landed on her face, directly on top of her husband.” Sarah wiped at the woman’s forehead with her gloved hand. “No bullet hole.”

  “How can you tell, Sarge? There’s so much damage.”

  “There’s no bullet hole,” Sarah said with some certainty.

  “You think she shot her husband and then committed suicide?” Martin asked, baffled.

  “Murder/suicide? That’s a pretty big call, Al.” Sarah got to her feet.

  “It’s just one theory,” Martin explained.

  “If you’re right, there should be a gun around here somewhere. Check her shoulder bag, Al.”

  Martin opened the bag and rifled gently through the contents. “No gun,” he announced. “Lots of girl stuff: tissues, a money purse, breath mints, couple of crunched up receipts, a sanitary napkin, but no gun.” He closed the bag.

  “Okay,” Sarah said. “Let’s look around. If your theory is gonna stand up, there has to be a gun.”

  For several minutes, they scoured the surrounding area, thoroughly searching the stunted undergrowth and rocky ground for up to ten metres around the bodies. There was no gun.

  “Maybe they are laying on it,” Martin suggested.

  “We’ll check when the medics come to remove them,” Sarah said. “Got your phone on you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Call the lads up top and ask them to search the area for a weapon. Even a spent cartridge would help. If they come up empty, we may well have a murder on our hands here.”

  “Maybe two murders?” Martin proposed.

  Sarah nodded. “Maybe. Hopefully we’ll know more after the autopsies. I’m hoping this does not become a murder investigation. The killer could be long gone from here by now.”

  “Or still here, somewhere.”

  “Either way, we will have to lock this place up tight until we get some answers.”

  Sam Rose opened his fridge, grabbed a beer and stepped into his compact living room. He kicked off his shoes and sat wearily in his favorite armchair. He placed his feet up on the small coffee table, yawned deeply, popped the ring-pull on his beer can and took a long swallow. “Ah, that’s good,” he murmured to the empty room. He placed the beer on the coffee table and removed his phone from his trouser pocket and tapped out a well-known number.

  “High, baby,” he said when Sarah answered his call.

  “Hey, Sam, how are you?”

  “I’m okay. I’m concerned about you, though. Are you alright?”

  “I’m tired,” Sarah said. “But I’m okay.”

  “Tough day?”

  “Yeah. We never got back from Kings Canyon until late last night and I didn’t sleep well.”

  “Why don’t you come back to the Alice for a few days? The break will do you good.”

  “Sounds lovely, darling,” Sarah replied. “But I can’t. Not yet anyway. I’ve got a lot to catch up on. Maybe I can grab a couple of days next week.”

  “Okay, as long as you are alright.”

  “I’m fine, Sam, thank you for caring. I love you.”

  “I love you too, baby. I have some news.”

  “Good news, I hope,” Sarah said.

  “Well, it’s news. I’ll let you determine if it’s good or bad.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Yap Yap Barker put a rush on the autopsies of the two bodies you sent yesterday, and the pathologist is not a happy chappy. He and his team worked through the night.”

  “And?”

  “You were right, Sarah. The man was shot. He was dead before he went over the edge of the canyon. They found bullet fragments in his brain and we have them going through ballistic tests as we speak.”

  “And the woman?”

  “It was difficult, given the condition of her body,” Sam replied sombrely. “But there are no bullet wounds anywhere on her body. It looks like the fall killed her.”

  Sarah shuddered and said softly, “Not a good way to die.”

  “No way’s a good way, honey.”

  “What about the camera?” Sarah asked.

  “Badly smashed in the fall. Our Forensics chaps managed to salvage a few photos—mostly holiday snaps. There is one interesting snap, though. Looks like the last photo taken before they went over the edge.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s a snap of the happy couple standing on the very edge of the rim. No more than a foot from the edge. Arms around each other, smiling. The woman was looking up lovingly at her husband. It certainly does not look like she was about to shoot him in the head.”

  “The camera was around the man’s neck, Sam. Who took the photo?”

  “A fellow tourist is my guess,” he replied. “They asked someone passing to take the photo with their camera and then he, or she, gave the camera back.”

  “And seconds later, the man was shot and they both went over the edge.”

  “Shot by the photographer?” Sam suggested.

  “Had to be what happened,” Sarah agreed. “They asked someone to take a photo of them enjoying their honeymoon, and then he killed them. What the f is that about?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. But you and I have been in this job long enough to know that the world has its fair share of evil bastards. There is no reason why we here in good-old Oz should be immune from their actions.”

  “I just had a horrible thought,” Sarah announced. “What if it was the offender’s intention to shoot them both? He shoots the husband first and before he can get a second shot off, the wife grabs frantically at her husband to save him from falling, and they both go over the edge.”

  “It sounds to me like that might be exactly what happened,” Sam said. “How high are the canyon walls?”

  “You’ve never been to Kings Canyon?”

  “No.”

  “The walls vary in height along their length but, at the spot where they fell, the wall is almost 150 metres high.”

  “That would explain the condition of the bodies,” Sam said. “What investigations have you carried out?”

  “There wasn’t a lot we could do, Sam. It had every indication of being a horrible accident—until I suspected the husband had been shot. We shut the whole place down immediately—no one in, and no one out for the whole day. That pissed off a few people, particularly those with forward bookings. We interviewed resort guests, including caravanners and campers. We have a list of every person booked into the resort from the day before the incident until late yesterday. There are hundreds of them. I forwarded the list to Alice Springs. We don’t have either the time or the staff to carry out that many background checks. It’s gonna take days, I think.”

  “CCTV footage?”

  “We have the tapes here at Yulara,” Sarah answered. “We are checking them all, but we really don’t know what we are looking for, apart from perhaps a lone traveller; we don’t know if the killer was alone or had an accomplice. I don’t think we are going to learn much from the tapes. There is a public carpark near the resort where day travellers can come in and walk the canyon, without checking in as a resident. The carpark is also under camera surveillance and
we are checking those tapes as well. These travellers are supposed to register their presence in the interests of Occupational Health and Safety but there is always the chance some will choose not to comply with that requirement.”

  “You’re doing everything right, sweetheart,” Sam stated. “I’ve got plenty of leave due; would you like me to come out there and give you a hand?”

  “I would love that. But we both know that if you come out here, we won’t get a lot of work done. Besides, you have to be busy with the killings out Finke way.”

  “You’re right, we are busy. Probably a better idea to take a raincheck on the visit.”

  “I’m sorry, darling,” Sarah apologised. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” She paused. “Do you think this could be the work of the same perp?”

  “The same perp as the Finke killings?”

  “Yes. It all seems too much of a coincidence to me. Finke and Chambers Pillar are only a couple of hundred ks from here.”

  “To be honest, Sarah, it never occurred to me. However, now that you mention it, I will pass it on to the rest of the investigation team. I hope the two incidents are not connected but it has to be worth consideration.”

  “Okay, darling, I have to go. I hope to see you soon.”

  “Just as soon as we clear this mess up,” Sam promised.

  “Bye, darling,” Sarah said softly.

  “Sarah?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  “Thank you. I love you too, Sam.” Sarah disconnected.

  10

  Adalhard Jaeger guardedly pushed aside the double-folded blankets he had draped over the Caribee Snow Drift sleeping bag before having zipped himself inside his makeshift cocoon several hours earlier. He raised his head slightly and peeked cautiously from the draw-cord hood of the heavily insulated sleeping bag.

  Through the dust- and grime-coated windows of the vehicle canopy, a faint pre-dawn light struggled to penetrate the cramped space which had become his home since he purchased the four-wheel-drive on his arrival in Australia. He pushed his hand through the small neck opening of the sleeping bag and waved it around in the air. Although daylight was fast approaching, and with it the burning desert heat, the remnant night air was still freezing; inside the canopy of his vehicle, it felt like the inside of a chest freezer. He quickly pulled his arm back under the covers and snuggled deeper into the folds of his sleeping bag. He needed to relieve himself badly, but he would just have to hold onto it for a little while longer.

  Adalhard was no stranger to cold nights. Back home in Germany, winter consisted of months of constant rain, snow, and sleet with days and nights where the minimum temperature rarely rose above freezing. He was not familiar with the seasonal climatic conditions in Australia, but he did know that at this time of the year it was winter. In the Northern Territory, in particular, the locals referred to it as the “Dry Season”. It rarely rained in the Dry Season, never snowed, and sleet was a weather feature from places other than the Territory.

  This was the Australian Outback. The vast variation between day and night temperatures in this part of the country, at this time of the year, was something Adalhard found difficult to comprehend. Within just a few hours of waking in the morning, the temperature could easily rise high into the thirty degrees Celsius and above range. Then, in the late afternoon, it would drop rapidly, until the temperature during the night often dropped below freezing.

  But to Adalhard, this was a different cold. It was a dry cold. This was the central Australian desert region and here the cold embraced the night and everything in it like a dense, descending weight from which there was no escape. There was no respite from the bone-chilling, breath-freezing, body-aching cold until the next day dawned, accompanied by temperatures that would quickly soar into unfathomable highs, where the scorching desert sun made it possible to fry an egg in less than a minute on the bonnet of a car.

  At first, he found it somewhat disconcerting—day after day of burning, dry heat, followed by nights so cold and so silent he could sometimes hear the sound of small lizards scurrying across the desert floor as they busied themselves in nocturnal foraging for the tiny desert insects they survived on. At least, he guessed they were small lizards; it was always way too cold to climb out from under his blankets and investigate. Ultimately, he found himself waiting for the soft scurrying sounds, as if they were a reminder that he was not truly alone in the desert wilderness of a foreign country thousands of kilometres from his homeland.

  Sometimes, when he lay awake, waiting for the morning sun to warm the vehicle before climbing from his cocoon to face another day, he would think about Germany, and Hamburg in particular. He often wondered if he would ever return to his home, and what he would do if he did. He had a return ticket, but the return date was open, and he had not yet given any real thought as to whether he would return when his tourist visa expired.

  Adalhard was being hunted by the police in this country now, and there was a very real possibility the German police might be searching for him back at home also. Returning might be more dangerous than staying. He felt reasonably sure the local authorities did not know who they were looking for, not yet anyway, but police and security personnel would be on alert, even in the airports. They would learn his identity at some point so, should he decide to return to Germany, he would have to do it before they did.

  On other mornings, as he lay in his sleeping bag waiting for the night chill to seep from his bones, Adalhard thought about his parents. He knew a long time ago that he hated his father, and as a teenager rapidly approaching the time when he would have to make some decisions regarding his future, it was an emotion that scared him. Children are supposed to love their parents and the strong feelings Adalhard felt for his father frightened him. He wanted to make his own way in the world. Wanted to make his own decisions as to how he might earn a living. It seemed, however, that Gerhard was determined to take those choices from him.

  Through the confusion of emotions, exacerbated by the mishmash of hormones screaming through his young, developing body as he graduated from boyhood to manhood, one thing was clear to the young Adalhard: he did not, and indeed would not, follow his father into the stuffed-shirt, brandy-snifter world of international banking and finance. That was impossible now, even if he were to have a change of heart.

  Adalhard’s feelings for his mother were similar to those he harboured for his father. Heidemarie Jaeger was a fusspot mother. She doted on her son to the point of obsession. It was like Adalhard’s happiness transcended everything else in her life. There were times, way too many times, when Heidemarie’s devotion and attention to her son so embarrassed Adalhard; he wanted to hurt her so badly, so that it would all stop. Even when he was feeling the oppressive weight of teenage blues and wasn’t hungry, she would make his favorite strudel and sit at the kitchen table and watch him eat it, smiling widely at every mouthful he took. Where his mother was concerned, Adalhard wanted for nothing, but still the fussing continued unabated. It was only a matter of time before he would reach a point where he had to stop the mollycoddling by his mother and the pressure from his father.

  He wanted to tell his mother how he felt about her constant fussing, and about his feelings for his father, but he dared not. She would not understand. Heidemarie was from old, traditional German stock. Husbands and wives stayed together for life. Parents were there to love and guide their children through the pitfalls of life and teach them that no one would ever be better role models than their parents. Oh, she knew that her husband was too strict when it came to his son, but he was the father, the head of the household, the family patriarch. A wife did not reprimand her husband, regardless of how she might feel about the way her spouse interacted with their children. A wife’s place in the home was to provide food and comfort for her family. It was not to participate in the decision-making process regarding the future of any children of the union.

  Gerhard Jaeger expected Adalhard to follow him
into the business. To his mind, there could be no other career choice for his son. It was however, somewhat more than an expectation. His life-plan for his only son consisted of a term in the military to toughen up the lad, followed by a few years of intense study of international banking and finance. It was a roadmap to his son’s future, and there could be no deviation from it. Gerhard knew Adalhard was not particularly enamoured with his plans for his son’s future, but the military would knock that out of him and make a real man of him. His wife treated their son like he was a girl, pampering and fussing over him whenever and wherever she could. It was downright embarrassing to watch.

  Gerhard had contacts in the military, particularly in the Kommando Spezialkräfte, the elite arm of the army Special Forces Command. He was himself a former member in the specialist military unit. They would knock the soft, girly edges from Adalhard’s character in no time at all.

  Clearing his mind of unheralded thoughts of his family, Adalhard unzipped the sleeping bag, pushed aside the blankets and reached out for the empty glass jam jar he kept close at hand. He unscrewed the lid, fumbled with his clothing, and proceeded to pee into it. The empty jam jar was his night-time, emergency en-suite bathroom. The alternative was to climb out of his warm bed in the middle of the night, open the rear access door to the cargo bay of his utility and climb down and take a leak outside where the temperature was below freezing. He did that a couple of times before he decided that an empty jar was a far more comfortable alternative. Besides, who was going to reprimand him? Pissing in a jar might well be considered inappropriate by some, perhaps even to the point of being disgusting, but he was alone out here in the wilderness. Who was going to know … and did he really care?

  He would have loved to build a fire, if only for the warmth it offered. But a fire would create smoke and smoke would attract attention. He was at least three or four kilometres from the main Mereenie Loop Road, an unsealed, north-westerly access road to Kings Canyon from the West MacDonnell Ranges through the 106,000-hectare Watarrka National Park. He was parked beneath several spindly, stunted trees struggling to survive on the banks of an ancient, dry, shallow riverbed. He knew it was illegal to camp in the national park and certainly illegal to start a fire, but it would be warm enough in a very short time—so warm, in fact, that he would be wishing for the night to come to get some relief from the relentless heat of the day.