Anya breathed out. “If you see them in cases like this, they’re suspicious. It suggests someone strangled the victim and staged the hanging to cover it up. It’s tough to strangle anyone, so killers usually release pressure, then apply it again.”
The implication of her words was clear to everyone present. Giverny may have been murdered and the scene made to look like a suicide. Anya suddenly remembered the threat painted on the car in the garage.
Jeff Sales continued his external examination. “Don’t forget to get a photo of the knot in the cord.”
Zimmer donned rubber gloves and bent down. “Not this one. It’s been cut right through and unravelled.”
“Damn!” Hayden muttered, hitching up his trousers at the waist.
In the emergency, Anya hadn’t thought about the knot. All she’d cared about was saving the girl’s life. There was no way that Mary would have known how important it was to preserve the knot as evidence when she followed Anya’s instruction and cut the dying girl down. Anya’s hands began to tremble again.
“Mate, you did the right thing.” Zimmer moved to her side. “We’re all trained to prioritize. Save survivors first and make the scene safe. That’s exactly what you did here. It’s what any of us would-and should-have done.”
Anya suddenly wasn’t so sure. It had never occurred to her that Giverny could have already been dead when they arrived. She saw the girl and automatically reacted, more with emotion than clinical acumen.
She hadn’t looked beneath Giverny’s closed lids to check for hemorrhages on the conjunctiva, and she couldn’t remember whether there were any on the girl’s face. She assumed there weren’t but could never swear to it. She may have simply failed to notice. God, how could she have missed something so important?
“I didn’t notice any hemorrhages. I’m sorry. It all happened so fast.”
Hayden offered, “None of us would have swapped places with you. We all knew Giverny and her gentleness got to all of us. But if those bastards did this to her to stop her testifying, we need to know every possible detail, no matter how insignificant it might seem.”
Jeff Sales clicked on a hand-held dictaphone.
“One hundred and twelve Levy Road, inside the front door is the body of a female adolescent, weight approximately fifty-five kilograms, height one hundred and sixty centimeters. ET tube is in situ, as is cannula in right forearm. A cream computer cable appears to have been removed from her neck.
“The face is engorged and petechial hemorrhages dot the area around the eyes and conjunctiva. A ligature mark consistent with the width of the computer cord extends from below the earlobes, under the chin. There is a small area on the left side of the neck, two centimeters inferior to the left ear, where the skin has been pierced. Blood has flowed vertically and then appears to travel toward the nape of the neck.”
Anya listened, still unable to accept that the body in front of them was the young woman she had known and treated. She looked down at the dried blood on her fingers. Giverny’s blood.
“I cut the cable with that knife on the floor,” she said, pointing to the smaller knife by the door, “while I was holding her upright, then when Mary freed her from the door tie I laid her flat on the ground to begin resuscitation. That’s why the blood dripped down then behind.” Her hands shook again as her temperature climbed. “Mary used the larger knife.”
She held her ribs and coughed again.
“You okay? You look flushed.” Hayden had a worried expression.
“I’m fine.”
“We can take a break if you want.”
“No. Let’s keep going.” Anya’s words were more curt than she had intended. It was best they finish going over the details while everything was still fresh in her mind.
“Were the knives near the body when you arrived?”
“No, I told Mary to quickly find something to cut the tie to the door. I assume she got them both from the kitchen.”
Zimmer photographed the knives, then placed them in paper evidence bags. The bloodstained cord went in another bag. “We’ll need to fingerprint Mary, as well as the doorknob.”
Jeff Sales lifted the skirt of Giverny’s dress, then replaced it.
“Underwear intact. No external evidence of sexual assault.”
All Anya could do was stand and watch, feeling as though Giverny’s body was being violated yet again.
3
After giving formal police statements, Mary dropped Anya a few blocks from her home. Anya wanted to clear her head and walk the rest of the way. By trying to save Giverny, she and Mary had contaminated what was considered a crime scene. As a result, if anyone had murdered Giverny Hart, evidence could be too blurred to lay charges.
She pictured the threats painted on the car and garage wall.
Damn! Why couldn’t she remember what Giverny’s face had looked like before she had freed the cord from her neck? The small face was bent forward, barely visible until the ligature had been severed and released. It was the priority under the circumstances.
She knew better than anyone that in order to cause petechial hemorrhages, a killer would have to have cut off the blood supply to the neck, then relaxed the grip long enough for blood to surge back into the head region, before tightening the grip again. Even the strongest of men had trouble maintaining a hold long enough to kill in one episode of pressure.
If that happened, Giverny could have been in and out of consciousness, knowing she was going to die.
Anya coughed and a pain shot through the middle of her back. She slowed her pace and paused by a tree to let an elderly couple pass on the footpath.
The only ones who would benefit from the girl’s death were the Harbourns. The thought of her failed attempts at resuscitation helping them get away with murder brought bile to her throat.
She walked slowly, pain shooting through her back. Leaning over the body, doing cardiac massage had been exhausting. Now her muscles were in spasm.
Her thoughts wandered to her mother, a family doctor in Tasmania. Doctor Jocelyn, as her patients called her, had often come home dejected about losing one of her patients. Too often, as one of the few doctors in the area, she was the one to pull victims from mangled cars on the highway, or deliver stillborns of women she in turn had delivered all those years before.
Up until today, Anya hadn’t truly appreciated the impact that must have had. Her mother knew-and cared for- almost everyone in their area.
Giverny was a kind, sensitive girl who had touched all who had met her after the assault. The one hope was that she had not suffered any more in death that she had in life. If she’d hanged herself, unconsciousness would have come within about fifteen seconds of the cord tightening.
But if she were murdered…
Despite being terrified of facing her attackers in court, Giverny had talked about finding strength knowing that without her evidence the brothers would get away with their crimes. In spite of that, the multiple delays in the trial had worn her down. Having dropped out of school, her spirits were low. The parents’ separation was undeniably stressful. But was she depressed enough to commit suicide?
Anya thought about how much the Harts had lost. Bevan’s only daughter had been brutally raped. His determination to see a conviction had driven his wife to leave; she had wanted Giverny to move on with her life, not remain a victim. In contrast, the trial had become the focus of her husband’s life.
Looking at a passing couple in her street, hand in hand, doting on their baby, Anya felt a terrible pang for the Harts. No parent should ever outlive a child. Bevan and Val would never experience the joys of watching their daughter fall in love and have her own children, their grandchildren. That had all been taken from them.
As Anya walked slowly on, rain began to spit from a charcoal sky. The day could barely be any more miserable. A minute from home, the drizzle became a downpour.
