Anya scraped the leftovers into the dustbin and one-third filled the sink. Tight water restrictions due to a statewide drought meant using the dishwasher as little as possible.
Peter picked up a tea-towel and stood next to the draining tray.
“Years ago, he gave an opinion on a series of infant deaths from the one family, attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This was about the time some pathologists, including Alf, started believing that there was no such thing and that every case was murder in disguise.
“A pretty aggressive prosecutor got a conviction for a young mother who’d lost two children, based on Alf’s evidence.” He held up the first plate and let it drip into the sink before wiping. “She’d been in jail about fifteen years when Alf did an autopsy on the woman’s baby niece. Turns out there was a metabolic abnormality that ran through the family. Alf went back and rechecked the specimens on the other babies. They all had the same disorder. An innocent woman had been convicted of murdering her children.”
Anya listened in silence, but knew that with the benefit of hindsight and better technology for testing, there were probably many similar cases from the past.
“Around the same time, Alf’s wife delivered a stillborn and he thought it was a sign from God, punishing him for that woman’s wasted years in jail. That’s when he started exploring alternative medicines and became obsessed with Vitamin C deficiency.”
Anya pulled out the plug. “What happened to the woman?”
“She was released and exonerated, but the husband had left her and she was unable to have any more kids. He’s kept track of her all these years.”
“That is tragic. Reality is that we probably would have all come to the same conclusions at that time. But Alf didn’t help anyone by overcompensating and crippling the police investigations into genuine homicide cases. In some cases more than one child in the family lost its life to abuse. Don’t you think that’s criminal?”
Peter nodded. “I just don’t think anything is that simple any more.”
Anya dried her hands and touched his arm. “Normally I’m the one trying to right all the wrongs and you’re the calming realist.”
“Maybe the student has outgrown the teacher.”
“Never!” She smiled. “I was going to ask your advice about the Willard case.”
Peter folded the tea-towel and hung it over the oven door-handle. “I remember that one from all the publicity.”
Anya put the plates away, banging the cupboard door in haste. “The file’s in my office, if you’d like to take a look.”
They passed Ben, who was lying on his stomach drawing what looked like a truck in his scrapbook, while watching Sylvester try to catch Tweety Bird.
As they entered her office, Brown-Eye stood guard, and stared through his glass eyes.
“What the-”
“It’s going back to its owner tomorrow. Don’t ask,” she said, handing Peter the autopsy reports for Eileen Randall and Liz Dorman. He studied them for a while before speaking.
“There are distinct similarities, but the time of death is most certainly wider than the window defined here. The girl could have died well before, especially if she were floating in the water, which she must have been.” He scanned down further. “A quick immersion wouldn’t have resulted in that many crayfish larvae finding their way into the chest cavity. And the post-mortem wounds are interesting. You don’t often see exploratory wounds like that after a frenzied killing.”
“What if,” Anya said, “someone other than Willard killed that girl on the beach and sexually assaulted her, and he merely pulled the body out of the water?”
“That could explain the smear of blood on his shirt.”
“Don’t we have an obligation to at least check, to right a potential wrong?”
Peter frowned. “I think I taught you far too well.” He ran his eyes over the reports again, scratching his beard. “All right, what would you like me to do?”
38
On Monday afternoon, Hayden Richards arrived at the SA unit. Anya had just finished examining an eight-year-old girl allegedly abused by her mother’s de facto husband. The local doctor had referred the girl after noticing some inappropriate sexual behavior, but the mother refused to separate from her boyfriend. Family services would have the girl in a foster home by this afternoon.
Anya had taken twice as long as usual to examine the young girl, accompanied by a gynecologist from the hospital. The pair concurred and the magnitude of their decision was not lost on either of them. If the girl stayed in her current situation, she would be subject to more abuse, but the child didn’t want to be taken from her mother.
The sounds of the girl crying when told she would be placed in a temporary home still rang in Anya’s ears. She double-and triple-checked the evidence. The photographs weren’t clear and didn’t help.
“You look like you’ve lost your last penny,” Hayden said as he tapped on her open door.
“Guess we’re all suddenly questioning ourselves, hoping we’ve made the right decisions.” Her head throbbed and she tried to ease it by rubbing the pressure points at the base of her skull. It made the pain worse.
“Is that such a bad thing?” He leaned against the door with a videotape in one hand. “Want to talk about it? I’m a pretty good listener.”
She rested her head in her hands after gesturing for him to come in. “I just took a child away from her mother. What if it isn’t the right thing?”
“None of us is infallible. Come to think of it, maybe you should be having this conversation with Sorrenti.”
“Speaking of whom, how did you get off the leash?” The moment she said the words, she wished she hadn’t.
Luckily, Hayden just raised his eyebrows and sat down. “It is a bit like that, especially after Willard’s arrest. Unless his former conviction for the Randall killing is overturned, he’s going to stay on remand for the Dorman murder. The similarities are far too close for any judge to let him go. Sorrenti’s got him pegged for your knife-rapes as well. She doesn’t want to consider any other suspects.”
He looked like Anya felt. Tired, disillusioned and fed-up. Like someone who had lost his spark, whatever that was. Anya studied him. Each time they met, it seemed as though more weight had melted off his frame. For a moment she wondered whether he was in perfect health, or whether there was a more sinister reason behind the massive weight loss. Whether the cancer scare was merely that.
Then she thought of Meira Sorrenti. It couldn’t have been easy working with someone who knew a lot less about investigating sexual assaults.
“Guess we’re all under pressure.” She lifted her head. “So what brings you to this salubrious part of town? Have you come to tell me Melanie wrote that letter?”
“Nope, handwriting doesn’t match. We’ve also turned up a number of rape cases that could fit the pattern, but victims are proving hard to find.” Hayden threw the tape into the air and caught it. “To cheer you up, I brought Geoff Willard’s initial confession.”
There had to be something unusual about it, or he wouldn’t have bothered. Anya moved to another room and returned with a portable TV/video. She plugged it in on the desk and inserted the tape.
A young-looking Willard appeared in black and white. The quality of the picture was poor, but she could make out that he was sitting at a desk in an office. The uniformed officer, a younger, thinner Charlie Boyd, sat with his back to the camera.
She turned up the sound.
“Here comes the good bit,” Hayden pre-empted.
“All right.” Willard wiped his nose with the back of a blood-stained hand. “I’m hungry and I wanna go home.” He had the look of a rabbit startled by a shooter.
“You tell us what we want to know, and we’ll let you go,” the policeman said. “And your mama will stay out of prison, too.”
