“All right, I killed Eileen Randall. I saw her and stabbed her to death on the beach.”
“And what else did you do?” A beardless Charlie Boyd tapped the table with his pen.
“I stuck my penis into her insides.”
“You mean you raped her vaginally?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Charlie Boyd noted the time and date Willard had confessed.
Before he could shut off the tape, Willard asked, “Can I go home now? I said what you wanted.”
Anya stopped the tape. That wasn’t a confession. It was a frightened adolescent saying what he was told. He was scared and probably didn’t understand what had happened.
“That last bit didn’t get heard at the trial,” Hayden said. “The local cop thought he was doing the right thing. Screwed up big-time with that effort.”
The confession should never have been shown at trial. It failed the most basic standards of policing.
“After I saw that, I decided to do some checking. Nick Hudson’s no cleanskin. He served some time in Queensland for assault in the early 1990s. He’s got a charge-sheet for minor offenses, but no other convictions.”
“Nice family.” The timing suggested Nick hadn’t been in prison with Gloria Havelock’s rapists, so would not have had access to Melanie’s photo. Three questions remained: why Geoff had small amounts of blood on two shirts, who’d written him the letter and how he’d got Melanie’s picture.
“Have you checked out where Nick was the night of the Dorman murder?”
The phone rang and Anya answered it, gesturing her visitor to give her a minute. He wandered into the corridor while she spoke to a victim’s local doctor. When the conversation ended, Hayden returned to the doorway.
“Hudson works at a local pub. No tax records, just cash in hand. He says that on the night in question, the owners went out and asked him to cover the bar. The owners confirmed it and every dropout from Fisherman’s Bay frequents the place, so the guy’s got a firm alibi.” He leaned his head on the door again. “They all know someone who recruits at the local chicken factory. It’s like some kind of magnet for them all.”
Anya wondered if Hayden had a back problem and was more comfortable standing.
“For all we know,” he said, “there could be more fatal cases, ones we’re missing because Willard was in jail at the time. I’m thinking our killer’s struck before.”
“Funny you should say that.” Anya swivelled back in her chair to the empty fax. “I was wondering the same thing.”
“Damn!” he said, sat and pulled the chair between his legs. “You know something.”
So much for the bad-back theory, she thought.
His foot met Brown-Eye, who was temporarily deposited under the desk. “Jeez, you’ve gotta take that back. It’s disgusting.” He screwed up his nose. “And it smells worse than ever in here.”
“Thanks for that.” She wondered what other smell he was referring to, one when Brown-Eye wasn’t there. “It’s going back tonight. I just want to grab some aspirin and check the other fax. I’ll be right back.”
In a few moments, Anya returned with a blister-pack of tablets and a glass of water. Under her arm, she clutched some papers. “This just came through-your timing’s impressive.” She squeezed past the detective to get to her seat and deposited the papers on her end of the desk. “A friend did a search of the National Coroners Information System. I can’t access it from here.”
The NCIS had been established in 1998 to collate autopsy findings around the country. Its purpose was to identify clusters of disease, trends and similar cases to reduce preventable death and injury. Its role had become important in occupational health and safety, pinpointing the types of work-related deaths, occupations most at risk, and equipment linked with deaths.
Pathologists also found it useful for looking up similar pattern injuries. She’d ring and thank Peter Latham later.
Hayden wanted to get in first. “Well, I came up with a case from three years ago. A woman up north was stabbed to death in Port Macquarie. Local police thought it was a break-and-enter gone wrong, and never even had a suspect. No fingerprints or DNA at the scene. Hard to say if anything was taken. The investigation was pretty sloppy.”
Anya looked through the faxed sheets. “Leonie Turnbull?”
“Bingo!” Hayden suddenly looked brighter. “What have you got?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.” Anya gulped the tablets and read the report. She recognized the name of a locum pathologist who’d done the autopsy. Thankfully, Alf Carney hadn’t been involved. The deceased, Leonie Turnbull, was in her mid-twenties, five foot two and weighed fifty-five kilograms. Cause of death was massive blood loss due to thirty-eight stab wounds. Some were superficial. One penetrated the thoracic aorta, which was probably the fatal wound.
“Looks like she was stabbed multiple times; wounds look confined to the chest and neck, some deep, others superficial. Some look like they’d been done after death.”
“Anything to suggest she’d been sexually assaulted?”
“Not according to this, but that doesn’t exclude it.”
Hayden flicked through his notebook. “Apparently she was a medical student from Sydney sent there for a country rotation. She’d just returned from a few days off. No one even knew when exactly she got back, but she was having problems with her supervisor. Seems she didn’t really like the place and wanted to get back home.”
“Any patients bother her?” Anya knew that a young medical student could easily attract unwanted attention in a small place. Doctors were at a much greater risk of being stalked than anyone else, given the relationship they had to forge with patients. Even the most innocent exchange could be misinterpreted and deemed intimate by someone with dysfunctional thinking.
“Not that we know. According to the supervisor, she looked young, but her work was fine. He thought she was bright, shy and a bit strange, but he wouldn’t explain what he meant. He thought she was irresponsible when she just took off for a few days. Sounds like he’s pretty guilty about what happened to her. Thinks he should have spoken to her more.”
Hindsight was 20/20, Anya thought. Everyone would do things differently if they had the benefit of what medical people termed the retrospectoscope.
She wondered about the young woman’s sudden disappearance. Hayden’s mobile phone rang and he excused himself to get better reception.
Anya flicked through the list on her notice-board and dialled Port Macquarie hospital. The medical-records department proved surprisingly helpful when she explained the need for information. No one named Leonie Turnbull had been admitted. The sexual-assault service had been run by the local clinic for many years. Anya doubted a medical student would want to be examined by people she worked with if she’d been assaulted.
She dialled a friend at the Newcastle SA unit, the closest major center. After explaining how important it was to know whether Leonie had presented three years ago, her colleague agreed to check and promised to call back. Anya thanked her and flicked through the remaining pages from Peter Latham.
A case from six years ago involved a more elderly woman who had been stabbed in her home multiple times. This woman had ligature marks on her wrists and ankles from being restrained on the bed. Judging by the trauma, the poor woman had been raped with a sharp instrument prior to death. The details were horrific. After the rape, the perpetrator slit her throat, shearing the carotid arteries on both sides. The stab wounds weren’t confined to the chest and involved the face and limbs as well. As far as murders went, this was one of the most sadistic. The killer had even urinated on his victim.
When Hayden returned, Anya passed him the pages. He read in silence, shaking his head at various stages. “Hard to imagine what sort of animal can do this,” he said.
“I doubt it’s the same killer. The pattern of injuries is very different.”
Hayden studied the page. “I agree. What did Quentin Lagardia say about our guy? The gentleman rapist?”
“Exactly. In relative terms, he’s not that sadistic. Whoever did this wasn’t role-playing with the old lady. Everything he did was angry, brutal and degrading. Look at the urination. That’s something either an anger- retaliatory or anger-excitation rapist would do.”
“Our guy doesn’t kill them
