his arrogant tone. She didn’t want to speak to him, not today. She deleted it before he’d finished.
Lastly, her father had phoned. He’d be in town next week and asked if they could have dinner.
She sat down, and wrote down the phrase that Desiree had used so casually. The way she’d behaved was a little possessive toward Nick, yet she made a point of saying how happy she was with her “good man.”
What was Desiree’s last name? She strained to remember. Watt? Putt? Patt? Sounded like a hairdo-Platt! That was it. She circled it on the page for when she next spoke to Hayden.
She also wrote down what they knew about the Dorman murder. Two of Geoffrey’s shirts taken from the house had traces of blood that were consistent with Liz Dorman’s. The DNA evidence against Willard was pretty damning, let alone the similarities to the Randall stab wounds-the number, distribution and types. He also had no alibi for the night Liz Dorman died.
Anya concluded that the same killer was most likely responsible for both deaths.
Did Liz’s rape have anything at all to do with her murder? But the photo that had been stolen from the fridge during the rape was found in the garbage bin after her murder. She was unaware of any serial offender who took souvenirs of their victims and then returned them to the scene.
The rape
Elaine arrived with a cheery “good morning” and removed a scarf and coat.
“You started early,” she said. “Anything I can do?”
“Just going over a case. Just when I think I’ve worked it out, something comes up to confuse me all over again.”
Elaine rubbed her hands together. “Do you mind if I put the heater on?”
“No,” Anya said, lost in thought again.
Mrs. Willard had told her one of Geoff’s shirts had come from the opportunity shop and he hadn’t even worn it. But it was possible the mother had lied to protect him.
Was there a possibility the shirts he bought already had Liz’s DNA on them? She clicked on to the Internet and googled Willard. He’d been released four weeks ago, and Liz died just over a week ago. It was unlikely he’d worn the same donated shirt and trousers for three weeks, especially if they didn’t fit. Still, Hayden could check the dates with the shop receipts. Maybe he had borrowed Nick’s clothes in the interim.
“Oh, Anya!” Elaine called from the kitchen, her voice impatient.
What now? She stood up, not realizing how cold her fingers were until she passed through the lounge room and felt the warmth of the sun in the kitchen. Elaine was behind the kitchen in the laundry, bending over the washing machine.
Anya had begrudgingly accepted that Elaine liked to mother even when at work. Sometimes that meant helping out with household tasks. Today Anya had no objection.
“The machine was bouncing across the floor. You put an unbalanced load in,” the secretary said, standing up with two mottled pink shirts, both of which had originally been white. “I can’t believe you did this again.”
Anya had thrown the clothes in without checking inside the machine. Ben’s missing red sock had been in there, forgotten from the last wash. Her favorite pair of capri pants were ruined as well. Things were not getting better.
“When I duck out with the post, I’ll get you some of that dye remover,” Elaine said. “If we wash it straight away, the color might just come out.”
There was no point stressing over a pair of trousers, Anya thought. She went back to her office. Just as she sat, the idea of dye running in the wash made sense.
“Elaine, you’re a genius!” she called. “You’ve just helped me with a case. Why didn’t I think of it sooner? I’ve got to go out for a while. I’ll be back soon.”
She grabbed her handbag from the kitchen bench and slipped into her shoes at the door, pausing to say, “That dye remover is under the sink. I bought a spare in case it happened again.”
42
Anya stood in the forensic-science student lab at the University of Technology in the city. Renowned for its forensic-science degree, the university had developed an excellent post-graduate research program.
The director of the degree course was a biochemist who was so passionate about the science that he was a major instigator in the World Congress of Forensic Medicine, organizing conferences in Sydney followed by Montpellier in the South of France.
Jean Le Beau was a small man with the blackest hair and dark brown eyes. He had the sort of eyelashes that mascara companies would die to promote, had they been on a woman. It was the only feminine thing about the gifted scientist. Jean was intense, and his face seemed set in a perennial frown. Anya often questioned whether supreme intelligence was a constant burden.
“Hello, Unya,” he said, in an accent that could melt the coldest heart. She knew it was shallow, but at the forensic conferences she’d been to, married women would find excuses to talk to him, just to hear his voice. His presentations were always standing-room only. Not bad for someone with relatively little charisma before he spoke.
“Do you come to teach or to learn today?”
“I have a hypothetical question, and you, or one of your students, may be able to answer it.”
Jean’s brow furrowed deeper as he pulled a stool from the lab bench and took a seat. “I am ready,” he said, as though about to start a quiz.
Anya felt like a student again, sitting at a chemistry bench. The whiteboard, sinks and gas-taps could have been at any university or high school. They were strangely comforting.
“I’ve been involved in a homicide case where a woman was repeatedly stabbed in her house. The suspect was found to have a shirt in his home with DNA that matched the blood from the crime scene. His mother tells us that the suspect had bought the shirt secondhand and that it was washed, but that the suspect had never worn it.”
“How much blood was on the shirt?”
“That’s the interesting thing. Small traces, it seems, which also appeared on another shirt confiscated from the house.”
“Ah, I see the problem. Your question is, how is this possible? Why would there be such little blood? Stabbings are messy, blood spurts everywhere. Yes?”
The scientist used his hands to emphasize the movement of blood.
Anya smiled. “Actually, I wondered if there’d been some kind of error at the lab, contamination of samples, perhaps?”
“There are other possible explanations,” he said, pulling his hands to his chest, while maintaining the frown. “The shirt from the murder may have been placed on top of the other shirts, in the laundry basket or perhaps in a cupboard. Come, we will see.”
Anya followed him along a tiled corridor with offices to each side. He kept his head down as they passed a couple of students laden with texts and backpacks.
Around the corner, he knocked on a door. The door had been wedged open, presumably for ventilation. The room was even more compact than Anya’s office at the SA unit. With shelving along one side, it had probably been a storage cupboard in earlier times.
A female with long brown hair kept off her face with an Alice-band worked at a laptop computer. “Just a minute, I need to back up.” She saved to a disc and removed it. Turning, her face broke into a warm smile. “Professor, sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.” She stood up, eager to please, it seemed.
“This is Doctor Crichton, a forensic physician who ’as an interesting case. Doctor, this is Shelly Mann, one of our honors students. She might be able to ’elp.”
In the doorway, Jean explained the scenario and Shelly’s eyes widened.
“Your research might be applied in a police case sooner than you thought,” he said, sounding for a moment like a proud father. “You should take Doctor Crichton to the testing center.”
