She quickly scanned the pages and tore out just one that related to the suspects that had been questioned over the case. By the time Sergeant Soward returned, Kylie Faulkner was back in her seat with her hand held to her face, shielding her sensitive migraine eyes from the light.
************
Obsessed and energised by the new information snatched straight from the case file, Kylie threw herself into trying to succeed where the police had failed and work out who was driving the other car in the accident. According to the file there had been five people who had been questioned over the accident. She ignored all calls on her mobile that day as she poured over the notes made by the investigating officer on each of them. She searched for any possible link between the new evidence and what she already knew about the accident. After a long and exhausting day she fell asleep on her lounge.
Again she dreamed of the accident as she had so many times before. It always began in the same way, always with her parents singing in the car as they started the trip to the south coast. As the dream played forward she saw the fateful corner looming ominously in the distance. She floated above the car in her dream and watched herself as she dozed in the back seat. As her parents’ car rounded the bend, light filled the cabin, her mother screamed, Kylie snapped awake and her father wrenched the steering wheel to the left.
And then, just for the barest of moments, there in between the confused miasma of bright lights and screaming and screeching of tyres she saw something she had never before remembered in her dreams. She looked up from her seat and saw a young face in the other vehicle turning towards her parents’ car. His hair was light brown, long and lank, his eyes blue, wide set and unfocussed, his full mouth parted in laughter. Kylie awoke from her dream with a physical jolt but tightly clutched the new image, savouring it, touching it over and over in her mind and burning it into her memory. It would be a face she would never forget. The field had been narrowed to one.
Using the internet, it was a simple enough task for her to track down the five main suspects from the list stolen from the police file. One by one, like a black cat, she quietly crossed their paths, searching for the man of her dreams. After finding that the first four were not a match, she was beginning to think that the man from her dreams might just have been a creation of her own desperate mind seeking closure from the pain of the past.
She tracked the fifth suspect down at his work in a store specialising in selling security equipment in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. According to the case notes she had lifted from Sergeant Soward’s desk, he had been a suspect, the main suspect, because he had been arrested for drunk driving just twelve kilometres from where the accident had occurred and only ten minutes after the time of the accident. The car he had been driving was a 4wd. It was a neat fit. He had been visited and questioned the day after the accident and his car was checked, but his tyre treads hadn’t matched those found at the crime scene. He had also denied that he was had driven along the road in question at the time of the accident and without any hard evidence, the investigating officer had not been able to pursue the suspect any further.
Kylie entered the shop and browsed through its merchandise while surreptitiously studying the faces of the staff working there. She discounted the short, solid, dark haired assistant who was completing a transaction with a customer and focused on another who had his back to her as he stocked shelves. She watched him from a distance and waited patiently, hoping. He turned his head to the side as he answered a question from his co-worker and Kylie audibly gasped as she saw his face, the face from her dream. Older now, less carefree, more creased, but the same unmistakable face nonetheless. A mixture of emotions assailed her. Her hands started to shake and beads of perspiration erupted on her forehead. She wanted to confront him and scream at him for the parents he had taken from her. She wanted to tell him about the years of hell he had put her through and the nightmares and the pain she had suffered. But her rage was soon replaced by a cold and bitter anger and as she walked away, her anger focalised into one small hard point, with one thought repeating itself in her mind. Justice.
Kylie pondered her next move. As she still had no tangible evidence that this man was responsible for initiating the accident that killed her parents she thought it unlikely that Sergeant Soward would show any further interest in reopening the case. He had made his position quite clear to her. She considered buying a gun and extracting natural justice with her own hands and although the thought held some attraction, she decided that a quick and easy death would not be sufficient punishment for him and would not result in justice being served. She calculated that he owed her thirty years of life for each of her parents. To this debt she added her own suffering at the hands of Lester and the years of trauma that followed. At that stage, she wasn’t sure how she was going to extract this debt from him.
His name was Craig Thoms.
Chapter 38
On the drive back to HQ Nelson again played the case through his mind, weighing each piece of information he could recall and tried to fit them together. The loose ends taunted him, but their only effect was to make his resolve stronger and his urgency greater to tie them up neatly and solve the case. He decided his next move would be to put Kylie Faulkner’s and Jennifer Nolan’s lives under the microscope and work out what the connection between them and Emilio Fogliani was. He knew there was a link, but the form and nature of it eluded him for the time being. Once he had found the link he would bring Jennifer Nolan in for another interview, with her damn solicitor and she would not be let off as lightly as she had been today.
He parked his car and entered the building. He impatiently ignored the perennially slow arriving elevators and bounded up through the stairwell. By the time he reached the eighth floor he was breathing heavily. He was pleased to see Robards working at his desk as he had half a dozen things lined up for him to do. Nelson reversed his chair towards Robards’ desk.
“I’ve got some news,” he said in between gradually quietening breaths.
“Me too,” replied Robards evenly. “But you go first.”
Nelson told him how his morning had panned out. He described his meeting with the retired Sergeant Soward and how they had discussed the car accident that left the parents of a young girl named Kylie Faulkner dead. He told him that Craig Thoms had been one of the main suspects at the time but was never charged through lack of evidence.
“Is this the car accident we talked about yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know you were that interested in it.”
“I wasn’t. But I am now.” Nelson told Robards that he had gone to the address at Woollahra that Robards had given him for Kylie Faulkner and had been confronted by none other than Jennifer Nolan. Nelson briefly skimmed over his discussion with her because he felt embarrassed to admit that he had been slow to regain his composure and that he’d had the door slammed in his face.
Robards listened quietly to Nelson’s speedy recitation of events and although he was surprised and mildly intrigued at the discovery of a possible connection between Jennifer Nolan and the car accident from fifteen years ago he was not fully infected with Nelson’s enthusiasm. It did little to sway him from his own theories, which to him, seemed to have a much stronger foundation than Nelson’s flights of fancy.
“This afternoon I want to find out everything we can about Kylie Faulkner and what the connection is with her and Jennifer Nolan. I know there’s something there, I can feel it. We just have to dig down and unearth it.”
Robards leaned back lazily in his chair. His arms were folded and his chin rested on his chest. Nelson realised that in his own excitement he hadn’t noticed that Robards’ body language was all wrong.
“What’s up? You’re not still angry about our disagreement last night are you?”
“Na, that’s water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned,” replied Robards good naturedly.
“Well, what is it then? Here am I thinking we’re just about to bust this case wide open and you’re sitting there as if your best friend nailed your missus and she told you he was much better at it than you,” said Nelson.
Robards managed a smile. “That’s unlikely.”
“Well what’s the problem then?”
“The problem is that as of now, the case is closed.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Well, after I gave you the address for Kylie Faulkner this morning, VanMerle and I were ordered up to Crighton’s office where I was asked to give an update on the case. I told him where we were at and that we were
