Daughters of Eve, page 17
He paused. ‘You alone?’
A tiny muscle under my right eye twitched. ‘None of your damn business.’
He chuckled. ‘I saw you take those files.’
It wasn’t like I’d tried to hide it. ‘What are you, the school snitch?’
‘Just wondering if you’re using them to chock up a table leg at home?’
I looked down at the bag of files and smiled. ‘Don’t want my brain to go rusty.’
‘Yeah, about that …’ He paused and I waited. Someone was banging around and then a kettle started to hum. ‘Hold on.’ The sound of something rustling. ‘Okay, found a bit of privacy. Look, are you working the case from home?’
I bit my lip. I’d been angry when I grabbed the files, but now I was probably staring down the barrel of a week or so at home, they felt like a lifeline. ‘What’s happening in there?’
‘Cyber took down the site but it’s come up again; this time it’s out of China. Willoughby’s on to Canberra, asking them to get the Chinese to take it down.’
‘Jesus, China? You don’t think they’re involved?’
‘No, it’s definitely homegrown. At least that’s what Cyber reckons.’
‘Do we know how many people downloaded the app?’
‘There isn’t a counter, but if the list is any indication, it was a lot. It passed a thousand names around three o’clock.’
I didn’t want to think about the list and what it might mean. The shooter had been escalating, but with a thousand names, were the Daughters looking to scale up?
‘So, what are you doing, Hart?’
‘Just thought I’d look over the files, make sure we didn’t miss anything.’
Robbo cleared his throat. ‘I wouldn’t want to encourage you or anything—you know Willoughby would go spare—but let me know if I can help. You picked the gendered violence. It wouldn’t have occurred to the rest of us.’
If I hadn’t been in bed already, you could have knocked me down with a feather. ‘Sure. Yeah. I’ll call if …’
Robbo’s breath was suddenly loud, as if he was too close to the phone. ‘Goodo. Call me if you come up with anything.’
The line went dead.
I hung up the phone and looked at it for a moment, like it might do something sudden and unexpected.
Had Robbo really rung to offer me help to work off the books? Willoughby must have made it clear he didn’t rate the Daughters angle, and Peterson would have backed him. Was Robbo losing control of the investigation?
I hauled the tote bag of files onto the bed and found I’d brought home the three volumes of Prescott files, all the paperwork I’d printed to take to Melbourne and what was on my laptop.
I fanned the printed pages out around me on the bed and started poking through them.
The Panadeine Forte fog was clearing, leaving me able to form coherent thoughts again. It was intoxicating. Willoughby could throw me out of the office, but I had files, I had my warrant card and now I had Robbo to feed me info on the investigation.
I picked up the nearest piece of paper. Notes I’d made based on my talk with Patty. I had that tickle in the back of my brain again, like maybe I was missing something.
Patty didn’t seem bright enough to launch a website. If she was that kind of smart, she wouldn’t be working as a punching bag.
I grabbed the notes I’d made after interviewing the Sydney victims’ next of kin and laid them in a row. There was Miranda Griffith-Jones and her daughter, Phoebe. Abbey and Patty Prescott. Alice and Justin Sanderson, and Maria and Gloria Jennings.
I put notes on the Melbourne widow aside for now. The Daughters of Eve spoke as a collective and not an individual. Given the bullet spread on the Melbourne victim it seemed best to proceed as if the cases were interlinked rather than a single shooter.
So, these four families were our Sydney killer’s targets. Chosen because, as the manifesto stated, the Daughters execute abusers, oppressors, killers and child rapists. If we could work out how the killer identified these particular victims, it might shed some light on who they were.
Apart from the Sea Cliff Bridge dad, none of them were on the record for domestic assault or rape. Even Prescott would have looked clean to anyone but police or child services staff.
Police or child services.
What if the killer was an active cop? I flipped the Prescott file open and checked the front folio. It listed everyone who’d checked it out of records since it had been created. Robbo’s was the last name on the list because he’d pulled the file for me. The name before his was more than ten years ago.
But Robbo remembered the case. Maybe others did. I could check the file and see who else had worked it. But then there was child services. They’d have a file and staff who might remember. It was worth running the idea past Robbo, see if he wanted to put a couple of uniforms on following it up. And Prescott’s kids—they knew what he’d done.
And I was back to Patty, a trained shooter with a gun. But how would she have found the other victims? And we were fairly confident she wasn’t Anne Bonny, unless she had a way in and out of that house unseen.
A knock on my bedroom door broke my train of thought. I looked up and saw Rose in the doorway.
‘Thought you might need a cuppa.’
I nodded and she came in with a steaming mug of tea. I pushed some papers aside so she could perch at the end of the bed. ‘I saw the car and looked in when I got home. You were asleep. Are you okay?’
I took a sip. There was something lovely about the girls being old enough to parent me. I pointed to what was left of my trouser leg and the bandage.
‘I’ve torn something or wrenched it. It’ll heal.’
She scanned the pages around her and stopped suddenly at the picture of Anne Bonny.
I covered it with a typed page and checked for crime scene photos.
‘You don’t want to see these.’
I started gathering up the pages but she touched my hand. ‘I’m not a child, Em.’
I looked at her hand. When had it got so big? Her nails cut short and neat. No polish.
‘They’re confidential.’
She smiled and went to sit in the old armchair in the corner. ‘I won’t look then. Simple.’
That was Rose. Clever. Practical.
‘Is it true? The shootings—are they linked to this Daughters of Eve website?’
And curious.
‘We don’t know.’
Rose pulled her legs up so her knees were tucked up to her chest. ‘Why not?’
I looked from the pages spread in front of me to her face, alive and alert, thirsting to know, to understand.
‘The Daughters have claimed credit but we can’t jump to conclusions. We have to work the case, let the evidence lead us to the killer. Or killers.’
Rose’s face creased as she considered what I’d said.
‘I mean, we’ll work the Daughters as an angle. Robbo has Cybercrime looking at the website, backtracking to locate where it was uploaded.’
‘They can do that?’
I smiled. ‘Online might look like the Wild West, and there’s space for lots of bad stuff to happen, but the bad guys leave a trail. We catch more paedophiles now that they’re online, even on the dark web. We find them, charge them and lock the bastards up.’
Rose hugged her legs a little tighter. It reminded me of when I’d first met her. I’d pulled a forty-year-old man out of the back seat of his car with his pants around his ankles, only to find her huddled against the car door. Barely a teenager, she’d clearly been unwilling to provide the level of service he’d wanted.
While my partner processed the john for statutory rape, I sat with Rose to wait for the social worker. By the time the overworked bureaucrat arrived, I’d offered Rose the opportunity to live with Grace and me.
The vulnerability I’d seen in her that night was a shadow she’d never completely lost. I wondered about the stories she hadn’t shared with me, about her family or why she’d run away. I had my suspicions and I’d even sent her to a therapist for a while …
A therapist. I didn’t hear what Rose said next because my brain was running like a freight train rattling down a new track.
‘I’m sorry, love. I’ve got to make a call.’
She nodded, smiled and slipped out the door, trying not to look hurt. Maybe I’d get Grace to bake a cake for us tonight, because Rose might just have given me the breakthrough we needed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘It’s worth a shot.’ That’s what Robbo had said when I’d called to explain the idea. I was still a little annoyed about his lack of enthusiasm, but as I picked up my phone to make the first call I realised my confidence was starting to waver.
I started with Zanthe’s mum, Angie. We’d met at a school fete, over the baked goods table. She baked and I bought.
We stuttered through the usual niceties until I asked about Zanthe. Then the line went quiet.
‘Angie?’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just …’ There was a fragility to her voice.
‘Grace told me what happened.’
There was no way I was dragging this poor woman through saying the word when I already knew, when that was the reason for the call.
‘He seemed like such a …’ The words hung between us, unsaid: a nice boy.
‘How is she doing? How are you doing?’
I put my hand to my mouth when she whimpered, to stop myself from echoing it.
‘We’re keeping her home. She might change schools.’
‘Is she seeing someone? You know, to talk?’
Another sound, more guttural than the last. She was crying.
‘We found a psychologist who specialises in sexual trauma for kids.’
My hand curled over my mouth again. How were there enough kids and teens seeking help for sexual trauma that it became a specialist field of psychology? I’d said no to a spot in the Sex Crimes Squad just before I joined Homicide. I knew my skin wasn’t thick enough to survive it.
‘I’m glad she’s got that extra support. And you and Chris as well. You must be …’
You must be what? You must be in the ninth circle of hell right now?
‘We take it one day at a time.’
I nodded, then realised she couldn’t see me. ‘That’s all you can do. And how about you and Chris? Are you getting support?’ I sounded like a social worker and it made my skin crawl.
‘We’re okay. We’ve got each other.’
Damn. A teen-and-child psychologist might be seeing Phoebe Griffith-Jones, but Patty Prescott and Maria Jennings weren’t teenagers. My theory was looking shaky, but still I needed a name.
The conversation was winding up, I could feel it, and the cop in me kicked back into gear. ‘Angie, can I ask you another question?’
The line went quiet. Maybe she’d heard the change in my tone, or maybe she was just sick of talking about living through a nightmare.
‘Could you give me the name of the psychologist that Zanthe’s seeing?’
Another silence.
‘Why?’
I bit the end of my thumb. Hard.
I didn’t want to lie but if I told her the truth would she give me the information I needed? Finding the person who killed her child’s rapist probably wasn’t high on her list of priorities right now. And if the Daughters was a hoax and it turned out to be a gun-for-hire shooter, then Angie and Chris could be in the frame for murder.
‘I’ve got a friend in the Sex Crimes Squad. Her daughter …’ Technically I hadn’t told a lie, but I felt dirty.
‘Oh God, Emilia. I’m so sorry. I just thought … Look, her name’s Sally-Ann Prendergast. I’ll text you her details.’
I got off the call as quickly as I could after that. A few platitudes. The offer of help, anything I might be able to do. Then I put the phone down and sat with the feeling that I might be a no-good lying bitch, a bad mother and a worse friend.
I was preparing to make the next call when a knock on the door made me jump. None of our friends used the front door.
It was coming up to five o’clock and I eased myself onto my feet and hobbled into the hall. Rose and Grace were peering around the kitchen door.
I picked up the cricket bat I kept by the front door in case of intruders and clicked the lock open.
Matt was on the verandah with a nervous smile. I let go of the cricket bat and hopped back to open the door a little wider, but not wide enough to let him in.
‘Christ, Matt. What are you doing back here?’
He held a bag of takeaway Thai aloft. It was from the good place around the corner.
‘I thought you and your family might be hungry.’ He pointed to a set of crutches leaning on the wall by the door. ‘And I thought you might need those.’
I looked at the crutches before finally reaching out to tuck them under my arms. ‘What if I had some already?’
He shrugged again. ‘The boys in the squad room are running a pool on how long it’ll take you to get cleared by a doctor. Most of them say you’re too stubborn, reckon you’re more likely to tough it out.’
The corners of my mouth twitched upwards. The boys in the squad room were probably right. ‘What did you bet?’
Matt smiled. ‘I’ve got fifty on you being back before Friday, so you’ve got a few days to recuperate.’
I suppressed a smile. ‘I guess, you should stay for dinner, since you brought it. But don’t get any ideas.’
I turned and hopped down the hall with the aid of the crutches. By the time we got to the kitchen, I’d found my stride. I was surprised at the difference they made.
The girls looked up as we entered. I knew they’d been listening at the door because they had their books out but Grace’s were upside down.
‘Matt, Grace, Rose.’
The girls grinned and I rolled my eyes.
‘Are you staying for dinner, Matt?’ Grace asked.
He held up the bag of takeaway and the girls’ smiles widened.
For the record, I had no idea where the second bottle of wine came from. I had a strict rule about wine in the house—one bottle at a time. I didn’t want to end up like so many of the blokes I’ve worked with, down the pub after every shift, downing pints like they were lolly water in a desperate attempt to self-sedate. When you see the worst of humanity’s behaviour on a daily basis, it can be hard to head home with all that shit still circling in your head.
Me, I tried to leave it in the car park. It sounds crazy, but there’s a dumpster near the boom gate at the Bunker. Every night, while I waited for the boom gate to go up, I’d imagine a box and in it I’d put all the stuff I’d seen that day. I’d drop the box in the dumpster before I drove out. I didn’t bring work home with me either, if I could help it. But I’d broken that rule today. There were actual police files, including gruesome pictures, in my bedroom and Rose knew they were there. She’d seen them.
The weight of parental responsibility sat heavy on my shoulders. I guess that might be part of the reason I didn’t say anything when the second bottle of wine magically appeared. Though if I’m honest, the real reason I didn’t complain was that it felt good. That buzz. The way the room seemed a little brighter and the girls’ laughter sparkled. I felt happy. And I liked it.
But I cursed that second bottle when I fumbled the crutches as I struggled to stand, intending to walk Matt to the door. The girls had disappeared into their rooms by then.
My knee gave way and Matt’s arms went around me, saving me from a fall. My first instinct was to wriggle away, to stand on my own two feet, but one of those feet wasn’t working. Then I felt his breath on my cheek. I smelled red wine and the tang of Thai curry. Then I tasted it. The heady mix of food and wine and Matt.
He left the crutches on the floor and scooped me up, his lips still on mine. Nudging the kitchen door open with his foot, he carried me up the hall.
‘Which room?’ His voice was low and urgent.
I pointed to my door. It was to the right of the front door, the door he should be leaving through, and my will went to war with my body.
He pushed the door gently with his knee and kicked it closed behind him.
‘You have to go,’ I said as he lowered me onto the bed. ‘The girls … I don’t …’
But then his lips were on mine again and his tongue slipped between my teeth as his hand ran up the bare skin of my back to unclip my bra. He dropped it off the edge of the bed and my willpower went with it.
With the bleary eyes of the newly awakened, I thrust my arm out from under the sheet and slapped it over the bedside table until I found my mobile. That retro ringtone would have to go. Grace had downloaded it for me, saying I needed something edgy, but it was so edgy it was carving its way through my hangover like a chainsaw.
I accepted the call immediately, before it went to voicemail.
‘There’ve got a body in Perth.’ Robbo hadn’t waited for me to speak.
I rested the mobile against my ear and squinted against the light that poured into my bedroom past curtains I’d forgotten to close.
I went to sit up but froze. I patted my hand cautiously across the mattress then breathed a sigh of relief. I was alone. Matt must have crept out of bed while I was asleep. Hopefully he’d let himself out before the girls had woken because I could hear them arguing in the kitchen.
‘Are you there, Hart?’ Robbo asked, irritation evident in his tone.
‘Sure. Sorry.’ I coughed to cover the croak. ‘Body in Perth, and we care because?’
‘The vic’s name is on the Daughters’ list.’
I rubbed my eyes and checked the time on my phone. Ten forty-five.
What the hell? I was an early riser even when I didn’t set the alarm, I was awake by six most days.
‘Three to the chest?’ I was trying to sound like I’d been awake for hours but I don’t think Robbo bought it.
‘Single bullet to the head at close range. Body found in an alley, out the back of a nightclub.’
‘So not our shooter.’
‘If the name wasn’t on the list it wouldn’t register on our radar.’
My brain pushed through the sludge of oversleep. ‘And the list is public.’
