The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries

by Fiona Snyckers

  “We were afraid that the experience of being an Olympian would cripple him,” her husband went on. “But it did the opposite, in spite of his injury. It motivated him to move on and get a job. He used his reputation to get a job coaching boxing at Queen’s Town High. He did such a good job of it that he was poached by St. Michael’s a few years later. That meant a huge jump in salary and status for him. We were very pleased.”

  “Now we’re just waiting for him to get married and start a family,” said Refiki. “Everything has improved except for his ability to relate to women. That has never got any better.”

  Chapter 23

  A tense silence filled the room as the Bapandas seemed realize the implications of what Refiki had said.

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “My wife wasn’t implying…”

  “I didn’t mean that he has a real problem with women,” she said. “He gets on perfectly well with them. I just meant, from a romantic point of view…”

  “Our son has always struggled to relate to women romantically,” said Dev. “That’s all Refiki was saying. It’s very common, I believe. We have encouraged him to let us help him find a partner the old-fashioned way – through an arranged meeting - but he would never agree to that. He says he wants to find someone for himself.”

  His wife snorted. “He isn’t doing a very good job of it so far. He is in his mid-forties already.”

  “What has his career been like since he joined St. Michael’s School?” asked Eulalie.

  Refiki got up to fetch more biryani.

  “For the last two years, it has been good,” said Dev. “He has received two promotions and is now in line for head of the math department.”

  “And before that?”

  “I don’t know what was wrong with him before that,” said Refiki, spooning food onto her husband’s plate. “He seemed so manic all the time. He talked too fast. He walked too fast. His eyes darted around the room when you talked to him. It was very strange.”

  Behind his wife’s back, Dev mimed someone snorting cocaine. Eulalie nodded.

  “Whatever it was, we’re grateful that he’s back to normal now,” he said. His wife smiled in agreement.

  “When you were staying at the Olympic Village in Sydney, did you notice anything about the other athletes that seemed strange in any way?”

  There was a pause while husband and wife refocused on this topic.

  “Ronald Coward was a first-class whiner,” said Refiki. “That I do remember. He never took responsibility for anything. It was always someone else’s fault.”

  “The archery guy, Laurent Task, was a bit of a ladies’ man. I caught him near my own wife a few times.”

  Refiki smacked him gently on the arm. “Oh, nonsense, Dev. He had a pleasant manner, that was all. There was never anything going on. He was very fond of his fiancée. They had a little boy together and got married soon after we all got back to Prince William Island.”

  “The kid Jules was a bit of a fish out of water. He was much younger than the rest of us and didn’t fit in with anyone. I suppose it was only to be expected because of his age.”

  “Anything else?”

  They shook their heads, so Eulalie rose to her feet.

  “Thank you for taking the time to talk to me and thank you for lunch. That was one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. If you feel like a night out, come along to Angel’s Place on downtown Lafayette. Give your names to Angel or Gigi and you can enjoy dinner on the house. Angel is my grandmother, and I’m a part-owner of the restaurant.”

  Whatever their son might have done, they seemed like a nice couple, and she wanted to pay them back for their hospitality.

  “Do you hear that, Dev?” Refiki sounded pleased. “Angel’s Place! We had excellent seafood there once, remember?”

  “We did indeed.” Dev stood up and shook Eulalie’s hand. “We will certainly take you up on your kind offer, thank you.”

  They showed her out of the house and waved as she drove off.

  Eulalie went back to the office, deep in thought.

  “Good afternoon, dear.” Mrs. Belfast looking up at her over the rims of her cats-eye glasses. “Investigation not going well?”

  “I’m afraid it’s going to stall. I need a breakthrough, and I need it soon.”

  “I forwarded some emails to you. They were from Chief Macgregor’s office. Dr. Autry sent him more detailed reports on the three bodies and there’s a report from the crime scene techs too. Perhaps there will be something there to help you.”

  “Let’s hope so. Thanks, Mrs. B.”

  Eulalie sat at her desk and opened her laptop, waiting for it to boot up. Paddy the cat abandoned his post on Mrs. Belfast’s lap and jumped onto Eulalie’s desk instead. He propped himself against the side of her laptop and began to wash.

  The promised emails were already in her inbox. Eulalie scanned them eagerly, looking for anything that could be helpful in making an arrest or building a solid case against the perpetrator.

  Dr. Autry’s examination of the three bodies was complete. She confirmed that all three victims had been killed in the same way – by a single blow to the back of the head. It had been administered by a blunt metal object, similar to a baseball bat. The person holding the bat was at least six-foot-two in height, and right-handed, as he had struck in a sweeping, right to left movement. It was speculated that the person was strong because killing a human being with a single blow to the skull takes considerable force.

  There were traces of metal embedded in the skulls of each victim, which told the medical examiner that a rounded metal object had been used. Beyond that, the traces were of no use in identifying precisely what kind of object it was. Eulalie thought that a baseball bat or a metal bar were good guesses.

  In a separate email, there was an analysis of the red ribbons that had been found tied around each victim’s right wrist. The three pieces of ribbon were shown to originate from the same batch and dye lot that had been imported into Prince William Island thirty years earlier. The crime scene technicians proved that each length of ribbon was an off-cut from the previous length. They had matched up the ends of the ribbon to show a high probability that they had been cut from the same continuous piece.

  Eulalie wondered if the perpetrator were driving around with a fourth piece of ribbon hidden in his car right now. That fourth piece would have been intended for Kelly. Now that she had got away, how long would it be before the urge to use it on someone else overwhelmed him?

  The crime scene techs had also supplied a comparative analysis of the shallow graves that the women had been found in.

  The first victim, Fauve de la Cour, had been buried in a grave three feet deep. It had been dug by hand rather than by machine, most probably using an ordinary spade. At that stage, it seemed as though the perpetrator had been serious about trying to conceal his crime. For one person to dig a three-foot-deep hole for a human body was no small task. It must have taken him a couple of hours. The soil had been well pushed back into place. The Megamoxy construction workers who had accidentally uncovered her body reported no sign of a mound or anything indicating the presence of a grave when they had started digging. Of course, the intervening twenty-eight years had wiped away much evidence of the perpetrator’s actions.

  Robson’s Field was a relatively untouched part of the island, which explained why Fauve’s body had lain undisturbed for so long. But three decades of weather, soil erosion, and animal and insect activity, meant that the site was anything but pristine.

  The second victim, chronologically speaking, had been dealt with similarly to the first. She had been buried in a three-foot-deep grave that had been dug by hand, using a non-mechanical device like an ordinary garden spade. Her grave was also undisturbed, except by natural forces. She had lain in the ground for only fifteen years, rather than twenty-eight.

  The third victim chronologically was the second to be found. She had been disposed of very differently to the othe
r two. The perpetrator had dug a shallow trench for her body and covered it loosely with sand. The signs of recent digging were obvious and there was a clear mound where her body lay.

  The Megamoxy workers had barely got started that morning before they realized that something had been recently buried there. It took them bare minutes to uncover her enough to realize that they were dealing with a human body. It was as if the perpetrator had wanted his handiwork discovered as quickly as possible.

  There was also the possibility that he had been disturbed while burying her, but if that were the case, no one had come forward to report the incident. Thanks to the excellent work of the K9 cadaver dog team, the police department were confident that there were no new bodies waiting to be discovered at Robson’s Field. The report ended with speculation that there might be a second dump site somewhere on the island that had been used by the perpetrator over the years. Eulalie regarded this as possible, but unlikely. He was a creature of habit.

  The crime scene technicians had gone over the victims’ clothes with a fine-tooth comb looking for usable fingerprints or trace evidence. The clothes of the first two women had been severely degraded by the time they had spent buried. The ribbon and clothing associated with the first victim, Fauve de la Cour, had yielded no fingerprints.

  The items associated with the second victim had yielded one usable fingerprint – inside the victim’s right shoe, which had still been on her foot.

  Chief Macgregor’s team had contacted Agnes Nillson’s parents who were now living in Sweden and got them to send a toothbrush belonging to the girl by overnight courier. The fingerprints had matched. The print inside the shoe was a right thumb print belonging to the victim.

  Her parents were now anxiously awaiting the conclusion of the investigation so that their daughter’s remains could be repatriated to Sweden and she could be properly laid to rest. Just like Eulalie and Angel, they were a family whose worst fears had been confirmed and who were now undergoing a second grieving process that at least had the merit of bringing them closure.

  Eulalie made a silent vow that the De la Cours would not only get their daughter’s body back but would know that the man who had done this to her would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

  The body of Lisa Lavalle yielded much fresher evidence. Only the red ribbon had been completely without fingerprints. The perpetrator had clearly handled that with gloves.

  Lisa Lavalle’s fingerprints were found in multiple locations on her shoes, sunglasses, and cellphone. A second set of fingerprints was found to belong to her boyfriend. There was a third partial thumbprint on the handle of her sunglasses that was proving difficult to match to anyone. If the perpetrator were ever caught, and his fingerprints matched retrospectively to Lisa Lavalle’s sunglasses, it would be a compelling piece of evidence, but it would have to form part of a strong case. It wasn’t enough on its own.

  Eulalie opened another email.

  This one detailed the multiple interviews Detective Wesley Wright of missing persons had conducted with Lisa Lavalle’s boyfriend. They went on for pages.

  Eulalie scanned the interviews carefully, looking for any inconsistencies that might point to him as a suspect.

  He seemed to be very conscious of his own role in causing Lisa to run off that night. He was by turns defensive and aggressive as he answered the questions Detective Wright repeatedly lobbed at him. There were times when he was calm, and times when he was irritated. Having to answer the same questions over and over again didn’t sit well with him.

  He seemed genuinely sad that she was dead, but genuinely determined not to be blamed for it. After several days of questioning, his focus had shifted to getting off Prince William Island and back home to America. It irked him to be obliged to remain in Queen’s Town while the investigation was underway.

  At this point, Detective Wright decided he was a flight risk and confiscated his passport. This made him even less cooperative. One thing Eulalie noticed as she scrutinized the transcripts of the interviews was that he never changed his story. The basic structure stayed the same.

  They’d had an argument in the early evening about his tendency to flirt with girls who weren’t Lisa. Lisa got upset and he was unable to calm her down. She stormed out of the hotel, expressing the intention of catching a flight back home. He eventually went to bed when she didn’t return. In the morning, he realized she was still missing and raised the alarm. By that stage, she was already dead.

  Not one detail of this changed, no matter how many different ways Detective Wright came at him about it.

  Another email that Eulalie opened contained details of interviews Detective Wright and his team had conducted in and around the hotel. There were several people who claimed to have seen him after Lisa had run off. He had ordered drinks at the bar, chatted to a few people, and spent some time slumped in the lobby. The sightings stopped at around one-thirty in the morning when he had apparently gone to bed.

  This still left him with enough of a window to take Lisa out to Robson’s Field, murder her, and dig a very shallow grave for her body.

  “Coffee?”

  Eulalie jumped. Mrs. Belfast was standing at her desk, with a go-cup in her hand.

  “Thank you.” She dragged her thoughts away from the interviews. “What time is it?”

  “It’s four o’clock.”

  “Wow.” The hours had flown.

  “Are you making good progress, dear? You’ve been very quiet.”

  “There was a lot to get through. I won’t say it’s going well, but there’s a certain clarity that comes with knowing which avenues you won’t be able to explore.”

  Mrs. Belfast trained her cats-eye glasses on Eulalie’s face.

  “Tell me, dear. Do you know who committed these murders?”

  “Yes, I believe I do.”

  “Can you have him arrested?”

  “No. There’s not enough evidence. If he is arrested prematurely or harassed in any way by the police department, it will make it difficult to bring a successful prosecution later.”

  “Do you believe he will strike again?”

  “Without a doubt. Maybe within the next few days. Maybe tonight.”

  “Do you have a plan to stop him?”

  “I do.”

  “And…?”

  “It’s a plan nobody will like except me.”

  “What about Chief Macgregor? Wouldn’t he back you up on it?”

  “I can pretty much guarantee that he won’t. If he knew what I was planning, he’d be more likely to lock me up for my own safety. I can’t tell him what I have in mind.”

  Mrs. Belfast gave her a thoughtful look. Eulalie was a resourceful young woman, but she wasn’t super human. The thought of her tackling whatever harebrained scheme she had in mind without backup was a little alarming.

  “This isn’t something you have to do on your own, you know. You’re supposed to be part of a team that includes the police department. This isn’t only your fight.”

  Eulalie put down her coffee and smiled.

  “But it is, you see. My mother was the first victim. I met her killer when I was twelve and didn’t recognize what I was dealing with then. Now I know exactly who he is and what I have to do. It’s time to finish this.”

  “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Tutting to herself, Mrs. Belfast moved behind Eulalie to clear away her coffee cup. But instead of picking up the go-cup, she picked up a heavy desk stapler and swept it through the air in a sideways motion, aiming for the back of Eulalie’s head.

  Before the stapler could make contact, Eulalie swayed forward in her chair, avoiding the stapler by inches. She looked up at her secretary in astonishment.

  “What on earth are you doing, Mrs. B?”

  Mrs. Belfast put the stapler back on the desk with hands that shook slightly.

  “You can still do it. I wasn’t sure if you could, but you can. You knew that st
apler was going to hit you before it did, and you moved out of the way. You couldn’t even see me, but you moved out of the way.”

  “Was that some kind of test?” Eulalie’s eyes were like saucers.

  “Yes, dear. Exactly. If you couldn’t get out of the way of my stapler, you wouldn’t be able to get out of the way of this man’s metal pipe or bat, or whatever he uses.”

  “Please tell me you were going to pull back at the last second if I hadn’t moved out of the way?”

  “I had faith in you, dear.” Mrs. Belfast patted her arm. “I feel much better now. I still wish you would let someone help you with this, but at least I know you haven’t lost the ability to take care of yourself.”

  Chapter 24

  Twilight saw Eulalie standing at the corner of Lafayette Drive and De Gaulle Avenue.

  She kept to the shadows. She wanted to be seen but not recognized. As the light faded and the shadows lengthened, she strolled between Lafayette Drive and Beach Road, sticking to the alleys and avenues that ran between them. These were less brightly lit than the main roads, with deeply shaded doorways for her to retreat into, and long, unlit patches that would give her cover.

  She was wearing a broderie anglaise nightgown that Angel had bought for her years earlier when she had first moved into her own apartment. It was beautiful, but she had never worn it. Tank tops and sleep shorts were her idea of sleepwear, rather than yards of white embroidered cotton.

  Her hair tumbled loosely over her shoulders, falling to the middle of her back. Her feet weren’t quite bare, but you had to look twice to see that she was wearing a pair of thong sandals almost the same color as her skin.

  She wore no makeup, apart from the eyeshadow she had used to create dark circles under her eyes. She wanted to look exhausted and distressed – a lost girl looking for someone to tell her story to.

  He would be out hunting - she was sure of it. His failure with Kelly would be a sting to his ego after his success with Lisa. Whatever compulsion it was that made him see vulnerable women as prey would need to be fed soon.