Expect the unexpected, Sport. Then they can't use your surprise against you.
I stopped wiping the whiteboard in my small office clean and stared at the reflection of the sun as it streamed through the unshuttered window; we were experiencing an unusual for winter sunny day. And wondered just when the Carlisms would stop.
I was ready to move on, I think. Finally ready to stand on my own two feet. Damon, of course, had provided a decent crutch, a catalyst to help me take that first, hesitant step. But Carl wasn't done with me yet, it seemed. His voice as strong as ever in my head.
"Need a hand?" Damon asked from over my shoulder. I jumped a little. "Where were you?" he asked.
How long had he been standing there? How long had I been zoning?
I offered a smile; he saw right through it.
"You take this end, I'll go backwards," I said, getting into position on the end, closest to the door, of the big wheeled whiteboard.
Damon followed my directions and we manoeuvred the device out through the door, navigated the hallway, and set it up next to the dining room table. It was starting to look like CIB in here.
"Does it help to talk about it?" Damon asked. "Or is it better to bottle it up inside?"
I glared at him for a second, saw only concern and wariness on his face, not challenge. Perhaps challenge would have been better. That, at least, I could fight. But this genuine worry?
"I'm not good at talking," I said at last. "Ask Hennessey."
"How does he get you to open up?" Damon wondered aloud.
"I've been seeing him for four months," I pointed out. "He's only just discovered I'm a woman."
Damon crossed his arms over his chest and raised an unamused eyebrow at me.
I threw myself into my recently vacated chair at the table with a huff.
"Can we just work on this, please?" I added the please a little too late. "You're not going to solve all my mysteries in one day, Damon."
"No," he agreed quietly. "But eventually..." He left the sentence open.
I ignored the implied threat. He cared, I told myself. He really did. And wasn't that something?
"Anton Burgess," I said into the silence, pulling his file folder closer and opening it up.
"Death by knife," Damon provided, allowing us to return to the job at hand and avoid any further personal dissections. I appreciated that he was prepared to wait to fix me.
It wasn't the sort of task that could be completed in just one day.
I was way too screwed up for that.
"Sliced, left to right, across the neck," I said, reading from the autopsy report. "Severed the carotid artery. Bled out within minutes."
"Found in the Silo Park, Wynyard Quarter," Damon threw in, looking at the on scene report.
"Three hours after meeting me there," I offered, voice laden with my own, perhaps misplaced, guilt.
Damon called me on it. "How were you to know? It was the first murder."
I nodded firmly. He was right. If I blamed every death on my actions I'd never get out of bed. Just because I was connected to the murdered did not mean I caused his death or held the knife.
"OK," I announced. "We know the killer was either taken by surprise and acted reflexively, or something angered him and he lashed out. We also know Burgess had come into a sum of money, enough to enter the drug trade at the skate park and be noticed."
"All right," Damon said reaching for another report. "Thomas Withers, found deceased in the boot of a burned out car. Second murder.
"Same locale as a meet with me several hours prior."
"Escalation in killer's routine," Damon offered. "Query; trying to send you a message?"
"That he's clever? That he wants me to team up with HEAT?"
"Both," Damon remarked, leaning back in his seat. "Hennessey said as much in the profile. The killer wanted your attention. Hey look at me, I'm smart. I know my way around accelerants. I know the system, because HEAT now has to get involved. Put that with the newspaper delivered to my door two days before, and he's engineered our get-together."
"Two days before? So, the killer had already sliced Burgess, but had no idea I would meet with Withers. Why get you involved? At this stage it's not a serial."
"Because he knew it would become one," Damon offered. "Brings it back to the first murder. Something happened to make him have a reason to go on and kill again."
"What?"
Damon shook his head. "It's enough to know that it definitely did happen. Maybe Burgess told him something. Maybe he discovered something and followed you, saw you meet with Burgess and then attacked."
"No, the attack was where he learned this new piece of information. Knives are personal murder weapons, an extension of your hand. He sliced once, but not repeatedly, so we rule out passion. However the move was harsh, fast, and there was no indication of hesitation. He very much meant to kill him, he just grabbed the first thing on hand to achieve it immediately, receiving instant gratification through the knife. And he did it as soon as the reason for this killing spree became apparent."
"What's the reason?"
"That's the question, isn't it?" I replied.
"OK," Damon said, reaching for another report. "Withers came into money too. Except he wouldn't tell his girlfriend where it was from, just that 'it better be worth it'. Both received money, a pay-off or a bribe."
"Tyrone Anderson, large sum of money found on his person at the scene of his death. I wonder if Patrick O'Malley had any recent increase in wealth?" I reached for his file, but it wasn't complete. Cawfield and Simpson were still to follow up with a check on his home address when I left Central last night. Probably doing it right now. I did not want to phone Cawfield, so chose the senior officer on the case and dialled Pierce.
"Keen, I bet you're still in your PJs," Pierce growled as soon as the call was answered.
I glanced down at my worn jeans and faded classic Pink Floyd t-shirt, definitely not CIB approved wear.
"No, but I do have my slippers on," I replied, making Damon look under the table to check. I wriggled my good toes at him - completely bare and fluffy slipper free.
"I'm jealous," Pierce quipped. "Now tell me you've solved the case."
"I wish," I muttered. "No, just checking on O'Malley's financial status. Did we find any large sums of money in his possession at all?"
"Let me check."
I heard him cover the phone and then muffled voices in the background. Something about Cawfield needing to hurry up and finish the damn report. Pierce came back on the line a moment later.
"Things are not progressing as speedily as I am used to around here," he complained. Then in a lower, conspiratorial voice he added, "The sooner you're allowed back in here the bloody better. It's hard to get good help."
Part of me was pleased to be appreciated. Another part was saddened to hear proof that I was on forced quasi-suspension after all.
"Cawfield tells me that yes, several thousand dollars was found at O'Malley's home address in Penrose, as well as a couple of hundred in his locker at the Port. Totalled to four thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven. That what you're looking for?"
"Yeah," I said heavily. "All four victims were in possession of large sums of cash when they died. We're querying a pay-off that the killer may well have been aware of."
"A pay-off for what?"
"That's the question, isn't it?"
"And what makes you think the killer was aware?" Pierce asked.
"OK," I said, placing the call on speaker-phone down on the table and standing up and walking to the whiteboard.
I began writing all four names on the board at equidistant corners, Damon watching as I did so. I wrote as I talked, loud enough for Pierce to hear on the cellphone behind me.
"Money on all the vics, for one," I said. "All four informants connected to me and Carl. Two of which I'd seen beforehand, one I'd attempted to touch base with and been shot at instead, the third I'd just been talking to minutes before. The gun fro
m The Cloud is confirmed as fired from the third informant's hand, Tyrone Anderson. Fourth informant, O'Malley, used a chain to try to harm - let's say kill - me, and then was killed by that chain minutes later. The killer learned something at the first scene, enough to anger him and make him strike out with death. By the second scene he'd already organised for HEAT - specifically Investigator Michaels - to be involved; delivering the newspaper to Michaels' house knowing he'd see the picture of me inside and come running. This was two days before Withers' death. He chose car fire for Withers to draw HEAT in officially. Therefore the killer knew something, and that something he was aware of before Withers' death, and it ties in with me and the pay-off money in their possession."
I stepped back and looked at all the notes I'd written on the board. How many repeated. How many linked back to me. How they all crossed over each other, interconnecting each murder, looking like a spider's web on the board where I'd meticulously drawn lines between each one in different colours to denote each piece of evidence.
Pierce had remained quiet throughout, but spoke up now.
"We can't be sure it's because of the money, but it is a good deduction to make. It certainly has something to do with you, though. Did Burgess, the first victim, behave differently when you met?"
I sat back down at the table, leaving the phone on speaker for Damon to hear, and thought back to that night.
"Not really," I said, finally. "He was jittery, but he'd been behaving that way for at least a week. It wasn't a sudden change."
"Like O'Malley?" Pierce asked.
"I can't say. O'Malley's not a regular contact for me. He was Carl's. I kept telling myself, when we were talking under the crane, that he was just jittery being seen with a cop. But maybe it was more than that. I must have failed to read the signs."
"You didn't know him well enough," Damon offered, but thankfully didn't reach to comfort me physically. Even though Pierce was at the end of a phone call and not actually there to see, it was still too close to show that sort of tenderness. Or dependency.
"I should have been more alert," I argued, staring at the cellphone, waiting for Pierce to remark.
He didn't confirm or deny that I was right, he skipped over it completely. Which made me think he probably agreed, but didn't feel it necessary to punish me for my error right now.
"OK," he said. "Let's say that between seeing you and getting killed something happened to Burgess. Maybe he received the cash and the killer observed."
"Maybe he received the cash and the killer struck," Damon countered. "We've established the killer responded reflexively, anger making him kill for the first time. There'd be little delay in learning whatever has set him up on this course and completing the first kill."
"The second part's true," I offered. "But Burgess wasn't found with the cash on his person. He had time to get involved in the skater drug trade scene before his death. The cash came earlier."
"Sleeper," Pierce offered.
"What?" Damon asked, looking puzzled.
"He'd already been hired," Pierce explained. "Didn't receive the go-ahead until that night. You said yourself, Keen, that his behaviour changed a week before. He'd already been contacted by the cash payer. We can assume then, that the others had been as well. Did you meet with any of them over the past week prior to their deaths?"
"Only Burgess, the rest I met, for the first time in weeks, the night of their deaths."
"This is more complicated than we first thought," Pierce commented.
"And it had been pretty convoluted before," I offered.
"You do realise what they probably have been hired to do?" he said carefully.
I turned and stared at the whiteboard. Particularly at the last two deaths. Both of whom had tried to kill me.
"Yeah," I replied softly. "I'm getting the picture. Burgess got the go-ahead the night the killer stepped up, but didn't have time to complete his task. Who knows when Withers' did, but he'd been reluctant from the start if his words to his girlfriend are to be considered. He might have been delaying, unwilling to see the job through. Anderson and O'Malley are the only two to have acted on their orders."
Damon stared at me, head tilted to the side. "What have they been hired to do?" he asked, but the tone of his voice led me to believe he'd already joined the dots too.
"Someone wants me dead and they've decided to use my informants to achieve it," I declared, silence my only answer. In the room and over the line. "Gotta ask who I've pissed off lately," I tried to quip, but the enormity of the situation was starting to hit.
"Good question," Pierce finally said. "Wanna make a list?"
I laughed, it was strained. "There's not that many. Cawfield tops it."
Silence again. This time uncomfortable.
"Look," Pierce said. "Go back over the evidence. There's bound to be another connection, something that makes this line up."
What else was there to do?
"And you?" I asked, wanting to return the conversation to a more normal one.
Pierce harrumphed. A disgruntled sound that was conveyed quite convincingly despite the use of a phone.
"I'm neck deep in sorting out this fucking King spill-over case."
"You're still going over Carl's notes? Doesn't this take priority?" I asked.
"Fucked if I know, Keen. Just been getting hounded by Hart to sort it out, who is obviously being hounded by the Crown Law Office to get this done. Something has set the Solicitor-General off over this and it's trickled down to us in CIB. But for the life of me, I don't know what it is I'm supposed to be looking for. Carl's notes, as you know, are incomplete."
"I wonder if he copied them somewhere else," I mused aloud.
"If anyone knows Carl Forrester's habits, it'd be you, Keen," Pierce said. "Shame you're neck deep in a murder case that looks like a hired kill case targeted on your own sweet arse."
"Thanks," I mumbled, unsure what else to say to all of that. "I'll get on with saving my own sweet arse then."
Pierce chuckled. "You do that. Let me know how it goes." Then the line clicked dead.
Damon let a long breath of air out and uncrossed his arms. I hadn't noticed that he'd had them over his chest until then.
"Do you really think...?"
I cut him off. "I'm not prepared to rule anything out right now." We both looked back at the whiteboard. "But it sure as hell looks like it, huh?"
"Lara," Damon started. I held up my hand.
"Let's take a look at the video footage of Tyrone Anderson at the Quay Street McDonald’s. I saw it in his folder, wanna get it out and I'll go grab my laptop from the office."
I got up and retreated to the privacy of my small workspace, taking the opportunity to sit on my desk chair as soon as I arrived. My legs were far more shaky than I had realised.
I'd already considered the two last informants trying to kill me a pretty good indication of where this was all going. But it wasn't until it was all laid out on a whiteboard, lined up and connected and written in black, that it really began to sink in.
The informants had been hired, paid in cash. Two of them had tried to kill me. And the killer was murdering them before they could.
Stalker or guardian angel?
I think I had my answer. I just didn't know what it meant.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
"You go to bed each night and do what you gotta do to get up the next morning and do it all over again. Don't think about it, just do it. Know yourself and you'll get through it in the end."
By the time I came back out to the dining area Damon had located the DVD of the camera footage and placed it out for us to view. But he wasn't sitting at the table waiting, he was instead in the kitchen, peering into the fridge.
"Want a bite to eat first?" he asked, not bothering to look up when he heard me place the laptop down on the table's surface.
"Yeah, might as well. Computer forensics went over this footage already and couldn't come up with anything. It's probably a waste of
time."
"How about an early lunch?" Damon asked, pulling out ingredients; looked like for an omelet. "You chop the tomatoes, I'll grate the cheese," he suggested.
We settled into our respective tasks without any further words. I was grateful he wasn't fussing over me. I could tell the revelations of the past few minutes had thrown him, but Damon was doing his level best to let me come to him, instead of him chasing me down. I'd said it earlier, I'm not a talker. Maybe that's because I was raised by a cop, and cops tend to keep things close to their chests.
My father did anyway. He'd come home from a particularly bad shift, one you knew had an effect on him, yet he'd brush it aside. File it, as he later told me. Put it all in a mental locked drawer and throw away the key. It's the state of our Emergency Services, I think. Do your job. Suck it up. Get on with it.
My father was definitely a do your job, suck it up, get on with it kind of man.
When I first started working with Carl I'd asked a lot of questions. How did he sleep at night after seeing a child beaten half to death? How did he not vomit at the smell of burned flesh? How did he go from the scene of a road-rage car accident to a sexual assault of a minor, then to an elderly lady having been burgled, and switch off from one to the next? Did he drown the images in alcohol after his shift? Did he numb them with other pursuits? Should I? I was interested to know if he operated like Ethan Keen.
My home life was all I knew of the Police Force. My grandfather much like my father and no help balancing the scales there. So, when I left the beat and crossed to CIB, just like my father and his father before him, I decided I'd investigate the nature of the beast.
Carl had answered the first few questions and then abruptly asked one of his own.
"Are you a doer or a thinker, Keen?"
"I'm a doer," I'd replied instantly.
"Then there's your answer," he'd shot back, not making any sense at all.
"What answer?" That was no answer, I'd thought.
"You just do it," he'd qualified. "You go to bed each night and do what you gotta do to get up the next morning and do it all over again. Don't think about it, just do it. Know yourself and you'll get through it in the end."
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