The bouncer shook his head. “Nah, man. I was too busy by then.”
Marks clapped a hand on the doorman’s beefy shoulder. “Thanks for your help.” He slipped the doorman a card as well, and several others to pass around. Without bothering to go back in and finish his beer, he trotted down the stairs and out into the street.
He spied a taxi rank across the road and up a ways. After waiting for a passing car, he walked across the street and up a slight hill to the line of taxies. There he methodically went through the process of showing the photos and asking questions of every taxi driver on duty. It proved fruitless. No one remembered giving the two a lift on Saturday night, and several of the drivers hadn’t even worked that night.
Frustrated, Marks moved on and continued canvassing anyone and everyone in the area, hoping to find someone who could give him a solid lead on this guy.
The last thing he did was commission all the CCTV footage from around town on Saturday night and early Sunday morning. He would assign a junior detective the task of enduring the endless hours of viewing pleasure.
Twelve
When Ryan got up at eight-thirty the next morning, Chelsea’s bedroom door was open. He poked his head in to discover her room was empty. A quick search of the apartment told him she’d left already.
Hopefully she’d gone to school.
After a toasted cheese sandwich for breakfast and a coffee, Ryan showered, dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, then left the building and went up town to start work.
He’d stayed for one more drink at Bliss, just chatting idly with Selena about nothing in particular. When he left the club and hit the fresh air outside, only then did he realize just how potent those top shelf bourbons were. Coupled with the wines he’d consumed earlier in the evening, he’d felt half pissed as he walked home.
Once again the day was clear and sunny. The humidity felt a fair bit higher than it had the last couple of days and Ryan wondered if they might be in for a storm later on. There was very little breeze about, even as he walked up Cavill Mall toward the beach, adding to the overall sultry feel of the day.
A lot of people were heading to the beach. Some were locals, but the majority looked like tourists from interstate and overseas. Charlie’s Cafe was packed out with the mid-morning breakfast crowd and, as always, McDonald’s was doing a roaring trade.
Directly below Bliss Night Club was the receiving and storage room. It was situated right near a small undercover parking area and loading zone for delivery vehicles and small trucks. At the moment the loading zone was empty.
There were two doors to the club’s storage facility. One was a standard entry door that was made of metal instead of wood. The other was a roller door, big enough to run a small forklift in and out of. The roller door was currently shut, but the entrance door was slightly ajar. Ryan went up to it and knocked three times. There was a grunt from within which Ryan took as an invitation to enter.
“Are you Gordon Wells?” Ryan asked the man and extended a hand.
“Last time I checked.”
“I’m Ryan Fox.”
The cellarman’s voice was deep and throaty and sounded like he was speaking with gravel in his mouth. Wells gripped Ryan’s hand so hard it felt like his bones were about to snap. His hand was then twisted beneath the cellarman’s in a typical power play handshake.
Selena had said Wells was late thirties, but he looked more like fifty. His leathery, tanned face was heavily wrinkled. Deep crow’s feet were etched into the corners of his eyes. Frown lines were carved across his forehead and heavy grooves ran down his chin from the corners of his mouth, giving him the appearance of a puppet when he spoke. The man’s hair was completely grey. It was short and fuzzy, particularly above the ears, which stuck out like wing nuts. His torso was barrel-shaped, an unflattering shape that was accentuated by the tight-fitting yellow T-shirt he wore and the stubby blue shorts.
“I’m here to work with you today,” Ryan said. “To learn the ropes.”
Wells grunted again and nodded. “Yeah, I got the memo. Can’t say as I’m too happy ‘bout it.”
“Why’s that?”
“There’s not really enough work for two. Besides, I’d rather work alone.”
Interesting point to note, Ryan thought.
He took in his surroundings. At the moment he was standing in a small, narrow office of sorts. There was a filing cabinet that, going by the labels on it, was used for storing delivery dockets and the like. There was one swivel office chair on wheels, blue and black in colour. It sat before a simple white desk with wooden top and metal legs. On the desk was a computer, LCD monitor and a laser printer. There was the usual office paraphernalia scattered a little messily on the desk; such as pens, sticky notes, paper and note pads. A small fan buzzed atop the desk, providing some slight relief for Wells when he was seated in front of the computer. There was a cutaway in the wall to the left that opened up into the spacious storage area.
When Wells saw Ryan looking into the other room, he said, “Go in and take a look around.”
Ryan did so. The room was quite spacious and well-organized. Parked near the roller door was a small orange Toyota forklift that ran on LPG. There were cases of beer of all varieties taking up the entire far wall, with the more popular beers stacked neatly on pallets. Other pallets spaced strategically in the centre of the floor held boxes of spirits of every description. There were also racks holding things like boxes of straws, coasters, napkins, trays, glasses, cleaning products and a whole array of other stuff used in the day to day running of a night club. Long fluorescent lighting illuminated the room from the high ceiling. Several industrial fans angled down from the corners to help keep things comfortable. Both were currently set to full power, creating a swirling current of air. At the back of the room was a large sliding door that led into a cold room. Ryan walked down there and slid the door open. He was greeted by a blast of frigid air which he found quite refreshing. Inside there were more cartons of beer, as well as the setup for the post mix system. Plastic tubing snaked up from the syrup chambers in the post mix machine through holes in the ceiling above, those tubes obviously linking up to the taps in the club. There was also a freezer section inside with clear glass doors. Through the glass Ryan could see bags of ice stacked one on top of the other.
Ryan stepped out of the cold room and shut the door. Returning to the main storage area felt warm and stuffy and he immediately felt sweat start to leak from his skin.
“Why don’t you open the roller door to let in some fresh air?” he said to Wells, who was tapping away on the computer keyboard.
“Security reasons,” came the gravelly reply. “Door only opens when there’s a delivery.”
“Are you expecting one anytime soon?” Ryan stepped back into the little office.
Wells checked his watch. “In ‘bout an hour a pallet of VB will be arriving. Not much to do until then.” He shook his head, looking at the monitor and not at Ryan. “Still got me stumped why the boss lady wants you workin’ with me. Barely enough for one to do, let alone two.”
“It’s just for the experience.”
“So you’re doin’ it for free then?” Now he did turn around and face Ryan, a hard look in his hazel eyes. “Are you makin’ a play for my job?”
“No, not at all, Gordon. If Selena gives me a job, I’ll most likely be working upstairs. She just wants me to know how it all works.”
Wells raised an eyebrow. “Maybe she wants you to manage the place?”
Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Have you done this sort of work before?”
He shook his head.
Wells just grunted and returned his attention to the computer, where he was mindlessly passing the time playing some online slots game. Ryan would really like to get a look at that computer and see what he could find. If the man was up to something, then maybe he’d left some clues on the hard drive somewhere? Possibly he would get an opportunity when the truck
arrived to unload the beer.
“I’m goin’ outside for a smoke,” Wells announced and got out of the chair. “Come and join me.” Ryan glanced at the computer, then followed Gordon Wells outside, where Wells removed a pack of Winfield from a pocket of his shorts and lit one up. “You smoke?”
Ryan shrugged. He almost refused the cigarette offered to him, despite his lungs crying out for the fix, but in the end he accepted. Sometimes doing something simple like sharing a smoke or a drink or a conversation about the football can create a bit of a rapport with someone. Or was he just using that as an excuse to let his willpower crumble? Either way, he took the smoke and lit it with the cellarman’s lighter.
After a few drags Ryan had a mixed reaction about it. On one hand the carbon dioxide and nicotine hit was divine, because that’s what his addicted body was craving. Mentally, though, he felt really guilty about it and that severely marred his overall enjoyment of it.
He decided that was a good thing.
“Do you like working here?” he asked Wells casually.
Wells thought about it and nodded. Ryan detected a bit of a glint in his eyes, but wasn’t sure what it meant. “It’s pretty cruisy. I hardly ever see the boss lady, so that’s a positive. Not that I don’t like her or anything, but who wants the boss hangin’ around all the time? Not me. I don’t want anyone hangin’ around all the time. That’s why I took this job, because I get to work alone.” He glanced sideways at Ryan. “Until now.”
“It’s only for a few days.”
When Ryan’s cigarette was two thirds through, he stabbed it out on the ground and dumped the remains in a nearby bin.
“What a waste,” Wells complained. “With the price of cigarettes these days, I smoke mine right to the butt.”
“I’m trying to quit.”
“Now ya tell me.”
Once Wells had smoked his until he was sucking on nothing but smoldering cellulose acetate, he put it out and they went back inside.
Ryan was bored already. Without access to the computer and no deliveries coming in yet, there wasn’t really anything for him to do; investigative or otherwise. He didn’t want to pepper Wells with a bunch of questions and make the guy suspicious of him.
At a quarter past eleven the truck with the beer arrived. Wells opened the roller door and climbed aboard the forklift. He fired it up and expertly maneuvered it out to the truck, where he had the pallet unloaded and inside the storage room in no time flat. After loading some empty pallets back onto the truck, Wells signed the driver’s delivery book and closed the roller door again.
“We need to clear some floor space,” he told Ryan. “We’ll stack this beer onto that pallet over there.” He pointed to a pallet that was down to its last five cartons. “We’ll take those off and stack the new ones on, then put the older ones on top. That’s called stock rotation.”
“Right. Got it,” Ryan said.
While he stacked the five cartons on top of a nearby pallet, Wells removed the invoice from its plastic envelope and ripped the clear pallet wrap from the new arrival. The pair then worked in tandem stacking them onto the pallet near the wall. Wells would take one off the new pallet and hand it to Ryan, who would then place it strategically on his pallet. As he worked Ryan counted the beer cases and finished with a total of sixty-four from today’s delivery. He loaded the five older boxes back on by himself, the load now totaling sixty-nine cartons of Victoria Bitter. He made a point of remembering the totals.
After lunch a delivery van arrived with a dozen boxes of Smirnoff vodka. Once again the stock was rotated on a pallet that housed four different brands of the spirit. Wells placed the invoice in the office on top of the beer invoice.
When Wells ducked out for another cigarette, Ryan quickly glanced over the figures on both invoices before joining the other man outside.
“Who does the ordering here?” Ryan asked during the afternoon as he helped the cellarman restock the supplies upstairs in the empty club. A cleaner was busy vacuuming the floors.
“I do for the most part,” Wells said. “Why?”
Ryan shrugged and stacked some Jack Daniels on the shelves. “No real reason. Just wondering. I’m trying to learn the job. Remember?”
When four o’clock came round Wells told Ryan to go home. Ryan was under the impression that he’d be working until five, but the cellarman insisted he leave at four. Ryan suspected there was a reason for that. His intuition was telling him - as it had done with Selena - that something was not above board with this man. He had a feeling he’d find out exactly what it was before his three days were up.
There was indeed a storm brewing out in the west. Heavy dark clouds were forming above the mountains. The air was thick and steamy with humidity and the easterly wind had picked up in intensity. That would swing around to the west when the thunderstorm came through.
On his way home Ryan took a detour through a shopping arcade. His plan was to pass by Threads and see if Chelsea was in there. As he strolled slowly by he saw her inside folding up shirts and placing them neatly onto a display pile. She didn’t see him.
Ryan sighed and continued on home.
Thirteen
Detective Marks arrived at the morgue early. As he parked his car in the staff car park he noticed a storm was brewing in the west. He made sure all his windows were completely closed before going into the building.
He’d just got off the phone to Mrs Simms. Once again she was concerned about the autopsy on her daughter. Marks asserted that Amanda’s remains would be well-respected and that even if organs had to be removed for closer examination, they would all be returned to the body. She still hadn’t sounded appeased, but what could he do? This had to be done to accurately determine the cause of death. She and her husband were already making funeral arrangements.
So far all efforts to locate the suspect had drawn a blank. No significant leads had come in from the public yet after the media exposure, and he and the other detectives and police hadn’t gleaned much information from last night’s canvassing.
They needed a breakthrough, and soon.
Marks went downstairs where he met up with another detective, Scott Richards, who worked for the Coronial Support Unit (CSU). He was also going to be attending the autopsy. Richards was a few years older than Marks and was often the person Marks consulted with when it came to the autopsy process and ensuing results. Unlike the Homicide Detective, Richards had a healthy and full head of blond hair. He was tall with bright blue eyes, was fit and lanky, and always seemed to have a perpetual suntan. Anyone who didn’t know him would think he was a fulltime surfer. It was true, he did like to surf, but time constraints of the job usually meant he didn’t get much of a chance to indulge his passion.
In the ‘cutting room’, as Marks liked to call it, they teamed up with the Forensic Pathologist who would be performing the post mortem on Amanda Simms.
Dr Jim Shultz shared the same hairstyle as Marks, only he was naturally completely bald and didn’t shave his head at all. He wore expensive spectacles with gold frames, the lenses exaggerating his dark brown eyes and making them pop out of his skull like a goldfish. He was short and plump and probably not considered the world’s best specimen of masculinity. However, he was very adept at his job, and that’s all Marks cared about. He didn’t need Shultz to win any modeling contests.
Amanda Simms was spread out on the cold and sterile stainless steel table, with its drain hole down the bottom and fluid catchment area beneath. The tone of her skin looked completely unnatural, which was to be expected when one was dead.
The pathologist looked as dapper as he could in his white lab coat, latex gloves and plastic boots. The three men nodded greetings to one another.
“Anything interesting show up on the X-Rays?” Marks asked the doctor.
“They were all normal,” said Shultz.
“Hmm,” Marks said, standing there rubbing absently at his goatee with thumb and forefinger.
The room smelle
d like a hospital. It was supposed to be a clean and sterile scent, but Marks always found it quite sickly. There was another smell in the air, one that would become more pungent as the autopsy got underway. The smell of death.
“You guys want face masks?” the pathologist asked. He obviously wasn’t bothering with one. Used to the aroma, no doubt.
Both Marks and Richards decided a mask and lab coat would be a good idea. They also slipped visors over their heads. The visors had large, clear plastic face shields designed to protect them from any gore splatter. Their hands were then fed into gloves, just in case they needed to touch the deceased.
When they were just about to get underway a female mortuary technician came into the room. She was Asian, possibly Chinese, and was armed with a tray of implements to be used in the autopsy. On the tray were knives and scalpels, forceps for moving things around, a ladle for fluids and a bone saw. There was also an array of other objects spread out on the tray.
One of the SOCOs, a new guy that Marks didn’t really know, entered the room carrying a notebook and a small digital video camera. He would take notes throughout the procedure as well as record events on camera.
Dr Shultz adjusted his glasses, lowered the visor over his face and moved in close to the body. He pointed to Amanda’s throat. “What do you make of these lesions here?” He looked at Marks.
The detective shrugged. “I was hoping you could tell me. I thought they may be insect bites of some kind.”
Shultz examined them with the magnifier and nodded to himself a few times.
“What?” Marks wanted to know. “Are they bites?”
“Well, they’re definitely puncture wounds of some kind. They are located directly on the left common carotid artery.”
Marks said, “So what does that mean?”
“It means there is a good supply of blood flow through that artery coming from the aorta.”
“So you think something latched onto her vein and tried to suck her blood?” Marks tried to play with his goatee again - as was his habit when contemplating - but with his gloved fingers and the face mask, he could barely feel the hairs.
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