by Clare Kauter
“What?”
“Never mind.” Apparently Tim wasn’t a Harry Potter fan. I’d have to work on that if we were going to be friends. “Appearance?” I guessed.
“Exactly!”
“But The Prince said no one had ever seen him.”
“Maybe not recently, but he must have gotten that nickname somehow. I’d say that there’s a fair chance there’s something rat-like about the way he looks or moves.”
I wasn’t totally convinced. It seemed like a bit of a leap to me.
Tim continued. “Plus, we know he does his business online, so he must be pretty good at covering his tracks. That would mean he’d probably be able to set up McKenzie fairly easily.”
“OK, so what’s our next move?”
“Go over the case again, see what we’ve missed. Try and find out how this guy fits in. Lea’s helping you, right?”
“Right.”
“So fill her in and see what she picks up from the files. I’m guessing you’ve got copies of all my information?”
“Yep.”
“Good. Go through that and whatever else you’ve got and see if anything jumps out at you. I’m going to spend some time trying to track down where this Rodent has been sending his emails from.”
I thought for a moment. “It’s the two-week anniversary of Frank’s death on Monday.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“The police aren’t going to find the killer, are they?”
“Not with Andrews in charge.”
“Do you think James will go down for it?”
“I hope not.” That wasn’t particularly comforting.
“He has an alibi, though, right? When she gets back –”
“If.”
“What?”
“If she gets back, honey. A contract killer isn’t going to leave his fall-guy’s alibi alive if he can help it.” I was getting a sick feeling in my stomach. I’d met Sarah Hollis a few times; the first being right after my brother went missing. She’d been pretty young, just out of the academy – closer to me in age than she was to most of her fellow officers. She’d made me tea and looked after me and just made things feel OK for a while. I couldn’t handle the thought of someone killing a person who was so nice. I hadn’t known any of the other victims, but I knew Sarah didn’t deserve this.
“If we don’t find him, no one will, will they?” I asked. Tim didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. It hadn’t really been a question. “Any ideas on how?”
“I’m sure it’ll come to us.”
Chapter Thirteen
When I woke up on Saturday morning, there was sun shining through my window. Not something I remembered seeing before. I felt around clumsily on the nightstand for my glasses. When I put them on and looked at my clock, I was shocked. 7 o’clock. In the morning. My big weekend sleep-in lasted until seven. Argh! Baxter & Co. was doing weird things to me. I mean, seven!
I stepped out of bed (yes, I was alert enough to step out of bed, not just roll out) and walked down to the kitchen. When I entered, Mum and Lea looked up at me, shocked.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s not even 10 yet, and you’re up!” Mum answered.
“So? I’ve been getting up at five-thirty the rest of the week. Seven is late for me these days.” OK, so that was a stretch, but I really was getting used to it. It was weird.
“Whatever,” said Mum. She wasn’t buying it. “Are you doing anything on the McKenzie case today?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “We’ve got a heap of information to go through, plus I got some more yesterday. We’re going to be busy.”
I got all the information from upstairs and spread it over the kitchen table. I filled Lea in on what The Prince had said, and then we started sorting through the information. By 9 o’clock we were done and had nothing interesting to report. We’d even Facebook-stalked James’s timeline to try to alibi him for the dates Tim had given me of all the murders. No luck there. I could only think of one thing to do, and I really hoped that Lea wasn’t going to freak when I told her.
It’s now or never, I decided. “We need to see what the police have got.”
She looked at me. “I was just about to say that. How do we get hold of it?”
“Well, I have a plan, but it’s slightly illegal.”
She nodded. “Sounds good.”
This was going to be easier than I thought.
“OK,” I said. “Here’s the vague outline. You and I go to the station and ask to see Michael Andrews. I haven’t figured out what we’ll say, but he’s not the smartest cookie in the jar so it won’t have to be too believable. One of us goes to his office with him and the other follows, looking inconspicuous. When one of us gets into the office, the other one bangs on the office door and pretends to be an annoying journalist trying to get information. While this is happening, the one in the office finds whatever they can on McKenzie and puts it in their handbag. If there’s stuff on the computer, copy it to USB. Then we exit very quickly and come back here to look at it and make copies if we have to. Then we somehow get it back to the police and we have all their information.”
“Like on that TV show the other night?”
I nodded.
“Can I be the one in the office? Please? Pretty please?” I took that to mean she was in.
“Sure. I make a good annoying journo. It’ll be fun.” If fun was the right word. Nerve-racking and incredibly dangerous was probably more accurate, but I was going with fun for the moment.
“When are we gonna do this thing?” she asked.
“ASAP,” I answered.
Which is how we found ourselves, one and a half hours later, standing out the front of the police station, psyching ourselves up.
“Let’s do this,” said Lea.
“Up and at ’em.”
“We’ll pounce!”
“We’re gonna get that file!”
Ten minutes later, we still hadn’t gone inside.
Lea took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders like she was gearing up, and said, “Now or never,” before walking in. To tell the truth, now that we were here I would prefer it to be never. Or perhaps even later than never. Not that I could tell Lea that, what with this being my idea and all.
I followed her in. Due to enormous good fortune, Michael Andrews, the walking marshmallow himself, was also in the front foyer, about to head up the stairs.
“Officer,” said Lea, as she swung her (decidedly narrow) arse over towards him. With all that hip swagger I was amazed she could stay upright, especially with boobs like hers – I certainly didn’t have that kind of balance. He turned to look at her and I realised that she wasn’t going to need an excuse to get into his office. “Officer,” she repeated. “I knew Frank McKenzie quite well and I thought I might be able to help with your inquiries.”
His mouth was hanging open. “Yes,” he said. “I’d love for you to tell us anything you know. Come with me. We’ll talk in my office if you like.”
I followed them at a safe distance. Andrews led Lea up a flight of stairs and down a corridor lined with posters saying things like ‘Gerongate says NO to domestic violence’ and ‘Drink-driving is a crime’. Fascinating. I wondered what the point was of these posters. To tell the police what the law said? To be fair, Andrews may have found that a handy reminder. He probably couldn’t hold too much information in his brain at any one time.
I pursued them through a doorway and found myself in a big room with about twenty different desks in it. Oh no. This wasn’t what we’d planned for. Andrews walked over to a desk (I assumed it was his) and asked Lea what she knew. That was my cue.
“Officer Andrews,” I said in my best snooty-reporter imitation. “How is the McKenzie case going? Any new leads? Is it true that James McKenzie, Frank’s nephew, is a suspect?”
Andrews walked towards me and behind him I could see Lea frantically searching through his desk drawers. This wasn’t what we’d imagined. We thought that the offices would be separated and I could lu
re him out into the corridor while Lea searched inside. In here, if Andrews turned around Lea would be caught. In fact, if any of the other officers looked over, we were in big trouble.
“There are rumours going around that there have been other murders similar to this occurring across Australia over the last five years. Can you confirm or deny this? Does this mean we may have a serial killer on the loose? Don’t you think the people of Gerongate have a right to know if they’re in danger?”
Lea still hadn’t managed to find the stuff we wanted. With our luck, it was probably all on computer and there wasn’t a hard copy. She definitely wouldn’t have time to copy anything onto USB. She signalled at me to keep him talking.
“What about Sarah Hollis? Have you heard from her yet? Can you confirm whether she is alive or dead? She’s due back in the country tomorrow. Will she be brought in for questioning? Is she in danger?”
Andrews looked a bit overwhelmed with all these questions. Over his shoulder I could see Lea grab something from a drawer and shove it in her bag. Andrews turned around to catch Lea shutting the drawer.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Looking for a pen,” she answered. “I know an answer to this crossword.” She gestured to a magazine sitting on top of the desk. Apparently Andrews had been trying to expand his limited vocabulary.
“Oh,” he said to her. He turned to me, pointed at the door and said, “Out. Now!”
I left and walked to my car, beeped it open and hopped into the driver’s seat. I put the key in the ignition but didn’t start the engine. The only radio station I could tune into that wasn’t advertisements or classical music was a local news station. I listened to it for a while, but it didn’t tell me anything of interest to the McKenzie case. It just said that “the police were continuing their inquiries” and didn’t elaborate.
Ten minutes later, Lea still hadn’t returned. I wasn’t too worried about her. She was probably just helping Andrews with his crossword or answering some questions about Frank with completely fabricated lies.
I was bored. I picked up my handbag from the passenger-seat floor and poured the contents onto the seat. Nothing interesting. A wallet, some tissues, sunglasses. No food. No mobile. Nothing to keep me occupied. OK, so maybe it was a good thing that I had no food. Will had said my bum was OK, but I didn’t want to risk adding to it.
Maybe I could go for a run to pass time. But I didn’t want to keep Lea waiting if she turned up. Now I’d started worrying about my posterior again. No longer was I bored. This is stupid, I told myself. You’re worried about being fat? Do something about it.
I thought for a while. I knew what I should do. And I knew what I wanted to do. And they were two very different things. I wanted to avoid the gym at all costs. However, I knew the only way I was going to tone up would be to go there and exercise. I was going to do it, I decided. I was going to sacrifice my happiness for two hours after dinner tonight on the quest for rearward excellence.
I was already dreading it.
I put all my things apart from my wallet back in my bag. It wasn’t a cool bag. It wasn’t an expensive bag. And the wallet wasn’t too flash either. I knew what I was going to be spending my pay on – a new wardrobe.
Yeesh, who had I become?
My wallet contained my driver’s licence, my Baxter & Co. key card, and my pay packet. I opened up the envelope and took the slip out. It showed my normal pay (minus the money I’d spent on food at the cafeteria), as well as $300 extra for the two jobs I’d helped Tim with. Wow. I got payed $150 each time for setting off a fire alarm and sitting in a pub. This was a cool job.
I scrunched up the envelope and put it into a side pocket on my bag. Just as I was putting my wallet away, the door opened and Lea slid in next to me.
“Sorry I took so long,” she said. “He insisted I stay and help him with the crossword. It was pathetic. ‘Canine’, three letters, ‘d’ something ‘g’. Whatever could it be. He didn’t even ask me about McKenzie after you left. Oh, that reminds me.” She retrieved the file from her bag. “Let’s get home so we can decide what to do next.”
Lea read out the post mortem results as I drove back to Elm Avenue. Nothing new there. Method of killing was exactly the same as it said in the papers. Toxicology report came back clean, so we knew he wasn’t drugged.
Lea thought that we didn’t really need to see the forensic photographs until we decided that there was nothing else in the file worth looking at. The pathologist had concluded that the bullet in McKenzie’s head had not been shot from the same gun as any of the other killings, so apparently the murderer used a different firearm each time. Also, the weapon used to remove the head varied from victim to victim. That was probably why no one had connected the crimes sooner. All the information from the other cases was included in this file, too. It was a thick file.
“Frank McKenzie’s head was removed with a hacksaw,” Lea said, flipping through the file in horror.
She was right. I didn’t feel much desire to look at those autopsy pictures either.
The forensics had also concluded that there were no DNA traces left by the killer. The Prince was right – this guy was a pro. The police were never going to find The Rodent.
There were also copies of everyone’s statements (no contact details for anyone, though, so follow-up interviews would be hard for us). James’s was just as you’d expect. He didn’t do it. He had an alibi. He didn’t know why anyone would want to kill his uncle (which was bullshit – he knew exactly who had his uncle killed and why).
Larry Jones’s statement said that he hadn’t had anything to do with it, he got along well with Frank, and he had an alibi. He didn’t know who had torched his office or why. Everything he’d said was a lie.
I parked the car in the neighbours’ garage and went inside. We sat at the table with the file and looked through the stuff we hadn’t read in the car. Lea had also managed to swipe one extra thing from the office – Frank’s digital organiser. I didn’t know people even used these any more; surely most people just used their phone. Maybe it was a rich-person thing. Or an old-person thing. From the details in the file, it looked like the police had not, as yet, been able to open it due to the password protection.
I typed in a few random words. I tried James, Francis, Frank, McKenzie, money, billionaire, hill and, just for good measure, duck. Yeah, I know duck was a long stretch, but you never know. I went back to the file and found a sheet listing properties, houses and hotels Frank had owned. I went through trying all of them but had no luck. I sighed and dialled James’s number.
On the second ring, Karen answered. “Hello, McKenzie residence. Karen speaking.”
“Hi Karen, it’s Officer Higgins here,” I said in a nasal voice. “I was just wondering if I’d be able to ask James a few questions.”
There was a pause and I guessed she’d been covering the mouthpiece to ask James if he wanted to talk. “He’s just coming,” she said. “He’ll be right with you.”
“Hello?” It was James.
“Hi James. It’s Charlie. Don’t say my name. The only reason she let me speak to you was because she didn’t recognise my voice. Now, I know this is kind of abrupt, but what was the password to your uncle’s organiser?”
He didn’t answer.
“Hello? Are you still there?” I asked.
“My uncle’s organiser is in police possession.”
“Of course it is. Just answer my question.”
He hung up.
The bastard hung up on me! OK, so I should have realised a cop wouldn’t like me stealing from the station, but really, we were talking about his uncle’s death here.
I picked up the phone and hit redial. Damned if I was gonna let McKenzie hang up on me.
“Hello? James speaking.”
“Why the hell did you hang up on me?”
“Because if I didn’t I would have started yelling at you for stealing police evidence. What were you thinking?”
I rolled my eyes. “Just tell me the password.”
“I don’t know. Figure it out yourself. I can’t believe you stole – ”
“Shut up,’ I said, and hung up on him. There, I thought. A much better ending to the phone call. Now we were even.
As soon as I hung up, the telephone rang again.
“Hello? Charlie speaking.”
“Hi, Charlie, it’s Adam. Look, I was just wondering if you were going to be driving past the office any time today.”
“Uh – ” I thought. “I was thinking of going to the gym tonight, if that works.”
He paused. “Yeah. What time?”
I thought. “Eight?”
“There’ll be a lot of security officers working out at that time.”
“So?”
“You’re welcome to go, but they, uh...”
Oh god. “What?”
“They can be a little… Tough. On newcomers.” Like the guys I’d met already hadn’t been?
“Oh, well. I’ll survive. Why did you want to know?”
“I have your work mobile here to give you. It’s a secure one, in case you need to talk to other people from B-Co about cases or anything confidential. Anyway, I’ll see you at eight.”
“Bye.”
“Later.”
We sorted through the police information all afternoon, but we didn’t find out anything exceptionally useful. Or even moderately useful. Slightly useful. We found nothing. And I couldn’t figure out McKenzie’s password.
At half past seven, I was dressed in shorts and a baggy T-shirt that came down past my (sizable) backside. I drove to the office and parked in my spot. When I got to the gym, it was packed. Weirdos. Didn’t they have anything better to do on a Saturday night? Like, you know, stay at home drinking tea and reading a good book?
I hopped on an exercise bike and pedalled until I was dripping sweat and my legs had liquefied. I stepped off, fell over and was given a hand up by someone I didn’t recognise.
“Wow. Is there any possibility you’re allergic to exercise? You’re looking a bit worse for wear.” He spoke with an Irish accent. His hair was red, his eyes were blue and he was only a little bit taller than me. “Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. M’name’s Jason, but you can call me Patty.”
