Coming Home

by PD Martin

  I take a seat opposite him.

  ‘What’s up, Anderson?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve read my personnel file, sir.’ I skirt around the issue a little.

  ‘Yes?’

  I hesitate for a moment, reticent. Means to an end… ‘So you know about my brother.’

  Brady shifts uncomfortably in his chair. We deal with crime—murder, rape, child abduction—every day but it’s always someone else’s child, someone else’s brother.

  ‘Yes, Anderson. I know.’

  I give him a small nod. ‘My parents rang me early this morning. Another boy was found murdered in similar circumstances.’

  His eyebrows knead together. ‘After so much time?’ He’s comfortable dealing with the topic on a more professional level and that suits me fine—I need to keep myself together today, which means keeping all conversations about John superficial and business-like. Or at least trying to.

  ‘Yes. It is unusual. And it raises lots of questions.’

  ‘Of course.’ Despite the acknowledgment I can tell he’s got no idea where this is going.

  ‘I’d like some time off, sir. I’d really like to be with my folks and I need to find out more about this latest killing.’

  ‘Oh.’ He seems a little surprised but then nods his understanding. ‘Of course. Your cases? Leave?’

  I breathe a sigh of relief. It had occurred to me that Brady might not understand, might not want to let his one and only profiler go on leave so suddenly.

  ‘I’ve got my cases here, sir. One I should be able to finish today.’ I stop myself from adding if I can keep my head in the game. ‘And I believe the BAU will take three. That leaves another three, but I’d like to work on those in Australia, if that’s okay.’

  He gives a little frown. ‘You know case files aren’t supposed to leave the building, let alone the country. I’ll need to think about that. And leave?’

  ‘I have two weeks of vacation time available. Maybe if I need more I can use the Bureau’s compassionate leave.’

  ‘Mmm…I don’t mean to be insensitive, Anderson, but isn’t that usually reserved for a death in the family?’

  I clear my throat. ‘I’m not sure, sir.’

  He gives a nod. ‘I’ll check with HR and let you know. When were you hoping to leave?’

  ‘ASAP. There’s a flight late tonight, actually.’

  ‘Tonight?’ His eyebrows arch. ‘Doesn’t give us much time, Anderson.’

  ‘I know, sir. But I’d like to investigate this recent victim. So the sooner I get there, the better.’

  ‘You’re going to work the case?’

  ‘Of course not, sir. But I can provide some expertise. Victoria Police only has one profiler. In fact, we’ve only got three in the whole country.’ Nothing’s changed since I left Victoria Police three years ago—Victoria still has only one profiler, Lily Murphy. I’m still in touch with her on and off, but who knows if she’ll be asked to profile the case. If she is, I’d like to contribute and if not, I’d like to draft a profile myself.

  ‘One profiler, huh? How come?’

  I keep my answer brief. ‘Population, lower rates of violent crime and criminal profiling just isn’t as popular there.’

  He nods. ‘Okay, Anderson. I hope you can help them.’ He even manages a smile.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’ll check with HR now.’

  ‘Thanks, sir.’

  ‘What else have you got on your workload?’

  ‘A prosecution strategy brief for a court case in four weeks’ time. A homicide. But I can write that on the plane.’

  He nods. ‘Okay. I’ll need a full written summary of what’s happening with your workload before you leave today.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ He picks up the phone. ‘That’s it, Anderson.’

  I stand up. ‘One other thing, sir.’

  ‘Yes?’ He looks back up at me.

  ‘I’d rather keep this as private as possible. I know you have to tell HR, but that’s it, right?’

  ‘I understand, Anderson. This is your personal life.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I give him another nod and make my way back to my desk, avoiding the curious gaze of Melissa. She’s one of my friends here in LA, but I’ve still never told her about John. It was so many years ago, and I know the reaction I’d get—shock, horror, sympathy. I’ve had it all before, and I don’t need people I work with looking at me differently. Feeling sorry for me. Of course it changes you, forever, but it’s my past, a different life.

  The past...I sigh. My past life is slamming headlong into the present, now. I bite into my lip hard as a wave of grief hits me.

  Chapter 2

  I’m typing speedily on my Netbook when my BlackBerry buzzes. I lurch out of the prosecution strategy and look at the display. Darren. About bloody time. I left a message for him eight hours ago, and while I’d thought about trying him again several times, in the end I was too flat-out to bring thoughts into action.

  I close my Netbook, putting it into hibernation. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hey. Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you, Soph. I was in court.’

  ‘Until nine-thirty?’

  ‘No.’ He hesitates, no doubt wondering why I’m on the offensive. ‘Our guy suddenly changed his statement at a quarter to five,’ he explains, ‘and we’ve been chasing our tails ever since. What’s up?’

  I sigh. There’s no use taking it out on Darren. There’s no way he’d intentionally blow off my phone call, plus my message was pretty vague. The day’s a blur, but I think I may have said “call when you can”, not “call me as soon as you get this message”. Our jobs often don’t allow us to return phone calls within a few minutes and we both understand that. Darren’s a homicide cop in Tucson, Arizona and works long hours over variable shifts. Plus he’s interviewing people, in court, on the road…hard to get a hold of. My duties tend to be more Monday to Friday, except my workaholic nature and the sheer volume of work that comes my way keeps me on a roughly sixty-hour week.

  ‘Are you okay?’ His voice is on edge.

  ‘Not really, no.’ A half-truth. The reality is I’ve been so busy all day I’ve barely had a chance to think about John. I’m not a quivering mess, even though I probably should be. ‘I’m at LAX, waiting for tonight’s flight to Melbourne.’

  ‘What? What’s happened?’

  I take a deep breath, still wanting to avoid the subject. Even with Darren there’s a part of me that shuts down. ‘A young boy has been killed, and they think it’s related to John’s murder.’

  ‘Oh my God. That’s…’

  Silence.

  Darren’s speechless—which pretty much sums up the situation. After several seconds: ‘Oh, Soph, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  A moment’s silence, then, ‘Do you know what the link is?’

  I shake my head, even though he can’t see me. ‘No. I asked Mum and Dad a couple of hours ago, but they didn’t think to ask the cops. I’ve told them to wait for me now. No point in them trying to decipher all those details.’

  ‘True. They must be shell-shocked. Your poor Mom.’ Darren met my parents eleven months ago in LA, before we were together.

  I don’t know how Mum will cope with this. I can’t remember much from the time John was abducted, or from the year between his abduction and the discovery of his body, but sometimes I get the feeling she only just scraped through. Certainly if John had been an only child…

  ‘I’m worried about Mum. In some ways I wish she didn’t have to go through all this…again.’

  ‘Mmm…you never truly accept an unsolved death, but you move on as best you can.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  He blows out air forcefully. ‘I wish I was sitting beside you right now. Getting on that plane with you.’

  I smile. ‘Me too.’ Two-fold: I’d love Darren’s company now, plus he’s a fantastic cop, and, given that child abduction by strangers is,
horrifically, so much more common in America, the cops here are more experienced with this particularly heinous type of crime. I’m hoping the Victoria Police can use my expertise, but I could use Darren’s.

  ‘Darren, will you look at the file for me? If I get a copy of everything to you?’ He’s looked at John’s file once before, but maybe this new murder will reveal something important.

  ‘Of course. Soph, I hope to be with you in Australia as soon as possible. If that’s okay?’

  I feel my shoulders relax down. ‘That’s more than okay. Are you sure?’

  He gives a little scoffing laugh. ‘Of course. This is…this is your brother’s murder, your family. Like I said, I wish I was boarding that plane with you.’

  ‘Thanks, Darren.’

  ‘Like you wouldn’t do the same for me.’

  He’s right, I would. In a heartbeat.

  ‘How are doing? Honestly?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. Every now and again I feel it, think about it properly, and a wave of grief or nausea hits me. But for the most part I’ve been on the go for the past eighteen hours, trying to get everything organised at work.’

  ‘It’s not the time for stoicism, you know.’

  ‘That’s a big word for a cop.’

  He chuckles for a second before clucking his disapproval at me. ‘I know what you’re doing, Sophie. Humour is a form of repression.’

  Part of me wants to fire back, You really know how to bring a girl down, but I know all hell would break loose if I tried for another joke.

  ‘All right, all right. I give in.’

  ‘Sometimes I wish you would.’

  Give in? Sometimes I wish I could too.

  Another stretch of silence.

  ‘Have you looked at John’s file again?’

  I’m sure Darren knows the answer to that question, but I respond anyway. ‘Yes, before work this morning.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing, as usual…on all fronts.’

  For a week before John disappeared I had nightmares about a boy being chased by a man, about John being in danger. And the night he was taken I had a full waking vision of his murder, from the perpetrator’s point of view.

  John was crying, and the man was happy.

  Then his hands encircled John’s neck, squeezing until John went limp. A surge of adrenaline and renewed happiness flowed through the bastard.

  I saw this. Felt it, too.

  I was eight, and it was devastating. I repressed the dream and the vision for many, many years. Until about two years ago, when I started seeing things relating to the DC Slasher case. The visions returned then, with a vengeance. But they weren’t about my brother—they were about the case I was working on, and this entering into killers’ and victims’ heads from afar became a semi-regular part of my life.

  It took me a while to accept this talent, especially since I’d always thought psychics were a load of rubbish. But eventually I came to terms with it and decided I’d use it to help find killers and other criminals in the cases that come across my desk every day. And since this gift of mine has re-surfaced I’ve tried many times to use it on John’s murder, but always with the same result—the same dream, the same vision. Never anything new. After several attempts I gave up, unable to put myself through it again.

  ‘I think you’re too close, Soph. It’s too personal for you.’ Darren knows that my gift is silent when it comes to John.

  I sigh. ‘Maybe. Or maybe I’ll get something with this new victim.’

  ‘I hope so, honey.’

  ‘Me too.’

  After a few beats of silence, Darren says, ‘So, what are you doing now?’

  ‘Notes for the DPP. Homicide case. Until the boarding call.’

  ‘Wish I could help with your workload, somehow…’

  ‘It’s not too bad. I handed over three cases to the BAU and managed to get permission from Brady to access electronic versions of my three other case files remotely. No hardcopies, no printouts. So nothing that could get stolen or misplaced, or wind up in the hands of the public or media.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ A pause. ‘Call me when you land?’

  ‘Sure. It’ll be tomorrow night your time.’

  ‘Thanks, hon. I’m going to get on the phone and see if I can’t organise me some leave.’

  I smile. ‘Sounds good.’

  We say goodbye and hang up.

  I was hoping to go back home with Darren at some stage in the next twelve months. I was looking forward to showing him Australia and to him getting to know my parents better. But, now? This is how he’s going to see my parents again and be introduced to Australia?

  When I made Homicide at Victoria Police, I’d photocopied the complete contents of the three cold-case murder files and also scanned and printed out the crime-scene photos in colour. On the plane, I start with the file of the first boy, angling myself into the window even though there’s a spare seat between me and the aisle-seat passenger, a man in his early twenties who’s hitting the free drinks, hard. These photos sure as hell would sober him up.

  Ryan Stokes was abducted from his home in Bendigo two days before his ninth birthday. It was a hot January night in 1975 and the country property had all its windows open—like most Australian houses do in the peak of summer. The flywire screen in Ryan’s bedroom had been cut around the frame with what police identified as a sharp instrument much like a Stanley knife. No jagged edges and no hesitation marks. The killer had started at the top in the middle and worked his way around the flimsy flywire clockwise. This bit of forensic work gives us one small detail—the killer is right-handed. There was no sign of a struggle in Ryan’s room, and the mother, a reportedly light sleeper, didn’t stir. So presumably there was no scream, no scuffle. Perhaps Ryan was knocked unconscious while he slept, or he may have been drugged to ensure the perp could remove him from the family home with ease. A torn piece of Ryan’s pyjamas on the window frame suggested he was dragged out the same way the perp came in. Again, this indicates the boy was not fully conscious—most people being dragged out of a window are going to make some noise. There were no unknown fingerprints found in the bedroom, but forensics did discover a brown hair. However, in 1975 DNA identification systems had yet to come to the forensic and criminal justice worlds.

  Next, I flick through the printouts of the crime-scene photographs. They’ve been boxed up with John’s case, but the papers and pages are well-worn from my annual review. Ryan’s house was a typical country home, much like our own property just outside Shepparton. Four steps at the front led up to a wooden veranda that encircled the front and both sides of the house. It was a weatherboard home—hot as hell in the Australian summer and freezing during winter—and the white boards needed new paint in a few areas. The house was surrounded by a small but quite lush garden. Not many gardens are like that in Victoria now—definitely built way before water restrictions. So many English settlers had come to Australia and planted English-style gardens, not realising how much water they’d need to cope with the Australian climate. The Stokes’ garden looked like it was out of a magazine—beautiful roses of red, pink and yellow; lavender; a path lined with knee-high box-hedges; daisies in perfectly manicured flowerbeds, alongside the striking yellow of primroses and the rich purple of violets. The garden also had annuals like begonias and the popular hydrangea, in pinks and purples. The pictures bring a smile to my face…bet you couldn’t maintain that garden nowadays, not on weekly waterings.

  Going through the internal shots I’m reminded, once again, of our own family home. Carpet throughout, a stark contrast to the now-popular floorboards; brown tiles in the kitchen; blue floral tiles in the bathroom with bronze tap fittings and a large bath. Ryan’s room had sign-of-the-times posters of movies and pop stars, like Herbie, Jaws, Kiss and David Cassidy. The window in his room was just like our windows—you turned the sash fastener at the top and heaved with all your might to slide the pane of glass upwards. I scan the
many photos of the flywire, which had been so easily cut to give the perp full access to Ryan. The perpetrator was an organised offender who planned the abductions meticulously. He obviously watched Ryan and the house, presumably knew or could deduce that the only thing standing between him and Ryan Stokes was the flimsy mesh of flywire.

  Next, I move to the second set of crime-scene images, the body dump site. Ryan’s skull was found by a bushwalker in the Greater Bendigo National Park nearly two years after the abduction. The rest of his remains had been spread around the area by animals. It was 15 December 1976 and the forensic anthropologist estimated that Ryan had been dead for twelve to eighteen months. The decomposition process was well and truly complete, with only hair and bone remaining. Dental records, along with the forensic anthropologist’s findings on sex, age and race, provided a positive ID.

  But Ryan wasn’t alone. Only a few metres away lay the badly decomposed but mostly intact body of Cameron Howell, who’d been abducted from his home in February 1976. His body was in the final stages of decomposition, disturbingly indicating that the perpetrator kept the boys for months. Cameron Howell’s time of death was estimated to be roughly six weeks earlier—mid-October and nearly eight months after his abduction. However, these results have to be taken in the context of the forensic procedures in the seventies, before the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine was established in 1987. Prior to the VIFM, autopsies in rural areas were generally conducted by a doctor at the local hospital, not by someone trained specifically in forensic pathology. As a result, the autopsies from the seventies aren’t as conclusive as our current-day autopsies.

  Neither boy was ever sighted after their abduction, so we can assume the killer was able to keep them isolated. If this scenario was the American suburbs, you’d think perhaps a basement. But most Australian homes don’t have basements, so it’s more likely the killer either lived alone, and perhaps rurally where he could keep the boys completely under his control, or he had a secondary property where he was guaranteed complete privacy. Again, the length of captivity and the rural dumping sites both point towards a perpetrator who lives, or lived, in rural Victoria and probably in the Central Victoria region. Killers generally hunt in a region they feel comfortable in, usually close to their home or work. Ryan and Cameron were both from Bendigo. And then there was John in Shepparton, one-hundred and twenty kilometres north-east of Bendigo, just over an hour’s drive. Had the killer moved? Expanded his target area? Or perhaps he travelled for work—not that uncommon in country Victoria. Could be he worked in Bendigo and lived in Shepparton, or vice versa.