Vodka Doesn't Freeze

by Leah Giarratano

  'There was a lot of blood at each crime scene,' said Jill. 'The killer had to clean that off themself somehow. We should get some uniformeds to go round to the servos and hotels in each area, see whether any of them found blood in their bathrooms, or noticed anyone coming in covered in blood.'

  'Worth a shot,' said Jardine, writing it up, as Elvis snorted.

  Elvis next suggested that they stake out Crabbe's funeral.

  'We'll need to get a photo of everyone that attends,' he said, 'Then meet with one of Crabbe's relatives, and try to identify the people who showed up. Could be our killer will come to say goodbye.'

  'Good thinking,' Jill liked the idea, 'and some other members of Sebastian's paedophile ring might show up as well.'

  'We're working a homicide case here, Jackson,' Elvis's voice was caustic.

  'Yeah, I've caught up with that, thanks, Calabrese,' her voice just as hard.

  'Really? Seems to me you've spent a lot more time looking for this supposed rockspider group than you have on your own case. Maybe you'd have got somewhere by now if you weren't off trying to save the world again.'

  'What's wrong, Elvis – you're not involved in this crime ring as well, are you?'

  Jill knew she'd gone too far. Problem was, his words had cut deeply because she knew there was some truth to them – she hadn't been trying as hard as she could to catch Carter's killer. Calabrese rose to his feet on the other side of the table, and she quickly apologised.

  'Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that,' she said.

  Opposite him, Scotty stood as well; the men leaning forward, eyeballing one another. She stayed seated, ignoring the venom radiating from the man across the desk.

  'Look, I said I'm sorry. It was a stupid remark. There's not a lot left to do here today, so if we could just keep our shit together for a bit longer.'

  'Sit down, Hutchinson, Eddie.' Jardine's voice was authoritative. 'We're nearly done here.'

  Harris watched the confrontation with a look of amusement. Elvis finally sat, face like a hatchet.

  'We need to re-interview the man in the car with Manzi when he was killed,' Jardine continued. 'What was his name, Harris?'

  'Jamaal Mahmoud,' Jill answered instead, all ears again.

  'Yeah,' said Jardine, 'that's him. He told Harris that he didn't see who hit him. Said he was getting out of the car when he was hit from behind and reckons he must've fallen back in. Problem is, forensics say the blood pattern from the wound at the back of his head doesn't match his story.'

  'We're wondering why he would lie,' said Harris.

  Jill decided it was time to bring Honey into the picture.

  'Mahmoud is a long-term associate of Sebastian. An employee, as far as we can determine. Their connection extends back at least a decade, probably longer.'

  Jill then told the group Honey's story, adding that she'd also seen Sebastian visiting Jamaal in hospital after the attack.

  'Don't you think you could have told us that earlier?' Harris said.

  'Jamaal hadn't come up yet. I was going to.' Her tone was defensive. Truth was, she felt protective of Honey and did not want these men interrogating her.

  The meeting wound down soon after, with Jardine setting a preliminary division of jobs for each member of the taskforce.

  As she walked from the room with her partner, Jill could feel Elvis's eyes burning into her back.

  Mercy willed her eyes to stay open, but her lids prickled and took longer to re-open following each blink. She gazed, dry-eyed and unfocused, at her 4 p.m. patient, Lynette Balaqua. Lynette cried quietly as she spoke again about the breakdown of her marriage.

  'I really think you should be getting some more sleep, Dr Merris.' Her patient sounded offended. Mercy was shocked to find herself opening her eyes.

  'I'm so sorry, Lyn. I haven't been well. I'm really very sorry. I've never done that before.'

  Mercy saw her disgruntled patient from her room and sat back in her recliner. She looked around the office. This was all meaningless. She stood and made her way to her desk, gathered up her handbag and keys.

  She turned at the sound of a polite rap on the door.

  'Mercy, a word?'

  Noah. She forced a smile to her lips.

  'Actually, Noah, I find myself unwell, and have decided to leave for the day.'

  'You haven't been well for a while, Mercy. It's being noticed around here, and I'm beginning to worry.'

  'Well you needn't, Noah.' She dropped the smile, and made her way towards the door. 'I'm taking some time off. I won't be in again this month.'

  'But what about our work, our sessions?'

  'I'm stopping for a while. I said I'm sick.'

  She tried to get past him to leave. He moved slightly, blocking more of the door.

  'Have you told anyone?'

  'I'll call Carole when I get home. Now please, Noah. I will be fine, but I really would like to go home now.'

  'I'll drive you, you're not well.'

  'Really, I will be fine with some more sleep. I insist you let me out of my room please.' Her voice carried now.

  Dr Noah Griffen stood back, surprised, and watched his protégé walk down the hall.

  He was still standing there five minutes later when a cleaning woman walked past.

  'All right there, Dr Griffen?' she asked him, smiling.

  'Yes, yes, Joan.' He smiled back. 'I hope so.'

  37

  THE TASKFORCE HAD agreed to split the murder sites between them, and Jill was pleased to be travelling out to Leichhardt alone. She could have waited until morning, of course – she knew the rest of the team would – but she didn't feel like going home right now. The onset of autumn was definitely getting to her.

  The afternoon light was beautiful but the exquisite golden sunshine evoked more melancholy than pleasure for her. She wanted to be as far away from Elvis as possible when she felt this way. Vulnerable. Like the door to her heart had been blown open by the turn in the weather. She'd have to work harder to close it.

  She drove into the street in which Crabbe had lived, and pulled in to the kerb in front of his house. A large townhouse, freestanding, Jill could see that it had been split into four apartments; the crime scene tape across the door on the left marked Crabbe's former residence. A wall had been built between the two front doors to stop the occupants having to greet one another every day unless they felt like it. Left of Crabbe's door, shrubbery shielded the house from a small park – a narrow strip of greenery with one bench and a small swing set.

  As she was gathering together her notebook and camera, and an empty box in which to collect evidence, a couple in sweats and sneakers walked past, out doing their afternoon exercise. They threw an offended glance towards the homicide house. People in this neighbourhood were highly sensitive about anything that could affect property prices. If they'd recently bought into the area, they likely shouldered ridiculous levels of debt, and didn't want their neighbourhood associated with crime.

  The forensics team was finished with the house, and had given her the okay to go through it. She'd picked up a key to the flat and a just-faxed copy of their report before leaving Central. The killer was right-handed. They'd confirmed that, as with the other sites, there were no fingerprints, just smooth gloved smudges. She let herself into the flat and snakes of blood screamed at her from the walls. She shuddered. It didn't surprise her that no-one had yet been around to clean up. Crabbe had no close family, and chances were that professional cleaners, paid for by the real estate agents, would get the job of washing away what was left of Wayne Crabbe's life.

  Neighbourhood smells of jasmine and roast lamb couldn't mask the metallic odour of blood in the doorway. Jill imagined Crabbe here, fighting for his life two nights before. Superimposed over the scene in front of her was the image from the photo this morning. Whoever took it must have been standing just about here, she thought.

  The excessive violence betrayed the killer's emotion. Crabbe had died of stab wounds to the lun
gs, neck and stomach, and his face had then been smashed beyond recognition. The medical examiner was fairly certain that he'd been dead, or close to it, from the stab wounds when the bashing began. Jill tried to imagine someone standing right here, hammering down on the face of an unconscious or dead man at their feet. Blow after blow with some heavy, metal weapon, pulverising bone and flesh in a feverish bloodbath in an otherwise quiet suburban street.

  Detectives from Leichhardt had interviewed the owners of the two upstairs units, and both had denied hearing anything that woke them from their sleep; the murder took place sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. The unit next door was currently for lease. Jill could see the proprietor having difficulty renting both of the bottom floor units for some time to come. By law in New South Wales, agents were compelled to advise people if the last occupant of a home had been murdered. People steered clear of the ghosts.

  She put her equipment on the floor, avoiding the dried blood pools, and walked a little further into the house, her footsteps loud in the silence. She shivered; wrapped her arms around her ribs. A quiet click from the kitchen propelled her heart into her throat and her hand to the gun at her waist. Almost immediately, she recognised the sound as the refrigerator humming through a new cycle, and she forced herself to reduce her grip on the handle of her firearm. She didn't put it back in its holster.

  The floorboards in the hallway were bare. A dilapidated sofa, the colour of vomit, was positioned in front of a no-name widescreen TV. Other furnishings were minimal, and the perfunctory curtains were open. There was a clear view of the swing set in the park next door. Jill would be willing to bet that this outlook had influenced Crabbe's decision to lease the unit.

  Crabbe's kitchen held little food that could be considered fresh. Frozen goods, mostly white stuff made of flour – pies, pizzas, dim sims; packaged noodle meals in the cupboards, flavoured milk toppings, and bags and bags of salty snacks – potato and corn chips, Cheezels. A loaf of white bread, jam, and no-frills, plastic-wrapped cheese slices in the fridge, along with margarine, four litres of milk, and a can of whipped cream. Four litres. Sheesh. For one guy. Jill was willing to bet she'd find laxatives or suppositories in the bathroom cupboard. No way this guy's bowels were doing anything of their own accord.

  She re-holstered her firearm and retrieved the box from the hallway. She knew what she'd find in the bedroom, but went in anyway. The rest of the taskforce would also be collecting anything incriminating left at their scenes, although most of their evidence had been collated already and was now over at Central. The Leichhardt detectives had found pornography in the cupboard next to Crabbe's bed and on the PC he kept on a small desk in the bedroom. They'd taken most of this in and given Jill authority to clear the rest. A digital camera had been found, smashed, next to his body, but the techies had already managed to retrieve from it dozens of skin-crawling images of kids.

  In the bedroom, Jill pulled on latex gloves and piled CDs, magazines and videocassettes into the box, avoiding looking at any of the pictures. A huge, glossy-black cockroach scuttled across one of the pillows on the bed.

  'Missing your master?' she said aloud to the insect, deriving some satisfaction from the fact that Crabbe's face had earlier been lying on that pillow.

  She moved through to the bathroom; although relatively clean, the mould growing in the grout made her grimace. She stared at the fungus and thought about the man who had lived here. 'That's just what you were, Crabbe,' she said to the shower walls. 'Mould growing in wet cracks.' She turned to the small, mirrored cupboard on the wall. Anti-dandruff shampoo, condoms. The usual toiletries and medicines. Laxatives. She smiled deprecatingly and closed the cabinet. Her own face in the mirror startled her. Sometimes she couldn't recognise herself. She left the bathroom.

  Jill picked up the box and left the house; she couldn't wait now to have a shower. Setting the box down, she took a few photos of the doorway, the shrubbery, the park behind it, the street. They'd have all these photos anyway, but she wanted to make sure she'd recorded what she saw. She put the box in the car boot and walked around to the driver's door, preparing to leave. A few porch lights were on at the neighbours', and the streetlights would come on soon. It was still a beautiful late afternoon. A sprawling frangipani in the park sat in a lake of sweet scented blossoms, the smell almost cloying on the warm breeze.

  The swing set sat forlornly in the centre of the park. She walked over and sat on the swing, looked back at the house. This area would have been like a stage to Crabbe, on his lounge, leering through his window. She moved over to the graffiti-covered park bench and sat down. She realised that just as Crabbe could watch the park, someone sitting on this bench could watch him too. If his curtains remained open, anyone sitting here could see right through his house.

  Her mobile pealed and she snapped it open.

  'Hi, Ma,' she smiled into the phone. 'Working . . . Yeah, yeah, I'm going home now.' She talked for a few moments longer, agreeing to meet her mother in the city for shopping on the weekend, and then ended the call. As she was putting the phone back in her pocket, she looked at the ground at her feet. Next to a chocolate wrapper and a used condom was a small mound of crushed out cigarette butts. Gitanes, lipstick rimmed.

  Mercy, what are you doing? she thought.

  A dog barked a welcome to its returning owner, and a baby squalled. Jill got off the bench and headed back to her car for an evidence bag to collect the butts.

  38

  'IT'S POSSIBLE THAT you're describing a mission-oriented serial killer.'

  As agreed in their first meeting, the taskforce had decided to consult a forensic psychiatrist. Jardine had arranged the appointment, and because the doctor was very busy and they were pressed for time, they'd agreed to meet on his turf, the university campus at which he taught part-time.

  Jill shifted a little in the lecture-theatre chair and focused upon the doctor's words.

  'You see, there are several types of multiple murderers,' the psychiatrist continued, instructing them as he might his forensic science and psychology students. 'Australia uses the American FBI system developed in the eighties to classify homicides by patterns and motives.

  'Most mass murderers are sexually motivated, but I don't see a lot of evidence for this in these cases. Rather, your perp might consider they are ridding the world of evil – hence the "mission-oriented" label. The aim here is for power, control. Sometimes they see themselves as God. Of course, the motive could still be revenge, as you've speculated, but the killer may also see their acts as benefiting society in some way.'

  Jill coughed quietly. No-one needed her opinion on that point right now.

  'Given that the murders have been committed in such a short time period,' said the doctor, 'it could be the case that this is a spree killer, someone who is on a non-stop rampage, with little cool-down time between murders. Do you have any evidence that this person could have struck at any other time or place?'

  'No,' answered Jardine. 'As far as we're aware, this is it, although we're in the process of checking past homicides across the country.'

  'Although it's a rather arbitrary distinction,' the doctor continued, 'a serial killer differs from a spree killer in the amount of cooling down time they have between hits. The serial killer might wait weeks or months before killing again, and can function well between kills in an ordinary life. The spree killer, on the other hand, is in a frenzy, spending all of their waking hours planning and enacting the next death.'

  'Does it really matter what we call this son-of-a-bitch?' Elvis was perched on the edge of a desk in the auditorium. Jill had spent a couple of moments wondering whether this was in order to be positioned at a greater height than the rest of them – a power play – or because his belly couldn't fit under the desks permanently attached to the chairs. Watching him move a little as he spoke, she suspected the latter.