Voodoo Doll jj-2 Page 5

  'Poor bastard.'

  Isobel sighed, ran her fingertips lightly over his blackened cheek; the bruise was still spreading. 'Anything good on at the movies?'

  'I don't know. Let's go find out.'

  She stayed where she was; watched the ceiling fan cycling slowly.

  'Work organised a collection for Andy and Lucy,' she said. 'We're gonna try to get ramps built so he can wheel in and out of his house.'

  'Sounds good.' Thwack, Aaarrgh. 'Let's get out of here.'

  The movie had been a bad idea. He hadn't been able to get a seat in the last row, and that left his back exposed. Joss rubbed at his neck: his shoulders ached from the tension of straining to hear everything behind him. It had been a while since he'd had to sit with his back to the wall.

  And now there's this freaking crowd, he thought, trying to surf to the front of the wave that had spilled out of the theatre when the movie ended. Isobel half-jogged along beside him, aware of his need to get out.

  'Joss, we've got to pay for parking before we go to the car.' She squeezed his hand.

  'Where?' All he could see were the exit doors.

  'Just back in the shopping centre a bit. Near the lifts,' she said. 'You want me to go?'

  Yes. 'Nah, I'm coming.'

  He followed her through the cinema foyer to an alcove between the shops and another parking station. The area was quiet and bare, brightly lit and airless, discouraging people from loitering. An elevator whisked customers to the glamour of the shops below, minimising the time they were away from spending.

  Isobel had her purse out, facing the machine, figuring out how to insert the ticket, when Joss, reading the instructions over her shoulder, felt movement behind him and spun on the spot.

  The fact that time had slowed to half-speed left him convinced for a moment that this was just another nightmare. But even his worst nightmares did not inject this much adrenalin into his gut. He nearly evacuated his bowels. He backed hard into Isobel, jamming her against the ticket machine. Safe. Between him and the wall.

  In front of him stood Henry Nguyen. Cutter.

  'Hey!' said Isobel, at the same time that Cutter said, 'Hey. Don't I know you?'

  Joss scanned the ground, searching for a bottle to smash. Nothing. No litter, nothing he could use as a weapon. A Coke machine in the corner. The bottles would be plastic anyway. Fuck. He opened his arms, protecting Isobel, ready to fly forward and tear this guy's face off.

  'Joss. Aren't you Joss? We used to go to school together.'

  'Joss, what's wrong?' Isobel sounded unsure.

  'Henry. Henry Nguyen. Remember me?' He was holding out his hand.

  Isobel was trying to get out from behind him.

  'I saw you back in the cinema,' Cutter continued. 'I can't believe I recognised you. How long since we've seen each other, man?'

  The question hung in the air.

  'I think we were thirteen or fourteen. Shit. It's been forever,' Cutter continued.

  He'd dropped his hand, but hadn't moved forward. Joss saw Cutter's mouth moving, but the words were faint, muffled by the pulse in his ears.

  Ready. I'm ready, motherfucker, he told Cutter with his eyes.

  Cutter was laughing. Isobel was really struggling now.

  'Joss, let me out!'

  'You're squashing your wife, man,' said Cutter. 'I mean, is this your wife?'

  'I. Don't. Know. You.' Joss's voice was quiet. His eyes never left the other man's.

  Isobel stopped struggling. Went small behind his back. Knew, when she heard his voice: danger.

  'Yeah, whatever man,' Cutter laughed again, only with his mouth, his eyes stayed dead. He flicked long black hair off his shoulders, exposing the gaol tats on his neck.

  'Good to see you anyway, Joss. Maybe you'll remember me later. And we can catch up. I'm sure you'll be able to find me if you come around the old neighbourhood. Or I can find you. Think about it. It would be good to see you again.'

  With a sideways step, Cutter was gone.

  A polished circular table had been moved into the library. When Jill and Gabriel arrived, Superintendent Last was seated with his back to the door. Next to him, his uniformed driver stabbed with two fingers at keys on a laptop. David Tran had the dragon seat, facing the door. Derek Reid slouched in a deep armchair that had been pushed against the wall to make room for the table.

  'Did ya get lost?' Reid asked, arms folded across his huge chest, a suggestive smile on his face. 'Big house. Lots of rooms.'

  Three empty chairs waited at the table. Jill took the seat that showed Reid her back.

  'Jill. Gabriel.' Superintendent Last acknowledged them. 'Colin here is noting our impressions before we leave the site.' He pointed his chin at the officer with the laptop. 'David's just begun making his comments,' he continued. 'Help yourself to some coffee.'

  Jill took a bottle of water from the centre of the table instead. She sipped as she listened to Tran talking about his impressions of the site.

  'I couldn't help but notice,' David Tran spoke respectfully, with a faint Vietnamese accent, 'how many items of value the group left behind. I think that is what struck me the most while here.' He sat straight in his seat, and looked at each of them as he spoke. 'If we assume that the whole gang was here last night, then they had four men to carry away stolen property. I was expecting to find the house more… disturbed. I did not expect to find a laptop computer. It was in plain sight in the daughter's bedroom. Also in her room was a box containing some gold jewellery. In the master bedroom, I found an expensive watch, and a mobile phone. These are items that could easily have been taken by the group.'

  'Very true,' said Superintendent Last. 'When we first got here, we even found a couple of hundred in cash in the breadbox in the kitchen. Previous victims have reported that all such items were cleared out. What do you make of that?'

  'Well, obviously in this case they came for the guns,' Reid answered.

  'Has the surviving victim made any comment about the number of offenders?' asked Tran. 'Maybe there were fewer on this occasion?'

  'She hasn't been able to cover specifics yet, no,' Last said. 'It is possible there were fewer offenders. That might have left them less time to cover the house thoroughly.'

  'Maybe they couldn't focus,' Gabriel spoke for the first time. The group turned to him. 'Could be they weren't feeling well.'

  Reid snorted. 'What? You think they all got a headache or something, Delahunt?'

  Gabriel paused. 'Yes. I think that's a good way to describe it.' He was silent again; his trucker cap pulled low, eyes on the table, eyelashes brushing his cheeks.

  They waited, until Last finally suggested, 'Maybe if you think it through aloud, Gabriel? We'd like to hear what you're thinking. It's all just hypotheses at this stage.'

  'I think that the killer, their leader, is a headache for the rest of the gang.' He smiled, happy with his analogy. 'One of them was literally sick last night.' He told them about the vomit in the bushes near the murder room, his language indicating that both he and Jill had made the discovery, although she hadn't had anything to do with the find.

  In response, Last opened the mobile phone on the table, and instructed somebody to take a specimen sample from the courtyard immediately. He put the phone down and stared at Gabriel, nodding at him to go on.

  Gabriel just smiled back at him.

  'Ah, could you talk a little more about what you think happened here last night, Gabriel?' said the superintendent.

  'Oh. Okay.' He continued. 'Well, three of them waited in a white van in front of the vacant block a couple of houses up. At least one of them was smoking.' He withdrew the evidence bag from his jacket and placed it on the table in front of him, then skidded it across to Tran, who was staring at the package. 'Then same old, same old. One of them crept in behind the Porsche, got the vic out and let the others in. Then the leader took over. The others kept the girl quiet. They were too panicked or revolted by what they saw in the media room and they weren't ab
le to concentrate on clearing the house of valuables. At least one of them besides the leader had to go right past Eugene Moser's body to help carry the guns. And one of them couldn't keep his food down.'

  For the first time, he seemed to notice the insulated cups of coffee in the centre of the table, and he reached across to take one. Jill noticed his bicep bulge as his arm moved. His skin was a dark honey colour.

  Gabriel opened the lid on the styrofoam cup and looked at the coffee. They all watched him.

  'Why are you sure it was one of them that vomited?' asked Tran. 'We should ask the first officers on the scene if any of them became ill.'

  'Betcha forensics'll find the spew belongs to a dog,' said Reid.

  'They weren't ready for the saws,' said Gabriel. 'I think it's thrown this group over the edge. All of them. The leader's out of control and the others are pissing their pants. The group's on the brink and they're already making mistakes. It's gonna be easier to find them, but more people are going to die first. The killer's on a spree. He can't stop.' After this rush of words, he looked down at his coffee again, pushed his nose past the rim of the cup and took several deep sniffs.

  Last said, 'Saws? You said saws.'

  'Jill found them.' Gabriel opened a different coffee and sniffed it, then compared the scent to his other cup.

  Superintendent Last focused his attention on Jill.

  'The tool rack in the garage,' she said. 'Um. They weren't dusted, and there's a power saw and hand saw missing. We figured maybe they could have been used on Moser.'

  'Great work,' said Last, looking over the shoulder of the man typing, ensuring he'd captured the comments. He reached for his phone again and instructed someone to pick up the evidence bag and dust the shelves in the garage. He then called the medical examiner's office and left a message about the missing saws.

  While Last was on the phone, Jill tried desperately to find something to distract her from Gabriel. He'd turned to David Tran, asking him, 'So what's wrong with your legs?'

  She stood and walked to the back of the room. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered the back wall. A wooden A-frame ladder on wheels waited in the corner of the room, offering access to the books near the ceiling. Leatherbound copies of Dickens, Shakespeare, Austen. Books on architecture, modern art, classical music. She wondered if any of them had been read. It seemed like a designer's idea of a library. She turned when she heard someone moving towards her.

  Reid. He leaned in close.

  'Well spotted out there, Jackson.' A sheen of sweat, or maybe moisturiser, highlighted open pores across his nose and cheeks. She stepped back a little from the sweet smell of his breath.

  After a few beats, he said, 'Look, since you're new around here,' – Oh God, here it comes, she thought – 'I was thinking maybe I could introduce you to the rest of the Ds out here. We drink at the Crossroads on Wednesday nights.'

  'Yeah. I don't think so,' she said.

  She knew she was supposed to make an excuse here, say something conciliatory, even come up with a new topic once she'd declined, but when she could not find even one word, she just waited.

  'You can bring your boyfriend, Delahunt.'

  Things never changed much from the schoolyard. She almost laughed, but instead moved back to the table. Superintendent Last looked as though he was ready to speak again.

  'Good work today,' he told them when they were again seated. 'Now I'd just like to discuss how we're going to use our time over the next few days. First up, I'd like to meet each morning at eight as we did today. That okay with everyone?' He looked around the group. 'Appreciate it,' he said, his eyes meeting Jill's.

  'Next, we'll need to re-interview the direct victims of the past robberies.' He removed two stapled groups of paper from his folder. 'Names and current contacts. David and Derek, I've got you interviewing the vics from robberies one, three and five. Jill and Gabriel, you've got two, four and Donna Moser, who's over at Liverpool Hospital at the moment.' He gathered together his belongings. 'I'm heading back to the House. If anyone wants a lift back now, you're welcome. If you want to stay out here a while, there'll be plenty of people heading back later this afternoon. See you in the morning.' He left the room.

  Jill checked her watch. Almost one o'clock. She moved over to Gabriel, and indicated the paper containing the names of the victims they were to interview.

  'Do you want to see whether we can get one of these interviews in this arvo?' she asked him.

  'Yep,' he answered, pulling out his phone. 'Where do you want to start?'

  'Somewhere close?'

  'Abbotsbury. Down the road.'

  She studied the list. The victims from incident number two lived at Abbotsbury. Ryan Temple and Justine Rice. While Gabriel dialled the number, she glanced over their police statements, although she knew the story already from the meeting this morning. Justine was seventeen, Ryan a year older.

  On the night of the robbery, Ryan had been staying over at Justine's house while her parents were overseas. The gang had just knocked on the door this time. Ryan opened it, and in they came. Easy as that. They'd taken Justine upstairs and worked Ryan over in the loungeroom. He'd been bound and beaten, the two offenders upstairs telling Justine they'd kill Ryan if she didn't hurry up and get them cash, jewellery, drugs, everything valuable in the house. No one was cut on this occasion, but the offenders were wearing their trademark black and balaclavas, and carrying machetes.

  The apparent leader had been upstairs with Justine. Both she and Ryan had indicated that he'd given orders to the other offenders. Their descriptions of his height and role within the group matched those given by other victims.

  Jill read Justine's description of him. She'd guessed he was around 5'8", a little shorter than Ryan, her boyfriend. A thin, black ponytail extended beyond his balaclava; his eyes were dark, Asian. Australian accent. No labels she could detect on his clothing, although the others had been wearing black sports clothes bearing well-known brand names. She'd seen tattoos though – a scorpion on his hip, glimpsed, she said, when he had reached for her brother's Game Boy when raiding one of the rooms, and what looked like crudely inked spiders on the side of his neck between his collar and the balaclava.

  Jill caught the end of Gabriel's conversation, and looked up from the file.

  'Yes. Thank you, Mrs Rice. We'll see you soon.'

  Gabriel closed the phone and together they left the house.

  On the way to the car, Jill breathed deeply, ridding herself of the scent of death that had permeated every room of the house. Gabriel stood by the driver's door. Apparently he was driving this time. She threw him the keys and took the passenger seat without comment, putting her sunglasses on and winding up the window.

  When they'd left Capitol Hill behind, Jill leaned back in her seat. Gabriel drove confidently, seemingly comfortable with their silence, allowing Jill to think about the kids they were on their way to interview. She thought again about Justine's statement. Something was different with this case. For a start, the violence was much less severe than in any of the others. She thought about the statements she'd read from the other victims. She couldn't be certain, as she'd not had a chance to study them properly, but she was pretty sure this was the only time tattoos had been mentioned.

  8

  CHLOE FARRELL SHIFTED uncomfortably in the early afternoon sun. The crutch of her tights had been heading south since she got out here this morning. She'd thought about finding a toilet somewhere and taking them off altogether, but the blisters from her new shoes would only get worse. She scowled at her boss, Deborah Davies, as she postured for the camera. Davies had shown up at lunchtime after Chloe had called her, letting her know she'd finally persuaded one of the Capitol Hill residents to be interviewed. Deborah had finished the interview, using Chloe's typed list of questions, and the neighbour had gone back inside her palatial home, thrilled to have met the current affairs presenter she watched in her loungeroom every night. Davies was now recording the fill-ins: asking t
he questions over and over again in an ever more concerned tone. Giving empathic nods and outraged shakes of her head to her favourite thing in the world: the camera. The gestures and comments would be edited into the piece later, by Chloe, ready for the six p.m. broadcast.

  Chloe knew she could've done the interview better. Shit, the stuff she'd got before Deborah arrived was gold. At first, the frightened housewife had refused to speak to her at all, but Chloe had managed to persuade her through the intercom that her comments could help people understand how terrible these home invasions had been. Maybe then the police would do something about catching these bastards, she'd said, knowing the woman was standing just there, behind the door, listening.

  She'd opened up, just as Chloe had known she would. Although she lived in a mansion, they were still in the western suburbs. And people around here could tell that Chloe was one of them. She made sure of it with every word she spoke. It got her in a lot of doors.

  Born and raised in Seven Hills, Chloe had been one of just a handful from her high school to make it to university. She'd excelled in her journalism studies, taking the university prize two years running. At just twenty-three, and a brand new graduate, she knew a hundred others who would claw her eyes out for this cadetship with the premier news service in the country.

  But Chloe was impatient.

  Her parents had run their local mixed grocery store for thirty years and they were so tired. Chloe saw her mum every morning, grey-faced and miserable, leaving home to open the shop. Now she was working, Chloe saw her dad only on Sundays. He would be at the markets when they opened at five a.m., and asleep before she returned from work each evening.

  Growing up, the shop had been her second home. After school, she'd make her way there and could choose anything she liked for afternoon tea. When she got older, she helped serve customers. Soon she knew most of the neighbourhood. By the time she was thirteen, she knew that Mrs Shanoa's husband was a no-good drunk; that Jeremy Peterson was having an affair with his boss behind his boyfriend's back; that Tania Taylor was on the pension, even though she worked fulltime for cash in hand at the bowling club; and that Mr Mason dressed in drag once a month and stayed out all night in Darlinghurst. She knew plenty more besides, and she couldn't get enough. People opened up and told her things, quietly, while she cut their ham, weighed their frankfurts, rang up their smokes on the outdated till.