Blood Sunset

8



EVEN WITH THE AIR CONDITIONER ON, I slept restlessly after Ella left, finally waking at 5 a.m., unable to get her out of my thoughts. Despite her declining my offer to spend the night, it hadn’t spoilt the evening or undone any of the positives. There seemed to be a glowing ember of hope now and I couldn’t wait to see her again, but I needed to be patient. I’d once read somewhere – possibly in a trashy magazine at the doctor’s clinic – that a woman’s heart was delicate, and that distance and space were sometimes more important than flowers and phone calls. It was all in the timing, apparently. I wanted to call or at least send a text message, but it was too soon. I needed to blow on the ember gently, fuel it gradually and pray that it would catch.
I quickly showered and made my way outside. It was going to be another scorcher. Driving through St Kilda before dawn, I noticed the strip was busier than it had been twenty-four hours earlier. Groups of clubbers gathered outside nightclubs, hailing taxis and staggering across the street.
Outside the Prince of Wales Hotel, an ambulance had pulled into the kerb, its lights flashing. Two paramedics squatted over a patient on the sidewalk, the fluorescent strips on their jumpsuits glowing like beacons. In front of the ambulance, a divisional van had its blue lights going too. Must’ve been a brawl somewhere. Another drunk bites the dust.
I slowed down, recognising the two uniforms questioning the victim’s friends, one of whom held a bloodied tissue to his face. The other’s shirt had either gone missing or had been used post-battle as a makeshift bandage. I wound the window down and asked the cops if they needed help. One of them quipped that if I could make it rain, they could use me. I nodded at the familiar complaint. The hotter it got, the more people drank and the more we were called upon to break up brawls and shitfights.
At the Acland Street junction, near where Dallas Boyd had died, I went over what I hoped to achieve today. Top of the list was to let Ben Eckles know I no longer believed the death to be accidental. It was a conversation I wasn’t looking forward to, but I didn’t care. I was in the hunt again and felt the clarity of my judgement and intuition returning.
At the police station on Chapel Street, I parked in the side car park, using the window reflection to adjust my tie. I took the concrete staircase to the third floor where the detective squad rooms were located. In the mess room the television was on but no one was watching. No one in the squad room either. Checking the whiteboard, I saw the night-shift detectives had signed out a car to attend a crime scene. In the notations column next to their names were the letters ‘DD’. A domestic dispute.
The open-plan squad room stretched the length of the building and accommodated a team of fourteen detectives. My desk was in the back corner, wedged between a concrete wall and a row of filing cabinets. As I made my way between the desks, the domestic dispute notation reminded me that Dallas Boyd’s stepfather needed attention. If, as Will Novak had said, Dallas had organised for the Department of Human Services to check on his sister, there was a very real chance the girl could be removed from the home. Though it sounded like genuine motive, thinking about it now, the killing seemed too slick for a domestic homicide. Still, I couldn’t rule it out without a thorough check.
Eckles’ office overlooked the squad room, but the door was closed and the blinds drawn. It was just after six and I figured I had about thirty minutes before he arrived. I dumped my briefcase at my desk and took my daybook to a computer by the window. Soon after his assignment as senior sergeant for the CIU, Eckles had rearranged the room so that all four computers were lined up facing the window. His official claim was that it enabled detectives to look out the window every so often, thus reducing eye strain, but everyone knew the real reason was so Eckles could see what was on each screen from his office, which we had nicknamed ‘the observation post’. In response, detectives who wanted a little privacy simply raised their chairs so their shoulders blocked the screen.
I did this now, even though Eckles wasn’t in, and logged onto the Law Enforcement Assistance Program. While the LEAP database booted, I opened my daybook to my notes from yesterday and started on the list of names I needed to check.
Sparks – nickname?
Derek Jardine – friend?
Vincent Rowe – stepfather
First I ran a check on Dallas Boyd. Skim reading, I learnt Boyd had an extensive criminal history that had culminated in an armed robbery two years before. There were no other offences since then. As Will Novak had said, Boyd had stayed clear of the police after his release from Malmsbury. I wasn’t sure what to make of this. I wasn’t a big believer in the virtues of criminal rehabilitation, in either kiddie or adult prisons.
Reading on, I answered my second question when I saw the name ‘Derek Jardine’ in the case narrative. Jardine and Boyd had been arrested for the robbery of a Chinese takeaway store. I used the incident number to bring up the relevant information on Jardine. A year older than Boyd, he had a similar story, with numerous petty offences prior to the armed robbery. Nothing since. No fixed place of abode. However, there was an extra paragraph that wasn’t in Boyd’s narrative.

Offender Derek JARDINE (DOB 10/10/1991) and co-offender Dallas BOYD (DOB 01/11/1992) are well known to each other through foster care and have committed numerous offences in tandem. Third offender Stuart PARKS (DOB 14/02/1993) is also well known to both males, both through the commission of crimes and the DHS Child Protection Unit. All three are accomplices in this matter, although it appears PARKS was unaware of the plans to carry out the robbery.

I wrote the name Stuart Parks next to the nickname ‘Sparks’ in my daybook, printed the entire file and returned to the main menu, then ran a name search on him. This was more like it. Parks had dozens of convictions, most recently for a residential burglary dated a week after Christmas. His address was registered as the Carlisle Accommodation & Recovery Service. I didn’t get excited about that: a lot of the street people in St Kilda used hostels for an address even if they didn’t actually live there. An address was necessary to receive welfare payments and these places were the closest they had to a home. Still, it meant Will Novak would probably know the kid.
I glanced at the clock on the wall: 6.30 a.m. Eckles would be in soon. I printed the page then opened my email inbox and typed a message to the Divisional Intelligence Unit requesting copies of both Stuart Parks’ and Derek Jardine’s mug shots. Using the number Novak had given me, I also filled out a request for a call charge record on Dallas Boyd’s mobile phone, hoping the calls coming to and from the phone in the hours before his death might help ID a suspect. Finally I switched back to LEAP and printed everything I could find on the stepfather, Vincent Rowe. Gathering the pages off the printer, I hid them in my daybook as the door opened at the end of the squad room and Ben Eckles walked in.
‘McCauley, you’re in early,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t sure if you were going to make it. I left a message on your machine but you never called.’
He walked through the room, suit faded and too big for his lean body. His red hair was slick and wet and combed back over a dome-shaped head. The haze of sunspots covering his face, responsible for his nickname, Freckles, had increased over summer.
‘You don’t need to remind me to show up for work,’ I said.
He grunted as he unlocked his office, hit the light and dumped his briefcase on the desk. Following him in, I told him I needed a chat.
‘Can it wait? I’ve just got here.’
‘It’s important.’
He tilted his long face, as if my simple explanation held all the answers. ‘Just give me a few minutes.’
I walked into the mess room to check the TV for a weather update. Sure enough, thirty-seven degrees and no relief for the firemen. Even a brand-new fleet of water-bombers brought in from America wasn’t helping much. I soaked a paper towel and was dabbing it against my eyes when Eckles walked in.
‘What’s the matter with your eyes?’ he asked, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. ‘Been out on the piss again?’
‘No. Hayfever.’
‘Hayfever? That’s what my seventeen-year-old son tells me when he’s been smoking dope. He thinks I’m stupid. Thinks I don’t know why his eyes are bloodshot.’ He leant into my face. ‘Are you a pothead as well, McCauley?’
I smiled at his lame attempt at humour. Prior to my shooting, Eckles had been the boss of the uniform section downstairs. Back then, he had assisted the Ethical Standards Department by enlisting one of his rookies, Cassie Withers, to spy on me. At the time they’d all believed I was responsible for, or at least involved in, the murder of an acquitted cop killer. But Cassie, to her credit, had gone in with open eyes and we were both eventually able to prove them all wrong and find the real killer. Most cops saw her efforts, and mine, particularly after the shooting, as heroic and staunch. We had taken on the underworld and the ESD, and lived to fight another day. Eckles, on the other hand, didn’t fare so well. Despite being promoted to run the St Kilda CIU, a lot of coppers were suspicious of him and I knew he quietly blamed me for that.
‘A lot of people think I’m stupid,’ he said, pouring a cup of coffee from an urn on the wall. ‘You don’t think I’m stupid, do you?’
‘I think your son does more than just smoke dope,’ I joked, trying to lighten his mood. ‘Saw him down on Fitzroy Street last night, tight hotpants, lace T-shirt, outside one of the gay clubs. I think some of the boys downstairs got pictures.’
Eckles frowned at me, unimpressed. ‘Yeah, righto. What’s the problem with the OD?’
‘Ah, well, I’m not sure any more that it was accidental.’
‘What?’
‘There were anomalies with the scene.’ I was about to elaborate when we heard voices from outside. Two detectives walked by, said hello and continued on to the squad room. ‘I don’t think we should discuss it here. Day shift’s about to start. Maybe we could go –’
‘Speaking of which,’ Eckles interrupted. ‘Where’s Cassie? Finetti said she bailed out early Thursday and left you with the OD. I’m not happy about that.’
Annoyance and frustration clouded my thoughts. Finetti and Cassie had worked together in the uniform section for almost five years, forming a strong friendship that had become intimate on at least one occasion. Now that he wasn’t getting into her pants any more, things weren’t as rosy between them.
‘Seems Finetti said a lot, huh?’ I said to Eckles.
Eckles checked his watch theatrically. ‘Well, where is she, McCauley? I mean, I know her old man’s sick, but she either works here or she doesn’t. You basically sponsored her entry into the CI, and I can’t run this joint properly if I don’t even know who’s going to show up.’
‘Her father’s not just sick, Ben. He has leukaemia. Jesus, Cassie paid for him and her mother to fly here to get the treatment he needs.’
‘I know that. I just think . . .’
His words faded as Cassie walked into the mess room.
‘Think what?’ she said innocently.
Cassie was short and stocky, but incredibly athletic, with short blonde hair she’d recently had cut and styled into a spike. It was a rough and grungy look, and there’d been mumblings about dykes when she first had it cut, but I absolutely loved it about her. No bullshit. Sexy without the make-up or fancy fingernails.
‘Heard my name,’ she said. ‘What’s the go, boss?’
‘Sarge was just saying he wishes he could help you out a bit,’ I said. ‘I’m suggesting he put you on permanent day shift. What do ya say, boss?’
‘Ah, yeah,’ he said, giving me a curt smile and walking away. ‘I’ll have a look at the roster and see who I can juggle.’
I winked at Cassie and followed Eckles back to his office. He closed the door and nodded towards the chair facing his desk.
‘Nice one,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve gotta come good on that or she’ll bitch to the lezzos over in Equal Opportunity. That’s all I bloody need, the hairy armpit brigade marching through here with their women’s rights.’ He slumped in his chair and shook his head. ‘That’s what’s wrong with the job these days. We used to be a police force, now we’re just a p-ssy force.’
I waited, silent, letting him rant.
‘Don’t tell me you agree with affirmative action?’ He pointed out the window. ‘Let me tell you something, McCauley. This isn’t a f*cking university; this is the real world. Having fancy p-ssy like Cassie fluffing around only makes it harder for blokes like you and me to get the job done. I don’t care what anyone says, females just get in the way. I mean, can you really see her out there wrestling with drunks or brawling with some shithead off his face on meth?’
I didn’t bother replying. I could name numerous occasions when female cops even smaller than Cassie had dealt effectively with the mad, the bad and the sad.
‘You wanna hear this or not?’ I said.
‘Sure, go.’
I explained the anomalies at the crime scene, starting with the missing syringe cap and moving through to the lack of teeth marks on the leather belt. I told him about the missing mobile phone and the CCR I was requesting, and ended by detailing the expensive clothes the victim had been wearing and how he hadn’t had a single criminal conviction over the past year. I didn’t mention anything about my visit to the morgue, the conversation with Will Novak or my search of Boyd’s apartment.
When I’d finished, Eckles rubbed his jaw, swivelled away from the desk and looked out the window.
‘So you’re saying somebody else injected him?’
‘I’m saying I think he was murdered.’
‘Whoa, hold up a second.’ He fished a report from a tray on his desk. ‘That’s your eighty-three from yesterday morning.’
Eighty-three was code for an official police report to the coroner.
‘Now let’s read from the summary,’ he continued. ‘ “Nil signs of violence. Nil suspicious circumstances. Most likely cause of death is accidental overdose.” ’
I remained silent while he put the report back in his pile.
‘Let me get this right,’ he said. ‘What you’re telling me is that you think you might have green-carded a homicide, wrote it off as accidental?’
‘I wouldn’t put it that way.’
‘Then how would you put it?’
‘I’m telling you there are anomalies that need investigating; anomalies that weren’t apparent at the initial crime scene.’
‘What do you mean they weren’t apparent at the crime scene? Everything you’ve just described was at the crime scene.’
I closed my eyes, knowing it was true.
‘What I mean is, I didn’t realise the significance of it all until I got home and thought about it.’
‘So you wrote it off as accidental because you either ignored or missed the anomalies at first. Now you’ve had a change of mind.’
‘Well, not exactly. I guess everyone on the scene concurred that it looked like a standard OD.’
‘Everyone else? You mean Finetti?’
I nodded, the shame of it weighing on me.
‘Since when do you let a cowboy like Finetti dictate a crime scene? This was your scene, McCauley. You wrote it off, so don’t go blaming anyone else. You accept this f*ck-up and own it –’
‘All right,’ I said, a little too forcefully, anger curling inside me like a fist. I needed solutions, not condemnation. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘We?’
‘Well, you countersigned that report, boss. Like you said, it goes up the line.’
He stared at me a long moment. ‘We wait and see what happens with the coroner. If they pick up suspicious circs then we don’t look like dickheads calling in Homicide after the horse has bolted.’
‘And what if the coroner doesn’t pick up any other anomalies and all we’ve got to go on is what we know about the crime scene?’
‘Then it’s not a homicide.’
‘Excuse me?’
Eckles let out a sigh. ‘Look, we can’t afford to be chasing so-called anomalies for every single death we come across. That’s what the coroner’s for. Besides, this department has suffered enough embarrassment over recent years, and so have you. I don’t want you to pursue this any further and be thrown into the public laundry again. We’ve done our part.’
My gut churned. I saw right through him. It had nothing to do with saving the reputation of the Force or balancing resources or, indeed, my welfare.
‘It’s your job you’re worried about, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘You’re the officer in charge here, the acting OIC, but you don’t want a check against your name when it comes time to appoint a permanent. So you’d prefer to write this off as accidental rather than lose face by accepting we made a mistake.’
Eckles pressed his hands down on the desk and took a breath, measuring his words. ‘I wouldn’t say we made the mistake. I think the only mistake I made was letting you back on the team in the first place.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, I can’t afford to have detectives on my team who make these kinds of mistakes. This is St Kilda, the busiest CIU in the country. Surely you understand this sort of thing makes me question your judgement.’
My left shoulder tensed and I rubbed it with my hand.
‘What I understand is that you’re still pissed off I proved my own innocence in the Varilla case. And if I was betting, I’d say that’s why you put so much shit on Cassie, because your plan to pit her against me backfired. You were wrong about me and you were wrong about her. What does that say about your judgement?’
‘That’s ridiculous. I wanted to believe you were clean on that. I knew you were clean. We just needed to prove it, so I used Cassie to do it.’
I scoffed at that. It was complete bullshit and I was offended that he thought I was stupid enough to believe it.
‘No, you see, setting Cassie against me and taking sides with ESD showed everyone what side you were on. Now you wonder why nobody trusts you. It’s not that everyone thinks you’re stupid, they just know you’ve got ambitions.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’
‘There is if you’re prepared to sell out your own crew to climb the mountain.’
He breathed out long and low, as though attempting to calm an inner rage.
‘You know what your problem is, McCauley? You don’t respect your superiors. That’s always been your problem – you’re recalcitrant and you have an ego the size of a Jamaican’s dick.’
I wanted to argue back on that one, but instead I got to the point.
‘Look, let’s move on. It’s in the past and we need to be a team. I mean, we’re all on the same side, right?’
He didn’t answer that.
‘Come on, boss. I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere. You might wish I wasn’t here, but I am, and in the end you don’t get to choose who stays on the CI. My rep goes higher up the line than this office, so let’s just work together on this and find a solution.’
Eckles walked around his desk, leant over me. The smell of coffee wafted from his breath as he spoke, his voice a coarse whisper.
‘Maybe I agree with all that, but you’re missing the point. You’ve just come in here and admitted to me that you made a mistake. A big mistake, so this is my choice. You’re on a return-to-work pass. All I have to do is dish you up an unsatisfactory performance report and you’re back at home watching Days of Our Lives.’
‘Maybe you need your ears checked, Freckles. Your signature is on that inquest sheet too. So we’re in this together. How do you think it’ll look if a genuine homicide gets written off as accidental on your watch?’
He stepped back and pursed his lips, making his face look like a squashed tea bag.
‘Fine, do what you want, McCauley, but I’m warning you, I won’t go down for this. See, I have friends too. I didn’t just bend over for ESD without getting something in return. They owe me, mate, and they’ve made it perfectly clear that careers in this organisation are built on the scalps of rogues like you. So don’t screw me on this or I’ll serve you up quicker than shit off a shovel. You got that?’
Yeah, I got it, all right. The Police Force is like a huge carnivorous machine, completely unforgiving. Everybody knows you don’t get even by trying to fight it, so what I did next probably wasn’t the wisest of moves, but sometimes you can’t help yourself.
‘You know something, Ben,’ I said from the doorway, loud enough for everyone in the squad room to hear, ‘you talk about my lack of respect. The truth is, I used to respect you, back when you were a cop.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’re not a cop any more. You’re a f*cking bureaucrat.’