A Thousand Cuts Read online

  "I know we covered this before, but can we go over what happened the day Jessica went missing and what your movements were?” I said.

  "Gemma, her sister, was with her that day in the park. It was just across the road I thought it would be okay. I was five minutes away, almost home from work nearby," Will said quietly.

  A key clicked in the front door, it opened, and Melinda Holmes entered with a man behind her. Her blonde frizzy hair looked newly styled, somehow incompatible with the scene. “I bought these for the girls,” she said. She looked around the room, locating Will and dropped three black bags on the floor beside the front door. The dark-haired man, obviously several years younger, hovered behind Melinda, hands shoved in pockets. "What's going on?” she said, voice rising in pitch, focused now on us standing in the lounge room.

  I stepped forward and extended a hand. She shook it limply, eyes wide. "Mrs. Holmes, you remember me from the previous investigation? I'm Detective Sergeant Fletcher, this is DS Ed Garrett and DC Steve Lamont." They rose and walked in her direction, but she didn't bother shaking their hands. Her mouth had dropped.

  Will gazed over at her, wiping his eyes.

  "Will, what the hell is going on?” she said, voice screeching, rapidly increasing in volume and intensity. "Did you find Jessica? Where is she?"

  Will got up from the couch and extended a hand out, palms down. "Melinda, they found her. She's dead. They just arrived, they want us to identify the body”.

  Melinda screamed and wailed, a bone-shattering sound. "No!” she screamed. "No, not my girl, bring her back! Bring her back to me! Now! I need her…" The young man leaned down beside her, supporting Melinda as she fell to her knees and rocked.

  Garrett and Lamont moved in, as Melinda Holmes, still kneeling, lashed out with her hands flailing, her screams now at fever pitch. "No, it's not true, I don't believe you. If something had happened to her, I would know!"

  She was inconsolable. I whispered into Will Holmes’ ear "Does she have a doctor? Someone we can call to prescribe something?"

  "Yeah, Dr Baker in Knox,” he said quietly. "I'll call him now."

  “Give the number to Ed, he’ll call.” Garrett handed him a sticky note and Will wrote the number down, hand shaking.

  The younger man began speaking to Melinda, attempting to calm her down. I still had no idea who he was, so I approached him. Garrett and Lamont held Melinda gently to stop her from hurting herself. After a while, she calmed a little and allowed the younger man—presumably her new boyfriend—to guide her to the staircase.

  "Can I talk to Gemma?” I said to Will.

  “She’s at her Nanna’s, back tomorrow” he mumbled.

  I was momentarily distracted, feeling the need to ID the man before he disappeared with Melinda. "Excuse me,” I called out. I noticed he stopped and looked back in my direction. "Could I talk to you briefly please?"

  "Now?" The man paused, one foot on the stair above. He turned and peered through the railings on the staircase.

  "I won't keep you for long, just standard procedure." He sighed as if I’d asked something irritating and he stepped back down into the open living area.

  He didn't sit at the table with Will and me, instead, he stood nearby with hands shoved into his jeans.

  "The first obvious question is,” I began, “Who are you?”

  His eyebrows raised and he looked away, not keen to answer. I waited it out. There was a definite need to know who was wandering around.

  “Eric,” he said.

  “Eric? Eric who? And what’s your relation to the family please?”

  “Eric Slavosky. Not any relation. I’m Melinda’s partner.” He stared me in the eye as if willing me to look away or challenge him.

  “Any ID on you, Eric?” I asked, adding a small smile to soften the situation. He took a small leather wallet from his back pocket and opened it, the same way I’d flash my own ID badge. There, in the front plastic sleeve was his driver’s license. I took a close look and handed the wallet back.

  “Fine,” I said. “Thanks. Now that’s out of the way, Eric, can you remember your movements four days ago, on the 12th of March?"

  "What, you think I had something to do with this?" Eric raised his eyebrows again, crossed his arms and leaned forward at the waist, neck jutting out.

  "Eric, it’s just standard procedure to eliminate people in the victim’s social circle. I'd like to eliminate you early on. I’ll be asking everybody else the same questions. So, 12th March, where were you?"

  "What day was that?"

  "Last Thursday."

  Eric frowned. "Ah yeah, Thursday I remember now. Melinda was discharged from hospital, and I was with her. Waited around for a couple of hours while they finished the bloody paperwork."

  "Thank you,” I wrote it in my notebook. "Name of the hospital?"

  "Pinewood Private.” Eric cleared his throat. “I have to go, Melinda needs me."

  "Of course,” I said, adding the hospital to my list of enquiries to follow up on. Eric took off up the stairs.

  I turned my gaze back to Will Holmes. "Will your ex-wife be okay?"

  "Yeah,” he said. "Garrett said Dr Baker’s on the way over to help her, but she was never exactly stable, put it that way. For once, Eric the prick’s made himself useful."

  "We’ll need to stay until the media unit gets here," I said.

  "All right,” said Will slumping back into his seated position on the couch, staring at the floor.

  Obviously, there was no love lost between Will Holmes and Eric, the new boyfriend. Garrett and Lamont stood to my right, murmuring to each other, the conversation barely audible.

  Garrett edged up close to my right side. "Hicks sent me a text, media unit alert. Bit late, but..."

  I hung my head. We weren't going anywhere in a hurry. Lamont took a step away diagonally, then turned. "Hamburger with the lot?"

  "Yeah, mate." A rote answer, I wasn’t hungry, but we all knew we were in for a late finish. I walked over to the couch and sat two seats away from Will on the couch. I withdrew my phone from my jacket and typed out a text, not easy considering my mutton fingers.

  Late home, probably tonight's news, I texted to my wife, Abbie.

  Another night at work. I barely knew my daughters’ schedules lately, let alone Abbie's. She’d be fine, though. Thank God I'd married an independent and capable woman—even if things had been strained between us lately, thanks to the ever-increasing demands from work.

  Garrett took more notes, most likely orders for the night’s dinner. He passed it to Lamont and nodded silently.

  I thought about what came next. I planned on going over the crime scene photos one more time, and following up on the whereabouts of Will, Melinda and Eric, as well as talking to Gemma.

  I handed my card to Will, telling him to call me anytime, night or day. He gave a small nod.

  "We're not going anywhere just yet though,” I said. "The media unit will be here soon, so hold tight."

  He barely moved from the couch, hunched over, fists over his eyes, and sobbed. I told him I'd be back the next day to talk to Gemma.

  Tracey and a colleague from the media unit arrived much later that night, technically the next morning despite the dark. After I gave her a brief rundown in a hushed voice, she nodded.

  I signalled to the other detectives that we should leave and opened the front door. We headed back to our parked cars.

  "See you back at Crime Command,” said Garrett, and I nodded, knowing we couldn't say a great deal within earshot of the family.

  I wondered what extra information Gemma had; for some reason, during her initial questioning, I'd got the impression she was holding something back. Potentially, her information could change the whole direction of the job. She hadn't been there earlier. I wondered if Will had possibly had a warning of what was coming and sent her away for a couple of days.

  Back at Crime Command, I threw my jacket over the chair back and picked up the crime scene information
we had so far. The horror of the crime scene photos was still fresh. The tiny cuts all over her body, the burn marks, her tiny naked body staged with her hands crossed over her chest… it all hit me like a physical blow.

  What kind of monster did this to a child? Whoever it was, I was convinced they'd worked up to this, until the killing no longer satisfied their sick desires.

  Starting with the basics, I began a timeline of dates, starting with Jessica's visit to the park, through to the day her body was found.

  I'd checked with Will Holmes on his whereabouts the day his daughter disappeared, and he had a decent alibi; he'd been at work, something that could easily be checked. Gemma, Jessica's sister, could hold the key, especially if she'd been at the park with her. If Jessica had left with someone, Gemma might be able to identify them. I'd need to confirm with Pinewood Private that Melinda had been discharged the day Jessica went missing, and—importantly—we had to confirm that Eric was with her at the time.

  I searched on my computer for jobs involving child murders, a young girl, in that area. There'd been few murders of children, but a couple of others had appeared over recent months, both young girls, although the victims were a few years older than Jessica.

  I looked them up. Both girls had been stabbed and the bodies moved and staged after death. Both bodies had been found in various locations within the massive Sherbrooke National Forest area, within the Dandenong Ranges shire.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My belief that this was the work of a serial killer drew closer to confirmation.

  The two other cases were open and unsolved. Ten-year-old Taylor Wentworth was a ward of the state. She’d been found stabbed a couple of months earlier, body staged. Eleven-year-old Bianca Baker had vanished from a shopping centre, and her body was found two weeks later, stabbed and body staged within a different section of Sherbrooke Forest. Despite some initial coverage, the media barely mentioned them now. The initial calls had come through from a Detective Sergeant Rae Swanson of the Ringwood branch, within the Maroondah jurisdiction. I looked her up and called her. It went to voicemail. In the meantime, I’d pull the files for the murders of Taylor and Bianca, and get a board started. For Jessica, it would be back to basics and to the timeline of events before heading back to the Holmes family tomorrow to maybe get some leads from Gemma.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The sky was as dark as ink when I called it a night and pulled into the drive at home, but some of the lights inside were still on.

  Despite declining her calls, Abbie must have been waiting up for me. If she wanted an argument at this time of night, it wouldn’t end well; it never did.

  The job took its toll on our marriage, but after fifteen years together, surely she knew what she was in for by now. I assumed she'd been warned beforehand what life as a police wife would be like. Maybe she'd believed she could change me, buoyed along by love and the hope I’d change over time. The first few years had been okay. Until I'd transferred to Homicide.

  Abbie had the front door open as I got to the porch. I walked through the open doorway. She glared at me, gripping the door handle with her right hand, lips pressed together, not saying a word. It slammed shut behind me with a heavy thud.

  Exhausted, I dragged myself to the living room and sat down in one of the chairs, sighing as I kicked my shoes off. They landed with a clatter on the polished floorboards. Through the archway, I saw the fruits of Abbie's consistent organisational skills on the kitchen bench, lunch boxes packed and ready to go into the refrigerator, and school uniforms washed, pressed and ready for the morning.

  No question at all she was a damn good mother, and in the moments where I managed some brief flashes of insight, I saw that Abbie was also a pretty patient wife considering she hardly ever saw me. I should have asked more questions, but then hindsight is a wonderful thing. I was sure she'd talked to police wives before we’d got married, back in the heady days when we socialised at barbeques and gatherings; that was back when life didn't revolve around solving murders day in day out, let alone murders involving hideous brutality against children.

  I couldn't be certain I'd get the words out. I lay with my eyes half-closed, legs stretched out, and for a moment I paused as the heat from the open fire radiated into my legs. Maybe she wouldn't take it further. Maybe she'd let me be. The brief delusion didn't last long.

  "Did you decline my calls? Again? What the hell is wrong with you?" Lulled into a false sense of security, I'd barely heard her move from the kitchen to the living area. She stood, leaning over me, her face red, hand outstretched, pleading, angry, betrayed—all the usual.

  I didn't have much of a defence, other than the brutality of Jessica Holmes's crime scene, the horrible stuck image of it wouldn’t leave.

  "I'm sorry, I wasn't in a good frame of mind at the time. I thought it was better to decline the call,” I said, hoping that would be enough.

  "Oh well, I was having a fantastic time, running around doing errands for all of us, you included. If you’d bothered to take my call, I would have reminded you tonight was Maddy's concert."

  I closed my eyes. Shit. I'd missed my girl’s big moment. Again.

  "Oh God, I'll have to go see her." Unable to move or think too much, I couldn't croak out any more than that.

  "She's asleep, Jack. I have a hard enough job explaining why you’re working all the damn time. I’m tired of explaining why they can’t wait up for you. I’m tired of explaining why you never come to any of their special nights even though you always promise you’ll be there. She has school tomorrow and needs to sleep. If you want to see her, you should be home earlier. And I’m tired of saying that too."

  Without moving, I managed another couple of words. "I'll go up and kiss her goodnight.” In my mind, I tried to work up the energy to get myself up and out of the chair, to go and sit by my beautiful blonde girl and gaze at her for a while, even if she would never know I'd been there.

  "I'm practically a single mother, Jack," Abbie sighed, and her anger appeared to have reduced from raging to a quiet simmer. She sat on the edge of the seat opposite, hands on her lap. She looked tired, haggard, her dirty blonde hair floating around her thin face in wisps where it had escaped from the ponytail.

  "I got called out to a crime scene today. A little girl, Maddy's age, seven. Raped, tortured beyond all recognition and murdered. That’s all.” I rubbed my eyes, but that wouldn't erase the scene from my mind. "If someone gave me a choice, and promised to erase the memory from my mind, I'd take it in a heartbeat."

  Abbie fell back in the chair. She stayed silent for a long time.

  "Oh, God, Jack, I don't know what to say."

  There was nothing she could say, and we both knew it. She moved slowly in my direction, staring at me, before sitting beside me on the couch. She reached out tentatively and rested her right hand on my arm. I should probably have shifted my gaze from the floor, but I couldn't look at her.

  All I wanted was to see my girls, check on them, hold their hands, warm and full of life, and remind myself that some good still existed in the world. I had two girls that loved me no matter what and who were happy to see me, no matter how many times work called me out to investigate the unthinkable atrocities of which mankind was capable.

  "Do you want to talk about it?” she said quietly.

  "No, I'm sorry. I don't think I can."

  "Okay."

  I finally got up from the couch and walked over to the stairs. Abbie stood in the middle of the lounge room.

  "Jack, please; let's talk. I'm sorry but, you know, I need someone too. We need each other. Talk to me.”

  I kept on climbing the soft beige carpet until I reached the upstairs landing. The soft sounds of my daughters’ relaxed breathing echoed out from the open bedroom doors.

  I pushed open the door to Maddy's room. Moonlight streamed in through the gap in the curtains. She looked peaceful, not a care in the world. She lay with one hand out just in front of her face as if catch
ing a ball in her sleep.

  Her blonde hair had the same streaks as the hair of Jessica Holmes, as light as sunbeams in places. Memories of the crime scene intruded, pushing their way in, and I focused instead on my daughter’s breathing, relaxed and easy, as regular as her heartbeat.

  I tried not to think about what Will Holmes would be going through, every parent's worst nightmare. He too would have memories, but memories were no consolation for a little girl that would never come back, never hold him and look at him as her hero—a little girl who would never laugh, play, and run as little girls loved to do.

  The abused innocence, the abuse of trust, aggravated me, pushing up through my bones like boiling oil. I couldn't remember ever wanting to catch someone as badly as I did with this particular job.

  I sat down carefully on the side of Maddy's bed, not wanting to wake her. I traced a line on her palm, skin warm to the touch. As I looked at her, her skin slowly shifted and morphed into something else, something strange and morbid. A ligature mark formed on her wrist, a burn mark on her forearm, closely followed by another on her neck, then one on her other arm.

  I wasn't conscious of my breath, but I stood up quickly, and electricity jolted through me. I realised now my breath came in rasped gasps and my pulse raced. As I took a step back from the bed, I knew it was all just a figment of my imagination.

  The ligature marks had disappeared from her wrists, and the burns had miraculously healed over. I hunched over and rested my hands on my thighs, attempting to get a grip on reality and slow down my breathing.

  I needed a drink. I walked back down the stairs quietly so as not to wake my daughters and noticed my right hand on the railing shake slightly. I pulled it away, covered the last few steps in record time, and bounded through the lounge room in lengthy strides, keen now on the idea of a drink to wipe out the memories. Considering I hadn't had one in a long time, it had more chance of being an effective amnesiac.

  I rifled through the drinks cupboard beside the fireplace, where the fire was now almost burned out.

  I sat on one of the armchairs, with the volume to the television down low. Soft footstep of slippers behind me. I hadn’t realised Abbie was still up. "Come to bed, it's late, I don’t want you smelling of drink when I’m trying to sleep.” I swallowed an angry comeback. What I had to say would only make things worse.