Bloodborn (21 page)

The detective had changed into exercise
pants and hooded top. She had set up an office on her living room floor, sitting barefoot with one leg tucked under and the other outstretched, papers spread around her and a large bag of potato chips at her side. Anya found patches of carpet to step between.

“I’ve been thinking. Zimmer might have had a point about ferrets being bred to kill. It’s in their makeup, just like dogs are naturally carnivores.”

“Okay, you lost me.” Kate crunched on some more chips.

“The nature or nurture concept. I used to think that the environment we’re brought up in makes us what we are, but studies are starting to challenge that.”

“Monkey see, monkey do. Does it matter when the end result’s the same?”

Anya appreciated Kate had little patience for theories that didn’t alter outcomes. And she had a point. She was task oriented and focused on end results, not necessarily on the process. It was one of the things she liked about Kate. Not one for sitting around contemplating the meaning of life, her friend was the most practical person she knew. The bookshelf that still sat in pieces at Anya’s house would have been assembled as soon as it arrived if Kate had her way.

“Beats me how you separate genes from environment anyway.” Kate continued to munch away while Anya sat on the arm of the lounge.

“It’s interesting, looking at studies of adopted children. They’ve found that children born to a criminal parent but adopted into a law-abiding family still have a much higher chance of committing crimes than their adopted siblings. Whereas kids born to noncriminal parents but adopted into criminal environments are more likely to stay within the law.”

Kate grinned. “Those studies are like statistics. You find one to justify anything. Remember all that work on identical twins separated at birth?”

Anya did. “Like the two women who met by chance in a cafe, appeared identical, were dressed in the same clothes and had the same job. Then discovered they were sisters.”

Kate laughed. “You intellectuals have selective memories. There were identical twin boys. One was racist and became a Nazi, but the other ended up working with natives on some island. Pretty much blows your theory about genetics.”

“No one’s saying it’s absolute, but both of those men you mention were arrogant, saw themselves as leaders and were pretty unpleasant to be around. They couldn’t even get on with each other when they met.”

“Sounds like most of the people I work with. God, they must all be related.”

Anya picked up a couple of cushions and pelted Kate, who toppled backward, then lay on papers singing, “We—are—fa-mi-ly.” She suddenly sat upright. “Hey, we can play charades. Who am I?” and pretended to vomit, multiple times.

Anya couldn’t believe how childish Kate was being, but thinking about Ben and Brody’s car still made her laugh until her stomach cramped.

Kate’s phone interrupted them. Anya retreated to make drinks.

When she returned, Kate punched the air. “That was McNab. The marks on the casing match one found at the site of a killing in Chinatown three years ago.”

The firearms expert had been right. After all the bullets and casings he and his team had examined, his memory of markings he had seen once before, years ago, was accurate.

“Were there any suspects?”

“Apparently.” She kept reading her notes from the call, placing the pen between her teeth.

Anya handed her the coffee. “Thanks,” she mumbled through the pen, before removing it from her mouth to drink.

“Before that, it was used in a drive-by where no one was injured, and an armed robbery. Chinatown victim was Andrew Li, who owned a restaurant. No one was ever charged, although the major crime squad thought Li was killed for refusing to pay protection money, as an example to anyone else in the community who thought they could stand up to the gangs.”

She searched around for a specific piece of paper and then cross-checked something while Anya made sure all the curtains were drawn without a gap. She then rechecked the backdoor lock.

“You need to find out if Natasha worked on that case, or any others involving those gangs.”

Anya knew that getting anyone to help with information would be even tougher, if it involved a closed, frightened community. Organized crime being behind her murder could explain the execution style.

It always surprised her how prosecutors made numerous enemies just for doing their job, but the same people loved their defense lawyers, even if the client ended up in jail. The list of potential suspects in Natasha’s killing was enormous.

“I’m thinking the elders in charge wouldn’t tolerate a renegade killing. They act through discipline and a hierarchy. As far as I know, killings are usually for revenge, and that’s the end of the violence.”

Kate had a valid point and sanctioning the murder of a prosecutor would be extremely risky. The last thing any criminal group wanted was even more police scrutiny into their illegal activities.

“It was found during a raid on a massage parlor, along with a cache of weapons.” She scanned further. “After that, it’s listed here as having being destroyed.” She reached into the bag and filled her mouth with more chips. A couple of crunches later she looked up.

“Shit. It’s a phantom.”

Anya climbed onto the lounge, legs folded beneath her, sipping no-name tea. “Which means?”

“Remember the national buy-back scheme after Port Arthur?” Kate arched her back and moved her neck to the side, cracking the vertebrae.

Anya nodded. Over a decade before, a lone gunman killed thirty-five people and injured another twenty or more in the popular tourist spot in Tasmania. Public outrage against the pro-gun lobby led the government to legislate another gun buy-back scheme, to promote better gun control. There had been rumors about some of those guns going missing, ranging from hundreds to thousands flooding the black market and making it into the hands of criminal networks.

Pro-gun groups hailed the scheme a dismal failure, and those in favor of gun control labeled it a success, citing a reduction in the number of mass shootings since.

“Well, those guns were combined with confiscated and recovered weapons. They went to warehouses run by contractors the public thought were impenetrable. Only thing is, hundreds of these guns have turned up since. Some of the contractors had contacts with pawnshops.”

“So the foxes were in charge of the chicken house, which was full of, let me guess, .22 guns.”

“Exactly.” Kate sipped her coffee. “The firearms squad think it’s the largest illegal gun distribution network to date. Got to give it to incompetent agencies. So people think the streets are safer, politicians pat themselves on the back and criminals have a bigger monopoly on guns. It’s a populist policy that has only made our job tougher. The licensed people with registered weapons were the ones who handed them in.”

Even so, Anya was relieved that she had seen fewer women threatened with guns in situations of domestic violence since the buy-back scheme. Even if one woman was spared being murdered on impulse by a man with easy access to a gun, the policy was, in her view, already a success. She wasn’t about to start a philosophical debate with Kate on the subject.

“Some of these demolition guys were paid by the government for incinerating the guns. The more honest ones found a loophole and officially rendered them inoperable. That way they could be sold to their pawn dealer mates as replicas, which could of course be made functional without too much effort.”

Anya enjoyed the warmth of the mug in her hands. “One casing led McNab to all that?”

“He had seen another casing that has very close markings. They retrieved the gun in a Chinatown raid, and the serial number had been ground down, but McNab’s boys managed to rescue it.”

Anya had seen it done. Hydrochloric acid, copper chloride and water was used to temporarily differentiate between the stamped metal numbers and the surrounding metal.

“So there’s no way of tracing the gun or how it got into our killer’s hands after it hit the black market?”

“We’d need the gun to prove it had the same serial number, but it’s like DNA. You need the killer to give it to you for comparison.”

Anya rested her mug on the floor. “Okay, what are we looking for?”

Kate handed her a box of old files. “Anyone from these cases who could have had a grudge against Natasha. Apart from that, I’m not even sure at the moment.

“We’ve got an assassin. Someone who apparently didn’t want anything from Natasha Ryder, just killed her. My informants have got nothing.

“It has to be someone who isn’t smart enough to understand how much heat they’d bring down on themselves, or someone who just doesn’t care.”

Like the Harbourns. Kate’s expression suggested they both had the thought at the same time.

Anya put the box down beside the lounge and asked to see the autopsy report again.

“The gun was a .22 caliber. Right?”

“A .22 rim fire with a hollow point bullet.”

And the grease, she thought. Something had bothered her about the entry wound. If the muzzle of the gun had been held against Natasha’s head as the gun was fired, there should have been specific signs present. The wound was not indented, suggesting the muzzle had not been pushed into the skin, and there was no soot or searing of the wound edges. Usually soot was so embedded in the wound, even enthusiastic washing of the skin wouldn’t remove it. The absence of findings could not be explained by examining the wound after the body had been cleaned.

There was also no mention of grease in the entry wound. That suggested a silencer hadn’t been used. So how did the killer prevent anyone from hearing the shot?

“Do you have the neighbor’s statement about the man loitering around Natasha’s house?”

Kate handed it across. “You have that clever look in your eye. What is it?”

Anya looked at the witness statement of a man with a hat, coat and large frame.

“This killer knew Natasha personally. I don’t think it was a hired assassin. Something was held between the gun barrel and Natasha’s head, my guess is to dull the sound. The witness said the man he saw had a big belly, like a fully pregnant woman.”

Kate pulled a cushion from the lounge. “And how do you make yourself look pregnant?” She shoved it under her hooded top to emulate a protruding belly.

“Damnit. We’ve all wasted critical time looking for someone with the wrong description.”

Anya returned Ned Goodwin’s call. As
if Natasha’s murder hadn’t been disturbing enough, Sophie was back in theater with a bowel obstruction, secondary to scarring from the hysterectomy and the abdominal surgery she endured after the stabbing. Her suffering was nowhere near over. Ned promised to call when she was safely out of surgery.

Anya would visit as soon as it was safe to.

Kate had Michael Buble playing softly in the background, which was surprisingly calming. Then again, that could have been the effect of a glass of wine and fatigue.

After their makeshift dinner of bread rolls and protein bars, Hayden Richards arrived, having called to say he was on his way.

“Have something you may be interested in,” he said to Anya, looking around the mess, presumably, for somewhere to sit.

Anya cleared off one side of the lounge. She got the impression that Kate would have left him standing indefinitely while she continued working. She either didn’t encourage visitors or wasn’t interested in being a good hostess.

“Coffee? Wine? Beer?” Anya offered.

“No thanks.”

“Everything’s fresh. I bought milk and the coffee’s just brewed.”

“In that case, white, no sugar, thanks.”

Kate seemed indifferent to the conversation, or chose to ignore it while she read and occasionally sipped beer from a bottle.

When Anya returned with the coffee, Hayden had some photos to show her.

“It’s taken a while, but those fragments of plastic you found on the road near the fatal crash site came from the front left indicator light and the headlamp from a silver Jeep Cherokee. We’ve narrowed it down to a model between 1993 and 1998. The damage to Savannah’s car on the right side rear matches, from the height where the two cars impacted, to the flecks of silver paint on her vehicle.”

Kate looked up. She had been listening.

“Good call. You were right.”

Anya felt satisfied, and hopeful that Savannah’s killer would be found. “So do the Harbourns own a car like that?”

“Not officially, but there are a few cars that come and go from their place; some are probably stolen or belong to deadbeat friends. Neighbors said a silver Jeep Cherokee was parked outside the house around the time of the accident but haven’t seen it since. Not that it would help us, the tribal mentality means they leave the keys in the sun visor so they can borrow whichever they want.”

“Or get away in a hurry. What are the chances of finding it?”

“We’ve put out a notice to all the spare parts suppliers in the city, to see if anyone has ordered replacements, but there is a long list for silver Jeep Cherokees. If someone’s hiding it in a garage or at an illegal smash-repair business, it could take longer.”

At least Hayden had confirmed that about a kilometer from where she had died Savannah Harbourn’s Colt had been hit from behind by another car.

“What about the speed cameras and the red-light camera at the intersection we looked at?”

Hayden pulled a photo from his file. It showed Savannah’s car in the intersection with the light red according to the camera behind and to the left.

“My guess is, whoever rammed her deliberately pushed her into traffic. That road has good visibility, it’s not as if the lights are round a blind bend. It’s a straight approach. According to calculations on the skid marks, when she crashed Savannah was doing at least fifty-five miles an hour. Either someone wanted to scare her, or chased her down with the purpose of running her off the road.”

“Or,” Kate offered, “she was scared and panicked after a minor bingle.”

Anya and Hayden stared at her.

“That’s just what your smarmy friend Brody would say. You know we need more than that.”

That reminded Anya. She hadn’t spoken to Dan since seeing him briefly at Saint Stephen’s. Somehow she’d almost taken personally his decision to defend Gary Harbourn, even though he had said it was initiated by Judge Pascoe through the other senior partners at his firm. And the work was to be pro bono. Officially, Gary Harbourn was unemployed.

She had decided to visit William again at the nursing home, to find out what exactly he knew about the baby’s father. For now, though, discussions with Dan had to wait.

“How’s Lydia Winter doing?” she asked Hayden.

“Forensics came back from the rape kit you did. Nothing helpful, I’m afraid. Lydia seems to have mysteriously forgotten the events of the other night.”

Anya couldn’t blame her if she recanted the story, or even blocked it from her memory. Besides that, medication could have interfered with her short-term memory, particularly if she’d been given certain benzodiazepines.

“I spoke to Natasha Ryder’s replacement. He doesn’t think we have a case. If Gary did rape Lydia Winter, he’s just committed the perfect crime.”