The Stalk Club (34 page)

“You’re lying,” she vehemently snapped at him.

“I’m afraid not.  Maybe we’ve drifted apart a little over
the years, you know this job doesn’t exactly allow for a full social calendar,
but I still try and catch up with him every now and then.  After he was taken
into custody I paid him a quiet visit in the cells and asked him what had
happened.  He told me his story and swore on his life that he didn’t murder
Fogliani.  Now I admit that it took me a while to come around, the evidence
against him was so strong, but eventually I came to believe him.  You see, Craig
is many things, he’s annoying, offensive and arrogant, but the one thing he is
above all other things is honest, sometimes painfully and brutally honest, but
honest nonetheless.  It’s a rare trait these days.  The unlucky part for you in
all this is that if any other Detective had been assigned to the Fogliani case
they probably wouldn’t have believed a word he said.  They would have taken
that beautiful evidence trail you and Torres laid out and slammed the case
shut.  But not me.”

Natalie continued to clutch her shoulder as she listened
to Nelson.  She was beginning to understand how Nelson had discovered her
subterfuge.  She wondered why God continued to think of such ingenious ways of
torturing and taunting her.

“Almost from the beginning I was working towards finding
a way of getting him off.  I thought
about removing some of the
evidence to weaken the case on him but decided against it.  It would have been
too risky.  There were too many people sniffing all over this case from the
start and they would have known it was me, so
I
decided to focus on finding the real killer and who had set him up.  Looking
back, I should have had
vague suspicions about you
from the start.  I mean call me cynical, but when was the last time you saw a
beautiful woman hanging onto the arm of an overweight and unattractive guy with
no money?  And you were the one who chose Craig’s mark for him.  It had to be
you.  And yet for all your planning, here you are, sitting with a bullet hole
in you and probably facing some pretty serious charges.  It’s certainly going
to be ironic if you end up in prison and Craig walks free,” said Nelson with an
amused glint in his eye. 

Natalie’s mind recoiled at the thought of going to prison. 
It was the exact antithesis of what she had been planning for the last three
years and the thought of it sent a wave of nausea flooding over her.

“I
don’t care what you do,” she hissed.  “I’m going to tell the whole world that
he killed my parents.  It’s all I have left now.  Someone will listen.”

Nelson
smiled like a benign father and shook his head.  “Well I hate to burst your
bubble, but that’s not quite correct.”

“What
do you mean?  You said you knew he killed my parents!”

“I
said I knew that he was involved.  
Let me tell you a
little story, hopefully we have just enough time before the local cops arrive. 
This story is about two young men who went out one night to celebrate after one
of them had graduated from the Police Academy.  You see I’d been posted to
Narooma straight from the Academy and Craig drove down from Sydney to see me. 
One thing led to another and by closing time at the local pub we’d had way too
much to drink.  I took the keys from him because I was trying to be responsible
and I thought I was in better shape to drive than he was.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said halfheartedly, beginning
to feel uneasy with the direction the conversation was taking.

Nelson continued as if he didn’t hear her.  His mind reached
back into memories which were still clear in his mind.  “I was just a stupid kid
filled with beer.  Anyway, I came around a corner a bit fast and a bit wide and……and
that’s where you and your parents come into the story.  I didn’t see your car
until it was right in front of me.  There was nothing I could do.”   

Natalie’s faced blanched at the admission and her world continued
its downward spiral into the abyss.  She had spent the last three years of her
life hating Craig Thoms and plotting his downfall and the realisation that her
energies may have been misdirected shattered her like a fragile wine glass.

“But I saw his face in my dreams, in my memories of the
accident,” she said defensively, not wanting to believe. 

“Maybe you did.  Craig was in the car, but he was on the
drivers’ side in the
back
seat of his 4WD.  I was driving that night,
Natalie.  It was my fault, not his.”  She searched his face, looking
desperately for a trick, for a sign of a lie but saw none.  He had no reason to
lie seeing that he already held all the cards.

“But I saw him,” she said, her voice faltering.  “He was
laughing at us.”

“No,” responded Nelson firmly.  “He was laughing because
he’d just opened a can of beer and sprayed it all through the car.  Sounds ridiculous
now, but it was funny at the time I guess.”

Natalie looked inward and replayed the memories of the
accident in her mind as she had done a thousand times before.  She closed her
eyes and willed herself painfully back into her parents’ car again.  She looked
up at the car that bore down on them and then for the first time, the full hazy
veil seemed to lift from the scene and she saw Craig Thoms looking down at them
laughing, or, laughing at
something
, from the back seat of the dual-cab 4WD,
and there in the driver’s seat was another man, his face which had been turned
towards Craig in the rear vision mirror slowly began turning toward her as they
sped past each other in the night.

“I stopped the car and looked back to see where your car
was but didn’t see anything at all.  I assumed you’d just driven off, so I did
the same.  If I had known, I would have stopped.”  Nelson’s normally calm,
unlined face, creased with the memory and Natalie instinctively knew that every
word he spoke was the truth.  “Five minutes later I drove head long into a
breathalyser team of my very own colleagues.  Craig and I both knew that if I
was caught, it would probably be the end of my very short career.  Craig didn’t
hesitate for a moment.  As we slowed down to queue up for the breathalyser, he
swapped places with me in the car and then I slid out the passenger side door
into a ditch beside the road and from there made my way home.  Fortunately for
me it was a dark night and there were half a dozen cars in line waiting to be
tested so no-one witnessed my escape.  Craig was tested and found to be well
over the limit and was charged with drink driving.  He took the rap for me and
lost his licence for six months, but he didn’t say a word to anyone about me
being there.  Later that morning I dragged myself in to work still nursing a
sore head.  I heard about the car accident and started to wonder.  I drove to
the scene on the pretext of offering assistance.  I saw the skid marks on the
road and realised what had happened.”

“Stop, please stop,” said Natalie quietly as tears continued
to roll down her cheeks.

Nelson ignored her, wanting to get it all out once and
for all. 

“I stood by the road for ages trying to decide what to
do.  The other cops there thought I was feeling a bit squeamish because I was a
new cop.  In the end I just drove away.  I phoned Craig and told him to change
the tyres on his 4WD and dump the old ones where no-one would find them.   Sure
enough, a couple of officers paid him a visit two days later but they didn’t
have any evidence without being able to match the tyres and Craig didn’t say
anything.  In time, it all blew over and I left Narooma as quickly as I could
to put it behind me.”  Nelson felt relief after his admission of guilt.  He had
never spoken of that moment to anyone but Craig Thoms before.  “Natalie….Kylie,
I know my apology is a bit late, about fifteen years too late, but I am sorry.” 

Natalie’s emotions fluctuated wildly with Nelson’s
revelations.      

“You’re a murderer!”

“No, it wasn’t murder.  I’ve seen murders.  I just drove
over the centre line on a road by a couple of feet, that’s all, and then fate
took over,” Nelson justified.  “Once it had happened there was absolutely
nothing I could do to change anything.  It was just a stupid accident.”

“You could have come forward and acted like a man.”

“Maybe I should have, but that wouldn’t have brought your
parents back or given you a better life.  The only thing that would have
achieved would be to put an end to my career and possibly putting me in jail,
and the thought of being a nineteen year old cop in jail didn’t sound too good,
so I decided to protect myself and Craig.  Self-preservation kicked in I guess.”

Nelson waited for Natalie to respond but she just stared
at him, trying to process all he had said.

“I know I did the wrong thing but I’d like to think that
over the last fifteen years I’ve done some good in my life and I’ve made a
positive difference in a lot of people’s lives through my work.  Would society
have been better served by me spending five years in jail or me working my arse
off to take cold blooded killers like Manuel Torres off the street?”

“I’m going to tell the fucking world that you killed my
parents,” she hissed at him, spittle flying from her mouth in her enthusiasm
for the idea.

“Are you?  I don’t think that would be a good idea,”
Nelson replied evenly.

“Why?”

“Because it happened fifteen years ago and you have no
evidence.  Trust me, I’m a cop and I’ve been through a few internal
investigations in my time.  It’s my word against yours and Craig will support
me, not you.  It will get messy for me, but I’ll survive.  On top of that, if
you stay, you’ll probably be charged with conspiracy to commit murder among
other things.  That can carry a pretty hefty sentence.  Admittedly the star
witness is dead,” he said, again indicating Manuel Torres’ corpse on the floor
beside him.  “And you’re a smart girl who has probably covered your tracks
pretty well, so maybe you’d come out of it ok, but then again, maybe not.  It’s
amazing what a team of Detectives can dig up on a person.  We tend to look
after our own.  And finally there are the Foglianis to consider.  No doubt they’d
be interested to find out you were involved in Emilio’s murder.  Maybe they’d
come after you too.”

Natalie stared at him, weighing his words.  She hated to
admit they made sense and she had the feeling that she had been backed into the
tightest of corners.   

“Look Natalie, I can’t bring your parents back, but maybe,
maybe if I let you walk away now it will go some small part of the way toward
balancing the ledger between me and you.  Maybe if you agree to disappear and
never come back to New South Wales, I can leave Kylie Faulkner out of my
reports and pretend I didn’t find you here.  You could put all this shit behind
you and start your life over again.  It’s the best offer I can make you with
the way things are.”

Natalie thought hard on his words and didn’t know what to
do.  She found it hard to accept that her three year crusade had come to such a
pointless ending and that her parents’ killer would again walk free,
unpunished, and yet she could fathom no other way out of her predicament other
than a full scale retreat.  She felt desperate, tired and drained of life and
her shoulder throbbed incessantly, reverberating through her head.

“What about my shoulder?”

“I don’t know.  You’re a resourceful girl, I’m sure
you’ll think of something.  Go and find a doctor to bat your eyelids at or
something.  It’s just a flesh wound so as long as it’s cleaned and stitched and
you take a few antibiotics you should be alright.”  Nelson cocked his head as
he heard the sound of wailing sirens approaching.  He surmised that the
neighbour who he had almost shot earlier had placed a call to the police and
told her story.  “Now we don’t have much time so I’m going to turn my back for
a few seconds and if you’re still here when I turn around then there’s nothing
I can do for you and you’ll have to take your chances against me, the police
and the Foglianis.”  Nelson turned his back on her and pretended to gaze out
the window to the night beyond.  He wondered if she would make a move for
Manuel Torres’ gun that lay on the floor only ten feet away from her and placed
his hand within easy reach of his holstered weapon just in case.  He watched
her carefully in the reflection of the window as she got slowly to her feet. 
He saw her gaze shift and momentarily rest on the gun on the floor before she turned,
grabbed a bag of belongings that she had been in the process of filling when
Manuel Torres had arrived and disappeared out the door. 

Nelson quickly made a call to the Chatswood Police station
and then to Inspector VanMerle.  He took a seat in a comfy leather recliner while
he waited in the apartment for the cavalry to arrive. 

It had been six days since Emilio Fogliani was killed.

Nelson spent most of the rest of the night at Bryce
McKinlay’s apartment as a seemingly never-ending stream of people
traipsed in and out of the apartment to perform their allotted duties.  A forensics
team of two combed the apartment for evidence and the staff from the State Coroner’s
office removed the dead body of Manuel Torres.  Detectives from the North Shore
Local Area Command and investigators from the Professional Services Command - previously
known as Internal Affairs - questioned Nelson time and time again about the
events that led up to the death of Manuel Torres.  Nelson kept his story
straight and simple and told each of them that he had gone to the apartment on
the pretext of asking further questions to Bryce McKinlay about the Fogliani case.