Malicious Intent (16 page)

Anya felt like a voyeur. ‘What do you know about the woman’s lifestyle, her hobbies?’

‘No one knows much about her. According to reports, Debbie Finch was quiet, private and efficient. Just did her job.

Didn’t have anyone over to her home. Always met people at the movies, wouldn’t let anyone pick her up from her house.

Maybe she was ashamed of her old man,’ Kate suggested as an afterthought.

Anya had always wondered why Kate had said little of her family or life, apart from the fact that she was an only child.

Like Anya, Kate seemed to concentrate on the present.

‘Could someone else have been there? Any restraint marks to suggest she’d been coerced?’

‘Nope.’

Anya perused the photos in the file. A demented father may have been aggressive and difficult to look after. Elder abuse was on the rise, given the pressures of home care on a relative who sacrificed a social life to care for someone who was incapable of loving in return. The man wore a urodome on his penis attached to a urine collection bag, and had no control of his KATHRYN FOX

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bowels. Anya felt sympathetic toward someone who had to bathe, feed and toilet her own father. Maybe she just couldn’t give anymore.

Kate licked her salty fingers. ‘Neighbors say he couldn’t even recognize her, let alone celebrate her birthday. Maybe it all got to be too much. She just disappeared after a party for her at work.’

The kitchen looked immaculate. No cups, glasses or dirty dishes. Each plate stood in a rack, every cup positioned on a stand. On the bench sat an almost empty two-kilogram plastic tub of strawberry jam with a large spoon in it.

‘Doesn’t look anything like my place,’ the detective declared, tearing open another chocolate bar.

‘For one thing, you can see the carpet. There aren’t clothes, books or CDs lying on every possible surface.’ Anya chomped into the apple.

Kate fiddled with the computer settings. ‘Very amusing.

What are we looking for, in particular?’

‘Signs of renovations, any work or damage that could have disturbed old fibers in the building.’

In the large, open-plan office, detectives arrived for the day’s work – men in suits, women in gray or black skirts or slacks. ‘Plain clothes’ meant uniform by another name. Four rows of five desks gave the room a classroom feel. Each work-station displayed a phone, a computer, and a distinct lack of paperwork. The ‘clean desk’ policy at the end of the day seemed to be enforced by everyone but Kate Farrer and her team.

Brian Hogan greeted Kate. ‘Isn’t this the one you’re consulting on? Thought it was open-shut.’

‘Just thought we’d check it over. See if anything got missed.

And Dr. Crichton is interested in the environment. Seems there have been other deaths that showed up something in the lungs and she wants to know where that stuff could have come from.’

Hogan responded with as much interest as a child made to watch a geography program, and found an excuse to get coffee.

The original linoleum and carpets were in place, and the 122

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bathroom still had brown mosaic tiles around the basin, bath and shower. The room had been modified with a handrail and a white plastic chair sat in the shower. The shower head detached, just like a hospital one. There were no renovations or extensions in this house, nothing to explain the lung fibers.

The phone on Kate’s desk rang. She grabbed it on the second ring.

‘Homicide, Detective Sergeant Farrer . . . Right, thanks. I’ll send someone down.’

She leaned back in her chair and looked around. ‘Anyone seen Hogan?’

An attractive woman answered without looking up from her desk. ‘Um, I think he ducked out for a coffee.’

Anya saw him disappear toward the toilets with a newspaper.

‘Shit. All right. I’ll have to do it.’ Kate stood, wiped the crumbs from her trousers and asked Anya if there was any food in her teeth.

‘There’s a woman downstairs who says she’s a cousin of Debbie Finch. The Gosford boys couldn’t find any relatives up there.

She’s the only one anyone’s heard of.’ She grabbed her jacket.

‘Won’t be long. Need to tell her about the deaths and ask if she knows what state of mind Debbie was in when she died.’

Typical Kate. Breaking bad news and interviewing a grieving relative only took a minute. Anyone else would put at least half an hour aside. As Kate headed for the stairs, Anya returned to the computer screen. She navigated her way around the disheveled bathroom. Towels lay crumpled on the floor, the toilet seat was up, a patterned shower curtain hung off its rail. She wondered how Debbie Finch, who shunned visitors but took pride in her house, would feel having strangers prying into her intimate world.

Anya turned into the first bedroom, with Joseph Finch sitting upright in his chair, bullet hole almost obscured by the position of his slumped head. She used the computer mouse to move around the old man’s body. Jam stained his cheeks and mouth, and spread over his shirt and trousers. Beside the double KATHRYN FOX

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bed sat a toilet chair, a commode. Apart from that, the room had little furniture.

Down the corridor in the adjacent bedroom, dressed in navy trousers, sheer black shirt and black heels, lay the body of Debbie Finch. She could have been sleeping peacefully on her side. The view from above showed a small entry wound to the right temple and a gun beside her hand on the turquoise chenille bedspread.

Leanne Finch stood on the steps outside the building, chewing her fingernails. A mop of dyed straw hair wafted from black roots. A baggy shirt and harem pants did little to disguise the emaciated body beneath. Pustular acne made Kate suspect heroin addiction. The woman looked to be in her forties.

‘Leanne, thanks for coming.’

‘What do you want? My flatmate said you had some news.’

‘I’m afraid it’s bad news. There’s no easy way to say it. Debbie and Joseph Finch were found dead in their house a few nights ago.’

‘Shit. Both of ’em?’

Kate nodded. ‘Looks like Debbie shot her father and then turned the gun on herself.’

Leanne chewed the rest of her nails in silence.

‘When was the last time you saw them?’

‘Not for years. Not since Aunt Rita’s funeral.’ Leanne sat down on the cement steps. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Why do you say that?’

Kate looked around and sat on the same step.

‘I shot through when Rita died. I’d lived with them for ten years and had had enough.’

‘What did your aunt die of?’

‘Alcohol poisoning, although no one in the family wanted to admit it. She bled to death from the stomach or something, they said. But we all knew she drank. No one talked about it, that’s all.’

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‘When did your uncle become ill?’

‘Dunno. I lost touch with the family after that. I move around a fair bit.’

‘When was the last time you had contact with Debbie?’

‘About a year ago. The old man was in a wheelchair by then. Deb was relieved he’d stopped wandering all over the place. Lost his marbles with the Parkinson’s, she reckoned. He had this disgusting thing happening where he couldn’t control his tongue or head. Deb said it was because of a medicine he had to take for being out of control.’

‘Did she ever get help from other people, apart from the carers? It must have been a huge job looking after someone that ill and working in a high-stress job at the same time.’

‘Deb never wanted anyone in the house.’ She studied what was left of her stumped fingers. ‘Where’d she shoot him?’

Kate studied the woman’s face. ‘In his bedroom.’

‘No, I meant where on
him
?’

‘In the neck.’

Leanne Finch shook her head. ‘Did she make him suffer?’

Kate was unsure how to answer.

‘Come on, did she make the old bastard suffer?’

Kate stood. ‘I think you’d better come inside and have a chat.’

Upstairs, Kate showed Debbie Finch’s cousin into a conference room and sat opposite her at the table. ‘Debbie shot her father and stuffed jam down his throat before she killed herself.’

‘Oh, Jesus.’ The woman’s eyes filled with tears. She wiped her nose with her sleeve. ‘I didn’t think Debbie knew.’

‘Knew what?’

‘Every time Rita and Debbie left the house, the old prick would lock me in the bathroom with him.’

‘Leanne’ – Kate lowered her voice – ‘did your uncle sexually abuse you?’

The woman almost whispered the words. ‘Usually it hap-KATHRYN FOX

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pened in the bathroom. If anyone else was at home, he’d pick me up from school and take me to the park. He called it having afternoon tea.’

‘Did he ever do this to Debbie?’

‘Don’t reckon. He said afternoon tea was “just for us.” ’

Kate shifted in her chair. ‘What did afternoon tea mean?’

‘He’d pull down his pants, and make me . . .’ The woman looked away, unable to face the detective.

Kate offered, ‘Leanne, this is really important. Did it have anything to do with jam?’

The woman nodded, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ‘He put jam all over his dick. He made me lick it off. And then he used it on me.’

The detective let out a sigh and the mysterious murder–

suicide made sense. She would have shoved a lot more than jam down the old man’s throat.

Leanne startled. ‘But Debbie never knew about the jam.’

‘Looks like she must have.’

‘But I never told her about it. I couldn’t. He was her father and I was about to shoot through. I just said he touched me up and she said she’d look after things.’ Leanne began hitting her forehead with her fist. ‘How could she know about the jam?’

Kate knew the answer. ‘We found it in her mouth, too.

Looks like you weren’t the only one your uncle had afternoon tea with.’

Kate saw Leanne out, and straddled a chair next to Anya and quietly explained about the abuse.

She frowned. ‘I don’t get the jam in Debbie’s mouth. Surely she didn’t eat it for old times’ sake. The old man didn’t seem fit to force her to go down on him.’ She closed her eyes tightly.

‘They didn’t check Debbie’s mouth for semen, did they?’

‘Not unless they had reason to suspect something. They swabbed the jam in her pharynx, but it would be easy to miss semen if you weren’t specifically looking for it. There weren’t 126

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any poisons or toxins in the jam.’ Anya checked again. ‘There’s nothing mentioned about swabbing anything else.’

‘Looks like these fibers don’t mean much,’ Kate announced.

‘We’ve got a motive for killing her father.’

‘Hang on.’ Anya held up her index finger. ‘The toxicology report says his blood contained thioridazine, but the family doctor says he should have been taking dopamine for his Parkinson’s disease. None showed up on the screen.’

Kate wheeled her chair forward to check. ‘Yeah, that was on the fax when I got here, but looked like gobbledygook to me.

What’s the difference?’

‘The daughter was an efficient nurse. I’d be surprised if she forgot to give him his medication, or didn’t stand over him while he took it.’

‘Maybe she withheld it, to keep him in the wheelchair.

Sexual abuse would give her one hell of a reason for keeping him incapacitated before killing him.’

Anya had an unpleasant thought. ‘Is it too late to do a sexual assault kit on Debbie’s remains?’

‘As far as I know, no one’s claimed the bodies. That’s why the Gosford guys were tracking down Leanne.’

‘In that case,’ Anya said, ‘you could ask them to do it.’

‘You’re not suggesting the old man rose from his wheelchair, made her give him oral sex one last time and she flipped out?’ Kate knew better than to expect an answer. ‘I’ll check it out with Connelly right away.’

While Kate made the call, Anya flicked through the file photos. Debbie Finch lay on the stainless steel table, free from any kind of abuse. The gunshot wound to the temple was the only evidence of trauma. This white, hairless body would never know childbirth, menopause or aging. It seemed slightly odd that someone so private shaved her pubic region. She remembered what Jeff Sales had said about the genital blisters only being obvious on Fatima Deab because she’d shaved. It was supposedly a fad in younger, sexually active girls, not someone devoid of intimate contact. Anya wondered what other secrets KATHRYN FOX

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Debbie Finch and Fatima took with them when their lives ended.

Anya spun back to the computer and once again navigated her way to the bathroom. And then it became obvious.

If the old man was wheelchair-bound and incontinent of urine, who’d left the toilet seat up?

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Brian Hogan shook his head. ‘Shit. There could have been someone else there. How did that get missed?’

Kate was behind him before he got the words out. ‘How many blokes do you know who put the toilet seat down? Bet you wouldn’t even notice if the bloody thing was missing.’

‘Remember, hindsight is always twenty-twenty,’ Hogan retorted.

Kate hung her hands on her hips. ‘Bit embarrassing having an outsider discover a screwup like that.’

Anya wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that comment. At this point, she didn’t really care. ‘Did they fingerprint the place?’

‘The entry and exits but only four sets of prints turned up –

the three carers’ and the deceased woman’s.’

Anya’s first thought was the police. ‘Could one of your lot have urinated at the scene?’

‘It wouldn’t have been the first time someone pissed on the evidence. But this time a female constable and her partner were first on the scene. They both swore blind they didn’t touch a thing. One look at the bodies and the young guy bolted outside. Stayed there ’til the detectives arrived. Don’t reckon you could have paid him to go back inside for a leak.’

Kate had obviously done her homework late last night.

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‘Had the commode been emptied? That might explain it.’

‘Full. Made the detectives gag.’

‘Okay,’ Anya tried, ‘so someone else has been there. What about friends, relatives, community nurses?’