The Stalk Club (26 page)

“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do unless you have
something certain to go on.”

She tried to read him and turn him to her way of thinking,
like she had successfully done with many men before, but could find no weakness
in his character, no extravagance of pride or ego to exploit.  She tried to
flatter him but he shrugged it off.  She stretched back in her chair, slowly
and languidly, and then leaned over his desk, to show him some of her notes,
suggestively revealing her cleavage, but he kept his eyes on the paper and
didn’t even glance in her direction.  After half an hour of discussing,
cajoling and pleading to no avail, she thought of a new tack and slumped
forward in her chair, complaining of nausea and a migraine.  Her act was
convincing and Sergeant Soward rose and offered to get her a glass of water and
a wet towel.  As soon as he left the office she sprang up like a startled cat
and rifled through the case file on his desk.

She quickly scanned the pages and tore out just one that
related to the suspects that had been questioned over the case.  By the time Sergeant
Soward returned, Kylie Faulkner was back in her seat with her hand held to her
face, shielding her sensitive migraine eyes from the light. 

************

Obsessed and energised by the new information snatched
straight from the case file, Kylie threw herself into trying to succeed where
the police had failed and work out who was driving the other car in the
accident.  According to the file there had been five people who had been
questioned over the accident.  She ignored all calls on her mobile that day as
she poured over the notes made by the investigating officer on each of them. 
She searched for any possible link between the new evidence and what she
already knew about the accident.  After a long and exhausting day she fell
asleep on her lounge.

Again she dreamed of the accident as she had so many
times before.  It always began in the same way, always with her parents singing
in the car as they started the trip to the south coast.  As the dream played
forward she saw the fateful corner looming ominously in the distance.  She
floated above the car in her dream and watched herself as she dozed in the back
seat.  As her parents’ car rounded the bend, light filled the cabin, her mother
screamed, Kylie snapped awake and her father wrenched the steering wheel to the
left.

And then, just for the barest of moments, there in
between the confused miasma of bright lights and screaming and screeching of
tyres she saw something she had never before remembered in her dreams.  She looked
up from her seat and saw a young face in the other vehicle turning towards her
parents’ car.  His hair was light brown, long and lank, his eyes blue, wide set
and unfocussed, his full mouth parted in laughter.  Kylie awoke from her dream
with a physical jolt but tightly clutched the new image, savouring it, touching
it over and over in her mind and burning it into her memory.  It would be a face
she would never forget.  The field had been narrowed to one.

Using the internet, it was a simple enough task for her
to track down the five main suspects from the list stolen from the police file. 
One by one, like a black cat, she quietly crossed their paths, searching for
the man of her dreams.  After finding that the first four were not a match, she
was beginning to think that the man from her dreams might just have been a
creation of her own desperate mind seeking closure from the pain of the past. 

She tracked the fifth suspect down at his work in a store
specialising in selling security equipment in the Western Suburbs of Sydney.  According
to the case notes she had lifted from Sergeant Soward’s desk, he had been a
suspect, the main suspect, because he had been arrested for drunk driving just twelve
kilometres from where the accident had occurred and only ten minutes after the
time of the accident.  The car he had been driving was a 4wd.  It was a neat
fit.  He had been visited and questioned the day after the accident and his car
was checked, but his tyre treads hadn’t matched those found at the crime scene. 
He had also denied that he was had driven along the road in question at the
time of the accident and without any hard evidence, the investigating officer
had not been able to pursue the suspect any further.

Kylie entered the shop and browsed through its
merchandise while surreptitiously studying the faces of the staff working
there.  She discounted the short, solid, dark haired assistant who was
completing a transaction with a customer and focused on another who had his
back to her as he stocked shelves.  She watched him from a distance and waited
patiently, hoping.  He turned his head to the side as he answered a question
from his co-worker and Kylie audibly gasped as she saw his face, the face from
her dream.  Older now, less carefree, more creased, but the same unmistakable
face nonetheless.  A mixture of emotions assailed her.  Her hands started to
shake and beads of perspiration erupted on her forehead.  She wanted to
confront him and scream at him for the parents he had taken from her.  She
wanted to tell him about the years of hell he had put her through and the
nightmares and the pain she had suffered.  But her rage was soon replaced by a
cold and bitter anger and as she walked away, her anger focalised into one
small hard point, with one thought repeating itself in her mind.  Justice.

Kylie pondered her next move.  As she still had no tangible
evidence that this man was responsible for initiating the accident that killed
her parents she thought it unlikely that Sergeant Soward would show any further
interest in reopening the case.  He had made his position quite clear to her.  She
considered buying a gun and extracting natural justice with her own hands and
although the thought held some attraction, she decided that a quick and easy death
would not be sufficient punishment for him and would not result in justice
being served.  She calculated that he owed her thirty years of life for each of
her parents.  To this debt she added her own suffering at the hands of Lester
and the years of trauma that followed.  At that stage, she wasn’t sure how she
was going to extract this debt from him.

His name was Craig Thoms. 

On the drive back to HQ Nelson again played the case
through his mind, weighing each piece of information he could recall and tried
to fit them together.  The loose ends taunted him, but their only effect was to
make his resolve stronger and his urgency greater to tie them up neatly and
solve the case.  He decided his next move would be to put Kylie Faulkner’s and
Jennifer Nolan’s lives under the microscope and work out what the connection
between them and Emilio Fogliani was.  He knew there was a link, but the form
and nature of it eluded him for the time being.  Once he had found the link he
would bring Jennifer Nolan in for another interview, with her damn solicitor
and she would not be let off as lightly as she had been today.

He parked his car and entered the building.  He impatiently
ignored the perennially slow arriving elevators and bounded up through the
stairwell.  By the time he reached the eighth floor he was breathing heavily.  He
was pleased to see Robards working at his desk as he had half a dozen things
lined up for him to do.  Nelson reversed his chair towards Robards’ desk.

“I’ve got some news,” he said in between gradually
quietening breaths.

“Me too,” replied Robards evenly.  “But you go first.”

Nelson told him how his morning had panned out.  He
described his meeting with the retired Sergeant Soward and how they had
discussed the car accident that left the parents of a young girl named Kylie
Faulkner dead.  He told him that Craig Thoms had been one of the main suspects
at the time but was never charged through lack of evidence.

“Is this the car accident we talked about yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know you were that interested in it.”

“I wasn’t.  But I am now.”  Nelson told Robards that he
had gone to the address at Woollahra that Robards had given him for Kylie
Faulkner and had been confronted by none other than Jennifer Nolan.  Nelson briefly
skimmed over his discussion with her because he felt embarrassed to admit that
he had been slow to regain his composure and that he’d had the door slammed in
his face.

Robards listened quietly to Nelson’s speedy recitation of
events and although he was surprised and mildly intrigued at the discovery of a
possible connection between Jennifer Nolan and the car accident from fifteen
years ago he was not fully infected with Nelson’s enthusiasm.  It did little to
sway him from his own theories, which to him, seemed to have a much stronger foundation
than Nelson’s flights of fancy. 

“This afternoon I want to find out everything we can
about Kylie Faulkner and what the connection is with her and Jennifer Nolan.  I
know there’s something there, I can feel it.  We just have to dig down and
unearth it.”

Robards leaned back lazily in his chair.  His arms were
folded and his chin rested on his chest.  Nelson realised that in his own
excitement he hadn’t noticed that Robards’ body language was all wrong. 

“What’s up?  You’re not still angry about our disagreement
last night are you?”

“Na, that’s water under the bridge as far as I’m
concerned,” replied Robards good naturedly.

“Well, what is it then?  Here am I thinking we’re just
about to bust this case wide open and you’re sitting there as if your best
friend nailed your missus and she told you he was much better at it than you,”
said Nelson.  

Robards managed a smile.  “That’s unlikely.”

“Well what’s the problem then?”

“The problem is that as of now, the case is closed.” 

“What?  What are you talking about?” 

“Well, after I gave you the address for Kylie Faulkner
this morning, VanMerle and I were ordered up to Crighton’s office where I was
asked to give an update on the case.  I told him where we were at and that we
were still chasing up some loose ends but Crighton would have none of it.  He
said that it looked like we had enough on Thoms to convict him three times over
and that if there wasn’t an obvious underworld connection then there’s no point
in spending weeks looking at it as there’s a huge backlog of cases.  He ordered
us to close the case.”

“I don’t believe this,” said an incredulous Nelson.

“Look, if it’s any consolation, Crighton said to pass on
his thanks to you for doing such an excellent job in arresting the suspect so
quickly.”

Robards watched Nelson as he took the news in.  He forced
himself to stifle a smile as patches of red coloured Nelson’s cheeks and neck. 
Although Robards’ description of the discussion with VanMerle and Crighton was
reasonably accurate, he had omitted the part where he had provided his own full
and frank opinion on the case and Craig Thoms’ guilt.  You lose Nelson.

Based on Robards’ summary of the case, Crighton and
VanMerle had been equally convinced that Craig Thoms was good for the
conviction and that there was no more work to be done on the case.  Nelson sat silently
with mouth slightly agape while he processed the information. 

“That’s just crazy.  We’ve only just begun to look hard
at this one.”

“I told them they should speak to you first but Crighton was
pretty adamant.  Sorry Nelson.  I tried to call you but your phone was off.  They’ve
already issued a press release saying that the investigation has been finalised.”

“You’re kidding?  Already?”  Nelson got up and kicked his
chair away.  He began to pace back and forth and massage his forehead.

“Yep.  VanMerle said he’d speak to you about it when you
got back to the office.  I think he’s out to lunch at the moment.”  Robards
handed Nelson a copy of the Press Release which he read carefully before
screwing it up and tossing it at the bin, only to see it rim out.

“This is bullshit!  We just need a couple more days.”

Robards decided to get all the bad news out of the way
while he was at it. 

“And VanMerle’s already dumped a new case on us.  Some bigshot
property developer was knocked off in his home in Potts Point this morning.  The
Kings Cross LAC boys say they’ve got their hands full investigating half a
dozen deaths from drug overdoses during the last couple of days and have asked
for assistance.  Bovis is working up a profile on the deceased for us.  VanMerle
said we should head out to the crime scene asap and close out the Fogliani case
paperwork in our spare time.”

Nelson’s anger hit the rev limiter.  He wanted to mindlessly
lash out at something but forced himself to calm down.  In some ways he was
surprised that he hadn’t foreseen this.  Sydney was the sort of city that kept
Homicide Detectives busy and he knew that VanMerle’s in-tray was always full.  He
realised he should have spent more time buying time from the likes of VanMerle
and Crighton instead of leaving it up to Robards while he chased down leads.

He wordlessly returned to his desk and thought about what
it all meant for the Fogliani case.  He understood that VanMerle would expect
them to work the new case full time.  At best, they would only be able to
continue working the Emilio Fogliani case on a very limited basis.  There would
be precious little time for chasing down leads in between, or around the other
cases that would become their priority.  They had done it before, but Nelson
knew it was a poor substitute for working a case full time.