Night Realm (8 page)

Marks nodded grimly, not sharing the joke. “I think I’ve gathered that much. Estimated time of death?”

“Not sure until an autopsy is done, but a rough estimate would be at least a couple of days.”

“Cause of death? Anything obvious?”

Chris shook his head. “Again, not certain. There are no signs of bullet
wounds or stab wounds. No bruising around the throat or crushing of the wind pipe to suggest strangulation or asphyxiation. She doesn’t appear to have any broken bones. No major bruising. Really doesn’t look like she put up a struggle at all.” He glanced at the body, then back at the detective. “We did find something really odd, though. Come here and take a look at this. See what you make of it.”

Marks followed him over and knelt down beside the poor girl. She only looked young, maybe late teens or early twenties at the most
. What a waste of life, he thought as he fingered his goatee again.

“Look here,” Chris said and pointed at the throat on the left hand side. “See these two puncture wounds crusted over with blood? Have you seen anything like that before? I certainly haven’t.”

Marks shrugged. “Could they be insect bites? Or a snake bite?”

“I’m not about to completely rule it out, but I don’t think so.
We’ve taken some swabs of them, and the autopsy should tell all of us a lot more than what we can determine on site here.”

Marks eyed the naked form, his eyes resting
for a brief moment on her completely shaved vagina. “Was she sexually assaulted?”

“We did find traces of semen in the vaginal cavity and on the quilt, but that doesn’t prove she was raped. She may have had consensual sex just prior to the murder, most likely with the perpetrator himself. We’ve taken swabs and put a rush on DNA profiling. He might show up in the system somewhere.”

“Hopefully. It’ll sure make my job a lot easier.” Marks rose to his full height of five feet, nine. “Bag her up,” he said.

Two other SOCOs placed the corpse carefully into a body bag and zipped it up.
The bag was then placed on a trolley and wheeled up to a waiting van that belonged to the government contracted funeral director, who would then transport it to the mortuary. Another pair of forensic team members stuffed the pink quilt into a large black plastic bag and labeled it.

“You know,” Chris mused, “she may not have been murdered. Could have been an accidental death. The guy
has sex with her. Somehow she dies. Heart attack, maybe. The guy panics, wraps her up and dumps her body.”

“
I guess it’s possible,” Marks said, though not convinced. “If it was accidental, why not just call it in? Why go to all this trouble of dumping her and later having to explain if caught? It doesn’t really make sense.”

“Well, one thing I’m sure about,” Chris said. “She wasn’t killed he
re. She was murdered some place else and her body dumped here.”

“Yeah, but where?” Marks
watched as the body was loaded into the back of the van. Some members of the press and a news crew were just arriving on scene. “Any identification?” he asked Chris. “Do we know who she is?”

One of the uniformed officers overheard and
came up to Detective Marks. “I might have a lead on that,” he said. “A missing person’s call that came in last night.”

Detective David Marks was at the Gold Coast morgue in Southport, awaiting the arrival of Sean and Stacey Simms; the dead girl’s probable parents. They were due in any minute to formally identify the body.

He paced up and down the
chilly corridor that ran off the waiting area. They always kept these places at a constant temperature of about 20° or 21° Celsius.

Body identification
had to be one of the most unpleasant parts of police work and he couldn’t wait to get it over and done with.

Marks checked his watch. They should
arrive shortly.

His mobile phone beeped, telling him he’d received an SMS. When he checked it, he saw that it was from his wife, asking him what time he might be home this evening.

He wrote back.:
I don’t know.

Things weren’t the best at home for him at the moment. A wedge had driven distance between himself and his wife of late, and maybe the chasm was just too wide to traverse? His case load had been heavy these past six months, and now this new murder
investigation on top of everything else.

A separation and possible divorce may soon be on the cards.

He already had the SOCOs around at the Simms residence in Riverstone Crossing, meticulously going over the house, and particularly Amanda’s bedroom. If this body was indeed that of Amanda Simms, then it was highly likely her death happened in her bedroom.

When Stacey and Sean Simms arrived they were ashen-faced, eyes glazed and disbelieving. They hadn’t yet viewed the body, but it was obvious to Marks that they already knew the truth and expected the worst.

Marks signaled an attendant dressed in a white lab coat and wearing glasses with thick black frames. The man entered the door that led into the holding room. Marks guided Mr and Mrs Simms over to a window that allowed them to see into the room. They watched as the attendant opened a door to what looked a lot like a cold room. In that large chamber the temperature was sub-zero, about -15° Celsius. It was used to store bodies that had yet to be identified. The attendant emerged a moment later wheeling out a trolley with a sheet-covered corpse on it. Beside him, Marks felt Stacey Simms stiffen when she saw it.

The trolley was wheeled over to the window. The attendant looked at Detective Marks. He looked at Mr and Mrs Simms.

“Are you ready?” he asked softly.

They both silently nodded.

The sheet was pulled back to reveal the face.

Stacey gasped and collapsed into her husband’s arms. Sean just stared, mesmerized. He appeared frozen with shock. Ever so slowly he peeled his eyes away from the scene beyond the window and turned his head towards the detective.

“That’s Amanda,” he stated flatly.

Marks nodded to the attendant, who then covered the body back up and quickly wheeled it away.

Marks took a deep breath and sighed. “The Coroner wants an autopsy performed to determine the cause of death, among other things.”

“So you don’t know how she was killed?” Sean asked, his eyes red, verging on tears. Bravely he held them back for now. His arms were still wrapped tightly around his distraught wife.

“No. We don’t,” Marks answered. “The autopsy will tell us more.”

“So, you’re not even sure she was murdered?”

“The fact that her body was dumped in bush land strongly suggests she was. I’m sorry, Mr and Mrs Simms.”

Marks let them console each other for a few minutes in the waiting area, giving them a chance to come to terms with their loss to some small degree.

Bleary-eyed and sniffling back tears, Stacey asked the detective, “When can we make arrangements?”

“Her body will likely be released as soon as the autopsy is complete.”

“Likely be released?” Sean repeated. “What exactly does that mean?”

“She should be released as soon as the post mortem is finalized. However, there is the slight chance that we may need to retain the body for longer in the event that we need to gather more evidence. But that shouldn’t be the case,” he added quickly.

Mrs Simms asked, “When will the autopsy be conducted?”

“It’s scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock.”

“Can we be there?”

Marks shook his head. “That’s really not an option
, Mrs Simms. Trust me, you don’t want to be there.”

“She’s going to be mutilated, isn’t she,” she stated, bitterness coating her tongue.

“I assure you your daughter’s remains will be treated with the highest degree of respect. Only procedures absolutely necessary to determine exact cause of death will be carried out. She will in no way be mutilated.”

Sean looked convinced but Stacey didn’t look so sure.

“I really need you to accompany me down to the station to answer a few questions. I can drive you there and drop you back to your car when we’re done.” Stacey and Sean glanced at one another. “I really wouldn’t be asking you to do this right now if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. We need to catch her killer and I need some background on your daughter to be able to do that.”

*  *  *

“How old was your daughter?” Marks asked.

Sean Answered, “She’d just turned twenty a few weeks ago.”

They were sitting in an interview room back at the precinct. This wasn’t a formal interrogation, just preliminary questions to obtain some background on the victim. A coffee rested on the table in front of Sean. Stacey had only wanted water. Marks had opted for black tea. He had his digital recorder on the table and set to
Record
.

“Was she seeing anyone? A love interest? Did she have a boyfriend? Girlfriend?”

“You mean, was she gay?” Stacey looked incredulous. “Amanda
was not
a lesbian.”

Marks held up his hands in a gesture of supplication. “In this day and age I’ve gotta ask things like that.”

“She didn’t have a partner that I know of,” Sean said. “But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t seeing someone without our knowledge.”

“Was it common for her to have friends come over to the house?”

Sean said, “Sometimes.”

“Men?”

“Male friends, yes.”

“Lovers?”

Stacey shook her head. “Our daughter never had sex in the family home. I’m not saying she wasn’t sexually active. Hell, she was twenty.”

“Not to our knowledge,” Sean added.
He stared hard into the detective’s eyes. “Do you think some guy who was keen on Amanda may have killed her?”

Marks shrugged. “It’s a distinct possibility. Maybe he was a jilted lover? Or someone who fancied her but she didn’t feel the same way? Many murders are crimes of passion, and with most murders, the perpetrator is known to the victim. We have to look at all possibilities.”

“Are we suspects?” Stacey asked pointedly.

Marks hesitated before answer
ing. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table and tenting his hands. “When a murder first occurs, virtually everyone known to the victim starts out as a person of interest. It’s a process of elimination. So, where exactly were you two when Amanda disappeared?”

“We were on the Sunshine Coast at a health spa
, from Friday afternoon until Monday,” it was Stacey who answered.

“Can that be verified?”

Sean said, “Absolutely.”

“Okay. Leave me details of the place and I’ll look into it.”

“Detective, this is all wasting time,” Stacey said. “You really need to speak to Amanda’s friend, Rebecca. They were out together on Saturday night and Rebecca saw her leave the night club with some guy.”

Marks sat back with a sigh. He scratched at his goatee. “Well, I wish I was told this a little sooner.”

Stacey shook her head, tears welling in her eyes again. “I’m sorry. With everything that’s happened, and seeing our daughter lying there dead on that table...” Her voice trailed off.

“It momentarily slipped our minds,” Sean explained. “We did mention it to the officer who took our missing person’s report last night.
”

A reprimand for him, Marks thought and leaned forward on the desk again. “Did this Rebecca know the guy? Was it someone either she or Amanda were familiar with?”

Stacey shook her head and wiped her eyes. “I don’t think so, but you need to talk to her.”

After a few more questions and issuing them each with a business card, Marks sent them on their way and arranged for a uniformed officer to locate Rebecca Winston and have her brought into the station to make a statement.

As it turned out she’d never seen the young man before, and she was pretty certain Amanda had only met him for the very first time that night.

Deeply distressed over her best friend’s death, Rebecca was taken before a forensic artist, who utilized a computer program to form a fairly accurate rendition of the possible offender. Copies were printed off and distributed in hardcopy, by fax and by email to staff in all stations in the local precinct and beyond. An APB was put out on the suspect.

Marks kept several copies for himself and decided tonight was a good night to do some night clubbing. He sent his wife a text saying he didn’t have a clue what time he’d be home and not to wait up for him.

Ryan was busy searching the apartment for a cigarette when there was a knock on the door. He opened it to find Chelsea’s friend standing there in her school uniform.

“How did you get up here?” he asked, knowing full well he had to let her in after she’d buzzed the intercom.

Emma shrugged easily. “Someone else was coming in at the same time.”