The Monster's Daughter (61 page)

Mathebe broke away at the exit. Alet eased up on the petrol when she saw Mathebe tapping his brake lights, realizing that she was almost bumper-to-bumper with him at 120 kilometers per hour. Green hills morphed into dry savannah the farther inland they went. The traffic was ungodly on the two-lane highway, and it took them nearly three hours to get to the Joubertina city limits. Captain Groenewald met them at the station. A Sergeant Mazingane was to escort Alet to the crime scene and walk her through the pointing-out. Mathebe stayed behind to interview Ngwenya.

“I can't go with, you understand?” Groenewald's tone was apologetic. “There can be no question of me leading a witness, or being anything but impartial in this case.” Alet nodded. It was standard procedure. The investigating officer could be nowhere near the pointing-out, in case he was accused of intimidation. The whole case could fall apart in court.

Mazingane pulled over at the rest stop where the Bravermans had been killed. Alet stopped behind the police van. Two other officers were present—to observe, they said.

“Will you please show us where you stopped your car, Constable Berg?” Mazingane was draped in an air of new authority. At first glance, he looked a little like a young Mathebe, but he wasn't nearly as careful with his words and actions, his manner verging on insolence every time he addressed her.

“Over here.” Alet walked about thirty meters past the rest stop's concrete benches and planted herself in the spot. She looked back at the crime scene: Mazingane writing on his pad, the frowns on the faces of the other two. Everything looked mundane, even innocent, the terror of that evening scrubbed away by the clear day. Around them lay miles of flat dry farmland, the highway trilling with car horns as traffic slowed down as soon as they saw the parked police cars.

“What did you do once you exited your vehicle?”

Alet closed her eyes briefly, remembering the sequence of events. “I called to the woman on the ground.”

“It was dark. How could you see her?”

“Before. In my headlights.” Alet pointed to Mazingane's feet. “About there.”

“What exactly did you say, Constable Berg?”

“I think I asked if she was okay.”

“You think?”

“I did.”

“Walk us through what happened next.” Mazingane motioned her over.

“I knelt next to her. I tried to stop the bleeding.”

“She was alive.”

“
Ja
. I heard something behind me. Then Ngwenya hit me.”

“Show me.”

“I was here.” Alet crouched down. “He caught me here.” She touched the right side of her face. “I turned. He knocked me down.” Alet fell back, simulating what happened. Something sparked in her memory. She tried to grab on to it, but Mazingane interrupted.

“Then?”

“I fired a shot. He ran to my car.”

Mazingane looked over at the other two officers, a knowing look passing between them. Alet took a deep breath. She hated their judging expressions.

“You fired again, correct?”

“Twice.”

“You were aiming at the fugitive.”

Alet bit the inside of her cheek. “I couldn't see him.”

Pop. Pop. The sound of the gunshots reverberated in her mind. Pop. Ngwenya running, the car starting. Pop. Pop. Two shots, drowning another noise. Alet replayed the memory. Pop. Pop. She looked back at the picnic table, the patch of trees farther down the road where they discovered Mr. Braverman's body. She had been focused on Ngwenya. Her face was throbbing, the taste of blood. Pop. Pop.

“There was somebody else here.”

“Mr. Braverman?”

“No. I heard a noise.”

“What noise?”

“I think there was a car by those trees there. It drove away when I fired.”

Mazingane glared at her. “This was not in your statement.”

“I was trying to stop the suspect. I didn't remember it till now.”

“Didn't remember it, or made it up?”

Alet locked eyes with Mazingane. “There was another car here, hidden behind the trees. I think it was the Bravermans' car. The baby must have been in the back. Don't you see?” She took a few steps toward the trees. “Ngwenya's buddies killed Mr. Braverman over there by the car. Mrs. Braverman tried to run, but Ngwenya caught up to her and killed her here. When I stopped, Ngwenya hid behind the picnic table. He must have thought he could deal with me too, but he didn't plan on me having a gun. The others abandoned him when they heard the shots.” Mazingane showed no reaction. She went on. “Look, Captain Groenewald said there was another set of tracks. Was it by those trees?”

Mazingane didn't look up from his notepad. “Anyone can use this rest stop. We have no evidence except your new testimony that those tracks were left at the same time that the Bravermans were killed.”

“There should have been forensic evidence of more than one attacker. If you processed the scene properly.” Alet turned her palms up when Mazingane didn't respond. “Well?”

Mazingane's mouth curled up in one corner. “There was,” he said.

Unie was languid in the afternoon heat. Alet stopped at the grocery store. There was no food at the flat and she was starving. She scoured the shelves, settling on a loaf of bread, a tin of apricot jam, a six-pack of Black Labels and a hand full of Wilson Toffees. She handed the toffees out to the little ones hanging around outside. When she looked up, Mynhardt was leaning against her car, which was parked halfway down the block.

Alet walked over, dreading what was coming. “Captain?”

“You are supposed to be on holiday.”

“
Ja
, I … I had the pointing-out this morning, so I thought I'd stop at home.”

“Your dad said you are planning on leaving for good.” Mynhardt didn't take his eyes off her. “Is that so?”

Alet felt a stubbornness rise in her. “I don't know, Captain. I don't always have to do what my dad says, you know?” Mynhardt nodded to someone behind her. She turned to see Strijdom at the store's entrance. “Is there a problem?”

Mynhardt stepped close enough that she could smell his breath. She turned her head away. He grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into the flesh. Alet thought about hitting him with the six-pack, but it would be a waste of beer.

“I'd listen if I were you,” Mynhardt said.

“Is that a threat, Captain?” Alet defiantly met his eyes.

“Make of it what you want, my girl.” Mynhardt let go of her arm. He knocked her groceries out of her hand like a spiteful child and walked away.

Strijdom followed, a wry smile on his face. “Watch it,” he said as he walked past her. He ran his hand over his brush cut, scanning the street to see if anyone was watching.

“Fokkers,”
Alet muttered under her breath as she picked up her bag, her anger seething at the thought that either of them called himself police. More like uniformed gangsters. If Wexler wouldn't testify, she had to find another way to prove they were dirty.

Mathebe knocked on her flat's door around four o'clock. “There is rain coming,” he said when she opened the door for him. Alet sniffed the air, realizing that she had forgotten what rain smelled like. She left the door open and made room for him among the folders and photographs laid out all over her couch. Mathebe's eyes darted over the disarray. Alet put her half-drunk beer back in the fridge.

“Coffee?”

Mathebe held up his hand in reply. “I cannot stay long. The captain asked me to come in for overtime.”

“How did it go with Ngwenya?”

“He knows he can be reached in jail if he talks. Captain Groenewald is trying to make a deal with his lawyer. Protection and a more lenient sentence if he testifies against the men who killed Mr. Braverman.”

Alet hated the thought that Ngwenya might get off easy. “Will it work?”

“I do not know. He fears for his life.”

“We need to find Skosana. I'll go talk to Magda Kok again. See if she knows anything.”

“I will go with,” Mathebe said resolutely. “Have you found out anything more about Mrs. Pienaar's movements the day she was killed? How she ended up on the farm?”

“Not much. She was in the garden that morning around seven. Tilly said she phoned Trudie around eleven when she started prepping for lunch at the guesthouse. Trudie had found out what Tilly had done for Wexler.” Alet opened her notepad to a sheet of paper with her initial timeline. “We don't know anything about what she did after that, but the neighbor down the street saw her going for her daily walk around six. Sometime after that she must have driven to the Terblanche farm and was murdered between midnight and two a.m.”

“Could she perhaps have gone to confront Mrs. Terblanche?”

“If that was the case, why didn't she go to the house? Her car was discovered kilometers away. I've taken that route up the back side of the mountain, Johannes. It's a difficult climb in broad daylight, never mind at night when it's pitch black.”

“It was her farm.”

“Tilly said she hadn't set foot there in years.”

“Miss Pienaar might not be aware of everything her mother did.”

Alet nodded. There was a lot that Trudie had kept hidden from Tilly. “There's something else that's bothering me, Johannes. That guy who attacked me in Koch's office?”

“Yes?”

“Well, it always looks so easy to strangle someone on TV, but have you ever tried it? This guy put everything he had into it and I still managed to stop him. I mean, we know this Ben could hold down Wexler, a big guy, without effort. It should have been easy for him to take care of me.”

“It was not him?”

Alet shook her head. “Hand me that pile?”

Mathebe picked up a stack of folders next to him on the couch. Alet plopped down on the ground and spread the autopsy reports from each file in front of her.

“
Ja
. See?” Alet handed Mathebe the first report. “Says here there were finger marks on the victim's neck. This one too. And this one.”

“These are the earlier victims. The later victims were completely incinerated.”

“But all of them had cracked hyoid bones, so we know they were strangled first. Wait.” Alet rifled through to the bottom of the pile. “Here. This is one of the later victims, part of the Angel Killer investigation.” She scanned the report, then pulled out a copy of the file she'd found in Koch's safe. “
Ja
. Liezl Brits. Koch made a case study for his book. Hyoid bone cracked. He found subcutaneous bruising in the shape of fingers.” Alet put the files down. “I'll go through all of these, but I bet you that's how our bloke gets off. Skin on skin. He burns the bodies purely to get rid of evidence. A practicality. Or maybe it's some kind of ritual, I don't know. But the real high is the strangulation. That's his reason for killing. In his mind he was probably strangling Trudie like that, over and over, until he found her. They were practice runs for his sick fantasy.”

Mathebe's features distorted in concentration. “Then I believe we have a problem, Constable.”

“What's that?”

Mathebe removed Trudie Pienaar's autopsy report from the pile, his eyes narrowing to droopy slits as he studied it. He looked up at Alet. “Dr. Koch's autopsy report states that the hyoid bone was broken, not cracked.”

“
Ja
, Koch said …” Alet suddenly realized what Mathebe was referring to. It was a clean break. It would have been almost impossible to do that with bare hands. Trudie's killer had used a garrote.

Alet sorted through case evidence long after Mathebe left, a newly opened cold beer within reach. Why did Ben change his MO? Why use a garrote on Trudie if he had killed all the other girls with his bare hands? Perhaps he had been injured somehow, a broken arm or something that made business as usual difficult? Would a super-strong killer who lived three times as long experience the same muscle deterioration as a normal aging human? She reached for her phone.

“You've reached Professor Engelman. Please leave a number and a brief message.”

Alet disconnected the call before the beep. She had left a message already. Messages. Mike Engelman hadn't shown up in Unie, which worried her. In light of what had happened to Koch, nobody connected to this investigation was safe.

Alet pored through Trudie's stack of documents. There were report cards, a high school certificate, all in Theresa Morgan's name. There was a marriage certificate in Lilly Maartens's née Kritzinger's name, and ID books and birth certificates in all three of the aliases. There were love letters between Lilly and her husband, most of them written when he was away, helping people when their family members were arrested by the police. He sometimes hinted at giving up, his despair clear, but Tessa always urged him on, begged him to do what she couldn't. Alet's discomfort grew as she read on, feeling as if she was violating Trudie's life, but she had to make sure that there wasn't anything here that could lead her to the killer. The names on all of the documents matched up to the aliases she already knew Trudie had used, except one, the deed to a
plot
in Bloemfontein. It was registered to Theresa De Beer. Alet stared at the name. It hadn't shown up anywhere else.

The gas needle hovered on the right side of half after Alet turned the key in the ignition of her Toyota. Enough to get her where she needed to go. She dialed Theo's number as she pulled into the street. “I think I might have a last name, Theo. De Beer. Can you run Ben De Beer through Tempe records and see what you get?”

“Hold on,” Theo said. “Let me check the list I have.” The sound of typing filled the silence. Alet remembered Theo's fingers gliding over the keyboard, barely touching it, his broad shoulders hunched ever so slightly forward as he squinted at the screen. “Got a Benjamin De Beer here, discharged from Tempe military base in 1948 because of medical reasons. Only did basic service.”