Chapter Twenty-One
First thing on Wednesday morning, Judith made her way to Rocky’s office. She knocked on the open door.
‘Do you have a minute?’
‘I do.’ He gestured for her to close the door behind her.
‘I think I might know who she is.’ Judith said.
‘You think you might know who who is?’
‘Alexis Turner. She gave me a false name and address. She gave Walker a fake student number. She emailed me from a burner email address. I’ve been trying to track her down for days and I’ve got nowhere.’
Rocky leaned back in his chair. ‘And now you think you’ve found her?’
‘Yes. Well, no. But I have a theory. I think she might be Miriam Hall’s little sister, Ruth. And I think Miriam and Ruth Hall might once have been Margaux and Renée Palmer.’
Rocky was frowning.
‘Charlie Palmer’s daughters.’
Rocky’s frown deepened.
‘Charlie Palmer was—’
‘I know who Palmer is. Was. I worked the case.’
It was Judith’s turn to be surprised. It took her a moment to respond.
‘Did you meet Margaux?’
He shook his head. Leaned back in his chair. ‘I was working out of Anglesea Station. We were called in the next day. Everyone was, for crowd control and to search the beach for evidence. By the time I got there Anita’s body had already been found, and the girls had been taken away to the hospital.’
‘There were rumours that Harrison—’
‘The rumours were true,’ Rocky said. ‘Harrison was an arsehole. Everyone in a fifty-mile radius knew that he was one of Palmer’s best buddies. And they didn’t bond over fishing or footy.’
‘The girls?’ Judith said.
Rocky gave a short nod. ‘Palmer slept with anything that moved. The younger the better. Harrison wasn’t much better.’
‘So Palmer had a lot of girlfriends? Not just the girls who disappeared?’
‘All of the women who disappeared looked a little alike. They were all small, dark-haired. They all looked a little like Palmer’s wife, when she was younger. We searched every inch of that house, every inch of the coastline, and we found nothing. What makes you think Miriam was once Margaux?’
Judith took a seat opposite Rocky. She explained about the foster records, about the sealed files.
Rocky gave her all of his attention. ‘I’m not sure it matters whether or not the Hall girls were Palmer’s kids.
It seems to me that the key information here is that Miriam Hall once lived with the Giffords.
She must have known about Gifford’s guns.
She could have told Jack about them. She might even have brought Jack to the house, to visit her old foster parents. ’
‘It’s possible. I’ll have to ask them. But Ruth Hall also lived in the house.’ There was a notepad and pen on Rocky’s desk. She reached for both. ‘May I?’
He nodded for her to go ahead.
Carefully, she wrote out the note received by Vanessa Walker, and the note received by Jack Miller.
I tried to get help, but that was a huge mistake.
He’s still here, sometimes, but he doesn’t want to be.
‘Look at this.’ She pointed at the first note.
‘We know Miriam Hall went to Robert Walker for help with her depression.’ Inwardly Judith cringed.
She still hadn’t told Rocky the truth about that encounter and she wasn’t sure she was going to.
She pointed at the second note. ‘And in his interview with you, Jack said that he was the one who let Miriam down, that he didn’t help her in her depression, that he stopped coming home. ’
Rocky stared back at her blankly.
‘Don’t you think these read like notes from Miriam? She tried to get help . . . Jack doesn’t want to be there . . .’ She let her voice trail off. Rocky looked bemused.
‘I mean, it’s possible. These notes could mean ten different things, or nothing. But what you’re saying is that you think that Miriam Hall’s little sister came to you, calling herself Alexis Turner, claiming to have been assaulted by Walker? Ten years after her sister’s death? Why?’
‘For revenge. It’s not so different from your theory that Jack Miller killed Walker for not saving Miriam.
My theory—if I’m right and Alexis really is Ruth Hall—is that she wanted revenge on Robert Walker, wanted to destroy his life before she killed him, and then pin the blame on Jack for not being a better partner to her sister. ’
‘Well, yeah. But I figured Miller was triggered by the reporting of the assault allegations. Whereas your theory is that this young woman Alexis, or Ruth, whatever we’re calling her, that she started the allegations in the first place, that she kicked all of this off.
And then you think what, that she stole the gun from the Giffords, and killed Walker?
You think Jack Miller is entirely innocent? ’
‘It’s possible.’
‘What age would she be now?’
‘Twenty-five.’
Rocky grimaced.
‘What? You don’t think a twenty-five-year-old woman could kill one man and set another one up?
’ Judith believed she could do it. She was building up an image of Ruth Hall in her mind and that image was of someone dangerous.
Someone who could put together a complicated and utterly brutal plan and then carry that plan out without hesitation or misstep.
‘No, Jude, that’s not what I’m saying,’ Rocky said, with slightly exaggerated patience.
‘I’ve been a cop longer than you have, remember?
But it’s a lot . . . Seems to me it’s equally likely—more likely—that they’re working together.
We just got the blood results back. The stain on Miller’s shirt is definitely Walker’s blood.
The dirt in his boots has traces of fertiliser used in Walker’s garden.
Right now, every concrete piece of evidence we have points to Jack Miller. ’
‘How secure is Jack Miller’s place?’
‘Not secure at all,’ Rocky said. ‘It’s a converted garage at the back of his landlady’s place. Looks like everything was done on the cheap.’
‘Well then. Ruth could have planted the bloody shirt. If I’m right about the kind of person she is, if she’s going to set someone up, she’s not going to do it by half measures.’
They stared at each other, neither one of them willing to back down.
‘I need to talk to Jack Miller,’ Judith said. She braced herself for an argument.
‘This isn’t your case, Jude.’
‘It’s connected with my case, I’m sure of it.’
‘Your case is over and done with. Your suspect is dead.’
Judith took a breath. ‘Rocky, I promise you, every instinct I’ve got is telling me that there’s something deeper going on here.
I’m asking you to trust me. Give me a little bit of room to work.
Let me prove to you that I’m right. Because if I’m right, Jack Miller is innocent.
We can’t take a risk with that. We need to be sure. ’
Rocky thought about it for a long moment, his eyes on her face, then he nodded briskly.
‘All right, Jude. Let’s see what you can find.
Confirm the basics of your theory first, and try and track down Ruth Hall.
You can start by sending me that file request. I don’t know if your theory about Ruth and Miriam being Charlie Palmer’s kids will hold water, or if it even matters, but we’d better run it to ground. ’
She moved to the door, then paused. ‘Any news on Luke Fraser?’
He shook his head, his face grave.
‘There was nothing about him in the papers today,’ she said.
‘No. But it’s coming. No doubt about it.’
‘So . . . what?’ There was something bothering him. He’d been so upbeat the last time they’d spoken. Something had changed.
He grimaced. ‘I thought that there’d be more rumblings, that’s all. In the building. So far it’s been very quiet. And that bothers me.’
Judith digested this. Quiet was deliberate.
Quiet meant someone was in control. So maybe Alex Thompson hadn’t known where Eddie Fraser’s skeletons were buried.
Luke Fraser—and Thompson—would go down, but Eddie would survive to fight another day.
Judith’s eyes met Rocky’s. He looked worried.
She didn’t like that. She gave him her best shit-eating grin.
‘Fuck it, Rocks. It’s keeping things interesting.’
* * *
Jude filed her request for Miriam and Ruth Hall’s child protection files, and then she left the station.
It took forty minutes to drive to the Giffords’ house in Lilydale.
She didn’t call to let them know she was coming.
There was no answer to the doorbell when she rang it, but when she walked around to the back, she found Steve Gifford dozing in a hanging chair on the porch, and his wife just coming out of the greenhouse.
Alison had a small basket on her left arm, half-full of raspberries, and she carried another filled with spinach and carrots and two brown onions.
‘Oh hello,’ she said. ‘Back so soon.’
‘I have a few more questions, if you have some time.’
They sat on the porch. Steve Gifford woke up and went inside, reappearing a few minutes later with a jug of water and some glasses.
‘Make some coffee, Steve, will you?’ Alison asked. ‘And bring out the cake.’
It took Steve ten minutes to return with coffee and cake, and Alison filled the time by pointing out to Judith which parts of the garden were thriving and which were struggling in the winter.
Alison Gifford gave the impression that she would have been quite happy to spend the rest of the day like that.
Sitting on the wide porch, a blanket across her knees, appreciating the view of the garden and the hills beyond.
Steve Gifford was a little more wary. When he served the coffee, his eyes kept returning to Judith’s face.
He knew she hadn’t come back for a social visit. Judith took out her notebook.
‘I have here a list of the children you fostered over the years,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you about one in particular.’
‘Our kids were all great kids,’ Alison said.
Judith nodded. She put her phone on the table, opened it to Katy’s list, then turned her phone and slid it across so that Alison and Steve could see the screen. She pointed to the name.