Chapter 9 #2
‘She was able to confirm for us what time the lone guy and the young couple came home,’ Dodge said. ‘Without consulting them.’
‘We put it in the maybe pile,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the lone guy. The one who passed Chloe on the stairs at eight p.m.’
‘He’s an electrician. He’s out here for work, doing something with the phone lines.
Or the NBN, I don’t know which. But I’ve got eyes on him basically the whole time he was down here at the pub, because one of the bartenders was mad about him, trying to get up the courage to ask for his phone number.
All three bartender girls made a game of it. ’
‘I still want all his clothes, all his possessions from the duration of his stay. I want the forensics team to hit his room, and the other rooms too. I want their DNA and their criminal histories.’
‘Done.’
I thought for a while, staring at the distant river. Bridie had disappeared from her spot on the sandstone wall. ‘How’d the killer know Chloe was up there on her own?’ I asked. ‘And how’d he know which room was hers?’
‘The simple answer is it’s someone she knows. She texted or called to say she was up there alone, and what room she was in. We’ll know when we have her phone records.’
‘Too easy. What’s the alternative?’
‘He was watching,’ Dodge said. ‘Looking at the lights in the windows, maybe? Seeing which ones are turned on and which ones are off?’
‘Okay, so he finds out which room she’s in from watching.
’ I said. ‘Then what? How does he get to her? When does he do it? He’s gone up there and killed her while there were still people in the beer garden, if Superman Hearing Lady is correct about the murder not occurring after midnight.
Our guy would have had to watch to see who was coming and going on the stairs, so he could be sure the other rooms and the hallway were empty when he went in for the kill.
So, what, he’s sitting there, watching, not even knowing if he’s going to get that moment he’s waiting for, when all the other guests are out and only Chloe is here?
That’s a lot of watching. A lot of hoping.
A lot of time standing around. A man standing alone in the beer garden watching the hotel windows for hours on end?
With nobody noticing that’s what he’s doing? I don’t buy it.’
‘Maybe it was one of the punters. Standing there with his mates. Watching the windows for his moment but sort of … doing it casually.’ Dodge shrugged.
‘And then he comes down covered in her blood? He’d have had back-splatter on his pants legs, at least.’
‘It was dark. Maybe he was wearing dark clothing.’
‘Nope. Not convinced.’
‘So what’s the alternative?’
‘The publican—this Rob character. He’s the one who found her, right? He’d know which room she was in without having to watch, and he wouldn’t have been out of place hanging around the stairwell and the hall and the rooms. Was he here last night? Working?’
‘Yeah.’
‘If we find out in due course that it wasn’t the publican, and it wasn’t a punter, then we’ve got a vantage point problem,’ I said. ‘Because where’s his vantage point? The roadside out there?’ I pointed to the back of the pub, towards the beer garden.
‘I don’t think so.’ Dodge searched the ground at his feet, his eyes restless as they moved over the surrounding landscape in his mind.
‘Past the beer garden there’s the road, and beyond that there’s houses.
Just about everyone in town’s got a dog, including the people in those houses.
He’s not setting up camp to watch from someone’s property without getting barked at. ’
‘What about from the front, here?’
‘Well, you can’t see the hotel room windows from the front of the building. No windows in the hallway.’
‘So where did he watch from, then?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Find out.’
‘I will.’
‘Back to Rob.’
‘Look, sir. I really think that one’s a dead end. It wasn’t him.’
‘Oh.’ I stepped back and appraised Dodge where he stood, which made him flinch. ‘I didn’t realise you were there when the murder happened. Please. Go ahead and stop me from wasting my fucking time, and just tell me who the killer was, Dodge.’
‘Sir’—Dodge put his hands up in surrender—‘I just know Rob Winter. Okay? Everybody does. This is the only pub between here and Wisemans. Rob is a good bloke. We’ve been close since I started in the area, on account of me driving the odd drunk home for him or clearing out the louts.
He’s not someone who’s gone and stabbed a young girl to death. ’
‘Can you do me a favour, Dodge? Can you spare me your completely biased assessments of the criminal potential of everyone in town, please?’ I asked.
‘I’m trying to run an investigation with some integrity here.
You clearly bribed someone to get you through the police academy, but even watching a couple of episodes of Miss Marple would arm you with the knowledge that nine times out of ten when someone’s murdered, the person who found the body is the culprit.
And another nine times out of ten, the kinds of people who stab young women to death do an all-right job of appearing like “good blokes”. ’
‘I’m more of a Law & Order guy,’ Dodge said.
‘If it’s not one of the other guests, or Rob, how’s the killer got past the swipe card access to the rooms?’
‘If you lose your swipe card, you can punch in a code to override the swipe system, and—’
‘—and let me guess. The code is one-two-three-four.’
‘It is.’
I gave a rueful smile. ‘Where’s Chloe’s swipe card?’
‘We haven’t found it yet.’
‘And was she given one when she checked in, or two?’
‘Rob says that unless someone asks for two, he just gives out one per room,’ Dodge said.
‘People lose them all the time. Put them in their bags and take them home. He’s constantly replacing them.
But, you’re right, sir. Rob had access to this upper floor without having to guess the code.
He has his own swipe cards. He’d have known which room was hers.
He also could have been up there, across the landing, past the blue door, where they have the pub’s storage space.
He could have made an excuse to go up, and watched for a while until he saw his chance.
It’s just a short hop across the landing from the blue door to the hotel door.
You could make it in a few seconds, without anyone down in the beer garden noticing you. ’
‘I want his criminal history,’ I said. ‘I also want to call up everyone who’s slept at the hotel in the past six months. Start with the female guests. Get them to tell you about his behaviour.’
‘You got it.’ Dodge gave a little salute, clicked his boot heels and took out his phone to send the necessary commands via text.
I liked all that behaviour. The doing what he was told without asking questions, the salute, the immediate actioning of my directions.
But I sure wasn’t going to let him know it.
One of the officers I’d seen standing around in the beer garden smoking approached us from inside the pub, having come from the counter where patrons ordered food.
The cop was carrying an open laptop on one palm, like a waiter with a tray.
He passed the device to his other hand and put his mitt out to shake mine.
His grip was firm and he was covered in colourful Japanese koi fish tattoos that reached to the very end of each wrist, exactly where policing regulations allowed them to exist and no further.
He was moustached and his name badge read N.
Fry. I dropped eye contact and backed up immediately, because tattoos and moustaches are a few of my favourite things. ‘Sir, glad to meet you,’ he said.
‘This is Nathan Fry.’ Dodge gestured to him. ‘One of my staff from Wisemans.’
‘What is it, Fry?’ I demanded.
‘We’ve identified a couple of key things on the CCTV so far.’ Fry gestured inside, to the bar. Dodge and I followed, me at a distance, staying well back, as the cop set the laptop on the bar runner. ‘Just keeping you updated, detective. We’ve only done a quick sweep through.’
Dodge and I crowded in around the laptop with Fry. Evan was suddenly at my shoulder, which boiled my blood instantly. ‘I told you to get coffee and stay out of my sight!’
‘They’ve got to actually have time to make the coffee, sir.
’ Evan glanced at Dodge and Fry for solidarity, like I was a lunatic who had wandered in from the street and tried robbing the place with a banana in my hand.
‘It’ll be here in a minute. One of the locals is going to round up a marquee for us to put out there. ’
‘We should ask for some of their pistachio croissants.’ Dodge stroked his chin. ‘I bet they’d do a batch up for us. Gotta keep the troops fed.’
‘Would you show me this fucking footage, Fry?’ I said. ‘I haven’t wanted to get out of a bar this badly since the time I stumbled into a speed-dating event run by the Vegans Who Love Jesus.’
Fry pulled up a clip from a selection minimised on the screen.
The image showed an overview of the bar we were standing at, the angle encompassing both the cash register and the space that might be taken up by the first two or three customers waiting to order.
I glanced up at the discreet black dome camera where it was mounted above me and to my left, above some shelves of wine glasses.
I knew from my time as a patrol officer working in Sydney’s Inner West that the camera was in a prime position for capturing sticky-fingered staff, patrons getting into scuffles over their spot in the queue, and those who snapped when they were refused service for being drunk, maybe threw something over the taps at the bar staff.
These were the top three concerns for pub owners, staples of the Saturday night shift.
On one side of the image, a small, fluffy-haired guy was fiddling with the till’s touch screen when a petite woman with a blonde ponytail walked into view.
The woman who must have been Chloe Lutz put her phone on the counter, and the two exchanged a soundless conversation while Rob Winter checked her in.
I watched Rob as carefully as the slightly grainy footage would allow, trying to decide if the publican was looking at Chloe’s face or her breasts or her hands while she fished around in her phone wallet for an ID card.
Fry pointed to the edge of the screen. ‘Check-in at 4.18 p.m., just as Mr Winter stated.’
I didn’t comment. Evan stepped closer, his arms folded, elbow to elbow with me.
The anger at him for existing was like a rock in my throat.
Fry pulled up footage of Chloe edging a small blue hatchback Toyota into a spot beneath a row of camphor laurel and getting out.
‘Here she is parking her car in the assigned space seven minutes later.’
I cocked my head as I watched, looked closely at the bags she was lugging in. A duffel bag, the one I’d seen upturned in her room, slung over one shoulder. There was also a sizeable black handbag tucked under her other arm.
‘Handbag.’ Evan pointed. I ignored him.
‘Here’s Chloe ordering her dinner,’ Fry said, bringing up another video. ‘Time stamp says 8.07 p.m. Lines up with what the electrician told us about when she came down.’
‘Wrong,’ I said. They all looked at me. I kept my eyes on the screen as a lanky figure loomed behind Chloe at the counter.
‘The camera shows us Chloe ordering her dinner at 8.07. Doesn’t do squat for the witness’s account of what time she came down from her room.
For all we know, the electrician’s lying or mistaken, and she came down at six and skipped around the streets picking dandelions for two hours. ’
The men around me considered this. I was hardly aware of them.
The tall, lean man standing behind Chloe was rocking back and forth on his heels almost imperceptibly, his angular arms folded, staring directly down from his considerably greater height at the back of her neck.
A neck that would, only a few hours later, be seized by a hand and used to smash her head into a wall.
Chloe’s ponytail was swishing before the tall man as she talked and pointed to the laminated menu on the bar.
A dark-coloured ball cap obscured the man’s face from the camera.
It swivelled sharply like the beak of a big black bird as Chloe walked away from the bar with her drink.
His gaze seemed to follow her right to the door, causing him to turn 180 degrees to face the staff member at the till.
‘Okay.’ I squinted at the screen. ‘So, who’s the creep?’