Chapter Eleven #3
Judith closed her eyes and opened them again.
She had a moment of intense disorientation, a brief dislocation of reality as she saw a flashback of the shooting of Robert Walker from her dream, when hers had been the hand holding the gun.
She felt dizzy, and reached out to grab the back of a chair to steady herself.
She had to pull herself together.
She took a breath and grounded herself by comparing the scene in front of her with her dream.
In her dream, it had been dark. Now it was daytime, and light was streaming in through the window.
The position of the body was different. In her dream, Walker had slumped to the right.
In reality, he’d fallen to the left. There was blood, an enormous quantity of it, but the pattern was again very different.
The blood had soaked through Walker’s shirt, and a thick, viscous pool had formed on the ground around him.
There were splatters against the wall of his study, and more on the bookshelves.
Judith shook off memories of her dream, and thought instead of Lachlan Walker, who’d had to find his father.
Poor kid. This scene would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Would he dream about it? Would he too have a nightmare that followed him?
Then her eyes fell on the desk, where a notebook lay open. Written across the top sheet of the notebook, in flowing calligraphy, was a single sentence.
Judith Lee did this.
The words hit her like a punch to the gut.
Who had written this? Walker? One last, shitty act of revenge before he killed himself?
To place the blame for his death at her door?
Judith’s eyes darted around the desk. There was a second notebook.
She flipped it open. It was filled with notes, pages and pages of writing, and the handwriting was all jagged, uneven loops, very different from the measured, careful calligraphy of the note.
Which meant that someone other than Walker had written the note.
Before, or after Walker had killed himself? After, surely. It had to have been.
There were footsteps coming from the hall. Judith hesitated. With that note, and Walker’s family angry and grieving and looking for someone to blame, Eddie Fraser really could threaten her career.
No. Not going to happen.
She reached out and then ripped off the top few pages of the notebook.
She had just shoved them into the pocket of her jeans when Rocky Jansen entered the room.
He was head of the Homicide Squad, but he didn’t come to every scene.
Had he come for her, because he too saw trouble for her in this death?
‘Jude,’ Rocky said. ‘You can’t be in here.’
‘I know. I’m going.’ But she didn’t move.
The note was in her pocket. Was it too late to put it back? It was, of course it was. Even Rocky couldn’t turn a blind eye to Judith interfering with evidence.
‘The family is outside. They’re blaming you for this.’
‘I know, I spoke to them.’ She shouldn’t have taken the note. It had been a stupid impulse.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Rocky said. ‘Walker did this because he was caught, that’s all, but your situation with Eddie .
. . we have to manage this carefully.’ Rocky sounded exhausted.
He suddenly looked like an old man who wasn’t sure he had it in him for the fight that was coming.
‘Look, it’s best if you go home. You’re not on today anyway.
I’ll have to call Sawhill. With that complaint on the record and now this, she might put you on leave pending investigation.
I’ll try to make sure that doesn’t happen, but I might not be able to stop it if Eddie gets involved. ’
Judith had stepped behind the desk so she could look at Walker more carefully.
From the looks of things he’d put the gun to the side of his head.
The worst of the splatters were on the bookshelves to his left; a mess of blood and brain matter.
Walker’s right hand rested in his lap. His left dangled towards the ground.
His mobile phone was nowhere to be seen, but there was a closed laptop on the desk, and the two notebooks.
Could he have written the note? Changed his handwriting for some reason, then picked up his gun?
It was all so strange. She hadn’t read him as a suicide risk.
He was too arrogant for that. Too sure that his money and his power made him immune to consequences. She leaned down to look under the desk.
‘Vanessa Walker’s a powerful woman, Judith,’ Rocky said. ‘There’s already been a complaint. They’re going to want all of this looked into. Your handling of the case, all of it. You need to get out of here right now. You coming into the scene, that’s going to make things ten times worse.’
‘I know.’ Judith straightened up. Her eyes scanned the room.
From outside, they heard voices and footsteps approaching.
‘Leave,’ Rocky said. ‘Right now Jude.’
Judith didn’t move. ‘I’m going, Rock. Right now. But before I do, I have one teeny tiny little question.’
He stared down at her.
‘I’m just wondering, you see. If Robert Walker killed himself, all because of pressure from little old me . . . if this is a suicide . . . I’m just wondering . . . where’s the fucking gun?’