Chapter Eighteen
Judith went into the station and took the lift up to the tenth floor.
It was quiet in the squad room, and she was too preoccupied to do more than nod a brief hello to the few officers who were there.
She went straight to her desk, pulled a notebook out of her drawer, and started to write.
Her thoughts always seemed to solidify and clarify when she had a pen in her hand.
She quickly jotted down the key facts in bullet points. Alexis Turner’s allegations, lies and disappearance. The video, sent to Chloe the influencer, and to Vanessa Walker, which according to Vanessa was a fake. Walker’s murder. The gun in Jack Miller’s hands.
Judith tapped her pen on her notepad, thinking.
She turned on her computer and logged in to the Robert Walker murder file.
She turned to the transcript of Miller’s interview with Rocky and Lucy and confirmed what she already knew.
Jack had said that the gun had been sent to him, ‘wrapped up with that red velvet bow, and that weird arse letter’.
And Vanessa had received a ‘beautifully wrapped box’ with her name on it, and a letter too.
Judith searched the evidence section of the Robert Walker file until she found it—a scanned copy of the letter that Jack Miller claimed had been sent to him with the gun.
The writing was familiar. It mirrored exactly the writing used in the note left on Robert Walker’s desk, the note that had said Judith Lee did this. What the hell?
Judith copied the words of Jack Miller’s letter down on her notebook, and wrote the words from Vanessa’s letter directly underneath.
He’s still here, sometimes, but he doesn’t want to be.
I tried to get help. That was a huge mistake.
Judith tried, but she couldn’t extract much meaning from the letters.
She ran an internet search, on the off-chance that they were quotes from something, but got nothing except Reddit posts about break-ups.
She’d talk to Rocky in the morning, tell him about Vanessa’s letter and the USB.
See what evidence could be gleaned from both.
Jack Miller’s letter had been handwritten.
If the handwriting in both letters was the same then surely that meant Jack was telling the truth.
Someone . . . that elusive someone . . .
was trying to set him up for Walker’s murder.
Except, no. The letters didn’t prove Jack’s innocence. Jack could have sent the letter and the USB to Vanessa Walker. He could have written the second letter found in his apartment himself, intending to send it to someone else.
Judith got up and went to the coffee machine, thinking, thinking all the way. When she got back to her desk, she went through the Robert Walker file again, looking for anything she could find on Miriam Hall.
There wasn’t much about Miriam in the file.
Rocky had looked into her death as part of the larger investigation into Jack, and discovered quickly that she’d been a suicide.
Lucy Phillips had thought to search through Robert Walker’s patient records looking for links to Jack, and she’d hit the jackpot when she found Miriam’s name.
Judith had to acknowledge that that had been good work.
Lucy Phillips had also requested the Coroner’s report, but she hadn’t gone much further than that, or if she had, she hadn’t yet recorded her work on the file.
Judith found Miriam’s date of birth on the Walker file, and ran a search for her in the wider LEAP environment.
She found nothing other than the short event history noting Miriam’s suicide.
She’d died at twenty years old, leaving behind a ten-month-old little boy, Cameron.
No criminal record. Had she expected to find one?
She couldn’t remember if she’d taken the time to look Miriam up on the system, ten years before. She didn’t think she had.
Judith stood up. She brought her half-drunk coffee to the kitchenette, dumped it in the sink, and set about making another.
She didn’t want another coffee, but she needed to move her body.
She was missing something. It nagged at her, an itch at the back of her brain that she just couldn’t scratch.
She brought the coffee back to her desk, took out her phone, and checked the list of foster kids that Katy had given her.
Three names from the bottom of the list she saw a name that made the skin prickle at the back of her neck. She called her friend.
‘Jude? You okay?’ There was noise in the background of the call. The kids were arguing.
‘Yes. I’m fine. Sorry. Have you got a minute?’
The noise faded as Katy moved to another room. ‘I’m here. You okay? You made it home?’
‘I’m at the station. Look, this list you gave me. The Giffords’ foster kids. You said you left off some names, right?’
‘Well, I didn’t include the kids who’d already died, because you said you were looking for someone who could have taken the guns.’
‘Right. That’s right. But you said . . . I’m pretty sure you said that one of them died by suicide.’
There was a short pause. ‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘Would her name have been Miriam Hall?’
‘I’m not sure. Let me check.’
There was a painfully long wait while Katy made her way to her home office and logged on to her laptop. While she waited Judith tried not to clench her phone too tight, tried not to pace. She was so close to an answer, she could almost feel it in her hands.
‘Yes,’ Katy said eventually. ‘That’s right.’
‘On the list you gave me, there’s a girl named Ruth Hall. Is she any relation?’
‘Uh . . .’ There was the sound of a keyboard clacking. ‘Yes, that’s right. Ruth was five years younger than her sister. She was fifteen when Miriam died.’
Judith wanted to punch the air. ‘Thanks. Thanks, Katy.’
‘What does it mean? Did Ruth take the guns?’
Judith ignored the question. ‘What else can you tell me about Miriam and Ruth?’ she asked instead. ‘Can you send over their files?’
‘Not without a formal request and approval I can’t,’ said Katy. But Judith heard the sound of a keyboard clacking again in the background, followed by a surprised, ‘Oh.’
‘What is it?’
‘The files are sealed. They’re under restricted access.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that I can’t open either record. Only a director can authorise release of these files. You’ll have to send in the formal request, and you’ll have to be able to back up your request with some good reasons, or you won’t get them.’
Judith had had reason to request child protection files a number of times over her career. She’d never come across a restricted file before. ‘Do you know why the files are locked down?’
‘I told you, I can’t see anything about them other than their names. But it’s very unusual. I think it only happens if the child is in witness protection, or if there’s a court suppression order.’
Witness protection. Bloody hell. ‘In what circumstances would there be a court suppression order?’
‘I don’t know, Jude. But . . . I suppose . . . you remember that fire last year? The mother and three of the four children died, only the fourteen-year-old survived?’
‘Yes.’ The mother had been suspected of setting the fire deliberately. It had been a big story.
‘Yeah, well the press wouldn’t leave the child alone.
Not just the press. Those true-crime podcasters were the worst. In the end the girl had to change her name and the department got a suppression order for her file.
No one under director level can find out what she’s called today or where she’s living. ’
‘Right. So you think it could be something like that? That Ruth and Miriam might have come from some kind of traumatic background?’
‘I don’t know, Jude. You’re the detective. But yeah, maybe. That, or like I said, witness protection.’ Katy sounded tired, a little stressed. Judith wanted to reach through the phone and give her a hug.
‘Katy?’
‘Mmm?’
‘You know I love you.’
‘Oh, get lost.’
‘You’re the best.’
‘Right.’ But Katy was smiling. Judith could hear it in her voice.
‘The absolute best.’ Judith started to sing, botched lyrics and notes that were broadly reminiscent of the theme from The Karate Kid.
‘I’m hanging up now,’ Katy said.
* * *
It was after ten when Judith left the station.
The shitty scooter was still at her apartment, so she picked up a sixpack of beer and got a cab home.
She ordered a Thai green curry and took it to the couch with a beer for company and the TV on for background noise.
Food done, she put the plate in the sink, then returned to the couch with a second beer and her laptop in hand.
She was tired. Her ribs were aching. She’d take some painkillers before she went to bed, but not just yet.
She pulled the blanket across her knees and settled in to do some research.
If Ruth and Miriam Hall had been in the witness protection program when they went into foster care, the only way Judith could confirm that would be to file an information request with the Witness Protection Unit.
Rocky would have to review the request and approve it, and it would have to go through two to three layers of sign-off before she got any information back.
If, on the other hand, they’d just been two kids caught up in some horror, then surely there should be some trace of that on the general internet.
Judith pulled up the list of Gifford foster kids that Katy had given her.
It told her that Ruth Hall had first gone to live with the Giffords in 2007.
She’d start there. She didn’t have Ruth’s date of birth, but she had Miriam’s from the Walker murder file.
Miriam Hall would have been about twelve or thirteen years old in 2007.
She ran a search:
Twelve-year-old 2007 Victoria Melbourne foster
She got a bunch of results—some hits for websites about foster care in Victoria generally, and a hit for a twelve-year-old ‘senior’ dog who’d been fostered by a family just before his time at a shelter ran out.