The slide switched to that of Jodie Davis’s bruised chest. Magnified, two additional perpendicular marks were visible midway along the bruise.
Meira Sorrenti sat forward. “What sort of knife are we looking at?”
“Melanie Havelock described a narrow blade, but can’t remember anything else.” With the laser-pointer, Anya directed attention to a small mark at the edge of the bruise, just above the covered nipple line. Even higher was a fainter impression that could easily have been missed. “This is made by part of the handle. My guess is the attacker put pressure on the woman’s chest with the knife held flat, but moved the handle during that time, which left the two marks you can see.”
Hayden Richards stopped taking notes. “It doesn’t fit with a kitchen knife. The handle’s too wide.”
“I agree. What’s interesting is that the blade itself isn’t very long, only about three inches.”
Meira stood and looked closer at the screen. “Could be a switchblade.”
Detective Constable Abbott put his hands behind his head. “If it is, tracking it’ll be almost impossible. There’s a huge black market and chasing Internet sellers takes a lot more manpower and computer expertise than we’ve got.”
He looked across the briefing room at the analyst, who shook her head at the thought.
A gentle knock on the door caught their attention.
Hayden stood and shook hands with the adult Harry Potter lookalike. “This is Doctor Quentin Lagardia. He’s a profiler. Some of you already know him. For those who don’t, he’s got a PhD in abnormal psychology and has put together some profiles for SA units around the country.”
Meira remained standing and folded her arms. “We have a detective in this building who is trained in profiling.”
“Yes, but Doctor Lagardia is here at the request of the Local Area Commander due to the media’s propensity to jump on serial cases.”
Quentin repositioned his glasses and cleared his throat. A mild hand tremor disappeared when he unzipped his jacket and opened his briefcase at the table.
Hayden quickly introduced the profiler to everyone in the room.
“Doctor Crichton was about to discuss the pattern of injuries the two victims sustained.”
Anya drew two body outlines on the whiteboard and marked the areas in which each of the three women suffered injuries. Melanie Havelock and Jodie Davis were named, but Louise Richardson was labelled Victim One to protect her privacy.
“A fourth woman, Gloria Havelock-Melanie’s mother-was raped by two men a year ago, but only one of the injuries matched, so we’ll leave her out for now. The others all had trauma to the left sides of their faces from a hit. With the knife mark on the left side of the chests, he holds the knife in his right hand but must swap it to punch with that hand when he thinks they’ve looked at him. Jodie Davies had a swollen jaw even though he pulled her jumper over her face early in the assault. She didn’t see him at all.”
“He’s right-handed. Was her bra pushed up or cut?” Quentin Lagardia inquired.
“Intact and pushed up.”
The profiler nodded and scribbled on his papers. “What about the others?”
“Havelock and Davis reported the same thing. I can’t be sure about Victim One.”
“Can you tell me anything about Victim One and her assault?”
“She’s a professional who works later than normal business hours, and who worked in the same area the other attacks have taken place. She’s my height, a bit heavier and has brown shoulder-length hair.” Anya referred to the intelligence statement she’d written. “She had on a blue skirt and a white shirt, nothing revealing. She’s a little hunched due to a scoliosis-curvature of the spine-so doesn’t look her full height, I suppose.”
Meira sounded impatient. “Did she see anything that can identify the man? Do we know if he looked familiar, did he have a car? Anything you can give us that will actually help?”
“This is helping. The detail is crucial,” Hayden said. “May I suggest we make the most of the resources we have with us today.”
Meira shot him an angry stare. “Then let’s ask the locals. Did you find anyone last night? Any information from the canvass?”
DC Abbott cleared his throat. “The door-knock of the area didn’t yield much. No one even knew the family, and had no idea what cars they drove. It’s a problem with automatic garages. No one knows the regular comings and goings of the neighbors. They did manage to remember who owned the most expensive house in the area.”
“Who lived there before?” Quentin asked. “Maybe Jodie wasn’t the original target.”
“A widower and his four sons.”
Hayden stood and paced. “I want to go over all offenses within a ten-kilometer radius that might have been misrecorded: bag snatches, robberies, muggings. It’s possible he was interrupted and the incidents were never reported as an assault. We may have to reinterview the complainants, to see if he threatened them with sexual assault, or if he fits the description we’ve already got.”
The analyst took copious notes. “I’ll get right on it.”
“I’ve asked Anya to fill in any details she can on Victim One. Given the fact that she won’t come forward and speak to us, we need to know as much as possible about her.”
“What about the rape kit she had done? Can that be tested anonymously?” Abbott asked.
“No,” Meira snapped. “Not unless she gives us permission, and that means making a statement.”
“Yeah, but if it’s anonymous, even if the evidence links the same offender with the other victims, it gives us a pattern and strengthens the brief we’ll give to the prosecutors.”
Anya understood his logic, but it wasn’t that simple. “The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has made it very clear that it can’t use anonymous samples in evidence. I’ve been trying to get them to accept coded samples, but there’s debate as to whether that still betrays a victim’s confidence. Especially since a code has to be able to be traced back to the victim. It’s a chain-of-evidence concern that opens up a legal can of worms.”
Abbott thought for a moment. “Then why don’t you just encourage the women to give false names? Who are we to know if the woman isn’t who she says? That way she might feel safe enough to give a statement.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Meira said with a wry smile.
For the first time, Anya felt she was on the same wavelength as the taskforce leader.
“Victim One wanted her kit destroyed and we had to comply with that request. There’s no evidence left.”
Meira threw a pen across the desk in front of her.
Hayden scratched his moustache. “Any suspects so far?”
Abbott spoke with less confidence. “The local boys pulled over a guy last night. Twenty-eight-year-old Caucasian. Five foot nine, solid. Had a porno mag in the car and had a dark cap, sunglasses. He was abusive, uncooperative and lives near the station.”
Hayden walked to the whiteboard and wrote down the details. “Put him down as a person of interest. Anyone else?”
“Geoffrey Willard,” Meira announced. “Released three weeks ago from Long Bay. Did twenty years for the rape and stabbing murder of a fourteen-year-old girl. He’s 1.7 meters, weighs about 80 kilograms.”
“He did a runner a few nights ago when a pack of locals found out where he lived,” Hayden said. “We want him under surveillance when we find him.”
“Haven’t the women described their attacker as taller and heavier than that?” Abbott ventured.
Quentin shifted in his seat. “Often people overestimate the size of their assailant. It’s understandable given they’ve been overpowered and don’t have the normal perspective.”
But eye-witnesses still swayed courts. Anya had been to one of Hayden’s talks in which a man in sports gear ran into the lecture theater, held a prop gun to Hayden’s head and took his wallet before fleeing. From the theater full of detectives, descriptions varied from a five-foot-tall white man to a six-foot-tall dark, swarthy-looking man of Middle Eastern appearance. An hour later, the supposed thief returned to the theater and took his place in the front row. No one recognized him in a suit. That proved a great lesson to Anya. Eye-witnesses were notoriously unreliable.
“But bear in mind,” Anya said, “that women being assaulted often notice tiny details about their attacker. They are close to them for a relatively long period of time. Their senses also seemed to be heightened, they notice smells, sounds, things that other victims don’t.”
“Exactly,” Hayden said. “That’s why I’d like to reinterview the two victims who’ve already made statements. The statements are in no way detailed enough.”
Meira seemed to take that personally, but it probably wasn’t intended that way. Hayden was a perfectionist and asked far more questions than any other investigator. It meant he also got more answers.
“Let’s talk about the profile,” he added, sitting down.
Quentin handed out some typed pages.
“From the statements, and especially his saying about hurt and love, this guy sounds like a classic power-reassurance rapist. He commits sexual assaults to assert power over victims, which reassures him of his masculinity. He often doesn’t do well socially and lacks confidence sexually, especially with women. Generally, he’ll use minimal force to subdue his victims, although this guy lashes out when he thinks he’s been seen. If he carries a knife, he doesn’t intend to use it. It’s more for the power and effect it has. He also uses surprise as a weapon.”
“Which is why he lurks around stations and car parks,” Meira said.
“Actually, no. I believe this man carefully chooses his victims. Often this kind of rapist stalks the women in advance. He knows their routine and pounces when the best opportunity arises.”
“If you rule out Gloria Havelock’s attackers, the rapes may still be opportunistic,” Meira argued. “The one in the car park and the Havelock girl coming home from the station. Even the woman putting out her garbage could have been bad timing on her part.”
“Not necessarily. I think you have to consider the fact that this man knew the victims’ movements in advance.”
“What about the saying he comes out with?” Hayden seemed even more interested than the others.
“That’s quite predictable,” answered Quentin. “What we call pseudo-unselfish behavior. He thinks that if he shows some kind of concern, he isn’t such a bad guy. He’s telling himself that he’s actually doing something good for these women. In the past he would have been called the ‘gentleman rapist.’”
“Don’t reckon that’s in the Queensberry Rules,” Abbott quipped.
“He’s a gentleman in the sense that he doesn’t go out of his way to humiliate and denigrate his victims.”
“Any more than raping them at knife-point does,” Meira responded.
Quentin didn’t react this time. “He also fantasizes that the woman is a willing participant and will try to act out his fantasies, especially if she doesn’t resist. Like the Havelock girl; he’ll spend a fair amount of time, even taking a break to go and eat a meal before assaulting her again. He’s playing the role of the partner.”
Hayden drew a timeline on the whiteboard. “How much time do we have before he attacks again?”
“Not long. This guy is all about ego and self-esteem. He needs to keep raping because his ego can’t handle not being boosted. I’d suggest monitoring his victims for a couple of weeks after the assaults, because he may like to have some sort of contact with them. Either bump into them in the shops, phone them, or watch them. He won’t stop until he’s arrested.”
“And that’s the good news?”
“Kind of. Bad news is that if his assaults don’t live up to the fantasies he’s built up, he could get frustrated. In that case, the violence in the attacks will escalate, particularly if someone resists. He could easily end up killing future victims.”
The room went quiet. A knock on the door interrupted the silence. A woman in plain clothes entered the room with a pile of handouts.
Hayden thanked her and handed out questionnaires that each victim needed to answer. The detectives groaned.
“Do you know how much time this is going to take? Couldn’t a psychologist do this instead?” Abbott complained. “We could be chasing up leads like the one the local boys pulled over.”
Hayden disagreed. “If he’s not our man, we’ll have wasted a lot of time. The more we know about the victims, the better. We need to put out a general press release. Anya, I’ll leave it to you to contact the mystery woman-Victim One. It’ll be less worrying coming from you, and it’ll give you a chance to interview your mystery victim.”
Anya looked at the list. The woman who had brought the questionnaires said that she had driven past the Davis home this morning. The place was for sale, and there was no sign of the family. Through the window she noticed the furniture had gone. When questioned, neighbors didn’t know where they were, though someone thought they might have left for an overseas holiday.
It was common for assault victims to move within months of the attack and not to let the police know where they’d gone. If the family had disappeared that quickly, it didn’t sound as though Jodie Davis really wanted to be found. She must have panicked about staying in the house. And who could blame her after moving so recently? Physical evidence did not mean much if the victim refused to testify.
“If we can’t find her, all we’ve got now is Melanie Havelock,” Meira said. “Let’s get to work. From the sounds of it, we need to move her to a safe place as soon as possible.”
Abbott stood. “I’ll pay her a visit and arrange for uniforms to keep an eye on her as well.”
As they left the meeting, Hayden spoke quietly to Anya.
“You need to be careful when you interview Victim One. Anything you say can be cross-examined in court. Tread carefully; don’t give a defense lawyer anything that’ll weaken the victim’s evidence. Don’t coach her, ask leading questions or put words in her mouth. If you do, the case could go belly up in court and this bastard will have got away with it.”
Great, no pressure, Anya thought. She looked down the list of points to cover. Most made sense, like the physical characteristics, friends, enemies, work history. Then there was “marital reputation?” What the hell did that mean? Personal demographics were straightforward: education level, intelligence, previous residences. Touching on psychosexual history was understandable, but Anya wished someone else would do it. Any information could be used as a weapon in character assassination of the victim. A victim’s arrest record had little to do with the assault, in her experience. Again, it made a jury see the victim as some kind of evil being, and somehow deserving of assault.
Outside the building, on the steps, Hayden explained, “Things are pretty tense in there. Sorrenti’s new to the job and feels undermined by my presence. Don’t take it personally.”
“I didn’t.”
They descended the stairs, Hayden a little short of breath. “I need you to ask the pharmacist some more specific questions. About the assault.”
The pair waited for a marked car to exit the underground police car park.
“Even if I track her down, we don’t know if this woman will agree to see me, let alone be quizzed on every aspect of her attack.”
“I know. An unofficial statement is the best chance we have right now. The more we have on how this guy behaves during the attacks, the better the chance of catching him sooner. He may have given something important away, in the way he spoke, what he said, what he didn’t say. If he changed attitude during the assault, and what, if anything, provoked him. Did he oblige when she begged him to stop, or did it make him more aggressive?”
“You’re asking a lot. This could compromise the sexual assault service if the Department of Health finds out. I’m crossing the line from patient advocate to police interrogator.”
“Every doctor has a duty of care regarding public health. Any information you collect is as important as tracing sources for transmissible diseases. This guy is a disease, and he’s spreading sickness fast.”
They crossed the road at the next corner, careful to avoid a grease patch.
“There’s no way I’ll push her. She’s fragile enough. If she says no, that’s it.”
“Agreed.” The detective began to puff again as they picked up the pace. “I also need to know whether he took anything belonging to her. Anything at all, or could he have taken it before the assault?”
Anya stopped and waited. Hayden pulled a folded sheet from his jacket with another list of questions. Catching his breath, he said, “I’m counting on you. Anything that seems insignificant could turn out to be vital.”