The following morning, Ben was up at his usual six o’clock and Anya struggled to adjust to the early start. Seeing him every second weekend made her want to make up for lost time, but trying to cram two weeks into two days was at times almost too intense for both of them. She constantly tried to find the right balance and treat Ben like he was with her all the time.
The gentle knock on the front door made her flatten her hair with her hands and grab a windcheater from the lounge room to cover her pajamas.
Standing on the doorstep was a weary-looking Peter Latham.
“It’s early, but I was on a walk and saw your lights on.”
Never a fan of exercise, Peter maintained his ideal weight by skipping meals, usually unintentionally.
“We’re up,” she said, hugging him. “Come on in.”
For a moment, Peter looked uncomfortable until he saw Ben run from the kitchen and launch himself into his godfather’s arms.
“How’s my favorite little man?” he said, dropping to one knee. He was one of the few people who got down to Ben’s level to hug.
“The way you looked around when you came in-don’t tell me you thought I was entertaining a man?” Anya teased, unsure whether she should be flattered or insulted. “I’m doing microwaved scrambled eggs if you’d like to join us.”
“I’d love to, but only if I’m not interrupting. I know how precious your time is together.”
“Please stay, Peter,” Ben said. “I can show you how to do a noisy trick.” He released the hug and ran his hand under his shirt, cupping it under his armpit. With a few levers of the other arm, he demonstrated.
“Wow, I was seven before I could do that,” Peter said, laughing.
“With all he can do, he’s proudest of armpit noises,” Anya said, shuffling in her slippers to the kitchen to the strains of Ben’s latest performance trick. In a way, she was proud of his boyish crazes. The thing she feared was having a child who felt socially inept. That was what had crippled her so much in her teenage years. Behaving like a four-year-old was what he was supposed to do, without inhibition.
Whisking eggs, she thought for a moment of Geoff Willard and wondered if his mother had harbored the same fears when her son was a child. She found it difficult to understand the woman’s reaction to the possibility that Geoff might have been innocent, as though the thought had never occurred to her before.
She added a little milk to the glass bowl and put it in the microwave. Two minutes on medium and she’d check it again. Meanwhile, she made the toast. The smell of bread cooking on a Sunday morning made her want to gorge herself. Today was no exception.
In the lounge room, Peter and Ben were competing for the better body trick. Ben could roll his tongue, but the more senior of the two could wiggle his ears, a talent that Ben immediately tried to mimic.
The microwave beeped and Anya stirred the sloppy mixture.
“Couple more minutes and we’ll be ready,” she called to the now silent pair. Wiggling ears took intense concentration. She’d have to remember that if she ever wanted Ben to be quiet for a few minutes.
“Smells yummy.” Ben appeared and sat at the table.
Anya placed knives and forks and dished up the toast and eggs.
Peter had arrived just in time for a large pot of coffee. After the exhausting week, Anya would probably drink it all day. She poured two cups.
Handing Peter two plates, she took the cups and they sat together. “Are you all right?” she asked quietly before flicking to her son. “Careful, Ben, it’s hot.”
“I know,” he answered, blowing on the first mouthful.
Peter sighed. “I saw Alf Carney last night. He’s taken it pretty hard.”
That was hardly surprising, given he had just been deemed incompetent and could even face criminal charges if the police felt he had fabricated evidence.
They ate in silence until Ben had finished. “Thanks, Mum. Can I watch cartoons, please?”
“Of course you can,” she said, and kissed his forehead as he squeezed past.
“What’s Alf planning to do?”
“He’s talking about suing for defamation, but I think he’ll change his mind once he’s cooled off. He’s threatened it before when someone questioned his decisions, but has never followed through.”
Anya wondered if that was how he’d got away with incompetence for so long. Threatening anyone who questioned him with legal action was one way of stopping people challenging him or going public with their concerns. Without open discussion and peer review, incompetence could go unchecked indefinitely.
“How could he have continued working for so long? He must have known that his decisions were way off-base.”
Peter chased a piece of egg around the plate with his fork. “He suffered depression for a very long time. He’s getting help now, but that probably affected some of his decision-making.”
“I’m sorry, but he should have known better. To refuse treatment is irresponsible.”
“It’s not that simple. Insurance companies can deny you income protection and reputations can be ruined if anyone hears about it. A pharmacist recently rang a doctor, to let him know that a GP with depression was working in his practice. The thing was, the sufferer was better on antidepressants than off.”
“Okay, that was inappropriate, but Alf is a different story. His decisions affected so many lives. People could have been falsely imprisoned or acquitted when they were guilty.”
The theme to Looney Tunes sounded from the lounge room.
Anya took the plates to the sink. “What isn’t clear is why he started out being pro-police, conveniently narrowing down time of death to the only time suspects didn’t have alibis. All the cases I reviewed were the complete opposite. He went out of his way to exclude anything other than death by natural causes.”
Peter collected the salt-and-pepper shakers and cups. “He talked about that last night. Seems he was very trusting of the police and then became pretty disillusioned.”
Anya scraped the leftovers into the dustbin and one-third filled the sink. Tight water restrictions due to a statewide drought meant using the dishwasher as little as possible.
Peter picked up a tea-towel and stood next to the draining tray.
“Years ago, he gave an opinion on a series of infant deaths from the one family, attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This was about the time some pathologists, including Alf, started believing that there was no such thing and that every case was murder in disguise.
“A pretty aggressive prosecutor got a conviction for a young mother who’d lost two children, based on Alf’s evidence.” He held up the first plate and let it drip into the sink before wiping. “She’d been in jail about fifteen years when Alf did an autopsy on the woman’s baby niece. Turns out there was a metabolic abnormality that ran through the family. Alf went back and rechecked the specimens on the other babies. They all had the same disorder. An innocent woman had been convicted of murdering her children.”
Anya listened in silence, but knew that with the benefit of hindsight and better technology for testing, there were probably many similar cases from the past.
“Around the same time, Alf’s wife delivered a stillborn and he thought it was a sign from God, punishing him for that woman’s wasted years in jail. That’s when he started exploring alternative medicines and became obsessed with Vitamin C deficiency.”
Anya pulled out the plug. “What happened to the woman?”
“She was released and exonerated, but the husband had left her and she was unable to have any more kids. He’s kept track of her all these years.”
“That is tragic. Reality is that we probably would have all come to the same conclusions at that time. But Alf didn’t help anyone by overcompensating and crippling the police investigations into genuine homicide cases. In some cases more than one child in the family lost its life to abuse. Don’t you think that’s criminal?”
Peter nodded. “I just don’t think anything is that simple any more.”
Anya dried her hands and touched his arm. “Normally I’m the one trying to right all the wrongs and you’re the calming realist.”
“Maybe the student has outgrown the teacher.”
“Never!” She smiled. “I was going to ask your advice about the Willard case.”
Peter folded the tea-towel and hung it over the oven door-handle. “I remember that one from all the publicity.”
Anya put the plates away, banging the cupboard door in haste. “The file’s in my office, if you’d like to take a look.”
They passed Ben, who was lying on his stomach drawing what looked like a truck in his scrapbook, while watching Sylvester try to catch Tweety Bird.
As they entered her office, Brown-Eye stood guard, and stared through his glass eyes.
“What the-”
“It’s going back to its owner tomorrow. Don’t ask,” she said, handing Peter the autopsy reports for Eileen Randall and Liz Dorman. He studied them for a while before speaking.
“There are distinct similarities, but the time of death is most certainly wider than the window defined here. The girl could have died well before, especially if she were floating in the water, which she must have been.” He scanned down further. “A quick immersion wouldn’t have resulted in that many crayfish larvae finding their way into the chest cavity. And the post-mortem wounds are interesting. You don’t often see exploratory wounds like that after a frenzied killing.”
“What if,” Anya said, “someone other than Willard killed that girl on the beach and sexually assaulted her, and he merely pulled the body out of the water?”
“That could explain the smear of blood on his shirt.”
“Don’t we have an obligation to at least check, to right a potential wrong?”
Peter frowned. “I think I taught you far too well.” He ran his eyes over the reports again, scratching his beard. “All right, what would you like me to do?”