Twice she'd gone to her large stainless steel refrigerator and rested her head against the cool exterior, her fingers on the freezer's handle.
'Open it,' the white-eyed girl had called inside her head. 'Make it stop. Please.'
Jill knew that if she'd opened the freezer at that point she would have remained standing there barefoot in her underwear until she'd drained the 750ml bottle of vodka that was hidden right at the back. The bottle had been unopened in her freezer for ten years, moving house with her three times. Her sister, Cassie, forced by their father to help her move once, had found the bottle and cracked the seal.
'Well, the night's not a total loss, then,' she'd giggled, holding the bottle aloft, while with her other hand she'd removed a carton of grapefruit juice from the fridge. 'Who'd-a-thought you'd have vodka in the house, sis?' she said, kicking the fridge door shut with her foot.
In one gliding move, Jill had removed the bottle from Cassie's hand, opened the freezer door and returned it, before her sister had even fully registered what was happening. Cassie had looked down at her empty hand.
'Hey!' she'd sounded shaken. 'What was that? Don't do that karate shit on me.' She flicked her hair back from her face. 'God you're weird, Jill. If we're not allowed to drink in your temple, why do you keep that bottle here?'
Jill couldn't explain it, but she knew that if she had one sip of the colourless liquid, her carefully maintained world would slide into the abyss. She wouldn't be able to stop herself a second time.
Now, sitting in the foam at the edge of the ocean, Jill wiped her surf-wet hands across her face, tasting salt. She'd had little sleep, but she had a lot to do today and needed to get going. She stripped to her bikini and ignored the surfers' calls as she strode out into the waves, letting the fizzing water wake her fully.
Twenty minutes later, she jogged out of the water, smiling. 'I'm just not seeing it, J. I really don't see how she could've killed three men. Not like that, anyway.' Scotty and Jill were on their way to speak with the last group of parents who could have had an interest in seeing David Carter dead – the last group they were aware of, anyway. 'I mean, that MO is not really the way that women kill men.'
Jill sighed and stared ahead, eyes on the road. Scotty had voiced her own doubts about Mercy being involved in the murders. She took one hand from the wheel and rubbed at some skin peeling from her sunburnt nose. She knew that female serial murderers were rare, and that those who existed usually used poison or a firearm.
'I know. I know that. But, Scotty, the three deaths have got to be connected, and she's linked in some way to all three,' she said. 'And to be honest, no, I don't really think she killed them, but there's something really odd about her lately, you know? She seems… well, a bit cracked.'
Scotty turned sideways to view Jill's tanned profile. Her white-blonde hair looked tousled, not as in place as usual. He took in her set jaw and the cold sore on her lower lip. He turned his eyes back to the road when he caught his own face staring back at him through the mirrored lenses of her aviator sunglasses.
'What?' she asked, voice flat.
'Nothing,' he said, and then paused. 'It's just that you're looking a bit tightly wound yourself lately. You're not sleeping well again, are you?'
Silence from the driver's seat.
'Are you eating, Jill?'
She focused on the road.
'Right. Well. Anyway,' said Scotty, giving up, looking down at some notes in a folder on his lap. 'Let's go through what we know about these cases. If we're going to convince Andreessen that they're connected, we're going to have to find more to go on.
'Okay – George Manzi, AKA George Marks,' he continued, 'found in a car with another guy on Elizabeth Bay Road at the back of the Cross.'
'The other guy they found with him – do they know his name yet?' Jill asked, changing lanes to take the right turn that led to Bondi Junction.
'Yep. Jamaal Mahmoud, found unconscious in the back seat, single blow to the back of the head. He's still recovering – they've got him in the Brain Injury Unit over at Prince of Wales.' 'What'd you say his name was?' A bubble of recognition floated up from the tangle of thoughts in Jill's mind. 'Mahmoud. Jamaal Mahmoud.'
'Jamaal…'
'Yep. A hooker found them last Sunday morning. Manzi was in the driver's seat, but he wasn't doing much driving when he died.' Scotty read from the notes in his lap – he had an updated version of the file Jill had read a couple of days ago. 'His pants were round his ankles. You reckon he was getting serviced by the killer?'
'Mmm. Maybe, but what would Mahmoud have been doing?'
'Watching? Waiting for his turn? Who knows?'
Jill was distracted. Where had she heard that name?
'Harris and Jardine found no sign that entry to the vehicle had been forced, or even that they'd fought the attacker off,' Scotty told her. 'They've guessed that Manzi and Mahmoud let the killer into the car with them. Also says here that Mahmoud was probably drugged. Hospital tests found Special K in his system, but too much of it for just a night on the town. It could've been an accidental OD, but they reckon that amount would've knocked anyone out.'
This information was new to Jill. The man in the back seat had not yet been identified when she'd read the file. So maybe the killer had drugged Mahmoud. Why? It would make sense to wait for the drug to take effect on the man in the back seat before striking – it would be difficult to fight two men off within the confines of a car. Eight holes had been punched through Manzi's skull with a claw hammer, the left side of his temple caving in completely; the killer would have been covered in blood and brains. The killer had then struck the man in the back seat. This awkward position, or a passer-by, had probably saved his life. He'd been hit just once.
A car horn sounded behind them, and Jill noticed that the lights were green. She accelerated forward.
'Jamaal!' she exclaimed, suddenly remembering. 'What if it's the same Jamaal?'
Earlier that morning she had briefly told Scotty about her visit with Honey. He'd asked first thing about the girl who'd come in to report a rape. Half the squad room – the male half – had told him about her. Now Jill filled him in a little more on Honey's past, telling him about Mr Sebastian and his driver Jamaal and their private parties in Auburn.
'We gotta turn left back there, Jill – where are you going? I told you I should've driven.'
Jill cursed and pulled into a driveway. She'd have to do a U-turn.
She decided that tomorrow she was going to see Honey. It couldn't hurt to take her on a visit to the Prince of Wales Hospital, check out the patients in the Brain Injury Unit. Jill shaved her legs in the bath that evening. She knew she was too thin, but she felt vaguely pleased with the muscles of her thighs, stomach, arms. At least her body felt strong. She rested her head against the back of the bath, let the steam relax her. Interviewing the Kaplans that afternoon had been awful.
The glare of the late summer day had respectfully kept its distance from verdant Woollahra. Red brick and sandstone mansions rested sedately in the shade of huge Moreton Bay fig trees. Jill had removed her sunglasses at the last moment when they made their way up the flower-lined path of the Kaplans' three-storey home.
Carly Kaplan was eight, and captain of her softball team, when she begged her mother for horse-riding lessons at Centennial Park. Her parents, Marie and William, gave in quickly, using the two hours each Sunday morning to take a walk and have coffee in the park while their daughter rode, under the instruction of a man who'd advertised in an Eastern Suburbs community newspaper. When Carly had wanted to quit the lessons five weeks later, however, William had put his foot down.