Instead, she stood at the door intending to make a couple of calls. The first to Scotty. She smiled and moved into a corner as his voice boomed out of the speaker.
'J!' he yelled enthusiastically. 'Coming back?'
'Yeah. Hi, Scotty. You at work yet?'
'On my way.'
'Could you pick me up from Central in about ten, fifteen?'
'On my way. Meet you at the House,' he said, using cop speak for the police station. 'Had breakfast?'
'No,' she smiled. It was always about food with Scotty. 'I'll shout you to thank you for picking me up. See you then.'
Jill disconnected and then accessed Honey's number on her palm pilot, but reconsidered calling right now. It's nine o'clock on a Monday morning, she reminded herself. Honey would be asleep and not happy, although it'd serve her right for some of the games she'd played with Jill. Anyway, the train was at Redfern and would be pulling into Central any moment. She worked her way through a smoothie for breakfast while
Scotty downed two bacon and egg rolls and a chocolate milk.
'How's your mum?' he wanted to know.
'Great. It was good to get away. She says hi.'
'What about your ribs?'
'Fine. I'm all right. How was your weekend?'
They made small talk back to Maroubra, and as they pulled into the station, Jill told Scotty about her plan to contact Honey later that morning to set up another meeting.
'We going after Sebastian?' he asked.
'Soon.'
They entered the squad room and Emma Gibson caught them at the door. She slinked around a desk and moved to stand under Scotty's chin.
'Andreessen's looking for you.' She blinked up at him. 'You're always late.'
'Thanks Emma,' he said, turning towards the inspector's office.
'And you're always rushing away,' she pouted.
'But I always take my time when it counts,' he smiled down at her.
'Hmm, something to think about.' Emma gave him a half-smile and sashayed away, throwing Jill a satisfied smirk as she passed.
Jill and Scotty exchanged a look. Without saying a word, her eyes exclaimed, Oh for heaven's sake!; his returned innocently, What?
Inspector Andreessen looked tired, as usual. His shirt was already food-stained, and a button was missing. Other buttons threatened to pop at the waistline. There wasn't a cop in the squad who'd say a word about his shirt to his face.
'Jackson. Hutchinson. I want you over at St Vincent's. Davis is going with you. Davis has the case. I only want you there because there seems to be a tie-in with the case you're working.'
'Another bashing?' Jill asked.
'Davis'll fill you in on the way over,' he said, then bellowed, 'Robinson!' looking over Jill's shoulder, calling out to another detective. That was it then.
Charmaine Davis was one of the youngest cops in New South Wales history to make detective. Her father was a barrister, her mother a GP. She'd chosen policing, while her siblings were academics or lawyers. She dealt predominantly with sex crimes, working closely with the victims to good effect; over the past year she'd helped successfully convict four serious offenders.
The three of them took a departmental Commodore to travel over to the hospital. Davis drove. She told them about the case as she manoeuvred through the light traffic.
'She's an eleven-year-old girl,' Davis began, and Jill felt her heart sink immediately. 'She was abducted from Bondi Junction shopping centre on Wednesday two weeks ago. She stopped in on her way home from school. CCTV caught the perp leading her away from the shop, almost carrying her. He'd drugged her Coke – slipped it into the can somehow. She was still holding it as he helped her walk. She showed up two days later, Newtown train station, asleep on a bench. No camera vision this time.'
'I heard about this one,' Scotty grunted.
Jill had too. She just listened.
'Anyway, she remembers pretty much nothing about the two days she was away. Bits and pieces. No names or places. She had different underwear on when she was found. She says she thinks she remembers the perp say he was taking her to a party. Rape kit was positive for semen in her vagina and anus. Physically she was otherwise okay… except her eyes.'
'Her eyes?' asked Jill.
'She was blinded. Some kind of chemical that fucked with her pupils. The doctors aren't sure what was used. She couldn't see more than light and dark when she first came in, but her vision improved over the next couple of days.'
Scotty swore under his breath. He shook his head, eyes dark. Jill's thoughts shouted in her head; she fought to keep her memories down.
'Anyway,' Davis continued, her eyes on the road, 'she's home now. She and her mum are coming in to the hospital today and I'm going to try to get some more from the girl, see if she's remembered anything else, but I doubt we're gonna get anything. These so-called date-rape drugs really fuck up the memory.'
'So they've got no real hope of getting him, then?' asked Scotty.
'Oh, we know who he is,' Davis answered, indicating right to turn their vehicle into an emergency-services bay at the front of the hospital.
Jill and Scotty stared at her.
'It's your perp from the beach. David Carter. Shopping centre cameras got a perfect shot of his face.'
32
Davis had arranged to meet the victim and her mother in an office in the outpatients' department of the hospital. She, Jill and Scotty were perched on classroom-style chairs in the sterile, windowless room. The space was small, and Scotty had had to search the department to scavenge another two chairs for Martha McKenzie and her daughter Madeline. Madeline, the eleven-year-old abduction victim, was having her eyes checked by a nurse in a room nearby.
To distract herself from the airlessness of the room and the fist of dread that had been groping at her stomach since she'd heard the details of this case, Jill focused on the features of her companions. She found that if she used all of her senses to absorb herself in her environment, she could stay out of the basement that was always waiting in her mind.
She started with Charmaine Davis. Mid-heeled black leather ankle boots. Straight-leg navy pants, cut higher than was fashionable last year – a look her cousin Alyssa would say was 'so right now'. A thin black belt looped through her pants and contrasted with the tailored white shirt, casually open just below the neck. Her dark brown hair fell below her collarbone and feathered around her face. Her cheekbones were high; her make-up shiny and see-through. The distraction exercise, taught to her by Dr Merris, was supposed to move on to the other senses next, describing things she could hear, smell and feel in the room, but a cough from the doorway interrupted her.
Jill hadn't figured on Madeline being so very small. She felt a flare of anger towards a mother who could let a child so young go to a shopping centre alone; then she mentally chastised herself. People had criticised her parents for not being at the swimming carnival from which she had been abducted. The blame should only be directed at the offenders. The men who spent their lives devising methods to exploit any chink in the armour parents tried to build around their kids.
Martha McKenzie, petite and in her mid-thirties, wore a summer skirt, sandals and a well-cut blouse. She looked puffy-eyed and pale. Crying too much and no sleep, thought Jill, remembering her mum's eyes looking that way for a year after she got home. She stared at them in the small room and waited just beyond the doorway, clearly reluctant to enter. Only a sliver of the little girl was visible, as she stood close behind her mother in the entrance. Dark glasses protected Madeline's eyes.