She stepped down from the living area into a black, cavernous room. Despite its size, it was warm and airless. Her shirt stuck to her back – the air-con obviously didn't reach this room. She smelled fuel. A dark four-wheel drive squatted ahead of her, ghostly smudges glowing from its panels in the gloom. She couldn't see beyond the car. Anyone could be there. Memories of waiting in the dark for the pain to begin crawled from her stomach into her mouth, and she closed her lips tight to keep them there. Heart thudding, she walked backwards until she felt the wall behind her; she slid her hand upwards, seeking the light switch, eyes always focused ahead.
Scrabbling at the wall now, her hand brushed the light panel, and she stabbed the switch on. The lustrous smudges on the Porsche Cayenne were just the chalky residue left behind by the fingerprint team. She stood against the wall a moment, blinked away the memories, already scornful of her weakness. Her contempt gave her the impetus to push away from the wall, and she moved towards the car.
If it had gone down like the others, she thought, Eugene Moser had stepped out of this vehicle into his garage and the point of a machete. The masked man would have led him back into the house, threatening to kill him if he did not comply quietly, and from there would have let in the rest of the crew. Jill imagined the man's terror, the impossible choices: Should I scream, stay here and fight? My daughter's inside – I can't let this man in! But if he stabs me now, he will get in anyway. I have to be in there with her. Maybe he'll just take what he wants and leave us alone. The options would have raced through his mind; his captor aggressive, masked, would have left him no time to think. Ultimately, he would do what he had to do to keep the knife from his throat, to try to placate his assailant.
On tiptoes, Jill peered through the tinted windows into the car's interior. Would they get any prints this time? To date, no fingerprints had been found at any of the crime scenes, and the DNA testing of hair and fibres was still jammed up in a queue with other cases. They'd prioritise everything from this case, she thought.
She walked through the rest of the triple-car garage. Along one wall, a floor-to-ceiling shelving system held every type of tool she could imagine. Drawers and cupboards were labelled and colour-coded; hooks held spades and small shovels, brushes and trimming shears. Each had been stencilled in paint onto the backboard. Jill appreciated the order, opened some of the drawers. Suddenly, she stopped walking. A tool was missing. A circular stencilled shape the size of a basketball signalled the outline of the tool that should be docked there. Close by, the hand saw's hook was also empty. She took out her camera, her lips a thin line. Along with the horrendous machete wounds found on a few of the previous victims, Eugene Moser had been dismembered with some kind of saw. Or maybe more than one kind, she thought, figuring a power saw would fit the first stencil perfectly.
The mechanised whirring of her camera droned through the stuffy silence as she snapped the rest of the tool shelves. There was no fingerprint dust on the shelving. She wondered whether the others had noticed that the saws were missing. No weapons had been left at the scene. She turned and stepped straight into Gabriel Delahunt's chest.
Her sharp intake of breath muffled a yelp. You scared me, she wanted to bark, but instead she just glared at him, not wanting to give away more than she already had.
'The others were waiting up the road,' he said.
If he had noticed her alarm, he gave no indication.
'Who?' Jill tried not to convey her irritation. Did this man ever speak in full sentences?
Gabriel held up a sealed evidence bag. 'Forensics missed these.' The bag held cigarette butts.
'Why do you assume they belong to the perps?' Jill stared into the bag.
'These hadn't been there more than a day,' he said, also looking into the bag. 'It rained a little out here the day before yesterday. But these haven't been wet. And a vehicle had been parked off the road next to where I found them. There're ten butts in here. Someone waited there a long time, smoking, yesterday at the latest.' He shrugged. 'Might not have been them. But it probably was.'
Jill stared at his profile as he scanned the tool shelves. Maybe Delahunt had just found their best bet for DNA from at least one of the perps.
'Two saws missing.' He pointed his chin at the stencilled patterns.
'Yeah,' she said.
'You wanna check out the murder site?' he asked. Like he'd asked if she wanted to get a pizza.
'Okay,' she said.
Jill could physically feel Eugene Moser's suffering in the room in which he died. His blood shrieked from the walls, ceiling, floor, demanding the witness understand the horror he'd endured. She stood in a vortex with the screaming, turning slowly in the middle of the room, buffeted by each arc of blood, drenched in the pain.
'The safe's through there.'
Gabriel stood at her shoulder, and she started at his voice, pulled from the nightmare. She glanced around again. The room was every bit as grotesque, but at least it had stopped howling.
The floor plans referred to this room as 'the media centre'. Ten reclining leather armchairs sat in two rows in front of a wall. On the ceiling above the wall, Jill could see a recessed opening where the screen must drop down. In the middle of the house, the room had no windows, and the doors sealed completely to shut out all light. The artificial lights rendered the scene somehow more garish. She could see no surface unmarked by blood.
She followed Gabriel through the room towards an opening in the wall – some kind of door – which stood slightly ajar. It was the same colour as the wall and she could see no handle. Were it closed, she doubted she could have found it again.
'It's not on the floor plan,' said Gabriel. He walked inside.
The size of a large walk-in robe, this room had obviously housed the guns. Display racks were empty, their black bolts open. A small safe stood ajar, some papers scattered on the floor in front of it. A monitor at the back of the room depicted four views of the house and grounds, each scene changing after thirty seconds or so to exhibit another part of the property. On the screen, Jill watched Derek Reid walk into one of the quadrants; in another, two uniformed officers stood guard at the front door.
'So this is a panic room,' said Jill, speaking her thoughts aloud. 'First time I've seen one. Except for that movie, of course.' She looked down at a computer under the monitor. Everything had already been chalked. She noticed the time display on the electronic equipment.
'Shit,' she said. 'It's already gone twelve o'clock. We'd better get back to the library.'
Gabriel was on his hands and knees. Was he sniffing the floor? Hearing her words, he stood and followed her out.
Outside the media centre, Jill made straight for a set of French doors at the back of the house. She needed air that did not reek of blood.
In contrast with the starkly modern media centre, this room held a chaise longue and several ornate cabinets full of trinkets. Jill opened the glass doors onto a pretty courtyard, sheltered from the rest of the yard by flowering shrubs. A semi-circular stone love-seat watched over a fishpond; two fat golden carp swam lazily. Jill followed their movements and saw that the pond flowed under a small bridge and out of the courtyard, apparently to a larger pool elsewhere.
'This is pretty good,' said Delahunt.
'Yeah,' she answered flatly.
'At least one of them can't handle what's going on.'
'What are you talking about?' She realised he was not looking at the fish.