CONTINUED - CHAPTER 18

‘Pretty good, really. Not much traffic at all.’

‘So, they made you jump through a few hoops to get in here? Did they search you?’

‘One hundred point ID check first, bit like in a bank. Then they gave me a key to a locker to lock away my property…car keys, wallet, that sort of thing. Then they searched me. Nothing too invasive, like gloved fingers up my A-hole. Checked my shoes, socks, around my belt, um, pockets that sort of thing. But it’s all good. It was worth it just to see you again.’

Kimberly fought to stave off the inevitable. Her lips tightened as her chin quivered. She couldn’t hold back anymore.

She started to sob. ‘I don’t want to be here anymore…. I want to go home with you,’ she whined.

‘I know, Hun. I want that too. Don’t cry… please. You’ll make me cry.’

Kimberly dragged a finger under her eye. ‘I’m sorry.’ She sniffed, then exhaled heavily to compose herself. ‘How much longer is it?’

‘Duncan is working on it, Hun. I had a meeting with him yesterday and he genuinely believes we have a chance to beat this. You just have to stay strong. He said he’ll know more when the police give him a copy of their evidence brief.’

‘Do we have a hearing date yet…?’

‘Not yet. But he said that the cops can’t leave you in here indefinitely while they prepare their case. He asked me to get you to ring him… you put him on your approved call list?’

‘I didn’t initially… But one of the more friendly guards in here reminded me to include my lawyer on the call list …so, yeah, he’s on there now.’

Looking at her husband and not being able to hold him was like an alcoholic sitting within reach of a freshly poured beer that couldn’t be tasted.

Boyd’s face tightened slightly. She knew all his tells and this one meant something was on his mind.

‘What’s wrong Hun…? What aren’t you telling me?’

Boyd took a moment to respond. Maybe it was to choose his words carefully. Kimberly’s brow dipped. The long pause concerned her.

‘Hun…What’s going on?’ she asked in a firmer tone.

Boyd adjusted himself on his uncomfortable metal stool. ‘I wasn’t going to mention anything… I thought I’d let Duncan tell you….’

Kimberly frowned. ‘Tell me what…? What’s wrong?’

Boyd held Kimberly’s gaze. ‘The cops found another one of the missing persons from your list….the hitch hiker that went missing in the Otterways.

Her body was buried in a shallow grave off a track somewhere.’

Kimberly exhaled. The tension in her shoulders relaxed. ‘That’s great. The family will now have some closure. That’s why she came to me, Hun…. She wanted my help,’

Kimberly said, with a sense of achievement. Her smiling face quickly wiped. She frowned at Boyd’s expression. ‘What?’

Boyd shook his head. ‘It’s not great, Hun,’ Boyd said. His morose tone was not lost on Kimberly.

‘The cops have amended your charges to six counts of murder now. Duncan received the new charge notification a few days ago. That’s why he wanted to meet with me. That’s why he wants you to call him.’

Kimberly’s shoulders slumped. She was so happy for Libby Vassillou’s family, she overlooked the seriousness of her own predicament. She leaned on an elbow and cupped her forehead. ‘There’s still one more missing, isn’t there…?’ Kimberly said.

‘So….if they find him, does that mean they’ll charge me with seven counts of murder….?’

‘They have to find him first, but…yeah,’ Boyd said, nodding. ‘If they do… I guess they will,’

Kimberly’s head shot up. Her expression firmed. She waved the back of her hand. ‘You know what? Five counts…six counts… seven counts… It doesn’t matter,’ she said with a defiance that belied her deepest concerns. ‘I didn’t do it. I never killed those people, so the number is irrelevant. They won’t be able to prove it was me, coz I didn’t do it….’

‘You’re exactly right,’ Boyd said. ‘But enough of that,’ he continued.

‘Let Duncan worry about that for us. How are you coping in here?’

‘As well as could be expected, I suppose. It’s killing me not being able to see you, to talk to you and hold you…’

‘I’m exactly the same, Hun. The bed seems so big without you in it. I come home after work some nights excited to tell you about my day and then I remember you’re not there.’ Boyd’s mouth straightened.

‘I’m so sorry I have done this to us. I wish I never said anything.’

‘Don’t say that, Hun. You did the right thing. Because of you there are six families out there who now know where their missing loved one is. The unknown to them would’ve been far worse than knowing.’

‘I know. But what’s good for them…’ Kimberly’s eyes fell. ‘Is horrible for me.’

‘We’ll beat this, Kim…I know we will. You just have to stay strong,’ Boyd said. ‘I gotta tell you though, Kim. I’m so glad you don’t have to wear those prison uniforms. I think it would be more upsetting to have to see you dressed like a prisoner,’ Boyd said.

Kimberly glanced at her clothing. ‘It does make it feel less like a jail when I can wear these,’ Kimberly said.

The allocated two hours passed quickly for Kimberly, and no doubt Boyd. Periods of extended silence started to replace their excited chatter. At times they just sat smiling at each other. They didn’t need to talk.

Kimberly startled at the firm knock on her door. Her eyes filled with panic as they met Boyd’s. Her husband would be leaving her. She didn’t want him to go.

The door to Kimberly’s side opened. A guard stood in the doorway. ‘Say your goodbyes and finish up, thanks,’ the guard said.

He left the door open and stood off to the side.

Kimberly stood from her seat. She placed her hand on the window. Boyd did the same. ‘I don’t want you to go,’ she said with desperation in her voice.

Tears flowed down her cheeks. ‘I want to go home.’ Her emotions took over. She broke down into tears…

Tears trickled down Boyd’s cheeks. There was nothing he could do to help his wife. He couldn’t even comfort her. ‘I know, Kim.. I know. I want you to come home,’ Boyd said.

‘But you have to stay strong…’

The guard re-appeared in the doorway. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. His direction was firm.

Kimberly and Boyd said their goodbyes. They hung up their phones. Kimberly held Boyd’s gaze as tears now flowed freely. ‘I love you,’ she mouthed to him. Boyd mouthed back the same.

Before exiting through the door, Kimberly turned back for one last look at her man. Boyd looked as sad as Kimberly. She blew him a kiss then stepped from the box. She sobbed as the guard closed the door. As sudden as that, it was all over.

The guard escorted Kimberly back to the remand precinct. Her lowered head and rounded shoulders painted a picture of internal pain as she strolled. No conversation took place for the entire walk back.

All she could think about was her husband, the look on his face as she left and the fact he would be leaving her all alone in this place. He was so close and now he’s gone.

Back in her cottage, Kimberly failed to acknowledge Clive’s smiling greeting. She marched passed the guard’s station, on a direct line to her cell. Kimberly slumped heavily onto her bed. She draped an arm over her eyes and openly sobbed for the life she once knew that was taken from her by these wrongful charges.

Jax dropped the file onto his desk. He exhaled heavily as he rubbed a frustrated hand over his balding head. He collapsed back in his chair while his dejected gaze shifted to the whiteboard.

The Words ‘LOCATED DECEASED’ in bold red letters, spread across six of the seven photos, leapt out at him from the board.

The strike rate of over eighty - five percent would usually excite someone tasked with locating long - term missing persons. But there was something about these victims that troubled him. Nothing linked them.

His years of policing told him the discovery of the bodies at locations disclosed in Kimberly’s list was not enough to be confident of securing a conviction at trial. He needed more. He needed evidence tying Kimberly to each victim. Problem was, the passage of time had effectively removed that possibility.

Alibis were either forgotten, or no longer verifiable. DNA evidence had long been destroyed. His searches failed to locate a murder weapon.

There were no witnesses. He couldn’t find any motive for Kimberly to commit these murders. He had doughnuts and lots of them.

Jax arranged for the police IT techs to run the same series of checks on Kimberly’s seized phone that they used to locate Malcolm Denver’s last movements, before he went missing.

None of these checks placed Kimberly’s phone in, or near any of the locations where the six bodies were located.

This provided Jax with two possible scenarios. The first and what he suspected to be the most likely, was that Kimberly was simply not involved in any of the murders.

The second considered the possibility she was involved, but had enough guile and foresight not to take her mobile phone with her during the commission of each murder.

Autopsy results for each victim was consistent. Cause of death was either exsanguination caused from a slit throat, or organ trauma from multiple stab wounds. None of the victims had defensive wounds.

The testing for blood on the clothing and knives seized from Kimberly’s home came up empty.

There was no victim logy pattern. There were no consistencies in each of the victims’ age, height, weight, gender, or residential suburb. There was no nexus to victim occupations, sporting interests, hobbies, places they shopped, restaurants they dined at, bars in which they socialized.

Everything pointed towards random victim selection, wrong place at the wrong time scenarios. The apparent lack of planning was more suited to a psychopath satisfying an uncontrollable urge to kill, rather than a serial killer who targeted specific victim types.

Meanwhile, Kimberly Davis, one of the nicest people he had met, had sat in a jail cell now for over two months while he tried to gather evidence to prepare a brief for trial.

He wasn’t confident he had his offender before he arrested Kimberly. Due to the paucity of incriminating evidence, he was even less confident now.

The same doubt, the same resonating question kept bouncing around in his bald head - what if Kimberly Davis was actually psychic…? The thought caused him to shudder.

Communicating with the dead defied his beliefs on the afterlife and it defied available scientific evidence on the subject. But was the scientific evidence proof, or merely proof of a scientific theory?

At the end of the day his problem was, he couldn’t prove Kimberly wasn’t capable of communicating with the dead and she couldn’t prove she could. It was a stalemate that may have caused the wrong person to be accused of crimes she didn’t commit.

A court of law required satisfying the burden of proof of beyond all reasonable doubt to obtain a conviction.

Right now, his evidence struggled to prove his case on the balance of probability.

Jax had numerous arguments with his boss over this case, some quite heated. As far as Jeff was concerned, he didn’t want to listen. Jax had the right offender. All Jax had to do now was get out there and locate the evidence to secure a convictism. And therein lay the rub - locating the evidence to secure a conviction.

Jax’s frustrated gaze moved back to Dale Cartwright’s photo on the whiteboard. He had since obtained Dale’s mountain bike from the Angelsea Police, after it was found beside a bush track, between the coastal towns of Airey’s Inlet and Fairhaven. As expected, it failed to provide any evidence.

Detailed line searches of the vicinity where the bike was located failed to find Dale Cartwright’s body. In the end, it was decided the search area was too large and the information recorded on the list was too vague to narrow down an approximate location.

He slipped Kimberly’s list from his file and re-read for the umpteenth time, the notation Kimberly wrote about Dale Cartwright.

Just like the time before, and the time before that, the list gave him nothing. He dropped the list onto his desk and rubbed a frustrated hand across his mouth.

Finding Dale Cartwright was important to his case, but if the other six bodies were any indication, finding him would not provide any smoking gun evidence leading him to the killer. At this point in time, Jax would settle for any evidence, compelling or otherwise.

‘Stuff this…’ Jax blurted. He pushed himself from his desk. ‘I’m going for a coffee while I’m there?’ he asked those present in the office. ‘No…? Cheap shout,’ he mumbled as he moved towards the exit.