Deadly Messengers (6 page)

Her stomach filled with stone at the thought of hearing gruesome details.
You need this commission
. This would also prove to Marcus she was tough, that she’d grown up. She imagined the look of pride on her brother’s face as he read the article.

Kendall hurried out the door, grabbing her laptop bag and an apple as she did. Today hadn’t started well, but it was getting better by the hour. Even her headache had faded. This massacre
was
a horrific event, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to pay the rent. Even if that meant dealing with the nightmares that would invariably follow.

O’GRADY STOOD IN THE KITCHEN staring at the pools of dried blood. Trip was out in Café Amaretto’s dining room among the ruins of what had only hours before been a bustling eatery.

He wondered what would become of the place and if it would ever recover. Eventually the murders would become folklore, but it might take several reincarnations of the business for people to forget. At the very least they would need to re-staff their kitchen. Basically the premises was screwed as any type of food establishment in the near future.

Forensics had already been over the place. The remnants of their visit—dozens of little numbered a-form placements littered around the kitchen and dining room—told of the hive of activity in the preceding hours. It would take days to process the scene. Not that it mattered hugely. There wasn’t going to be a trial. Benson had seen to that.

Lesson one for mass killers who want to survive: when police arrive, put down your weapon. No guarantees even then, but if you wave the weapon you’ve just used to slaughter innocent people, don’t wave said implement at armed human beings, police or not. The result rarely goes your way.

Trip and he planned to run interviews today with the witnesses—thirty-four freaked out patrons, four wait-staff, one female owner who ended up in hospital overnight under sedation, and several passers-by who witnessed something they would never forget. By night they should have a clear picture of events.

Preliminary interviews puzzled O’Grady. Toby Benson was unknown to the wait-staff as far as they could remember. Arriving around nine-thirty, he’d smashed in the kitchen door, then proceeded to go crazy with an axe.

Normally these situations turned out to be an ex-employee, a spurned ex-husband of an employee, or at least someone with an axe to grind (excuse the pun). They still hadn’t found any connection. Nada. This Benson character had simply flipped out—O’Grady’s bet was a mental illness—and his victims were simply in a “wrong place, wrong time” scenario. O’Grady’s experience told him if it looked like a crazy fish, smelled like a crazy fish, then that’s what you were cooking … a crazy fish.

Examining the damaged kitchen door, O’Grady ran a cautious finger over the lock’s remnants. The door was badly splintered; thin, jagged pieces of white wood stuck out at haphazard angles.

He pushed gently with his right hip to force the door open, keeping his hands in the air so he didn’t touch anything and contaminate evidence the CSI team hadn’t already noted.

Out in the alley, he carefully scanned the area. More yellow evidence markers littered the narrow laneway. Several forensic officers wearing thin white suits from head to toe moved slowly around, bending every few feet to examine something that had caught their eye. Down the end of the alley, where the entrance opened into the busy early morning street, yellow police tape flapped in the breeze. Just behind the tape, an officer stood, arms folded, staring out at the gathered crowd of curious onlookers.

O’Grady turned back to look at the door. Splinters of wood hung from around the lock. If nothing else, the guy was determined. Why had he picked this door, in this lane, when there were countless other restaurants and bars? The million-dollar question.

The detective took one more glance down the very ordinary-looking access lane and walked back in. He regarded the kitchen from the point of view of the killer upon first entering. The blood on the floor where the waitress had died drew his eye. The coroner had removed the body a few hours earlier. Poor girl. She was only twenty, waitressing to pay her college tuition.

Over by the kitchen sink they’d found the kid. O’Grady would never forget
that
image. He’d seen a lot in his eighteen years on the job, with twelve as detective, but what that freak had done to the kid was horrendous.

One of the beat police first on the scene had lost his lunch
and
his dinner within twenty seconds of walking in. Fortunately, he’d made it to the lane, so he hadn’t polluted any evidence. O’Grady had taken a moment, too.

The boy’s body had been nearly hacked in two. The first strike caught him full in the right shoulder, cutting through down to the armpit, severing the appendage from his body. Still alive after the first blow, he had tried to escape but looked to have fallen on oil spilled on the floor.

While he lay there defenseless, the killer had swung his axe with such force it took only a few blows to tear the kid apart. All Benson left were two halves of the kid’s body—upper and lower torso, joined by small threads of muscle—and his arm back by the sink.

The kid was seventeen.
Jesus Christ. What the fuck was that?

O’Grady didn’t envy the coroner’s job. At least his conclusion wouldn’t be
cause of death: unknown
. This was an open and shut case.
Death by lunatic.

You caught one of these cases rarely. If you were lucky—or unlucky, depending on your viewpoint—it could be considered a bonus. Another type of personality might dine out for a lifetime on a case like this. There might even be accolades or a promotion for closing it swiftly and putting the public’s collective mind at rest.

O’Grady preferred to keep a low profile. He didn’t like tributes. He didn’t talk about his job. He was haunted enough by past events without rehashing the unsettling violent aspects of his career. Those memories he compartmentalized for his own sanity, only bringing them out if a case required it of him.

In this case, where he and Trip were there to simply mop up evidence and do the paperwork, “tying bows” was all he would focus on. Let the profilers sift through the life of Toby Benson and come up with the reasons, to give everyone a better night’s sleep.

He glanced at another pool of blood near the boy’s. The chef, a hefty man, bled out quickly. For him, at least, death was quick. O’Grady stared at the mottled dried stains of sticky, rust-brown, clotted with black globules. Of all the “make you, break you” cases he could snag, this one he’d have happily missed. Even with his mantra of leaving work at work, he didn’t think the images would leave him for a long while. Italian was off the menu for the near future, too.

When he closed his eyes tonight, exhausted, he knew his mind would continue to circle one question:
what would possess someone to massacre these people?
If you wanted to make a case for evil, there was the confirmation, pooled in vivid red on this kitchen floor.

KENDALL HAD NEVER AMBUSHED SOMEONE for a story. She wasn’t one of those hard-nosed journalists who ran down the street after people shouting, “What do you have to say about ripping off old people?” Anyway, she probably wasn’t fast enough to pursue anyone more than ten feet while holding a microphone. What she did have was a natural curiosity and, after all these years, a good instinct for people and stories.

She stood on Beverley Sanderson’s doorstep wondering if her knock would bring anyone to the door, forcing herself to breathe deeply to calm her nerves. She’d managed only about two breaths before the sound of footsteps inside sent her heart racing.

The door swung open, revealing a woman in her mid-forties, her blonde hair held back by a bright purple scarf. She wore an unnaturally white smile. Kendall thought at first she must have the wrong address.

“Yes?”

“Beverley Sanderson?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Kendall Jennings, and I’m working on an article for
Healthy, Wealthy and Wisdom
magazine.”

The woman stared at her. In her nervousness, Kendall continued to talk, uncertain whether she was seconds away from the door being slammed in her face.

“Perhaps you’ve heard of it? They’re sold in all the supermarkets. Very popular. Over three hundred thousand copies sold.”

Still the woman stared.

“I thought you might speak to me about your experience at Café Amaretto last night.”

Beverley Sanderson continued to hold the edge of the door. Her stare revealed nothing. Kendall imagined
it
coming any moment: the get-off-my-property-scum-newsperson retort. It surprised her the woman had even come to the door. Surely, she’d already had approaches by dozens of news outlets vying for her story.

Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Kendall smiled her biggest, brightest, you-can-trust-me smile.

“A lot of people want to know what it’s like to survive what you went through …” Still nothing from the woman. She quickly added, “And Jennifer Aniston was on last month’s cover.”

Beverley Sanderson’s face suddenly came to life. Her countenance lit up as though a spotlight was focused on her for a close-up. “Oh, you want to interview me? Is that what you mean?”

“Ah …
yes
… if you have time. It’s just a few questions.”

“Yes, yes. I’m fine. Come in. Jennifer Aniston. Wow!”

Beverley pulled the door further open, then stood back to allow Kendall to move past her into a mid-seventies style living room, complete with dark brown leather couches and orange flock wallpaper. Most extraordinary were the china dogs. They were everywhere. On every surface, they sat, lounged, heeled, and lay on their stomachs. Bookshelves, on top of the coffee table, and on several purpose-built ledges dotted along the room’s walls.

“You like dogs, Beverley?”

“I love dogs. But I can’t have a dog. Allergies. I’ve tried all types of dogs and medications. I just sneeze and sneeze. This is the next best thing.”

Standing this close to Beverley, Kendall realized the woman was older than she looked in the newspaper picture. She was mid-fifties, and even at ten in the morning her face was plastered with a full complement of makeup. Her hot-pink lipstick combined with dark red lip liner gave her a clown-like appearance. The hair poking out from beneath her scarf was teased to a bushy bouffant.

“Coffee, Kelsey?”

She didn’t bother correcting Beverley’s mistake with her name. Something told her no matter how many times she corrected her, Beverley would never get it right.

“Fantastic, thanks.”

Kendall glanced around the room, taking care to show an interest in the dogs.

It surprised her how together the woman was—hardly what she expected after what Beverley had witnessed the previous night. Most people would be distressed for days, even months. If they were like Kendall, years.

She couldn’t decide if Beverley’s stoic behavior was oddball or admirable. Although, now Kendall thought about it, the woman’s calm perspective would certainly provide great counterbalance to other eyewitnesses—if she could get interviews with them—who
weren’t
dealing well with the horrific event.

“I won’t be a moment. I’ve just boiled the kettle.”

Beverley bounced out of the room. Now alone, Kendall walked slowly around the cluttered space, checking for further insights into the woman. Alongside the dogs were scattered faded photos of children wearing clothes dating them as growing up in the eighties. On the wall behind the three-seater lounge hung a large frame containing variously sized professional portraits of a still overly made-up younger version of Beverley. In her youth she’d been quite striking. Beverley and her husband obviously liked to cruise; many other photos depicted the pair aboard a liner or posing on exotic beaches, a cruise boat in the background.

“Here we go,” Beverley announced, as she walked back into the room carrying a tray with two mugs, a gilt coffee pot, a matching milk jug and a plate of cream cookies. She fussed over the coffee, pouring two cups and held out the cookies to Kendall with “Have one. I baked them this morning.”