Eden (2 page)

H
ades woke thinking he’d been shot. The great weight that seemed to fall and then wrap around his chest, the noise, the pain. He’d taken a bullet before and this was how it felt. But the thump on his chest was only the cat. The pain was his old man’s bones snapping into action, the noise his perimeter alarm sounding, an old fire alarm screwed to the wall above the door. Someone had entered his property. Hades groaned and rolled onto his side, flopping out of the bed like a swollen fish. The cat weaved around his stubby ankles, suddenly full of affection after the terror of the alarm. It was usually a bitch of a thing. Hades kicked it away and slipped his flip-flops on.

It had been months since he had been visited this late. He’d put the word out that he had retired, that all the problems he had once been happy to fix were to be taken elsewhere. He wanted to spend his declining years free of harassment by cops, forensics specialists, journalists, and true crime writers. During the day, the workers at his dump kept these scavengers away—Hades’ dark past was common knowledge among them and was at the heart of a brotherhood of loyalty and silence. At night he was vulnerable. His daughter Eden had insisted on installing the alarm when she had managed to walk all the way up the dark drive, into the house, and right to his bedside without waking him. Eden, always the predator, had made the alarm loud enough to induce a heart attack.

Headlights swept the kitchen. One of the few clocks in his extensive collection that actually kept time chimed an hour past midnight as he reached the screen door. He picked up a Ruger Super Redhawk that was sticking out of a flowerpot and tucked it into the back of his boxer shorts. The double-action Magnum tugged at the hem, felt cold against his ass crack. The gun was far too big to be practical, but if he was going to go out one night in a revenge attack, a shoot-out with the police, or a dance with burglars, all of which were equally likely, he was going to do it with a gun proportionate to his reputation.

The cat followed him out and bolted into the blackness. He hoped it wouldn’t be back, but knew it would. A red Barina with plastic eyelashes hanging over its headlights gripped its way uncertainly over the last rise before his shack and stopped with a jolt in the dust. If this was some kind of attack he was pleased by how undignified the approach had been. It didn’t speak of organization. When the driver slid out of the seat and came into the murky lights, he let his head hang back and looked at the stars.

“Oh God. Not you.”

“Hades!”

She fell on him, rock-hard breasts against his chest, nails in his hair, an assault of smooth limbs and wet kisses, cigarette smoke, perfume. Hades pushed her off. He resisted the urge to smile. It would only encourage her.

“Get off me, Kat.”

“I’ve missed you. God, I’ve missed you. It’s been too long. It’s been ages.”

“What are you doing here, for chrissake? I don’t have time for you. I’m retired. It’s the middle of the night.”

“I love you, Hades.”

“Go away.”

“No, Hades, I love you. I need you.”

“Oh, don’t tell me.”

“Please, Hades.” She stood back and clasped her hands like a child. “Please help me.”

He looked at her, let the silence hang the way he used to with Eden when she was a teenager, disappointment so deeply felt it could not be squeezed out into words. Kat had come in her usual getup—the six-inch heels and cheap nylon minidress, the half-dyed black hair falling out at the sides in wispy singed spikes. It was more than that though. The track marks on her ankles weren’t from smack, as she’d have you believe. Hades had seen these marks faked plenty of times by undercover cops—a little cayenne pepper and ink under the first layer of skin and irritated welts pop up like the angry sores of the addicted. The mascara was intentionally clumpy. The multiple piercings in her ears were magnets. Underneath the manufactured cheapness was a very beautiful woman, a clever woman. A seasoned killer.

Hades had caught Kat out once. She was sitting in a café in Glebe with a girlfriend, fresh-faced and vibrant, the makeup gone, her hair short and neatly bobbed, a gold watch she’d probably stolen hanging a little too loosely on her wrist. Hades had heard somewhere that she was a financial adviser or something. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t care.

Whenever she turned up, he played along with her little game because Kat was just one of many actors, hustlers, con artists, and tricksters who came to him in the night with bones to bury. Over the years Hades had been awakened by numb-headed drug mules who had waited for their moment to cut down their bosses; by lady killers in expensive linen suits, hit men with cold eyes and false charm. Wasn’t he one of them, too? Hades had spent decades crafting his tired old man image. Sure, he was getting on. He ate too much and fell asleep in front of the TV more than he actually watched it. But Hades was deadly. So was Kat. Under the stars that night they played out the roles of a worn-out ex-warlord and a skinny prostitute.

“What have you done now?” he asked.

“It was an accident.”

“It’s always an accident with you.”

“Oh, Hades!”

“Come on.” He waved at her impatiently. “Get on with it.”

She clopped back to the car, all guilty eyes and pouty lips. Hades watched her struggle with the trunk. Nickel bracelets jingled on her wrists. She thrust the trunk open and the overhead light flickered. Hades looked in and let a sigh ripple out of him.

“How many times I got to tell you, Kat?”

“What?”

“You’re not wrapping them right. I’ve told you this.”

“Hay-dees!”

“Look.” Hades leaned over and lifted the end of the tarp that contained the body. “You leave the ends open like this and you get DNA in your car. Hair. Eyelashes. Blood. Piss. Dirt and plant fibers from the tread in his shoes that will put him in your street, in your driveway. They can put a body in your trunk from a single flake of fucking dandruff, Kat. You know this.”

“So what am I supposed to do about it?”

“You tuck the ends in before you roll.” Hades illustrated with his hands. “Lie the body out flat, arms down. Like a burrito. Tuck, tuck, roll. Tape. Tape, Kat, not fucking bungee cords. You shouldn’t be using tarp, either. You should be using plastic drop cloths. I can give you some. Tarps have a weave in them. They’re not airtight.”

“Hades, I’m not as clever as you, okay?” she whined.

“You never rolled a fucking burrito?”

“I don’t even know what a burrito is. What do I look like?”

Hades shook his head, felt exhausted.

“The whole car will have to go. They’ll have your DNA in the front and his in the back. You need to start thinking about these things, Kat.”

“You talk too much, Hades,” Kat said, patting the side of his head, letting her fingers follow the rim of his ear to the nape of his thick neck. “You’re always talking. You’re always mean to me.”

Her breath felt warm on his face. Hades cleared his throat.

“I do it because you’re going to get yourself caught one of these days. And I don’t want to be the one who has to come after you before you testify.”

“Would you hurt me, Hades?”

“Probably not.”

“Sometimes I like being hurt.”

She was against him, kissing him, before he knew it. She’d got into his arms the way a fox will slip through a gap in a fence. Feral. Dangerous. He sighed again and surrendered. She always did this. He always fell for it. But in a way he kind of liked falling for it, knowing it was coming, wondering how she would make it seem spontaneous and wild each and every time. The concubine. Hades imagined that this was what it was like with the men she robbed and killed, leaving work and smoking on the corner, being approached by a cute, vulnerable, irresistible little whore in a painted-on dress. Cold, tired, gullible. Give me your jacket. Take me home. Play with me. Hades withdrew from her and rolled his eyes.

“Get in there.” He cocked his head toward the house. “Make me a goddamn coffee while you’re at it.”

“Don’t be long,” she said, victorious. Hades grumbled and shut the trunk. His hard-on was almost painful but he never put play before work, even when the play was just a ruse to get out of his body disposal fee. A twenty-thousand-dollar fuck. It was cheap and nasty, but he didn’t mind. It had been years since a woman had wanted to jump Hades’ bones. He wasn’t fussed. Women made things difficult, and the last thing he needed was more difficulty in his life.

First things first. He would drive the car back to the new fill grounds where the complex layers of rubber, vinyl, industrial biochemicals and trash were not yet finished. He’d slip Kat’s nameless victim in there, where the compressed layers, encouraging the development of leachate acid as a natural biodegrader of human waste, would eventually completely dissolve all trace of him as it had with hundreds of others over the years. He would grind the car’s identification off, leave the vehicle to be crushed into a cube and finished off in an industrial incinerator in the morning. Then he’d go to bed with Kat. Hades wondered gloomily if the reward would be worth the effort as he wrestled the keys from the lock. She’d take everything she wanted out of him in a matter of minutes and leave while he was asleep. He was making a mental note to put his wallet and keys away when he noticed the dark shape at the bottom of the hill.

Hades took a short wander to the crest of the hill. Stood. Listened. The car was idling, its headlights off. He felt a twinge in his chest, a leftover spasm from the fear that the alarm had generated. Hades began to walk again, a little faster this time. The car’s windows were down, blackness in the cabin, impenetrable. He got no farther than ten meters before the car began to move, passed the gates in a blur of dark gray, before disappearing between the trees.

Hades stopped, out of breath.

T
he television was on, but the knocking broke through the chatter of morning programs, to snap me awake. The first sensation was the wetness under my face. Cold drool. Camel mouth. The place smelled damp and reeked of kitty litter. But still bearable. I could leave it a couple more days. I sat up and felt a nudge in the small of my back. I fished around and retrieved an empty Jameson bottle. The pain—dull, heavy, everywhere.

The knocking came again. It was her. She came every day. I hung my head in my hands and groaned, long and loud, so she could hear me. She knocked again. The day before I hadn’t let her in, and she was waiting for me hours later when I went to get a pizza for lunch. Immaculate, in gray jeans and a knitted top that hugged the top of her perfect ass and fell to the backs of her cold, pale killer’s hands. Sitting on a bench in the foyer, reading a magazine. Waiting. Watching.

Eden knocked again.

“Go away!”

She knocked. I crossed the apartment in two steps, kicked newspapers out of the way, and flung open the door. Her hand was raised for more knocking. She took me in with those expressionless crow eyes, head to toe, let her hand fall, and waited for me to go on my usual tirade. I did. She listened to my swearing quietly, thinking. I don’t know what I looked like but I know what I smelled like. I’d expected the performance to get rid of her. When I tried to slam the door, her boot was in it.

“We’ve got an appointment.”

“I’m not going. Are you listening? Are you fucking stupid? I wasn’t going yesterday. I’m not going today. Eden, I need you to leave me alone.” I walked away from the door. She closed it behind her, wrinkled her nose just slightly at the smell.

“Have a shower,” she said. “We leave in twenty.”

I went into the kitchen and popped myself some Panadol, chewed them, angry. Her eyes wandered over the dirty plates balancing on the back of the couch, the dusty curtains blocking the mid-morning light, the gray cat pawing at the balcony door. Martina’s cat. Yes. All right. I’d let things slip since Martina died. Since I’d been shot and Eden had saved my life. It had locked me to her, silencing me forever on the true nature of her being, the nights she spent stalking Sydney’s killers and rapists and molesters. I’d shot and killed a serial killer, deliberately, and Eden had stood with me through the investigation that followed with her untouchable self-assurance. We were bound, Eden and I, and I hated her for it.

She came into the kitchen and watched me swallow two more Panadol and an Oxycodone. I liked the Oxy, had got onto it after the bullet. My shoulder was mostly healed now, but I kept up the act to get the drug. I was supposed to go to physiotherapy to get rid of a twitch that sometimes developed in the last three fingers of my right hand, the only real leftover from the wound, but I wouldn’t go. Anything to get the Oxy. Lovely, sleepy Oxy. There were three sheets left in the packet. I pocketed them.

“What are you staring at?”

“A problem.”

“Am I a problem for you, Eden?” I raised my eyebrows, shook the twitching from my fingers. “You going to do with me what you do with all your other problems?”

She licked her teeth, looked almost bored. Not answering struck a chord with me. Deep down inside I knew she could do it, I suppose that was why. One of these nights I could wake up and find her standing over me. I liked to fool myself sometimes that Eden had a heart, that I’d wrung a laugh or two out of her over our months together, that she would at least have trouble killing me. Most of the time I wasn’t so sure.

“You need to have a shower and come to this shrink’s appointment with me,” she said. “You need to do this two more times so you can get signed back on duty. You need to go back to work and get over this thing with Martina. Until you do all these things you’re a problem for me, Frank.”

“Don’t talk about fucking Martina.”

“Martina is dead. She’s dead, Frank.”

I shook my head at the floor.

“I don’t like your unpredictability right now. I want you to get off the drugs and stop drinking.”

“Honey, my mother died years ago and she was the last woman who got to tell me what to do.”

“Have a shower.”

“No.”

“Have a shower.”

“No.”

She stood waiting. I considered my options. The first was picking Eden right up off the floor and carrying her out of my apartment. In my mind that was fairly easy—even with all the weight I’d dropped after the shooting I still had a good thirty kilos on her. But she was slippery. I’d seen her put down men twice my size with minimal effort. I didn’t know if she had trained in any martial arts but I wouldn’t be surprised. She’d also been known to pull knives and guns from secret places on her body, which was always a shock because she dressed like she knew she had a kick-ass body—athletic and sprightly with curves only where they were absolutely necessary. I scratched my neck and looked at her, summoning all my Jedi power, and willed her silently to budge. She didn’t. I also knew she could hold a Mexican standoff for days. She had no emotions. No needs. I spewed some more venom under my breath and left her.

 

 

I took half an hour in the bathroom just to piss her off, to get something back. I finished up and stood in front of the mirror, counting off the minutes on my watch. Then I went out into the living room and grabbed a shirt from the back of the couch.

“Not that one,” Eden said, handing me a clean shirt she’d plucked from my wardrobe. “You didn’t shave. You need to shave.”

“You need to stop beginning sentences with
you need
.”

“You will shave.”

“Leave me alone, Eden.”

She relented a little and held open the apartment door for me. In the car she flipped the radio on and turned up the air-conditioning. I rolled down my window, let the warm autumn air come rolling in.

We turned onto Anzac Parade and headed into the city.

Eden was listening to the radio. Had that intensity about her—a cat about to strike, unnatural stillness.

“We’re going to get put on this, you and I,” she said.

“On what?”

She turned up the radio.

I reached over and flipped the radio to a station blaring celebrity news.

“I’m not on duty.”

“You’re going to be put on duty if they link this missing prostitute to the others. We’re the serial killer team now, Frank. That’s us. Jason Beck gave us that title. They’re going to sign you on and put us on that case, whether you like it or not.”

“Does that mean I don’t have to go to the shrink?”

“No.”

“I’ll refuse the case. My shoulder’s no good.”

“What is your plan?” A little frazzle seemed to edge into Eden’s voice for the first time that day. I felt slightly uplifted. “You’re just going to languish away in that hellhole of an apartment eating shit and listening to Chris Isaak until you depress yourself to death?”

“Sounds good to me. If no one bothers me for long enough the cat will probably dispose of my corpse. Ah, the circle of life.”

“You’re not funny.”

“Depressing myself to death would be very artistic of me. I always wanted to be artistic.”

“Just stop.”

“You stop.”

“I asked Hades if he would give you some work,” she said. She was driving one-handed, hanging her French-manicured nails over the edge of the center console. Now and then she rubbed them together, the only outward sign of her irritation. “He said he had plenty you could do.”

“Why do you call him Hades? He’s your dad. You should call him ‘Dad.’ It’s very weird to do otherwise. You don’t want people to think you’re weird, Eden. They might catch on to you. To your little game. Is that why you ended up a serial killer, Eden? Was Hades a weird father? Did he train you in the dark arts?”

“You better watch your tongue, boy-o.”

We looked at each other. My jaw felt locked.

“You’re completely without friends or hobbies right now,” she said after a time. “Binge drinking is making you ineffectual.”

“Oh dear. I wouldn’t want to end up ineffectual. That would be ghastly.”

“Hades needs help. He’s old. You need something to keep you busy.”

“I’m not working for Hades, honey. That’s my final word on that.”

Eden swung the car out of the traffic. The car behind us honked. She pulled up behind a taxi and I jolted in my seat as she yanked the emergency brake.

“Listen, Frank, here’s how it is,” she said, clasping her hands. “I’m going to keep coming to your apartment until you do as I say. I’m going to keep calling you on the phone. I’m going to follow you down to that disgusting pub where you spend your nights and I’m going to get in the way of those sluts you take home with you. If all that doesn’t work, I’m going to start hanging around
inside
your apartment, and you won’t be able to get me out. I’ve had a key for weeks. I’m not going away, so you make the decision now to get up and get moving or the consequences are going to get more and more inconvenient for you.”

A little color, a light pink, had come into her cheeks while she was speaking. That was the only indication that she meant what she was saying. I had to give her a little smile. For all the terror and heartache and frustration she brought to my life, for all her intrusions, her insults, her propensity for the word “dead,” I couldn’t deny that Eden cared about me. If she was forced to kill me, she was going to make it her last option.

“You’ve got a key to my place?”

She sighed.

“Seriously, how’d you get a key to my place?”

Eden pulled the car back into the traffic.

 

 

I’d made it clear early on that I wouldn’t be having private sessions with the shrink. Eden and I were required to have ten tandem sessions before we could be signed back on to work. The private ones were optional. The shrink had encouraged me to sit alone with her so she could address issues with me that she thought were “too private” to discuss in front of Eden. I told her she had my permission to discuss anything she liked in front of Eden and that she’d have to shoot a tranquilizer dart into my ass and hog-tie me to get me to do any more than was required. The paperwork Captain James handed to us stipulated that we needed to
attend
ten sessions. It said nothing about participation.

For the first session I’d simply sat in the chair and hung my head back over the headrest, examining the water stains on the ceiling. Since then I’d been stonewalling Dr. Stone, using all my years of training as a detective to keep a conversation going while revealing nothing about anything. It was kind of fun. I’m not sure Stone agreed.

Surprisingly, Eden was with me on this one. The last thing Eden wanted was anyone examining her past, or even her present, lest they should start scratching their heads about her, as I had begun to do when we met. Eden had a strange vibe that I’m sure she worked hard to keep under control. She was either very attractive to people or oddly repelling, like a pretty but deadly insect.

I didn’t know much about Eden’s childhood, but her father, Heinrich “Hades” Archer, had been one of Sydney’s most powerful criminal overlords back in the late sixties and early seventies. Eden and her brother Eric both joined the boys in blue, even though the two of them had made records in academia while completing their undergraduate degrees and been offered countless scholarships and fellowships to further their studies in science and forensics.

To my knowledge she’d never entertained a boyfriend, though wherever we went men walked into telephone poles at the sight of her. Her colleagues at the station were deeply afraid of her, and no one would say exactly why. No, any digging by our shrink into Eden’s character wouldn’t have been pleasant for the moonlighting serial killer. While I was usually fairly brazen about my refusal to participate in our psychologist’s appointments, Eden gave up just as little, albeit more politely.

 

 

Eden and I sat in the waiting room of Dr. Imogen Stone’s office. She pretended to read a magazine, flipping through the pictures, those predator eyes fixed and unseeing and her clockwork mind ticking away. I watched her, bored. She had quite a pointy look to her when I examined her carefully. She appeared in no way friendly, possessed none of the roundness and softness you would associate with approachability. Streamlined and fluid, like a shark.

When Dr. Stone walked out she made me think of a big-eyed kitten. She was blond and golden skinned with a sprinkling of freckles on her small nose. Short and pretty, the girl next door.

I realized she was speaking to me. Eden caught me checking out Dr. Stone and looked embarrassed. It was the Oxy slowing me down.

“Frank?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”

“Coffee, either of you? Tea?”

“Frank will have a coffee,” Eden said. Dr. Stone made the coffee in a little kitchenette behind her desk by the huge windows. When she handed me the cup I got a whiff of some delicate perfume. I wondered if she could smell me. There was still scotch in my veins.

“You’ve lost weight again, Frank,” she said as she took her seat.

“Keep your eyes off my body, Stone. I’m not a piece of meat.”

“Are you experiencing a loss of appetite?”

I sipped the coffee. Dr. Stone waited, her legs crossed and hands on her notebook. She really had coordinated her shoes well with her outfit. She was all cream today. The cashmere on her shoes was touchable, like the shimmery stockings.

“You’re going to stare at my shoes all session again, are you?”

“You really do have good taste in shoes.”

“Thanks,” she said. Stone was easier to frazzle then Eden. She shuffled the folders and the notebook. “I’ve just got the report back from the inquest into the shootings at the Avoca Street church. Looks like your colleagues are prepared to accept your account, that Eden’s brother Eric accidentally discharged his weapon at you, Frank, and that Eden, you mistook Eric for the killer and shot him dead. They’re still puzzled as to how six bullets from your weapon ended up in Mr. Beck’s head at a trajectory that would suggest he was lying on the floor and you were standing over him. Is this something you think we can talk about today? Either of you? Eden?”