The Stalk Club (27 page)

Nelson sat at his desk, watching and waiting for VanMerle
to return from lunch.  He had the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach
that the case was slipping away from him.  There had been cases like this
before, cases that no matter what your suspicions might have been, there just
wasn’t enough evidence to nail someone’s arse to the wall before time pressures
required them to put the case aside and move on.  These were the cases that
nagged at Nelson and during the few quiet moments he had at work, he would pull
the old case files out of his three drawer cabinet again and go over them in
the hope of finding something he had missed or possibly linking them to a new
case.  He was realistic enough to understand that not every case could or would
achieve a conviction but it didn’t make it any easier for him to let them go. 
It was never easy to look into the eyes of the victim’s family and tell them
that a killer remained free to continue their life while the family of the
victim received a life sentence of sorts.  For these people the loss was
devastating and every time a birthday or anniversary rolled around, the
celebration would be tempered by the memory of the lost one who wasn’t there to
share it with them.  This case was different though.  They had Craig Thoms in
custody and would more than likely get a conviction, but Nelson was almost
certain that they didn’t have the right person in custody and as lead Detective
on the case, this bothered him just as much as any unsolved case.

Nelson saw VanMerle return from lunch and duck into his
office.  He stormed off after him, his rage building quickly again and shut the
door to VanMerle’s office behind him.  The other Detectives in the office sensed
the conflict and watched the vague outlines of the two men through the opaque
glass of the office as Nelson’s voice carried out to them.  It was unusual for
Nelson to be so fired up on a case and they smiled and nodded to each other in
amusement.

“I just need a few more days!”
”I’m sorry Nelson,” came VanMerle’s smug reply.  “There’s nothing I can do.  My
hands are tied.”

“How about Robards and Bovis work the new case while I finish
up the Fogliani case in the next forty-eight hours?  Surely that’s not too much
to ask?  And it will be good experience for Bovis.”

“You know the rules Nelson.  What Crighton says, goes. 
And I’m too close to retirement to start pissing the exec off.”

“This place is crazy!  We’re more concerned with
statistics than ensuring the right man goes to jail.”

“Nelson, I’ve seen the evidence,” replied VanMerle, now
matching Nelson’s verbosity. “That isn’t the case here.  You’ve already got the
right man in custody so move on.”

Nelson stared at the man in front of him and all of a
sudden wondered why he had bothered starting the argument in the first place. 
VanMerle had no authority to overturn Crighton’s decision and probably wouldn’t
even if he could.  He hadn’t had an original idea in the last twenty years.  VanMerle
just enjoyed wielding the ounce of power that he possessed because that was all
he had.  He wasn’t liked, he wasn’t respected and ten minutes after he retired
everyone would forget he ever existed.  Nelson realised he was wasting his time
and energy talking to him.  He stormed out of VanMerle’s office and headed up
to the ninth floor to take it up with Crighton directly but was told
bluntly by Pasha that he was in meetings for the remainder of the afternoon.  Nelson
returned to his desk and sat quietly fuming, swishing alternatives around in
his mind.  He thought about ignoring VanMerle’s directive to move on, but as
attractive and heroic as that thought sounded, he dismissed it.  The realities
of life were that he still needed money and he still loved and needed the job. 
However, he vowed quietly to himself that he would continue working the Fogliani
case with every spare moment that he had.   

Kylie Faulkner sat down on her lounge and tried to fight
the feeling of nausea that was churning inside and threatening to overwhelm her. 
The plan which had been carried out in seemingly flawless execution had for
some unknown reason started to unravel and now she suddenly felt alone and scared. 
She breathed deeply in an effort to calm her jangling nerves.  

During the course of planning Craig Thoms’ setup she had
given thought to every conceivable eventuality and how she would deal with them,
including the seemingly unlikely event that she may in some way be linked to Craig
by the past.  She had thought the likelihood to be almost non-existent and
yet somehow Detective Nelson had managed to find the ethereal link within two
short days and follow it to her door.   She felt as if she could feel his hot breath
on her neck and the thought of losing everything she had worked so hard for sent
fresh waves of nausea radiating through her body.

She thought long and hard and tried to fathom where she
had gone wrong, which mis-step she had taken, but for the life of her
couldn’t locate it.  It had all gone so perfectly.  “The evidence is too
strong,” she said aloud to herself as she slowly paced in circles around the
lounge room of her apartment.  “Why the hell is he running around tracking down
Kylie Faulkner instead of nailing Thoms’ big white arse to the floor?”  It just
didn’t make sense.  

She knew that she needed to be very careful with her next
step, as one wrong move could spell her ruin.  She put herself in Nelson’s
shoes and tried to imagine what he was thinking.  She reasoned that if he had
come so far so quickly then he would be putting all his attention into proving
her connection to the past and to the murder.  If he was smart enough to track
down Kylie Faulkner, then he was probably smart enough to find the link between
her and Fogliani’s death. It would only be a matter of time.  

She came to the conclusion that she had only one option. 
It was time to tie up loose ends and sever the connection once and for all between
her, the murder and the murderer.  It was time to enact her insurance policy.  It
wasn’t something she wanted to do, it was something she had hoped to avoid, but
now she knew she had no choice. 

She made herself a strong cup of coffee and started to
think her way through her actions for the next morning. 

She slept fitfully that night and in the mid-morning, as
light rain fell from low hanging grey clouds, she made her way into the city.  She
had done her homework on the Fogliani family.  It wasn’t hard.  Their wealth
and past notoriety ensured that their name was well known in Sydney and
although they kept a reasonably low profile, she had found several interesting and
insightful newspaper articles on them while searching on the Internet and had
come to an understanding of where the power lay.  She snapped on a pair of
latex gloves and placed a call from a phone booth. 

“Fogliani Investment, can I help you?”  The voice that
answered was female, young, yet self-assured.

“Hello, I need to speak to Michael Fogliani,” responded Kylie,
hoping that she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt, as a swarm of butterflies
fluttered inside her breast.  She savoured the feeling and tried to hold on to
it but it soon passed and calm again prevailed.

“I’m sorry, Mr Fogliani is not receiving calls at the
moment.  Can I help you?”

“Oh he’ll want to speak to me I think.  Tell him I know
who killed his uncle and that it’s not the person the cops arrested.  Tell him
that if he talks to me for a moment I will give him some information that will
prove invaluable to him.  Go and tell him that.  I’ll hold.”

After a moment of indecision the young woman put Kylie on
hold to the strains of Neil Diamond singing Shiloh.  Kylie tunelessly hummed
along as she waited.  She didn’t mind Neil Diamond, even though he was
ancient.  After less than a minute a man’s voice came on the line.

“Hello, this is Michael Fogliani.  Who is this?”  He
sounded anxious but still in control. 

“It doesn’t matter who I am.  What matters is who killed
your uncle.  I know who it was and I know that it wasn’t the guy they arrested. 
They’ve got the wrong man.”

“Look, if this is some sort of joke it’s not very funny.”

“Mr Fogliani, this is no joke.  I know who killed your uncle
and I’ve got incontrovertible proof.  Now are you interested or shall I walk
away?”  Kylie’s confidence was building now as she knew she was already on top
of Michael Fogliani.  She listened to the silence on the other end of the line with
a smile and could almost read Fogliani’s thoughts as they came to him, just as
she had planned.

“I’m interested.  But, why haven’t you taken this
information to the police?”

“Well let’s just say I don’t like the cops ok?  And I
don’t think they’d pay as well as you.”

“What sort of evidence do you have and how did you get
it?”  Fogliani responded, trying to stay calm. 

“I’ll be honest with you.  I guess I was in the right
place at the wrong time and I witnessed your uncle being murdered.  I took a
video of the whole thing.”

“You have a video of my uncle being murdered?”  Fogliani
said, his voice involuntarily rising in pitch.  Kylie noted it.

“Yes.  You can see all that you need to see to be
absolutely certain about who killed your uncle.  It’s not pretty though so I
hope you have a strong stomach.”

Anger flared inside Fogliani.  He wanted to reach through
the phone and grab the person on the other end.

“Where are you?  What do you want?”  He fired his
questions at her. Kylie smiled at his eagerness and sensed his desire.  She had
judged him well enough.  She judged all men well enough.

“What do I want?  What does everyone want?  Money of
course, something that you no doubt have plenty of.”    

“Of course.  Come down to my office in the city and we’ll
talk.”

“No,” she responded flatly.  “This is the deal so listen
carefully.  I’ll give you a couple of photographs free of charge, as a sign of
good faith.  They should be more than enough to whet your appetite and convince
you I’m not full of shit.  If you want the full video of the murder then it
will cost you a hundred grand.”

Michael Fogliani’s mind raced with a heady mixture of thoughts
and emotions.  He shook his head in an effort to clear it and focus on the one
thing that mattered – playing this out and getting his hands on the
photographs.  That was the first and most obvious step.  “Ok.  I’m with you so
far but this better not be bullshit.”

“It’s not.  Trust me.”

“That’s not going to happen, but for the time being I’ll assume
you’re on the level.  So how do we do this?”

“I’m going to tape an envelope to the underside of the
shelf in the public phone booth outside your building.  Inside that envelope is
a memory stick with a few photos on it that are just a small part of the video. 
I’ll call you in a week and we can talk business.  Have the money in cash ready
if you’re prepared to deal.”

Kylie hung up the phone, attached the envelope underneath
the shelf of the phone box and rapidly moved away to the north up Pitt Street.  She was dressed in a dark blue business suit that clung to her lithe body and quickly
disappeared into the lunchtime crowd, merging seamlessly with the office
workers who filled the street.  When she was satisfied that she was far enough
away she stopped and waited.  She had a clear view of the phone box from where
she stood.  Within two minutes a young woman emerged from the office and made a
beeline for the phone box.  Kylie wondered if she was the one who had answered
the phone.  Just as quickly the young woman returned to the building with
yellow envelope in hand.

Kylie smiled and disappeared up the street.  She was pleased
with the way things had gone and that Fogliani had at least taken the initial
bait.  She sighed aloud and mentally patted herself on her back for having the
foresight to take a video of the murder.  At the time it hadn’t seemed
necessary, but now it was about to pay a handsome dividend by extricating her
from a deep hole that Detective Nelson was trying to put her in.

She had no intention of phoning Michael Fogliani back in
a week and trying to collect on the hundred thousand.  As tempting as it was, she
considered it to be too risky a play.  The mention of the money had just been a
ruse to allay his suspicions about being given something for nothing.  She
reasoned that Fogliani would try and save himself the hundred grand by
identifying and locating Manuel Torres on his own.  Rich guys don’t get rich
from being generous benefactors to the needy, they get rich by being
tightfisted pricks and screwing over whoever they can to make a dollar, she had
thought to herself as she made her plans.

From the carefully chosen stills from the murder video,
Kylie reasoned it shouldn’t be too difficult for a man with Fogliani’s money,
power and connections to find Manuel Torres.  One of the stills on the memory
stick was a very clear picture of him moving away from Emilio Fogliani’s car
moments after the shooting.  His face and the tattoo that snaked up his neck
from underneath his jacket were clearly visible.

She reasoned that in the unlikely event that she had
misjudged Fogliani and he ended up taking the evidence to the police, the
stills – without the accompanying video - would not be sufficient evidence to
get Craig Thoms off the hook.  Not when compared to the plethora of evidence
that had been stacked against him.  It was a calculated risk, but one that she
felt she now needed to take to protect herself.