Kathryn Fox - Without Consent

The area was filled with “McMansions,” as they were known in the press. Rows of similar homes, designed to fill almost every inch of the small blocks of land. Gone were the backyards, replaced with two storys, four bedrooms, a rumpus room and double garage. In an area where heat could be searing, every home had an air-conditioner, which attracted the ire of environmentalists and beach-dwellers who were lucky enough to enjoy an ocean breeze. Their criticisms filled the letters pages of the local newspapers.

As a mother, Anya could understand the trend toward a bigger home with more space, even without children. With the burden of mortgages, people couldn’t afford to go out that much, so home became the entertainment center of their world. Time otherwise spent on a garden went toward enjoying movies on home cinemas. Or so the theory went. The irony was that families felt safer closed off from their neighbors, but these areas led the state’s crime figures for break-and-enters.

Anya hesitated before getting out of the car. Like Mary, she couldn’t help but feel guilty about a death that might have been prevented. Even if she had no idea what more could have been done.

“What are you doing here?” Meira glared.

“She’s the only one of us who saw the victim alive and she’s still a pathologist. At this stage,” Hayden said, “we need all the help we can get.”

Cars slowed to a crawl as they passed by, some passengers straining to take photos of the site of a tragedy. Anya wondered where those photos ended up. Not the sort of thing you’d scrapbook for future generations, surely.

“Crime scene’s done. You can go in,” said one of the uniformed police manning the barricade.

Out of habit, all the police wiped their feet on the doormat, although it seemed unnecessary given the amount of blood on the carpet in the hallway. They followed the red trail to the lounge room. The smell of death was all around them. A combination of perspiration, fear and the metallic odor of dried blood filled Anya’s nostrils. She preferred the more sterile formalin.

A lamp lay on the floor in the entrance, with small markers indicating its position.

Inside the room, the darkness hit them. For the middle of the day, no light came in from outside. Someone switched on the light. The curtains were all drawn.

“Nice kitty,” Meira said, pointing to a mounted cat on the mantelpiece.

The once-living feline had been preserved in an attack pose and looked extremely unlovable. A small streak of blood had landed across its face.

A plasma television hung on the wall, with surround-sound speakers in the corners. They were all splattered with blood. In the center of the floor lay the largest pool. It was where the body had been found.

“The boyfriend said he tried to drag her into the street to get help. The phone wasn’t working and his mobile was missing,” the taller junior homicide detective explained. “We thought he was bullshitting until we got your call.”

Anya explained, “Elizabeth said she was asleep on the lounge and woke up with her attacker on top of her.”

“Why don’t you think she stayed for a medical examination?” Hayden asked.

“I can’t be sure, but she implied she was partly responsible because she’d left a window open.” Glancing about the room, she said, “The attack was very violent and frenzied, judging by the blood distribution. There has to have been a lot of movement during the stabbings.”

“Can’t have been that much. The body had over forty stab wounds, mostly in the upper chest and neck.” The second female homicide detective checked the windows in the room. “She can’t have fought through that many.”

“It depends on the depth and location of the wounds. Although, by the volume of blood loss and the way it spurted across the room, some have to have hit superficial arteries.”

Hayden had remained surprisingly quiet until now. “Some of the blood could belong to the attacker.”

“It’ll be a few days before we know.” The female detective couldn’t open the window. It had been boarded up with wooden planks. “No one’s going to be peeping through these again.”

The group walked slowly around the house. Each room had suffered the same window treatments.

“Did Crime Scene check the fridge? If he’s anything like our rapist, he might have stopped to eat something,” Meira offered.

“Good point,” said Hayden. “Make sure we’ve checked that and the bins as well, in case he threw out any leftovers.”

Anya looked around the kitchen, with its laminated benchtops and photographs on the fridge door. Two of the photos were of Liz Dorman cuddling a man, and another with a large group of people at dinner, raising their glasses.

“The way Elizabeth acted and spoke at the unit was the way victims often behave when they know their rapist,” she said.

Meira sounded impatient, again. “Maybe he realized and that’s why he came back.”

Hayden studied something on the floor. “Or maybe he’s one of those gentlemen rapists and he came back as part of his fantasy, like Quentin’s profile suggested. Only this time the fantasy got more violent.”

The other female detective continued to check the windows.

“The back windows all have keyed locks on them. This woman was suddenly very security obsessed. It’s the same in every room.”

“So how did he get in?” Hayden almost muttered.

“Looks like she opened the door and got stabbed in the back, then again as she ran into the lounge room,” the tall detective explained.

Anya studied the photos on the fridge. They were all placed symmetrically, with one space left. She wondered if that had been the spot where a photo had previously been.

A male voice called from the doorway, “Who’s here? I need to come in.”

They turned to see an unshaven man with a V-necked T-shirt and shorts. His visible chest hair was matted with dried blood, hands and face were smeared as well. He had to be the boyfriend.

“You can come in. It’s all right,” said the tall detective.

The man carefully avoided treading on the carpet stains and turned his head away from the lounge room as he passed.

“Greg found the body. He’s Elizabeth’s boyfriend. They lived here together,” the junior detective explained.

Greg looked like a broken man, stooped and unkempt. “I don’t have any clothes, not even my wallet,” he mumbled.

Anya assumed that, after moving the body, he had been covered in blood and the police had taken his clothes for forensic testing at the station. He was, after all, their prime suspect. He was still “a person of interest” until proven otherwise.

She stepped forward. “I’m Doctor Crichton. I met Liz last week when she came in briefly to the clinic, the day she went on the school excursion.”

He looked embarrassed and wouldn’t make eye-contact.

“Were you the one in the car that morning, waiting?”

Greg ran a dirty hand over his face, leaned on the bench and began to cry. “I didn’t know what to do.” He sobbed for a few minutes before catching his breath. “She almost didn’t go to see you, but I pushed her. I thought she should go to the police.”

The detectives each moved closer to the doorway, giving them some sense of privacy.

“Do you know why she was so scared about that?”

“I shouldn’t say. It’ll get her into trouble.”

“Greg, we need to know. It might help the police work out who did this to her.”

“She said it could ruin her career. The night she was…” he paused and gritted his teeth, “raped by that bastard, I was at a gig. She sat up late with a girlfriend and they smoked a couple of joints and had a few wines. Then she fell asleep on the lounge.” He seemed to steady himself. “She was scared that if the school found out, she’d be sacked, and no one would believe her anyway.”