Reaper, page 18
Max recalled the receipt Artie had written Nero’s phone number on, the receipt that had dog food on it – expensive dog food. ‘That’s a good choice,’ he said. He loved the dog too.
‘You do realise the implications of this death, don’t you?’
There were so many implications, Max wasn’t sure which particular one she was getting at.
‘You’ll have to be more specific.’
She leaned back, brushed aside an errant strand of hair, then leaned forward again, clasped her hands.
‘When DI Williamson arrested you…’ she began slowly, as if carefully choosing her words.
‘You were there too, Meredith.’
‘Yes, yes I was,’ she said, her shoulders bowing slightly. ‘When we arrested you for the murder of Gary Cochrane, the DI implied that you also could have been responsible for the murders of your homeless people.’
Max closed his eyes, trying once again to fathom how anyone could possibly think that, let alone Meredith. She knew they were his people, people he cared about. People he protected, not harmed.
‘We now know it couldn’t possibly have been you.’ He had been so shocked and overwhelmed by the news of Old George’s murder, that thought hadn’t entered his mind. ‘You were in police custody, locked away in a cell. You had the perfect alibi.’ He caught the quiet strain in her voice, knew that it was hard for her to say, to admit she was wrong.
‘Am I supposed to be grateful?’ he asked.
‘Max, don’t. I’ll admit that I was wrong to think that of you.’
‘Well can you bring yourself to think that if you were wrong about my being the Reaper, maybe you’re wrong about the murder you have accused and arrested me for?’
Max felt he was running out of cards to play, so if guilt was still in his hand, then play it he would.
‘Look, Max, the evidence against you is hard to refute; it’s there in plain daylight for everyone to see. And you of all people know the value of video evidence, timestamped, indelible video evidence.’
‘So even after all this, you still think I’m capable of murdering someone?’
‘I don’t know, Max, but I have to believe what my eyes can see. That isn’t up to me to decide.’
‘That’s a cop-out, and you know it. Instead of just looking at and accepting what’s in front of your face, dig deeper than that. Ask the questions. Like where the hell would I get a gun from? I don’t have enough money to put a roof over my head or even eat half the time, so how the hell could I afford a weapon, let alone get hold of one?’
Meredith just sat there, looking not quite into his eyes but somewhere just lower, somewhere less confrontational, where she didn’t have to see the raw betrayal on his face.
‘And how the hell would I have got to his place?’ Max went on. ‘Or did you think I’d just take an Uber to the scene of my planned murder? Ask the driver to wait while I took care of business? It’s not like I could take the bus to and from murdering someone, is it? And considering I can barely walk after getting the living shit kicked out of me, that wasn’t a viable option.’
Still she sat there, not saying anything. Not a word. Her silence provoking him more.
‘And what would I stand to gain from killing him anyway? Ask yourself that, Meredith. What the fuck would I have to gain? Do you think I would risk my freedom and everything I know for a two-bit, worthless, piece-of-shit drug dealer at the behest of a man whose son ruined my daughter’s and my life. My family’s life. And do you think I would be stupid enough to do it and leave obvious video fucking evidence? Come on, Meredith, what kind of a fool do you think I am?’
She did look up into his eyes then. ‘Max, you know I don’t think you’re a fool.’
‘Well show me, then. Listen to your gut. You know me. In your heart of hearts you know I couldn’t do this. It is not who I am. And giving in like this is not who you are. You’ve always fought for justice, and me being stuck here, accused of murder while the real person responsible gets away scot-free is not justice in any way, shape or form. And you know it.’
Her face was reddening and she was lifting her chin in that way she did when she was trying to stop her emotions getting the better of her. It was a look that was often followed by stubborn resolve, and by God he needed that stubborn resolve right now. He needed her on his side, even if it meant provoking her.
‘Meredith. Do your fucking job. Get over your damn pride and find the evidence that proves you wrong. Find the evidence that tells the truth. I am being framed. I don’t know who by and I don’t know why. But what I do know is I did not fucking kill Gary Cochrane.’
49: Reaper
The trap has been set, and he waits.
This is too easy. The curfew has proven to be a masterstroke, has worked better than he ever thought it would. There is never going to be enough police to enforce it, and the defence forces are so under-resourced that they have only a few navy staff from the Devonport Naval Base and some army personnel promised for tomorrow. Nowhere near enough to go to staff the two night shifts that cover the curfew hours. Making it 6.00pm to 6.00am – genius. He rubs his hands together with the thrill of anticipation for what is ahead.
The central city has emptied out, but for the few homeless who have refused to cooperate, the exact people he needs here. And other than one or two potential witnesses, there is no one to see his work tonight.
He likes those odds.
He looks down at the first act, sprawled at his feet. The red stain of blood blooming like a rose corsage on the chest, the trickle from the knife still stuck in the neck ending in a pool on the concrete. He is satisfied with his handiwork. The reappearance of the dog was a surprise, but luckily he still had the bait from last night.
It is the first time he has looked someone in the eye as he’s taken them, watched their life ebb away, their soul depart their body. It was strangely exhilarating to see the look of puzzlement turning to surprise turning to horror … turning to nothing.
He can’t wait to do it again.
50: Meredith
There was something that wasn’t sitting right in all of this. Meredith didn’t know quite what it was, but there was some undercurrent in her subconscious, prickling, niggling. She knew herself well enough to trust those feelings of unease, had learned to pull them to the surface and dispassionately examine them rather than push them aside as flights of fancy. Max’s words reverberated in her head. As much as she hated to admit it, they had hit home:
‘Meredith. Do your fucking job. Get over your damn pride and find the evidence that proves you wrong.’ And also: ‘You know me…’
She thought she did, but then again…?
All the evidence pointed to Max as the man who’d stood on a porch in suburban Mount Eden and pulled the trigger on someone. Someone who was admittedly a shit of a human being, someone who manufactured and profited from human misery. And a man who had likely left a legacy of young boys – now men – abased, traumatised and abused. Yet the Max she thought she knew believed in justice, had fought for it. He believed people had a right to a fair trial, no matter how guilty they were. He believed in the process. In fact he was the one who on that fateful day told her to walk away from doing something that could have compromised everything she believed in, when anger and frustration had nearly made her do the very thing she abhorred. Yes, he had taken a life that day, against everything he stood for, but in an act of protection and self-defence. And in a true act of compassion he had also saved her from herself. Was that the action of a man who could kill in cold blood? For any reason?
Fuck. She didn’t know what to think anymore.
In moments like this all she could do was turn to the tangible. Examine what was available, take action. Set that overthinking brain of hers onto the task of getting to the bottom of what was going on, using logic and deduction worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
At this moment all the evidence pointed to Max. All the visual evidence that is. Examination of other evidence – the shell casings, the fingerprint evidence on the doorbell – was still being processed by the forensic scientists at ESR. So she would start by looking again at the video recordings.
No amount of repetition could completely desensitise her to the horror of witnessing someone’s death, especially one from violence. So she armed herself with an industrial-sized mug of coffee, sat at her desk and prepared to rewatch the surveillance footage from Gary Cochrane’s front door.
She ran through it three times, but it was fairly unequivocal. Although you could not see the whole face, you could see enough to note the bruising of the jaw. You couldn’t see enough to positively identify the assailant as Max, but you could see sufficient not to rule him out. There wasn’t enough of the face visible to utilise the AI tools available either. The hand, however, was clearly taped and bandaged, and there was bruising visible on the skin that had not been covered up. Other than that there were no other features that stood out as identifiable on the person – no tattoos, no jewellery that she could discern. The clothing was very nondescript, no doubt purposefully so. The hair was completely hidden under the hoodie. The only physical features that made them stand out from the ordinary was the height and build. And again that was a very subjective judgement. And unlike on the sliding glass doors of banks and the like, which bore charts against which to gauge the height of any robber who might be fool enough to walk through them, there was nothing on the door to measure the figure against. And there was no way to take into account any optical distortion from the camera or the effect of angle and perspective. The viewpoint couldn’t completely identify Max, but it certainly couldn’t rule him out. The visual evidence was flimsy, but it was all they had. It had been just enough to make an arrest, although stronger corroborating evidence would be needed to stand in a court of law.
The next piece of footage she pulled up from the file was from the night of the ill-fated meeting with Nero. It was CCTV footage from Myers Park, the footage that captured the assault in which Max had copped all those injuries. When he had taken the stupid risk of meeting up with a dealer, Gary Cochrane, and paid for it dearly.
This was the first time she had seen this footage, as it had only just become available to the police. She hit the play icon on the screen and sat, oddly tense, as the scene played out. Max’s face was fully identifiable this time – Cochrane not so much, his face partially obscured by the hood of his puffer jacket. She could see their mouths moving, words being spoken as they walked together. But when the attack came it was fast and it was brutal. She flinched with shock as the first punch landed, finding its target completely off guard. Max hit the ground. He didn’t stand a chance. She winced with each kick aimed at his body, and felt ill as she witnessed the deliberate stomp of the boot to the hand, her own squeezing into a fist in sympathy. It was over as quickly as it had begun, and the camera caught the fast-walking exit of Gary Cochrane from the scene, his figure becoming smaller as he strode towards the next park exit. The sight of Max just lying there, curled up in a foetal position was pitiable. It tugged at her heart.
She hit rewind and played the video again, this time looking for detail. It was like going to a movie in the theatre. The first time the sheer spectacle of it, the drama and the excitement, hit you. If you saw the same film a second time, you took in more of the detail, the almost hidden clues, the clever pop-culture references, the double entendre, and by the third viewing the movie was an old friend that you could start to quote lines from. So she tried to set aside her visceral responses to Max’s pain, the extent of them unexpected, and looked closer.
Yes, now she could see there were a few frames where the camera fully caught Gary Cochrane’s face. That would be sufficient to make a positive identification that would stand up to scrutiny in a court of law. This time she observed the punches. That first sucker punch to the jaw, an upper right hook thrown with such power it amazed her Max’s jaw wasn’t broken. She watched the way Max crumpled forward and fell to his hands and his knees, watched as his assailant’s boot lifted up and stomped on his left hand not once, not twice, but three times and then crushed it underfoot, like he was stepping out a cigarette. There was no way in hell that hand was not broken. She was going to make sure it was properly examined now he was in the cells and she had the power to do so. She watched the repeated boots to the ribs, and then the coup de grace – a boot so hard up his arse it’s a wonder it didn’t lodge there. She leaned back then, processing what she had seen. That quiet voice in the back of her mind was telling her there was something important here, something she should notice, make a connection with, but so far she could not see it. She was about to hit stop and rewind again when the top of the screen showed a form approaching from afar – make that two forms. Was that a dog? She leaned forward to try and get more detail when the clip stopped, the cropped footage they’d been sent ending at that point.
‘God damn it,’ she said out loud.
If there had been other people in the park that night, they were potential witnesses to that scene, and also potential witnesses to the presence of other people of interest. There was still in the back of her mind the possibility that Shane McFarlane had followed Max to the park that night. Had he also been captured on camera and had someone seen him there? Would they remember him?
She moved the slider back and replayed those last few seconds before the recording ran out. And again. Yes, definitely a person and a dog. Had they come across Max? Did they stop? Or had they done that classic thing of not wanting to get involved and kept on walking. She was going to have to get more of that footage. And footage from the cameras further up the path.
She leaned back in the chair, stretched her arms out, closed her eyes. Where was she going with this? After seeing that kind of attack you could understand someone wanting to get some revenge, seek retribution. But to turn up at their attacker’s house and shoot them?
The uncertainty still sat within her, like an acid stomach, a discomfort that she couldn’t ignore. She swapped windows on the screen and went back to the footage of Gary Cochrane’s murder. She watched it again, looking at those gunshots, three of them. Groin, head, heart. The groin shot. Max had not attended Auckland Grammar School, had certainly not made any mention of prior knowledge of Cochrane, any possibility of having been a victim of his sexual predation. Yet that shot was very specific. It made a statement.
She rewound to the start of the shooting sequence, the bandaged hand holding the box against his chest, the right hand pulling the gun out of the hidden cutout in the box, the shot to the groin, shot to head, shot to heart. Bang, bang, bang. Down, up, middle before the body hit the floor. She rewound again, slowed the playback speed, and hit pause just as the gun cleared the box.
It was then that she noticed. She leaned forward to check she’d seen correctly.
Fuck.
She took a screen shot and blew it up to make sure.
The words on the carton were reversed, the logo flipped over.
Oh shit.
She quickly dipped back into the files and pulled up the scene photographs.
And there it was. Why hadn’t she noticed earlier? Why hadn’t any of them?
The video footage was inverted. It was a mirror image of reality. The scene photographs clearly showed the orientation of the walls to the door were the opposite to that in the film. Which meant video of the killer was a mirror image. Which meant the hand that raised that pistol, that squeezed that trigger three times, was not the right hand of the killer. It was his left. He was left-handed.
Max was right-handed. The hand that Max had had so cruelly crushed was his left hand. There was no way he could have pulled that trigger, no way that he killed Gary Cochrane. Tears sprang into her eyes with the sheer relief. She had hated doubting him, but her logical head had overruled her gut and her heart. And now she felt the crush of guilt that she had let it. That she had put him through all of that.
Then another thought fell into place, one that made her utter a ‘fuck’ aloud.
This killer had known of Max’s injuries, had replicated them. They had gone to an awful lot of trouble to set Max up.
Why would they do that? And why Max? Why was he the scapegoat?
Her mind thought back to Shane McFarlane. Would he be devious enough to do such a thing? But what could he possibly gain – other than deflecting attention away from himself. But when she thought about it further McFarlane had been the first to plant the seed that Max was responsible for the death of Nero, and had planted the seed that Max was the Reaper, too, as far-fetched as that seemed. A homeless man killing his fellow homeless. A homeless man lacking in resources and opportunity.
So did this mean the two killers were related – the Reaper and the murderer of Nero? Of Gary Cochrane?
It was all turning into such a mind-fuck. She placed her head in her hands.
What to do now?
First things first: she had to get Max out of custody. She didn’t know how she was ever going to be able to apologise for putting him there. She’d deal with that another time.
Next she had to get that security-camera footage. Footage from all of the park. The killer had been there. He must have witnessed that fateful moment between Gary Cochrane and Max. To have faked similar injuries, he must have been there one way or another, she was sure of it. And he must have got pretty close to Max to fake them in such detail.
Finally she was on his trail.
‘I’m coming for you, you bastard.’
51: Reaper
He hears the sound of footsteps approaching him from behind.
His heart rate picks up in anticipation, and he grips more firmly the hunting knife that sits across his lap.
He waits, bides his time. Don’t stand yet, he tells himself. Not yet.
He looks down at the bait lying at his feet, still invisible to the man approaching. He smiles to himself. And so begins Act Two.
