Disappear (17 page)

I know it must be hard for you, receiving these letters, but you’re the only one I can confide in, the only one I can trust. It feels good, sharing this with you. I just wish there was more we could share.

Do you have hidden sides - secrets - that you long to share with someone?

Tonight, I’m going into the dark again, to run with the other creatures of the night.

Wish me luck, Mother, I’ll be thinking of you.

It was getting late, and after an hour of kissing and hugging, Dianne Adamson allowed Ryan Paisley to remove her blouse and slip the bra strap from her shoulders. The moulded white cups dropped away, revealing the soft white skin of her breasts. Her nipples hardened, petals ripe and about to burst, as Ryan’s hungry hands firmly caressed her.

It isn’t working for me, Dianne thought. I don’t know why. I like Ryan and I’ve tried to relax but I keep tensing up. The feeling isn’t there.

Ryan removed his shirt and pressed his body harder against hers. ‘Ryan,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘slow down a little …’

‘Slow down,’ he kept his own voice low, responding to her whisper with a whisper of his own. He brought his arm up to face level, glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve been together since this afternoon,’ he protested, ‘we have to get on with this, Di. My parents will be home in another hour or so.’

‘Oh.’

He kissed her again, thrusting his tongue anxiously into her mouth. Her tongue was not as pliant as before. She was tense. His left hand stroked her breasts even more vigorously. With his right, he began groping at the button on her shorts.

‘Ryan … I’m sorry. I can’t.’

‘You’ll be fine, Dianne. I promise. Just try and relax.’

‘No. I don’t know why but I’m just … not ready, not tonight.’ She pushed his hands away.

A lock of sandy hair fell across his forehead. His face took on a brow beaten, puppy dog expression. ‘But this is our big chance.’

‘There’ll be other chances.’ Dianne reached for the bra, eased it into position and fastened the clasps from behind in fast, practiced moves. Instinctively she knew there wouldn’t be another chance. Not with Ryan Paisley.

‘You’re just nervous. I understand. I can fix that.’ Ryan put his arm around her.

‘Ryan. No.’ Her voice rose, filled with urgency. She attempted to disentangle herself from him but he persisted.

‘We both want this, Di,’ he said. His attempt to be seductive and forceful was, instead, clumsy and uncertain.

‘No. I don’t.’ She was angry now. How many times did she have to make her feelings obvious to him?

She pushed him away forcefully, rose to her feet and pulled her blouse on as she headed for the door. ‘Look Ryan, I’m sorry, okay? I think it’s best if I go now.’

Ryan jumped up and followed her. ‘Come on, Dianne, don’t over- react. Let’s try again.’

‘I’m going, Ryan. We’ll talk tomorrow.’

She was at the door. Ryan trotted along behind, confused, anxious. The anger started to come. ‘What the hell is all this? You’ve never been the sort to lead me on before. What’s got into you?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it now.’

Ryan took hold of her wrist. ‘Well I do.’

She jerked free of his grip. ‘Piss off!’ She turned hard on her heel, flung the door open and ran down the front porch steps. Tears sprang into the corners of her eyes.

Ryan charged out of the house behind her, fuelled by his own fury. ‘Dianne!’

Dianne kept running. She didn’t want another confrontation with Ryan tonight. They both needed time to cool off. She rounded the corner at the end of the street. Marcos Avenue, long and winding and lined with trees, stretched before her. Wide, gnarled tree branches, awash with canopies of leaves, obscured the full glow from the streetlights. There were many deep wells of darkness along the way.

She knew how headstrong and petulant Ryan could be. Halfway along the avenue she diverted her direction and stepped over the front fence of a large brick house. No lights shone from within. She planted herself beside a sprawling rose bush, hiding herself from view.

I’ll wait awhile, until the coast is clear, before I start out again
.

From behind the bush she peered out onto the street. There was no movement, very few house lights showing. From further along she heard the barking of a dog, followed by the sudden, sharp meow of a cat, then silence.

Minutes later she heard footfalls on the pathway. She held her breath, expecting to see Ryan. Instead, a lone jogger glided by.

Half a block around the corner, Ryan stopped at his front gate, fuming, debating whether to follow Dianne back to her place. He decided against it and went back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

At precisely 10 p.m. Bill Dawson, a creature of habit, left his house with an eager Max prancing in front of him, straining at his leash. Every day Bill took Max for a twenty-minute walk in the morning, the early afternoon, and finally last thing in the evening. To train a show dog, routine was an essential part of the day, and that went for relaxation as well as for teaching and practicing tricks and movements. Bill enjoyed these walks as much as Max did. He loved the peace and quiet, and the sky full of stars.

Bill paid fleeting attention to the figure in a tracksuit and sports cap, jogging along the footpath on the opposite side of the road, heading back in the direction from which Bill and Max had come.

At the end of the block, the jogger crossed the road, then resumed running. This time heading back the way he’d come, quickly closing the gap between himself and the old man.

Bill Dawson heard the footsteps approaching hurriedly from behind and threw a casual glance over his shoulder. He saw the jogger. He chuckled to himself.

These fellows are keen. And why not? Good for the health.

His dog, trotting along happily in front of him, also glanced back. The dog reacted differently. It stopped, began barking.

‘You are excitable tonight, aren’t you?’ Bill yanked at the leash. ‘Come on, matey. Stop making a fuss.’ Sudden shock gripped him as the coil of wire snapped into place around his neck.

Immediately he was choking. His whole body throbbed with sharp pain as the metal cut the thin flesh of his throat. The end of the leash dropped from his fingers as he vainly attempted to raise his arms to his throat. He staggered back, barely conscious of the strong male presence that pressed against him from behind.

His thoughts, in those few final seconds, were chaotic. His lungs were about to burst, his mind on fire, his vision unfocused and blackening, slipping away. The jogger! He pictured the runner, a blurred mental image.

Why doesn’t he help me? Can’t he see … what’s happening?

The obvious answer didn’t register with him.

Max flung his tiny body at the feet of the attacker, barking wildly, teeth bared, jaws snapping at the jogger’s ankles. The killer threw his left leg out, the side of his foot pummelling the dog square on its underside. Max reeled back, stunned.

From across the road, behind the rose bush, Dianne Adamson watched in horror as Bill Dawson’s limp form crashed to the ground. Her gaze followed the man in the tracksuit, pocketing the coil of wire, continuing his run along the street. The killer looked about briefly as he ran. Satisfied he was alone, he rounded the next corner without another backwards glance.

The dog scampered around the body of its owner, whimpering, rubbing his nose up against the corpse.

Dianne’s breath came in short, ragged bursts. Fear paralysed her. When the barking dog had alerted her, minutes before, she had peered out from behind the bush. It took only seconds for the shadowy scene before her to fully register - one man attacking another - but by then the lifeless body of the elderly man was dropping. There was a fleeting instant in which the jogger, beginning to move again, glanced about. The glow from the nearby streetlight touched his face. That brief moment was all she needed to see the firm jaw and the shape of the mouth. The upper half of the face remained in shadow, obscured by the cap’s peak. Then he was gone.

Dianne steeled herself against the plummeting sensation in the pit of her stomach. She forced herself to her feet and crossed the road. Several streams of blood were lazily forming into pools around the body. Bill Dawson had fallen on his back and his ashen face, illuminated like a ghostly visage under the neon, was frozen into a grimace of sheer horror. The eyes were wide-open, bulging, pleading.

Dianne ran to the nearest driveway and fell to her knees. She vomitted. She vaguely wondered why lights weren’t turning on inside the houses? Why people weren’t running out onto the footpaths, raising the alarm. The reason, she understood later, was simple. There had been very little noise.

The man in the tracksuit, she later told police, moved swiftly and silently, like a panther, taking his prey completely by surprise. The actual act of killing was very fast, and then the killer went, like a phantom, into the darkness.

There had only been the bark - and then the whimpering, of the victim’s pet. For years to come, that was what Dianne Adamson remembered most about that night - the soundtrack to all her nightmares.

The pathetic, mournful whine of that small dog, grieving for its master.

The murder of Trish Van Helegen, just a few days before, made the early news sections of the Sydney newspapers. Reported on the evening TV news, on balance, it received no more or less than most other violent crimes that are, sadly, commonplace in a city of several million people. Bill Dawson’s murder by identical means changed all of that. The front page of
The Telegraph
screamed to the city in bold banner headlines that a madman was on the loose. Two identical murders in less than a week.

Society needs to rid itself of these monsters
, proclaimed the editorial.
Why is it that in the last fifty years there seems to have been more and more of these mass murderers? It is clearly a phenomenon of our age, and it is not restricted to the cities of Australia, America or Britain. The serial killer knows no boundaries, no restrictions with language or race or colour or age. He, or she, could be anyone, anywhere.

The editorial closed with a prayer that this was not the work of a serial killer - that there would be no more killings.

9.15 a.m. Monday morning. At Mascot Airport, Neil Lachlan read the newspaper reports quickly. There had been another garrotte killing since Monique Brayson. He’d seen the internal police circular on Friday about her. There had been no media reports of that over the weekend. Had a shroud of secrecy formed around Brayson’s death, as it had for Brian Parkes? If that was the case, then why hadn’t the same been done about the death of Bill Dawson?

Todd was standing at the wall-length window, watching the runway. ‘Hey Dad, look!’

Lachlan joined his son at the window. A 747 Melbourne bound flight was hurtling along the runway. It lifted effortlessly off the ground, nose pointed skywards.

‘That is ace,’ Todd said excitedly.

‘Ace,’ Lachlan agreed.

‘Will we be on a plane like that, Dad?’

‘I’d say so.’ Lachlan’s mind wandered back to the news reports. Random killings. There appeared to be no connection between Bill Dawson and Trish Van Helegen. If the murderer struck again, anyone, anywhere could be the next victim. It was the stuff policemen’s nightmares were made of.

For what reason might Monique Brayson’s murder have been kept from the public? The difference struck him. Like Brian Parkes, the girl had been missing for eighteen years. The other two victims had not. He had to assume there was some significance to that.

‘I won’t be a minute,’ Lachlan told his son, ‘just going to make a phone call.’ He flipped open his cell. He hoped John Rosen could satisfy his curiosity.

The pleasant female voice over the loudspeaker interrupted his thoughts. She was calling for passengers to board the 9.50 a.m. flight to Brisbane.

Todd grabbed hold of his father’s sleeve. ‘Come on, Dad, that’s us!’

Lachlan grinned. The boy’s enthusiasm was contagious. The phone call would have to wait.

It was an hour since Jennifer had spoken to John Rosen on the phone. She had sensed the man’s reluctance to meet with her. Nevertheless she’d pushed the issue and he’d agreed to “squeeze her in” at 9.30 a.m.

‘We have a situation developing here,’ Rosen said, ushering Jennifer into his office. He gestured at the spread of newspapers fanned across the large oaken desk. ‘It’s all hands on deck. We believe this killer will strike again so you’ll understand I’m pressed for time.’

Jennifer gave a slight nod but chose not to acknowledge Rosen’s comments any further. Why was he being so evasive? There may be a killer on the loose, she understood the urgency of that, but at the same time she deserved some input on the case concerning her husband. After all, the unusual circumstances surrounding Brian’s case had caused this man to assign the case to his special investigations unit.

‘I want to know if there’s been any progress with my husband’s case.’ There was no mistaking the edge to her voice.

‘As I said on the phone, Ms Parkes, nothing further at this stage …’

‘It’s been almost a week.’

‘Ms Parkes, a murder investigation can take weeks, sometimes months …’

‘This isn’t just a murder investigation. There’s something extraordinarily strange about my husband’s disappearance and the physical condition of his body. I wasn’t sure at first but now I’m certain the whole thing is being handled with kid gloves. Do I have to run to the media to get any action?’

‘Turning the investigation into a media sideshow isn’t going to help you or us,’ Rosen said. ‘Please, I understand your frustration.’ He raised his hands in the air and, with a shrug, illustrated the enormity of the problem they faced. ‘I’m sure you understand just how difficult this is. There’s no rational explanation for your husband’s missing years, his death or his unusually youthful appearance. We have established for certain that he was run down and killed the evening prior to being found. We’re currently going back over old ground, cross checking information with the Missing Persons Unit, checking overseas records, trying to establish where he was. But we have nothing, absolutely nothing to go on.’