Heller’s Decision (25 page)

“
I love you, Niq,” I yelled out
again.

He
stopped at the door to the staircase and ran back to hug me
tightly. “I love you too.”

He ran off again, leaving me sitting at
the table sobbing, dripping drunken tears into my wine glass. “I
love that boy so much.”

Heller sighed patiently. “I think it’s
time for you to go to bed, my sweet.”

I snorted with watery inelegance. “You
always say that. I don’t want to go to bed. All I do these days is
work. I’m finally having fun for once.”

“It doesn’t look like it. You’re crying.”

“They’re happy tears.”

“I’m sure they are, but nonetheless, it’s
time for bed.”

“No. I don’t need anyone telling me when to
go to bed. I’ll make up my own mind.”

I stood to pour myself another glass of
wine
, but Heller gently
took the empty glass from my hand and placed it back on the table.
“Matilda.”

I glared at him and he gazed back
steadily.
And in his
eyes, usually so icy and unrevealing of his feelings, I saw a
complex mix of tender emotions, squeezing out a few extra tears
from mine.

“
Okay,” I said in a small
voice
, letting him take
my hand and lead me to his bedroom.

After a bit of stumbling around,
supervised by Heller, I managed to brush my teeth and dress myself
in my pyjamas
. I flopped
into his bed and into his arms.

“
I hope you’re not too tired,” he said,
commencing doing some things to me that awakened quite a few of my
senses.

But the next morning, after another long
night with my naked Norseman, I wasn’t feeling too sharp getting
ready for work.

“Matilda, you have your t-shirt on back to
front,” Heller informed me. “Here, let me help you take it
off.”

“
No!” I said, backing away from him. All I
needed right now was for him to start touching me and deciding he
needed another tumble in the hay. Then I’d
definitely
be late for work and at the moment, my lateness
seemed more in the realm of likely possibility than anything
definite.

After a reckless drive to work that had
my
pulse dancing with
anxiety, I hurried past Brady’s office, not daring to look at him.
But even though I kept my head down, I could feel a wave of
disapproval flowing out from there to envelope me.

I hurried to Trent’s office, throwing myself
in his visitor’s chair. He glanced at his expensive gold watch.

“
Oh, so you finally decided to turn up to
work again, huh? I’m honoured.”

“
Don’t,” I begged. “I’m not feeling too
good today. I had a late night.”

“You don’t look too good either, and I’d
wager it wasn’t the late night that’s making you look so
green.”

“Maybe I had one glass of wine too many.”

“It would appear so. Now, do you want to hear
about this new assignment?”

“Yep,” I said, sitting forward on my chair,
trying to seem engaged. “I hope it involves lying down in a dark
room with a cold washcloth over my face for the rest of the
day?”

Trent laughed. “Not even close. I want you
to go to the committal hearing for Turbot and Tank. It starts
tomorrow and is expected to last about four days.” He slid a card
across the desk to me. “Here’s a media pass. They’ve only allocated
a few, so guard it with your life. You know what journalists are
like when they think they’re missing out on a story.”

I sat up straighter, now genuinely
interested. “I know.”

“
It’s going to be a huge story. I don’t
want to miss out on it,” he said, missing the irony in his words.
“I know for a fact that
other
TV station will be covering it,” his voice dripping with
contempt for his rival station. “When you’ve sorted out the show
for the next week, you can spend the rest of the day researching
the case.”

I groaned. “That’s a lot of work.”

“Have fun.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I left his office, still
grumbling and went to my cluttered, untidy desk, rummaging under
the stacks of paper for my coffee cup. And with caffeine close at
hand, I set to work.

Hours later, after reading through the
tip-offs, emails, occasional letter and checking the online news
for anything that looked as though it might make an interesting
story, I had a tentative schedule. Trent, Brady,
Viv, Trent’s assistant, Scottie, and I met
to go over it.

Trent and Brady disagreed about a few
story suggestions and as their voices grew louder and more
strident, Scottie, Viv and I shot each other glances, all of us
sitting quietly. I figured there were enough egos in the room
without adding mine to the mix. Viv was used to them by now, so
ignored them, checking her phone. And Scottie, a measured calm man,
who Trent avowed he’d be lost without, was always the very model of
diplomacy. We worked closely together as he often picked up the
task of organising and booking people for stories when I was out of
the office.

A schedule finally approved, Scottie
assured me he’d take over that job again,
leaving me time to research Turbot and Tank. And
as Trent pre-recorded stories for the evening’s show, I sat with my
laptop in the studio reading up on the notorious pair.

Drug-fuelled teenage lovers –
nineteen-year-old Alice Turbot and eighteen-year-old Charlotte Tank
– had been charged with a series of horrific murders that rendered
the country speechless. I could still remember how I sat glued to
the news, watching the story unfold months ago. They were alleged
to have brutally murdered their families late one hot Sunday night
in a uncontrolled, blood-splattered frenzy. Alice’s mother and
older pregnant sister had been hacked to death with axes in their
beds as they slept. Afterwards, high on speed and murderous power,
they stole Alice’s mother’s car and drove to Charlotte’s home to
give her parents and three younger stepbrothers the same
treatment.

As if those events weren’t shocking and
sensational enough for the media, the girls were also accused of
afterwards drinking the blood of Charlotte’s mother. But to even
top all of that, they had then remained living in Charlotte’s house
for the next few days on a huge bender, dropping speed, smoking
weed, repeatedly watching DVDs and pigging out on junk food. They
allegedly had sex with each other a number of times on the
blood-drenched beds of their victims, while the five viciously
hewed Tank corpses remained
in situ
, undisturbed since their violent deaths.

The alarm had only been raised when
Charlotte’s parents failed to show for work. Her father’s boss, a
money-grabbing electrical contractor, had fronted at the Tank house
early one mid-week morning, to angrily demand why his staff member
hadn’t turned up for work for the previous two days. The young
women, who were clearly drugged to the eyeballs, had met him at the
door. Their bloody clothing remained unchanged since the massacre,
giving him a terrible clue that all was not well with his employee.
The young women had spoken to him in incoherent terms, ranting
about the testing of their darkness and devotion through a blood
offer, only stopping to swig from Charlotte’s father’s prized
bottle of vintage whisky. The man had backed away in horror and
immediately retreated to his van to ring the police.

The two uniformed officers closest to the
scene received a similar welcome from the girls, with the addition
of them tongue-kissing and lewdly fondling each other at the
doorway. Before long the women were taken into custody for
questioning and the house swarmed with cops and forensics. It was
only when detectives tried to contact Alice’s mother that the
slaughter in her family home was also discovered. Needless to say,
it was a busy day for the police, and a frantic one for the
media.

When the young women were charged,
d
ebate had raged in the
media for weeks about the level of influence cast over them by an
online promoter and practitioner of dark magic, Malefic. His
website, which had thousands of followers, was one that various
people constantly demanded the government permanently shut down. On
their arrest, the women declared they were his devoted ‘acolytes’,
as did many other impressionable young people, confessing to their
crimes without hesitation. They proudly told detectives they
murdered their families as part of a tribute ritual to Malefic to
gain his attention and approval.

After thirty minutes
on his website watching some of his
podcasts, I needed to dunk myself in a bathtub filled with
disinfectant. In my entire life of wasting time surfing the
internet, I’d never come across a more narcissist, malevolent
online presence than Malefic. Even the sight of him crept me out.
Ghostly pale, his black hair hung long and straight down either
side of his face. Totally unsmiling in every video, he dressed
entirely in black, his fingernails longer than mine and painted
black.
Two similarly
black-garbed, black-haired women sat silently either side of him in
every podcast like some kind of sentinels as he
recorded.

When I first saw him, I reeled back in
shock. His irises were so inky black, he appeared to have no
pupils. I reasoned to myself that it was probably coloured contacts
creating the effect, but there was no denying its immediate shock
value. That, combined with his sharpened canine teeth, lent him an
inhuman appearance.

But the most frightening thing to me was
his voice. It was beautiful, melodic, hypnotic. If I closed my
eyes, I could have happily listened to him speaking all day long,
no matter what he was saying. He spoke calmly, sounding the very
voice of reason and logic. It was easy to see how vulnerable young
people could be captured by his magnetism and message. And when I
watched a couple of the podcasts where he demonstrated some of his
rituals, I didn’t even want to laugh like I thought I would.
Instead, a chill crept up my spine.

Trent found me still at my computer many
hours later, deep in research about dark magic.

“
You look a little shell-shocked,” he
commented, planting his butt on my desk. “It’s late. You should go
home.”

“
This whole story is freaking me out. This
Malefic guy is so creepy. Look at him.”

He put on his glasses and peered down at
my screen, shuddering. “
He’s creepy, for sure. Hmm, maybe we should do something on
the topic for tomorrow night’s show?”

I leaned back in my chair and considered.
“What about getting a dark magic practitioner and maybe a religious
fundamentalist together?”

“
No way. Too controversial.”

“
Geez, I never thought I’d hear
you
say that!”

“Me either, frankly.”

“
Okay, what about a fundamentalist and a
practitioner of good magic? Like a Wiccan?”

He thought about it. “T
hat might work. Can you round anyone up in
time?”

“I have no idea how to find either of them.
But I guess that’s what you pay me for, right?”

“I knew there was some reason.”

“Ha, ha, you should go into comedy. I think
you missed your calling.”

“And with that praise ringing in my ears, I’m
off for the night. I have a date.”

I checked my watch. “It’s kinda late, isn’t
it?”

“This isn’t a dinner date.” He waggled his
eyebrows.

I held up my hand. “I don’t want to hear
anymore, honestly. It’s like hearing about your parents’ sex
life.”

“
Impertinent minx. And speaking of sex
lives, how are you and Mr Beautiful getting along?”

I shrugged. “Mostly okay. It’s a little
rocky now and then.”

“
Can’t be worse than my relationships. My
last lady friend wanted to spend most
of her time ‘discussing’ it, which usually meant
pointing out all my flaws as a human being.”

“
Can’t blame her. There are a lot of them
to discuss.”

“Watch it, girly.”

“
And which lady friend was this? The last
one? Or the one before her? Or the one before the one before
her?”

“
You make me sound like some kind of
slut.”

“
Hey, if the panties fit, you should wear
them.”

“Speaking of panties, I’m out of here. Don’t
stay too late.”

My stomach grumbled, reminding me it was
past
dinnertime. “I
won’t. Especially now I’m here by myself with nobody but this scary
Malefic dude for company.”

I stayed another hour, managing to track
down a couple of guests for the next night’s show – Joshua, the
reverend of a local independent church, who eagerly agreed to be on
the show, and Liya, an active Cybelian, a ‘church’ that worshipped
the ancient Anatolian earth mother, Cybele, and practiced good
magic. Pleased with that result and expecting a lively discussion,
I was just shutting down my computer when my phone rang.

“
Matilda,
where are you?” reproached Heller. “You should
have been home ages ago.”

“Sorry, I just had some things to wrap up at
work. I’m on my way now.”

“You need to let me know when you’re going to
work late. I was concerned something may have happened to you.”