The Night Stalker (Detective Erika Foster 2)

‘Who found the body?’ asked Erika.

‘A producer on his show,’ explained the officer. ‘She climbed up and smashed the window behind you to get inside.’

They turned and saw a large window, which looked out over the garden. There was a hole in the glass, surrounded by a spider web of cracks. The cream carpet under the frame was littered with broken glass.

‘So she’s confirmed this is Jack Hart?’ asked Erika.

‘Yeah,’ nodded the officer.

‘I thought his show was live every weekday? Today is Friday,’ said Moss.

They pondered that for a moment.

‘Okay. We need to get forensics in here fast,’ said Erika reaching for her phone.

Isaac Strong and the team of CSIs arrived quickly and started work in their blue coveralls. A couple of hours later, Erika and Moss came back to the upstairs bedroom also wearing blue coveralls. A row of steel boxes had been placed around the bed to elevate the officers from contaminating any evidence.

‘Okay, Isaac. Do you think this is the same killer as Gregory Munro? There’s a plastic bag, he’s naked, a single male,’ started Erika.

‘Let’s hold off on that assumption for a moment,’ said Isaac, looking up at her and Moss from the other side of the double bed. A crime scene photographer leaned in between them and took a shot of the body. ‘He’s been dead for less than twenty-four hours. We can still see evidence of rigor mortis in the clenched hands, and the mouth and eyes. The house is east-facing and this room, in particular, benefits from shade throughout the day, so the temperature has facilitated a relatively textbook decay. And he was photographed arriving home late last night, so it’s more common sense than science. The plastic bag was tied under the chin…’ Isaac indicated where the drawstring had been tied tight and was biting into the skin. ‘There may have been a struggle; the left eye is badly bruised from a blow with a blunt object, perhaps a hand or a fist. There was an empty bottle of beer on the bedside table, which we’ve got going off for toxicology tests. Again, there is little sign of a struggle around the bed and in the room; it was all very neat and tidy. The victim could have been incapacitated… overwhelmed by whoever did this. There is no sign of sexual assault. As I always say, I’ll know more when I open him up.’

‘What’s this, on the sheet?’ asked Erika, pointing to a white-grey residue which covered the dark blue bed sheet next to the body. She crouched down and peered under the bed. There were a couple of discarded socks, and a thick layer of dust that had been disturbed.

‘Dust,’ she said, answering her own question. ‘It’s been disturbed under the bed and brought up onto the mattress.’

‘Jeez, someone was under the bed,’ said Moss. The crime scene photographer leaned in to take a close up of the victim’s body, firing off bright flashes. Suddenly, a flash of light came from behind them. Erika turned and saw a man crouching on the piece of flat roof outside the bedroom window. He was thin, with his hair shorn into a bright blue mohawk. He pushed his camera lens through the hole in the glass and fired off two more photos.

‘Hey!’ shouted Erika, pulling down her protective mask. She went to the window, but the man, who was dressed in denim shorts and a black AC/DC T-shirt, ducked down and took another couple of shots between her legs. He moved quickly to the edge of the flat roof and, with a tinkle of broken glass, started to climb down, clinging onto a wisteria growing in thick tangles around a gutter pipe.

‘Shit, who is that?’ said Erika.

‘Looks like paparazzi,’ said Moss.

They peered out of the window as the man reached the lawn below. There were no officers in the back garden. Erika looked at Moss and they darted out of the room.

31

Erika and Moss ran to the main staircase, narrowly avoiding a collision with a crime scene technician holding a delicate tray of bagged-up evidence items. They dashed down the stairs and into the open-plan living area. They moved to the glass floor-to-ceiling window which looked out over the back garden, and Erika tried to get it open. The photographer with the blue mohawk was heading towards the fence on the right side of the garden

‘I need these open!’ shouted Erika, unable to make out anyone’s face as the blue-suited technicians looked up at them, only their curious eyes on display.

‘Boss, here!’ shouted Moss, emerging back through a door next to a steel American-style fridge. Erika followed. The door led to a utility room filled with a large washer and dryer. A long window looked out over the neatly landscaped garden, but there was no sign of the photographer. Moss tried the handle of a sturdy wooden door.