Open Wounds (Harbour Bay #2)
Camille Taylor
Chapter 1
Detective Sergeant Darryl Hill parked his unmarked red Holden SS Commodore outside the small one-storey house. With its neat garden, mowed lawn and clean gutters, it was the last house anyone expected to see with blue and white chequered police tape around the perimeter. He half-expected to see a couple of kids run out of the house squealing in delight, tossing around a football.
It was mid-morning, so most of the neighbours were already at work. A few lingered outside the tape with obvious interest at what had occurred on their quiet street in the early hours of the morning. Darryl climbed out of the car and made his way toward the front door, following his partner, Detective Inspector Amelia Donovan.
His last partner, Matt Murphy, was currently on leave with his wife Natalie and adopted daughter Hallie, taking a much needed break in Port Douglas. Before he’d left on his trip, Matt had, with a smile on his face, suggested there might be a new addition to the Murphy family in the coming months.
Darryl couldn’t believe Matt had settled so easily into married life, although at first it had been hard for him. Both he and Natalie worked long hours and they’d had to deal with being a readymade family when they had decided to adopt Hallie, who had been institutionalised for the past five years after witnessing her parents’ gruesome double murder.
It had been Darryl’s first homicide case since passing his detective’s exam and both he and Murphy had been assigned to finding the man who the newspapers dubbed the Butcher due to fact that he butchered his female victims until they were almost unrecognisable.
He had been Harbour Bay’s first and thankfully only serial killer. They still had the occasional homicide, of course, but it was nothing like the carnage left in the wake of the Butcher. Residents could once again sleep easy.
Harbour Bay, a city of about three hundred thousand on the southern New South Wales coast, was nestled against the harbour it had been named for. It had its share of good and bad, a blend of white and blue collar neighbourhoods and one large section spanning several blocks notoriously known as Coleani’s territory. The area was also the city’s central hub for crime.
Besides the state run rehabilitation centre, Paradise Valley, which specialised in the mentally unbalanced, the city also boasted a beautiful bay, a golden sand beach and marvellous breathtaking views. It also housed Harbour Bay’s Local Area Command—LAC, which sat on an outcropping of cliffs overlooking the harbour, as well as the Tasman Sea further out.
Thankfully, despite its recent bad press, people from all over the country still flocked to one of Australia’s best tourist locations.
Donovan showed her holographic Warrant Card—her official Police ID—to the uniformed officer standing guard at the front door and introduced both herself and Darryl for the record. The guard nodded, took note of their names on the crime scene log, and opened the door for them. She entered first, her light brown gaze sweeping over the interior of the combined kitchen, dining and family room. Darryl tried not to gag when he was assaulted with the aroma of dead bodies.
There is nothing like the scent of decomposing flesh to get you going in the morning, he thought grimly, as he followed her inside to the crime scene.
Two dead bodies lay face down in the centre of the room. Darryl barely glanced at the victims before moving to assess the scene. He liked to see the crime scene as his victims had first and noted there were no personal effects on the walls or on any of the surfaces. Had they just moved in? There were no boxes littering the room, so it wasn’t as if they’d just finished unpacking. People of few means, perhaps, which would explain the shabby furniture that looked to be mismatched op-shop cast-offs. This was at odds with the expensive wall-mounted flat screen TV and gaming system. A game was frozen on the LCD screen where someone had paused it and the dialogue box was prompting the user to ‘resume’ as if they had been interrupted by an unexpected guest.
Friend or foe?
The room showed no signs of a struggle. The house was as tidy on the inside as the exterior. Darryl’s gut told him that was important. He never knew men as young as his victims who kept such a clean house. Hell, he still didn’t despite being in his thirties. It appeared they had no money to pay for someone to come in and tidy up. Was it an attempt to keep neighbours from discovering something they shouldn’t?
The lingering scent of garlic and onion that warred with the smell of death had him turning to the coffee table near the bodies where two open pizza boxes sat beside the controllers for the Xbox. Most of the pizza had been consumed with only a few pieces left. A half-empty glass of flat Pepsi rested on the cardboard flap of the pizza box. He wrote down the name of the pizza company in his notepad so that he could interview the employees and verify the delivery time.
The forensic team buzzed about the room dusting for fingerprints. Men and women in white latex gloves snapped photos while collecting and methodically cataloguing evidence.
Darryl blocked out the hum of voices as he allowed his gaze to wash over the scene again. He had already seen all there was to see but a second look didn’t hurt, and he memorised the scene so that he could recall it later.
Blood and brain matter had splattered against the furthest wall, indicating that both victims had been standing at the time of death. The deep crimson had soaked into the beige carpet around the two bodies. Each body had three bullet wounds—one in the head, two in the chest, execution style.