The Girl in Kellers Way

  About the Book

  When a body is found buried near the desolate forest road of Kellers Way, Detective Melanie Carter must identify the victim if she is to have any chance of finding the killer. That’s no easy task with fragmentary evidence from a crime committed years earlier and a conspiracy of silence from anyone who might have information.

  The one person who may be able to help is Julie West. In a troubled marriage, Julie often jogs along Kellers Way to clear her mind and escape the confines of her suffocating suburban life. Until one day, something happens there that shakes Julie to the core, making her question everything she ever believed about her life, her marriage and even her sanity . . .

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One: Julie

  Chapter Two: Mel

  Chapter Three: Julie

  Chapter Four: Mel

  Chapter Five: Julie

  Chapter Six: Mel

  Chapter Seven: Julie

  Chapter Eight: Mel

  Chapter Nine: Julie

  Chapter Ten: Mel

  Chapter Eleven: Julie

  Chapter Twelve: Mel

  Chapter Thirteen: Julie

  Chapter Fourteen: Mel

  Chapter Fifteen: Julie

  Chapter Sixteen: Mel

  Chapter Seventeen: Julie

  Chapter Eighteen: Mel

  Chapter Nineteen: Julie

  Chapter Twenty: Mel

  Chapter Twenty-One: Julie

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Mel

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Julie

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Mel

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Julie

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Mel

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Julie

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Mel

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Julie

  Chapter Thirty: Mel

  Chapter Thirty-One: Julie

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Mel

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Julie

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Mel

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Julie

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Julie

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Mel

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Julie

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Mel

  Chapter Forty: Julie

  Chapter Forty-One: Mel

  Chapter Forty-Two: Julie

  Chapter Forty-Three: Mel

  Chapter Forty-Four: Julie

  Chapter Forty-Five: Mel

  Chapter Forty-Six: Julie

  Chapter Forty-Seven: Julie

  Chapter Forty-Eight: Julie

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Mel

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For my sons, whose boundless enthusiasm for

  my whimsical bedtime stories encouraged me to

  venture into the world of imagination.

  The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

  OSCAR WILDE

  Chapter One

  Julie

  If you go by the calendar, it’s already spring. Yet winter hovers over us in a perpetual chill. They say it was the coldest winter in years. To be honest I don’t remember much of it. The season went by in a haze of pills and numbness.

  I’m afraid to think what would have become of me if I hadn’t stumbled across my running shoes packed away in a shoebox in the back shelf of my closet. They reminded me that I’m better than this; that I’m a survivor. I put them on and went running for the first time in months. I’ve jogged every day since.

  Even this morning I run, though it’s drizzling and I’m exhausted. Running is the only way I know to ease the dread that has gnawed at me ever since Matt and I argued last night. It was a vicious, barb-filled fight that made me feel our marriage was teetering on the edge of a precipice. When I finally fell asleep my dreams were strange and unsettling, permeated by lashing wind and rain crackling on the slate driveway. I woke feeling bereft.

  The morning routine began the moment I opened my eyes. It was typically frantic. Alice threw a minor tantrum because we were out of her favourite cereal. Matt hastily cooked scrambled eggs with toast to placate her. I plaited her dark hair while she wriggled restlessly in front of the hall mirror. We both ransacked the house looking for the seashell Alice insisted on taking to show-and-tell. Despite the chaos, the atmosphere was icy. Matt and I didn’t exchange a single word.

  When I finally got Alice in the car to drive her to school, the storm from overnight returned. Rain flicked onto the windshield in an endless stream, taunting me as I drove the familiar route, past our local shopping strip lined with cafes and stores selling useless designer novelties. I watched our plastic toy-land town pass by through the whir of windshield wipers and thought to myself: if only the blemishes in my life could be erased so easily. I turned on the radio. The music didn’t help. I couldn’t stop thinking about last night’s argument.

  It began over dinner. Matt told me over the main course, in the same expressionless tone he uses when he asks me to pass the salt, that I’m not invited to Laura’s memorial dinner. He tried to let me off gently by making it sound as if he was doing me a favour. How boring it would be to sit through all those longwinded speeches. How the evening would run late, and how my medication would make me drowsy. And then he pulled the Alice card. ‘Darling,’ he said. ‘Someone needs to stay with Alice. She isn’t comfortable yet with the new babysitter.’

  I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. Does he have so little regard for my intelligence that he thinks I don’t know why I’m banished? Oh, I know alright. Matt can hardly play the grieving widower when I’m sitting next to him at the head table, clapping politely as scholarships are awarded in honour of his first wife. Dear Laura, who was in his bed and in his heart first. And there she will remain for eternity. Laura will never age, never get fat, never grow wrinkles, never disappoint him in the ways that I have done. They talk about her in superlatives, even after all these years. Me, they barely notice.

  ‘That’s just great, Matt,’ I said, trying to make a joke of it. ‘I never realised that I was your skeleton in a closet. The inconvenient second wife. Hidden from public view.’

  ‘Don’t be crass, Julie,’ he fired back. ‘You hate these functions. If I’d asked you to come then you’d have made up an excuse to get out of it. Isn’t that how it works with you, Julie? One excuse after the next.’

  ‘You could have asked me before you made a decision on my behalf. I have the right to make a choice.’ I ran upstairs and buried my tears in the quilt covering our bed. Deep down I knew that Matt was right. I wouldn’t have gone. I rarely socialise these days.

  They say running is a loner’s sport. I’m a natural long-distance runner in both build and temperament. I’m at my happiest when I’m running alone into wind that roars into my ears and drowns out everything.

  Of all the routes I take, Kellers Way is my favourite, with its steep hills and deep silences. I don’t care what anyone says, no gym equipment can replicate the sense of freedom you get from running through a forest. Not even the top-of-the-range treadmill that Matt gave me two birthdays ago. It sits in the downstairs spare room collecting dust. I’ve only used the treadmill twice, both times when blizzards hit and we were housebound.

  Matt doesn’t like me running on the streets. He doesn’t say why, but I know well enough. We live in the shadow of Laura’s tragedy. He wants me to exercise at home, or to use the platinum membership he bought me at the fitness club.

  Why can’t he see that it’s all fake? The effervescent step instructor who can’t possibly be that happy; the personal trainer flirting shamelessly with his clients for bigger tips; the stay-at-home moms surreptitiously measuring thigh gap while they exercise. Those women judge and covet at the same time.

  After class, they sip vegetab
le juice through clear straws at the health-club bar with the giggly excitement of schoolgirls getting drunk on homemade cocktails. I can’t believe I used to join them, drinking my own vitamin shake like some pathetic sorority pledge desperately trying to fit in. And failing miserably.

  These days, I prefer running alone, with the cold air slapping my cheeks until they sting and rain hitting me until I’m soaked through. Today the morning air is so frosty that my breath leaves loops of mist hanging before me like strange apparitions. They shatter as I run through them.

  I peel off the main road and descend into Kellers Way. The rain has eased to a light drizzle. I run until a deafening hum blocks out everything, even the excruciating pain that runs through me. I hear nothing for the longest time until loud gasps rip through the daze that has enveloped me. It takes a moment for me to realise the wheezing is coming from me. I’m struggling to breathe. I clumsily remove my asthma spray from my pocket and inhale until the tightness in my chest recedes.

  Behind me, twigs snap sharply. I whirl around. I am surrounded by trees as far as the eye can see, most still stripped of leaves. Then I see it. The soft eyes of a deer stare into mine until a flash of terror passes across them. The doe looks at me almost accusingly before running off.

  When I get to the university, Matt’s lecture is in full swing. Everyone listens with rapt attention. I’ve always admired the way Matt effortlessly controls a room. The navy shirt he wears with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and the hint of dark stubble on his jaw, makes him look more like a revolutionary plotting insurrection than a psychology professor.

  I sit anonymously in the shadows and watch his fangirl students cross and uncross their legs as they move restlessly in their seats, listening to the rich tones of his voice. I see the hunger in their mascaraed eyes.

  I’ve read comments about Matt on online college forums that made me blush. The things these girls have said and thought about my husband. He pretends not to notice the array of pastel panties that tease him from under their skirts.

  ‘Impulse.’ Matt writes the word on the whiteboard with a red marker pen. He underlines it twice.

  ‘We all have urges. Some urges we share with other animals. Hunger, for example. One of our most primitive urges. Other urges are more sophisticated. They reflect the human condition. The urge for power. The urge for ownership, or success. Or for recognition.’ He pauses.

  ‘If everyone in this room were to give in to their urges right now there would be chaos. Mayhem.’ He pauses until the uncomfortable laughter subsides. ‘Resisting urges, resisting desires is what sets us apart from our primate cousins. It’s what makes us human. It’s what, in fact, makes us civilised.’ Matt waits with his arms crossed until the crackle of anticipation is the only sound in the auditorium. His students strain to hear his next sentence.

  ‘The ability to resist the temptation of an immediate reward and instead wait for a better reward later has been shown to result in greater success. Higher SAT scores. Better professions. Higher income. The question is why people who are able to delay gratifying their urges are more successful. Anyone?’

  Someone sitting near the back puts up his hand. ‘It’s a sign of self-control,’ he says.

  ‘That’s right. Self-control. We exercise it all the time.’ Matt pauses. ‘We resist desires every waking hour of our lives. Chocolate, cigarettes, coffee.’ He pauses. ‘Sex.’

  He lingers on the word as he looks directly at a girl with long black hair swept behind her shoulders. I inhale sharply. The resemblance is uncanny. No wonder Matt can’t keep his eyes off her. Of all the students he’s decided to fuck this term, it has to be the one who looks like Laura.

  Chapter Two

  Mel

  We get a noticeable spike in murder cases in early spring. In winter the killings drop off suddenly and then rise again slowly to reach a peak in high summer when the heat is at its most stifling and tempers are explosive.

  Some say the annual rise in homicides in the spring is caused by the changes to sleep patterns from the switch to Daylight Saving Time. The truth is more mundane. Melting snow reveals secrets buried over winter. Old bones mainly. Pale and brittle. They peek through muddy soil to be found by hikers, who inevitably assume the remains are human. Occasionally they’re right. Mostly the finds are animal bones, often roadkill swept to the side and buried in winter snow. We spend an awful lot of time chasing old bones in the spring.

  The Kellers Way victim would never have been found if it hadn’t been for the worst springtime storms in two decades. We’d had three days of rain so bad there was minor flooding in the low-lying parts of town. Several forest roads were closed due to damaged trees in danger of toppling. One of those roads was Kellers Way.

  ‘We need you to head over to the national park, Mel.’ The dispatcher’s voice echoed through the kitchen from my cellphone’s speaker, drowning out the sizzling of the eggs I was frying for my kids before they headed to school. ‘We’ve found a body in a clearing near the road there.’

  When I reached the entrance of Kellers Way I skirted my car around a ‘road closed’ sign. Loose gravel crunched as I steered through a series of hairpin bends, making my way towards the strobed lights of emergency vehicles somewhere on the road ahead.

  Our forensics specialist had preceded me. Carl’s all too familiar grey head was bent over the crime scene, which was cordoned off by yellow tape. On the far side was a shovel and a neat pile of topsoil that had been dug from a hole in the ground that Carl had lined with white plastic sheets.

  ‘Hey Carl.’ My voice cut through the quiet. Carl’s head immediately shot up.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, standing up. ‘I started without you.’ His silver moustache drooped, mimicking the bleak set of his mouth.

  ‘What have you found?’

  ‘Suit up and I’ll show you.’ He tossed me a crime scene pack and waited with his arms folded as I pulled on a disposable set of plastic overalls. I slipped my shoes into plastic covers and worked my hands into blue rubber gloves.

  The sickly smell of death wafted towards me. I put on the paper mask and pulled the white hood over my head so that I was a pale face in a mass of white plastic. I scooted under the crime scene tape.

  I walked in Carl’s footsteps as he slowly moved towards the body. There’s nothing worse than having to rule out dozens of tread marks from cops and medics who have polluted a crime scene by strolling all over the place like they’re on a family picnic.

  The beam of Carl’s torch hit a body lying under a tree, partly covered by soil. I looked at the gnarled branches and the imposing trunk and thought, If only trees could talk.

  ‘The forestry folk were cutting down the trees along the road that were damaged in the storms. One of the branches they cut landed near here. When the crew came to remove it they found the victim’s leg, partially exposed by rain.’

  ‘What do you know so far?’ I squatted next to Carl.

  ‘The victim is most likely an adult female,’ he said. ‘Whoever buried her here did not expect her to be found.’

  I ran my torch along the uneven bark of the thick tree trunk looking for initials or any other mark the killer might have cut into the tree.

  ‘Carl, I’d like impressions of the tree trunk. The killer might have left a carving in the bark to mark the burial site.’

  I returned my attention to the body. Disintegrating pieces of fabric indicated the victim had worn black pants. There was a thick black leather boot on the exposed foot.

  ‘Have a look at this,’ said Carl, dusting off dirt with a brush until a hand emerged with polished nails. It was a sophisticated shade, classy. Not the sort of garish nail polish shade you’d see on street girls or strippers. On the wrist was a watch with a stylish, razor-thin face. It was misted over, though not enough to prevent me from seeing that it had stopped working at 2.44.

  The victim had money and taste. The two don’t always go together. This wasn’t a runaway or a callgirl whose disappear
ance might not have been reported to police. This victim was somebody whose absence would quickly be noticed.

  ‘How much longer until we can get the body out of here and start working on identification?’ I asked.

  Carl shrugged. ‘We’ll probably get the body out by nightfall. Otherwise we’ll bring in spotlights and work the scene into the night. If we run out of time we’ll come back tomorrow to bag the topsoil around the grave and bring it to the lab.’

  That was standard in these cases. The killer might have dropped something while he was burying the victim. Back when I worked cases up in New York we once found a hotel room key near a body found in a dumpster. It led us straight to the killer. He was fast asleep in his hotel bed, oblivious to the fact that he’d dropped his spare key card at the murder scene.

  ‘Let me know when the body is at the morgue,’ I told Carl as I bent under the crime scene tape. ‘There’s not much I can do until the autopsy.’

  That’s the thing about autopsies. They can make or break a case. When I first moved here four years ago I was called to a murder scene at a house on the outskirts of town. The victim lay on the ground under her backyard laundry line with her head bashed in. Blood splatter stained a white bedsheet she’d been pegging out when she was killed. We thought her ex-husband was good for it. He’d been drinking the night she died. Couldn’t remember a damn thing about what he’d done or where he’d been.

  Then the lab results came in. Microscopic fibres removed from the victim’s wound turned out to be from the talon feathers of a horned owl. The victim was killed by blunt force trauma alright, but not the type we’d thought. An owl hit her from behind and knocked her to the ground, where she died of a brain haemorrhage. The owl was probably protecting its young, as they do in the spring.

  The case would have been forgettable except as a dinner party anecdote if there hadn’t been a life lesson in that investigation. The crystal owl paperweight that glints on my desk as I walk into the squad room each morning is a reminder of the one lesson no cop should ever forget: sometimes you have to look beyond the obvious to get to the truth.