CHAPTER 22
Karen Phillips' parents wanted her to get a good university degree and become a lawyer, accountant or some other kind of desk-bound professional. But she thirsted for excitement and became a cop.
She should have taken their advice.
After graduating from the Goulburn Academy, she spent two years in uniform refereeing domestic disputes, writing up burglaries, pacifying the mentally ill and attending motor accidents. People who summoned patrol cops were usually having a bad day in a bad life. She was really a social worker with a gun.
Then she spent four years as a detective at an inner-city station - chasing burglars and car thieves - before transferring to the Homicide Squad. She was elated about the move. Her career was back on track. She was going to be a Homicide star.
But, after three years on the Homicide Squad, she was bitterly disillusioned. Initially, the hardest part was coping with the human carnage. At her first crime scene, she crouched over the maggoty body of a 22-year-old nurse who'd been dragged into bushland, raped and stabbed to death. A month later, she followed a trail of dead kids through a house until she found their father with a shotgun in his mouth and his brains all over the wall behind him. But she slowly developed a carapace of indifference and stopped descending into hell every time she fell asleep.
Now the worst thing about the job was her colleagues, who weren't the elite cops she expected. Many were morons, timeservers, perverts or weirdos. She strongly suspected several were necrophiliacs. Because she was a woman, they gave her the shittiest jobs. At crime scenes, if she wasn't appointed exhibits officer, she had to take witness statements or handle grieving relatives.
To break the ice, she went out drinking with them and chatted about sport and sex. She even laughed at their tasteless jokes about murder victims and ignored the occasional arm that brushed her boobs. But she realised she'd never be accepted when a drunken Detective Inspector lay on the floor of a pub, and invited her to sit on his face while the others laughed like drains.
After that, she kept mostly to herself. She only really felt comfortable with Detective Inspector Marks, who appreciated her hard work and - best of all - was happily married.
Unfortunately, she didn't have a partner to provide her with support. Her last relationship died almost a year ago. Her boyfriend was an Inspector on the Fraud Squad: charming, good-looking, well-built and a terror between the sheets. He was very self-assured. In fact, he only looked nervous when his mobile phone rang.
So one night, while he snored, she hit the redial button and chatted with his other girlfriend, who seemed very nice. They quickly decided neither wanted him.
When she told him to fuck off, he claimed his other relationship was "no big deal". She replied: "Maybe, but this one isn't either."
She wasn't really angry with him. He was just a dumb slob who thought it was a big achievement to be shagging two women at the one time. She was really angry with herself for going out with him. How could she have been so stupid? From now on, she wouldn't accept second best. No more jerks. No more playboys. If she couldn't find the right man, she'd stay single and sit at home, on her finger.
As an antidote to loneliness, she worked out at the gym a lot and threw herself into her investigations, particularly the bombing of Gary Maddox's apartment. Marks was nominally in charge, but she did most of the legwork.
It was an intriguing case. Most murderers stumble around spraying out clues. Indeed, she never ceased to be amazed at their stupidity: they dropped their wallets at crime scenes, pawned their victims' property and boasted to their mates about what they'd done. They committed the ultimate crime with their brains in neutral.
But after three weeks she still had no idea who'd planted the bomb in Maddox's apartment. Whoever did it was tech-savvy and street smart. He left behind no clues at all.
That meant the key to solving the murder was Maddox himself. He claimed to have no idea who tried to kill him. But she didn't believe him. So she trawled through his police personnel file and found it full of contradictions. While working as an undercover drug cop, he made a lot of arrests and got numerous commendations. He was obviously a very good cop. But he was often reprimanded for disobeying orders and using excessive force when making arrests.
Like all undercover cops, he was psychiatrically assessed every six months. She flipped through his psych reports. The shrinks described him as highly motivated, highly intelligent and aggressive, with slightly paranoid tendencies. For once, they seemed to have got it right.
She wondered if he was crooked. Some cops, who worked undercover for a long time, never re-surfaced. Maybe his apartment was bombed because a drug deal went bad. True, there was no indication in his personnel file that he was dirty. But that meant nothing. Only dopey cops got caught.
To learn more about Maddox, she chatted with several cops who worked with him in the Narcotics Strikeforce. None were surprised that someone tried to kill him. One officer, Detective Inspector Rex McEwen, said: "That guy never heard an order he didn't question. He was a chronic smart-arse with a bad temper. We once arrested a drug dealer who gave him some backchat and he tossed him down some stairs. The dealer ended up in hospital."
"Did he complain?"
"Yeah. So we charged him with resisting arrest. But after that I steered clear of Gary. I had to look after my career."
All the drug cops she spoke to thought Maddox was clean, except for Detective Sergeant Pringle, who said he'd heard a rumour Maddox was now importing heroin, but couldn't give any specifics. He asked her to keep him informed about her investigation.
So, in the end, her inquiries about Maddox shed no light on who bombed his apartment. Indeed, she still didn't know if he was good or bad, kind or cruel.
Then there was a strange twist in the case. Maddox was kidnapped in Byron Bay and released. She strongly suspected the kidnapping had something to do with the bombing of his apartment and hoped he would tell her what happened. But at lunch he lied to her. Didn't even look embarrassed. Just lied his head off. Miserable prick.
She couldn't let him get away with that: she would go up to Byron Bay and find out exactly what occurred. Detective Inspector Marks had to authorise the trip. She headed for his office.