The morning briefing had been a case of lots on the go but no breakthroughs. Not that anyone in their right mind had expected a miracle overnight – other than the media of course; miracles were good click bait and made it easier to sell papers. The entire front page of the Otago Daily Times had been dedicated to the case, along with the tabloidesque headline ‘Mother Killer Still At Large.’ It wasn’t helpful. The quarter-page photograph beneath the headline showed a windswept family on the esplanade at St Clair Beach on a clear, sunny day. They were in front of the shark bell. My mind was trying to find some strange significance in that. Justin Newman stood, arm around his wife’s shoulders, wisps of Aleisha Newman’s long, dark hair swept across the face of the cherubic girl she was holding in her arms – the cherubic girl holding on to her floral bucket sunhat, trying to keep it on her head. They all wore the grins of people who were having a stellar day. According to the caption beneath the picture, the girl’s name was Charlotte. My heart went out to that wee girl, to the mother she would grow up not knowing, to the family that had been shattered.
The team had sprung into action, canvassing as far and wide as they could with their basic preliminary investigations. Businesses in the immediate vicinity of the alleyway had been called on. Most were retail stores so weren’t open at the time the crime took place, but they were checked to see if they had security-camera footage that had captured anything that could be of assistance. Trouble was, Dunedinites were a trusting lot, so most security footage was of blind spots in the shop and the till area, to spot staff ripping off their bosses. Okay, so maybe they were not that trusting. Coverage of the store entrance was also popular. Unfortunately, most didn’t offer a wider view that included the street. Likewise, the security surveillance of the boutique bars down the alleyway was minimal, generally consisting of the inside of the premises and one external camera trained onto the door. Also not very helpful.
The Rialto movie theatre complex was just across the road, and that would be visited later this morning, as soon as it opened. The last movie had finished at 10.45pm on Monday night, so we were putting the call out to anyone at that screening, in case they noticed anything odd, or saw people acting strangely as they returned to their cars – anything that stood out around the alleyway entrance.
Dunners wasn’t awash with outdoor security cameras like many other cities around the world. Other than down at the university and in studentville, it was only really the nearby Octagon in the city centre that had surveillance, mostly because it was Grand Bar Central at night and the police needed to keep an eye on the drunks.
The overwhelming undercurrent at the meeting had been the sense – and burden – of a ticking clock. Somewhere out there was a newborn, stolen from its mother’s womb. Everyone was still getting to grips with the sheer horror of that thought, and even the most seasoned among us were struggling with it. The usual frisson of excitement over a new investigation was noticeably absent.
I refreshed the feed for the online Otago Daily Times on my phone and noted the new headline ‘Police Appealing to Public over Newborn.’ I clicked on it and scrolled quickly through the text, Police were looking for any sign of the newborn baby of the victim of Monday night’s horrific murder … Police were asking people to call if they noticed anyone with an unexpected newborn … Police said people could call 0800 Crime Stoppers if they wanted to remain anonymous…
0800 Dob in a Murdering Bastard more like. Well, we needed all the help we could get, and the public could be great sources of information. We were bound to get some calls about families who’d suddenly acquired a baby, and I already felt sorry for those who’d been called on to foster at short notice, or whose desire to adopt had finally, and suddenly, been realised. It would take the shine off the occasion if they were being looked at sideways courtesy of some sick bastard’s unfathomable actions.
My allocated task du jour was to read up on recent incidents involving baby snatching. I knew I was tossed this one because it was a desk job, and therefore safe for the pregnant woman – keeping the resident arsehole happy. And even though I knew everyone was looking out for my interests, it didn’t stop me from resenting it a bit.
The office felt very empty, as everyone else was out in the big, wide world doing what seemed like more hands-on and productive work. The lack of people energy in the room made the task feel even more grim and lonely, but, nevertheless, I settled down to do the bizzo.
I was aware there had been a couple of examples of baby abductions in Dunedin in recent years. Smithy had given me the heads-up on them. He was a born and bred Dunedinite, and although not assigned to those particular cases at the time, he remembered the furore they caused. I was only a recent arrival to the city, so they hadn’t lodged in my memory. The case that did loom large in my consciousness though, was the alleged baby-trafficking exploits of Minnie Dean, who was legend in these parts, and not for good reasons. But considering that all went down in the late 1800s, I didn’t think she’d be on the current list of suspects. Hers was a bloody sad case all around, really, and she had the dubious honour of being the only woman ever to be hanged in New Zealand. After the demise of some of her charges – and carelessly burying the bodies in her back yard – she was found guilty of infanticide. She was hanged in the Invercargill jail in 1895. Being a Southland girl, I was brought up on threats of being sent to Minnie to be ‘looked after’ if I misbehaved, which, being young and impressionable at the time, resulted in plenty of nightmares. Gee, thanks for that, Mum.
I decided to cast the net wider than Dunedin. Christchurch was only five hours’ drive up the road, which was nothing to us southerners. We wouldn’t bat an eyelid at hopping in the car and driving four hours along the twisty, turning, scenic road to Queenstown to get a pie or an ice cream, then heading back home. Me and my mates had done it a couple of times – it was almost a rite of passage, and the dungier the car the better.
I thought about the keywords to search for in the police database, and also in the general search engines. There were the obvious ones: baby abduction, kidnapping, snatching, assaults on pregnant women. But there were also the broader-picture subjects: baby trafficking, disputes over paternity, custody, Hague Convention cases. I stared out the window, trying to come up with scenarios where conflict might arise – not just at the extreme end, with violence, as this case certainly was, but also at the contention and argument end of the scale. I jotted ‘surrogacy’ down on my list, and ‘stored sperm’, even though it felt very left field. But there had been examples in the media of partners wanting to use the frozen sperm of their deceased loved-one to try and conceive a child, not always to the joy of the deceased’s family. It opened up a number of interesting ethical and moral dilemmas that the sensationalists latched on to pretty quickly. Even if wildly unlikely, in my experience the process of contemplating the outliers and low-odds cases often helped you focus in on the right path, or ignited the spark of an idea that led you to the truth of what had really happened. Sometimes you just had to trust your process.
Of course, none of this addressed the motive behind something as up close and personal as carving a baby out of a woman, and that motive had to be the key to everything in this case. It was also something I felt a little ill-equipped to deal with at present. My emotional range was yo-yoing between intense gratitude that I seemed to be having a hale and happy pregnancy, to guilt that I was having a hale and happy pregnancy. Chuck in outright paranoia and fear that something awful might happen to me and this precious cargo, and I was a jittery bundle of anxiety. I gave a little shudder and my hands dropped to their default positions – top and bottom around my belly.
I spent some time reading through the results of my search – various depressing cases and situations. One headline in particular stood out. Yes, there had been a baby abducted from a maternity ward in Timaru hospital just shy of three years ago. Timas was a small port city only two and a half hours up the road from here, and was more renowned for its boguns and boy racers than its rich cultural scene and tourism charms. It certainly wasn’t a place I’d be lining up to live in anytime soon. I jotted that down for follow-up and continued scrolling through the search results. There were a number of historical abductions that I ruled out for now – they were quite specific, involving relationship breakdowns and custody disputes. Again they left me feeling saddened and repulsed. It must have been awful for everyone involved, and it appalled me that children became a gambit or bargaining chip in adults’ toxic relationships. The cases were complex and no one won, particularly in the Hague Convention cases, where a parent had secreted the child out of the country, to the devastation of the other party.
The Timaru case was the only straight-out abduction, where the victim and family was unknown and unrelated to the perpetrator. The family unfortunately happened to have a baby in the wrong town and at the wrong time. It all ended happily, with bubs returned safe and sound, but it had certainly taken the gloss off their happy occasion, and would likely have stoked a life-time paranoia around their child’s safety. I think in this instance it would be very hard not to become helicopter parents, and for that poor child not to be cotton-wooled and over-guarded for the rest of their natural.
My bladder was telling me it was time to go for a walk to the facilities, and my stomach was telling me it was time to go eat. One of the perks of being pregnant was that no one questioned when you decided it was time to take a break, particularly if there was food involved. Not that there was anyone around to question it. I had an hour before it was time to catch up with the team. They’d had the morning out doing the interesting stuff while I’d been wedded to the computer. At least it hadn’t been a colossal waste of time. I’d come up with some interesting things to follow up and scoped some background information on past cases. But the whole business had left me with an empty feeling, and a gloomy outlook that went against my usual faith in humanity. What was in order was an infusion of cheer.
I needed some company to go with the food.