Dear Diary,
I thought I’d reached my lowest low, but it has nothing on the way I feel right now. My sister and her baby—dead. Not just dead, but murdered and in such a horrible, devastating way. I can’t imagine what kind of person could do such a thing! My sister, a beautiful, kind, generous woman who wouldn’t hurt a soul and her sweet little innocent child…
Dead. Killed so cruelly. The very thought of what the two of them endured in the moments before their deaths tears my heart in two.
And Franklin, poor Franklin. He’s a broken man. He doesn’t want to go on. He can’t go on. They were his life. They were his everything…
I can only hope and pray the police find the person responsible and see that justice is done. It’s the only thing that keeps me going…
I miss them so.
* * *
Dani leaned tensely against the black marble counter of her sister’s gourmet kitchen and stared at Franklin. No expense had been spared in the top-of-the-line appliances—the stainless steel Bosch oven and hot plate, the matching fridge and freezer combination with its chilled water and ice cubes available at the touch of a button, the shiny metallic dishwasher. The dream kitchen her sister would never grace again. Fresh pain washed through Dani and she bit her lip at the surge of hot tears that burned behind her eyes.
Ever since the detective had attended upon her with the news, she hadn’t been able to stop crying. Her eyes were hot and swollen. She looked a mess. But she couldn’t care less. What did it matter what she looked like? Her beloved sister and niece were dead, never coming back.
Franklin made a sound of distress from where he sat on the couch and Dani’s heart clenched with pain. Sabrina and Marnie had been his world. What would he do without them? No doubt he’d bury himself in his work. At least he had that to take his mind off the horror. Dani wished she were as lucky.
While she loved her job as a pathologist, it didn’t consume her. Not in the way Franklin’s work consumed him. It had been a running joke between the three of them: If Sabrina had been the least bit insecure, she could have been forgiven for thinking there was something else—or someone else—taking up so much of his time.
The very thought that Franklin might be unfaithful to his wife was as ludicrous as Sabrina sleeping with her old high school flame. At the reminder of Scott Wells and Franklin’s discovery of Scott’s ill-fated love letters, Dani moved forward and sat next to him. She took his hand and squeezed it.
“I… I told the detective about the paternity test,” she said quietly, wanting him to be prepared. She’d gone straight to his place after meeting with the tall officer. She was counting on the fact the detective wouldn’t have spoken to her brother-in-law again.
Franklin lifted his head to stare at her. Surprise flared in the dark depths of his eyes. “You knew about that?”
She nodded. “Sabrina told me about it last week—on Friday night. I came over for a visit. You were at work.”
A soft curse escaped him. His expression was so sad and remorseful, Dani caught her breath.
“I was so stupid!” he cried, his hands clenching into fists. “How could I have said such things to her? Accused her of such deceit? My beautiful, perfect Sabrina! I must have been mad! And now…she’s gone. What am I going to do without her?”
His voice cracked with emotion. Desolation flooded his face. Dani swallowed the lump that formed in her throat and blinked away her tears. Slowly, she shook her head.
“It’s not fair, is it?” she whispered hoarsely. “How could God be so cruel? Sabrina…and wee, innocent Marnie. I still can’t believe it.”
Franklin stared at her, his face ravaged with grief. “God had nothing to do with this, Dani!” he cried. “This is pure evil.”
Dani lowered her gaze and stared at her hands where they lay clenched in her lap. Franklin was right. This wasn’t God’s fault. A surge of helplessness rushed through her. Who could have done this, and why? Sabrina hadn’t had an enemy in the world.
“Do the police have any leads?” she croaked, swiping at her tears.
Franklin’s lips compressed and he shook his head. “Not as far as I know. One of our neighbors saw the maintenance man outside our place earlier in the day. The police are looking for him. But I know Kevin Thompson. He’s a good man. He’s worked here for years.”
Dani agreed with Franklin, immediately dismissing the idea that Kevin could be responsible. He’d been the maintenance man there for as long as she could remember. At a guess, she’d put the aboriginal man in his late forties and a nicer, friendlier guy you couldn’t meet. He always greeted her with a wave and a smile when she dropped by. More often than not, he had a joke to share or a report on his three grandbabies who lived out west, in Penrith. No, Kevin Thompson was the last person she’d suspect.
“There’s no way it was Kevin,” she said adamantly.
“Yeah,” Franklin slowly agreed.
Dani gazed blindly at the floor, filled with helplessness and anger. “Then who? Who?”
Franklin drew in a deep breath and blew it out on a heavy sigh. His face flooded with guilt. Dani stared at him, her heart pounding.
“What is it, Franklin? What do you know?”
“I don’t know anything!” he cried and dragged a hand down his face. “But, I can’t help wondering if it has something to do with a case I’ve been working on. The detectives even hinted at it.”
“Bilal Al-Jabiri?” Dani murmured.
“Sabrina mentioned that too?” Franklin asked.
“Yes, of course, but I’d already seen you on the news. Do you really think this could be connected?”
Franklin’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know, Dani, but it makes a mad kind of sense and the police seem to think it’s a possibility. I’ve pissed off a lot of people by taking on this case. People with radical viewpoints and tempers to match. I can’t believe I did this to my family. That I brought this to our door.” Once again, his voice cracked and he bent over with his head in his hands. Harsh sobs shook his shoulders.
After a while, she spoke again. “We have to talk about the funerals. Did Sabrina make any requests?”
Franklin lifted his head and stared at her blankly. “What the hell are you talking about? What kind of requests?”
Dani blinked back tears. She was just as on edge as Franklin. Couldn’t he see that? But someone had to sort out the arrangements, no matter how difficult it was to do.
“I… I don’t know, Franklin. Were there any special hymns she liked?”
Franklin dropped his gaze to the floor and shook his head from side to side. “I can’t talk about this, Dani. I can’t do it. I just can’t.” He choked on another sob.
Dani clenched her teeth against a surge of emotion and moved closer to pat him awkwardly on the arm. There was nothing she could say to ease his desolation and she wouldn’t even try. How could she console someone when she was inconsolable? At that moment, a mere handful of hours after the deaths of her niece and sister, the future looked dark and bleak.
* * *
Jett dropped into his office chair with a sigh. His shift had ended hours ago, but when a case like the Cook double homicide happened, nobody got to go home. He glanced across at Lane where he sat at the desk opposite.
“How did you go with the maintenance man? Did you manage to track him down?”
Lane shook his head and ran a hand tiredly through his hair, leaving it standing on end.
“No. There was no sign of him, but I spoke with the building supervisor. Matthew Phillip is Kevin Thompson’s boss. He confirmed Kevin had been booked in to clear a drain in the Cook condominium earlier in the day, but he expressed shock at the possibility the man was responsible for the deaths. Thompson’s worked there for ten years and has never caused him a moment’s trouble.”
“Did we get a contact number for the guy?”
“Yeah. Phillips called him while I was there. The call went straight to voicemail. I took down Thompson’s details. We sent a car around to the same address his pay slips are sent. There was no one home.”
Jett scratched at the stubble on his chin. “When did the super last see Thompson? Do we know if this guy entered the Cook condo?”
“That’s unclear. Phillips hasn’t seen Thompson since their tea break at eleven. At that time, Thompson confirmed the blocked drain in the penthouse was still on his list.”
“How did he seem, to Phillips?” Jett asked.
“He seemed like his normal self. Phillips didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Definitely no signs that the man was about to stab a woman and her child to death.”
Jett’s lips compressed at the memory of Sabrina and Marnie Cook and the state in which they’d been found. A wave of anger surged through him, quickly followed by cold determination. Nobody deserved to die that way. It was plain wrong, no matter how anyone looked at it. He would find the killer and bring him to justice, if it were the last thing he did.
Lane bent low and pulled something out of his briefcase and tossed it on Jett’s desk. “I asked the husband for his wife’s phone. I haven’t had time to go through it, yet. I thought we might find some clues in her phone and text log. It might be a long shot, but you never know.”
Jett nodded and reached over and picked up the phone. It was sealed in a clear plastic evidence bag. The iPhone was protected by a hot pink-and-silver Dolce & Gabbana phone cover. Given the overt display of wealth evidenced in the condominium, Jett assumed the designer accessory was genuine.
“How did it go with the sister?”
Lane’s question startled Jett out of his thoughts. In the blink of an eye, his mind zeroed back to the dark-haired beauty he’d spoken with earlier in the day. He wondered where she was right now and whether she still felt as devastated by his news as she’d looked.
“She’s a pathologist at the Sydney Harbour Hospital,” he said. “I broke the news to her at work.”
Lane held his gaze. “What was your take on her?”
Jett shrugged. “She seemed genuinely shocked and distraught. Then again, she might just be a good actress. Who knows? She’s almost as tall as I am and looks strong enough to be able to carry out the deed, but so far, I’m struggling for a motive.”
“Jealousy?” Lane suggested. “From the photos Franklin Cook supplied of his wife, Sabrina Cook was a stunner and everybody I interviewed emphasized how good and kind she was. She was married to a successful lawyer, with wealth far beyond what most of us ever hope for. To top it off, she had a sweet baby girl. She was living the dream.”
“Yes,” Jett replied. “It seems even more unbelievable that somebody purposely destroyed all of that. Sabrina’s sister is every bit as good looking and furnished me with an alibi. Apparently she was meeting with her AA sponsor. I tracked him down at No. 1 Oval at Sydney University. He corroborated her version of events.”
Lane nodded. “Samantha Coleridge called from the morgue with the initial autopsy results. Sabrina Cook was stabbed thirty-seven times before her throat was slit from ear to ear.” He shook his head, his expression grave. “This was personal. It’s why the Al-Jabiri angle doesn’t seem to make any sense.”
“Unless it was someone close to the legal action. Who had the most to lose?” Jett wondered aloud.
“There are a number of potential suspects,” Lane replied. “I spoke to one of the senior partners of Franklin Cook’s law firm. Mike Harris told me they’d received hate mail from members of the public the moment they announced they were taking the case. Franklin was often in the media, loudly defending his client’s right to a fair trial. That kind of thing’s bound to raise hackles and put certain people on edge.”
Jett regarded him curiously. “Were there any standouts?”
“We have a couple of names. Fanatics who took to social media about the case to vent against Harris & Birmingham. Franklin Cook gathered his fair share of haters.”
“Could the hate campaign have turned this personal? Personal enough to slaughter the man’s wife and child?” Jett asked, shaking his head. “What the hell are we coming to?”
Lane sighed heavily. “You’re asking me.” Glancing at his watch, Lane pushed away from his desk. “I’ll leave you to it, mate. I’m heading home. There isn’t much more we can do tonight and I, for one, am beat.”
Jett nodded. “Yeah, no worries. I won’t be far behind you. I might take a quick look through Sabrina’s cell phone before I call it a night.”
Lane nodded and lifted a hand in farewell. Jett turned back to his desk. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves from the box he kept in the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet and emptied the phone onto his desk. Activating it, his heart skipped a beat at the screen saver.
It was a close-up shot of Sabrina and her sister. Jett whistled beneath his breath. Lane hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d called Sabrina a stunner. The woman was breathtakingly beautiful. Golden blond hair fell in loose waves around a picture-perfect face. Clear blue eyes shone with happiness and warmth. A luscious mouth, perfectly formed, was opened in a wide smile.
She was cheek to cheek with her sister. The two of them grinned into the camera. Danielle Porter’s dark coloring contrasted starkly with her sister’s, but the impact of her emerald green eyes remained as dramatic as he’d found them earlier.
Today, her brown hair had been tied back in a neat bun at the nape of her neck, but the photo on the screen showed her hair loose, like her sister’s. It curled around her shoulders and fell in long waves across her chest. The informal hairstyle made her look much younger than her stated twenty-eight years.
Jett swiped his thumb across the screen and the phone opened to the text messages. It was curious the phone wasn’t protected with a password. Most people felt the need to secure their phone that way. Still, maybe there had been a password and Lane had asked Sabrina’s husband to remove it. Not that it mattered, one way or the other. The lack of a password would hardly point them in the direction of the killer, but her text and phone logs might.
Going straight to the messages, Jett scrolled through the list of texts, starting at the most recent and working his way back. Between nine fifty-one and ten-thirteen on the day of the murder, Sabrina had received and replied to messages from “Sonia” and “Wendy” about a playdate the girls had organized for Tuesday of the following week. Apparently, it was Timothy’s birthday and they were all meeting at the park.
Two days earlier, there was a brief message from Franklin, telling his wife he’d been caught up at work and would be home late. Sabrina had replied with a thumbs-up emoji and two red hearts.
Jett recalled Sabrina’s sister telling him about the recent disagreement between Franklin and his wife. He’d accused Sabrina of infidelity. It wasn’t the kind of accusation one made lightheartedly.
According to Danielle, the couple had been expecting the results any day. Jett made a note to follow the matter up with Franklin. From what Danielle had told him, it was unlikely the results had caused a stir, let alone a double homicide, but it was a loose end that needed tying up so that they could focus on other areas. Like the maintenance man and the middle-eastern angle.
Jett scrolled back through the texts a bit further and paused on the name “Dani.” The most recent message was over a week before. He opened it and scanned the words and then started in surprise.
How many times do I have 2 tell u, Sabrina? Butt out.
The texts from Sabrina were less aggressive, but all the same, it was clear there was tension between the two girls.
Get off your high horse, Dani and just LISTEN to me for a change!
And: You’re so darn stubborn! I’m only trying to help you! Please let me help you!
Dani’s reply was more forthright.
I don’t need your help, Sabrina. I can do this on my own.
Jett scrolled forward, but the argument ended abruptly with the first jab. It wasn’t clear what they’d been fighting about. According to Franklin, the girls had been on less friendly terms more recently. Jett wondered if the anger he felt in Danielle’s responses to her sister could have morphed into the kind of rage exhibited at the scene of the murders.
He shook his head and sighed. It was definitely a stretch. It wasn’t unusual for siblings to argue. Hell, he argued with his brothers and sisters all the time. It didn’t mean he wanted to kill them. He’d talk to the woman about it the next time he saw her, but as far as he was concerned, there were far more viable suspects than Danielle Porter.