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“You’re on speaker, Lacey’s in the car with me,” Nico warned. “We’re on our way into work. We’ve got something to share as well,” he said. “But tell me what you found.”
“Hi, Lacey,” Hickey sang out. For a big, gruff man, who reminded Nico a little of a bulldog and often growled a greeting at his fellow constables, Karl was always polite and friendly with Lacey. Nico thought he might harbor a secret crush on her, but he couldn’t begrudge the man, shewasgorgeous, after all. “Dan Huang wasn’t too hard to track down,” Hickey continued. “He works for a company called Drift Merchants, an importer who has a warehouse at Macquarie Docks in Hobart. I asked a couple of officers from down that way to go and pay him a visit.”
“How did that go?” Nico prompted.
“Dan confirmed he was Sukey’s boyfriend, and when they told him about her death, he seemed genuinely shocked.”
“But we released Sukey’s name to the media on Friday night. Did he not see that on the news?” Nico questioned. Yet another person who didn’t stay up-to-date with current events. What was with all these people?
“Sounds like he was out partying all weekend,” Hickey replied with a grunt. “The Hobart officers said they had to practically break his door down before he heard them knocking at his apartment. He dragged himself out of bed to answer the door because he’d only got home a few hours ago.” Okay, that might explain it. “So what about the story of Sukey going down to visit him?”
“Dan confirmed that Sukey was supposed to come and stay with him on the weekend of the fourth.” Nico decided that fitted the timeline, as it was coming up to three weeks ago. “But she never showed up. He just thought her parents had found out and stopped her from coming.”
“And he didn’t try and call her? Contact her in any way?”
“I believe he did call a few times, but when there was no answer, he wasn’t worried…” Hickey hesitated for a moment. “The guy seemed like a bit of a dick,” he admitted. “From his point of view, whatever he and Sukey had going on was strictly casual. No strings attached. Sounds like he’s seeing other women when Sukey wasn’t in Hobart. And he likes to party hard.”
“Hmm. Maybe the parents were right to try and keep their daughter away from the deadbeat boyfriend,” Nico mused.
“Yeah, he might be a deadbeat, but he has an alibi for the time frame surrounding Sukey’s death. He worked a double shift on the docks that weekend. Says he has multiple witnesses who can confirm,” Hickey continued. Autopsy had narrowed Sukey’s time of death down as best they could to the weekend two weeks before Zoya was killed.
“What about an alibi for Zoya’s death?” Nico asked. It was a long shot, but if the two deaths were connected and he couldn’t supply an alibi for last Sunday, then…
“Yeah, same as for Sukey’s death. He says he takes the weekend double shifts because they pay more. Seems like he regularly swaps shifts with the other workers so he can get paid more.”
“So the guy is either partying all weekend, or working all weekend,” Nico growled.
“Seems like it,” Hickey replied.
“What about suspected links to a triad?” It’d been Sukey’s parents who’d waved this red flag, and Nico wondered how many of their suspicions were based on fact, and how much was on sheer dislike of the guy.
“Still digging into that one. The company he works for imports products from China, clearly. But so do a lot of other companies. And they seem legit from what I can tell so far.”
“Keep digging,” Nico instructed. “We’ll be in the office soon.” Nico signed for Lacey to end the call.
They sat in silence for a few moments, the only sound being the tires humming on the road, digesting this new info. “Interesting,” Lacey finally said, turning from her perusal of the passing landscape to look at him. “So, who’s still on our list of possible suspects?” she asked, holding up her fingers so she could tick them off. “Erica Nellenbach?”
“Yes,” he agreed. She was a strong suspect, because she knew both of the victims, and because Zoya had perhaps tried to blackmail her. But that still didn’t account for why Erica also killed Sukey, unless the other girl was in on the blackmail too.
“Mike Baldwin?”
“Definitely,” he agreed. That man had looked at Lacey in exactly the wrong way. The way that had Nico seeing red. When Lacey had called him Creepy Mike, she hadn’t been wrong. There was something off with that guy that warranted a deeper investigation.
“The boyfriend, Dan Huang?” He had been on Nico’s list, right at the top, but his alibi seemed solid according to Hickey, although that’d need to be confirmed. “And even if he had something to do with Sukey’s death, why on earth would he want to kill Zoya?” Lacey continued.
It was true. They still hadn’t uncovered the link between why the two girls were murdered. Unless there were two separate killers. The coincidence seemed way too high to surmise they were killed individually, but showed exactly the same mode of execution and then dumped in the same location. There had to be a link, he was just damned if he could see it.
“I don’t know about him,” Nico admitted. “Perhaps I need to head down to Hobart and interview him myself.” But he wasn’t sure what that might achieve. With an inexact time of death for Sukey due to her immersion in the water and attack by wild animals, they needed to try and pin down Dan Huang’s movements for a few days before and after the given date just to be sure. It was a good four-hour drive from Hobart to Burnie. It was conceivable that Dan had driven up here, murdered Sukey, and then driven home again, all in the space of one night. Conceivable, but not likely.
“Are we still considering this mysterious serial killer as a suspect?” She posed this question in a soft voice while studying him seriously.
Nico was completely stumped on that one. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We can’t discount them. Even though the deaths don’t really seem to fit his preferred killing style or profile. Neither of these two girls were involved in the sex trade.” So far, the serial killer had only taken the lives of women who were well known to prostitute themselves for money. Not high-end escorts either, but the type who sold their bodies on the street. Which perhaps made them an easier target. All three victims of this supposed serial killer had also been drug addicts, using the money they scored from their activities to buy their next hit. Another way to make them easy targets. All the guy had to do was offer them a hit, then wait until they were high to grab them. Neither Sukey nor Zoya ticked any of those boxes.
Lacey nodded sagely, staring out the front windshield and biting her lip.
“And now we have this new information. The photo of the four girls.” She hesitated as something seemed to occur to her. “Perhaps our murders are somehow connected to Tia Brown’s death?” she mused quietly, almost as if posing the question to herself. He loved the way her mind worked. Loved how good they were at this; batting the facts back and forward between each other, trying to come up with an answer. Not only were their bodies made for each other, but their minds were made for each other too.
“I’m definitely going to bring both Sandra and Taj in tomorrow for a second interview,” Nico conferred. “I want to ask Sandra about these girls who were bullying Tia, and why she told Taj she’d taken care of them.”
