Twisted Justice

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Trent had agonised about what he was planning to do for a long time but it hadn’t helped. It had only made thinking about what had happened to Helen all the more painful.

It wasn’t his fault that it had happened to her, but it had happened, and nobody had been held accountable. In his mind, that wasn’t right. The powers that be hadn’t listened to him when he had raised his concerns. They had dismissed his accusations as unfounded, and advised him to seek help with managing his grief. He’d stuffed it all down into the dungeons of his mind and tried to get on with his life.

But she wouldn’t leave him alone.

Helen wanted justice and, after another night of haunted dreams, he understood she had chosen him to administer it and that she would not leave him in peace until he did. Seven years of nightly torment had worn down his resistance. He wanted peace more than anything else, and she’d told him how he could get it.

He sat at the kitchen table and wrote each of the five names he’d memorised onto a small square of paper, using the biro he used for making his weekly shopping list. He folded each square after he’d written a name on it and dropped the folded piece of paper into Helen’s coffee mug.

Trent couldn’t remember why he’d kept Helen’s mug. He’d discarded everything else that had belonged to her years ago. Now, as he dropped the name bearing pieces of paper into the mug, he understood why he’d kept it. She wanted to determine the order of his executions.

He picked up the mug in his left hand and held it above his head.

‘You choose, sweetheart,’ he said to the empty room, before blindly pushing the fingers of his right hand into the mug and pulling out a piece of paper.

He lowered the mug onto the table and opened the folded square. He read the name: Kelly Palmer.

Trent put Helen’s coffee mug with the remaining names in it back into the cupboard above the refrigerator, opened his laptop, and started researching Kelly Palmer.

The number of entries for Kelly Palmer surprised him but what he knew about her helped him narrow down the field of possibilities.

He signed-in to LinkedIn and read the profile of the Kelly Palmer working at City Hospital. She was still working in intensive care.

He signed-in to f*******:. There was a profile for a Kelly Palmer living in Morton Sands. The profile picture matched his memory of her face.

He opened White Pages and searched for K Palmer in Morton Sands. The search result listed two entries. He wrote down the addresses.

Trent made himself a thermos of hot coffee and two ham, cheese, and tomato sandwiches. Then he drove his van to Morton Sands.

The first address was a house in Whale Street. There were two cars in the driveway. He parked across the street from the house and waited.

He’d almost finished the coffee in his thermos when the front door of the house opened and a woman with grey hair stepped out onto the veranda with a dog on a leash. As he watched them walk towards the beach at the end of the street, he decided Kelly had to be living at the other address.

He drove around to Dune Avenue and parked outside the apartment block at number fifteen. He got out of the van, walked across the street and looked at the cars parked in the numbered parking bays. There was no car in the bay for apartment three. He returned to the van and waited.

Trent went home after watching the sun slide into the ocean and take its light from the sky in a spectacular display of oranges and pinks that slowly faded to black.

He came back to number fifteen Dune Avenue at two o’clock the next morning. There was a car parked in the bay for apartment three. He wrote down the details and figured she must be working the four to midnight shift.

He returned at three o’clock in the afternoon and watched Kelly Palmer get into her car. He followed her into the city. At three forty-six, he watched her turn into Grant Lane, opposite the main entrance to City Hospital, and enter the car park halfway down the lane.

He followed her to and from work for a week. At the end of that week, she started leaving for work at eleven pm and going home at eight the next morning. He decided on the car park, as there were always too many people around at her apartment building and there were no security cameras in the car park.

Trent spent several mornings observing the comings and goings in the car park around the time Kelly retrieved her car before driving home. She arrived at five minutes after eight most mornings and was the only person on level one for the next ten to fifteen minutes, which was more than enough time for what he had in mind.

On the Friday morning of the week Kelly had started on the midnight shift, Trent rode his bicycle into the city and waited opposite the hospital until he saw her leave the building. When she crossed the street and started down the lane, he followed her on his bicycle and rode past her before she’d reached the entrance into the car park.

He rode up the ramp to level one, dismounted, and leant his bicycle on the wall next to parking bay 1-B, and waited for Kelly to come through the door from the stairwell.