Blood Born Page 17

  The timing of the admission coincided with Savannah’s death and anyone would have been stressed facing a litany of charges beginning with homicide. Anya nodded, keen to let the doctor share his opinion and the diagnosis he had made for Gary Harbourn.

  He placed his elbows on the desk and clasped his fingers beneath his chin. “This is a very troubled man. There is a childhood history of physical abuse compounded by the nightmares he still has about seeing his father’s body covered in blood in their living room.”

  Doctor Temple paused, presumably to test Anya’s reaction. She needed to stay objective and be seen as such. She did not respond.

  “Gary’s stepfather was stabbed to death, you know.”

  Anya knew. Noelene Harbourn had never been charged because the family all touched the murder weapon and no one could refute her statement about being abused by the victim or her having to save herself and the children. “I’m aware of the family background.”

  “Forgive me, but I checked you on the internet. You’re a forensic pathologist turned physician, so you cannot be expected to know all the subtle psychometric consequences of such a traumatic event. To a child, even if his mother killed in self-defense, this was an enormous betrayal of love, and one he was always unlikely to recover from. The relationship with his mother is complex and she continues to have inordinate control over all her children.”

  Anya hoped he couldn’t read what she was thinking. The siblings had conspired with their mother to disturb the crime scene. Gary would have known right from wrong even back then.

  His mother didn’t make him rape Giverny, nor make him mutilate and kill Rachel Goodwin. Why did this psychiatrist have complete disregard for the victims? Gary Harbourn was a violent perpetrator. Sophie and her father and the Hart parents were the real victims. She moved in the seat, checking her watch, hoping he would let her see Harbourn now.

  If Doctor Temple noticed her sense of urgency, he ignored it.

  “Gary’s history of recurrent crime is textbook. He has been sexually and physically traumatized in prison and even refers to sex in terms of either prison-style or free-style.

  “He is incapable of holding down a job and demonstrates numerous signs of antisocial personality disorder on top of his depression and drug-induced psychosis.”

  The counterargument was that he couldn’t hold down a job because he kept being imprisoned for criminal acts and he had burned down the business of a former employer.

  Anya always knew that a large number of people in prison had antisocial personality disorder, so it wasn’t a reason to avoid prosecution. Nor was low intelligence or psychiatric illness. If that were the case, prisons would be virtually empty.

  “Do you think there is any chance he could be feigning psychosis?”

  Doctor Temple scraped his fringe to the side again. “I’m sure you are aware of studies in which psychology students were briefed to enter public hospitals claiming to be hearing voices.”

  He used the term “public” with a hint of disdain.

  “They were all caught out as fraudulent by the psychiatrists before they could gain admission. In fact, it’s extremely difficult to fake psychosis.”

  Anya had read other studies in which students were admitted because they heard voices but displayed no psychiatric symptoms once in the hospital. In those instances, psychiatrists failed to diagnose the normal behavior they exhibited. The other inpatients recognized the fraudsters, but the staff continued to document all behavior as abnormal, reinforcing the diagnosis.

  The field of psychiatry was reasonably subjective, which left room for manipulation by people like the Harbourns. Another reason why Anya preferred pathology.

  Deciding not to challenge Doctor Temple, she nodded. “May I see Gary now?”

  Seemingly pleased that he had argued his case on behalf of his patient, the doctor stood up. “He’s learning how to use the computer but I’ll bring him back here.”

  As Anya waited she glanced around the room and noticed two framed panoramic prints of wilderness icons-Half-Dome at Yosemite and Rocky Mountain National Park-two of the most picturesque places in the world.

  A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and Doctor Temple returned with a thickset man dressed in jeans, T-shirt and larger-than-needed slippers. Both feet were bandaged and he limped into the room.

  “I’m Doctor Crichton.” Anya stood. “Please take a seat.”

  Gary Harbourn tentatively moved to the spare chair and turned back to Doctor Temple. “Is it safe for her to be here with me? I don’t want to hurt anyone.” He spoke like a frightened child.

  “It’s okay, Gary, the medication is starting to work. I’ll stay in case you need me.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Gary said and sat. He bowed his head and stared at his knees.

  “Do you know why I’m here?” Anya asked.

  “You think I’m insane and am going to hurt people. You want to lock me up in jail.” His hands began to shake and he clamped them between his thighs.

  Anya glanced at the ceiling corners and lights, wondering if the interview was being monitored or recorded. There was no sign of a camera.

  “I’m here to have a look at you. There are some police who would like to have a chat with you when you feel better. I need to check you out to see if you’ve been hurt recently.”

  The hands shook uncontrollably, even between his legs.

  “What happened to your feet?” she tried.

  “I cut them. The voice was telling me to hurt people. It wouldn’t stop ordering me to hurt…” he looked across at Anya for an instant, “…women.” His gaze returned to his lap. “So I cut them to stop me from getting away from the doctors here.”

  “May I see how they’re healing?” Anya tried to sound sympathetic. Temple was listening. She didn’t want to appear combative in any way. This interview had to be unbiased.

  Gary Harbourn unwrapped one bandage, hands struggling to cope with the simple task. He tried to cross one leg to show the sole of the foot and took two attempts before managing it. She wondered how he had coped with a computer keyboard before their meeting.

  Spontaneously he announced, “The Bible says that if your eye causes you to sin, cut it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than keep the bad eye and be cast into hell.”

  Anya wondered if that was an admission to killing Savannah. She tried not to show any reaction, even if he had misquoted the passage.

  “What do you think that refers to?” she asked, still looking at the feet.

  “You can’t die for a cause unless you’re prepared to kill for it.”

  That wasn’t exactly Anya’s interpretation. She documented the comment.

  Although Gary Harbourn had multiple horizontal lacerations to his foot, none was deep enough to warrant stitches. In other words, they were all superficial and parallel, which would have been difficult to achieve with a genuine hand tremor.

  “Can you tell me why you think you might hurt someone?”

  Gary stared at her with dark cold eyes, the ones Sophie had described.

  “It’s the voice in my head. He keeps telling me to do bad things.”

  “Can you tell me a little about the voices. Do you know who is talking to you? What do they sound like?”

  “It’s always the same. My stepfather. He’s telling me to kill women. Stab them, cut their throats before they kill us both. Can you make him stop?”

  Anya studied his face, trying to see a smirk, or anything to suggest Gary was faking his symptoms. “Do you know what happened to your father?”

  He hesitated before answering. “He’s inside my head. He says I’m the only way he can stay alive.”

  “Do you see him?” She hoped he would try to describe extravagant hallucinations and slip up, overdoing the symptoms and detail.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Does he appear to you in color or black and white?”

  Gary’s tremor stopped. He appeared
stumped for a few moments. “No one’s asked me that before. Why do you want to know?”

  “Just curious,” she said, aware she had rattled him.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Can you hear his voice now?”

  His little boy tone disappeared, replaced with a deeper, more controlled voice. “He doesn’t like you. He thinks I should hurt you because you’re out to get us.”

  Anya ignored the threat. “Doctor Temple mentioned that you were improving on medication. I’d like to ask you a few questions and I need you to give me honest answers.”

  Gary nodded. “I want to help.”

  Anya moved forward to examine his arms, chest, back, hands neck and legs. There were no signs of scratches or bruising. He was clean and there was unlikely to be any evidence left from the night at the Goodwins on his body.

  “Can you recall the night you had the street party after being released from prison?”

  Gary shook his head and the hand shaking returned. “All I remember is having some drinks and smoking a couple of cones. After that, it’s all blank.”

  Anya let a silence hang between them, choosing to observe overtly while taking notes. He didn’t take the opportunity to initiate conversation.

  “One more thing, did the voices ever want you to kill your sister, Savannah?”

  He clenched his teeth. “She died in an accident.”

  Anya kept eye-contact. “I was hoping you might like to talk about how she died. It could help.”

  Gary quickly stood and pulled down the picture of Cradle Mountain, smashing it against the wall and screaming incoherently.

  Doctor Temple stood up and pressed a red buzzer above the desk. Swiftly, Anya moved closer to the door. A nurse arrived with a trolley and two wardsmen. The psychiatrist drew up an intramuscular sedative and injected it into his arm with his staff’s help.

  After watching Gary Harbourn’s sedation take effect, Anya excused herself and left the room.

  Doctor Temple followed, like a nervous parent.

  “No one could deny that Gary is very disturbed.”

  “I agree. He is extremely troubled about a number of things, as you mentioned; his sister’s death is one of them. However, he should still be able to be interviewed by the police about the night Rachel Goodwin and her sister were attacked-with your approval and presence, of course.”

  26

  Natasha Ryder downed a grape from the plate on the table and rocked in her chair.

  “The insane defense? You’ve got to be joking.”

  Anya handed the prosecutor her report of Gary Harbourn’s assessment.

  Natasha pulled on rimless glasses and read while Hayden Richards and Kate Farrer sat quietly.

  “Hearing voices, that’s original. Is there an ‘Idiot’s Guide to Faking Insanity’ that we don’t know about?” Natasha mumbled as she turned the page. “Let’s get to the crux. Is he faking?”

  Anya had to be honest. “From that short interview, I can’t be sure. His psychiatrist is convinced but Harbourn was reasonably lucid when I saw him, until I mentioned Savannah’s death. That’s when he went berserk.”

  Kate slapped the arms of her chair. “How can he be insane and lucid? He’s making fools of us.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Anya explained. “He claims to have been in a psychotic state when the Goodwins were attacked. One induced by depression, cannabis and alcohol. It’s irrelevant about whether or not he’s thinking clearly now. My purpose was to assess any physical injuries he had and whether he was fit for police interview. That’s it. The rest is my non-expert opinion.”

  “I appreciate that,” Natasha said, “but what’s your gut telling you?”

  Anya had to be careful what she said. This was outside her field of expertise. “Sorry, but I’m not qualified to judge.”

  Hayden Richards stroked his mustache with one finger. “How about we show you his behavior at the house search and you can compare that to the impression he gave you?”

  “I want to review that tape anyway.” The prosecutor stood and turned on the portable television. “Maybe you missed something. These guys aren’t that smart.”

  Anya could see Kate grip the chair. “We even had a stud gun looking for metal hidden behind the walls, which is how we located the knife, which is consistent with the girl’s stab wounds. We’ve established that the underpants in the bag belonged to Rachel. We believe we were thorough.”

  “Let’s see.” Natasha hit the play button and returned to her seat with the remote.

  The DVD began with Noelene Harbourn in view wearing her gown. It quickly fast-forwarded to the room searches. A few minutes later, Gary Harbourn came into view, wearing nothing but underpants.

  Bare-chested, it was possible to see a torso, biceps and triceps that had only developed from weight-lifting, with or without steroids. He may have had strength, but the shortened hamstrings and bulked quadriceps meant he was unlikely to be fast or flexible.

  He didn’t appear to be in any distress from his feet, which were bare and bandage-free. From his comments and wisecracks, this was a man who didn’t fear the police. He had cut the soles of his feet some time between the search and being admitted to Saint Stephen’s.

  Natasha paused the footage of the smirking Gary, who seemed to be daring Kate to arrest him.

  The behavior was arrogant and taunting, not what she would expect from someone in psychosis, with no memory of an event. Experience and instinct told her Gary Harbourn was faking to avoid prison.

  “He’s pretty smug, the bastard.” Kate scratched at the arm of her chair. “As if he’s sure we wouldn’t find anything on him in the house that day.”

  Natasha agreed. “Not exactly Einstein, this guy.”

  “What about the baseball bat? Any prints or blood on it?”

  The conversation she had with Savannah and mention of the baseball bat had been confidential, but then she remembered Sophie mentioning the man with the bat going into Rachel’s room. Gary’s overreaction to the brothers borrowing it the night Savannah was beaten meant it was probably incriminating.

  Natasha played, then paused the recording again. When Milo sprayed the luminol in the living area, there was no bat. A few minutes later, a baseball bat and tattered mitt were by the sofa.

  “For occupational health and safety reasons the CSO wouldn’t spray with members of the public present.” Kate sank in her chair. “She got them to leave the room, then re-enter it.”

  Natasha forwarded through more images. The cameraman moved to the next room and followed Liz Gould and the CSOs.

  The lounge room, where the family had waited, was only searched with the naked eye once the bat appeared. If an object had been in contact with blood, then washed, it wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone doing the search.

  “Where did the bat come from?” Anya wanted to know if it had been there or brought out by one of the family when they moved back into the room.”

  The prosecutor moved closer to the screen and paused the image. She forwarded slowly. The cameraman had recorded each of the children filing back from the corridor.

  One of the elder boys entered the room with something at his side, then the children huddled together. A few frames later, the youngest sister was standing near the bat, the handle now covered with a mitt.

  They watched Liz Gould checking the walls with the stud finder, to knee level. Kate explained, “Anything metallic, like the knife, would register. We got lucky in Gary’s room.”

  “Smart,” Natasha commented. “It should become part of the routine. So we think this could have been used to threaten Rachel?” Anya could not admit knowing that the bat had been used for other assaults.

  “We need to check it for traces of blood,” Hayden shook his head at the mistake.

  “That leaves us with a few problems.” Natasha tapped the desk with her pen. “Were Rick and Patrick the other Harbourns at the Goodwin home, and do we have anything to link them to that house, or even
to Rachel and Sophie? And what about this Simon Vine character? If we can only prove Gary was there and he claims insanity, we could lose. If there’s nothing to suggest he deliberately planned the attack on the Goodwins, he might get away with insanity as a defense. Without motive or a logical reason for him attacking the girls, it’s hard to challenge a drug-induced psychosis. If a jury sees his act, they’ll acquit.” A good defense lawyer could tear Sophie to shreds on the stand given her severe blood loss that night and inability to ID the others.

  Kate flicked through her notebook. “The singlet and shirt that showed positive for luminol were Gary’s, and they’d both been washed. Lab’s trying to get DNA from the blood in the seams, but hasn’t had any luck yet.”

  “We’re still canvassing friends and acquaintances about who left the street party, but so far no one’s talking. It seems everyone we approach thinks of the Harbourn brothers as folk heroes beating the system by getting out of jail, or else they’re too scared of being bashed, or worse.” Hayden sounded more frustrated than the prosecutor.

  “What about the knife? Do we know where it came from?”

  Kate answered, “Patrick claims Gary took the knife from him that night. Wait for it, to carve up roast chickens for the street party. Funny how he could hand Gary a knife and not leave his own print on it.”

  Hayden added, “There’s no obvious link between the Harbourns and the Goodwins, so we don’t have a motive. The pubic hair found on Rachel’s body could belong to a number of extended family members, but so far all but one has a sound alibi, some interstate and others overseas. It seems that even the cousins want nothing to do with Noelene’s bad brood.”

  The prosecutor turned to Anya. “This isn’t enough. We need more on the family.”

  Giverny’s rape and death, Rachel’s murder and Sophie’s brutal assault should have been enough, she thought. But the legal system put the onus on the prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt. Giverny was dead so that case was compromised. Natasha Ryder was placing all of her hopes for a conviction on the Goodwin case, or any other they could prove. Yet despite physical evidence linking Gary Harbourn to the Goodwins, he could avoid prosecution by pleading insanity.