Free Perfect Victim by Megan Norris, Elizabeth Southall Page A

he believes Rachel is dead.’ But still I couldn’t believe that Mike felt this. Why would he continue to search for her in areas where she could still be alive? We were making little sense as our tortured minds battled fatigue and denial. I either didn’t feel she was dead or didn’t want to admit it. No one who knew Rachel would want to harm her. The other possibility that she had been grabbed, drugged, and raped was, in my despair, becoming more likely.
    On Friday night we decided to extend our search to the Grand Prix. We had planned just to walk around but found the place surrounded by what seemed like three-metre-high wire fencing. So we went to St Kilda and drove around the red-light district, very slowly. We didn’t even bother looking at the street map.

8
    Q UANTUM L EAP
    Day 5: Saturday, 6 March
    Our friend David had been producing more posters overnight. He rolled up on our doorstep early this Saturday morning. We plastered posters on the inside of our car windows. We gave him a list of people who wanted to distribute more. He would be delivery man.
    We mulled over the words ‘running away’, ‘running away’. We knew Rachel would never run away, yet the detective senior sergeant had shown us these words written in Rachel’s handwriting.
    ‘Running away … Running away … Runaways,’ said Mike. ‘Perhaps she meant runaways. Sounds like …’
    ‘Shoes,’ I said. ‘That’s it. They’re gym shoes. You know her preoccupation with shoes.’
    And suddenly, after trying so hard, I remembered something Rachel had been telling me about her day at the modelling school. She had handed me the sheets to read. I had turned over the notes and read on the back, ‘running away’.
    ‘What’s this?’ I’d asked.
    She’d laughed. ‘It’s a pair of shoes.’
    But this would not be enough for the police. We had to find the shoes.
    Alex, a friend, called in with two mates. They had decided to doorknock Church Street. Before they left we discussed the problem male friend. I told Mike about the photographs he had given me a few months before which I had thrown in the bin, because they seemed really off. Scary almost. Photographs of places, empty chairs, where we had consumed legitimate cups of coffee on the way home from business meetings.
    This man had progressively made me feel more and more uncomfortable. It wasn’t all his fault. Mike tells me I have an infectious and sometimes flirtatious smile. I enjoyed his company and assumed we could be friends, like girlfriends.
    Rachel knew he made me feel uncomfortable. She didn’t like him. She had seen him turn up at the dance school, looking for me in the pizza shop, where I would sometimes eat and read a book, while I waited for night classes to finish.
    He would turn up at my workplace. He would sit in his car waiting for me to leave work. Sometimes I would get to the car and discover his business card on the windscreen. Once I found a card sitting on the steering wheel when I had forgotten to lock the car.
    Two weeks before Rachel’s disappearance I was home alone and so nervous that I closed all the curtains and would not answer the phone. Sure enough, he arrived. Mike’s car was not in the drive. He rang the front doorbell as he dialled his mobile. Our phone rang. I went into Heather’s bedroom. He walked around to my bedroom window, trying to look in, and dialled once more. Our phone rang again. He went back to the front door and pushed the bell again. I sat where I was, hiding. Eventually he left. I rang Mike.
    Later in the day the phone rang. I decided to pick it up and not talk. If it was Mike or my mother, or someone from work, they’d speak. No one spoke, for a long time. Then, ‘Elizabeth … Elizabeth.’ It was him. I hung up, waited a minute and picked the phone up. He had not replaced the receiver. I pulled the plug from the wall. This was a game I didn’t like.
    It was such a hot day this Monday. After school Ashleigh-Rose, Heather and I