This is all on you, Blue. They’re all watching.
Lenny was crawling, trying to get to his knees. I opened the gate and pushed back through the crowd, pulling it shut behind me.
‘She’s leaving!’ someone cried as I sprinted across the yard. ‘Don’t go, you stupid bitch! Don’t leave him there!’
There was a four-wheel drive standing at the edge of the truck yard, the driver’s door left open. I leapt into the vehicle and turned the keys.
The machine had all the weight and grip I was after. I floored the accelerator, spun the truck and headed straight for the gate, my horn blaring.
‘Get out of the way!’
The fence rushed up against the front of the car, and as the gap closed I pushed the accelerator to the floor.
The gate smashed down in a terrifying roar. A scream escaped my lips. The gunshots started immediately, the driver’s side window exploding, a thousand cubes of glass raining over my shoulders and back as I bent almost double at the wheel.
Pock-pock-pock-pock.
I didn’t look, but I knew he was littering the side of the vehicle with holes. I heard the telltale rush of air as one of the back tyres exploded. I knew a bullet could tear into my insides at any second. I’d been shot before – I knew there’d be a thump, a dull heat, and then that sickening wetness running down my side.
Lenny started running. I reached over and threw open the passenger door, slamming on the brakes as I came alongside the miner. He launched himself sidelong into the vehicle, his whole body slamming into mine, his head almost in my lap.
I swung the wheel and let the engine roar, putting my back to the shooter, making a smaller target of the vehicle. I didn’t care where we ended up. The man in the vehicle with me was alive. He curled, crying against the dashboard, his fingers gripping the car like claws.
Chapter 77
WHEN EVENING FELL Whitt and I retreated to the steps of our donga, having spent most of the day interviewing Lenny Xavier. A quietness settled over us as we thought about what he’d said, about the voice on the radio telling him that a sick game was on.
Out in the desert, Taylor Fink and her team were examining Michael Hibbert’s body. Lenny had told us that when the shooting first started, Mick had lain flat on the ground and refused to run. The gunshots had hit the sand all around him, the killer seemingly trying to encourage him to participate in his twisted race.
‘I guess he realised Mick wasn’t going to play,’ Lenny had shuddered, sitting hunched over in the corner of the rec room. ‘Then one final shot came, and the top of Mick’s head came clean off. I just bolted after that.’
Whitt and I had received word that afternoon that police reinforcements were on their way.
‘Will the killer stay, or will he go?’ I mused aloud. Whitt brushed off the knees of his trousers, thinking.
‘He’ll stay,’ he said finally. ‘Everything about Lenny’s story suggests the killer enjoys the spectacle. He’ll want to watch the hornets scurrying around, now that he’s well and truly kicked the nest.’
‘Broad daylight,’ I said. ‘Dozens of people watching it unfold. This guy’s accelerating.’
‘You’ve got that right.’
It was only a five-minute rest break, but I still felt guilty that Gabe arrived and found Whitt and me not actively doing anything. I shot up from my seat when I spotted him coming over, his hard hat in his hand.
‘Something bite you, Harry?’ Gabe asked.
‘No.’ I brushed my hair back. ‘No, we were just putting our heads together, and I didn’t want you to think –’
‘I think you look exhausted.’ Gabe smiled. ‘Both of you. And the whole camp’s talking about you driving out there to save Lenny like a crazy person. You could have both been killed.’
I didn’t notice Whitt slip away. But when Gabe put his hand on my shoulder, I knew it must have been because we were alone.
‘I was terrified when I heard that,’ he said.
‘It was fine.’
We walked in silence to the east fence and looked out at the forensic unit’s tents lit up in the distance. My eyes wandered over the black desert until I found a convoy of cars heading towards town, a chain of gold and red rumbling across the horizon.
‘Very few will leave,’ Gabe said.
‘Really?’
‘Oh yeah.’ He laughed a little sadly. ‘There’ll be plenty of discussion tonight, but the majority will stay. None of these guys want to look afraid in front of each other.’
I watched his big fingers grip the wire.
‘I was doing a materials check at three kilometres deep once,’ Gabe said. ‘Ride down in the elevator took fifteen minutes. Down that deep it’s hot, and the air isn’t right for breathing. You’ve got to wear masks and protective gear. Sweat was pouring down my whole body.’
He stared at the sky.
‘The earth makes noises – doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It rumbles and grumbles all the time. But for some reason it spooked this young miner. There’d been a collapse at a nearby mine the day before, and he must have been extra sensitive. After a really sharp rumble he dropped his tools and shouted, “It’s coming down!”’
‘Jesus,’ I whispered.
‘At that depth, in the dark, with the air pressure and the heat, you’re right on the edge. Your mind is ready to panic. But most of the time you just get on with the job. But this kid’s cry. Everyone broke. Snap! We were like animals.’
He shook his head in disbelief.
‘It’s times like that you really face your own humanity. Or lack of it. Long story short, these guys are world-class veterans in denying their own fear. They won’t leave.’
My hands, of their own volition, had crept up and gripped onto the collar of my shirt, my sweat dampening the fabric. I had been on the edge of that same animalistic panic since Sam was arrested. It might be years of this, I’d thought. It might never go away.
‘How do you live on the edge like that for so long?’ I asked.
‘You train your mind away from it. It’s all about denial. And trust me, place like this? We’re so far from anything ordinary that the few little lies you tell yourself to survive are so easy. I mean, it’s like a dream, isn’t it? Sun rises, sun sets. There are no days, no months, the weather never changes. Same people come and go. Danger and fear are so everyday that they kind of cancel each other out. You know, truth is, if you’re twenty metres deep or three thousand metres deep, you’re still going to die if it all comes crashing down.’
He stared at the horizon.
‘So, you spin yourself a web of lies.’
Chapter 78
WHITT AND I sat on my bunk in the semi-darkness, our backs to the cork partition. Around us on the bedcovers lay six or seven notebooks crisscrossed with suspects, their work histories and whereabouts on the mine. We stared at the laptop screen between us. Jaymee the Bilby had snagged the personnel list for us. And emails from my headquarters containing the criminal records of the miners had started rolling in.
Jaymee had also brought me a clear plastic bottle of ‘Mine Wine’. To combat the alcohol restrictions on the camp and high prices in town, plenty of miners had started home-brewing. Like prison hooch, most of the Mine Wine was terrible – the result of unsuccessful experiments with dried fruit and tomatoes, even bread sometimes. Though this batch was terribly sour and filled with sediment, it wasn’t all that bad. I kept the bottle between my knees and enjoyed the gentle haze that was settling over me.
‘Theodore Ivan Sava,’ Whitt yawned. ‘Charged: sexual assault, grievous bodily harm. Conviction recorded. Joseph Doyle. Charged: common assault, common assault . . . Lots of common assaults. Convictions recorded. Blake Henry Young. Charged: common assault, resisting arrest, being a general scumbag.’
‘Category three,’ I said. I wrote the names down on my Category Three list.
‘Jessica May Harvey. Charged: burglary, possession of a prohibited substance. Conviction recorded. Oh dea
r. The next three guys have aggravated sexual assaults, and one had a manslaughter charge.’
I picked up my Category One notepad and started writing.
Whitt started laughing suddenly. ‘David Alistair Burns,’ he said, smiling. ‘Possession of a prohibited substance. Three charges.’
‘That dickhead,’ I said. ‘No wonder he didn’t want the checks done. Where’s Linebacker’s? I can’t wait to see that guy’s rap sheet.’
‘They’re not giving us the files in any particular order.’ Whitt yawned again.
There was a soft knock at the door, and Taylor Fink poked her head in.
‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘Slumber party?’
‘The password is “I’m Tired and I Want to Go Home”.’
The pathologist wriggled onto the bunk between Whitt and me. I shifted the laptop to make space for her. She flipped open a scrawl-filled notebook.
‘Alright.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Let me start you off with what I’ve just seen out there in the desert. Deceased Caucasian male, mid-forties, mildly obese, one major external injury, likely the cause of death. Head wound, large calibre gun. Took the skullcap clean off. Likely died instantly.’
I made notes quietly in my own notebook.
‘I also have the findings from the three mine bodies, but I’m paraphrasing here. Amy King was played with a bit. Fingers missing, bullet wound to the knee and hip. Looks like he might have chased her around. Her younger sister died from a single long-range gunshot wound to the back. Hon Lu suffered a number of injuries. He was missing a couple of fingers and an ear. Burn patterns suggest these were also long-range gunshots. Teaser wounds.’
‘Did your colleagues do the soil analysis of the boots?’ Whitt asked.
‘They did. Tori and Hon had deep-desert sand uppermost in their boots. So, shortly before death they’d been out there somewhere in the Never Never. Amy’s boots were filled with mine sand only. So it looks like she was killed here.’
‘In the tunnels,’ I sighed. ‘He probably hunted her down where she worked, for talking to us. Didn’t have time to complete his ritual.’
‘Here’s an interesting tidbit for you,’ Taylor said. ‘All three had gun oil on their palms. Hon Lu even had bruise impressions on his right hand consistent with the ribbing on a rifle stock. All three handled a gun shortly before they died.’
‘What?’ I looked at Whitt. ‘Why would our victims have handled the weapon?’
‘No idea. We’re not even sure they handled the weapon, the one that killed them. They just handled a weapon,’ Taylor said. ‘The gunshot residue findings are interesting, too. Hon and Tori had very small amounts on them, consistent with handling a gun that had, at some point, been fired. But Amy was covered in the stuff. It looks to me like she might have actually fired the weapon she handled.’
We sat in silence for a long time.
‘It’s a hunt,’ I said, looking at the others in the dark. ‘Lenny said that before the shooting started, a voice on the radio told him that if he made it back to the camp he’d be left alive. Think about it. It’s like a ritual. You set them up with a challenge and a defence mechanism of their own and then you hunt them, like foxes. What pisses off fox hunters most? When the foxes go to ground. When Michael wouldn’t run for his life, he was executed. Maybe the killer gave the others a weapon to make the hunt more interesting. Give them a chance to fight for their survival.’
‘He didn’t give Lenny a gun,’ Whitt said.
‘No, but this time he was hunting in broad daylight with dozens of spectators. The odds were always on Lenny’s side that he’d be rescued somehow. The whole spectacle of it would have been titillating enough.’
‘How do we find this guy?’ Whitt murmured, staring at his hands. ‘How do we get control of the ritual?’
‘We stop acting like prey,’ I said.
Chapter 79
I WOKE TO the sound of helicopters, and for a moment lay wondering if another body had been found. But it was the Channel Seven helicopter sending tumbleweeds rolling across the accommodation yard. The miners were walking to and from work like nothing was happening, but I knew there’d be a heavy press turnout at the front gate.
When I arrived at the chow hall, Whitt was sitting with a group of eight uniformed police officers, four men and four women. A black coffee was waiting for me when I sat down.
Whitt introduced me to each of the officers in turn.
‘I’d really love to know what we’re supposed to be doing out here,’ one of the men said. ‘Edward tells us we don’t have approval from the mine bosses to search cabins. And Perth seems to be dragging their feet on a warrant.’
‘We won’t get a warrant,’ I said. ‘People with this kind of money and influence, they’ll have too many friends in the Justice department. There’s no way the bosses are going to have cops exposing the mine’s drug problem live on the evening news.’
‘What bullshit,’ the cop next to me snorted.
‘Searches are happening, but they’re happening unofficially.’ I sipped my coffee. ‘Background checks are also happening, but it’s very hush-hush. I’ve got a list of mine personnel with violent backgrounds or gun offences. You can help with those. But we don’t have approval for any arrests. So if the miners refuse to talk, there’s nothing you can do.’
‘Who are your main suspects?’ someone asked.
I took a photocopy of Linebacker’s ID card and spread it on the table.
‘I don’t like this guy,’ I said. ‘And yeah, maybe that’s influencing me a bit. He’s a major creep. But if my instincts are any good, he’s someone we should be looking at.’
A heavy silence fell over the table.
‘OK.’ I felt my face grow hot. ‘I know what you’re all thinking. What good are this detective’s instincts if she couldn’t even recognise her own brother as a sexual predator? Well you know what, guys? My brother’s guilt or innocence is still on the table. So, as of today, there’s no reason to suspect there’s anything wrong with my intuition.’
‘I second Harriet’s feelings about this guy.’ Whitt tapped the picture of Linebacker. ‘I think we need a couple of our team watching him at all hours.’
I unfolded the printout of the shadowy figure at the Earth-Soldier camp.
‘I’ve got this image from a group of activists outside the camp. I don’t like their leader, either, this Ocean Divine woman.’
‘Ocean Divine?’ a young female cop howled. ‘Classic!’
‘These freaks are wearing the ear tags of dead sheep. Who knows what they’re capable of? I don’t feel like they’re behind these murders. But they’re certainly not cooperating with us, and I want to know why.’
‘Richard Lee Machinna.’ Whitt laid a picture of Richie on the table. ‘He’s the camp drug lord. Richie and his crew have been violent towards people on the mine. They’ve been known to rob helpless tourists, and even the weaker members of the mine staff trying to pass through. Now, if that isn’t some kind of sick power game, I don’t know what is.’
‘Why have we got a drug syndicate operating openly on the mine?’ one cop asked. ‘Is this guy on payroll?’
‘Don’t ask,’ I sighed. ‘He gets to just wander around. He’s part of the furniture.’
‘We also have prostitutes conducting our searches for us,’ Whitt said, smiling. ‘But while they’ve been very helpful, they’ve also been responsible for some violence towards miners, too. So they’re not completely off our suspect list.’
‘Welcome to the Outback,’ someone laughed.
Chapter 80
SINCE WE’D SENT them out to search the accommodation areas, the Bilbies had been feeding me back photographs of interesting things they’d found. There were plenty of handguns on the mine. With so much masculinity flying around, it made sense that a few guys had brought in pistols to show off, maybe even take out into the desert and pop off a few cans.
There were rifles among the mix, but so far only classic wooden-stock, low-
range rifles without scopes. The type farmers might give their sons to keep the rabbits at bay. None of the men seemed to be hiding their weapons very well. The pictures were of guns leaning against walls and sitting on the end of beds. There was probably a bit of bragging going on, about what might happen the next time the shooter showed up.
As the day wore on, miners started to approach Whitt and me as we worked through the criminal records and interviewed security staff who had been on the edges of the mine when Lenny and Mick were targeted. Most could only offer useless leads, rumours and snatches of overheard conversations.
Someone saw a flash from the east accommodation block as Lenny was being shot at.
Someone heard the killings were linked to a sex trafficking ring.
Someone knew an ammunitions guy in Perth who had recently been bought completely out of .50 cal bullets by a man in a snappy suit.
My mood slid downhill dramatically with every new supposed lead. I knew this was what was happening back in Sydney, now that the papers had named their suspect for the Georges River killings. Someone would have overheard my brother in a bar talking about what he’d done to the last victim. Someone would have heard about him dumping evidence behind a warehouse somewhere. Someone’s friend’s friend would have made a narrow escape from him, having agreed to help him move some items he didn’t own into the basement he didn’t have.
People wanted to be a part of trauma and terror. I didn’t know if it was because they wanted to make sense of the tragedy, to feel better themselves, or if it was just a sick fantasy made real through lies.
The men and women of the mine were nervous and agitated. I suspected that some of them had stayed for the reasons Gabe had explained. But, deep down, I also suspected some of them stayed because they feared losing their jobs. These were people from hard lives, who knew security here that they’d never known anywhere else. They stayed for the money, for the beds, for the food. They stayed because maybe home, where angry husbands and wives and parents waited, was just as dangerous.