‘Not in that fancy outfit.’
Whitt watched as Tox crawled under the car, dragging himself forwards on his belly on the asphalt. He seemed to linger under the vehicle a little too long, the legs of his filthy jeans unmoving.
‘You alright under there?’
Tox scrambled out from under the car, threw the glasses at Whitt’s chest. He jogged around the back of the Camry, head low and eyes narrowed, like a hound.
‘What is it?’
‘This channel,’ Tox said. ‘This drainage channel.’
He pointed to a narrow drainage channel cut into the asphalt, covered with a blackened and oil-covered grille. Tox all but dove under a car two down from where they had stood. Whitt heard the scrape of iron.
Tox reappeared, grinning triumphantly, smeared with grease, and holding a broken phone.
Chapter 58
IT WAS TIME to go. Time to risk it all. Caitlyn had tried to bargain with her captor. She’d tried to reason with him. Hell, she’d even tried sympathising with him, attempting to understand the kind of sickness a mind like his must have. She understood that she had become an animal to him. An inconvenient pet. He didn’t speak to her. His eyes hardly ever found hers anymore. He was beginning to feed her only every second day. It was clear to Caitlyn that her captor didn’t know what to do with her now. She wouldn’t survive waiting for him to decide. This was it. She would have to put everything on the line. Fight or die.
Fighting meant lying as still as she could on her belly in the middle of the floor, the wine bottles smashed all around her. The sour, eggy smell of expired alcohol was making her eyes water. She lay for hours before she heard the footsteps in the corridor. Hesitant, soft. She heard him shifting back the things he used to block the doorway, the scrape and thump of the biggest thing, the rattling and jangling of the smaller things. His hands on the locks. Caitlyn closed her eyes and eased a long breath into her aching lungs, let it slip through her lips. Softly, softly, she thought. If she screwed this up, it was all over.
She felt no fear. One way or another, it was about to be over.
Chapter 59
I SAT UP in my fold-out bed on Snale’s porch, listening to the sounds of the night-birds and clicking away at my laptop. I was sending enquiries about Sam’s case. Whitt had emailed a list of leads that he and Tox were working on. A green sedan. A broken phone. The fight with Jace Robit’s people, and the optimistic tone of Whitt’s email, had lit a fire in me. Earlier, I’d managed to get a fifteen-minute phone conversation with Sam, and my brother sounded healthy, and calm despite the catcalls in the background. I sent a request to my chief, Pops, to have the security guard from the car park re-interviewed by Nigel’s team. I wanted to get in touch with the detectives in the Gold Coast chasing down sightings of Caitlyn McBeal, to find out if there was any truth to the rumours.
From a thin mattress on the floor beside my bed, Zac Taby spoke up, breaking my concentration.
‘So you work on the town’s case all day, and you work on your brother’s case all night,’ he said.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘When do you sleep?’
‘Sleep is for losers.’
‘True.’
The Taby parents had been mortified first that their son had escaped lockdown at their house, then that he’d been chased like a dog by people from the town. They had been happy to turn him over to us.
‘If my typing is keeping you awake, you’re welcome to move your mattress away from mine,’ I told the boy. ‘No one invited you to sleep this close to me. Frankly, it’s weird.’
‘No way, man,’ the boy said. ‘I’m stickin’ next to you. You’re my guard dog now. You whooped some freakin’ arse out there. I’m not leaving your side for nothin’.’
I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or annoyed by my description as a ‘guard dog’. It had a certain truth to it. I’d have liked to be a guard dog. Unthinking, unquestioning, a loyal hound who followed someone I loved at all hours of the day, searching for threats and receiving treats in return for my service. It seemed a blessedly uncomplicated life.
I heard a grunting, snuffling sound, and Jerry the pig appeared in the doorway to the living room. The huge animal tested the air with its snout a few times as Zac and I watched. Then it lumbered with effort down the single stair onto the porch and took up residence by the teenager’s side, crashing to the ground, a mountain of hairy flesh falling. It seemed the coolest place to sleep that night was by my side.
‘How much did you say all that gold was worth?’ Zac asked, his chin resting on his hands on the pillow. The boy had found the rocks on Snale’s kitchen table and marvelled at our explanation for them, his mouth hanging open and eyes wide. He’d watched us stash them away behind a handful of books in Snale’s living room cabinets.
‘About eighty thousand bucks, I think.’
‘We could just, like … take it.’ His voice was low, conspiratorial.
‘What?’
‘Why not?’ He rolled onto his side. ‘You and me. We could split it. Get the fuck outta this lame-ass town.’
I laughed aloud. ‘That’s a nice fantasy you’ve got there, but forty thousand dollars isn’t a lot of … money.’ My words faltered. I was wrong. To some people, it was a lot of money. It was enough for my mother to sell out her only son to the press. To endanger his life, possibly contribute to his eternal damnation, at least in the eyes of the public. It wasn’t the kind of money you could run away forever on, though. Or was it? What kind of plans did this young man have? How far was far enough from his miserable life in this loveless town?
‘If we stayed together, though, it’d be eighty,’ he mused, a smile playing about his lips.
‘Oh, right,’ I smirked. ‘I see. You and me, a dusty old convertible, running away across the country together. Staying in dodgy hotels, escaping our problems in each other’s arms.’
‘Hell yes!’
‘Please,’ I sighed. ‘I’m old enough to be your mother.’
‘Isn’t that kind of hot, though?’
I slid a leg out from under the blanket and kicked him in the side.
‘Shut up, idiot boy.’
Chapter 60
THE BOY FELL asleep quickly, undisturbed by the pig’s snores. I lay on my side in the dark, eyes open, staring at the wall. Soon enough, I sighed and picked up my phone, sent a text.
If you refuse the magazine interview, I’ll pay you fifty thousand, I wrote. I can’t let you sabotage Sam’s defence.
I waited. In time, the phone vibrated in my hands and the screen lit my face.
How soon can you get it? my mother asked.
I’ll transfer it tomorrow, I wrote.
I’d prefer it in cash, she replied.
I’ll bet, I thought.
Chapter 61
I DIDN’T KNOW I had fallen asleep until the sound came, a wailing, blaring siren that rang in my skull. I shot up and shoved the laptop and phone aside, almost stumbled over the pig on the ground next to Zac’s empty mattress. Kash’s bare feet thudded on the polished boards of the living room as he rushed out from the front of the house in only boxer shorts, struggling with his glasses. Lights flickered on.
‘What is it?’
‘A car horn.’ He was actioning his pistol.
‘Where’s Zac?’
‘What’s happening?’ Snale ran out of the bedroom in pink pyjamas covered in smiling, dancing pigs.
I sprinted through the house and out the front door, my partners in tow.
Zac was sitting in the driver’s seat of Snale’s four-wheel drive, leaning on the horn, flashing the high beams. His huge eyes followed me, front teeth locked together.
‘What is it?’ I called. ‘What? What?’
I reached for the driver’s side door beside him but he screamed before I could pull the handle.
‘Don’t!’ he cried through the glass, hands flat, palms out, surrendered. ‘Don’t touch anything! Look! Look!’
He grabbed a sh
eet of paper from where it had been stuck with tape to the steering wheel. He pressed the paper against the glass.
The words were handwritten. They read ‘DON’T GET OUT.’
Chapter 62
THEY SAT IN Whitt’s car on the edge of Parramatta Road, the hammering of rain on the roof the only sound they could hear. Though the engine was off, Tox’s hard hands gripped the steering wheel. His head was bent forwards and his jaw set, his eyes focused on the patterns the rain made on the windscreen. Whitt watched him. He could hardly see the man breathing. His own heart hadn’t stopped pounding since they’d stood in the little park inside the university. With the camera in his hands, the sound off, he sat watching the green sedan emerge from the car park driveway at the edge of the footage. There was only a shadow behind the wheel. A pair of white hands pulling the steering wheel sideways calmly, turning the vehicle left towards the science district.
‘It could be nothing,’ Whitt warned. ‘When the lab traces the phone’s serial number they might find it just belongs to some other student. Someone who dumped it there on purpose or dropped it as they were getting out of their car.’
‘It’s Caitlyn McBeal’s phone,’ Tox insisted. ‘It’s broken because she broke it in the struggle as she was being abducted.’
Whitt sighed.
‘The green sedan,’ he continued. ‘It might just be a student leaving for the day.’
‘It’s the killer,’ Tox said. ‘Leaving with Caitlyn McBeal.’
A search on the green sedan’s registration had found it was stolen. Whitt told himself that didn’t mean anything. Students could drive stolen cars. Buy them, sell them, steal them, trade them – students and old cars had a chequered relationship. It could just have been a coincidence that the sedan was leaving the lot mere moments after Caitlyn was allegedly abducted. As much as he tried to tell himself they were probably onto nothing, Whitt couldn’t help but feel a flutter inside him that maybe that was wrong. When Tox’s phone chimed, the two men grabbed for it at the same time.
‘They’ve got the car,’ Whitt said, motioning for his partner to start the engine. ‘It’s outside the old Pinkerton Hotel. Let’s go.’
Chapter 63
CAITLYN HEARD HIS footsteps near her. Shuffling, despondent, probably relieved that she had finally expired quietly and without mess. He’d won. His game hadn’t been a fast, violent, painful end for her but a drawn-out one, one in which she would have had to actually give up, cell by biological cell, and let death take her. Now he had her remains to leave here or dispose of as he pleased.
His foot against her shoulder, shoving experimentally, once, and then again. She was limp. It wasn’t hard to relax her limbs completely. Just to stay awake was an effort, had been for weeks. She let the darkness take her, little by little.
She heard him groan as he crouched.
Yes, Caitlyn thought. A little closer now.
Hidden between her chest and the ground, Caitlyn clutched the chunky hexagonal fixture at the end of the long, thin steel rod she had extracted from one of the old beer kegs. The weapon was blunt, rusty, but it was all she had. She balled her fist around the handle as she felt his breath on the back of her neck.
Chapter 64
‘OH MY GOD,’ I stammered, reading the note in Zac’s hand. He pointed desperately to the back seat. I stepped sideways and looked in. There were three huge propane gas bottles sitting like round white passengers strapped into the seatbelts. I put my hands on the glass and Zac put his on the other side, staring into my eyes, terror making his whole body shake.
‘I didn’t see the note until I got into the car!’ he screamed. ‘I didn’t see the gas bottles!’
‘I know,’ I shouted. ‘I know. It’s OK. It’s OK.’
I looked to my partners. Snale was standing well back, her hands over her mouth. Kash was circling the car, looking in the windows. He dropped to the ground in front of the engine and examined the underside of the car. Both were panting like me, the adrenaline rushing so fast through my veins I could hardly think. My mind split into fragments, thoughts racing in different directions. Three or four times the ludicrous impulse jabbed at me to just open the door and pull the kid out.
‘Don’t panic!’ I called, unable to keep the fear out of my own voice. My mind was begging me now to get away from the car. There was no telling when it would explode, what might cause it to go off. I stopped touching the windows. ‘Just. Just, uh. Oh God! Just don’t panic!’
I looked at Kash, and the expression on his face didn’t settle me. The back of his hand was against his mouth like he might be sick. He came to the driver’s window, his steps shaky, uneven.
‘What happened when you got in?’ he shouted.
‘I heard a click when I sat down,’ Zac called, his voice muffled by the glass. ‘Like a, like a, a sound like things snapping into place!’
‘Can you hear anything now? Like a ticking or a whirring? Anything?’
‘I don’t know! I’m scared! Don’t leave me here! Please!’
The boy burst into tears. On the front passenger seat beside him I could see the black plastic and duct-taped package. He’d tried to sneak out with the gold. Tried to take off, into the glorious sunrise, a ridiculous bid for a new life that could cost him his current one.
I backed up a couple of steps with Kash, my hands gripping my hair.
‘What is it?’
‘It could be a number of things.’ He licked his sweaty upper lip. ‘We know from the bomb on the hillside that the killer’s new at this. So I’m leaning away from complex chemical-reaction devices. It’s probably a circuit-breaker. Mercury tilt-switch, maybe.’
‘What? What the fuck? How do we disarm it?’
‘I need to know more about it,’ he said. The big man before me was trembling gently all over, but his face was hard with focus. ‘It might be connected to the seat. It might be connected to the doors.’
‘How much time do we have?’
‘There’s no telling. We need to find out if there’s a timer and what kind.’
‘You figure that out,’ I said. ‘I’m going to do a quick lap around the immediate area. This is a spectacle. There’s no way the killer would miss this.’
I dashed towards the house, wincing as I heard Zac call out after me.
‘Don’t leave me!’ he screamed. ‘I don’t want to die!’
Chapter 65
CAITLYN ROLLED, USING the momentum to push herself up, her shoulder, arm, hand shooting upwards, the metal rod flashing out. There was less resistance than she anticipated. The end of the rod went straight into his eye socket, seemed to shudder as it cleaved through bone and came to rest in his brain.
She got up and staggered back as the man groaned and flopped away from her, limp as a fish. He lay there on his back, the rod sticking grotesquely from his head, bloodless, his mouth agape. Caitlyn shivered, her eyes darting over his ragged clothes and filthy boots, the long thin tendrils of grey and brown hair running from the sides of his otherwise bald scalp.
A homeless man. One of the people who must have come into the hotel and left the trash she’d seen in the hall. She could hear that it was raining hard, now that the door to her prison room was open.
She stumbled, trying not to gag, her stomach rebelling against the sensation now cemented in her memory of the rod going up, the breath coming out of her victim. Fighting her revulsion, there was a white-hot excitement pulsing through her at the sight of the dark gaping doorway. She could feel sobs pushing their way up her throat but couldn’t hear them. Her ears were ringing. It seemed an age before her hand finally reached the doorframe and she looked down the long hall.
He was there.
Eyes fixed on the unlocked door, flicking now to her face.
Caitlyn’s captor marched towards her.
Chapter 66
I DIDN’T WANT to leave Zac. But I knew if I could find the killer, I could force him to tell us how to disarm the bomb. My teeth were gritted as I bolted i
nto the house and grabbed my gun, Snale running after me with the diary from the kitchen table. The rage rippling up through my throat was almost a growl. I was going to find this sick fuck and make him reverse the trap he’d put the child in. If I had to beat him to within an inch of his life to make that happen, I would do it.
I ran across Snale’s porch and through the back door into the yard, keeping low so that my silhouette didn’t appear against the lights of the house. My gun drawn, I did a sweep, squinting in the dark, then hopped over a fence into the next property. I could still hear Zac’s crying from the windswept fields. Around Snale’s property, lights were coming on. As the seconds passed, more lights appeared in the distance as residents called each other, panicked, in the night.
‘Come on, you fuck,’ I seethed. ‘Where are you?’
I rushed across the road and through the property opposite Snale’s, making for the tiny house in the centre of the barren field. As I leapt up onto the porch a woman emerged, a young mother, small children trailing behind her. She screamed at the sight of me.
‘I’m police,’ I said. ‘Are you alright? Have you seen anyone in the area?’
‘No, no.’ The woman tried to usher her kids back through the screen door but they resisted, mouths gaping at my gun. ‘We heard screaming. What’s happening?’
‘Get inside,’ I said. ‘Shut the door.’
‘It’s all gonna come out.’ She shook her head ruefully, trembling before me, her hands gripping the small children by the shoulders of their pyjama shirts like they might run off at any second. ‘It’s all coming to an end.’
‘What?’ I squinted at her. ‘What’s that mean?’
She disappeared inside the house. I kept moving, doing a lap of her house, the next field, sweat sliding down my neck and ribs. When I got back to Snale’s house she was on her knees in the light of the doorway, flipping through the diary as Kash tried to get sense out of Zac.