Whitt had accidentally written ‘Harry’ instead of ‘Sam’ in his notes. He crossed out the name, but circled the word ‘empathy’, tapping his pen thoughtfully on the page. Harry shared her brother’s wild, unpredictable personality. She was abrasive and hard to relate to. But she did not lack empathy. Whitt had spent a couple of weeks in the desert with her, watching her toss and turn in her sleep, watching her struggle under the almost physical weight of her worry for whomever the Bandya Mine killer would target next. She’d been broken-hearted after a spider in their cabin had been found unceremoniously squished. She felt things for others. In fact, sometimes Whitt thought she felt them too keenly. She would take the crusades of others on as her own responsibility, fight for people who didn’t want or didn’t deserve it.
Whitt had lost himself in dreaming. He rubbed his eyes, looked around. At the end of his row, a man with a closely shaved head was sitting with his hands on his knees. Whitt didn’t know what it was that drew his focus to this man. Perhaps it was his attentive presence in the distinctly sparse seating area reserved for supporters of the accused. Whitt and the man were alone on the bench, and the bench behind them was empty. But no, it was something more. Whitt realised that almost every set of eyes in the courtroom was focused on the large screen behind the witness stand, where Doctor Hemsill was pointing at parts of the human brain lit up with different colours.
But the shaven-headed man’s eyes were on Samuel Blue. The man was not just staring; his gaze was locked on Blue, like a cat with its attention fixed on a bird. The hairs on Whitt’s arms were beginning to stand on end. Something told him to commit this man’s face to memory. He looked at the notebook before him. Perhaps he could make a sketch. He took up his pen. But when he turned back to examine the man again, he was gone.
Chapter 19
I SAT AT Snale’s kitchen table with my head in my hands, listening to the officer rattling around the kitchen, scraping food together for her two city guests. It had been a long day, and when Snale showed us to our accommodation, my space a single fold-out bed at the end of her large enclosed porch, I felt the desire to fall into the sheets and bury my face in the pillow. It was a struggle to keep my mind on the diary that lay open in front of me. Snale came to the table with her notebook in her mouth and two wineglasses in her hands.
‘Don’t drink it all at once.’ She put a glass down before me. ‘Wine’s expensive out here. They only do a supply run every two weeks.’
Without warning there came a grunting, scraping sound. I almost spat out my first sip of wine when an enormous grey creature emerged into the narrow hall from the front room. The pig was at least a metre and a half long, covered in a fine black fur and a smattering of speckles. It trotted lazily into the room, looking me over with little interest.
I felt the first smile of the day crack my face. ‘What the fuck?’
‘Look,’ Snale sighed, ‘there are thirty-three adult men in this town. Thirty of them are married. One’s seventy years old. And the other two aren’t interested. It gets lonely out here.’
I laughed. ‘You could have got a dog.’
We watched the enormous pig sprawl out on a blanket by the door, giving a long, guttural groan as it flopped onto its side.
‘Jerry is a real presence in the house,’ Snale said. ‘His footsteps are heavy, and he snores really loud all night long. It feels like there’s someone here.’
Kash finished a phone call and joined us.
Forensics had arrived that afternoon and completed a once-over of the diary for DNA and prints, so we could touch it now. We’d also handed off the plain red backpack the book had been found in. The backpack looked new, and nothing else was in it. That was odd. Why not just carry the notebook by itself? Was the red backpack meant to attract attention from the roadside? Did the diarist want the book to be found?
I perused the pages quietly while Kash and Snale chatted. The writer had indeed done some extensive investigation of bomb-building options, focusing on explosives that could be made from everyday household objects. The idea seemed to emerge out of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris’s failed attempts to blow up their school cafeteria with gas-bottle bombs before they went on their rampage.
‘Let’s get the handwriting analysed against all the handwriting samples we can collect from the town,’ Snale suggested.
I made notes, a list of to-dos.
‘So this is the preliminary breakdown of the Campbell scene from Forensics today?’ I asked, pulling Snale’s notebook towards me.
‘Yes, classic propane bomb,’ she said. ‘Seems to the team that Theo would have been sitting with the gas bottle either between his legs or wedged under the chair when it went off. He was sitting facing the town.’ She sighed long and deep. ‘His wife, Olivia, is in tatters. Just beside herself.’
‘Does she have any ideas about suspects?’
‘She wasn’t very coherent,’ Snale said. ‘Says Theo was over in the next town fixing a mate’s roof – someone called David Lewis – and then was going to stay for dinner. When he didn’t answer his phone she figured he must have stayed the night. I’ll go back to her for suspects in a day, maybe. Give her time to get over the shock.’
‘Let’s go talk to David Lewis. See if Theo was acting weird.’ ‘Right.’
‘Any sign of someone else at the crime scene?’ Kash asked.
‘Maybe,’ Snale said. ‘There were footprints. Smeary, hard to tell the tread, but looks like an ordinary old workboot. Size seven men’s, nine women’s. Looks like a person pacing back and forth not far from the blast site. But they can’t really date the prints. Could have been a day or two before. Theo’s service weapon is missing, so someone must have got hold of it, used it to coerce him into the chair.’
‘Where did the chair come from?’ Kash asked. ‘Surely the killer didn’t bring it with him.’
‘There’s a bunch of junk up there on both crests, on the roadsides in and out of town,’ Snale said. ‘Kids go up there and smoke and throw things off the cliffs. Every Saturday night I go and do a sweep through the bush there and down in the gully, make sure they’re not doing anything too naughty. The chair was probably from one of their little campsites. The duct tape, I don’t know.’
‘Yes, the duct tape. Where were Theo’s handcuffs?’ I asked.
‘I’d be surprised if he had them with him. Neither of us have ever really bothered with them,’ Snale said. ‘I haven’t cuffed anyone in the ten years I’ve been out here. Things never really get that out of control. And I know every single person who lives here. There’s nowhere to run, so why try to get away?’
I turned to Kash, who was staring at the wineglass in my hand. ‘Propane bombs. Are they hard to make?’
‘Not at all. They’re the terrorist-in-training’s favourite improvised explosive device,’ he said. ‘Simple design, easily obtainable ingredients. Any idiot can make one. You get a gas bottle from a backyard barbecue, duct tape a can of petrol to the side of it. Take the cap off, put a wick in, light it up and run away. Boom.’ He threw his hands up.
‘So we could literally make one right now?’ I scoffed. ‘With Snale’s barbecue gas bottle?’
‘You could make a bunch of different bombs with stuff lying around here.’ Kash took out his mobile phone, showed it to me. ‘I could crack this open, find the wire that connects to the ringer, expose it so that it’ll spark. Dump it in a bottle of something. Make a call to it. There you go. Mobile phone–activated bomb.’
‘But where does a person get the knowledge to put these things together?’
‘The internet,’ Kash said.
‘Surely people send up red flags with your agency when they search for stuff like that,’ I said.
‘If every teenage boy in the country who ever searched for how to blow something up earned a file with ASIO, the department would cease to be operational.’ Kash was eyeing Snale now as she drank her wine. ‘We don’t identify terrorists by their Google searches. That’s amateur hour.
’
‘Let’s get all the IP addresses in town anyway.’ I made a note. ‘Check everyone’s internet activity.’
‘Why Soupy?’ Snale’s lip quivered. She sipped her wine to cover it. ‘Why pick him? He was an absolute doll. Someone’s pacing back and forth. They’ve got him taped to a chair with a bomb between his legs. Facing the town. It’s a good view from up there. You can see everybody. All the houses.’
‘Everybody can see you, too,’ I said.
‘It’s very … showy,’ Snale said. ‘A demonstration. Either for Theo or for us, down here. A spectacle. Only the timing wasn’t great. No one awake to see it. Was it a practice shot? Or was Theo the audience – was he supposed to see the town spread out before him just before he died?’
I liked Snale’s musings. I wanted her to continue, but Kash spoke up.
‘Look, I don’t mean to interrupt. But are we going to be making drinking a part of our ongoing investigative practice? Or is this a one-off drinking session?’
Snale and I looked at each other.
‘Don’t get me wrong. You’ve both had interesting lines of inquiry so far. But we’re shooting the breeze about this case over a bottle of red in a dining room like a bunch of old ladies.’
‘Would you like to move to the garage?’ I snorted. ‘Should we appoint a chairman? Let me guess. It should be you.’
‘There is a violent terrorist in this town.’ Kash took the diary from in front of me and waved it in my face. ‘Is the seriousness of the situation escaping you?’
‘We are taking it seriously,’ Snale huffed. ‘We’re just cooling off, that’s all. It’s been a long day. I had to go tell a woman her husband was blown to pieces all over a hillside today.’
‘Well, I’m sorry.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess I’m just not on the same page as you two. When I was on assignment gathering intel in Afghanistan, I was seeing guys being blown to pieces all over hillsides every day. And it only toughened my resolve. I think we shouldn’t drink on the job.’ He got up and traipsed away into the living room. I let my eyes wander to the shell-shocked Sergeant Snale.
‘That was hilarious.’ I took a sip. ‘I think my wine actually tastes better now.’
‘Let’s look through this diary.’ She pulled the book towards her. ‘We’re going to catch this killer, with or without him.’
Chapter 20
MY SLEEP WAS thin. The diary had disturbed me deeply. There was a detailed profile of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, who’d killed thirty-two people on campus in Blacksburg. Once again, the diarist had listed the elements of Cho’s massacre plan they seemed to find useful for their study.
Chained doors, trapping victims.
Made detailed manifesto video, so reasons would be known.
Low personal profile, maintained non-threatening reputation before attack.
Cho had acted out of a seething rage, making a rambling video manifesto while kitted up for the massacre. His cap turned backwards, the sullen, dark-eyed young man talked about a fiery demise for his enemies. I lay in the dark, his words bouncing around my brain, visions of his victims running for their lives flashing against the backs of my eyelids.
I was starting to get a mental picture of the diarist. If he or she had decided these were the attributes of a successful killer, then surely they’d be putting these behaviours into place in the lead-up to their own plan, whatever it was. They’d be maintaining a low profile, keeping quiet and resisting the temptation to bring collaborators in on their mission. They’d be trying to obtain weapons without raising any eyebrows. It wouldn’t be hard out here. Every farmer in the town would have a gun. It would only be a matter of amassing them on or just before the day, once the killer had worked out where they could all be found.
I tried to tell myself to sleep. Without sleep, I’d never catch this guy. I was drifting in and out when the sound of grunting broke through my consciousness. I thought at first it was the pig. I climbed off the end of the bed and went to the porch screen door. Kash was out there in the barren dirt yard, a barely visible black streak against the rise of the distant ridge. I pushed open the door, still mussed from sleep. He was shirtless. A rippling, sweat-glistening torso lit up as I switched on the backyard light.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
He was jogging back from the end of the property. He ignored me, dropped and did ten seamless, perfect push-ups. The muscles in his triceps looked surgically carved.
‘Are you nuts?’ I continued. ‘It’s … What time is it?’
‘It’s two am.’
‘Why are you working out at two in the morning?’
‘If you want to bring down the enemy, you’ve got to think like the enemy,’ he said. He’d huffed rhythmically through ten jumping jacks, dropped for more push-ups. ‘Think, act, live like them. This is a classic training regime used by the Taliban for their frontline fighters. They conduct sessions at early morning hours to train the brain out of its circadian rhythm. They can eat, sleep and access high levels of physical energy whenever they need to.’
I watched, bemused, as he took off again towards the back of the property. He sprinted back and dropped to complete a set of sit-ups.
‘You’re a bit of an addict of this stuff, aren’t you?’
‘What stuff?’
‘The terrorism gig.’
‘Don’t knock it just because you’re incapable of it.’ ‘Incapable of it?’ I squinted. ‘Of what, exactly?’
‘Of the lifestyle. Of the kind of commitment it takes to work in national-level human security. I mean, there’s a reason you’re a cop. You want to protect people. But if you were capable, surely you’d do it at this level.’ He gestured to himself with one arm as he did push-ups with the other. ‘Not that level.’ He pointed at me.
‘You know, I’ve met some colossal douchebags in my life, Kash. But you’re slowly climbing the ladder to number one.’
‘Number one,’ he mused. ‘Sounds like me.’
‘You’re not even doing those properly,’ I said. ‘Your chest is, like, ten centimetres off the ground.’
‘Is that a challenge?’ he asked.
‘I’m just saying, if you’re going to run around training like a lunatic in the middle of the night, there’s no point in doing a half-arsed job.’
‘A half-arsed job?’ He stopped working out for the first time since my arrival. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I don’t joke about push-ups.’
‘You wouldn’t last to the end of this workout,’ he said. ‘I guarantee it.’
‘Right,’ I snapped. I went back inside, slamming the door, dragging my bag from where it lay at the end of the bed to search for my shoes. Agent Kash had no idea what I could withstand. In a life like mine, full of darkness and pain, a tough workout was child’s play.
Chapter 21
THE WORKOUT WAS invigorating, my quiet exhilaration heightened when he announced ruefully that I’d completed it. My body screamed through dozens and dozens of burpees, joint-grinding squats and panicked sprints to the end of the yard and back. When I knew he was looking, I scratched my nose with one hand during the push-up sets, the other arm continuing on through the exercise with what I hoped looked like effortlessness. I finished drenched in sweat. There were no congratulations from my new partner. He trudged off towards the house in silence.
I sat in bed making a list, light beginning to creep under the curtains drawn closed around the glassed-in porch. The porch was creaky, and when Jerry the pig came out to join me at sunrise the whole thing rattled like an old wooden wagon. The huge animal stood snuffling at me for a while, its big brown eyes searching mine, then flopped to the floor by my bed with an exhausted sigh.
Snale was right. The snoring was oddly comforting. I lay on my side and watched the animal’s ear flapping now and then as it dreamed. Its body warmth made my corner of the porch cosy. I fell asleep to thoughts of Sam’s case.
I had so much that I wanted to do to help my brother
, but all of it was out of my hands. There was so much evidence against Sam. Not least his confession.
I walked up behind her. I was quiet. I swept my arm around her neck, pulled her backwards towards my car …
Sam confessed to all three murders. But less than an hour after leaving the interrogation room, he said the confession was coerced. I didn’t want to believe that my own colleagues might have psychologically tortured my brother, exhausted him and threatened him until he simply surrendered. Maybe they’d beaten him. I’d been known to get a little rough with suspects myself, inside and outside the interrogation room.
But I also didn’t want to believe that Sam was guilty. So I tried not to believe anything.
Marissa Haydon had disappeared from the university grounds, in a small car park behind the campus bar on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. My brother’s credit card records showed he had been in the bar that same afternoon.
Elle Ramone had disappeared from a street three blocks away from the university, in the residential area behind the main street of Newtown. Sam usually walked home that way at around the same time she had gone missing, from his graphic design business in Marrickville, where he worked the three days a week that he wasn’t teaching.
Rosetta Poelar had disappeared from a side street off of Parramatta Road, near the university’s veterinary science building. CCTV inside a bicycle shop captured Sam walking through the area just fifteen minutes before Rosetta was last seen.
Sam had been at the right place, at the right time, for all three abductions. Police had been watching him, and they didn’t like what they saw. He was single. He was antisocial. He had a history of juvenile crime. If he was as violent as his sister when he lost control, he might be deadly. The task force had jumped in and made an arrest even if the evidence was flimsy. The media had been hounding them for progress. Even a false arrest at that point would have been something.