That night, things took a turn. The police had found worrying evidence inside Sam’s apartment – some violent porn, a rape dungeon–style set-up in his back bedroom. Those things were circumstantial. There was no evidence of any of the girls at Sam’s place, and no evidence of Sam on any of their bodies. But the prosecution could physically place him near all three abduction sites. What were the odds?
I woke from a sweaty half-slumber and slid my notebook out from under my pillow. I flipped through the crime scene photographs of the girls’ bodies sprawled on the banks of the Georges River. I looked at the trees on the opposite bank, a blur of pale eucalypts in the photograph. Fine grey sand and murky brown water. This place meant something to the killer. What had it meant to us?
My childhood had been full of rivers, fields, national parks. Often, Sam and I found ourselves in large families with multiple foster children lumped together with biological children. When child services found a willing foster carer, someone who was reliable, they sent them as many kids as they could possibly handle. Sam and I, two moody, aggressive white kids, would become part of an odd collection of youngsters all under the care of one foster couple. With so many kids in tow, traditional means of entertainment were off the cards. Going to the movies was too expensive. The families would take us to parks, rivers and long, empty beaches. Sam and I had spent time at the Georges River, but that time hadn’t been any more meaningful than it had been anywhere else. At least, it hadn’t to me.
Maybe there were things about Sam I didn’t know. We’d been separated now and then, sometimes for up to a year, when families wouldn’t take us both. Maybe there was another Sam, a brother grown out of those blank spaces in his life, the ones I hadn’t witnessed.
An evil Sam.
Chapter 22
THERE WAS LITTLE to say to Kash and Snale when I arrived in the kitchen in the morning. Kash was reading the Herald on his iPad, a two-page spread about my brother.
‘We’ve got to go,’ I said, drawing on my cap.
As we started walking into town, Kash lagged behind us, talking on his phone. I eavesdropped on his conversation, trying to distract myself.
‘You can’t take that. I bought it. You – But, Tenacity, baby, let me talk for a second, will you?’
Tenacity. I’d heard that name before. When I first learned Tenacity Bridge’s name, I thought she’d probably had a mother who’d thought she was cool landing her daughter with a moniker people would cringe at for the rest of her life, like mine. My secret shame, ‘Jupiter’, was at least my middle name and not my first, and I’d been able to hide it for most of my life.
The Tenacity I knew had been a victim I met in my work in Sex Crimes. A young man named Alex Finton had climbed in through her bathroom window one night and sexually assaulted her in her bed. I wondered silently if the woman Kash was talking to on the phone was the same one. How many could there be?
I was drawn out of my daydream by the crowd gathered out the front of the town pub, squinting in the sunlight. They turned angry faces on Kash and me. A sneer twisted the lips of the nearest person. It was only then that I noticed almost all of them were carrying rifles.
‘There they are,’ said one man, advancing towards us.
Chapter 23
‘WE WANT TO know what the hell’s going on.’ The man jutted his chin at me, turned and sized up the much larger Agent Kash. ‘We’re hearing the whole bloody town’s about to be attacked, and we’re seeing Sydney’s sent exactly two coppers to protect us. This is bullshit!’
‘Whoa, hold up.’ Kash put a hand out. ‘I’m not a cop. I’m a trained federal agent specialising in counter-terrorism.’
‘Terrorism?’ The group glanced nervously at each other, shifted their rifles. ‘Is it a terrorist?’
‘No.’ I stepped between them. ‘There is nothing to suggest right now that –’
‘Them Muslims,’ someone seethed. ‘I knew it’d only be a matter of ti–’
I didn’t have the patience for this. I was about ready to snap when a man broke in to the group, short and pot-bellied with thinning ginger hair.
‘Let’s keep this under control, huh, Jace?’ He put a hand on the rifleman’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure these officers know what they’re doing.’ The man turned to me, offered a hand. ‘I’m John Destro. Everybody calls me Dez.’
‘Dez is the mayor,’ Snale told me.
The man laughed, showing teeth so straight and white they could have been dentures.
‘Well, technically Last Chance is too small to appoint a mayor. I call myself that but I don’t get the salary.’ He smiled warmly. ‘I run the post office. So I’m the most powerful guy in town.’
He gestured to a two-storey building diagonally across the road from where we stood. It occurred to me exactly how powerful a postmaster could be in a situation like this. He literally had a monopoly on the essentials of life out here – food, alcohol, tools, farming supplies. It paid to be nice to the people who controlled your supplies, particularly when it was a two-day drive to anywhere with a population above five hundred.
‘I’m here to help in any way that I can.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Thanks. You can start by telling everyone to put their guns away. There is no evidence of an imminent threat to the people of this town. And this many people running around with rifles and frayed nerves is going to get someone killed.’
I walked inside the pub, where the tables surrounding a large stage were packed with people, some of them already halfway through breakfast beers beside plates of toast. There were people on the upper floor, arms hanging over the railing, watching. This is what people do in country towns when there’s trouble: go to the local pub, gossip, get a hold on the situation, regardless of the work to be done that day. The place was the beating heart of the town. There was a sweaty bartender standing behind the long, polished counter, holding a pint of beer to his lips. The glass featured a brass nameplate with ‘Mick the Prick’ engraved on it. I guessed drinking on the job was acceptable here, at least.
I walked to the stage and thirty sets of eyes followed me. Literally half the population of the valley was here.
‘My name is Detective Inspector Harriet Blue,’ I said loudly. ‘I’m from the Sydney Metro police department. I’ve got a few things to say.’
I drew a long breath. How many of these people would recognise me from the front page of yesterday’s paper? Snale was watching me from the doorway, with ‘Jace’ and the hostile group of farmers.
‘Last night, your former police chief Theo Campbell passed away,’ I said. There was no rumble of voices, no gasps of surprise. ‘We’re still investigating the circumstances, and whether they are linked to the diary Sergeant Snale questioned you all about some days ago. At this stage there is no reason to believe that anyone else in town is under any further threat. I advise you to go about your business. Those people we want to question about the case will be contacted shortly. If you think you’ve got relevant information to share with us about Mr Campbell’s death, or the diary, then please do so.’
I tried to leave the stage and almost ran right into the solid wall of human muscle that was Kash. My stomach sank.
‘Ah, actually,’ he shifted past me to the centre of the stage, ‘it might be helpful, Detective Blue, for us to provide a deeper understanding of what information might be relevant.’
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I whispered. He ignored me.
‘My name is Special Agent Elliot Kash. I’m a highly trained counter-terrorism expert, specialising in Islamic terrorism and insurgency. I’ve spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan gathering surveillance and intel on lone-wolf and sleeper-cell development.’
The crowd stirred. The bartender slammed a pint glass down.
‘Because of my specialist experience,’ Kash said, ‘I can tell you the kind of thing we’re looking for. You need to keep an eye out for someone you know who’s been acting strange lately. Maybe spending more time than usual on
their own or on their computer. Ask yourself if someone in your household has gained a sudden interest in organised religion, particularly Islam, or if they’ve been making aggressive political statements. Have they withdrawn from their circle of friends? Are they making or receiving private phone calls in the middle of the night? Hypervigilance is the key here, people. Be aware, and if you see something, say something.’
‘Terrorists,’ someone at the back murmured. ‘I bloody knew it.’
‘That Taby kid’s always on that laptop,’ someone else said. ‘You see him around town with it. That’s how they radicalise them. The internet. The videos. The chat rooms.’
I all but yanked Kash off the stage as he tried to wrap up. He seemed confused by my fury. I pushed him out the pub door and into the shade of the awning.
Chapter 24
‘YOU ARE GOING to panic the people of this town.’ I shoved his chest. ‘There is no evidence of organised terrorism in this case so far. None!’
‘Maybe not to your eyes,’ Kash said. ‘You don’t have the training, or the experience. This is how lone wolves operate. They hide out in small regional towns where their activities don’t raise suspicion, and they experiment, honing their skills, until they can move on to bigger targets.’
I tried to breathe evenly. Snale exited the pub, shoulders hunched, embarrassed by the public display of antagonism. I had to salvage this situation, if not for the case, for the town’s perception of city law enforcement. Threatening Kash, shouting at him, wasn’t working. His skull was too thick, trapping messages outside his tiny brain. I needed to be calm. Reason with him.
‘You know,’ I said, ‘my training is in Sex Crimes. I live it. I breathe it. I spend my every waking moment dealing with it. So when a victim or a witness comes to me and tells me their story, my natural instinct is to believe what I’ve been trained to believe – that a crime has occurred.’
‘I don’t see where this is going,’ Kash broke in. I took a moment to visualise myself punching him in the face, then closed my eyes and carried on.
‘But sometimes,’ I said slowly, ‘very rarely, a crime hasn’t occurred. Someone is lying, or they’re mistaken. I have to make sure that I approach every situation with an open mind, and look at the evidence, before I form any conclusions.’
‘So?’ Kash shrugged.
‘So you’ve assumed there’s a terrorist in this town without any evidence to support that. And worse, you’ve just warned these people to look out for someone acting strangely, who’s withdrawn, moody, and who gets phone calls late at night. You know who that sounds like? It sounds like every fucking teenager I’ve ever met.’
‘Radicalists often target teens,’ Kash said. ‘They’re usually already despondent, disenfranchised. Vulnerable to the ideas of terrorist organisations.’
I turned to Snale, who was watching Kash with the kind of confused awe reserved for audiences of the truly mad.
‘Find me Zac Taby,’ I said. ‘We need to get to him before someone else does.’
Chapter 25
I STOOD FUMING while Snale went back to the house to get the four-wheel drive. I couldn’t so much as look at Kash, who was now talking to Mayor Dez, probably giving him a run-down of covert surveillance tactics in the rural environment. I was steadily becoming exhausted. It seemed the further I got from the city, my home, the harder it was to breathe. Already the midday sun was baking the air, making it feel like steam in my lungs. Seven days, I thought. It’s only seven days.
I noticed the farmer, Jace, standing nearby when he spat on the ground. He was watching me from the shadows beneath his hat. All of him was browned by the relentless sun, black freckles and moles standing up on his arms like cracked pepper. He had a foot propped on the stone front step of the farming supply store next to the pub.
‘Was there much of Soupy Campbell left?’ he asked.
I considered the question. It was odd. Not only deeply inappropriate, but slightly voyeuristic, too.
‘It was a terrible scene,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine why you’d want to know.’
‘Well,’ Jace said, shrugging, ‘out here we have pretty simple beliefs about justice. The blackfellas, they have their ways. They’ll have the elders sing to the spirits about you. Bring down some bad luck. Sometimes they’ll have a ceremony. Spear you in the legs. Depends on what you done.’
He looked me up and down, as though assessing my life’s worst deeds.
‘Then there’s the white man’s bush justice,’ he said. ‘An eye for an eye. Sounds like Soupy’s woman won’t have much left to bury. Whoever did this, it should be the same for their family.’
‘Look.’ I let my head loll. ‘That’s very impressive and scary, and believe me, I understand your way of looking at things. I’ve encountered a number of predatory scumbags in my particular line of work who I’d have loved to torture slowly with a barbecue fork. But that’s not the way the world works.’
I was mildly uncomfortable at my own words. I had, in my time, tracked down and beaten a couple of sex offenders who had escaped justice. I had relished in hearing that violent child-sex predators got the old ‘Long Bay Welcome Tea’ – a bucket of scalding water thrown over them on their first night in prison. That was the violent part of me. The beast inside. But this man didn’t need encouragement to go out and punish Theo Campbell’s killer with his little band of sunburned cronies. The men I’d punished had endured full, fair trials. I’d known they were guilty. The farmer before me was itching for a suspect to hurt. And there was no way he was going to wait to make sure he had the right guy.
‘Any suspects yet?’ he asked, as if on cue.
‘No. But if we find some, and anything happens to those suspects before we can get them locked up, I’ll be looking at you.’ I pointed at Jace’s eyes. ‘So take your white man’s bush justice and fuck off.’
He laughed at my bravado, gave me another long visual assessment, his eyes wandering right down to my boots, back up to my face. I stood sweating in the sunlight as he wandered away.
Chapter 26
ZAC TABY WASN’T hard to find. Snale picked us up in her four-wheel drive and drove us, not to the school but away from the town. Along a dirt track that rattled the car windows almost out of their frames, we came to a shaded gully at the foot of a tall cliff face covered in spray-painted tags. I got out of the truck and stared at the peppering of cigarette butts at my feet. Somewhere in the shady brush someone was playing music, a whiny peal from phone speakers.
A large black-and-grey dog rushed to the car to intercept us, barking in a decidedly unfriendly manner. Its stride jangled with the string of Coke cans tied to its tail. Snale sighed, exasperated.
‘Digger,’ she snapped. ‘Come here. Come here, girl.’
The dog gave up its vicious charade and allowed itself to be freed.
‘Whose dog is that?’
‘It’s the town dog.’ Snale ushered the dog up onto the back seat of the four-wheel drive. ‘No one really owns her. Everybody feeds her. Which is probably why she’s so fat.’
A stringy, dark-skinned teenager emerged from the brush. I noticed others scuttling off through the trees, a couple of girls and a tall, lanky young man in a huge black trench coat that was ridiculous in the heat. Zac must have known we’d come looking for him after hearing about Theo Campbell’s death. There was laughter on the wind as the teens took the back route into the bush, a couple of defiant cries of ‘Fuck the Po-lice!’
Zac had a practised surliness well beyond his fifteen years. I might have wondered what it took to become this angry at life so young, but I had been exactly the same kind of kid. I never slept. I smoked like a chimney. I swore at strangers and hung out in the wrong places. One of my foster dads had nicknamed me ‘Bitch face’ because he said I always looked like I wanted to scream at someone. This kid thought nobody cared about him, and he was probably right.
‘You got some friends, Vicky?’ the teen asked, eyeing Kash and me. ‘That’s a first.’ br />
‘We need you to come with us, Zac,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get your parents so we can chat about an incident yesterday morning.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Oh yes you are.’
‘Suck my dick, bitch,’ he snapped at me. ‘I don’t know anything about what happened yesterday. So you can go and annoy someone else, because I ain’t no terrorist, and I don’t keep a diary. Diaries are for little girls.’
‘We just want to talk,’ Snale said. ‘Maybe you can tell us something that will help. You and Soupy were … well acquainted. You might know someone else who had a major grudge against him.’
‘Whoever it was deserves a fucking medal.’ Zac drew a cigarette packet out of his jeans. ‘Dude was an A-grade fucktard. I heard the bomb blew his head right off. Is that true?’
‘We don’t have time for the tough-guy games.’ I strode forwards. ‘Get in the car.’
‘Should I resist?’ He jutted his chin at me, grabbed a handful of his junk. ‘Would that be exciting for you?’
‘That’s it,’ I heard Kash mutter as he came up behind me. He pushed me aside and grabbed Zac, slamming the kid into the dirt.
‘Stop! Stop!’
Zac was squealing with terror, all his bravado gone. Kash had a knee in the kid’s back and both hands in his pockets, scooping and dumping detritus on the ground around us: cigarettes, joints, condoms, a pocketknife, scraps of paper. Kash got the boy’s phone and let Snale and I drag him off the wailing teen.
Zac rolled in the dirt. ‘Fuck you! Fuck you, po-lice piece of shit!’
‘Let’s have a look,’ Kash was saying, swiping through Zac’s phone. ‘Recent photos.’