Authors: Vicki Tyley
Forgetting she
had renounced her journalism career and was, in theory, only there as a favour
to Anthea Sutton, she squeezed her way to the front. Her skin crawled like a
junkie craving a high, the story so close she could taste it.
“Detective
Inspector Daniel Lassiter, please,” she said, her voice strong and
authoritative. Not only did she succeed in attracting the attention of the
round-faced constable closest to her, but that of the whole media circus.
Reporters thrust microphones in her face, demanding to know who she was, her
connection to DI Lassiter, and her purpose for being at the site. She ignored
them all, leaning forward to present her business card to the constable.
He dutifully
accepted it, stepping away from the tape and turning his back briefly to talk
into his radio. He returned, speaking to his colleague before lifting the
cordon tape and motioning her under. An indignant clamour rose behind her.
Constable Peter
Haggerty, as he had introduced himself, walked her down the rough dirt track
leading into the forest. Not as sure-footed as her minder, she had to
concentrate hard to avoid stumbling over tree roots and rocks. She struggled to
keep pace with him, the dry, earthy air tickling her throat as she gasped for
breath.
Once out of
sight of the sealed road, Constable Haggerty told her to stay put while he
checked on Daniel’s whereabouts. Thankful for the respite, she sagged against
the nearest tree large enough to take her weight. No longer a moving target, a
cloud of bush flies closed in, attracted by the sweat rivulets running down her
face. She waved her hand in front of her face, driving them away.
Keeping up the
wiper motion, she surveyed the area. Though she couldn’t see the police
operations, she could hear their jumbled voices floating up from the other side
of the rise over which Constable Haggerty had disappeared. Through the trees
and some distance away, she caught sight of a couple of intrepid individuals
bushwhacking through dense undergrowth in an obvious attempt to circumvent the
police cordon.
Brave or stupid?
she wondered. If the snakes and spiders
didn’t get them, the police undoubtedly would.
This thought
sent her scuttling into the middle of the track, away from the bushes and
trees. Logic told her that with all the commotion, any snakes would be long
gone. Phobia told her it was better to be safe than sorry.
Intent on checking
for movement in the scrub off the side of the track, she didn’t hear Daniel’s
footsteps as he came up behind her. In the same instant he spoke her name, he
touched her shoulder.
“Shit!” She
clapped her hand to her chest. “Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
“Sorry,” he
said, not looking the slightest remorseful, “but what the hell are you doing
here?”
“On assignment.
What’s your excuse?”
“Pardon?”
“Kangaroo bones
don’t warrant this much attention.”
Daniel pressed
his lips together and dropped his gaze. “Jacinta, I’m sorry,” he said, his
voice low and soft like he actually meant it this time. “You’re right; what I
told you last night was more to appease you than anything else. You have to
realise I’m not in a position to tell you anything more substantial. Anything
you may have heard elsewhere is wild speculation, and nothing more. The
investigation is still very much in the early stages, but I promise you, when
we have something for the press, I’ll let you know. Besides–” his voice rose an
octave, “–it cuts both ways. What’s your interest in this case? Didn’t you tell
me you had given up the reporter game? Perhaps there’s something more you ought
to be telling me…”
Before she could
protest, Constable Haggerty turned up to tell Daniel he was required. “Jacinta,
we need to talk, but not here and not now. Can I call you later?”
She hesitated
and then nodded. Pretending he didn’t exist wouldn’t make him disappear. And
maybe – just maybe – if he could convince her of his sincerity, the monster
inside her head she had fed for years would wither and die.
“Peter will take
you back to the road.”
For a moment or
two, she watched Daniel’s retreating form before turning to begin the hike
back.
“You friends
with DI Lassiter, then?” asked Peter, his tone casual as, walking side by side,
they retraced their earlier steps.
“He’s my
brother,” she said, surprising not only the young constable but herself.
“Stepbrother, actually.” Why she had felt compelled to blurt that out, she
didn’t know.
Peter Haggerty
didn’t ask any more questions, remaining mute until they reached his colleagues
standing guard at the track entrance. All eyes were on her as Peter directed
her along the blue and white police tape to a less populated spot.
Ducking under
the tape, she knew Anthea would be less than pleased with her lack of results.
In her previous life, she would probably have stood her ground: demanding,
wheedling, and pleading until she had the information she wanted. But somehow,
she knew being obnoxious wouldn't have worked with Daniel, anyway. After all,
he hadn't achieved his rank by giving into annoying reporters, stepsister or
not.
She straightened
up, glancing first at her car, then at the growing pack of reporters and
stickybeaks, and then back at her car. She was dehydrated, hungry, tired and
sweaty; the air-conditioned sanctuary of her car won out easily over standing
around in the building heat, dust and sticky flies.
A blast of
superheated air hit her when she opened her car door. She started the car
without getting in, leaning across the driver’s seat to turn the
air-conditioner and fan to maximum. With all the Pulsar’s windows open, the hot
outside air soon displaced the even hotter interior air, along with a couple of
bush flies for good measure.
Leaving the car
idling, she dug into her satchel for her mobile phone. Even though she had
nothing to report, Anthea would still be waiting for her call. Her phone’s
signal indicator flickered, steadied and then died. Cursing, she danced around,
holding her phone in the air like some demented marionette.
Swinging around,
she came face to face with the last person she expected to see.
“Grace!”
Kirsty Edmonds’
best friend and self-proclaimed lover, Grace Kevron, gave her a lopsided grin.
“Hello, Jacinta,” she said, her speech marred by a slight slur. “Fancy meeting
you here.” She giggled, tilting her head to one side.
Jacinta frowned,
wondering from which planet the pale-faced alien with dilated pupils had
descended. “Have you been drinking?”
Grace responded
with another stupid, lopsided grin, before moving her face in so close that
Jacinta feared she was about to be kissed. She instinctively pulled back, but
not before Grace had blown a lungful of garlicky breath in her face.
“What are you
doing here, Grace?”
“You’re not the
only one with contacts, you know.”
That much was
obvious. “What do you think you’re going to achieve?”
“Justice.”
“I don’t see how
a pile of animal bones is going to do that,” Jacinta said, using the line
Daniel had given her the previous night.
That bloody grin
again. “You’ll see,” Grace said over her shoulder, as she turned and walked
away.
Like a ghost, Grace had faded into
the crowd, leaving Jacinta bemused and none the wiser. Who or what had brought
Grace into the Toolangi State Forest? Were her cryptic comments about ‘justice’
and ‘you’ll see’ meant only to taunt, or something deeper? What wasn’t she
saying?
Using her hand
to shield against the glare, Jacinta scanned the surrounding area again, to no
avail. She sighed and closed her eyes, immediately wishing she hadn’t when the
insides of her moisture-less lids sandpapered her eyeballs. Not only her eyes
but her whole body craved water.
With dehydration
fogging her brain, what hope did she have of corralling her thoughts into
anything coherent? She had no choice. She would have to return to Healesville
for supplies.
Getting into her
car was like going from the oven to the freezer. Before she closed her car
door, she flicked a fly comatose with cold from the dashboard. Then, hoping
like hell that nothing major happened while she was away, she drove off.
Once in
Healesville, she broke the diet commandment, ‘thou shalt not shop on an empty
stomach’, and piled her shopping basket with enough junk food and drink to
survive any siege. At the checkout counter, she added
The Acacia Tribune,
The Age
and
Herald Sun
newspapers, noting that the discovery of the
human remains had yet to make the front pages. If nothing else, she would have
something to read to while away the time.
Not waiting for
the car to cool first, she jumped into the driver’s seat, cramming her shopping
bags into the passenger-side footwell. With an opened bag of jellybeans on the
seat between her legs and a bright blue sports drink in the middle console, she
somehow managed to retrace her route to the Toolangi State Forest without
getting lost.
In her absence,
a couple of new vehicles had arrived and at least one – namely the black Toyota
Prado she had been parked behind earlier – had left. Other than that, nothing
had changed.
She opened all
the car windows, allowing any breeze there might be to flow through, and
stretched across the console to retrieve her picnic provisions from the floor.
In the middle of this contortionist act, she heard a vehicle slow and stop
close by, followed by a mishmash of disjointed voices. Rummaging in the bags in
the footwell, her grip tightened on a cold bottle of something in the same
instant the voices registered. She froze; her left elbow propped on the
passenger seat taking the bulk of her weight.
Snatches of Daniel’s
deep voice, mixed with Detective Sergeant Renee White’s softer tones, drifted
through the car window. Not wanting to alert them to her presence, Jacinta kept
her head down and held her breath. Her ears strained to pick up every sound,
flipping into overdrive when she heard the words ‘DNA’ and ‘Edmonds’ in the
same sentence.
Stringing
together the words she could hear with the ones she couldn’t wasn’t easy. But
if she had the general gist right, it wasn’t Kirsty Edmonds’ remains out there
in the bush. Or at least not the first body. Daniel’s last instruction to DS
White before she restarted her car was to notify Narelle Croswell and Craig
Edmonds of the DNA results in person.
Jacinta waited
until she felt sure the coast was clear before she sat up. Able to breathe
freely again, she tried to work out where Daniel had gone but, like Grace, he
had disappeared from sight.
Renee White,
Jacinta presumed, was on her way to the Edmonds house. How would Narelle and
Craig react? Would it be good news or bad news? Sincerely hoping that
insensitive prat of a sidekick, Detective Constable Mark Fratta, wasn’t
accompanying her, Jacinta took a swig of her now tepid sports drink.
Narelle wanted
closure, but at what expense? She and Craig had more than themselves to consider
now. If the remains had been positively identified as those of Kirsty Olive
Edmonds, their lives would have been thrown into turmoil. The once dormant and
all but forgotten murder case, along with its prime suspect and his new wife,
would once again have been thrust into the spotlight. Could either of them have
handled the stress again? What would the effect have been on their unborn
child?
But if it wasn’t
Kirsty’s body, whose was it? Someone else’s daughter, sister or wife had been
murdered and left to the elements and wildlife. What else had the police
uncovered out there in the undergrowth?
Leaning back
into her seat, Jacinta weighed up the little she knew with what she could only
surmise. Fact one: skeletal remains of an unidentified female had been unearthed.
Fact two: that female wasn’t Kirsty Edmonds. Speculation: remains of at least
another person – sex unknown – had also been discovered in the same area. If
speculation proved to be fact, did that mean this secluded spot in the forest
had become a serial killer’s dumping ground? How many victims were there? How
long had they lain there, waiting to be discovered?
She shook her
head. The more she thought about it, the more questions she had. Besides, it
wasn’t her problem any longer. Copywriters didn’t hang around in the back of
nowhere, battling the heat and flies in the slim expectation of a story,
wasting a perfectly good day off. And as of Monday, that was what she would be
— a salaried copywriter with an air-conditioned office and regular hours. Anthea
Sutton could get someone else to do her dirty work for her.
With the media
turnout, Jacinta had no doubt any breaking news would be splashed across the
television and radio in no time.
What’s one less unemployed reporter?
she thought, putting the car in drive and checking the side mirror before
easing out onto the road.
All of a sudden,
the crush of reporters spread out in front of her, blocking her way. No one
looked at her, their focus centred firmly on a white Toyota Land Cruiser
leaving the cordoned-off dirt track. She caught a glimpse of its dark-haired
driver and immediately wondered if it might be Daniel.
The driver
nudged the 4-wheel drive through the milling reporters and cameramen,
accelerating quickly once clear. On the other side of the crowd, Jacinta tapped
her fingers on the steering wheel, resorting to an impatient toot of her car’s
horn when they ignored her more subtle engine revving.
She planted her
foot, catching up with the Land Cruiser just as it turned left onto Myers Creek
Road. Even after catching sight of the driver’s profile, she still couldn’t be
sure it was Daniel. But what did it matter, one way or the other? Shaking her
head, Jacinta flicked on the indicator and followed the 4-wheel drive around
the corner. Like an itch she couldn’t stop scratching, logic didn’t come into
it.