Where they fall, p.17
WHERE THEY FALL, page 17
“No worries.”
Blake closed the toilet lid and sat down. Cole grabbed Blake’s shirt and lifted it past her grazed hip and over her shoulders, feeding the garbage-bag and cast through the sleeve hole. Blake winced. Using two hands, Cole pulled the shirt over Blake’s face, doing his best to avoid her grazed and seeping jaw. It was like he was trying to disarm a bomb. He took it slowly to make it as comfortable for Blake as possible. As he pulled her torn shirt up and over her head, their eyes met. For the briefest second, something sparked. Appreciation. Friendship. A kind of platonic love. Something more?
Blake wore a black bra, lace and somewhat transparent. Cole’s eyes gravitated towards it. He then forced himself to look past her chest to the wound on her hip. Blake was his mate. His best friend. His dead wife’s best friend. Despite all that, it was only natural for butterflies to flap their woozy wings.
“Are you okay with the rest?” He said, keeping his eyes low, evading her semi-naked body.
“Well, if it’s not too awkward for you, I wouldn’t mind if you help with the bike pants. I’ve kind of only got one functioning arm, Cam.”
“Jesus, are you wearing something underneath?”
“Of course! I’ve got knickers on. I was going for a bike ride, not shooting a porno!”
“Well, I dunno. I haven’t removed the clothes off a woman since, well… since...”
Cole’s voice trailed off into the space that memories hide.
“This isn’t quite the same thing,” Blake said. “But thanks for making it weird now.”
They both forced laughter to break the tension as Cole gently lowered Blake’s bike pants down, keeping the material from touching the aggregated graze down the length of her right leg. His hand brushed her inner thigh. The sparks returned. He swallowed and fought the primal arousal. He stood and their eyes met again.
“If I didn’t know any better, Cameron Cole, I’d think you’re blushing.”
Cole laughed and shook his head. “I’m only a mere mortal,” he said as he stepped toward the shower. He turned the mixer on, set the wall mounted temperature control to forty-one degrees and turned back to Blake. She stood, using the towel rack for help. Cole did his best not to marvel at her toned physique. Her curved bottom and muscled thighs were a testament to her hours of cross fit. Her hardened stomach, her brown skin, her hipbones jutting out just above her black underwear all frenzied Cole’s misguided thoughts. He focused on the red raw gravel rash.
“Jesus, that’s bad,” he said, examining the lack of skin from her knee to her ribs. “Now you’ll need to sort out your underwear alone. I’m a nice guy, and I wanna do what I can to help, but I think taking your underwear off is crossing a line I can’t come back from.”
“Thanks, Cam. I’m sure I’ll work it out.”
“I’ll go get some of Lizzie’s clothes for you, okay?”
Cole turned and left the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind him.
“Hey, Cam,” Blake called out as the door was ajar.
“Yep?”
“Thanks. I mean it, okay? Thanks for everything. Thanks for looking after me.” She forced a laugh. “Thanks for making that as normal as it could have possibly been.”
Cole smiled. “It’s all good.”
He pulled the door closed.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Cole placed a pair of grey tracksuit pants, a loose fitting blue shirt and a hooded sweater on the spare bed along with a pair of Lizzie’s underwear.
Given the differences in their bust size, Blake would need to put her worn bra back on, or go without. Cole sat on one of his breakfast bar benches and drank another beer. He laughed off the awkwardness of the situation. He had known Blake for a decade. They had shared every detail about their lives with one another. Blake was like a step mum to Jenny. Why couldn’t Cole shake off the feeling that something had just been unlocked? Something that he couldn’t return to whichever component of the subconscious it had just come from.
He forced his mind back to the task at hand. He searched for Alexandra Chung in whatever databases he had access to. Once logged onto the Victoria Police Department’s mainframe database, he searched her name nationally. She didn’t appear to have a South Australian driver’s licence or an Australian passport. Evidence surfaced of several Alexandra Chung’s arriving on international flights over the last twelve months. Three were from Hong Kong. One of those was on a flight to Adelaide. Two months ago.
“Bingo,” he said aloud. “We need to speak with immigration.”
Blake emerged from Cole’s ensuite ten minutes later. She hobbled out with a towel wrapped around her and her hair tied up.
“How’d you go?” Cole asked.
“Put it this way. I don’t want to do that again in a hurry. The hot water on my skin was torture. I think I’d rather be dirty.”
“Okay. Clothes are on the spare bed. Yell out if you need a hand.”
“I’ll do my best. But thanks.”
By the time Blake reappeared with Lizzie’s clothes on and the sling firmly reattached, the clock chimed eleven pm. Cole studied Google maps street view. He examined each building next to the post office in Elizabeth, studying the front façades. Blake sat beside him, smelling like his body wash. It was unusual. She had a smell that he had grown so accustomed to. Having her sit beside him, radiating the fresh aroma of Nivea for men confused his senses.
“What are you looking at now?”
“Buildings with visible cameras. This Chung chick is a ghost. No license. No Aussie passport. I can’t even find evidence that she’s here on a visa, but I have seen the name on inbound flight logs.” He took a swing of his beer. “I’ve got an idea. We send something to the PO Box, right? Something with express shipping. Then, if that camera at the pharmacy across the road,” he said, pointing at the National Pharmacies chain-store on the street view before him, “is recording, then we can catch her in the act. I bet my left nut that Alexandra Chung collects that mail.”
“If you keep betting your left nut, soon you won’t have one left.”
“Not if I’m right.”
“And then what? All we’ll see is this girl collect some mail. It won’t bring us any closer.”
“Unless she drives there and parks the car. We will see the car, hopefully get a licence plate number.”
Blake shook her head. “I bet your left nut that the car, if we even see a licence plate, will be one of the twelve vehicles registered by Alpha Numerix with no contact address other than a PO Box and no contact info other than the info at Prime Technologies email address. It won’t give us anything we don’t already know.”
Cole took a swig, finishing his beer, and scrunched up his face. “Damn it. Why do you have to be right all the time? Fine then, we need to be there. We need to be watching, scouting the PO Box for when she arrives.”
“In Adelaide?”
Cole nodded.
“Cam, that’s ridiculous. It’s eight hundred kilometres away. We have no jurisdiction there. Hell, we’re not even meant to be on this case.”
“Which is even more reason to do it.”
“You’ve lost your marbles,” Blake said. “And I thought I was the one with a head injury.”
“Rach, think big picture here. If Holland is dirty, if we find Lachlan Harvey, then they will herald us as heroes. You might get the promotion you keep harping on about.”
“But if Holland isn’t dirty, and if we go to Adelaide and nothing comes from it, then we’ll be thrown over the coals and suspended.”
“It’s the only lead we have. The PO Box, the registered vehicles and the name, a name that landed at Adelaide Airport two months ago. Everything leads to South Australia. I’m doing it.”
“How are we going to get to Adelaide?”
“Umm, the Ranger. Cruise control the whole way, baby. If we leave first thing, we can be there by 2:00pm.”
“What about Jenny?”
“I’ll get Cynthia to come here.”
“God, that poor girl. Everything in her life is so disruptive.”
“C’mon, Rach. Don’t give me that shit. You think I don’t know that already? You think I don’t feel bad having to bail on her birthday dinner? You think I don’t feel guilty that she lost her mum and I’m always working? Well, I do. But it is what it is. This is my job. So spare me the guilt trip, please. I didn’t sign up to be a single parent and I’m doing the best I can.”
Blake pursed her lips. “Sorry, Cam. You’re a great dad. It was always going to be tough to balance major crimes and parenthood. Even if Lizzie was still here.”
Cole’s lower lip trembled. He blinked away welling moisture. Then, to change the subject, he Googled a car parts wholesaler in Adelaide. He clicked on the first item in the digital catalogue, a transparent purple gear stick handle in the shape of a princess-cut diamond.
“Twenty-six bucks,” he said. “Add to cart.”
When he proceeded to the checkout, the e-commerce portal gave him options for shipping — standard or express. Express guaranteed him the next day's delivery. He placed the order, entering the Elizabeth PO Box as the shipping address and paid with his personal PayPal account. Within a minute, his iPhone pinged, notifying him of a confirmation email.
Estimated delivery date: Wednesday August 3, between 12:00pm and 5:00pm.
“Cam, that’s tomorrow.”
“That’s the idea.”
“We can’t be there before midday. That’s impossible. We could miss the whole transaction, wasting your twenty-six dollars and an eight-hundred kilometre drive.”
Cam placed his hand on Blake’s shoulder. “We won’t miss it, Rach. Not if we leave now.”
“You’re crazy, Cameron Cole. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Only you, my wife, and my daughter.”
“Three wise women.”
Cole scoffed.
“What about Jenny? You can’t leave her alone tonight.”
“I’ll get Cynthia to come over.”
“It’s eleven o’clock.”
“That’s fine. She barely sleeps anyway. I’ll text her now.”
“I can’t go like this. I’m wearing Lizzie’s lounge room dags. I don’t have my pistol, my badge or anything.”
“Fine. We go past your place, then Holland’s office. Then it’s straight on the M1 motorway. I think I better put some coffee on.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Jake stood in the darkness outside Allan’s general store.
The still desert air bathed Lyndhurst in sickening silence. The half moon offered a silvery light, casting gloomy shadows over the parking lot. Jake noticed the black four-wheel drive parked beside the roadhouse. The same one he saw Annie and Jules get loaded into. He wiped the blood off his hands and raced towards it with the pistol raised. It was unlocked. Jake opened the driver’s door, hoping to find the keys in the ignition. He cursed, seeing the ignition barrel empty. The keys would be in one of the dead guy’s pockets. He didn’t want to go back inside and face what he had done. He didn’t want to waste time. People would have heard the gunshots. There could be more coming.
Jake spotted a handheld UHF radio mounted to a holster beside the passenger door. He ripped the radio from its holster and turned to run. A light flicked on inside the front room in the house with the sagging veranda. He sprinted past it with every remaining ounce of energy and found himself in an abandoned block on the verge of the highway.
Hardy weeds somehow endured the lack of rainfall. They grew to waist height, wilting from their own weight. Jake pushed through them and stopped at a dilapidated corrugated iron fence. He kicked one of the skewed panels and it tore right off the rotting frame. He ducked through the gap where the sheet of iron had been and took off into the bare saltbush field behind the block. Within seconds he was beyond the outskirts of the tiny town and soon found himself alone in an empty field.
He stopped.
He swayed as images of blood and gore busied his mind. Guilt gnawed at him. Fear consumed him. Fear that he would never see Annie again. Fear that he would die alone in the desert or spend the rest of his life in jail. Once his heart rate slowed, he began running again. He turned the radio on. He didn’t dare say anything, instead using the device to listen. To see if they were out there, communicating, searching for him.
Nothing.
Jake reached a barbed-wire fence, the wire so rusted that the barbs no longer posed a threat. He stepped over it and continued south. An old, dysfunctional windmill loomed before him, casting eerie shadows through the dry saltbush plains. A corrugated iron water tank, rusted and warped from decades in the sun, sagged beside the windmill. Desperate for something to drink, he turned the tap and scooped a handful of water from its steady flow.
He gagged. The water tasted saline. And old. He spat out the remains and continued. He turned the radio from fifteen to sixteen. Then, after a few minutes of the occasional hum of static, from sixteen to seventeen.
Seventeen purred with unique tones of static. He clipped the radio to his belt and continued across the plain.
A silhouette broke the featureless skyline on the horizon. He slowed his steps, cautious in the desert darkness. He gripped the dead mercenary’s pistol in one hand and clenched his free hand into a tight fist. The radio buzzed with static. Jake almost thought that he heard an actual word. A distant crow shrieked, making him flinch. He turned and looked back in the direction that he had come. Nothing but empty, frightening blackness crawled across the plains behind him.
He turned forward again, studying the shape on the horizon. Sharper profiles formed. A roof. Old weather board panelling. Jake inched closer, realising he had stumbled across a derelict dwelling alone amid the empty grassland. He approached the building. The front door didn’t exist. Spinifex grass grew from the rotting decking on the front porch. Under normal circumstances, the house would have freaked him out. The eerie old building would have surfaced insecure thoughts of ghosts and hauntings. But there, alone under the desert sky, he saw it as an opportunity of refuge. Somewhere to hide. Somewhere to be safe from the watchful eyes of whoever these black uniformed savages were. He had just killed three people. He was a long way past ghosts and hauntings.
The radio purred again. Jake stepped inside the doorframe. The musty smell of rotting wood and goat shit hit him hard. As his eyes adjusted, he could see that no one had been in there for years, decades perhaps. Two broken chairs lay in the corner of the front room, the windows somehow still intact. The skeletal remains of a kangaroo littered the narrow hallway.
Jake stepped over the bones and searched the rest of the house. A steel bedframe was the only other piece of furniture in the place, the springs rusted and broken. The mattress was long gone. He sat down beside it, realising he hadn’t stopped since shoving that piece of wood into the man’s neck.
I wonder what his name was? I wonder if he had a wife? Kids? Did I need to do that?
Exhaustion came in a rising wave. As Jake’s heart rate waned, fatigue set in. He hadn’t eaten in hours. The idea of eating somehow made him feel worse. He leaned up against the rotting weatherboard wall and cried. He closed his eyes and somehow, despite everything, sleep claimed him.
Jake jolted awake, pulled from nightmares by the sound of a voice.
They’re here.
He sat in silence, too frightened to breathe. Surely they couldn’t have followed him out into the desert? How had they tracked him?
The voice sounded again, distant and barely audible. Jake realised it hadn’t come from outside the building. It came from the radio handset beside him. Channel seventeen. He turned the volume up and listened.
“…. Yeah mate, I’ll be back through in a fortnight.”
The voice was male, deep with a thick east-coast accent.
“Roger that. I’ll keep you posted.”
The same voice. Whoever the guy spoke with was too far away for Jake to pick up on his handset. He could only get one side of the conversation.
“… Yeah, give the kids my love… Copy that…”
Surely this voice didn’t come from murderous villains clutching rifles? Jake picked up the handset and held it to his mouth. He considered his options. He had changed channels. The likelihood of the black uniform guys being on multiple channels was slim. The chance of the killers sending their love to someone’s kids was even slimmer.
Jake’s hand shook as he gripped the radio. He pressed the intercom button.
“Hello.” His voice was shakier than his hand. His throat felt like sandpaper. “Hello. Is anyone there?”
“Who’s that? Bernie? Bernie, is that you?”
“I need help. Please. We need the Police. There’s been a murder.”
“Murder. Who is this? Bernie, you better not be fucking around?”
Jake gripped the radio and raised his voice. “I’m not bloody Bernie! I’m Jake Gibbs. Please, wherever you are, we need the Police.”
“You’re for real? Wait. Are you the same fella as from earlier today? On the Strzelecki? On the radio to Allan at Lyndhurst?”
Paranoia. Uncertainty. This guy knew Allan. Maybe he was in on it, too. Jake was sure that UHF radio couldn’t be tracked.
“Do you know Allan?” Jake asked.
“Allan from Lyndhurst? Yeah. He runs the servo. He’s a grumpy old fucker. Anyway. Jake Gibbs. Where are you? What’s happened?”
“How do I know I can trust you? Who are you?”
“Trust me? You’re the one on an open radio channel harping on about murder. Twice in one day. How can I be sure that I can trust you?”
“They took my girlfriend. They just took her and disappeared. Then they shot my mate in the head. They’re at Lyndhurst now. They’re dead. Allan is dead.”
“What do you mean, Allan is dead?”
“Who are you?”
“Me? I’m just a truckie, mate. Ryan. My name’s Ryan. Now, where are you?”
Jake had no idea where he was. Even if he did, he didn’t want to tell this guy over the radio. But he knew he needed help. He couldn’t do this alone. He would need to take a leap of faith. Uncertainty trapped him into the rotting corner of the dilapidated dwelling. What if this guy wasn’t a truck driver at all? What if he was one of them?
