They did. The phone fell silent for thirty seconds, and then the ringing started again. Dolly huffed, kind of annoyed by the sound of it. She wondered when Harry would get there. What the doctor would say when she arrived. It certainly wasn’t visiting hours. Perhaps Harry would be disguised as a guard, as the night doctor himself, even. Dolly looked out the window at the empty hallway and winced at the ringing that was vibrating around her bruised skull. She scratched her head and sighed. The ringing kept on and on.
On the third call, Dolly picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Dolly?”
“Um, yes?”
“Christ, Dolly, what took you so long!” Harry blasted.
“Har…Harry?”
“Yes! My God, who the fuck else would it be!”
“How did you get this number?” Dolly looked around. “I…I thought you were coming here. Are you coming here?”
“Am I—oh, Jesus—Dolly, I’m not coming there,” Harry huffed. “You’ve got to pay attention. I’m going to give you some instructions and you’re going to have to try to really focus. We haven’t got much time. The night doctor is probably on his way over right now.”
“Oh. OK. Right,” Dolly straightened. “What do you want me to do?”
“Listen carefully,” Harry said. “Do exactly what I say. OK? I want you to hang up the phone, and—”
Dolly put the phone back in its receiver.
Chapter 82
THE PHONE RANG. Dolly picked it up.
“Hello?”
Dolly could hear a clicking sound, like teeth grinding. Harry’s voice was low and dark. “Dolly. I meant. After. I’ve finished. Giving. You. The instructions.”
“Oh,” Dolly said, nodding. “OK. Sure.”
“I want you to write down a number,” Harry breathed. “When I say ‘Go,’ I want you to hang up, and then pick up the receiver and dial those numbers into the phone, and then hang up again. Have you got a pen there? There should be one on the desk.”
Dolly looked around. There was a pen at the furthest edge of the tabletop. With difficulty she threw a leg up onto the counter, knocked the pen onto the floor and pulled it toward her.
“OK,” she said, “I’m listening.”
Harry read her a list of numbers. Dolly wrote them on her ankle.
“What do you mean, star?” she asked. “How do I dial star?”
“There’s a star button on the phone,” Harry said.
“I don’t see one.”
“There’s. Dolly—It’s there, I’m telling you. Look. Use your eyes. It’s…it’s next to the zero. On the left.”
“There’s an asterisk?” Dolly said. “Do you mean that?”
“Dolly…” Harry said. “I am going to straight up murder you.”
“You always say that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“When are you coming back?” Dolly asked. “Are you in gen pop now or are you still outside?”
“No, I’m not in gen pop, I—Just, just focus, Dolly. OK? Focus on what we’re doing. We haven’t got time to chat.”
“They’re taking me to the Bay tomorrow, Harry. For a psych assessment.”
“That’s a good thing, Doll. While you’re in Johnsonborough you’re in danger. The people at the Bay won’t know you,” Harry said.
“I don’t want to go. I’ve heard about that place. That’s where they send all the mentals. The skin-eaters and baby-killers. If they decide I’m crazy I might never get out.”
“Dolly, we can’t talk about this now. We have to do this thing with the phone.”
“This is all a bit complicated, Harry,” Dolly whined. “Can’t you just come here and do it?”
“No,” Harry said. “But you can. Do it now, all right? If it works, I won’t be able to call you back.”
“What’s all this about?”
“It’s about helping you, Dolly. So just do it before the night doctor gets there.”
“If you say so.” Dolly shrugged. She put the phone receiver down, picked it up, dialed the number and the asterisk and put the phone down again. She waited. Nothing happened. She heard the night doctor and the guard buzzing through the gate at the end of the hall. She looked at the ground and remembered Doctor Goldman lying there, dying, her blood spreading out over the linoleum.
Chapter 83
I CLOSED MY eyes and exhaled long and slow. Teaching Dolly to divert the phone in the doctor’s surgery at Johnsonborough had driven me to furious levels of tension. If she had keyed in the numbers correctly, dialing the surgery number would now send the call to Pops’s mobile, which was sitting on the bedside table at my elbow.
Hoping silently with every fiber of my being, I reached over and picked up Pops’s landline phone, dialed the Johnsonborough female section doctor’s surgery. Pops’s mobile rang. I pressed the answer button on the mobile and listened to the silence, eased air through my teeth. Now that I had the surgery phone line under my control, I took Pops’s landline and dialed into the surgery’s voicemail. I knew there would be no pin code on the prison phone system, precisely so that any officer would have access to the voicemail of other officers anywhere in the prison in the event of an emergency. Sometimes the prison couldn’t use the PA system to direct staff, because then prisoners causing riots or trying to escape would know their movements. If the radio system went down, or the prisoners got hold of a radio, officers calling each other and not getting through during a crisis needed to be able to leave messages telling one another what was going on.
A charming female voice came on the line.
“You have—three—unplayed messages,” it said.
I listened hard.
“Message from February twenty-five, at one sixteen p.m.: Hi Goldie. Marie at the front office here. You’ve got a package. Thanks.”
I waited.
“Message from February twenty-eight, at seven forty-nine a.m.:” There was silence on the line. A click. The hope was draining from me. The messages were weeks old. Perhaps Goldie was too busy to check them.
“Message from March thirteen, at twelve twenty-one p.m.: Hey, it’s me, babe.”
I sat up sharply on the bed.
“The Corolla was making weird noises this morning. I’m going to have the NRMA come out and look at it today. But if it won’t go, can I get a ride home with you? You can call me back in the staff room—I’m having lunch and finishing those cell search reports. See you later.”
I smiled, played the message again, listened to the soft lilt in the man’s voice as he signed off the message.
See you later.
See you soon, I thought.
Chapter 84
WHITT KNOCKED ON the door of the Mallally house at five in the morning. The sun had not yet risen over the sharp, dark-blue edge of the distant sea. The slope toward Bondi was cluttered with mansions with darkened windows. He had to push the doorbell four times before he heard padding footsteps inside the house.
Louis Mallally opened the door in a red satin robe. His hair, unstyled, fell in a crown of oily ringlets over his head and behind his ears. He squinted in the dim light.
“What the hell is this?”
“We need to talk,” Whitt said.
Mallally lifted a finger, pointed it at Whitt’s face like he was chastising a dog. “No. No. You’re not doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Starting a program of harassment,” Mallally said. “This is what you cops do. You get desperate, and you herd anyone even remotely involved with a case and you start pushing and pushing to see who’ll fall off the cliff first. This is an inappropriate time to come to my home and disturb me, Detective Whittacker. And as I have been constantly telling your colleagues, this house will not be entered by the police against my will without a warrant.”
“Just give me the second phone,” Whitt said. “You must have had a phone that you used to communicate with Tonya to organize your meetings. Give it to me, and I’ll review the
messages between you, and we’ll be done.”
“No,” Mallally said. “There is no second phone. You have not a shred of hard evidence that suggests there ever was a second phone. I’ve got detectives following me up the fucking street, standing in my driveway, taking my trash out of the bin every night. They haven’t found a phone.”
“There’s no recent communication with you on Tonya’s phone,” Whitt said. “And no communication with her on yours.”
“Yes, and discovering that was a blatant invasion of my privacy.” Mallally pointed again. “I have not viewed a warrant to access my personal phone records.”
“Our investigators don’t have to justify themselves to you, Mr. Mallally,” Whitt said.
“No problem.” Mallally shrugged. “They can do it to a judge in my civil lawsuit against the department.”
“No communication between you and Tonya on your personal phone tells us that you must have bought—”
“—I’ve explained how Tonya and I—”
“—must have bought a two-pack of burner phones and given her one.” Whitt held his hand up. “I don’t need hard evidence to know that. It’s common sense. The idea that you met at the courthouse every Tuesday and didn’t find a secure way to communicate with each other outside of that arrangement is bullshit. Unless you communicated through telekinesis, a second phone is the only sensible way—”
“I’m asking you to leave these premises, Detective Whittacker,” Mallally said.
“And I’m asking you what you and Tonya discussed that was so incriminating that you won’t surrender your phone.”
Mallally rubbed his brow, leaned in the doorway. He was fighting back, but he was not fully awake yet. Whitt knew that when he came to completely he would be spouting deeper, more damaging legal threats. Whitt needed to hit hard, and keep hitting, before that happened.
“Why is your colleague, Elliot Prince, acting as Jax Gotten’s lawyer?” Whitt asked, changing tack.
“I don’t choose Elliot’s cases for him,” Mallally said. “He has an obligation to take a certain number of pro-bono cases in order to fulfill his requirements as an associate at my law firm. He chose Gotten because the case interested him.”
“Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? With Gotten suspected of killing your ex-girlfriend?”
“My colleague didn’t know Tonya was my ex-girlfriend until Detective Nigel Spader told him,” Mallally snapped, his eyes dark and blazing. “And neither did my wife! Do you people have any kind of training in confidentiality in your line of work? Can you even spell the word?”
“What’s Gotten going to say about you when we find him, Mallally?” Whitt asked.
“I don’t think I’ll be his major concern.” Mallally shrugged sharply, making the shiny satin of his robe flash in the morning light. “From what I’ve seen on the news, the guy’s running from mass murder charges. There were seventeen bodies in the desert, is that right? An entire rival bikie crew killed and dumped in a mass grave?”
“Do you know Jax Gotten, Mr. Mallally?”
“No.”
“Did Tonya ever mention him?”
“I’m telling you for the second time now, I want you to leave my property.” Mallally grabbed the edge of the door.
“Submit your house to a search,” Whitt said. He stepped forward, put a foot in front of the doorjamb. “If there’s no phone, then let our officers confirm that. Show us you’ve got nothing to hide.”
Mallally tried to slam the door but it bounced off Whitt’s boot and smacked back into his hand. The two men heard a little whimper at the sound of the scuffle. Mallally turned, and they saw one of his small daughters standing at the foot of the stairs, looking frightened, her hands clutched under her chin.
Whitt slid his foot out of the doorjamb and felt the whoosh of air as the door slammed shut in his face. He took out his phone and scrolled to find Tox’s number.
Chapter 85
TOX BARNES WAS standing in the waiting room outside the emergency department of St. Vincent’s Hospital, watching the television screen in the corner of the room, like everyone was. There was aerial footage of the mass grave outside Panuara, shot the day before, rotating slowly above scrolling headlines. A news anchor was speaking, her words flashing on the screen in black-and-yellow closed captions.
It has been an extraordinary 24 hours for New South Wales Police, who have confirmed the discovery of a mass grave just outside the town of Panuara in the state’s central west. Early reports indicate the remains may belong to members of outlaw motorcycle gang the Road Rabbits, who…
Tox was hardly taking in what he was seeing. In his mind he was a small boy running across a highway bridge to the safety of the bushland beside the road, trying to keep up with his friends, a girl he didn’t know walking toward him, confused by their terror, meeting his eyes as he passed.
…second incident playing out in tragic scenes last night. The body has been identified as Tonya Woods, the 22-year-old daughter of Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Woods. Police have not yet confirmed the whereabouts of missing two-year-old Rebel Woods, and are asking the public to…
Around him in the emergency waiting room people shuffled, murmured, sighed, and looked at the clock. Tox had come to the hospital planning to do what he had been doing a bit lately: walking through the emergency-room double doors, turning left through the fire door, taking the stairs to level five and walking down the hall to Chloe’s office. She had the midnight-to-midday shift that day, he knew. He needed to find her. He needed to understand. But his feet were stuck, as though magnetized, to the scuffed linoleum floor. It was rage that paralyzed him. Fury at himself, at the stupid boy on the bridge, a boy who grew into a stupid, blind man. He should have known something was wrong when Chloe Bozer came into his life. People like her didn’t hang around people like him. They sure didn’t love people like him. And yet somehow he’d entertained those fantasies, whispered promises of what they might have. He’d seen it in her smile in the doorway. Felt it in her arms as she held him, breathed him in. It was all a lie he’d chosen to believe. That life was not for him, and he needed to understand why she’d let him believe it was.
He was about to leave when she came through the doors into the waiting room. She was wearing pink scrubs, and her eyes had the hardness of someone prepared to look upon death and disfigurement all day. But they softened as she approached him, deliberately, like she was shaking it off.
“I’m quitting,” she said.
Chapter 86
HE DIDN’T KNOW what to say to that. They walked together to a small alcove near the triage desk. The activity of the waiting room seemed to fall away. Tox wanted to take her hands, but he stuffed his fists into his pockets instead.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I wanted to say before you left last night,” Chloe said. Her voice was smaller than he’d ever heard it. “I wanted to say meeting you has made me realize that I can’t do this job anymore.”
“That’s…” Tox shook his head. The rage re-emerged suddenly, never far from the surface. “That’s unfair. That’s unfair to me. I made a mistake as a kid and you’re punishing me by making it so that I’ve ruined something so perfect, so right, as you being in this job. You’re not going to run into anyone like me ever again around here, Chloe. It’s a horrible coincidence.”
“You don’t understand.” She wiped a tear from her cheek. “It’s not you. It’s not what you did. It’s me.”
He couldn’t look at her. She leaned in close.
“When I was standing over you in the operating theater, and I saw who you were I…I decided to save you.”
“Of course you did. You’re a good person.”
“No. It’s not like that. It’s not supposed to be a decision at all,” she pleaded. “It’s supposed to be automatic. I do my best for everyone who comes in here. Everyone. I’m a doctor. My job is to go to every effort to save the murderer or rapist or pedophile on my table j
ust as if it were my own child lying there. And when I saw it was you, for a split second I stood there and thought about not helping you.”
Tox looked away. He could hardly speak. “But you made the right decision.”
“Yes, but I hesitated.”
A nurse walked briskly past them, carrying an armful of papers. There was stillness in the waiting room.
“I don’t know how this happened.” Chloe rubbed her brow. “After I saved you I thought that would be it. I…I’d done the right thing. I’d hated you for so long, but that hatred didn’t win out against what I knew was the right thing to do in the operating theater. And then it didn’t win out against wanting to see you again after you showed up here. It didn’t win when I balanced it against wanting to kiss you that night outside the bar.” She shrugged. “It just seemed to get weaker and weaker. And I kept crossing lines,” she sighed. “And then it seemed impossible to tell you.”
“Chloe.” He held her face in his hands. “Please don’t quit. You’re a good doctor and a good person and you deserve to be here. Forget about me. You won’t ever see me again, so none of this will matter. If you really don’t hate me then you’ll let things go back to the way they were before I came in and ruined everything.”
She fell into his arms. He held her briefly. Then he had to walk away.
Chapter 87
TOX STOOD IN the car park and put his head in his hands. When his phone rang it was a welcome distraction from the hurt. He took the call from Whitt without speaking at all, his memories rolling through that moment on the bridge, the sound of car tires squealing and the gasps of horror from the boys around him as the impact boomed from the road, up the struts of the bridge, into the concrete beneath their feet.
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