Smoking Gun (Adam Cartwright Trilogy Book 1)

by Dennis Debney

  Moments later the sound of the approaching vehicle abruptly increased in volume and the vehicle seemed to be very close and rapidly getting closer. Suddenly it was almost on top of me. I did not stop to think. I threw myself off the road shoulder into the rocks and scrubby bushes alongside the road. It all happened so fast that it was impossible for me to remember the exact sequence of events. But I was aware of being struck and propelled through the air narrowly avoiding landing in a dry watercourse leading from a culvert a few metres ahead of me.

  It is said that sometimes the difference between life and death, or between a few bruises and serious injury, can be measured in millimetres. If that is so then I was grateful for those millimetres. I had thrown myself blindly without seeking a favourable spot to land. I hadn’t had the time to finesse my dive. The road surface was about a metre above the surrounding countryside and I hit the ground hard.

  My first instinct was to look up at the fast disappearing vehicle. It was a dun coloured 4WD partly shrouded in a cloud of dust that prevented me from reading its registration plate. It hadn’t slowed down, it was continuing to head eastwards at breakneck speed. There was no possibility that it had been an accident. Someone had deliberately tried to run me down.

  I gingerly flexed my limbs while still lying on my back amid small rocks and dust. Nothing seemed to have been broken. Even more gingerly I rolled over and slowly stood up. Standing there rather unsteadily I looked down. I immediately noticed was that my left running shoe was gone and that I had grazes on both arms and down my right leg.

  As I stood there I looked around, searching for my missing running shoe. But it was nowhere to be seen, so I scrambled up the small embankment to the roadway and began hobbling eastwards searching for the lost shoe. It didn’t take long to find it. It was laying on the shoulder of the road about ten metres from where I had been struck. Hopping along the road I picked up the errant shoe and examined it. There was an indentation on the back of the heel which I speculated was due to being struck by the edge of the bull bar or a mudguard. I had certainly been lucky. I could not have been more than a few millimetres away from having being seriously injured. Once I got my shoe back on I set off jogging back towards the mine site. I did not expect the hit-and-run driver to return for a second attempt but all the same I kept making frequent glances behind me just in case I was wrong.

  Apart from a degree of stiffness in my left ankle I was able to move quite easily. When I got back to the mine site I asked the gatekeeper what the vehicle was that had exited the mine site ten to fifteen minutes earlier. To my surprise he said none. That no vehicle had left the mine site. Seeing my reaction he held up the log book to show me. He was right. There was no record of any vehicle leaving the site after seven fifteen the previous evening.

  I had just reached my quarters when I saw Christine sitting on a bench seat near the swimming pool in an area of lawn fronting the row of dongas that we occupied. She stood as soon as she saw me and waved a greeting before commencing to walk towards me. As she approached her smile changed to concern as she saw the grazes and scratches on my arms and leg. “What… what happened? Are you all right?”

  I shrugged and grinned a little sheepishly. “I had a fall. I’ll have a quick shower and come and see you in your room. I’ll tell you about it then.”

  “No. I’ll wait here. But are you sure that you are all right? Those grazes look like they should have some attention.”

  I shook my head and said, “It’s okay for now. Perhaps I’ll go along to the first aid station later.”

  Ten minutes later I was showered and dressed. Christine was still sitting on the bench seat and still looked concerned. Gesturing for her to remain seated I walked across the lawn and joined her. Giving her a kiss on her cheek I said, “Good morning. I hope that you had a good night’s sleep. And sorry for my lack of greeting earlier, I was a little distracted…”

  She turned towards me, grasped my left forearm with both hands and said anxiously. “Adam, something has happened. Please tell me.”

  I had already decided that I would not keep secrets from her and replied, “You are right. Something has happened.” Putting my right hand on top of hers I paused before continuing. “Someone tried to run me down as I was jogging along the road. They very nearly succeeded.”

  She was literally speechless, so I proceeded to describe the events in as much detail as I could.

  Breakfast was a fairly sombre affair with both of us lost in our thoughts. Finally after a prolonged silence I spoke. “I am glad that you’re leaving this morning. I’d never forgive myself if you were harmed when someone had another go at me. I’ll be much more relaxed when you are back in Sydney.”

  Christine smiled. “When I woke up this morning I decided to ask if I could stay on here for a few more days. But now I have been wondering how to suggest to you that you would be safer back in Sydney as well.”

  I smiled wryly. “Before the attempted hit-and-run I would have very much welcomed the thought of you staying on for a few more days. But not now.”

  “So what are you going to do about the hit-and-run? Are you going to report it to the police?”

  “I don’t know yet. As soon as we finish breakfast, I’m going to check the webcam feed that covers the main gate to see if there was any traffic that was not recorded by the gatekeeper.”

  Christine shook her head. “No, Adam. The first thing after breakfast is for you to get those grazes and scratches attended to. When will the first aid station be open?”

  “The attendant will be on duty from eight o’clock.”

  “Good. We’ll go there straight after breakfast.”

  ***

  The first aid attendant, a young woman, was on duty when we arrived. When she was told that Christine was a Doctor she immediately offered to step aside and let Christine do what was needed. First I had to remove my shirt and singlet so that the grazes on my arms, and scratches on my back, could be washed with some antiseptic and daubed with mercurochrome. The grazes on my legs and my right hip were more of a problem. I would not have bothered to have them looked at but Christine, wearing her Doctor’s hat, insisted that I remove my trousers. I grinned and was about to make a jocular comment until Christine, having read my mind, waggled her finger and shook her head.

  Nevertheless I couldn’t resist feigning extreme embarrassment while standing in the middle of the treatment cubicle wearing nothing but my briefs and my socks. But once Christine inspected the wounds her demeanour soon convinced me to take the situation more seriously. After treating the injuries with antiseptic wash and dabbing them with mercurochrome she placed some adhesive bandages over the more significant of the wounds and gave the first aid attendant some instructions for ongoing treatment. After we left the first aid station we went to my office and I logged onto the site webcam that included the main gate in its field of view. Winding it back to just before six a.m. we watched as I left the mine site and started running along the road. About twenty minutes later I could be seen returning and stopping to talk to the gatekeeper. No vehicles had entered or exited the main gate during that time. Christine looked at me enquiringly. “This doesn’t make sense. The vehicle had to have come from somewhere.”

  I agreed and said, “The only explanation is that the vehicle had been driven onto the road somewhere between the main gate and the two kilometre mark.”

  “But when we drove here yesterday, I didn’t see any intersecting roads for the last twenty or so kilometres.”

  I thought for a moment. “No, you are right. But there are a few tracks leading into the countryside along that length of road. If we’re lucky it might have been captured on the webcam.”

  It was worth checking so I restarted the video from the time that I left the mine site. I figured that we only had to view the first six minutes at the most, and I was right. We were lucky.

  About four minutes after I started my run there was a shape that looked like a vehicle moving through the scrub and r
ocks towards the road from the south. It seemed to be near a point where the road disappeared from view behind a small hill. We had missed seeing the vehicle the first time we played the video because it was very hard to see and we hadn’t actually been looking for it. We had been focussed on traffic through the main gate.

  Thinking out loud Christine said, “The question now is; when did the vehicle arrive at that location.”

  I grinned in appreciation. “You’re right, since none of the tracks in that area go anywhere then the vehicle must have approached along the road to the mine site. Even better, that someone had driven to that spot sometime before six o’clock this morning. In that case they would almost certainly have used their headlights and…”

  Christine finished the sentence for me. “And the headlights would probably have been picked up by the webcam.”

  After rewinding the video to midnight I began running it forward at four times the normal speed. Knowing approximately where to watch made it easier. Again we were lucky. After about thirty minutes, around two a.m. on the video, there was a flicker of light in about the right location. I then rewound the video for a few minutes before replaying it at normal speed. A vehicle’s headlights could be seen moving from the road apparently along one of the tracks towards the south for a few hundred metres before turning to face the road before being switched off.

  I turned to Christine and asked, “Well, what do you think?”

  She shrugged and said, “It looks fairly conclusive to me. Someone had driven to a spot off the road at two a.m. and lain in wait for you.”

  I responded, “That’s the way it seems to me also, but just how convincing will that explanation be for others. They might argue that it was just a courting couple who had dropped off to sleep. Then when they awoke at daybreak they had panicked because they should have been somewhere else and been speeding to get there as quickly as they could. They might not have seen me at all. Or perhaps they had decided to play a prank and give the jogger a fright. They didn’t stop because they either didn’t think that they had hit me, or else they thought that they had hit me and fled the scene.”

  Christine shook her head. “We can’t deny that that is a possibility. Perhaps we are both wrong and it was just a couple of lovers in a hurry. But somehow I don’t believe it. Farfetched as it seems, I believe that someone has just tried to kill you. For the second time.”

  I slapped my desk in frustration and said, “Here I am, again the victim of a failed murder attempt and I have no real evidence to support a complaint to the police.”

  Christine chipped in with a comment. “But, at least this time, the police might be a bit more inclined to listen to you if you told them about the Comancheros involvement in the construction fraud and that you are a ‘person of interest’ to them.”

  I pursed my lips and shook my head before responding. “But that could complicate matters for the Crime and Corruption Commission as their involvement has been highly confidential. It is probably best if I could leave it to the Commission to decide when their investigation is made public.”

  “So you will report the hit-and-run to the Commission then?”

  I made a decision. “Yes. I won’t report today’s incident to the police, but I will record a statement and include the relevant sections of the webcam video in a report to Toni Swan at the Crime and Corruption Commission.

  Christine nodded. “Good. I don’t think that you have any other option really.”

  She was right. I agreed with her.

  ***

  When Christine had first entered my office the previous day she had been impressed by the critical path diagrams that completely took up all the space on one wall. One of the diagrams was about two metres wide and a metre and a half in height. It showed all the major activities for the entire project.

  The diagrams were a little old school but still served a useful purpose even though I normally relied on a computer screen for the latest update.

  Today Christine pointed across at the diagrams and asked, “Critical Path Diagram. I have a vague idea what it’s about. Why don’t you tell me about what all those lines looking like spaghetti mean.”

  I grinned. I suspected that she was just trying to change the subject from the hit-and-run but I was happy to oblige. “Just imagine all the thousands of activities in a project like this. Well, every activity is dependent on the completion of another activity, or activities, that precede it. Those diagrams show the major activities from the start to the completion of the project. The circles show the activity’s duration and its start and finish dates. The lines show the dependence of one activity on another. For example, steelwork can’t be erected until after the foundations are completed. The continuous red line zigzagging from the start to the completion is the critical path. The red line identifies activities that if delayed will delay the completion date of the project. This Critical Path Diagram is the key to planning the project so that it will be completed in the shortest possible time.”

  Christine walked across to the wall and examined the large diagram more closely. Turning to me she asked, “Keeping track of all these activities is a lot of work. For it to be useful it must have to be kept up to date.”

  I nodded. “You are absolutely right. I have a planner engaged full time monitoring the progress of all activities. It is his only job and he does it well. I am probably more addicted to critical path analysis than most construction managers but it works well for me. In fact, addicted is probably quite an apt description of my relationship to the critical path method. I have even developed a computer program that analyses the trend in non-critical activities to see if that are at risk of becoming critical. It’s a sort of early warning system.”

  She walked back to my desk and sat down again in a chair facing me. “Computer programs. Tell me about your interest in computer programs.”

  I shrugged. “Most people that work on a remote site like this need something to do when they are not working. Many relax by resorting to drink, gambling or using drugs. Others might pursue more cerebral activities such as learning a language, playing computer chess, becoming crossword fanatics, reading and even writing. I am in the latter group. I relax by writing computer programs. Usually programs that have some application in my work. I enjoy it. I get real satisfaction from developing useful programs.”

  There was a brief amiable silence before I again spoke. “Christine, I have been wondering if we shouldn’t go for a drive and see if we can find any evidence of the hit-and-run vehicle.”

  “What do you have in mind? They’ll be long gone.”

  “I thought that we might find where they waited for me. They might have left tracks. Anyway we may be able to prove that at least it was possible for them to watch the road and not be seen. We have the time before you get cleaned up for the trip back to Sydney.”

  Christine jumped to her feet. “Let’s go.”

  I chuckled at her enthusiasm. “I’m right behind you Nancy!”

  She stopped and looked at me, momentarily puzzled. “Nancy?”

  I grinned. “Yes. Nancy Drewe. The girl detective. Friend of the Hardy Boys.”

  Christine grinned. “Which one are you? Frank or Joe?”

  ***

  We found the point where a vehicle had turned off from the road to the mine at our first pass. Driving at a slow speed on the wrong side of the road it was easy to spot the tracks heading towards the mine and turning off to the south. While they were clearly seen they might not remain like that for much longer as it looked like a rain shower could eventuate later in the day.

  After pausing to take some photographs with my cell phone we then continued following the rough narrow track for about three hundred metres until we reached a small relatively clear, slightly elevated area. Tracks of a vehicle could be seen turning off the track and doing a three point turn to face the direction that it had come from.

  We stopped where we were on the track and walked across to where the previous vehicl
e had turned around. Standing there we looked back towards the mine site. Lookout Hill was clearly visible as was the roadway coming from the mine. It was obvious to both of us. A vehicle had parked here since the previous afternoon as yesterday morning’s rain showers would have washed the tracks away had they been made earlier.

  Also, anyone observed jogging from the mine site around sun rise would have been easily sighted while the observer was obscured by the surrounding scrub and invisible against the brightening sky. Christine slowly exhaled and exclaimed. “Well, that clinches it for me. There was someone here this morning and they could have easily seen you from here, jogging along the road from the mine.”

  Looking at the ground I responded pointing at a cluster of cigarette butts. “And that someone was a smoker.”

  “Make that two smokers. If Nancy Drewe was here she would probably conclude that two people sat here smoking and dropping cigarette butts outside their vehicle.” Christine added pointing at a second scatter of cigarette butts a few metres away from the first.

  I chuckled. “I reckon that Nancy Drewe would be right on the mark.” I stopped talking and looked at the sky. “It’s going to rain soon. All this will be washed away. I’ll get some Ziploc plastic sample bags from my vehicle and collect some cigarette butts.”

  Five minutes later I had collected the samples, taken photographs and we were on our way back to the mine site road. Once we got to the road way we turned right, heading further from the mine site, to find the place where the hit-and-run had occurred. We had no trouble locating the right spot. Tyre tracks were clearly visible swerving onto the right hand shoulder of the road and then back onto the road carriageway narrowly missing a culvert. Christine Pointed and exclaimed. “Look. The vehicle nearly ended up hitting the culvert.”

  She was right. It looked like the culvert might have saved me. After taking some more photographs we set off to return to the mine site.

  On our way back to my office I outlined a plan. I would assemble and email a report to Toni Swan at the Commission while Christine got packed and ready for the flight back to Cairns. As I was talking, Christine had been looking thoughtfully at the sleeves of her shirt and eventually asked, “Is there any chance of me keeping this shirt and trousers? I can pay for them.”