Ghostly Hitchhiker Box Set

by Rodney Strong

  ‘So you liked school but didn’t like your teacher,’ he picked up the conversation again.

  (Class was a bit boring, but lunchtime was pretty awesome.)

  Oliver nodded. It was a sentiment he remembered echoing to his mother when he was the same age as Brigid. He suspected it had been the same way since schools were invented, less a place of learning and more a place for friends to congregate five days a week.

  He usually liked listening to the radio when driving alone, however after the trip up north yesterday he decided silence was better than listening to Brigid ruin more songs for him. He underestimated her. Halfway to the city Brigid got bored and started singing, in that confident way of someone who knows the first two lines of a song and not the rest. There was a lot of mumbling, followed by the start of a new song. Oliver gritted his teeth and took lots of deep breaths.

  Graeme Wilson lived on the side of a hill, as did half the population of the city. With all those hills you’d think the residents of Wellington would be half human and half mountain goat thanks to having to walk up hill everywhere, but instead there were thriving taxi, cycling, and electric scooter industries.

  Or in the case of Graeme Wilson, a private cable car.

  He lived in one of the bays between the city and the airport, with stunning views of the harbour. In the weekend the water was usually dotted with white sails, but today it was empty, apart from a single kayaker leisurely paddling across the flat water.

  The view only got better as Oliver rose higher in the small wooden cart. A plane roared past, barely higher than the hill as it made its way towards the airport.

  Brigid was suitably impressed by all of it, but especially the cable car. The idea that someone got to ride in it every day to get to their house was enough to render her almost speechless with delight. Almost. What came out was a close to incomprehensible flood of words.

  Oliver was more concerned with the cable fraying, sending him plummeting down the slope, across the road, and into the harbour. Brigid thought that would be fantastic.

  When they reached the top, Oliver stepped onto solid ground with relief. Brigid immediately demanded to go back down and repeat the ride. Oliver had to remind her that they would be going back down after they talked to Graeme. She grumbled until they got to the front door, then became distracted by the doorbell. Underneath the button was a sign which read “Do not push this button if you have a weak heart”.

  (Ohh, push it!)

  Instead he raised a fist to knock on the solid wood door.

  (Are you scared? Are you a chicken? Push the doorbell. Please.)

  He hesitated, then with a sigh, extended a finger and pushed the button.

  A high pitched scream sent him stumbling backwards. He looked around wildly, fully expecting to see a murder happening before his eyes. His heart rate went from resting to “what the hell was that” in the space of three beats.

  (Holy heck. I think I just peed a little.)

  Oliver clutched at his ear, fully expecting his hand to come away wet with wee, before remembering Brigid was a ghost.

  The front door swung open to reveal a tall old man. He took in the expression on Oliver’s face and chuckled.

  ‘The sign warned you,’ he pointed out. ‘Sorry about that, my niece put the doorbell in for Halloween and I can’t figure out how to turn it off again, so it’s easier to put the sign up.’

  Oliver straightened up and forced a smile. ‘I don’t imagine you’d get a lot of trick or treaters up here,’ he said.

  (What’s Halloween?)

  ‘You’d be surprised.’ Graeme stepped out of the doorway and extended his hand for Oliver to shake. His grip was firm and the tips of two fingers were stained dark.

  (Yuck!)

  Graeme’s hair was thick and completely white, and his face was cracked with wrinkles, but his eyes were bright and seemed to X-ray through Oliver’s face and straight into his mind. He imagined it was an effective skill for a journalist.

  (You think he can see me?)

  No, it just feels like it.

  ‘Please come inside, Oliver. I’m guessing it’s a little too early for anything stronger than tea, unless you’re a coffee man?’

  He gripped Oliver by the arm and led him through the front door and into a cluttered hallway.

  For a horrible moment Oliver flashed back to his own house and had a sinking feeling he was expected to tidy up the piles of magazines and dirty shoes. However, Graeme steered him past the mess and through a door at the far end of the hall. They emerged into a large living area that was empty apart from an old arm chair facing a floor to ceiling window that ran the length of the wall. The view was even better than from the cable car, although Oliver suspected that was because there was something more solid about looking at it from a house as opposed to a moving skateboard attached to a wire.

  The placement of the chair suggested to Oliver that Graeme spent a great deal of time watching the world go by. He wondered if the man was lonely. There was no sign of a wife. Or maybe he was broke, although the house would have been worth a fortune just by the view alone. Sun bathed the entire room and a single bead of sweat materialised on his forehead.

  ‘Your timing is excellent. You can give me a hand,’ Graeme said. He slid open a set of internal doors to reveal a pile of furniture stacked around a dining table. ‘Just had the carpets cleaned yesterday and haven’t had a chance to move the furniture back.’

  A little ashamed at his assumptions, Oliver helped the man move the leather couch back into place, facing the corner where he then helped Graeme place an enormous flat screen television. By the time they were finished the lounge was like something out of a home fashion magazine, and Oliver was feeling conscious about his shoes maybe being dirty.

  Graeme looked around and nodded with a satisfied look. ‘Right, I promised you a cup of tea, but would you prefer something cold?’ He gestured for Oliver to follow him through the dining room and into the kitchen where he pulled a bottle of water from what looked like a smart fridge. An LED screen on the front reminded Graeme he had an appointment with someone called Nosy at 10am.

  (Nosy. Ha ha, that’s you Oliver.)

  Oliver felt his face flush and he hoped Graeme would put it down to the heat and the manual labour. He gratefully accepted a glass of ice cold water, and perched on a bar stool next to the kitchen counter.

  ‘So you’re interested in the Debbie Judkins murder,’ Graeme said.

  Oliver scrunched up his face and tilted his head slightly. ‘Murder? I didn’t think they found a body.’

  ‘They didn’t,’ Graeme waved a hand dismissively. ‘But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t foul play. An eight-year-old girl doesn’t just disappear.’

  (Exactly.)

  ‘No,’ Oliver agreed. ‘She could have been abducted though.’

  Graeme pursed his lips and stroked his neck. ‘True, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than for a woman to come forward and say she was Debbie Judkins…’

  (Not likely.)

  ‘…but my gut says it was a sadder ending.’

  Graeme pulled a laptop over from the edge of the bench and opened it.

  (What’s that?)

  A computer.

  (What’s that?)

  Something to look things up on.

  (Huh?)

  He tapped a few buttons then swivelled the screen around so Oliver could see it.

  ‘This is a copy of the original story from back in 1978. The next page down are the notes I took from follow up interviews with family.’

  Oliver skimmed the article. As with most initial stories of this nature, it was light on details. Missing girl, no clues, police looking into it, etc. It took him longer to finish than normal, as Brigid was reading it as well and she was a slower reader than him.

  (Okay, I’m done.)

  He stifled his frustration and scrolled down to the next pages. First up was an interview with Debbie’s parents, then her sister, and a local teacher
who described Debbie as a ‘pure delight’.

  Why was it that all the people who disappeared and were killed were pure delights? Oliver thought.

  (Yeah, Debbie wasn’t the devil, but she wasn’t an angel either.)

  ‘I don’t see an interview with her best friend Brigid,’ Oliver said when he’d finished.

  ‘Not through lack of trying,’ Graeme admitted. ‘But I couldn’t get access to her, and then she got hit by the car and I’d missed my opportunity.’

  ‘And she died,’ Oliver pointed out.

  ‘Tragic, but bloody inconvenient.’

  ‘Do you think the two things were related? It seems suspicious that Brigid is killed less than a week after her friend disappeared.’

  Graeme snorted. ‘Of course it’s suspicious. It’s suspicious as hell. The police looked at it. Not very well, but they looked at it. To be fair they were more focussed on Debbie. But I looked into it in detail. If someone had killed both of them and I was the one to break the story…’ he shook his head.

  Oliver hesitated for a moment, then decided to press forward. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you seem more regretful about the missing story than you do about the dead child.’

  ‘Children,’ Graeme corrected. He scratched his chin. ‘I can see why it might appear that way, but I’ve had forty years to live with this case, and time has a way to warp your perspective.’

  He took back the laptop from Oliver, clicked a few buttons, then swung it around again. The screen was filled with thumbnail photos. ‘I knew a guy on the force who got me copies of the accident scene.’

  Oliver tried to mask the disappointment on his face as he stared at the laptop screen.

  ‘Problem?’ Graeme asked?

  ‘Oh it’s nothing, it’s just I guess, with the case being old and you being an ex-reporter, I guess I was expecting…’

  ‘A box full of clippings?’ Graeme finished with a grin.

  Oliver tried to hide his feeling of foolishness by staring at the screen.

  ‘If you want I could print these out. I think I have an old box somewhere in the laundry.’

  ‘No, no this is fine,’ Oliver replied quickly.

  Clicking on the first photo, he saw some dark skid marks at the intersection of a deserted road. In the background was an empty section, then a glimpse of a house behind some tall trees. He clicked on the next photo, and his heart thumped at the sight of a white sheet lying on the ground. Something was underneath it, and he’d viewed enough crime dramas on television to know what it was.

  ‘I didn’t think they actually did that,’ he murmured.

  (Whoa, is that B…is that my body?)

  Best not to think about it.

  He quickly clicked through the photos, spending less time on the ones with the body in them.

  (Where do you think they got the sheet from?)

  Oliver paused his finger over the button. I can honestly say I’ve never thought about it. He clicked onto the next one.

  (I hope there was no blood. That’s so hard to get out of clothes and stuff. At least that’s what Mum said every time I cut myself.)

  As principal clothes washer in his family and parent to a son that scraped his knees a lot, Oliver agreed with Brigid’s mum.

  ‘What don’t you see there?’ Graeme asked.

  Oliver thought back over all the photos, but nothing sprung out as being missing. He shook his head and Graeme looked disappointed.

  ‘I thought you fiction writers were supposed to be observant types.’

  Oliver started at the beginning and went through the photos again. When he got to the end he was still no wiser. Then something struck him.

  ‘What time was Brigid killed?’

  Graeme nodded in satisfaction. ‘Midday, completely sunny, high visibility in all directions.’

  ‘So how did she get hit? The driver should have easily seen her waiting at the intersection.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Graeme clapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘And there’s no place for her to hide,’ Oliver added.

  ‘Exactly,’ Graeme repeated. ‘I thought you were dumb, but turns out you’re just slow. No offence.’

  Oliver couldn’t see a way not to be offended by the statement, but decided to let it go.

  Do you remember what happened?

  (A big metal object hit me and I died.)

  Okay, we’ll talk about this later.

  (Now you sound like my mother.)

  ‘It could have been as simple as an inattentive driver,’ Oliver said.

  Graeme fixed him with a disillusioned stare. ‘Is that what you really think?’

  Oliver studied the photos again, then slowly shook his head. ‘The world is full of coincidences, but this one seems a little too extreme.’

  (Damn straight.)

  ‘Language,’ Oliver said automatically.

  Graeme looked confused and too late Oliver realised he’d forgotten to use his internal voice. ‘Nothing,’ Oliver muttered. Meanwhile Brigid was laughing her head off.

  ‘Were there any suspects at the time?’ Oliver asked.

  ‘For the car accident? No. This was before decent forensics, so there was no way to determine anything about the car, other than it had wheels. And no one saw a thing. For Debbie Judkins’ disappearance, the police looked hard at the parents and some young fellow that had been hanging around the area, Nick Rawlings, but nothing panned out.’

  Oliver made a mental note to ask about Nick Rawlings. ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘No idea,’ he answered with a shrug. ‘I kept tabs on him for a while, but the case went cold and I had other stories to write. Last I heard, which was about ten years ago, he was working up north somewhere.

  Oliver stifled the instinctive response that pretty much everything in the world was north of Wellington except the South Island of New Zealand, and the Antarctic.

  ‘You could start with Barbara Smith though. She was a teacher at the girls’ school, in fact she only retired this year.’

  (I don’t remember a Mrs Smith at school.)

  Graeme scribbled a phone number down on a piece of paper and shoved it across the counter. Oliver folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket.

  ‘What’s your interest in this?’ Graeme asked.

  ‘I recently came across some information that lead me to digging up a box buried in Debbie’s family garden.’

  ‘The earring,’ Graeme said.

  Oliver stared in amazement. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Because retired Judge Beth Judkins and I have a long and complicated love/hate relationship. After you left her last night she rang to accuse me of still trying to write a book about the disappearance by using, and these are her words: a worn out carbon copy of myself to weasel my way into her life.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Oliver said with a wry smile.

  ‘Oh, that was her being polite. Way worse has come out of her mouth in my direction over the years. So how did you know where to find the earring?’

  (I told him.)

  ‘A letter,’ Oliver said.

  ‘Seems unlikely. Do you know Debbie was wearing them when she disappeared? Which means you’re suggesting the killer snuck back to the family house and buried one because…why exactly? Guilt?’

  (He’s a bit rude.)

  ‘They were special to Debbie, and therefore special to Brigid, so maybe Brigid buried it because she was hoping her friend would come back.’

  ‘Well, you’d know the inner workings of children’s minds better than me. Never had kids of my own. Nieces and nephews are the closest I got and they are enough. You get to give them back at the end of the day.’

  Oliver tried his best to ignore the outraged response from Brigid, and hoped that she didn’t notice his thought about how peaceful his household was when the kids stayed at a relative’s place. Instead he decided it would be a good time to leave before more awkward questions were asked about how he knew where the earring was.

&
nbsp; (Oh goodie, we get to use that cable car again.)

  They stood just outside the front door.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Oliver. Anyone who can exasperate my nephew as much as you do must be doing something right.’

  ‘You don’t get on with him?’

  ‘Of course I do. He’s family, I love him. But he can be a bit too smug for his own good. Let me know if you find anything new on the case. I’d be happy to write it up for you. I might be retired, but this one sticks in my throat like a prawn tail.’ He slapped Oliver on the shoulder and his words were light, but there was an anxious undertone.

  ‘Thanks for your help. And don’t worry, I have no plans to write about what I find. I’m more into fiction.’

  ‘Ah yes, that superhero book that’s not about superheroes. It’s very good.’

  ‘You’ve read it?’ Oliver asked in the surprised tone he used with anyone who said they’d read one of his books.

  ‘I’ve read the online reviews,’ Graeme said with a grin. ‘And they were very good. You must have a lot of friends.’ He laughed at the sour expression on Oliver’s face.

  The ride back down was marginally better in Oliver’s opinion, because the ground was getting closer. Brigid still thought it was too short.

  ‘Okay,’ he said once he was back in the car. ‘Who was Nick Rawlings?’

  (Just this older boy who was hanging around.)

  Oliver absently tapped the steering wheel as two women ran past, leaning forward as they battled the wind that was an almost constant companion to the bays.

  ‘Did he ever say anything threatening to you?’

  (Nah, he was cool. I’d sometimes see him in the field behind my house though. Sitting in the grass and looking at the clouds, or birds, or something.)

  ‘How old was he?’

  (I don’t know, does it matter?)

  ‘It might. For example you have to be a certain age to drive,’ Oliver replied.

  (Oh. Right. He was, like thirteen, maybe.)

  ‘Do you remember seeing him after Debbie went missing?’

  (Definitely didn’t.)

  ‘How can you be so sure? There was a lot happening at the time. Is it possible he was still hanging around?’

  (Don’t you believe me? I didn’t see him.)

  ‘Okay, just checking.’ Oliver was used to his less than reliable children when it came to accurately recalling events. And those events usually happened minutes before, not forty years ago.