Promise of Hunters Ridge

by Sarah Barrie

  Ben just needed a glimpse of who was in the car that night and the rest would fall into place. He was sure of it.

  There were no cameras behind the hotel, he’d checked. But he looked around and down the street behind him. This corner of the carpark was closer to the bottle-o, the Chinese takeaway and a stretch of shops than the hotel.

  He walked the length of the street to the intersection. Walked back. At a newsagent he spotted a CCTV camera. He spun back to the carpark, checked the angle. He’d be lucky to get more than the edge of the car on screen. Probably no number plate. Unless the car drove in off this street.

  He called Indy. Then he drove home, to spend most of the night surrounded by scribbled notes and mind maps and reports and photos. By the time first light dulled the last of the stars, the pieces had just about fallen into place.

  A phone call from Indy at seven thirty had him on his feet. He had enough, but he wanted this set in concrete. Because who the fuck was going to believe it?

  He needed to see Brent Boland one more time.

  ‘I’m going to start this interview by warning you this is not the day for bullshit. I know what’s going on. I don’t need you to tell me, I need you to tell everyone else. I want a full confession. Now.’

  Boland stared at the wall. ‘I don’t know nothing.’

  ‘Hey.’ Ben slapped a hand on the table and got Boland’s eyes back on him. ‘You’re working with a cop. You tell me about it and I’ll be understanding. You keep lying to me and I’ll add a long list of charges to your sheet.’

  Boland watched him as though trying to read just how much of what Ben said was true, or if he was being played. When Ben’s gaze didn’t waver, he shrugged.

  ‘He came in, after I talked to Mia. Told me he was gonna help. Make sure the drop went down. He promised to get me outta here. I just had to organise the drop for when he said. That’s why I don’t believe she didn’t get it. I swear.’

  Ben stood and leant over the table. ‘You piece of shit! You’re so full of it you can’t even see the holes in your own story. You’ve been in on setting Mia up from the beginning.’

  The colour drained from Boland’s face. He closed his mouth, set his jaw and looked away.

  ‘You and this cop had it all planned, didn’t you? Every other person from the Hunters Ridge hunt other than Littleton is dead. Why? Because now that it’s blown wide open, the cop involved is covering his arse by making sure no one lives to tell the tale. And those men, any of them, could have told it. You agreed to kill off anyone who threatened to talk in here, while Chapel offed the ones on the outside.’

  Boland was trembling now, his pale face beginning to shine with sweat, but he still refused to look at Ben.

  ‘Talk to me, you piece of shit!’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because once I get this guy it’ll be too late to deal. I can knock years off your sentence, or I can add them on.’

  Boland put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. ‘I had no choice, there are snitches everywhere—’

  ‘And it’s not Littleton who’s got snitches in here, is it? It’s the cop. And this cop needed someone else to take the fall for the murders, so he concocted this great plan using Mia because he knew she’d take the bait. She needed to find Littleton because, as you’ve already said, she knows he’s coming for her. And it was perfect, because it seemed like an open and shut case of revenge killing.

  ‘Mia goes to prison, cop walks away, you get off for assisting police. But you’re forgetting something. As soon as Chapel was no longer useful he became expendable. You really think he was going to let you walk out of here?’

  ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘I know who it is, and with a bit more time I can prove all this on my own, but I need it sorted fast. I don’t want anyone thinking I put his name in your head, so I’m not going to say it. You’re going to name him, on tape, right now. You’re going to start at the beginning, and you’re going to be thorough. And then I’m going to go get the bastard.’

  ‘All right. But if I’m going down for the murders of Turlington and Stansky, so is he.’

  ‘That’s how it works. Start talking.’

  * * *

  Indy was waiting outside the station when Ben arrived. She rushed to meet him before he went inside. ‘Did you get it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay—wait, wait, wait!’ She put herself between him and the doors. ‘Ben just—take a breath.’

  ‘I’m not going to calm down, Indy. I can’t.’

  ‘I know how you feel, I do, but—don’t kill anyone.’

  ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘Because your hand’s already on your gun.’

  He hadn’t even noticed. ‘May as well get it out then.’ He heard her curse as he left her to follow.

  He found the entire taskforce and the inspector in the meeting room when he strode in.

  ‘Where the hell have you two been?’ the inspector asked. ‘We’ve got another dead girl.’

  ‘We’ll deal with that in a minute.’ Ben pointed his weapon and officers and analysts scattered. The room went silent. ‘Tell me why I shouldn’t put a bullet in you right now!’

  Russ lifted his hands slowly. ‘Ben, what’s this about?’

  ‘You bastard! I’ve got you. Don’t bother.’

  ‘Ben,’ Indy tried again, ‘please put the gun down. Please.’

  He couldn’t breathe for the need to do damage to something. Anything. This man was supposed to have been his friend, a trusted ally. ‘I didn’t want to believe it. I would have got it so much sooner but I didn’t even look in your direction. When I did, when I had to, it all fell into place. But I still didn’t want to believe it. I had to get Boland to admit it.’

  ‘What are you accusing him of?’ the inspector demanded.

  ‘I told you I thought a cop was involved with the hunts and you went straight into damage control,’ Ben said to Russ. ‘For whatever reason, the men involved in the Hunters Ridge hunt could identify you, so you needed them taken care of. You organised for Boland to take out anyone inside who could talk and in return you devised this whole plan to let him walk by providing information on the larger network of hunters. Because you had that information all along, didn’t you? But before we got that list, before you could complete your deal with Boland, Marsden and Lomond—the only two still alive associated with Hunters Ridge—also needed to be dealt with. But I was already looking for a cop, and you knew we were going to figure out only the Hunters Ridge men had been targeted. That’s where Mia came in. You needed a scapegoat, and she was perfect.

  ‘You went to see Boland. Coached him on what to tell Mia, then you arranged to be alerted when Mia booked a visit. You had Davis Walker talk to Mia and in return you fed him information on our number five victim. When Mia went out to the prison you were notified and had Stuart turn up on some unnecessary errand so he’d see her there.’

  ‘Ben, your gun,’ Indy said.

  ‘Then,’ he continued, ignoring her, ‘you went to Chapel—one of your informants, as it turns out—and had him meet with Mia and demand money while you sat in that carpark and took photos, which you again used Davis Walker to provide in return for case information. Nice touch sending Mia the message the jobs were complete, but Chapel didn’t have a history of texting confirmations to any of his clients.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove Mia didn’t kill anyone,’ Stuart interrupted. ‘It was her gun that killed Chapel and Walker.’

  ‘That was opportunity, wasn’t it?’ Ben asked Russ. ‘There’s an out-of-control party at Mia’s. You work late that night, decide to involve yourself. You’re in her house and her gun goes missing. Then another opportunity: I tell you I can’t locate Mia one afternoon while she’s in the city and suddenly Chapel turns up dead—killed by Mia’s gun. You might have left it at that, but it only got worse, didn’t it?

  ‘I’m quickly gathering evidence beyond reasonable doubt that a cop is be
hind it all, and that he’s close by. We know this cop had been working with Littleton from the beginning, and through his connections to Littleton, he’s likely worked out of our station for as many years as you have. The list of suspects is narrowing.

  ‘Then I find out Davis Walker couldn’t have been at the hotel that night to take the photos during the exchange and I’m thinking that whoever passed them on works for—or in fact is—the Liam Jones I’m looking for. You’re not sure I won’t be able to convince Davis to talk to me. The net’s closing in, right? You really start to panic. You need to pull off something spectacular to stop this investigation in its tracks.

  ‘So, knowing I would be in a meeting, and because I’d told you Mia would be home at twelve, you tell Davis to meet you at Mia’s and just before that, get the kid to let you in. You hear her garage door opening, shoot them, drop the gun for her to find, then take off out the front door and call in the disturbance. You go home, clean up, arrive back in time to help with the search. You took the thumb drive with you and planted it. Job done.’

  ‘Detective Bowden,’ the inspector said. ‘Please lower your weapon.’

  ‘Ben, you’re right,’ Indy said. ‘You’ve got him. We need to arrest him.’

  Ben slowly lowered his gun, then handed it to Indy. There would be repercussions for his actions. He didn’t care.

  Russ closed his eyes. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘What part? You covered up the hunts, killed the witnesses, framed Mia. What exactly don’t I understand?’

  ‘I had to.’ He clawed at his face. ‘I was the detective who went down to Hunters Ridge to assist with the initial missing girls case. While I was there I accidentally walked in on a meeting between Littleton and Lomond. Lomond would have killed me but Littleton explained to me that Lomond and a few other underworld figures were just out there for a recreational hunt. That they paid for silence. I went from being murdered to being offered money.

  ‘Then Littleton told me those couple of runaway girls I was there to look into were putting a spotlight on the place that needed to be turned off. All I had to do was lie about finding the girls in Queensland—tell the parents they were safe but didn’t want contact. I could walk away with my life and six figures in the bank. My wife—you know how sick she is. The bills just keep coming. I was desperate to keep her treatment going. You have to believe me—I didn’t know they were hunting women. I’m not a monster. I didn’t find out what was really going on until you did.’

  ‘You deliberately misled us the night Ebony was going to be hunted. You took us to the wrong location and tried to keep us there. She would have been killed, and Mia.’

  ‘Littleton knew there was a good chance you’d stuff everything up. He told me to keep you out of the way—or else. You’re right that I panicked. More than once. No matter what I did you just kept getting closer to the truth. Of the hunters who survived that night, it was Lomond, Boland, Turlington and Stansky who could identify me, but I knew if I didn’t have Marsden taken out as well, it wouldn’t look right.’

  Russ dragged in a breath and looked at Ben. ‘You were always going to figure it out. Mia told you Littleton had blabbed he had a contact. I didn’t know how much more he’d told her and if she would one day remember something or say something that would implicate me. I could have had her taken out as well, but then you still would have been looking for the contact. Besides, I knew how much you cared about her. You would never have let that go.’

  ‘So you decided to frame her.’

  ‘It was perfect. She had every reason to want those men dead and Boland had handed her the opportunity. Who wouldn’t understand it?’

  ‘And when we find Littleton? You didn’t think he’d turn on you?’

  ‘You’ll never get Littleton alive. I know it’s inexcusable, but those men were all scum anyway, all men who hunted women or killed for a pay cheque. It’s no loss to society. The only ones I feel bad about are Davis and Dexter.’

  ‘Dex is still alive.’

  Russ nodded slowly and released a long breath. ‘I’m not surprised. I really struggled with that. I couldn’t even look when I pulled the trigger. I’m sorry, Ben, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You think I care? Did you care about what you were doing to Mia?’

  ‘I was doing her a favour! You know Littleton’s coming for her. You know what he’ll do. At least in prison she’ll be safe. And then you’ll have time to get rid of Littleton. Everything she’s been through would work in her favour at sentencing. I was going to do what I could to make sure of it.’

  ‘Give the guy a medal. He’s a fucking humanitarian.’

  ‘Would have been easier if you did put that bullet in me,’ Russ said. ‘I can’t go to prison. I’ve put too many people in there.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re out of choices.’

  Russ gave a tortured smile and lifted his hand from under the table. His gun came with it.

  ‘Russ—don’t—’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  The gunshot drowned out Indy’s desperate cry. Russ’s hand bounced off the table as it dropped, the gun flying across the table. His body slumped, then slowly shifted sideways and fell off the chair.

  In the stunned silence, Stuart started yelling.

  CHAPTER

  25

  Mia shivered in her jacket, though the temperature was mild. There was a different kind of cold; something much worse than physical discomfort. It was lodged like a knife inside her as she lay on her back on the hard bench and stared blankly at the ceiling. The stark white hurt her tired eyes but she couldn’t close them, she kept seeing Davis, his blood so red against her mat. And her stomach was churning over Dex. They’d said he’d survived surgery, was in intensive care. Critical. But that was hours ago. She hadn’t been able to find out anything more, locked in this box all night. She supposed she might as well get used to it.

  The idea she was going to prison, possibly for decades, was too terrifying to allow into her mind. But it hovered around the edges, threatening to sneak in whenever she wasn’t concentrating on keeping it out.

  Whatever else he could believe of her, how could Ben think she’d hurt Dex? The knife sliced deeper. It hurt, but there were no tears. She wasn’t sure why. Her eyes were just dry. She should have kept her distance. She knew better.

  Footsteps echoed in the hallway and the guy in the next cell started screaming obscenities and banging at his bars. He’d been doing that most of the night. The footsteps got closer, then stopped outside her cell.

  ‘Mia.’

  Her gaze moved to the doorway. Indy and another officer stood there. Indy’s eyes were red rimmed and swollen—had she been crying?

  ‘Good news. You’re free to go.’ The door was unlocked.

  Slowly, she got to her feet. ‘Why? What’s going on?’

  ‘Ben figured it out.’ Indy smiled—sort of. ‘Come with me, I need to give you back your things.’

  ‘Why are you upset?’

  ‘There was an incident. I can’t talk about it. Let’s just get you out of here.’

  Ally and Cam stood when they saw her come out behind the desk.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Cam asked. ‘Is she being transferred?’

  ‘She’s being released,’ Indy said.

  ‘Thank God!’ Ally stared past Mia at Indy. ‘You’ve been crying.’

  ‘Not a good look for a police detective. I’ll let Ben explain. He’s been held up. Mia, are you satisfied with your treatment by police?’

  ‘Really?’ Ally muttered.

  ‘Procedure,’ Cam said quietly.

  Mia shrugged, nodded. ‘Thanks for what you did in there,’ she told Indy. ‘I hope everything is … okay.’

  Indy gave her a hug. ‘Go home and get some rest.’

  She got out of the station as quickly as she could. On the street, she breathed in air as though she’d been deprived of her freedom for months. It had felt like it. She should have been happy, should have been
feeling overwhelmed with relief, and it was there, but too much of what had happened—was still going on—kept that hollow and depressed ache solidly in place.

  ‘Do you want to wait to talk to Ben?’ Cam asked.

  ‘No, please. Not now. I’d like to go to the hospital, see Dex.’ She needed to make sure Dex was all right, then she needed to sleep, just block it all out.

  They reached the car and she slid into the back, closed her eyes. Her body was stiff and sore, her emotions stripped to pieces. Her mind ached with a dull heaviness that wouldn’t let her think—small comfort.

  When they reached the hospital, the parking lot was packed. But even when Cam finally found a space she just sat there. What was she going to say to Bear?

  ‘You ready?’ Ally asked.

  ‘Yeah—I’ll be fine.’

  ‘We’re coming in.’ Ally got out of the car.

  Cam followed but checked his watch. ‘We can’t stay too long though. Ebs is out of bottles.’

  ‘I should have brought her with me. I just wasn’t sure how long I was going to be camped out at the police station.’

  ‘You have to go,’ Mia said. ‘She’ll be missing her mummy and daddy as much as her milk.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘There’s no need for you to hang around,’ Mia reassured her. ‘Bear’s here.’

  ‘What if we stay for a little while, then you come back to Hunters Ridge with us?’ Cam suggested.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t feel like heading right back out there today. And I need my car. But thanks.’

  Ally put her hands on her hips. ‘You’re playing the “I’m okay” card, but you’re not okay.’

  Mia pressed her fingers to her eyes. ‘No, not completely, not yet, but I’m okay enough, and I really just need to spend some time with Dex. Then I’ll sleep. And tomorrow, I’ll come home.’ She gave Ally a hug, then Cam. ‘Thanks for being here.’

  Cam got out of the car and handed Mia her spare house key and some cash. ‘You’ll need these.’