by David Carter
“Lucky me,” he replied as he rolled his eyes.
“You will be under my personal supervision during every second of each day you are assisting with this investigation. Each night you will be locked in a cell at the Glendale Police Station, that is, after we have gone down to the pub and had a decent meal and a few beers to wash it all down with.”
“Now you’re starting to talk my language.”
“Good. You are to assist and comply in everything that I ask of you. And finally, you are not permitted to carry any weapons until I deem you trustworthy—hence I cannot permit you to leave here with your knife. I’ve asked the governor to hang on to it until we’ve made contact with your sister.”
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered under his breath. “Why leave it with the governor?”
“Because if nothing comes of this arrangement, you are coming straight back here. No point in him sending me your personal belongings if we are just gonna bring them right back again.”
“Trust me, that ain’t gonna happen.”
Ryan saw the resolve in Blaze’s eyes. “These are the terms and conditions of your release. What do you say? Are we partners in this, or what?”
Blaze considered everything, including the thought of having to tolerate Elizabeth. He said, “I need a private word with Frankie before we go.”
“Sure, no problem, mate.”
“I’m not your fucking mate.”
Blaze and Franks walked over to the other side of the car park, out of earshot from Ryan and Elizabeth. Blaze stopped walking and looked Franks square in the eyes, and quietly said, “Nice acting, asshole.”
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
Blaze clutched Franks’ shoulders with both hands as he said, “Promise me you will tell Danny what’s happened. It’s gonna kill him if he thinks I’ve abandoned him. Shit, it’s killing me just thinking about it,” he said with a slight tremor in his voice.
“I will.”
“Fucking promise me, Frankie!”
“All right, all right, I promise. I’ve got your back on this.”
Blaze breathed a sigh of relief as the knot in his stomach subsided, and released his grasp on Franks. “Thanks, man,” he said.
Franks offered his hand. “Good luck. I’ll be waiting for that phone call.”
Blaze felt two small objects being discreetly placed in his palm as they shook hands, farewelling each other.
You’re a fucking legend, Frankie.
Blaze slipped his knife and memory stick into his jeans pocket and joined Elizabeth and Ryan. “Let’s get out of this shithole,” he said.
Ryan turned on his phone as they climbed into their seats in his car. Just before he started the engine, he heard a notification tone. He saw that he had two missed calls and one new voice message. He said, “Please excuse me for a moment. I really need to follow these up.”
The voice message was from Hampton. He was on his way back from Milton City. He had found the video footage at the casino that confirmed Duncan Walters had arrived with a little more than six thousand dollars in cash and had blown the whole lot by midnight. He surmised that that had given the Watcher plenty of time to kidnap Trinity during the night and drop her off to his hideout and still have enough time up his sleeve to incapacitate Duncan, before dragging him to the Glendale church and demonstrating the severe consequences of stealing from God.
Elizabeth noticed the strain on Ryan’s face ease a little, and asked, “Good news?”
“Hampton confirmed that Duncan was at the casino with the treasury money last night,” he replied.
“Poor Duncan,” she said sadly. “I could never have pictured him as a thief. And now...”
She shed a tear as she silently reflected on the fond memories she had of him.
Ryan dialled the number of the missed call on his phone. He heard a recently familiar voice in his ear as the person on the other end picked up. He listened intently, then yelled into the phone, “I’m on my way! Don’t go anywhere!”
Blaze piped up from the back seat. “What’s up, partner?”
Ryan cursed under his breath before he said, “That was Anna Davies from the Glendale Hospital.”
“Ha ha, old thunder thighs. What did that fat bitch want?”
Ryan ignored his rude remark. “She had some terrible news regarding Karl O’Brian...”
“You talking about the gay cop in hospital who arrested me and got sliced up real bad?”
“Yeah,” he murmured
“Well, go on, what’s the news?”
Ryan exhaled heavily, fired up the engine, then curtly replied, “He’s dead.”
Chapter 40
Ryan dropped Elizabeth off at her hotel, then gave Blaze the choice of either tagging along with him to the hospital or getting acquainted with his new, temporary home at the police station. Blaze was still in considerable pain from the gash in his abdomen and decided a decent cat-nap in the comfort of a violence-free, air conditioned cell sounded like heaven.
As Ryan locked him in his cell he took the opportunity to break the ice between them by saying, “You know, you don’t have to prove anything to me. I already know enough about you to know that you’re as tough and smart as they come. I jumped at the chance to use you on this investigation.”
“So I can be the bait in the trap...”
“No, because even though I work for the law, I know that sometimes it takes a little ‘creative investigating’ to achieve justice.”
Blaze raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “What do you mean by that, exactly?”
“Well, word has it that you’re a take no prisoners type of guy. On top of that, I’ve already noticed your arrogance, intolerance, hot temper, and that you’re one hell of a lot smarter than you let on.”
“You trying to make a point?”
Ryan looked left, then right. Only one officer was on duty in the police station, sitting at the reception desk at the other end of the building. “What I’m about to tell you is strictly off the record,” he said quietly.
“Shoot.”
“I don’t just want you to find the Watcher. I want you to make sure he can’t possibly harm anyone ever again...”
“Are you serious?”
“After what he’s done to Karl, Luke, and Duncan? I’m dead bloody serious.”
“Well I’m all in. But how the fuck am I meant to do that while I’m locked in a cage without a fucking weapon?”
Ryan grinned. “Try using the one in your pocket.”
Blaze was taken aback. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t insult my intelligence. I saw the guard you seemed to be quite chummy with slip it to you in the car park before we left Winterhill. I’d be curious to learn what the other item he gave you was, too.”
“Yeah, well, that’s none of your fucking business.”
“Well, then, Bobby—”
“It’s Blaze. Don’t ever call me Bobby.”
“All right then, Blaze, here’s the deal; you can keep your knife with my blessing, and in return you can drop the asshole act with me.”
Blaze stood up and moved directly in front of Ryan. “How do I know you’re not just fucking with me?”
“Are you thirsty?”
“Huh?”
“I said, are you thirsty?”
“Sure.”
“Coke?”
“Whatever.”
Ryan went to the fridge in the small kitchenette and grabbed two cans of Coca Cola. He placed a chair in front of Blaze’s cell, sat down, and passed him one of the cans, then said, “I want to tell you a story, Blaze.”
“Can you tuck me in and kiss me goodnight, too?”
Ryan grinned. “I was working a case in Australia when I did a two-year stint as a junior homicide investigator in the state of New South Wales. This wealthy, hot shot lawyer was accused of continually beating his wife until one day she just vanished into thin air. Long story short, the evidence we had was pointing us in the directi
on of her husband, but we couldn’t get any of it to stick. He knew his way around the law, and not only that, before she disappeared, his wife wouldn’t testify against him. I figured she was most likely living in fear of what he would do to her if she did.”
“Probably.”
“Her sister informed the authorities that she was being beaten, and when I finally got a full confession from the lawyer I discovered he was raping her, too.”
“How did you manage that?”
“Well, this is where I think you may find we have more in common than you might realise.”
“We’ll see,” he said, intrigued.
“The first time I had the lawyer down at the station for questioning I noticed he was sweating profusely as I pressed him about murdering his wife. He denied everything of course, but it turned out his nervousness was due to a large funnel web spider crawling up the wall behind me in the interview room. He told me he suffered from arachnophobia, which explained his sweat-drenched shirt and why he was seriously freaking out.”
Blaze took a swig of his drink. “Fucking pussy.”
Ryan grinned with him. “After weeks of absolutely no progress and no witnesses, the case was going to be thrown out and I was pulled from the investigation. I was so angry. My gut instinct convinced me the lawyer was guilty. My partner who worked with me on the case thought he was guilty, too. So after much consideration, we approached my partner’s cousin who worked at one of the most popular tourist attractions in New South Wales and arranged a special surprise for the lawyer. My partner and I drove to his house one night. I banged on the door, and as soon as he opened it, I slugged him in the face, knocking him over. My partner restrained him, then threw him in the back of the car. I drove him down to where my partner’s cousin worked, which happened to be a spider and reptile park that had virtually every deadly creepy crawly known to man on display.”
“Sadistic bastards.” Blaze grinned.
“We escorted him to a private room where the park normally housed a giant goanna. I told him he had one last chance to tell me the truth, or I was going to lock him inside and send in a different species of spider through a one-way feeding trap every thirty seconds until he told me what I wanted to hear.”
Blaze had a smirk on his face a mile wide. “It appears I may have underestimated you,” he said.
Ryan continued. “I pinned him face down to the ground with my foot between his shoulder blades while I twisted his arm behind his back and threatened to break it. He kept struggling so I let him know I wasn’t bluffing, and sharply hyper extended his elbow.”
“Ooh, that’s gotta hurt,” said Blaze as he scrunched up his face.
“I left him screaming on the ground as I reminded him about the spiders soon to be crawling in his direction. That put the fear of God into him. I swear I saw his pupils turn pure white for a split second as he realised I meant business. I closed the door and got my partner’s cousin to start loading up the cage with spiders every thirty seconds as promised.”
“How’d you manage to persuade the cousin to go along with your little game?”
“We promised him five hundred bucks if he did it and kept his mouth shut.”
“I’d have done it for free just to see him shit his pants.”
Ryan chuckled. “Well, it took eight and a half minutes, seventeen spiders, and a dislocated elbow to get him to shit his pants and confess. But to be fair, I would’ve cracked, too, if I’d had a bird eating tarantula with twenty-three-centimetre-long legs and a body the size of an adult human heart climbing up my trousers!”
“Shit, are you serious? Fuck that!” said Blaze as he shuddered at the mere thought of it.
“He admitted to beating, raping, and murdering his wife. He even told us where he’d dumped her body. We found her where he said it would be, well, more like we found pieces of her out in the middle of a bush reserve, mauled and torn apart by feral foxes that had overrun the area. When we combed the scene and found a human skull, we immediately sent it for analysis. The dental records of the lawyer’s wife proved beyond a doubt that it was her remains, and he got a life sentence.”
“Sounds like the prick deserved it. What happened to you? Surely you didn’t just get off with a slap on the wrist?”
“The lawyer pressed charges against me for what I did to him. I was stood down for six months without pay. The department who hired me was ropeable. I was lucky to stay in the agency after that. But what saved my ass is the fact that I put away one of humanity’s sick and twisted assholes and gave some closure to the victim’s sister and extended family. My boss told me, off the record, that I should be commended for ‘thinking outside the square’ to get a conviction.”
Blaze stood up and did something totally unexpected to both himself and Ryan: offering his hand for Ryan to shake. “Shit, did I have you figured wrong. You aren’t just a dickhead bureaucrat in a suit. You’re the real fucking deal.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said as they shook hands. “Glad to have you aboard.”
Blaze sighed. “Yeah, well, you did just get me out of jail, so I suppose I should at least say thanks, detective.”
“Call me Ryan. That’s what all my friends call me.”
Blaze grinned as he said, “Whatever you say, detective.”
Chapter 41
“I’m so sorry!” exclaimed Ryan as he collided with Anna Davies, causing her to drop her clipboard and scatter sheets of paper all over the reception floor after bursting through the main entrance to the Glendale Hospital and running straight into her.
“That’s quite all right, detective,” she said as she brushed herself off. “I saw you pull up in the car park. I was on my way outside to greet you.”
Ryan insisted on picking up the mess of assorted patient notes, drug charts, and patient release forms that had flung off her clipboard. “Well, it’s still no excuse for not watching where I was going. I was in such a hurry to get here,” he said.
“No harm done,” she replied.
Ryan handed over her clipboard, and asked her, “Tell me, what happened with Karl?”
“Follow me,” she said, and walked him to the small staff room down the main corridor just past the reception desk. She made them both a cup of coffee, before sitting down next to him. She inhaled loudly through her nose and ran her hand through her hair, taking a moment to come to terms with the happenings of this afternoon.
“I was on my rounds when Karl pressed his emergency call button. So I rushed to his room and found him trying to sit up in bed all by himself. I told him to stop straining and lie down immediately. He pushed me back and started making this terrible grunting sound, as though he was desperately trying to get my attention. I figured he wanted something, so I asked him a few questions, like, was he uncomfortable, was he in pain, did he need a new bed pan, etc.” She paused for a mouthful of coffee. “But he didn’t respond to any of my questions. I tried a different angle. I thought it was a long shot, but I asked him if he wanted to talk to the detective, referring to you of course, and he started grunting loudly, as if to shout, yes!”
Ryan took a sip of his coffee. “You’re sure that’s what he wanted?”
Anna took a large gulp of her coffee. “I’m positive. I asked him two or three times, and he made it quite clear that he wanted to talk to you.”
“All right then, what happened next?”
“I told him I’d go and telephone you, but he started grunting and whining, as if to say, no!”
“That’s strange. Why ask for me and then say no when you go off to phone me?”
“Well, at first I was confused. Then I remembered how you wrote down the alphabet to help Karl communicate with you last time you were here. I asked him if he wanted to give you a message. He started grunting his approval.”
“That must be what he meant by wanting to ‘talk’ to me.”
“Exactly. I hurried back to my desk and grabbed a blank piece of paper. When I returned, I said I was go
ing to write down the alphabet just like you did. But before I’d even got halfway he started groaning loudly again. Then with a final burst of effort he sat up, crossed himself, and collapsed, dead.”
“What do you mean, crossed himself?”
“Well, he was Irish, and raised by a strong Catholic family, as was I, and I believe he made peace with God, knowing he was about to leave this world for a better place. Except that he did something I thought was very strange…”
“How do you mean?”
“When he crossed himself, I noticed he did it in reverse of how one would traditionally cross one’s self.”
“You mean instead of touching his forehead and sternum before touching both sides of his chest, he went chest, sternum, forehead?”
“Yes. I found it quite peculiar.”
“Well it is rather strange...”
“But in saying that: it’s since been confirmed he died of a brain aneurysm. So who knows what was going on inside his head; poor Karl…”
“That’s quite understandable,” he agreed.
“I was quite moved,” she paused, “watching a man making peace with the Lord moments before passing. It was something I’ll never forget.” Her lips quivered.
Ryan put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s never easy losing a friend or loved one—or a highly-regarded constable.”
“No, it isn’t,” she sniffled.
“Thank you for telling me this,” he said kindly. “Is there anything else I can be of assistance with?”
Anna drained the last of her coffee and stood up. “No, it’s quite all right, detective. Don’t let me keep you. I’m sure you have a million other things to do.”
Ryan looked at his watch. “I do need to keep moving. I have a rather important meeting with someone tonight.”
“And this person wouldn’t happen to be, five-eight, brown hair, and a smile to-die-for, would it?”
