by JD Nixon
He leaned back on the pillows and read it through a couple of times, a thoughtful frown puckering his forehead. I watched carefully for his every reaction, studying him as I did. He was a gorgeous man with honey-brown skin, wavy golden hair, unusual amber eyes, and a ready smile. All the Bycrafts were tall, well-built and beautiful, the golden hair and eye colouring running in the family, but only Jake was good-natured, industrious, and respectable. The rest of the huge clan constituted a socially-bankrupt, one-family crime wave. They hated the police and in particular, they hated me. The feeling was returned two-fold.
“Wow,” Jake said softly. “That’s just . . . Wow.”
“Do you think he means it, honey-boy?”
Jake’s sharp glance was indignant, quick as always to jump to the defence of his rotten family. “Of course he does! He made the effort to write to you. Why would you doubt him?”
I gazed back at him with silent steadiness. I didn’t want to insult him by stating the obvious – I doubted Tommy because he was a Bycraft.
“People can change, baby doll,” he entreated.
“He never expressed any remorse at the trial. In fact, I distinctly remember him grinning and giving you all the thumbs-up when the judge handed down her sentence.”
“I don’t know what he did. I wasn’t there, remember? And besides, he’s clearly been thinking a lot about it, just as he wrote in his letter. Jail gives some people a different perspective on things, some self-realisation of where they’ve gone wrong in their lives. I’ve seen it happen tons of times.” Jake worked as a prison officer at the nearby low-security prison, though I had strong reservations about whether being sent to that luxurious jail would engender any self-examination in its pampered inmates. Half of them probably never wanted to leave.
“The Sarge believes he means it,” I said without thinking.
Jake stiffened and stared at me. “You talked about this with Finn before you showed it to me?”
I sighed quietly. “He was with me when I received the letter, so I showed it to him. It’s no big deal.”
But it was to Jake. “How long ago was this?”
“About a month ago.”
His face filled with hurt, he slipped out of bed, not meeting my eyes. “I’m going for a swim in the surf.”
“Jakey . . .” I began, but it was no use. I stayed in bed, watching him gather up his clothes and leave without kissing me goodbye. The roar of his ute as he drove off spoiled the morning peace.
Good one, stupid, I scolded myself, climbing out of bed as well. Jake wasn’t normally a jealous person, too easy-going to be bothered by that kind of possessiveness, but there was something about the Sarge that just pushed his buttons. He resented the close relationship we’d forged in the nine months since the Sarge had arrived in town, forgetting how important it was for our safety on the job to work together as a tight team.
And Jake kept overlooking the critical fact that the Sarge was engaged, not that we ever saw much of that spoiled young lady here in town. She flatly refused to move to Little Town, forcing the Sarge to faithfully trot back and forth on the seven hour drive to the city whenever she summoned him. I didn’t know why he continued to put up with such treatment – it wasn’t as if he was a doormat in any other part of his life. I guess he felt he’d made a commitment to her and he was an honourable guy, trying to make their relationship work. But it was obvious to me that the whole situation was testing his patience almost beyond breaking point. And judging from the tense phone calls I’d accidently overheard – okay, I’ll admit I was trying to listen in – things weren’t going too smoothly between Melissa and him.
Virtuously brushing all that aside as not being any of my business, I concentrated instead on hurrying through my shower, breakfast and tending to my chickens. I had no time for my usual morning jog as I needed to arrive at work early these days to beat Kevin, our overeager recruit from the police academy. He’d been placed with us for two weeks on field experience as part of his training. We’d never had a recruit posted to Little Town before and I’d been excited when the Super rang to tell us the news. Then she explained that he didn’t want to come here, having nominated Big Town as his choice, but they had too many to cope with there. He was one of the unlucky ones to be farmed out to the nearest smaller towns.
The Sarge was kindly putting him up for the fortnight in the police house adjacent to the station, and the two men were getting along well. Kevin was a bit of a Sarge-clone, serious and by-the-book, listening intently and taking copious notes on everything we said and did. But while the Sarge was the very model of rectitude and professionalism, I’d had to make Kevin expunge quite a few of his scribblings when he’d recorded me ranting about paperwork or procedures once or twice (or fifteen or twenty times). Unwisely, I’d expressed some very frank opinions about police bureaucracy in his presence that would surely land him in hot water if he ever aired them back at the police academy.
In fact, the Sarge had assiduously and deliberately kept Kevin away from me during his time with us, mentoring him personally. They’d bonded over traffic infringements, random breath tests, gun licences, and petty small town problems such as straying horses, shoplifting, public drunkenness, and preventing the Bycrafts from destroying the very fabric of the community with their anti-social behaviour. The two men had cruised around together in the patrol car, leaving me back at the station sullenly doing paperwork, gorging on Tim Tams, and answering wrong number calls for the Saucy Sirens Gentlemen’s Club.
And to top off the whole terrible fortnight, the Sarge hadn’t even made me dinner once since Kevin arrived.
But today, on his last day with us, my time with the impressionable young recruit had finally arrived. The Sarge was bogged down with routine end-of-month paperwork about our statistics and activities, so I shamelessly took advantage of his preoccupation and offered to take Kevin with me to walk the beat. Kevin swiftly agreed, rather bored with watching the Sarge tote up numbers and punch them into his spreadsheet. There were only so many notes you can take on that, I suppose.
I hoped Kevin would ask me lots of questions about policing so I could share my knowledge, not having ever mentored anyone before. But although I’d noticed he was deferentially inquisitive with the Sarge, with me he was gawky and inarticulate, not able to string a single sentence together. A tall, gangly copper-haired young man with freckles from tip to toe, he somehow managed a full-body blush every time I even looked at him. And though I felt for him, not being the most socially adept person in the world myself, it was strangely compelling to witness. I’d never seen anything like it, leaving him looking as though he’d been sunbaking out in the Simpson Desert for an entire day in summer, slathered in olive oil.
We climbed into the patrol car and I spun out the tyres in the loose gravel that formed the station carpark, alarming Kevin. He blushed. As soon as we hit the road, my phone rang. Blatantly disregarding the law forbidding the use of a phone while driving, I pulled it out of my pocket, earning myself a shocked glance from my passenger.
“Isn’t that . . . I mean . . . Are you allowed to . . . Sergeant Maguire warned me . . . They told us . . .”
I waited patiently for him to finish. Or to start. I wasn’t sure which.
“I mean . . . I was just asking . . .” He sputtered to a halt and promptly blushed again.
After a few more ticks where Kevin remained silent and rosily glowing, I figured that comprised the entirety of his conversation and resumed answering my phone. It was Jake, lovingly apologetic for his temper this morning and immediately asking for a favour. He’d just turned up to work after his swim and couldn’t find his security swipe card, which he needed to access the prison. He thought he’d left his wallet behind at my place after hurrying off in such a snit.
Glad that he wasn’t angry with me anymore, I readily agreed to help him out. So instead of walking the beat, Kevin and I made the quick trip south down the highway to my house. I left him in the car as I dashed insid
e, yelling out to Dad not to worry himself about me as I was only home for a second. I grabbed Jake’s wallet and his watch from my dresser and bolted back down the stairs.
Kevin spoke as soon as I threw myself back into the driver’s seat. “I thought . . . You know . . . We’re not supposed to . . . Private use? They told us at the academy . . .”
He petered out again, furiously reddening. Even his earlobes turned scarlet. Pondering the physical plausibility of that, I drove back out to the highway and set off towards town, heading for the prison. Jake ducked out to the entrance to meet me, still dressed in sea-dampened clothes, looking a little sheepish. Even though they knew him well and he was one of the live-in staff, the officers at the front wouldn’t give him access to the prison without his security card.
He took a few precious moments to apologise again and to thank me with some sweet kisses that were probably just this side of being unprofessional, me dressed in my uniform as I was. His workmates cheered, catcalled and wolf-whistled as we smooched. Being an all-male prison, they didn’t see a lot of women outside of visiting times.
“Hey, keep your eyes off her, fellas! She’s all mine,” Jake yelled back at them, grinning as he held my hand and walked me over to the patrol car. Kevin sat in the passenger seat burning with colour. Jake opened the door and settled me in the driver’s seat, fastening my seatbelt for me while I smiled up at him like the gooey-eyed besotted fool that I was. I introduced the two men and Jake politely enquired of Kevin if he was enjoying his placement.
“Oh . . . It’s very . . . Sergeant Maguire . . . And of course, Senior Constable Fuller . . . They . . . You know . . . Well, they both have.”
And he sat there gazing at Jake as if that explained everything, leaving Jake staring back at him, at a loss as to what to say in response. His amber eyes cut to me for a second before returning to Kevin’s blazing face.
“Oh,” he said finally. “That’s . . . just great.” And Kevin emphatically nodded in agreement.
Jake leaned through the window to kiss me once more, causing Kevin’s face to change from cerise to crimson. I drove off, waving cheerily from the window. I wouldn’t see Jake again for days as he was working a week-long block and also pulling a couple of double-shifts.
“Righto, Kevin,” I said. “Let’s go back to town and walk the beat for a while.”
“That would be . . . I’d like . . . Yeah.”
But we weren’t destined to. At that precise moment I noticed a gang of teenaged Bycrafts screeching around the T-junction of the Coastal Range Highway and the road to Big Town, in what could only be a stolen car.
Chapter 2
Crammed into an unfamiliar late-model red Commodore, the Bycraft juniors zoomed off towards town at least fifty kilometres over the speed limit, the stereo blasting out horrible doof doof music. That was bad enough, but what made it worse was the identity of the driver – Chad Bycraft, a notorious car thief but not yet old enough to even hold a licence. The Commodore was definitely not one of the Bycraft family’s fleet of ancient rust-buckets, meaning that Chad had probably ‘liberated’ it from its owner in a shopping centre carpark back in Big Town.
Not people naturally attracted to early rising, the fact they were driving around at this time of the morning meant a couple of things to me. They obviously didn’t plan on going to school today, and were probably returning home after spending an entire night rampaging around Big Town, a spree most likely started the previous afternoon.
I immediately threw on the siren and lights and sped up after them, dodging around the other cars and semi-trailers travelling in both directions on the highway.
“Hold on,” I warned Kevin tersely. He clutched the arm rest, his eyes round with fearful anticipation.
I checked the mirrors carefully before I pulled out on to the other side of the road to overtake another law-abiding vehicle travelling at the speed limit.
After a few more kilometres, it became obvious the young Bycrafts had no intention of stopping in response to our siren and lights. That conviction became a certainty when two of them stood on the back seat to press their bare butts against the rear window in a blatant show of disrespect. Kevin gasped a sharp intake of breath, shocked at the audacity, but I didn’t react, by now rather immune to their insolence.
“I’d say Mikey’s and Sean’s butts judging from the shape,” I decided after a moment’s consideration.
Kevin stared at me. “How . . . How . . .?” He probably wondered if we kept a database of butt shots as well as mug shots in this town.
“God knows I’ve seen them enough,” I explained. “Bycraft boys aren’t shy about showing off their bodies.” I waited for a semi-trailer to zoom past us before pulling out to overtake a slow moving van. “Actually, come to think of it, neither are the Bycraft girls.”
Chad performed a reckless overtake, forcing the car in front of him to slow down and drive half off the road to avoid a side collision with him.
“They’re going to drive through town at that speed,” I noted through clenched teeth. “They’ll kill someone. It’s nearly time for the primary school to start for the day.”
All I could think about was that my good friend’s darling little daughter, Toni, was one of those children at risk. And with that dream about Nana Fuller fresh in my memory, red rage swamped me as I imagined Toni’s tiny body being struck and broken by Chad Bycraft’s speeding car.
“Shouldn’t you . . . You know . . . I just thought . . . We’re told . . .”
“What, Kevin?” I snapped impatiently. “What?”
An ugly burgundy flush blossomed over his neck and up to his face. “To call it in,” he managed to spurt, a little upset by my tone.
“Nope, I’m not doing that. There’s no point. They’ll just tell us to abort.”
“But . . . I mean . . . High speed chases . . . Sergeant Maguire said . . .”
“I’m not calling it in, Kevin,” I said firmly. “We’ll deal with this ourselves. It’s our town and our problem.”
Technically, we were meant to confer with the district communication centre in Big Town about a range of policing activities before we proceeded. But in reality the cops there inevitably proved patronising towards us ‘country cousins’ and our small town troubles. When assistance was offered, it was always done reluctantly and slowly. Learning that bitter lesson soon after taking up the junior police position in town, I’d fallen into the habit of never calling in anything before the Sarge arrived. But now, at his insistence, we called in about half the times we ought. Regrettably though, with red hot anger consuming my mind, today wasn’t one of those times. Especially as I didn’t have the Sarge sitting next to me demanding that I consult with Big Town.
As I feared, the Bycrafts shot through town, nothing more than a red blur to the startled townsfolk out and about on the main road this morning. I followed at an equally risky speed, siren wailing, lights flashing red and blue. I should have set a good example and slowed down when we hit the town’s sixty zone, where the highway briefly wended its way through our small patch of civilization. But I didn’t, because I was concentrating so hard on driving safely. Or at least that’s what I’d tell the Sarge when this was all over.
“Senior Constable!” Kevin yelled out in panic as a blue Volvo pulled out on the highway directly in front of us.
Its driver, the town’s representative on the district’s super-Council, pompous Mrs Villiers, was talking on her mobile phone and made only a cursory check to the right for oncoming traffic. I’d already clocked her though and smoothly swerved around her. I narrowly missed potato farmer Brett Cusack driving in his ute in the opposite direction, before falling back to my side of the road. Brett screeched to a halt, his face a shocked smudge as I flew past. Mrs Villiers received the fright of her life and unwisely jerked her steering wheel in response, mounting the curb and pranging into one of the town’s two street-bins.
Oh dear, I thought, glancing in the rear view mirror at her crumpled bu
mper. There would be hell to pay over that. An absolute dragon of a woman, she would probably immediately be on the phone to the Super to complain about me.
“Senior Constable Fuller . . . Shouldn’t you . . . ? Isn’t this . . .?” Kevin’s strangled voice barely dented my consciousness. I had the scent of a Bycraft hunt in my nostrils and I wasn’t stopping for anything. Not now. And unfortunately, for once the Sarge wasn’t here to moderate my actions. For once, I was in charge.
Poor Kevin.
My radio crackled and the Sarge’s angry voice burst out, ordering me to end the pursuit and get my butt back to the station immediately. I reached down to turn the volume to its lowest setting so I couldn’t hear him.
“Senior Constable Fuller! I don’t think . . .” started Kevin, scandalised by my actions.
“Shush,” I demanded. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
Free of town, the red car sped up, so I sped up as well. I reasoned they’d keep driving on the highway, past the mental health clinic, heading for the state border where I’d have to abandon them. I didn’t want to pursue them across the border because of the attendant jurisdictional issues. The two states had a formal agreement covering interstate police pursuits, but it came with ten tons of paperwork and a whole world of pain. I didn’t need that in my life.
And also I’d definitely have to call it in if I crossed the border. I really didn’t need that in my life either.
But the Bycrafts surprised me by throwing a hard right into Mountain Road at the crossroads two kilometres out of town. I spun the steering wheel frantically after them, the patrol car screaming around the corner.
“Why the hell are they going up there?” I wondered aloud. “It’s a dead end road. There’s nowhere for them to go.”
“Shouldn’t we . . .? You know . . . Wait?” Kevin spluttered, grasping the arm rest so tightly his knuckles shone white through his skin. “As it’s a dead end and they’ll . . . you know . . . have to come back?”
