by Tony Black
He looked back at Vegas’ open front door. The three detectives standing on his porch had finished conferring and were walking back to their cars.
‘And the deceased?’ asked Clay.
‘Male. In his twenties. Believed to be the guy that lives here.’
‘Vegas.’
‘Sorry?’ said Hawker.
Clay turned to the old cop. ‘They called him Vegas. I don’t know his real name. Patrick something, I think. But everyone called him Vegas.’
‘You knew him?’
‘A little. He was a nice guy.’
‘The other officers reckon he was a drug dealer.’
‘So I’ve heard.’ Clay looked back to the house, his face held firm, adding nothing to the debate. Hawker seemed to leave it at that.
A thought crept into Clay’s mind and he scanned the crime scene. ‘Where’s Anderson?’ he asked.
‘In the house.’ Hawker looked around before leaning a little closer to Clay. ‘If I was you, Moloney, I’d get out of here before he sees you. Your name is akin to blasphemy around the station at the moment. Anderson’s got it in for you like I’ve never seen before. Whatever you did to piss him off… it worked.’
‘Just doin’ my job,’ said Clay. ‘Thanks again, mate. I appreciate the help. It’s nice to know there are good honest coppers still out there.’
It was a pointed comment, but Hawker took it as intended. ‘There’s still a few of us around.’ He smiled.
Clay gave Hawker a gentle pat on the back and headed back to the car. Bec jogged across the street and intercepted Clay on the way.
‘Are we going already?’ she asked.
‘Have you got a snap for the front page?’
‘Yeah, I guess. I mean I think I’ve got something we could use.’
‘Then let’s go before Anderson gets here.’
Bec’s gaze roved about as she quickened her step on the way toward the office Subaru. In a matter of seconds, Bec had executed a swift U-turn, turned a corner and the car was moving back towards the highway.
‘Was it Vegas?’ she asked within seconds of leaving the scene.
‘Yep.’
‘Oh, my God.’
‘I know.’
She stopped the car at the traffic lights, waiting for a green to turn onto the highway. ‘What does that mean?’ she said. ‘What the hell is going on?’
Clay searched for something to say. He could hear something close to panic in Bec’s voice. ‘I don’t know.’ It was all he could think to offer and it was worth less than nothing.
The light went green, but instead of turning right onto Raglan Parade and back to the office, she went straight ahead. Clay didn’t say a word. He watched as she drove up the hill, through a roundabout, and under a rail bridge. Clay could see the colour had gone from her knuckles – she was holding tight to the steering wheel.
Up ahead lay Proudfoots Restaurant, on their right was the cemetery, to their left, the Hopkins River. Bec veered wildly to the left, taking the entry to the river view car park a little too fast, before screeching to a halt at the river’s edge.
The water was high and choppy in the rising breeze. It had breached the car park, as it did most days, and slopped against the Subaru’s tyres. Seagulls sat on the guard rail that provided a laughable boundary between the car park and the river. The river cruise boat lay dormant, waiting for the night and the next party to arrive.
The car was quiet for a moment but the silence was shattered when Bec started pummelling the steering wheel with her hands. ‘Ah!’ she yelled. ‘What the hell have you gotten me into?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said again. Clay kept his voice as even as possible. He’d already had his minor freak-out back at the crime scene, but he knew Bec probably needed to have one of her own.
She looked at Clay with burning eyes. ‘Vegas was murdered, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
Bec thumped the outer rim of the steering wheel again. ‘Christ almighty. What are we doing?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What the hell is going on?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Stop saying that!’
‘Sorry.’
‘Do you know anything?’
Clay took a deep breath and looked out across the river. ‘No. My mind’s still reeling, much like yours is. All I know is someone shot and killed Vegas, before trashing his lounge room. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.’
Clay’s words, although they said little, seemed to calm Bec. He turned to look at her and she was gazing across the water. Her eyes looked like they were fixed on the houses on the other side of the river. Clay had heard people call the area Snob’s Hill, as it contained some of Warrnambool’s most expensive houses. He knew what Bec was thinking – the people who lived in those houses didn’t have to deal with dead drug dealers and dead prostitutes and angry cops.
‘I’m sorry I dragged you into this,’ he offered.
Bec frowned. ‘You know, I’ve lived in South East Asia, India, the Middle East… I’ve lived in some areas that a lot of people consider to be unsafe. I even spent six months in my idealistic twenties taking photos for Médecins Sans Frontières in some pretty bad parts of Africa. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt as threatened or as in danger as I do right now. And I want to blame you for that.’
‘That’s probably fair enough,’ he said, giving her a weak smile.
‘Don’t make jokes. I know it’s not your fault, but I really, really want to blame you for dragging me into this. I want to blame you for taking me to crime scenes, for being followed by the police, for getting Eddie relocated, for introducing me to prostitutes and drug dealers and grieving fathers, for taking me to a house a matter of days before a murder was committed in it.’
‘I also took you to Lachlan Fullerton’s mansion.’
‘Stop joking around – I’m warning you. Like I was saying, I want to blame you for all of that.’ She sighed. ‘But I can’t. You were just doing your job, and you wanted me to come along for the ride. And I wanted to come along. And now, I don’t know what’s happening or why Vegas is dead or why it scares me so much, but I know I need you to stick by my side.’
Clay was momentarily silenced. He hadn’t foreseen that turn in the conversation.
‘I want you to stay at my place from tonight,’ said Bec. ‘Please. You’re the only person I know and trust around here and I don’t want to be alone.’
‘OK,’ said Clay. ‘If it’s any consolation, I need you by my side, too.’
Bec finally turned back to look at Clay. Clay smiled, but Bec didn’t return the expression. The look on her face was unlike anything he’d seen before. He couldn’t read her.
Chapter 36
Dusk settled across the paddocks on the outskirts of Koroit. It was about 8.30 p.m. and the last hints of orange grabbed at the sky from beyond the horizon. In the fading light Bec could barely see the yellow grass, left tinder dry by a long hot summer, extending across the flat plain to meet the night. The warmth of the day was hanging around, trapped in by the late clouds that had gathered. February was not far from finishing, but she could tell the heat would remain for a while longer. The sound of crickets buzzed in the air like white noise.
For the moment, Bec felt at peace. She had been trying to put the thought of Vegas’ fate out of her mind all day. Work had helped – it had been a distraction, if nothing else – and when that was over, she’d driven with Clay to his old apartment, picked up the last of his stuff, thrown it in the back of her ageing Mazda and headed for her home on the fringes of Koroit.
The drive home had brought Vegas back to mind. Clay hadn’t said anything about Vegas, but deliberately so, she could tell, and that was enough to make her mind race away from her again.
We spoke to Vegas only days ago. And now Vegas has been shot. Whoever killed him could be coming for us next. We might get shot. She tried to shut such thoughts from her brain, tried to reason with herself that the
re was no logic to them, but they wouldn’t go away.
On the drive to Koroit, Clay had made idle chit-chat. He’d told her distracting facts about things they were passing along the way. Like how the stretch of highway from Illowa to Tower Hill was called the Mad Mile because it used to be the scene of illegal drag races and youths testing the speed limits of their cars back in the Sixties and Seventies. How the dunes at the end of Gormans Lane were said to hide the remains of the Mahogany Ship, a mythic Portuguese caravel that would rewrite Australian history if it was ever discovered. How Tower Hill was not classified as an extinct volcano, but rather a dormant one, which theoretically meant it could erupt at any moment, despite it being filled with water, bushland, koalas, and emus.
But Bec was only half listening, despite Clay’s best efforts to entertain her and occupy her mind.
Clay had asked to stop at Koroit’s lone supermarket and Bec had waited in the car for him. As she sat there she found herself eyeing everyone who walked past. What would a murderer look like? What did this Lerner character look like? Was it even him?
Clay returned with a couple of packets of smokes, a six-pack of Carlton Draught, and a couple of bottles of red wine. They drove on in silence until they reached Bec’s house, which sat quite literally on the edge of town. On one side of the road was a long row of houses and beyond that, the entirety of Koroit. On Bec’s side, there was her little former farmhouse, set back about four hundred metres from the road, and a bunch of paddocks, and that was it. Her home was an outlier, like a satellite orbiting a planet.
They’d unloaded Clay’s stuff, which wasn’t much – a swag, a pillow, a gym bag full of clothes, a plastic bag of toiletries, and a briefcase. She had no idea what was in the briefcase and didn’t ask. Clay poured some wine for each of them and Bec threw together a stir fry while Clay commented on Bec’s spartan set-up. She’d only been in the country for two months and the house was a combination of cheap thrift store furniture and a great deal of nothing. Whole rooms she had no need for remained empty. The only personal touches were the books she was starting to amass and pile up around the lounge room. Clay dumped his belongings in one of the empty rooms, rolling his swag out on the floor.
After dinner she took Clay out on to the back porch, which faced west. They watched the sunset, and finally, after her second glass of wine, he asked what was on her mind.
‘Are we in danger?’ she said.
Clay dragged on a freshly lit cigarette. ‘I don’t think so. For starters, no one would know we’re out here. And secondly, why would anyone kill us?’
‘Why would anyone kill anyone?’
‘There are plenty of reasons to kill someone. But I’m pretty sure none of them relate to us.’
‘Should we call the cops? Just in case?’
Clay laughed and for a split second Bec felt offended. ‘And tell them what?’ said Clay. ‘That we were at a drug dealer’s house one day and then he turned up dead and now we’re scared?’
Bec didn’t want to admit it, but her fears sounded childish when Clay enunciated them.
‘And besides,’ he continued, ‘I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust our call to be answered by an honest cop at the moment. The less potential contact I can have with Frank Anderson, the better I will feel.’
‘Maybe we should call Eddie. I mean, just to be on the safe side.’
‘Eddie’s got enough to worry about just now.’
‘I just thought, y’know, maybe he’d come and—’
‘What? Get in the way of us being shot? I don’t think he can help us, Bec. And besides, Eddie’s likely on his way north right now. We got him transferred, if you recall.’
Bec turned to look at Clay in the fading light. She had so many questions on her mind right now. ‘So who killed Vegas?’
He didn’t seem perturbed by the question – his face showed that same blank look she’d come to understand as being Clay’s thinking face. ‘My best guess is Lerner,’ he said. ‘But it could just as easily have been a disgruntled client. Maybe a deal went bad. Who knows? Vegas was a drug dealer, let’s not forget that.’
‘Let’s say it’s this Lerner character; why would he do it?’
‘Aside from the fact he’s a violent meth-head who’s probably already killed one other person?’ Clay blew out some cigarette smoke, along with half a laugh. ‘Jealousy, maybe? Paranoia? Maybe he thought Vegas spoke to the cops? Who knows? Most murders, as infrequent as they are around here, are either crimes of passion or random incidents with no major motive behind them.’
‘So this was random?’
‘Probably.’
‘And Jacinta Porter?’
‘Crime of passion. Lerner killed her in an ice rage because she left him or because she was an escort or some other bullshit reason.’
‘And Kerry Collins?’
‘Crime of passion or random incident… I’m not too sure about that one. Maybe the guy in the suit was a serial killer who hired her for a job on his boat and then he choked her and threw her overboard. Who knows? That one’s still a mystery to me.’
Bec watched Clay’s cloud of cigarette smoke catch the fading rays of the sun as it drifted away. ‘So let’s assume Lerner killed Jacinta Porter,’ she said. ‘And a serial killer killed Kerry Collins. Why would Frank Anderson cover up both of those murders?’
‘That’s the big money question.’
‘Any guesses?’
‘Anderson must be looking out for somebody. Or somebodies. That’s the only possible outcome. But who? That I don’t know. The fact that he’s covering both murders up makes me suspect they’re linked, but I can’t see how. Same killer, maybe? Perhaps Lerner killed both girls.’
‘But why would Anderson protect Lerner?’
‘That’s another good question. My best guess is Lerner is Anderson’s son.’
Bec looked at Clay’s face in the half-light, trying to discern whether he was joking or not.
‘That’s the wild card theory,’ he said. ‘Or maybe Lerner is the son of someone who is blackmailing Anderson. To be honest, I don’t have a clue.’
Clay reached forward and dropped his cigarette butt into an empty Carlton Draught bottle. ‘I think I left a couple of packs of smokes in your car,’ he said, as he stood up.
‘Car’s unlocked,’ she said, and watched as he walked along the verandah and disappeared around the side of the house.
She turned her gaze back to the darkening sky. Clay was right – why would anyone come after them? She realised being so close to all this – murders, drug dealers, prostitutes – had gotten her increasingly wound up. She’d come to Australia with a particular mindset. She wanted a quiet, normal, Western life. No more bustling Asian and subcontinental cities, no more ashrams or remote shacks on distant beaches. She had wanted something like where she had grown up, but which wasn’t where she had grown up. She wanted no fear, whether it be from criminals or from a domineering mother.
Bec shook the thought out of her head. Even thousands of miles from her mother, the influence lingered. Bec had come to Australia, and not Ireland, to find normality because she couldn’t stand to be in the same country as her mother. And her mother symbolised Bec not being in control and it meant living with a kind of nagging fear at the back of her mind.
That is what these murders have brought up in me, she thought, not just fear, but a feeling of being out of control. She detested the fact that someone with power and influence could whisk away a man she was seeing. She hated that someone could turn up at her friend’s house and beat him for doing his job. She abhorred the idea that someone could kill someone she had just met.
It all sounded so silly in her head now. The idea that she could control anything was ludicrous, whether it be in a farmhouse in Koroit or the crazed rush of Bangkok. Bec laughed out loud, a short sharp sound that burst the night air and its buzz of crickets. Did I even have anything to fear in the first place?
Obviously Clay getting beaten up was
a serious matter, and Eddie getting transferred was worrying, but earlier in the day Bec had feared for her life. Maybe she’d gotten a bit too wound up without really thinking things through.
That was when she heard the gunshot rip through the night air.
Chapter 37
You know you’re in the country when you can leave your car unlocked outside your house at night, thought Clay, as he strolled toward Bec’s beat-up red Mazda.
Beyond the car the lights of Koroit shone. The nearest houses showed warm yellow glows ringing dark curtains – they looked inviting, but quiet. Clay realised there was very little noise. The distant murmur of traffic on the main road, maybe the hum of cars from further away on the highway, even the low roll of the surf less than ten kilometres away, but beyond that there was little but crickets and the occasional dog barking somewhere in town.
Then he heard something else and turned to look at Bec’s house. The front porch light above the door was on and Clay could see a figure standing a few paces back from the entrance step. Whoever the person was hadn’t seen Clay come around the side of the house, but Clay couldn’t make out who it was due to the angle of the light. It appeared to be a male, by the size and shape of the figure, standing motionless. Clay wasn’t sure why it was, instinct maybe, but something seemed off about the situation.
Clay was next to the car, but there was nothing between him and the dark figure. Keeping his eyes on the silhouetted man, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone to call Bec and alert her. It made a beep that seemed louder than any beep his phone had ever made before as it lit up. Clay glanced at the illuminated screen and swore to himself. No reception. Typical. Not even twenty kilometres from Warrnambool and may as well be in the middle of the outback.
Clay looked back at the distant shape he had down as a male and then it turned, slowly revealing a quivering outstretched hand holding the unmistakable outline of a handgun. For a second, Clay’s heart dropped into his guts and he took a sharp intake of breath. He thought of Bec, sitting on the far side of the house, oblivious to what was happening and to what could potentially happen. I need to get this guy away from the house, thought Clay.
