Already Dead

by Jaye Ford

  Brendan had said his wife would be just like Jax. But it wasn’t the prediction that made Jax pause. It was Kate Walsh herself.

  She was exactly like Jax.

  Not a carbon copy or a long-lost twin. She was a few years younger, shorter with dark hair and a smattering of freckles, but Jax felt as though she was seeing herself a year ago. Bare feet, cotton trousers, T-shirt, hair pulled back into a ponytail, a scrape of make-up to hide the red eyes and pall of strain, and a tense uncertainty to her whole body, as though she was bruised and bracing herself for the next blow.

  And Jax was there to deliver it – however she told it.

  As she crossed the floor, her urge was to wrap reassuring arms around Kate, tell her the first year would be hard but she’d make it. The things Jax wished she could go back and tell herself. But Kate Walsh held out a hand and Jax realised she didn’t know what the police had told her, wasn’t sure what Kate knew or assumed, and so she simply took her offered palm. ‘I’m Miranda Jack. I’m so sorry about Brendan.’

  Kate’s fingers were cool to the touch and uncertain, her voice little more than a restrained murmur. ‘Thank you.’

  It’s your meeting, Jax. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told about me, about what happened, but I wanted to …’ Jump right in and slap her with it? Christ, not like that. ‘Brendan said – well, he said a lot – and …’ She saw his white shirt billowing as he ran into the traffic and tears stung her eyes. Shit. ‘Would you mind if we sat down?’

  She wasn’t sure if Kate’s abrupt glance away was discomfort at the tears of a stranger or trying to keep her own at bay but Jax took it as an opportunity to get her own under control. There were more noises from the back of the house as she made her way to a sofa. ‘Have you got family with you?’

  ‘Neighbours. My family is interstate. My son goes to school with the boy next door and the ones on the other side do some babysitting.’

  I love my son … I miss him so much.

  Jax clenched her hands in her lap. ‘How’s Scotty doing?’

  A frown creased Kate’s face. ‘You know his name?’

  ‘Yes. Brendan talked about him. And you.’

  ‘The police said you didn’t know Brendan.’

  ‘I meant in the car. He talked about both of you in the car.’

  Kate sat perfectly still for about three seconds before placing her hands together and holding them to her face like an oxygen mask, breathing or thinking or both. Then she dropped them to the sofa and lifted her chin. ‘Were you having an affair with my husband?’

  ‘No. God, no.’ What the hell had Aiden told her? ‘I’m so sorry you thought that but no. I didn’t know him at all.’

  ‘That’s not what the newspapers are saying.’

  She’d only read the local one. ‘They’re saying we were having an affair?’

  ‘They said you knew him, that you met when you interviewed him. People at the traffic lights said you were waiting for him, that he went straight to your car and got in.’

  And sometimes the facts of a story were misinterpreted. ‘About five years ago, I wrote a story about some soldiers leaving for Afghanistan. I was at the airbase when they left. He said you were too. Maybe you remember?’

  ‘Of course I was there. I don’t remember him doing an interview.’

  ‘It wasn’t a one-on-one. He was in a group of soldiers who answered some questions.’

  Kate’s eyes angled slowly away. Maybe she was trying to remember, maybe reshuffling the information she’d heard and read. ‘He got in your car, though. Yours wasn’t the only one at those traffic lights.’

  ‘I don’t know why he chose mine but he didn’t make the connection until we were on the motorway. I told him my name and he remembered the story.’

  Kate Walsh watched her for a long, drawn-out moment, stiff and still except for the fingers in her lap that were fidgeting and weaving like she was crocheting without wool and a hook. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft, a little wary, but firm. ‘So who are you?’

  ‘I’m just the woman who was sitting at the traffic lights when Brendan arrived.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not all. I’ve seen the pictures. You had a gun. Who has a gun in their car?’

  ‘The gun was Brendan’s.’

  ‘My husband didn’t own a gun.’

  ‘He had one when he got in my car.’

  ‘Was it for you? Did he get it for you?’

  What was she thinking? ‘No. He pointed it at me and told me to drive.’

  Kate blinked a few times. ‘Then why did he give it to you?’

  ‘It … I don’t remember how that happened.’

  ‘You didn’t take it from him. He was a soldier and you were driving a car. He must have given it to you. Why? What have you got to do with it?’

  Uneasiness crept like fingertips down Jax’s spine. ‘Got to do with what, Kate?’

  21

  Frustration flashed in Kate Walsh’s eyes. ‘What have you got to do with whatever happened out there? The police said Brendan hijacked your car. But you ended up holding his gun and now he’s dead.’

  Her last word was hard-edged and angry. Jax had used the same tone more than a few times in the past year to make her point. She saw the one Kate was making – and it wasn’t that something else was going on. It was that she didn’t understand what the hell had happened. Jax knew what that was like; it didn’t make it easier to explain. ‘He wasn’t shot. I didn’t shoot him.’

  ‘No. He was running. The TV said he was running away when he got hit by that bus. You had his gun. The police had to take it off you. Was he running from you?’

  The accusation stung – Jax had been trying to stop him. But considering the media coverage, it was a fair assumption. Possibly it would also be a fair response from a terrified carjacking victim who suddenly found herself in possession of the gun she’d been threatened with. The problem was, Jax had come here to tell Brendan’s wife the true story, but her message had been derailed by suspicion and she wasn’t sure how to get it back on track without shifting the blame to, He wasn’t running from me, he was running to you.

  Jax licked her lips, rolled them together, told herself to start somewhere else.

  She talked about Brendan – how he’d thought people were after him, how he said a lot that didn’t make sense, how he was agitated and confused. She didn’t mention the threats, the scary mood swings, the near fatal crashes – no wife needs to hear that when she’s still reeling with her husband’s death. Jax said instead that he wouldn’t get help, that he’d kept the gun on her, that he’d followed her into the cafe with it at her back and that his paranoia eventually infected her.

  ‘When we pulled over, there were police everywhere. He wanted to run, I had hold of his arms and he … he bolted and …’ She closed her eyes. ‘And then I was holding the gun. I didn’t point it at him. I didn’t point it at anyone. I tried to stop him. I didn’t want him to run. I’m so sorry.’

  Kate listened to it all with her gaze on the floor, wiping tears from her cheeks with a balled-up tissue. When Jax finished, the other woman folded her arms, took a few moments to get words through trembling lips. ‘Why are you here – to tell me my husband died because he was crazy? So you can feel better about how it turned out?’

  Was that how it had sounded? ‘No. I wanted to tell you he loved you.’

  ‘Shit.’ Kate swung her face away, her lips crushed together before they disappeared from view, the knobs of her spine shuddering inside her T-shirt.

  Jax clenched and unclenched her fingers. This was the moment she was here for, to deliver the details she thought Kate Walsh would want to hear, except … maybe she didn’t need details. Maybe it was just Jax who got fixated on them, stuck in place until she could move on with all the facts tucked neatly under an arm. She closed her eyes, told herself she should leave Brendan’s wife with her own grief, not someone else’s version of it.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Jax said ag
ain and stood, picking up her bag, planning to leave before she upset Kate more. Then a memory took hold like a hand pulling at her elbow.

  I wanted to get there first but I don’t know if I can make it that far. It might have to be you. You might have to tell her.

  Jax hadn’t promised and she didn’t know what Brendan had wanted her to tell – but she couldn’t leave without making an attempt.

  ‘He was trying to reach you. He thought he was going to die. He told me if he didn’t make it, I should tell you.’ She stopped. It wasn’t the message, but … ‘Tell you that he loved you and Scotty. I don’t know why he thought he was going to die. I wondered if he wanted to kill himself but his death in the end was by accident. He wanted to protect you, though. I can’t tell you what from but he was thinking of you and Scotty.’

  A knock at the front door echoed hollowly down the hallway. Kate didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge the sound or Jax’s words, but the shuddering in her spine had stopped. Now she sat with both hands in fists on her lap, face aimed at the blank wall opposite. Footsteps sounded on carpet; the guy with the leather skin passed the doorway. Jax hoisted her bag to her shoulder, deflated, disappointed in herself. She’d wanted to achieve something better.

  As the lock on the front door rattled, Jax tried to explain. ‘My husband died last year. I desperately wanted someone to tell me what he was thinking in the last moments of his life. I wanted you to have that. I’m sorry if it’s not what you wanted to hear.’

  Halfway to the door, Jax saw Kate’s face swing around as though she’d decided she wanted the last word. ‘Brendan had post-traumatic stress disorder. He got it in Afghanistan.’ Kate said it as though it was a disease he’d picked up, like malaria or cancer. ‘He had nightmares, anxiety, sometimes flashbacks.’ There were voices from the front door. ‘He worried about threats he couldn’t see.’ She interlaced her fingers in front of her, held them out to Jax. An offering, a trade of information.

  ‘Kate?’ It was the old guy in the doorway. ‘It’s those detectives.’

  Jax turned as Aiden Hawke walked in, followed closely by the female detective who’d spoken with him on the motorway – two sets of white shirts and black trousers, one with a tie, the other with shoulder-length black hair. In tandem, they looked at Kate, widened their view to the second person in the room, and transferred their focus to Jax. It looked like a rehearsed, three-step manoeuvre. They must have been surprised to see her, not that either of them gave much away: the woman did a slow blink, something flashed through Aiden’s eyes. Too fast for Jax to catch before he glanced back at Kate, but it definitely wasn’t pleasure at seeing her.

  Aiden spoke first, stepping towards Kate as he held out his hand. ‘Thanks for seeing us again. You remember Detective Constable Suzanne May?’ There were murmurs of ‘How are you?’ and ‘Have you been in touch with your family?’, then a loaded silence as the detectives turned to Jax.

  ‘Miranda,’ Aiden said, as though he was proving he knew her name.

  Well, duh. Everyone had seen him hold a gun on her. It left Kate Walsh wondering if Jax was a weapon-toting, carjacker vigilante. ‘Aiden,’ she answered, trying to inject a bit of yeah-I’m-setting-the-record-straight.

  He glanced at Kate and back. ‘Do you two know each other?’

  He knew they didn’t. ‘We’ve just met.’

  He watched her a second longer. ‘Are you on your way out?’

  That was the plan before Kate started talking about Brendan, but Jax had sat through sessions with police and knew now wasn’t the time to pursue that conversation. Aiden’s time-to-go tone reinforced her decision. ‘Yes. I’m going.’ She glanced at Kate, wondering if she’d see her again. ‘Thank you for hearing me out.’

  As she turned for the door, she remembered what was in her bag, tucked in a pocket and unused for twelve months. Why the hell not? She pulled a business card out and placed it on the coffee table. ‘In case you want to talk,’ she told Kate.

  Aiden glanced at it, then at his cop partner and said to Jax, ‘I’ll see you out.’ He followed her down the hallway, standing wordlessly at her shoulder as she opened the door. Did he have news, something he didn’t want to say in front of Kate Walsh?

  He stepped into the searing heat behind Jax and she waited as he pulled the door almost closed. ‘Why are you here, Miranda?’

  ‘Not Jax today?’ She smiled. He didn’t return it. ‘To talk to Kate Walsh,’ she said.

  ‘I asked you not to do that.’

  The tone was mild but the words sounded like a reprimand. She frowned, bewildered, a tad irritated. ‘No, you didn’t. You told me you couldn’t give me her number.’

  ‘You knew what I meant.’

  ‘I thought it meant you couldn’t give it to me. If you didn’t want me to talk to her, you should’ve said, “Don’t talk to her.”’

  A muscle at the side of his jaw ticked in and out. ‘How did you find her?’

  ‘I looked her up in the phone book.’

  ‘There are about a hundred Walshes in the phone book.’

  ‘It’s closer to two hundred. I rang twenty-eight of them.’

  His eyes held hers, not quite a glare but on the same path.

  What did he think she’d done? ‘I’ve worked a phone before. I used to be a reporter.’

  ‘Is that what this is about?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Were you trying to get an interview from Kate Walsh?’

  Surprise made her eyebrows shoot up. She spoke emphatically. ‘I’m not writing a story. I don’t even have a job.’

  ‘An inside scoop is a good way to get one.’

  Whoa. She straightened up as though he’d shoved her. Figured if he could accuse her of lying, she could accuse him right back. ‘You seem pretty worried about me writing stories. Maybe I should start digging. Maybe there’s more to why you were on the motorway following me.’

  He blinked. ‘My concern is about Kate Walsh. Her husband died in an incident that started a media party. She’s got no family here, just a few neighbours to look in on her and no experience in dealing with reporters.’

  ‘And you think I’m a problem? You should be asking me for advice. I’m the expert on being widowed in a media party. That’s why I’m here. I knew you’d only give her the bare essentials and I wanted to tell her what happened. At the end.’ She pressed her lips together. Christ, don’t cry now. ‘She should know Brendan was trying to get to her and Scotty.’ Her voice cracked on her last words, tears welling as she turned her face away. On the greying timber decking at her feet, she saw Aiden’s shadow cock its head, smooth its tie.

  After his push for answers, his silence made her glance back at him, hoping he understood. But she was way off.

  ‘This isn’t about Nick.’ His voice was firm: not empathy but an instruction to step away.

  And anger flared in her belly at another cop taking that tone with Nick’s name on his lips. She kept her voice low so it wouldn’t carry inside. ‘What, you have a conversation with Detective Anita bloody Lyneham and you think you know where I’m coming from? Let me guess what she told you. That I liked the publicity: Watch out for her, she’ll be looking to milk it with this one.’

  The momentary slackness to his mouth told her she wasn’t far off the mark. ‘You need to walk away from this, Miranda.’

  She let out a brief, scoffing breath. ‘You don’t know what I need. You got one part right, though. This is not about my husband. It’s about Kate Walsh’s husband. And I’m glad I came because you left her thinking he was having an affair with me and he ran into the traffic because I was aiming a gun at him. Great police work, Detective Senior Sergeant Hawke. Keep the family in the dark so they don’t know what to think. Well, the media isn’t the only element in this that Kate Walsh doesn’t have experience with. I think she needs advice from someone who’s already been fucked around by a police investigation.’

  He held up a hand, conciliation in his tone. ‘Miranda –’

&
nbsp; ‘And I don’t give a shit what you think about me being here.’

  If he said any more, she didn’t hear it over the thump of her shoes on the verandah and the blood pumping in her ears as she stalked to her car.

  22

  Jax slammed the car door, fought the key into the ignition, then held on to the steering wheel as her heart pounded so hard she could feel it slapping against her ribs. She wanted to tip her head back and gulp at the air but Aiden Hawke was still watching her from Kate Walsh’s porch and she could do without him shaking his head and making more assumptions. So she pushed the stick into gear, negotiated the corner, waited until she was out of sight and pulled over again, chest heaving, fingers tingling, a pulse whump-whumping in her ears. Christ, what was happening?

  The air-conditioner was blowing a gale but she couldn’t breathe. Eyes squeezed tight, she fumbled for the controls on the door handle, found the button for the window, heard the glass start to slide – and memory hit like a brick through the windscreen. Brendan was lunging, shouting; tyres were squealing, horns blaring; the car was swerving, tipping; Brendan bashing his head: Drive! Drive!

  Then the car door was open and she was tangled in her seatbelt, trying to escape. ‘Fuck.’ She was in the road, dodging a passing car, hand to her stomach, vision swimming. And sick. Holding on to the hood, heaving into the gutter like a cheap drunk on a girls’ night out.

  When there was nothing left, she stood in the shade of a kerbside tree, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, pushed the hair from her face and burst into tears.

  Bloody cops. Bloody Brendan Walsh. Bloody fingerprint dust on her trousers. And the removalists and the bank and the fucking bastard who’d run down Nick. And Nick for running on that road, for not telling her why he was there, for not trying to ring her. Fuck every ugly, sad moment that’d brought her to Newcastle again. Fuck.

  She pulled in a breath. And another one. Glanced around at the empty street, at the corner she’d come around, grateful she’d managed to get out of Aiden Hawke’s sight before she lost it.