“Hope y’all enjoyed the show,” she drawled. “But I’m afraid the game’s over.” She twirled the Winnebago’s keys around her fingers a few times, the metal flashing in the uneven light, then ditched them over the nomads’ heads into the sugarcane.
I hoped the police wouldn’t need those.
Etta smiled a hard, glittery smile. “Now that your transport’s all been compromised, there’s nothing for you to do but wait till the police show up and drag your sorry asses off to jail. So you may as well get down on the ground.” She shifted the gun for emphasis. “Now.”
Norma, Gerrie, and Ginger looked frightened. Kirk and Misti looked mad. And Ray grumbled, “Oh sure, my knees will like that all right. Give me ten minutes and a bar to hold on to, and I might be able to manage it.”
Misti assisted him in lieu of a bar. Maybe that’s why she looked mad.
Etta lowered her gun for a moment to light up a cigarette. She hadn’t been smoking much on this trip—or at least not in front of me—so I had a feeling it was for dramatic effect. Standing in the gloom with a gun in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Like a badass gunslinger out of some Western. If the nomads had any doubt whether she was comfortable with a weapon, those doubts had now evaporated.
A clever bluff when the gun was empty.
“How did you find us?” asked Kirk.
I saw no reason not to tell them. Conversation was better than rebellion. “A spare phone and the Find My Friends app.”
“What’s that?” Gerrie asked Ginger in a low voice.
“It’s one of those dating sites, dear,” Ginger said matter-of-factly.
Gerrie nodded like that made complete sense. I held in a snort and chose not to correct them.
Misti finally finished helping fold Ray’s large but unsteady frame onto the ground. Then she spun and bolted into the sugarcane.
Etta leveled her gun at the running target.
“Don’t shoot!” I shouted before remembering she didn’t have any bullets. Oh well, if she asked later, I’d pretend I was keeping up the facade.
The large stalks swallowed Misti from sight but not hearing.
Connor tensed to spring after her, but paused to ask, “Have you two got this?”
Etta took another drag from her cigarette. “Yeah, we got this.”
Connor disappeared after Misti.
Etta considered the five remaining people sitting in the dirt. No one’s knees were good enough to kneel.
“Izzy, why don’t you go into one of these rigs and find something to tie these folks up with.”
I moved to obey, selecting Ginger and Gerrie’s by virtue of its nearness. Inside was a mess, with various “fixed” panels removed and the inbuilt seat cushions at one end ripped up to reveal hidden storage spaces—now empty. A few tools lay around on random surfaces, and there was a glass-fronted bar-fridge-type thing that must’ve been an incubator on the counter. Nothing to tie up the owners with. I opened a few of the neat and jam-packed cupboards and realized it would take forever to search. No wonder border security didn’t bother.
Voices rose outside, but I trusted Etta had everything under control. Changing tactics, I yanked the top sheet off the bed, trying not to speculate when it had last been washed, and headed to the kitchenette area for scissors. I found them in view in a fixed pot on the counter.
The motorhome rocked as someone came up the steps. Connor? I turned, scissors and sheet in hand, to see Gerrie followed closely by Ginger.
“Wha-what are you doing?”
Gerrie smiled. “Divide and conquer, isn’t that right, sausage?”
Ginger gave his arm a squeeze. “That’s right, you clever man. What do you think, should we do the thing we did with the possums in the Grampians? Or the drunk at Ugly Creek?”
“What about the creep in Alice?”
“Oh yes. Let’s do that.”
I was none the wiser for this conversation. Apparently spending over fifty years together lent them a tactical advantage.
Ginger opened a drawer and pulled out a hair dryer. Not scary until she gripped the cord like a garrote. Gerrie opened another and thumped a granite rolling pin against his palm in a menacing fashion.
Crap.
The sheet and scissors weren’t going to cut it. My eyes darted around for an alternative.
I found one. But the Double Gs loomed closer. Too close.
I threw the sheet at them and shoved forward in an attempt to knock them over while I was blocked from view. Unfortunately, Gerrie was still a lot bigger than me and only stumbled backward a step. Ginger seemed plenty stable right now as well—despite her mishap with the traffic cone on the ferry.
Even so, the one backward step was enough. I grabbed the fire extinguisher Ginger had banned me from using the night of the fire. Thanks to another fire—one in my apartment four months ago—I knew exactly how to use it. I pulled the pin and sprayed it straight into their widened eyes.
They choked and coughed and clawed at their faces, and I shoved past them in the narrow confines of the motorhome and out into the night air. My vision took a few seconds to adjust.
Everyone had moved. Norma was hunched in the dirt close to where she’d originally been sitting—but was now covered in dust and had her blouse partway undone. Etta was wresting the much larger Ray to the ground, his arm twisted behind his back. I was relieved to see she still had her gun.
She looked up. “Dammit, Izzy, didn’t you get anything to tie them up with?”
Oops. “Sorry.” I darted into the Winnebago, spraying Ginger and Gerrie down again for good measure as I passed them. I’d take a special satisfaction in forcing them to pay for a new one. I picked up the discarded sheet and scissors, and though the small extinguisher was empty, kept it with me as I returned outside.
That was when I spotted Kirk spilling petrol about the edges of the sugarcane. And where the heck had Norma gone? Why hadn’t Connor come back?
The jerry can Ray had left conveniently on the ground before starting this cascade of chaos was a large one, fitting two and a half gallons of fuel.
Kirk had almost emptied it.
I stole a look at Etta, who had Ray under control but was gritting her teeth. No doubt she was lamenting our no-bullets policy since she’d clearly like to shoot him.
I was kind of lamenting it too because if Kirk set a match to that fuel, we were dead. With this in mind, I dropped everything but the fire extinguisher and lunged toward him. If I could overpower him before he could light a match, we’d be okay.
He saw me coming, dropped the jerry can, pulled a Zippo lighter from his pocket, and flipped up the lid.
A steady flame sprang to life.
“Stop right there, or I drop it!”
I stopped, only a little out of arm’s reach, but too far all the same.
Gosh dammit, I’d used the extinguisher on the wrong emergency after all.
Kirk’s eyes flicked to Etta. “Put that gun down and kick it out of reach.”
Based on the quiet behind me, Etta hesitated.
“You shoot me and you die seconds after I do.”
She put the gun down.
Connor emerged from the sugarcane, Misti restrained in front. Both of them were covered with sweat and tiny paperlike cuts, and both of them froze when they took in the scene. The strong smell of fuel. The jerry can at Kirk’s feet. And the Zippo lighter—held high, thank goodness. Who knew how many feet from the ground the gasoline had drifted?
Silence fell for a moment. The eerie rustling of the sugarcane came back into focus. The chirping of crickets. Misti’s heavy breathing. Water running in the Winnebago.
I noticed Kirk had something under his arm. The one not holding the Zippo lighter. Was that his dead friend’s picture frame?
Then Misti asked, “What are you doing, Kirk? You’ll kill us all.”
Norma emerged from the sugarcane behind him. “And our homes with us,” she pointed out quietly. “I found Ginger and Gerrie’s k
eys. They have one of those whistle finders on them, remember?” She clinked them together since Kirk was staring at me, the nearest threat. “Let’s tie these people up and drive out of here. What do you say?”
“Maybe,” Kirk allowed. He seemed about to speak again when the faint wail of sirens sounded in the distance. His eyes turned manic.
Fabulous. Now the police decide to show up.
“Everybody stay the hell back,” Kirk growled. “I’m walking out of this mess, and if anyone tries to stop me, I drop this lighter right now, you got it?”
I nodded.
He took a few steps backward, closer to Norma.
Norma, the one person who really cared about Amy.
“This seems extreme, Kirk,” I observed quietly. “Why are you so desperate not to get caught? Did you kill Amy?”
He dropped his arm a foot lower to the ground. “Shut the hell up, or I swear I’ll do it.”
I shut the hell up.
Norma lifted her chin, drawing my attention. Her eyes were fixed on my face. Telling me something? Had my questions about Amy’s murder done enough?
Kirk backed up another step.
Norma thrust out her hand and snapped the Zippo lid shut.
I bolted forward and smashed the empty extinguisher canister into Kirk’s gut.
He crumpled to the soaked and stinking ground, and I wrestled the Zippo from his grasp. His picture frame lay shattered beside him.
The sirens had grown louder.
Norma picked up Kirk’s broken frame of his long-dead friend. In apology maybe. Except her eyes widened as several news clippings and some other bits and pieces fell out of the backing.
“Kirk?” she said uncertainly. “What is all this?”
Kirk didn’t answer.
Norma held up a large prescription box of something I couldn’t make out and dropped her gaze back to one of the clippings in her hand.
“Why do you have Rachel Lamkin’s expired EpiPens?”
Kirk said nothing.
“She died because she couldn’t find them in time. Did you take them by mistake somehow? Or did you…” Norma glanced down at Kirk crumpled on the ground and shuffled through the items in her hands. “Or did you…” She trailed off again. Swallowed. “Oh my god, Kirk. Did you have something to do with these people’s deaths? The ones we thought were accidents?”
“Whose?” barked Ray.
“All of them,” Norma said. “Rachel. The four-wheel-drive tourist from Denmark. Gary, our scuba-diving instructor, and that woman who died from the tiger snake bite.”
“No way,” Misti murmured, horror coloring her voice.
“I think…” Norma swallowed again. “I think he killed them all.”
22
Kirk looked around at the faces staring at him in horror. “You don’t understand,” he began.
High beams swung across the cul-de-sac, and doors slammed, momentarily arresting everyone’s attention.
The police had arrived.
But the shocked nomads and Kirk, the object of their horror, seemed to have lost the will to fight for their freedom now. Too shaken by the night’s revelations.
“Really, I can explain,” Kirk tried to assure them. “I would never have done anything to hurt you. You’re my friends. You’re important—”
Norma cut him off. “Did you kill Amy?”
Four police officers streamed down the track.
Kirk was too intent on Norma’s censure to spare a glance for the officers. “N-no,” he stuttered like a schoolboy caught in a lie. “Not Amy.”
“And the others?”
“Well—”
“Everyone put your hands on your heads! Now.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a deliberate snub, but Norma turned away from Kirk as she complied with the police’s instructions.
The expression on Kirk’s face was heart-wrenching.
I tore my own gaze away and stuck my hands on my head, wishing I’d carried the Zippo lighter well out of the fuel range so I didn’t feel the need to clutch it so tightly. I was playing with fire. Literally. I didn’t like it.
The officers began cuffing people, and I wondered whether they’d brought enough handcuffs. I should’ve been watching my surrounds, but I was just as shocked by the night’s revelations as the nomads, and I was staring at the play of flashing blue and red lights across the sugarcane instead. What the hell? Who was this guy? A serial killer? An old friend of my mum’s was a freaking serial killer?
As if conjured, I saw another figure hanging back by the police cruisers. Mum? She must’ve followed the officers down here.
I turned in the direction she was staring. At Kirk, I realized. An officer was cuffing him, but as before, he seemed more upset at losing the other nomads’ camaraderie than at going to prison for the rest of his life.
Maybe that would come later.
The officer prodded him over to the cruiser that Mum was standing beside. The flashing light showed her expression was sad rather than judgmental. “Oh, Kirk…”
His gaze had been flicking between the other nomads and his feet, but now it snapped to hers. “No, you don’t understand! Listen, there’s a sealed envelope in my bedside drawer, marked to be opened upon my death, but go and get it. Read it. Then you’ll see why. Why it needed to be done.”
She shook her head in mute negation, and the officer pushed Kirk into the back of the car.
It took longer than we would’ve liked for the police officers to sort out the bad guys from the good guys. Etta especially seemed to confuse them—as if they couldn’t keep track of all the delinquent seniors.
Or maybe they were just misled by her feral grin.
It was lucky Etta was one of us, or they wouldn’t have been able to fit all the bad guys in their cruisers.
They were pushing a grumbling Ray into the backseat—he was protesting loudly that he still needed to visit the crapper—when Etta slipped away for a moment. She returned with an envelope and passed it to Mum. On the front in neat printed handwriting, it said:
To be opened upon the death of Kirk Bauer.
Mum hesitated, then broke the seal and pulled out a handwritten letter. Us “good guys” huddled around the light spilling from the Winnebago to read it.
I’m writing this because the question of what makes a serial killer has fascinated experts and the masses alike for centuries. My story is statistically irrelevant, but I’m sharing it anyway. Someone should know.
And for Mum. You were weak, but I have become strong. For both of us.
When I was six years old, the beatings started.
(Nothing special about that. Estimates suggest one in ten Australian kids are physically abused. And it’s even more common internationally.)
Mum would scream and cry, but it didn’t stop him. If she tried, he’d beat her as well. So I’d try to keep quiet, but I always ended up screaming and crying too. Sometimes I’d wet myself. Useless. It took four more years before I learned how to disappear into numbers, calculations, equations. If I concentrated hard enough, I could stop myself from making a sound.
It took another four more years before I learned to disappear in a physical sense. I mapped out escape routes, so if the old man was in a temper, I could get out before he found me. Unlike me, he never learned. Couldn’t keep from shouting his anger. Which suited me just fine since it gave me fair warning to run.
Yeah, I know, at fourteen I should’ve had a chance at fighting back, right? But I was scrawny, not built for fighting. I tried once, and he broke my collar bone and three ribs. Sports injury, we told the hospital. Like I’d ever taken an interest in sports.
So I concentrated on the things I was good at. Shutting up. Disappearing. Unfortunately, the kids at school didn’t always give as much warning as my old man, but then they didn’t do anything near as bad either. Nothing equations couldn’t fix. Numbers were good. Numbers were clear. Right or wrong. Not emotional. Clear. Simple.
I escaped that hellhole
at seventeen. I was outta there before I could even graduate. A new life was waiting. That was when I learned I was broken. Stained by the blood, piss, and tears my formative years had been steeped in. I was living alone, I had a job, I was going to uni. But people could smell it on me anyway.
(Nothing special about that either. Statistics are clear that victims of ongoing child abuse die an average of twenty years younger than the rest of the population—like you, Mum. And are far more likely to suffer mental and physical health problems, commit a crime, do drugs, and wind up in prison in their short shitty lives. Of course people could smell it on me.)
Things got better after I left uni. As well as a degree majoring in statistics, I spent the years learning how to disguise the stain. I landed a new job, and the office was less competitive, less cliquey. People were polite. Adults with money on the line were better at toeing the line. But I knew the stain would never go away. I could hide it from others, but not from myself. The only time I could pretend otherwise was when I got lost in the data, the numbers. So I was good at my job.
It took me a decade of working there to figure out being good wasn’t enough. You had to charm the people above you if you wanted a promotion. So I left. Went out on my own. It was enjoyable work, albeit lonely. I wasn’t afraid of being alone. Knew there were worse things. Eventually, I got a partner, an old colleague who was sick of the nine to five but was too intimidated to go out on his own. We became good friends in time.
He and I were taking a rock fishing trip when he died. Swept away right in front of me.
There was a cursory investigation but no one really seemed to care. Just like no one seemed to care when I was a kid. And I realized, I could’ve pushed him. No one would’ve known. No one would’ve cared. And I fantasized about pushing my old man. Watching him flail—as Darryl did. Watching his face disappear below the swells.
Of course, the old bastard was dead by then. Couldn’t even give me that.
But my mind played on the fantasy anyway. Like if I could’ve pushed him, maybe it would’ve set me free of that stain. Given me back that power he stole from me. That ability to know I’m enough. To walk with my head held high like others do without having to think about it. Because what’s more powerful than the power of life and death?
The Killer of Oz Page 18