Gone by Midnight

by Candice Fox

  It was all very curious to Amanda, maybe a little bit exciting, but she had learned long ago not to let on about that. The kinds of things that excited Amanda were those that made normal people frustrated – puzzles and unexplained occurrences, actions without apparent motive. Whenever reality dipped into the impossible, Amanda felt like she was wandering in that narrow realm between the ordinary and the absurd where she belonged; where she had, even just for a moment, the upper hand.

  So she kept quiet as she moved from floor to floor of the hotel, surveying the giant puzzle constructed around her, trying to decide how many possibilities there were for the boy’s whereabouts, if indeed he was still inside the building. She went to the first possibility, the starting point, and leaned her head into the doorway blocked by crime scene tape. This was where it had begun, the mystery that had so completely hooked her. Amanda Pharrell and the Unexplained Absence of Richie Farrow.

  The room was different to the one she’d visited that morning to meet with Sara Farrow. The theme was the same – dark wood veneer with chrome finishings and bleach-white walls, the framed artwork a local artist’s photographic tour of Cairns. Impossibly perfect grey stones placed along deserted beaches, impenetrable forests reaching like fortress walls into the spotless sky, the inevitable disgruntled-looking cassowary, and playful clownfish swirling above the reef. Amanda saw disturbed sheets through the doorway to the bedrooms, and pizza boxes stacked on the white marble countertop. A photographer was taking far too much time to consider his angles on the pizza boxes evidence shot, perhaps intimidated by the collection on the walls. Amanda surveyed the fingerprint expert’s work on the doorframe until he became annoyed by her presence.

  This room was 608, the Sampson family’s room, used as a base camp by the boys on both nights. She checked the things the briefing had told her. No, there was no balcony. Yes, the adjoining door was unlocked. The windows weren’t just shut tight but were designed without hinges or latches – just glass panels in the walls. She looked at the manhole to the ventilation duct. It was big enough for a boy to crawl into, but it did not appear that the screws on the front of the duct had been disturbed. Still, officers with dogs were going floor by floor searching the shafts, the obedient dogs crawling fearlessly into the dark on long leads.

  It was unlikely, Amanda decided, that Richie was still in the room somewhere. And she made much the same assessment of the Farrow family room and the Cho family room, located in 609 and 610. The Erretts’ room, 611, was a little down the hall and around a corner, and it was neater than the others but just as empty of clues.

  All of the Farrow family’s belongings had been confiscated by police for assessment. They would be tested for blood and other bodily fluids, and their electronic devices had been sent to a specialist to be analysed for any hidden clues to the boy’s whereabouts. Samples of Richie’s DNA would be taken on the chance that his body was found somewhere, unrecognisable due to trauma or decay. The data sheet had vague pictures of what Richie had been wearing when he went missing – dark blue and red shorts, a white Billabong brand T-shirt. An Iron Man figurine his father had bought him was missing and was presumably wherever Richie was. Amanda examined the picture of the metallic, red-uniformed toy with the lift-off gold mask and the goateed Robert Downey Jr likeness moulded in shiny plastic underneath.

  It was possible that Richie was somewhere in the hotel still, undetected by humans or by the search dogs. The dogs would be overwhelmed by residual traces of the hundreds of people who came and went through the hotel every day and, of course, by the food that travelled in and out of every hallway and room. The scents of pork and beef, Amanda knew, was very attractive to cadaver dogs, and there were several items on the Clattering Clam’s menu that featured them. The Clattering Clam was the hotel’s room service provider, so the dogs, accustomed to working out in the wild, would be up against it to single out Richie’s scent in close quarters, mixed in among the millions of other interesting scents available to them.

  When Amanda stopped by the second-floor business centre being used by a crew of surveillance experts to survey the hundreds of CCTV tapes collected from the hotel, she found that a briefing by the White Caps security manager was underway. She felt like a kid showing up late to class, trying to avoid the attention of the teacher. She took a chair by the door, her little notepad at hand, and ignored the stares of several police officers who noticed her entrance. Black-and-white footage was playing on screens all around the room, with some officers watching the recordings as they listened to a burly man in a black suit. A small plastic name badge on his label read simply ‘Reed’.

  ‘There’s no CCTV covering the halls leading to the rooms, or the elevators,’ Reed was saying. ‘The hotel decided to spend big on quality, rather than quantity, and so we’ve got the trouble hotspots covered with HD cameras, but not much else. There’s coverage in the car park to deal with theft from vehicles, which has happened a couple of times in the past, because the car park is easily accessible from the street. The foyer, business centre and conference rooms are covered, as well as the hallways to those rooms, because visible cameras in those areas make corporate clients feel safe. That’s also where you get laptops and phones going missing or visitors messing with the printer. There are cameras in the service elevator, because we’ve had difficulty with housekeeping staff getting sticky-fingered with guests’ belongings. There are cameras on all four sides of the building’s exterior to spot vandalism, or disturbances on the hotel grounds.’

  ‘What about the restaurant?’ someone asked.

  Reed leaned against the edge of the table and sighed. ‘Yes, the restaurant and the bar attached are covered for liability reasons. Guests getting too drunk, underage drinkers, that sort of thing.’ Reed took a handkerchief and wiped sweat from the top of his bald head. The suit was probably company policy, but with the ventilation shafts and air-conditioning system shut down for investigation, he was burning up.

  ‘We’ve got footage of the parents having dinner,’ Reed said. ‘Nothing unusual there. They got a bit rowdy both nights, but it was all jovial. We’ve got their waiters’ activities both on the floor and behind the bar. The registers are all covered to discourage theft by the staff.’

  Everyone waited while Reed gathered himself. He was not used to being the presenter. He sat in a chair to the side of a computer, so everyone could see the screen behind him.

  ‘We don’t have a lot of footage of the families,’ the security manager said. ‘We have them all coming home yesterday, parking in the car park, and then we have the parents coming down to dinner. That’s about it.’ He showed some snippets of the Samson, Errett and Cho families parking in the two-storey parking lot. Everyone watched as Sara Farrow pulled her car into the lot and parked close to the elevators.

  ‘So.’ Amanda raised a hand, drawing the attention of the gathering. ‘With the halls and the elevators unsurveilled, the boys could have left room 608 and had access to eight floors, with twenty rooms on each floor, all night long.’

  There was a silence while Reed the security manager considered this. As he opened his mouth to speak, a detective with a bristly black moustache sitting by the printer broke in. His name badge read ‘Ng’.

  ‘The boys didn’t leave the room, Pharrell. They were checked on every hour and found where they were supposed to be. They had no key to get back in if they went out, and no one saw them running around the halls. Don’t waste our time with questions if you haven’t caught up to what’s going on in the investigation.’

  ‘They said they stayed in the room,’ someone added.

  ‘They lied,’ Amanda said.

  ‘The guy in room 607 said he heard them playing in the room all night long,’ Ng said.

  ‘Maybe he heard them on the hour or close to the hour.’ Amanda shrugged. ‘When they came back to the room to be present for their parents’ checks before going out again.’

  ‘My understanding is that the boys didn’t have a key to get
back into the room,’ Reed broke in. ‘Now, we’ve checked the mechanism on the door. It’s not faulty. They couldn’t have jammed or propped it open. The only way they could have got back into the room is if someone let them in. That means one or more of them staying behind.’

  ‘They didn’t stay behind,’ Amanda said. ‘There’s no way four eight-year-old boys would peacefully negotiate some of their party sacrificing their time in the room while the others got to go out and play. I mean, how would they ration it? One stays in the room twiddling his thumbs for ten minutes while the other three play, and they organise a rotating roster? Forget it. Only one of the boys had a watch. How would they divide the time? Girls of that age could have found a workaround, I’m sure. But boys? No way. They’re basically animals. I’m betting they all left the room together.’

  ‘How?’ Ng snapped, throwing up his hands. ‘What, they stole one of the restaurant worker’s key cards? No, wait. They convinced different members of housekeeping to let them back in every hour without telling their parents.’

  ‘How many keys were issued to each couple?’ Amanda asked. ‘Did the families all check in at the same time?’

  An officer nearby drew up footage of the foyer and typed some commands into the laptop before him. There, at the long, high counter, were the seven adults and four boys that comprised the Farrow, Sampson, Cho and Errett families, their bags scattered all around them, a circus rolling into town.

  ‘It was one key for each adult,’ Reed said. ‘We’ve confirmed that with the receptionist on duty.’

  ‘Is that the standard?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did they ask Sara Farrow if she wanted a second key, or did they just give it to her?’ Amanda folded her arms.

  ‘The standard is one key per adult guest.’ Reed’s gaze wandered the floor at his feet. ‘I think.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit awkward?’ Amanda said. ‘Asking a guest on their own if they want one key or two? What if they want to go out on the town and pick someone up? Slip them the key across the bar, give them a wink.’ She gave a wink for good measure. ‘I stayed at the Sea Breeze last night. They gave me two keys without asking.’

  ‘And did you invite anyone back?’ a female detective nearby asked. There were snickers all around Amanda.

  ‘Sara Farrow was the only single parent travelling with three other couples,’ Amanda continued. ‘If it was me behind reception, I’d probably just have given her two keys, like the other parents. I’d have assumed her husband was off somewhere in the bathroom or parking the car. It doesn’t cost anything to assign two keys to a room. The receptionist in that footage is busy. Flustered. Look.’ Amanda pointed. Everyone looked. The slim woman wearing a blazer at the counter was alone, serving all four families at once, dashing between two computer screens. There was another couple at the corner of the video, waiting, looking at their watches. Amanda continued. ‘If the receptionist gave Sara Farrow two keys, instead of one, the boys could have gone through room 608 and into the Farrow room, 609, and used the additional key to get in and out through that door.’

  ‘The receptionist said she only gave Ms Farrow one key,’ the detective at the printer said. Ng shook his head at Amanda, infuriated.

  ‘You’re going to rely on her memory, are you? You’re going to conduct this entire investigation assuming everyone is telling the truth?’ Amanda snorted. ‘Are you new to this job?’

  Ng stood. The officer in the seat beside him put a hand out, a barrier.

  ‘I reckon the boys were running around the halls and elevators.’ Amanda said, unconcerned. ‘The abductor, if there was one, didn’t go to the room and pick Richie up. They met him outside, in the halls.’

  ‘We can check the system,’ Reed breathed, keeping an eye on the detective staring Amanda down. ‘See if the receptionist is mistaken.’

  ‘Assume they got out of the room,’ Ng said, his voice icy. ‘That just widens the cordon from the room to the hallways. The boys didn’t get into the service elevator. No one saw them in the staff areas. They didn’t go to the foyer or the car park lot. No cars left the hotel between the time Richie was last seen in room 608 and when he was discovered missing. No bins were picked up. No guests wheeled bags out without them being searched. I mean –’ Ng shrugged angrily, looked to his colleagues incredulously ‘– what’s your genius solution to that?’

  ‘Oh, there are heaps of possibilities.’ Amanda waved dismissively at Ng. ‘I can name at least three off the top of my head.’

  ‘Please do,’ Reed said, genuinely fascinated.

  ‘Meat mixer.’ Amanda held a finger up. ‘Garbage compactor. Industrial incinerator. Have we checked if the hotel has these things? What about a disguise? Are there any kids at all on the footage? Someone could have walked the boy out drugged and dressed as a girl. How long was it before all the occupied rooms were searched? Say the boy weighed thirty kilos. I know butchers who could carve up a sheep that size, pack and vacuum-seal it in half an hour. All you’d need is a bathtub and a good chef’s knife. The sniffer dogs wouldn’t smell a vacuum-sealed bag of meat slipped into the lining of a suitcase or taped to someone’s leg.’

  A female officer beside Reed was holding her hand against her mouth.

  ‘Of course.’ Amanda tapped her chin with her finger in thought. ‘Who would do that? What would be the point? And all those options suggest so much premeditation. Why make things so hard for yourself by choosing a kid in such a public space, giving yourself so little time to enjoy the experience of chopping him to pieces?’

  ‘Someone tell her to stop,’ the female officer moaned.

  ‘Jeez, this is a great puzzle, isn’t it?’ Amanda said. ‘It’ll be such an adventure trying to solve it.’

  ‘An adventure?’ Ng’s mouth fell open. A couple of the officers around Amanda shook their heads, returning to their screens. Amanda took her notebook and folded it closed. Ng was working a muscle in his temple with his fingertips as she left the business centre. She had caused enough trouble there.

  I’ve seen kids cry before. I’ve seen them genuinely upset after having fallen over in the park, knees grazed, tears rolling down chubby cheeks. I’m also no stranger to the sight of a weary parent in the confectionery aisle, their child red-faced and wailing on the scuff-marked floor.

  But Lillian’s reaction to Kelly and Jett leaving was nothing short of biblical. It was fire and brimstone. Swirling, storm-like rage and open-mouthed shock and betrayal.

  ‘I want my mummy,’ she growled, hardly getting the sentence out between body-shaking sobs. ‘I … want …’

  I stood on the lawn and simply marvelled at my screaming child for a little while, glancing up and down the isolated dirt road with the knowledge that she could probably be heard for kilometres. My small, rose-cheeked girl stood at the edge of the road and stared after the long-disappeared car, seeming to gather herself for a few seconds before she turned and spotted me. Yes, not only had she been abandoned by her Judas mother in the middle of nowhere, but she’d been left with me. Her mouth fell open, and she howled helplessly at the sky.

  There was no consoling her. I took her into the kitchen, knelt by her, squeezed her body to mine and whispered placations and promises. She had worked herself into such a frenzy that her entire body was fever-pink and hot to the touch, spittle dripping from her mouth. At the screen door, Celine watched on, whimpering in solidarity with my inability to defuse Lillian’s horror.

  The front door opened and closed, though I hardly heard it, my eardrums pulsing with my daughter’s screams.

  Val walked into the kitchen, picked Lillian up and sat her on the kitchen table with the care of someone setting down a sack of potatoes. She went to the counter beside the sink, extracted two slices of bread from the loaf sitting there, and opened the fridge, taking a pre-cut slice of cheese from a packet. She put the cheese between the bread and handed it to Lillian. My child took the sandwich gingerly, her whole body racked with throaty
sobs.

  ‘Now listen,’ Val said. Lillian’s sobs fell in volume immediately, then transformed into gasping, sucking sounds, which she further stifled with the corner of the sandwich. Val put her hands on her hips.

  ‘Your mummy’s going to be back in a few days,’ Val said.

  ‘I want …’ Lillian said, her mouth full of saturated bread and cheese, her eyes going to me, the monster in the corner she surely would not be left unsupervised with again. ‘I … want …’

  ‘Your mummy,’ Val said, slower and firmer this time, ‘is coming right back. Just a few sleeps. In the meantime, you’re going to stay here and you’re going to have a fabulous time with your dad. You’ll have lots of fun together. You, him, and that sweet little doggo out there.’

  She pointed, and Lillian and I looked. Celine stamped her feet and whimpered when all eyes fell on her, desperate to demonstrate her enthusiasm.

  ‘Look at that pup,’ Val said. ‘Look how sad she is at you, with all this crying and carrying on.’

  Lillian considered the dog at the door, snuffling and munching her sandwich. She looked at me, then Val, taking tiny bites, rubbing her running nose on the back of her hand.

  ‘Ducks?’ she asked.

  ‘The ducks too, of course.’

  My child seemed to come to some decision about the situation, slid forward and let Val lift her down from the table. Celine turned in a triumphant circle as the little girl pushed through the screen door, barely managing to keep her cheese sandwich out of the dog’s reach.

  Val looked at me. I pressed my lips as tight as I could.

  ‘Don’t you start,’ she said, pointing a gnarled finger in my face. ‘It’ll be a knuckle sandwich for you.’

  We went to the windows and looked out. Lillian was heading for the geese, who were already rising in anticipation of being chased. Lillian tore her bread into pieces and Celine tried to muscle in to the huddle of snapping beaks and flapping wings to get the morsels the girl tossed.