by Vicki Tyley
Open farmland eventually gave way to majestic Mountain Ash. She followed the news van deeper and deeper into the dense forest, hoping she would be able to find her way out again. Signposts were few and far between, and with her sense of direction, she could see herself driving around and around in circles.
According to Anthea, she should be looking for an old, overgrown logging road not marked on the map. So far she had passed at least seven dirt tracks fitting that description. She sincerely hoped the TV news crew had been given better directions.
She needn’t have worried. Up ahead, police, media and civilian vehicles packed both sides of the road, slowing traffic to a crawl. Flashing neon lights couldn’t have been more effective. The Channel 7 van braked suddenly and pulled onto the gravel verge, leaving Jacinta with no option except to continue driving through the tunnel of cars, 4-wheel drives and vans. At the end, she did a U-turn, her passenger side wheels sinking into the road’s soft shoulder as she parked behind a black Toyota Prado with tinted windows.
Once out of the car, she walked with long, purposeful strides. Loud-mouthed reporters vying for attention jarred the forest’s natural calm. Cameras and microphones jostled for position as young, uniformed constables standing sentry behind blue and white police tape struggled to keep them at bay.
“How many more skeletons have been found?”
“Are they male or female?”
“Is it true that one of the victims is Kirsty Edmonds?”
“What’s been done to identify the remains?”
“Are you investigating missing person’s files?”
“Who made the gruesome discovery?”
“Who is the officer in charge of the investigation?”
“What can you tell us about how the victims were killed?”
Unfazed, the police officers stood their ground, deftly deflecting the media’s endless questions. Jacinta smiled to herself. She had seen the same scene played out countless times before.
Forgetting she had renounced her journalism career and was, in theory, only there as a favour to Anthea Sutton, she squeezed her way to the front. Her skin crawled like a junkie craving a high, the story so close she could taste it.
“Detective Inspector Daniel Lassiter, please,” she said, her voice strong and authoritative. Not only did she succeed in attracting the attention of the round-faced constable closest to her, but that of the whole media circus. Reporters thrust microphones in her face, demanding to know who she was, her connection to DI Lassiter, and her purpose for being at the site. She ignored them all, leaning forward to present her business card to the constable.
He dutifully accepted it, stepping away from the tape and turning his back briefly to talk into his radio. He returned, speaking to his colleague before lifting the cordon tape and motioning her under. An indignant clamour rose behind her.
Constable Peter Haggerty, as he had introduced himself, walked her down the rough dirt track leading into the forest. Not as sure-footed as her minder, she had to concentrate hard to avoid stumbling over tree roots and rocks. She struggled to keep pace with him, the dry, earthy air tickling her throat as she gasped for breath.
Once out of sight of the sealed road, Constable Haggerty told her to stay put while he checked on Daniel’s whereabouts. Thankful for the respite, she sagged against the nearest tree large enough to take her weight. No longer a moving target, a cloud of bush flies closed in, attracted by the sweat rivulets running down her face. She waved her hand in front of her face, driving them away.
Keeping up the wiper motion, she surveyed the area. Though she couldn’t see the police operations, she could hear their jumbled voices floating up from the other side of the rise over which Constable Haggerty had disappeared. Through the trees and some distance away, she caught sight of a couple of intrepid individuals bushwhacking through dense undergrowth in an obvious attempt to circumvent the police cordon. Brave or stupid? she wondered. If the snakes and spiders didn’t get them, the police undoubtedly would.
This thought sent her scuttling into the middle of the track, away from the bushes and trees. Logic told her that with all the commotion, any snakes would be long gone. Phobia told her it was better to be safe than sorry.
Intent on checking for movement in the scrub off the side of the track, she didn’t hear Daniel’s footsteps as he came up behind her. In the same instant he spoke her name, he touched her shoulder.
“Shit!” She clapped her hand to her chest. “Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
“Sorry,” he said, not looking the slightest remorseful, “but what the hell are you doing here?”
“On assignment. What’s your excuse?”
“Pardon?”
“Kangaroo bones don’t warrant this much attention.”
Daniel pressed his lips together and dropped his gaze. “Jacinta, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low and soft like he actually meant it this time. “You’re right; what I told you last night was more to appease you than anything else. You have to realise I’m not in a position to tell you anything more substantial. Anything you may have heard elsewhere is wild speculation, and nothing more. The investigation is still very much in the early stages, but I promise you, when we have something for the press, I’ll let you know. Besides–” his voice rose an octave, “–it cuts both ways. What’s your interest in this case? Didn’t you tell me you had given up the reporter game? Perhaps there’s something more you ought to be telling me…”
Before she could protest, Constable Haggerty turned up to tell Daniel he was required. “Jacinta, we need to talk, but not here and not now. Can I call you later?”
She hesitated and then nodded. Pretending he didn’t exist wouldn’t make him disappear. And maybe – just maybe – if he could convince her of his sincerity, the monster inside her head she had fed for years would wither and die.
“Peter will take you back to the road.”
For a moment or two, she watched Daniel’s retreating form before turning to begin the hike back.
“You friends with DI Lassiter, then?” asked Peter, his tone casual as, walking side by side, they retraced their earlier steps.
“He’s my brother,” she said, surprising not only the young constable but herself. “Stepbrother, actually.” Why she had felt compelled to blurt that out, she didn’t know.
Peter Haggerty didn’t ask any more questions, remaining mute until they reached his colleagues standing guard at the track entrance. All eyes were on her as Peter directed her along the blue and white police tape to a less populated spot.
Ducking under the tape, she knew Anthea would be less than pleased with her lack of results. In her previous life, she would probably have stood her ground: demanding, wheedling, and pleading until she had the information she wanted. But somehow, she knew being obnoxious wouldn't have worked with Daniel, anyway. After all, he hadn't achieved his rank by giving into annoying reporters, stepsister or not.
She straightened up, glancing first at her car, then at the growing pack of reporters and stickybeaks, and then back at her car. She was dehydrated, hungry, tired and sweaty; the air-conditioned sanctuary of her car won out easily over standing around in the building heat, dust and sticky flies.
A blast of superheated air hit her when she opened her car door. She started the car without getting in, leaning across the driver’s seat to turn the air-conditioner and fan to maximum. With all the Pulsar’s windows open, the hot outside air soon displaced the even hotter interior air, along with a couple of bush flies for good measure.
Leaving the car idling, she dug into her satchel for her mobile phone. Even though she had nothing to report, Anthea would still be waiting for her call. Her phone’s signal indicator flickered, steadied and then died. Cursing, she danced around, holding her phone in the air like some demented marionette.
Swinging around, she came face to face with the last person she expected to see.
“Grace!”
Kirsty Edmonds’ best
friend and self-proclaimed lover, Grace Kevron, gave her a lopsided grin. “Hello, Jacinta,” she said, her speech marred by a slight slur. “Fancy meeting you here.” She giggled, tilting her head to one side.
Jacinta frowned, wondering from which planet the pale-faced alien with dilated pupils had descended. “Have you been drinking?”
Grace responded with another stupid, lopsided grin, before moving her face in so close that Jacinta feared she was about to be kissed. She instinctively pulled back, but not before Grace had blown a lungful of garlicky breath in her face.
“What are you doing here, Grace?”
“You’re not the only one with contacts, you know.”
That much was obvious. “What do you think you’re going to achieve?”
“Justice.”
“I don’t see how a pile of animal bones is going to do that,” Jacinta said, using the line Daniel had given her the previous night.
That bloody grin again. “You’ll see,” Grace said over her shoulder, as she turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 29
Like a ghost, Grace had faded into the crowd, leaving Jacinta bemused and none the wiser. Who or what had brought Grace into the Toolangi State Forest? Were her cryptic comments about ‘justice’ and ‘you’ll see’ meant only to taunt, or something deeper? What wasn’t she saying?
Using her hand to shield against the glare, Jacinta scanned the surrounding area again, to no avail. She sighed and closed her eyes, immediately wishing she hadn’t when the insides of her moisture-less lids sandpapered her eyeballs. Not only her eyes but her whole body craved water.
With dehydration fogging her brain, what hope did she have of corralling her thoughts into anything coherent? She had no choice. She would have to return to Healesville for supplies.
Getting into her car was like going from the oven to the freezer. Before she closed her car door, she flicked a fly comatose with cold from the dashboard. Then, hoping like hell that nothing major happened while she was away, she drove off.
Once in Healesville, she broke the diet commandment, ‘thou shalt not shop on an empty stomach’, and piled her shopping basket with enough junk food and drink to survive any siege. At the checkout counter, she added The Acacia Tribune, The Age and Herald Sun newspapers, noting that the discovery of the human remains had yet to make the front pages. If nothing else, she would have something to read to while away the time.
Not waiting for the car to cool first, she jumped into the driver’s seat, cramming her shopping bags into the passenger-side footwell. With an opened bag of jellybeans on the seat between her legs and a bright blue sports drink in the middle console, she somehow managed to retrace her route to the Toolangi State Forest without getting lost.
In her absence, a couple of new vehicles had arrived and at least one – namely the black Toyota Prado she had been parked behind earlier – had left. Other than that, nothing had changed.
She opened all the car windows, allowing any breeze there might be to flow through, and stretched across the console to retrieve her picnic provisions from the floor. In the middle of this contortionist act, she heard a vehicle slow and stop close by, followed by a mishmash of disjointed voices. Rummaging in the bags in the footwell, her grip tightened on a cold bottle of something in the same instant the voices registered. She froze; her left elbow propped on the passenger seat taking the bulk of her weight.
Snatches of Daniel’s deep voice, mixed with Detective Sergeant Renee White’s softer tones, drifted through the car window. Not wanting to alert them to her presence, Jacinta kept her head down and held her breath. Her ears strained to pick up every sound, flipping into overdrive when she heard the words ‘DNA’ and ‘Edmonds’ in the same sentence.
Stringing together the words she could hear with the ones she couldn’t wasn’t easy. But if she had the general gist right, it wasn’t Kirsty Edmonds’ remains out there in the bush. Or at least not the first body. Daniel’s last instruction to DS White before she restarted her car was to notify Narelle Croswell and Craig Edmonds of the DNA results in person.
Jacinta waited until she felt sure the coast was clear before she sat up. Able to breathe freely again, she tried to work out where Daniel had gone but, like Grace, he had disappeared from sight.
Renee White, Jacinta presumed, was on her way to the Edmonds house. How would Narelle and Craig react? Would it be good news or bad news? Sincerely hoping that insensitive prat of a sidekick, Detective Constable Mark Fratta, wasn’t accompanying her, Jacinta took a swig of her now tepid sports drink.
Narelle wanted closure, but at what expense? She and Craig had more than themselves to consider now. If the remains had been positively identified as those of Kirsty Olive Edmonds, their lives would have been thrown into turmoil. The once dormant and all but forgotten murder case, along with its prime suspect and his new wife, would once again have been thrust into the spotlight. Could either of them have handled the stress again? What would the effect have been on their unborn child?
But if it wasn’t Kirsty’s body, whose was it? Someone else’s daughter, sister or wife had been murdered and left to the elements and wildlife. What else had the police uncovered out there in the undergrowth?
Leaning back into her seat, Jacinta weighed up the little she knew with what she could only surmise. Fact one: skeletal remains of an unidentified female had been unearthed. Fact two: that female wasn’t Kirsty Edmonds. Speculation: remains of at least another person – sex unknown – had also been discovered in the same area. If speculation proved to be fact, did that mean this secluded spot in the forest had become a serial killer’s dumping ground? How many victims were there? How long had they lain there, waiting to be discovered?
She shook her head. The more she thought about it, the more questions she had. Besides, it wasn’t her problem any longer. Copywriters didn’t hang around in the back of nowhere, battling the heat and flies in the slim expectation of a story, wasting a perfectly good day off. And as of Monday, that was what she would be — a salaried copywriter with an air-conditioned office and regular hours. Anthea Sutton could get someone else to do her dirty work for her.
With the media turnout, Jacinta had no doubt any breaking news would be splashed across the television and radio in no time. What’s one less unemployed reporter? she thought, putting the car in drive and checking the side mirror before easing out onto the road.
All of a sudden, the crush of reporters spread out in front of her, blocking her way. No one looked at her, their focus centred firmly on a white Toyota Land Cruiser leaving the cordoned-off dirt track. She caught a glimpse of its dark-haired driver and immediately wondered if it might be Daniel.
The driver nudged the 4-wheel drive through the milling reporters and cameramen, accelerating quickly once clear. On the other side of the crowd, Jacinta tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, resorting to an impatient toot of her car’s horn when they ignored her more subtle engine revving.
She planted her foot, catching up with the Land Cruiser just as it turned left onto Myers Creek Road. Even after catching sight of the driver’s profile, she still couldn’t be sure it was Daniel. But what did it matter, one way or the other? Shaking her head, Jacinta flicked on the indicator and followed the 4-wheel drive around the corner. Like an itch she couldn’t stop scratching, logic didn’t come into it.
She hung back, keeping the Toyota in sight but not breaking any speed limits. Until she decided what her next move should be, she didn’t want to draw any undue attention her way. Then, in the split second it took to change radio stations, the unmarked police vehicle vanished from sight. With the exception of a small, red car coming toward her on the other side, the road was empty.
While her Nissan Pulsar was no match for his Toyota Land Cruiser, unless he had been called to an emergency, he couldn’t have gone far. She pressed her foot to the floor, once again demanding her little car’s all. Her frown deepened with each passing kilometre.
She heard him befo
re she saw him, the ear-splitting sound of a siren from out of nowhere startling her. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, she saw flashing lights inside the white 4-wheel drive, the driver signing her to pull over. She cursed, slowed the car and indicated, looking for a safe place to stop. She could ill-afford a speeding ticket.
The police vehicle parked behind her. She held her breath, watching in the side-mirror as the door opened, exhaling in a loud huff as Daniel stepped out.
“Hello again,” he said, leaning down into her window. “Do you realise what speed you were doing?”
“Yes… no…” she spluttered, unable to read anything in his deadpan expression. Surely, he wouldn’t.
“Let’s call it a warning this time.” His face softened slightly, moving from cop to real person. “Come on, Jacinta, out with it. Tell me what is so important that you had to tail me.”
“I’m entitled to use this road as much as you.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her and waited.
“All right, then, I confess.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “So far you haven’t exactly delivered on your promises. How do you expect me to trust you?”
Both eyebrows rose then. “Jacinta, we’re both professionals. You and I both know it’s not as simple as that. I might not have told you all you want to know, but I swear I have not knowingly lied to you.”
“Surely there must be something you can tell me.”
“I can tell you there will be a press conference later today.”
“I won’t be there.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes, holding her gaze in a steely grip. “Come to dinner tomorrow night.”
Her jaw dropped, his unexpected request flooring her.
“Bring Brett with you. It’ll just be a family dinner – Wendy, the boys and I, Brett and you. Nothing fancy.”
Unable to find the right words, her mouth opened and closed like a fish gulping air. She felt torn in two. Half of her wanted to keep her stepbrother at a safe distance; the other half craved what he was offering: to be part of a family again. Hoping she wasn’t being taken in by the same magnetic Lassiter charms that had sucked in her mother, she nodded, before adding a quick disclaimer. “I’ll have to check with Brett first, though.”