Catch Us the Foxes

by Nicola West

  ‘The only thing that struck me as odd –’ I began, sensing my dad’s heart rate rise, ‘was how beautiful she looked.’

  I would remain steadfast in my story. Besides, Mark was so pissed he probably didn’t even remember.

  I heard my dad sigh a breath of relief, and Michael bowed his head and nodded. From somewhere behind him, there was a guttural moan. It was raw and animal-like and made the hair on my arms stand straight.

  Lily’s mum fell to her knees, sobbing violently. She began pounding at her head with her fists and screaming Lily’s name. Her knuckles smashed into her skull, over and over again – like she was punishing herself for her daughter’s death. Despite my father and Michael being twice her size, they struggled to subdue her. Each grabbed an arm and wrestled it away from her head, only for it to return. The free-for-all felt like it went on for minutes, but I think it was only seconds. She eventually tired herself out and went back to her catatonia, like nothing had ever happened.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I blurted out as they helped her to her feet. I’d been standing there – frozen – utterly unable to do anything to assist.

  ‘Hey, it’s okay,’ Michael said, seeing how shaken I was. ‘She’s okay. It wasn’t you, her medication’s just wearing off.’

  I felt myself nod but remained unconvinced.

  I watched as the two men carefully guided her through the back gate to the waiting police car. Nathan was in the driver’s seat and would be taking Michael and Sharon back to their home on Saddleback Mountain. It would be the first time they’d returned home since their daughter had died.

  As they drove away, I noticed that I was shaking. My dad walked back towards me.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, opening the back door for me. ‘We need to talk.’

  I ducked under his arm and entered the cottage.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ he demanded, slamming the back door behind him.

  ‘What?’ I asked, bewildered by his tone.

  ‘You didn’t have to say anything to Michael. I covered for you.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget who’s covering for you!’

  His eyes snapped towards me. ‘From now on, you keep your mouth shut. You’ve given your official statement. If anyone else asks, tell them it’s none of their business.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, feeling my temper flare. ‘I’ll tell Michael that his daughter’s death is none of his business.’

  ‘I already said I covered for you. You didn’t need to lie to him.’

  ‘A lie of omission is still a lie! He was obviously suspicious and you were making things a thousand times worse.’

  ‘He wasn’t suspicious. He just wants answers and justice for his daughter. Which – for the record – is all I want, too.’ He sighed, rubbing both hands over his haggard face. ‘I told you there were reasons why I did this. I’m sorry that you had to be involved, but your part in this is over. You don’t have to lie because you don’t have to answer. Forget about it, Lo. Just let me do my job.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Look, I’ve got to get back to the station,’ he said, turning to leave.

  ‘No. You’re going to stay here and you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on.’

  He turned back to face me. ‘I can’t, Lo. I’m sorry.’

  ‘If you want me to keep my mouth shut you’d better give me a damn good reason why I should. I’m part of this whether you like it or not.’

  He opened his mouth, seemingly to protest, but thought better of it.

  ‘Okay,’ he eventually said. ‘I can’t tell you everything, but I can tell you where we are with the case.’

  It was a start, at least.

  ‘I already knew about the markings on Lily’s back,’ my dad said after we’d both taken a seat at the kitchen table. ‘They were reported to me a little while ago.’

  ‘By who?’ I asked.

  ‘I can’t go into specifics. I shouldn’t even be telling you this much, but – at the very least – I have to keep names out of it.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. I wasn’t satisfied with his answer, but I knew not to push it – not yet, anyway.

  ‘I thought I had a fairly good idea of who did the markings,’ he continued. ‘So obviously, when she turned up dead, we had a pretty clear-cut person of interest.’

  ‘Who?’ I paused, remembering I wasn’t supposed to ask for names. ‘I mean, can you at least tell me if I know them?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, you can’t tell me? Or no, I don’t know them?’

  ‘Lo…’

  ‘All right.’ I sighed.

  ‘Detective Leary got them into the Warilla station earlier today. Not for a casual chat like your interview. The two of us went at them – hard – trying to get answers.’ He paused.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It looks like the person’s got a pretty solid alibi for last night.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Like, an airtight alibi. They were at a crowded place, multiple people saw them, there were photographs taken – the lot. That’s actually why I need to get back to the station. The photos should have been sent through by now. And if the person is in them – which it sounds like they will be – we’re kinda back to the drawing board.’

  ‘So, what will happen if that’s the case?’

  He ran his hand through his hair. ‘I haven’t got the official figures for last night. But, typically, the show sees around ten thousand people through the gates. Every single one of them is a potential suspect.’

  ‘But surely you have more to go on than that. I mean, it has to be connected to those marks on her back, right? Maybe someone else carved them? What if your person of interest was the wrong person?’

  ‘Nah,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They all but confessed to that. Still not enough to actually do something about it, mind you. But I’m confident we pointed the right finger.’

  ‘So…’ I paused to think. ‘They had an accomplice then?’

  ‘Maybe, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s unrelated to the markings.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The preliminary coroner’s report hasn’t been officially released yet, but I got the main gist when I was up at Warilla.’

  I looked at him expectantly.

  ‘She died of blunt force trauma to the head. It was pretty straightforward – a single blow did it. No sign of the murder weapon, but we’ve got a pretty good idea what it was. There were crystal fragments embedded in the wound.’

  I thought of my dream – Lily jumping to her death onto crystal cliffs. I shivered.

  ‘Crystals?’

  ‘Yeah.’ My dad nodded. ‘She had a whole heap of them on her desk at the paper, didn’t she? Mark mentioned it.’

  ‘Yeah, bu–’

  ‘We’ve seized them all, and the lab rats are testing to see if any match. Girls sometimes carry that shit round with them, right? Like a lucky charm or something?’

  I thought of the crystal store owner’s words. ‘For protection,’ I said.

  My dad rolled his eyes.

  ‘So, what about all that makes you think it has nothing to do with the markings?’ I asked.

  ‘Because it clearly wasn’t premeditated. I’m not even sure if the person who did it intended to kill her.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘The evidence suggests that there was some sort of scuffle before the killing blow landed. Either the person started something and Lily fought back, or she instigated the action in the first place.’

  Neither option seemed particularly likely to me. That just wasn’t the type of person Lily was.

  ‘Either way, she probably tried to use the crystal as a weapon and it backfired.’

  ‘What makes you think Lily fought them?’ I asked.

  ‘There was blood on her dress. Only a drop, but it was somewhere that blood from her temple wound couldn’t have reached. DNA profiling hasn’t come back yet, but we know it doesn’t match her blood type.’
<
br />   ‘So, it belongs to her killer?’

  ‘Almost definitely. And I’ll bloody DNA test everyone in the town if I have to. But it would be a lot simpler if we could narrow things down. And that would be a hell of a lot easier if I wasn’t fighting you every step of the way.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ He sighed. ‘It’s a complicated situation. But we both want the same thing – for Lily’s killer to be found. So please, Lo, just let me do my job.’

  I nodded.

  ‘All right,’ he said, standing up to leave. ‘I’m going to get back to it.’

  CHAPTER 16

  I remained at the table long after my father had left, trying to process all the information I’d just learned. The more I thought about it, the less the crystal story made sense. The stones on Lily’s desk were relatively large – at least fist-sized. And while there was no denying a crystal that size could have caused her head wound, it didn’t make sense that she’d be carrying one around the showground. She certainly hadn’t been holding anything when she’d fled from the ghost train.

  But, if that were the case, then my father’s theory had to be wrong. The killer had to have brought the crystal with them, which only made sense if Lily’s murder was premeditated. Plus, there were a million other things they could have used to hurt her – the crystal was clearly chosen to send a message. Lily’s killer knew she was scared and knew she had been using the crystals to make herself feel safe. Did they also know that she intended for someone to investigate her death? Was that person who the message was truly for?

  Was it all to scare me off?

  When I finally mustered the energy to stand up, I went to retrieve my phone. I’d left it in the kitchen when I was getting tea for Sharon and I’d missed a few text messages since then. The first two were from Dan. One was a badly shot photo of Owen – the journalist staying at the Blue – that looked like it had been taken by a stalker, while the second, sent sometime later, contained a short yet emphatic statement.

  omg owen drinks the same whisky as u!

  u r soulmates!!!

  I was already thinking of a sarcastic reply when I opened the next message. It was from a number I didn’t recognise but that didn’t really raise any red flags. Unfortunately, that indifference only served to make the content all the more shocking.

  The words were all in caps and seemed to jump out at me from the screen. My mind translated them into a deafening shout that reverberated throughout my head. I struggled to come to terms with what I was reading.

  SHE KNEW SHE WOULD DIE

  SHE WANTED YOU TO HAVE THESE

  MEET ME AT THE LIGHTHOUSE AT MIDNIGHT

  COME ALONE

  NO ONE IN KIAMA CAN BE TRUSTED

  I frantically reread the message over and over again. When I finally processed what it was saying, my gut reaction was that it must have been some kind of cruel prank. Dan had told me that, while my name hadn’t been mentioned in the press yet, every local knew that I was the one who had found Lily. I didn’t think that I had any true enemies in the town, but I also wouldn’t have put that kind of thing past people. Kiama could be a suffocatingly boring place – I knew that as well as anyone – and I knew how alluring the potential for drama or excitement could be. Anything to distract from that mind-numbing monotony.

  Just when I was convinced the message was the product of some drama-starved troublemaker and nothing to worry about, I finally noticed that it was actually an MMS. I selected the attachment icon and watched the video download, hoping that a familiar face would pop up on the screen. A ‘gotcha’ moment that, while admittedly twisted, would have been far better than the alternative.

  But when I saw the diaries – those leather-bound journals I’d given Lily as a Christmas gift less than a month earlier – I knew the message was real.

  It was a short video but it still packed a punch. A gloved hand appeared from off-screen and picked up the top journal, before slowly flipping through its pages. Each contained writing or sketches, sometimes both, and I squinted at the screen trying to decipher the messages contained within.

  I’d often had to transcribe Lily’s notes at the paper so I knew the handwriting was hers. But the sketches were surprisingly foreign – frenzied, fluid and inky – almost comic book-like in appearance. I was puzzled. They were a far cry from the photo-realistic pencil illustrations Lily drew in art class. And yet, something tugged at my mind when I looked at them. Had I actually seen them before?

  I needed to see the video in more detail so I retreated to my room and tethered my phone to my laptop. I shut my bedroom door. It was unlikely that my dad would return but I wasn’t taking any chances. When I returned to the computer, the video was autoplaying and I maximised it before pausing on the page that had originally caught my attention. It was unmistakable in full screen – a flower-like symbol made up of interconnecting circles, surrounded by the exact same markings that had been carved into Lily’s back.

  I sighed, running my fingers through my hair and staring helplessly at the ceiling. I knew that the answers I wanted were inside the journals, but I was hesitant to seek them out – particularly by myself.

  What if it was a trap?

  I didn’t doubt that Lily wanted me to have the journals. Her comments about having a better use for them and her conversations with the crystal store owner both suggested that she’d always intended for me to investigate her death. But who was to say whether the person who now held them was a friend or a foe?

  What if it was her killer?

  I googled the phone number that the message had been sent from but came up empty-handed. I decided to go through the video frame by frame, trying to decipher any clues as to the sender’s identity. They’d gone out of their way to cover their tracks. The background was nondescript – a wooden table with no identifying features. Similarly, the gloved hand could have belonged to anyone. The black leather added both bulk and length to the person’s fingers, meaning that I had no idea whether they were a man’s or a woman’s.

  On my umpteenth view, I noticed something. The gloved hand paused on one page longer than the others and tapped twice on a particular bit of Lily’s writing that had been underlined. I squinted at the screen, trying to make out what it said, but the quality wasn’t good enough. I looked at the overall page. It seemed to be a list of some sort. I could just make out part of the title, scrawled in jagged, capital letters: MEMBERS?

  I took the clearest screencap of the page I could before upping the contrast and printing it off. I hoped that the list would be easier to see like that and began searching through one of my drawers as the printer chattered away. When I finally felt my fingers brush against the cool metal of the Swiss Army knife – a gift from my father – I smiled to myself and pulled out its magnifying arm.

  I pulled the page from the printer and was pleased that most of the writing was now much easier to see. It was a list of people from the town. Lily’s mum and dad were there, as was Mark. The mayor and the local member of parliament were also featured. In fact, I noticed it seemed to contain almost every high-ranked member of the community.

  Which was why I was surprised when I recognised my own name on the list. It was the one the gloved hand had tapped. However, while the nine letters that made up ‘Robertson’ were clear, the first name was harder to see. I had first mistaken it for an ‘L’ and an ‘O’, and had assumed it was referring to me, but when I used the magnifying glass the letters revealed their true identity: J – O – H – N.

  John Robertson, aka my dad.

  I stared at the list, an unsettling feeling bubbling somewhere deep within my mind. I wondered what the list signified and why the keeper of the journals had gone out of their way to show me my dad was included. I decided to go over the entire page with the magnifying glass to see if I could find anything else. That’s when I first noticed it – four faint letters that preceded the word ‘members’ at the top of the page: C – U – L – T.

/>   I immediately reached for my phone and replied to the text.

  I’ll be there.

  CHAPTER 17

  At 11.45 pm, I quietly snuck out the back door of the cottage, making a beeline for the side fence. I climbed it and dropped down into the post office’s parking lot to avoid detection. I preferred the iconic building at night. Its hideous pink hue softened in the moonlight, and you couldn’t tell that the clock’s hands were always far behind schedule. Perplexingly, the tower’s bell sounded at twenty-three minutes past the hour, a feature that the tourists found charming, but which infuriated the locals. Not me though. I didn’t even hear it any more. My years spent living next door had made me immune to its jarring bongs, and they had become nothing more than white noise.

  The time since I’d replied to the anonymous message had been a blur. I must have sat for hours staring at the list, willing my dad’s name to fade away. But it was there, and it was unmistakable. Suddenly his actions made so much more sense. And yet, my mind was flatly refusing to genuinely think of the implications. Every time I tried I would lose time. It was like I couldn’t even consider the possibility.

  I needed more evidence.

  I needed those journals.

  Nathan had come around, sometime in the evening, with hot chips and potato scallops drowning in chicken salt. He was just dropping them off and letting me know that my dad was back up at Warilla and wouldn’t be home until later that night. I thanked him before telling him that I’d be going to bed early. It had been a rough couple of days, y’know? He’d nodded understandingly, and I hoped he’d relay the message back to my dad.

  After finishing my meal, I returned to my bedroom. I turned all the lights off and sat in complete darkness to give the illusion that I was asleep. Just after 10.30 pm, my dad returned and I dived under the covers. I heard him opening the front door, putting his keys down, walking to my door and pausing, just outside. I held my breath as the handle quietly turned, snapping my eyes shut as my door slowly opened. My heart was pounding and it felt like I could hear my blood rushing through my brain. He watched me for far longer than I thought he would. My skin crawled.