by Candice Fox
“Sorry, sir.” I cleared my throat.
“What’s the issue?” he grunted.
I tore open the desk and felt for the Masonite board. It was gone. Lifting the entire drawer out of the desk and dumping it on the surface proved only to make a mess of my stationery. I pulled out the two remaining drawers and rifled through them. Captain James stood by, scratching the back of his wrinkled neck.
“As unlikely as it might sound,” he said, “mysteries are not my thing.”
“There were some photographs here, seconds ago, belonging to Doyle. They were . . . compromising photos, sir, of a criminal nature.” I struggled, looking at the mess on my desk. “I . . . I just . . .”
Captain James’s drooping bulldog eyes surveyed mine. I let my hands drop by my sides.
“Uh huh.” He finally nodded, tapping his coffee mug with his index finger. “No more coffee for you, Bennett. We’re about to undertake a major sting operation and you’re worried about missing happy snaps. Wise up, will ya?”
I went back through my drawers as he walked away. I even flipped through the papers on the desk, absurdly convinced the photographs had been found by someone else and misplaced. I heard Eric’s laughter from the smokers’ balcony and looked up to see him exchanging stories with one of the owls. He turned, stubbed out his cigarette and grinned at me through the glass doors.
My advance towards the doorway frightened the owl into the corner of the balcony. He gripped the steel rail as I ripped open the door and stepped out, slamming it behind me.
“Why?”
“Why what?” Eric smirked.
“The photographs,” I said. “Why did you take them? What have you done with them?”
“Naw. You’re talking in riddles now, Frankie. How cute.”
I grabbed the front of Eric’s flak jacket in my fists and shoved him into the balcony rail. The owl slurred a panicked excuse and dashed inside the office. Eric’s smile didn’t falter. He looked at me in an almost sympathetic way. I could feel my pulse ticcing in my neck.
“What was I going to find?” I asked. “Was your face a feature in those pictures?”
“I told you you’d have to be quicker, Frankie.” His voice dropped, became unfamiliar and chilling. “I told you you were running with wolves.”
I released him. His smile was rigid. The morning air felt painful in my lungs.
“Why would you want to protect a man like that?”
“I think his undertaker would agree that our mutual friend Doyle is far beyond my protection.”
I seethed. Some of the owls were watching us from inside the bull pen, their novelty coffee mugs frozen in their fingers with phrases like “Hands off my Inflated Ego!” and “I’ve got PMS and a handgun . . . any questions?” emblazoned on them. Defeat prickled in me. Eric smoothed out his jacket. He knew I wasn’t going to hit him, not here, and there was doubt in my mind that I could make contact even if I tried. The force of the slap he had given me in the men’s room of The Hound was at the forefront of my mind. He could move fast. Faster than an old man like me.
“Get ahold of yourself, will you, Frank?” Eric shook his head as he walked inside. “You’re putting everybody on edge.”
You can’t prove anything, I thought as I pulled my car into the lot behind the Liquorland on Malabar Road, five hundred meters from the Turners’ house. I wedged my car behind five or six other unmarked police cars and turned off the headlights.
You can’t prove anything.
What did I really have, if it came to the moment when I would stand face-to-face with Eden and Eric and accuse them of covering for Doyle’s sickness? What did I have even then, other than my own assumption that they had serious reasons for not wanting anyone to know what Doyle did to those women? Maybe Doyle had been a monster. Maybe Eric had discovered it. Maybe he had stepped in when I had been about to expose this information to the captain of our station and inevitably to the world. It could have been nothing more than a desperate gesture to preserve a dead man’s dignity. Maybe it was more than that. Maybe the photographs had something to do with Doyle’s death.
Why would Eric want to hide anything relating to Doyle’s death? Whatever it was, without the photographs themselves I had nothing to go on. I was beginning to wonder if I had really seen them in the first place.
I stood outside my car in the dark, just beyond earshot of the gathering of patrol and SWAT officers at the back door of the Liquorland. I didn’t hear Eden approaching, her boots soft on the gravel.
She didn’t say hello. I lifted my eyes, and she was simply there, looking at me, waiting for me to speak.
You can’t prove anything.
“You know what’s important, don’t you, Frank?” Eden said softly. In the distance I could hear the crunch of waves on the beach and for a moment the sound seemed to rattle in my chest.
“I know what’s important,” I said.
“We’re going to catch this killer tonight, aren’t we?”
“We most certainly are.”
Eden held my gaze for a long moment, saying nothing. Then she turned away, heading back towards the gathering of cops. The breath rushing in and out of my mouth left a mist in the night air. Eden wanted me to keep my mind on the job. How had she known it was wandering?
With a thundering heart I followed Eden towards the group. The Velcro flap at the back of her flak jacket was up, a single word in fluorescent white letters read POLICE. Across the circle of men and women I saw Eric, who had already caught sight of me. He was grinning in the light of yellow flashlights, shadows dancing under his cold blue eyes. He pulled a dark cap over his hair and I watched as his eyes disappeared. Now I couldn’t tell if he was watching me or not. A hollow feeling crept through my stomach, pressing at the insides of my ribs. Eric mouthed some words and I jolted when I worked out what he was saying.
Want to play a game?
“As soon as any car pulls into the street I want it caged by checkpoints here and here.” Captain James, standing at the center of the circle, pointed to a map he had spread out on the hood of one of the cars. “Feed the registration check directly to me. The code word for our boy is ‘Chopper.’ The code word for central command is ‘Bird.’”
My face was already burning, the sensation spreading down my neck like a bushfire on a hillside. My black cotton shirt was sticking to my chest. I pulled my cap down low over my eyes and glanced at the map, hardly taking anything in as the captain gave directions to each of the teams. There was a slow, sizzling energy in the men and women standing around me in the dark. They were shuffling on their feet and clapping their hands together softly, drawing ragged marks in the gravel with the heels of their boots like bulls awaiting the opening of a gate.
Eden took her pistol out and loaded a mag. Then she slipped her pocketknife from her belt, snapped it open, and examined the blade in the flickering beam of the flashlight.
You know what’s important, don’t you, Frank?
I closed my eyes, drew a long breath and let it out slow.
What’s important is catching the killer before he takes more innocent lives, I told myself. That’s my job. That’s what I’m here for. I’m not here to chase ghosts. I’m not here to follow hunches. I’m here to protect innocent lives.
My eyes snapped open as Eden shouldered past me. I followed her around the side of the Liquorland and into the main street, darting between shadows, on her heels, the faint perfume she always carried with her, of shampoo and incense, filling my nostrils. I tried to keep pace, but every time she arrived at a corner or crouched by a small stone fence I was two steps behind. The sensation of not knowing where Eric was in the dark streets sent chills snaking up my spine. I glanced around and saw the silhouettes of other officers, but when they stepped into the light it was never him. Eden took her position behind a car across the street and one house down from the Turner residence. I crawled into the shadow behind her, crouching so that my chin was level with her shoulder. I sat in silence for
a full minute before realizing my earpiece was hanging by my neck. Sweating, I fitted it into my ear.
“Bird to all units,” a voice in the earpiece called. “Status report.”
“Ground Unit One, set.”
“Ground Unit Two, set.”
“Ground Unit Three, set,” Eden whispered. Her voice inside my head felt like an intrusion, a slow taking over of my mind.
The checkpoint units and sky unit called in. Now and then I could hear the dull beating of helicopter blades, but it was keeping well off, doing laps of the coastline until called to avoid scaring the killer away.
We waited. Somewhere, someone was having a barbecue. The smell made me suddenly ravenous. It was an hour and a half before anything happened. Eden crouched, rigid as a stone, staring at the Turner house, where lights burned behind the drawn curtains. I squirmed in the silence, shifting my feet on the gravel, sinking down to my knees to try to relieve the tension in my ankles. It seemed to me that Eden was hardly breathing. Her silhouette was as motionless as a statue and for a moment I thought of reaching out to touch her, just to be sure she was really still there.
“Checkpoint A, we have a suspect sighted.”
“Ground Unit Three checking registration.”
“Roger,” Bird confirmed.
I rolled up onto my haunches and turned towards the checkpoint. A bronze Toyota van had pulled into the street. The ground unit, stationed in the next street with a mobile patrol unit, began looking up the registration details of the van.
“Negative on that one. Registration checks out, Bird.”
I watched the car turn into a driveway three doors down. Two children leaped out of the vehicle and ran to the front door, while a man and a woman began unloading plastic shopping bags from the trunk.
Another hour passed. A huge black cockroach circled us curiously for a while and then disappeared. Shadows moved in the Turner house. I felt sweat rolling down my calves, catching in the hair, tickling in my socks. I wanted to talk to Eden but I was unsure if she would even answer. Her words rang between my ears, zinging in the silence of the street.
You know what’s important, don’t you?
The voice in my earpiece sent electricity through my chest.
“Checkpoint B, we have a suspect sighted.”
A small green car, possibly a Kia, had rolled into the street from the other end. The windows were tinted almost black. Numbness prickled in my feet as I got up onto my heels. Eden shifted slightly, watching the car as it rolled towards us.
“Ground Unit Three to Bird. This isn’t his street. Car registered to a Michael Dalley, Chatswood.”
“Bird to all units, we could have Chopper. Get ready, guys.”
Eden slid her gun silently out of the holster on her belt. I did the same, flicking the safety off. The green Kia rolled past us quietly, pulling along the side of the road outside the Turner house. The lights on the car flicked off but no one exited. Trembling, I pressed a hand into the pebblecrete driveway I was crouching on, steadying myself in preparation for dashing forward.
“Steady all units,” Bird murmured.
Another minute. I counted the seconds as the car remained still. The sound of the door popping open echoed around the street like a gunshot. A man exited, tall and dark-haired, wearing a faded orange cap down over his eyes and carrying a black shoulder bag on his hip. Eden rose swiftly and began to run as the man moved towards the door. Suddenly, I was surrounded by running people. A cop from Ground Unit Two got there first, crash-tackling the man to the front step as he reached for the Turners’ doorbell.
“Get down! Get down! Get down!”
“Police! Get on the fucking ground!”
A howling voice, the scrambling of limbs. The radio was a wash of voices in my ear.
“Chopper is being subdued, call for patrol unit.”
Eden shoved aside the nearest cop and grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt.
I looked down at my feet as I recognized a smell. The bag the man had been carrying was crushed under my foot. The toe of my right boot was submerged in what I knew intimately to be butter chicken on jasmine rice, accompanied by what appeared to be Peshwari naan bread. One of my bachelor cuisine favorites.
“Christ!” someone yelled. Eden pulled the cap off the boy’s head. The logo on the front read CURRY 4 U.
“Please, please, don’t hurt me,” the boy sobbed, his hands shaking visibly in the air. A wave of panic rippled through the people around me. The Turners’ door opened and three officers tumbled out onto the porch, guns drawn.
“It’s not him.”
“Bird to all units. Withdraw. Withdraw.”
“We’ve fucked it,” I seethed. “All of it.”
I turned. At the south checkpoint, an unmarked car had been drawn out onto the road to block any attempt to escape. This was now unmanned, the officers having sprinted towards what was almost certainly Chopper, lying on the porch under the hands of fifteen men.
Beside the checkpoint was a single dark figure sitting astride a motorcycle, watching the commotion. As I spotted him, he turned and kicked the engine into life.
“Come on.” I grabbed a fistful of Eden’s jacket. “That’s him, come on!”
Eden beat me in the sprint to the patrol car parked at the checkpoint. I threw myself into the passenger seat as she began to pull away, the tires screeching as they momentarily failed to grip the wet road. I tugged the microphone out of my collar, grabbing the roof with my other hand to steady myself as Eden swung the car around a corner.
“Ground Unit Three to Bird, pursuing Chopper on Malabar Road heading south.”
Nothing came back to me. In the tense moments while I awaited a response, Eden leaned forward over the wheel, knuckles white in their grip. I was so wired that I jumped in my seat and smacked my skull against the roof of the car when a hand touched my neck.
“Isn’t this fun, comrades?”
Eric laughed and spread his arms over the backseats as though enjoying a carriage ride in the park. I had not heard him get into the car at the checkpoint. I wondered if he had been sitting there already when Eden and I climbed in.
I couldn’t think about Eric’s presence for long. Eden cut across a flat roundabout, screaming through a set of lights after the motorcyclist, who breezed between the cars on the main road. The patrol car flew over the hill towards Maroubra Junction. In the windows of a dozen tiny salt-sprayed apartments, people were watching television and sitting down for dinner. Eden blasted through another intersection, the red of the lights reflected in the rain on the road.
“Unit Three, we’re backing you up. Hang tight, keep the reports coming.”
Two marked cars, lights flashing, appeared on the road behind us. Eden gained and then lost ground on the motorcyclist. The man on the bike cut between two passing trucks, causing her to slam on the brakes. She followed at a distance, the red eye of his taillight blinking between the passing cars as we entered and then left the motorway. On Botany Road, the rider seemed to decide where he was going, leaning forward on the bike and gunning it between the cars waiting at the lights.
“Fucker,” Eden growled. She let out a short, hard sigh. “He’s heading for the airport. He’ll lose the helicopter out there and we’ll lose him in the crowd.”
“Ground Unit Three to Bird, Chopper is heading to Sydney Airport via Botany Road.”
I could almost hear Captain James swearing on the other end of the line. If the killer got into the airport, it would be a nightmare trying to find him.
“We’ll try to cut the entrances off before he gets there. Stay on him.”
“No chance.” Eric laughed from behind me. “He’s going to make it with room for an espresso.”
Eric was right. The red taillight of the motorcycle zipped right across an intersection of nine lanes of traffic, gliding down the domestic terminal lane like a kid on a bicycle. Eden wove and screeched into the intersection, leaning on her horn. By the time we reached the lineup
of taxis waiting to pick up new arrivals the black helmet and leather-jacketed shoulders of the rider were bobbing through the traffic a hundred meters ahead of us. Eden threw the car into park and jumped out, dashing ahead of me. I sprinted onto the road, running between the cars.
“Police! Get out of the way!”
Ahead, the rider abandoned the bike and helmet and ran through the automatic doors into the terminal building. The crowd waiting at the taxi rank scattered as I approached, my gun hanging by my side.
I glanced behind me to try and find Eric but he was gone. There were five hundred or so people in the check-in area. No one was running. Fat elderly men in Hawaiian shirts. Young ladies in pantsuits. Army guys lugging duffel bags. The stairs to the food court were loaded with people laughing, talking, carrying plastic trays.
A plump airport security guard, already sweating, wobbled up to my side, his pistol in hand. I flashed my ID, barely looking at him. In a glance I saw clear pale skin over rounded cheeks, eyes pinched at the corners by fat. I dropped my eyes to his name badge, hardly aware of his presence in my tangled thoughts.
My name is Chester and I take jokes about airport security very seriously.
“You got comms to all units in the building?” I asked.
“Sure do,” he nodded eagerly.
“You’re looking for a white male, six foot something, wearing a black biker jacket and jeans.”
The security guard grabbed his radio and gave the report. Without waiting for him I ran off toward the restaurants, stopping at the top of the stairs to scan the hundred of diners.
If he had not been looking right at me, I might not have noticed him. The killer was standing at the far side, by a large blue fire door. As soon as I turned towards him, he slammed the silver bar on the door down. A great screeching alarm erupted through the dining area, causing every single person to freeze.
The killer disappeared through the fire escape. I ran down the stairs, sensing Eden as she fell into step beside me. On the way across the dining hall I knocked over a man standing with a tray in his hands, watching in numb shock as we approached. The alarm whirred overhead, buzzing in my ear canals.