Dangerous Echoes

by Leisl Leighton

  If there were two things Katherine Stuart didn’t like more than being ignored and overridden, they were drugs cropping up in her town and the murder of Echo Springs’s citizens.

  She sat in her high-backed chair, greying hair pulled back into a tight bun, her lips held in a steady line as she looked at the papers in front of her. After a long moment, she lifted her head. ‘She is certain?’

  ‘She would stake her reputation on her conclusions—and that’s saying something.’

  Katherine waved her hand. ‘Yes, yes. I’ve read her file.’ She splayed her hands flat over the report, her gaze flinty. ‘So, this is a murder investigation.’ Her lips pursed. ‘You have put me in a difficult position, Detective Senior Constable.’

  ‘I know. And I’m sorry for it.’

  She tipped her head. ‘Are you?’ Her gaze was assessing. ‘I think you are sorry for disobeying my orders, but as far as the rest…’ She let out a harsh breath that could have been a laugh, except he knew her good humour would have fled to the Simpson Desert the moment she’d heard what he’d done. ‘With Detective Charles on stress leave, we have nobody here with enough experience to take the lead in a murder investigation.’

  ‘I am more than happy to take the lead.’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’ Her sarcasm was sharp enough to draw blood, but he stood still, hands behind his back, ready and willing to take whatever punishment she decreed was fitting for his crime. ‘I know you couldn’t stop Ms Hanson from calling her boss and going behind our backs, but there is still the little matter of you disobeying a direct order and helping her to do the autopsy before it was approved. If I give you this case, it would be tantamount to a pat on the back for a job well done. I really should put a request through for a detective from Dubbo or Sydney to come and take on this case.’

  Ice ran down his back. He didn’t want to lose this case, he couldn’t. He had to be the one to work with Erika. He didn’t let any of that show though. ‘I understand.’

  ‘However, there’s the matter of what Ms Hanson has written here.’ She held up a piece of paper. ‘She states that she would prefer you to be the investigating officer on the case, that you disobeying my order was completely her doing and you being there was necessary because otherwise the correct chain of evidence wouldn’t have been maintained so you were doing your job.’ He brow rose as she looked up at him. He maintained the perfect poker face. She pressed her lips together and looked down at the file again. ‘Then she says without her, we wouldn’t know this was a murder and would miss the chance to follow the leads while still fresh. Then she goes on to praise your professionalism and state that without you, there would be no case.’

  Hartley only just managed to stop the pleasure those words brought from showing on his face.

  ‘I don’t like to be blackmailed, Detective.’

  That wiped the small smile from his face. ‘I don’t think she would have meant that as blackmail, Boss. You don’t know her.’

  She waved her hand again. ‘Your father has told me about her.’

  ‘My father doesn’t like her.’

  ‘I know. I also called her boss in Melbourne after I got the call from the New South Wales Coroner’s Office approving her request to be loaned out for this case. He said Ms Hanson was the best at what she did and if anyone could help find the truth of things, it was her.’

  ‘You called her boss?’

  Her brow rose a fraction. ‘Of course.’ She looked down at the report again. ‘She’s as good as promised.’ Her lips moved silently. Hartley stood still, waiting for her decision. Finally, she looked up at him, gaze still flinty, but her lips weren’t still pressed in a harsh line. ‘You have the lead on this, Detective Senior Constable.’

  ‘Thank you, Superintendent.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. Given I apparently have no choice about allowing Ms Hanson to work on this case, and given I have no other detective at the moment and can’t request another to be transferred without having to explain to my seniors how you and Ms Hanson jumped the gun on the autopsy, I have no choice.’ She pointed her finger at him. ‘Work with her and get this solved. I don’t like murders happening in my town.’ She held up her finger before he could respond. ‘But from now on, everything by the book. Do you understand? One more show of “independence” on your part, and you’ll be on immediate suspension with no pay.’

  ‘I’m a bit surprised I’m not on that now.’

  She huffed out a laugh. ‘Quite frankly, so am I.’ She closed the file and held it out to him, but when he went to take it, she didn’t let go. ‘Don’t let me down, Cooper. I won’t be so lenient next time.’

  ‘Understood, Superintendent Stuart.’ He saluted her.

  She nodded, and let the file go into his hand. ‘Constable Fields is still to work with you but rope Mac in as well—this case is turning into more than a two-man job. Update him on what you know and then get him out interviewing family and friends. One of them could be a suspect.’

  ‘Yes Boss.’

  ‘Now go. Catch me a murderer.’

  ‘Yes Boss.’

  Everyone was staring as he walked out and into the main floor of the station. Ben ‘Strawberry’ Fields shot him a sympathetic look. Hartley gestured back to the office he’d just come from. ‘She wants you on the case with me. And Mac.’

  ‘You’re still on it?’

  ‘Holding on like grim death.’ Ben nodded his appreciation, but didn’t laugh. ‘Did you see anything else out at the site yesterday arvo that we missed?’

  ‘No, but I was looking at it as a drug accident, not murder, so maybe there is something. Should we head out now?’

  ‘No. Erika and Grim are on their way out there now. They’ll let us know if they find something. Let’s go over what else we’ve got.’ He led Ben into the case room and together they went over the evidence on the board, adding the movements of the murder victims in the previous week that Ben had verified the day before and that morning as well as what Erika had discovered.

  ‘I’ll go out and interview again with this fresh information in mind,’ Ben said when they were done.

  ‘Good. Let me know what you find.’ Ben left. Hartley looked down at his watch. It had been a good hour and a half since he’d left Erika. He needed to tell her they had the official go-ahead to investigate. Knowing her, she was probably still out at the site of the explosion collecting evidence. He was on his way out when Siobhan stuck her head out of the dispatch office.

  ‘A 000 call just came in about your friend, Erika Hanson.’

  ‘What?’ Fear prickled down his spine. Had she had another episode while viewing the place her brother had died? ‘Where?’

  ‘Her car has been run off the road on Old Station Road near the abandoned warehouses.’

  Before Siobhan could say anything more, he sprinted past her and outside. A minute later he was on the road, lights and sirens blaring, heart well and truly lodged in his mouth. Thoughts of her parents and how they’d died flooded his mind.

  Bloody hell. It was taking too long even at speed, lights and sirens blazing, to get to her. Why on earth had he let her go out there without him?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Hartley drove over a rise. In the distance, where there was a tight bend in Old Station Road, the back end of a silver Holden sedan—Erika’s car—stuck out of a deep, wide ditch. The ditch had been a measure to dissuade kangaroos from bounding onto the road when there’d been a lot of road-train traffic in and out of the area. For cars run off the road, it was a potential death trap.

  As he drove closer, he saw two people standing on the far side of the car. The taller one was leaning against the upturned tail, and the shorter one was standing in front of him. Toby and Erika. Erika was holding something to Toby’s head. She looked unhurt. A bit dishevelled, but otherwise okay. And playing doctor. If he wasn’t so worried, he might have laughed at the picture of her tending to an obviously embarrassed Toby.

  He took a deep breath, the
first in the last few minutes, the tightness in his chest loosening somewhat. They were okay. They were both okay. He’d been so worried, not just that she might have been injured, but that the nature of the accident might have pushed her over the edge again. Her parents had died in a car accident after being run off the road, and Erika had been in the car. Yet she didn’t seem to be affected, standing there calmly, doctoring Toby.

  He pulled in beside them, turning off the lights and sirens. Toby pushed himself upright, but Erika said something snappy to him and he leaned back against the car again.

  ‘Are you both okay?’ Hartley asked as he climbed out of the Patrol. Erika turned. Her clothes were dusty and there was a smudge of blood on her t-shirt, and a small cut on her leg. ‘You’re hurt.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She waved off his concern. ‘But Toby isn’t. Some idiot ran us off the road.’

  She said it like she couldn’t believe the audacity. Like it was the greatest insult that someone would not only try, but succeed in running her off the road. Laughter burst out of him, and he wondered if this was what it was like to feel hysterical. In fact, now that the panic and fear had subsided, now he knew they were both okay, he was furious.

  ‘You could have been killed,’ he said, reaching out for her, taking her shoulders in his hands and pulling her close. ‘You could have been killed.’ He buried his face in her hair, breathing in her scent—wildflowers with a hint of something spicy, mixed now with the road dust.

  ‘Harts.’

  At the husky sound of his name on her lips, he pulled back and seeing the life in her eyes, the slight hint of bewilderment, he took her face in his hands and kissed her.

  This was nothing like the kiss they’d shared two days earlier. That had been anger and surprise and a ‘you shouldn’t have left’ kind of kiss. This was relief and bliss and an acknowledgment of what was in his heart. He loved her. So much that he suddenly knew he couldn’t let her go. He’d thought it would be best for her to leave this town, but it wasn’t best for her to leave him. She was good for him and he was good for her. Or he intended to be. Intended to find a way to share this love between them. Because she loved him. He knew it with every fibre of his being in the same way he knew he loved her. He’d seen it in the flare of her eyes when he’d first walked into the interrogation room at the station, when she’d leaned forward and called him ‘Cooperman’, as if she still acknowledged that they were each other’s superheroes. He knew it in the way she’d asked him if she could do the autopsy. She would never have asked anyone else. That was her leaning on him, relying on him—and Erika never leaned or relied on anyone. He knew it in the way she’d argued with him, showing emotion that she didn’t show anyone else. He knew it in the way she’d broken in front of him and the way her gaze hadn’t met his that morning when it had met Pip’s and Daphne’s and even Mac’s, because his opinion was the one that mattered the most. He’d known it in the way she’d responded to their first kiss, but most of all, he knew it in the way she kissed him now. With no hesitation. As if she was ready for it. Needed it. Wanted it.

  Exactly the way he was kissing her.

  Warm, exploring, giving, open-mouthed kisses. Her tongue met his, licking, tasting, stroking. Her lips were soft and plump and lingered with every movement, as if she never wanted to let go of him.

  Hell, he knew that feeling.

  He slid his hands into her hair, completely dislodging the already messy ponytail, fingers sliding through the silky strands. She moaned, a little sound of pleasure in the back of her throat. He smiled against her lips, nipped at them. She moaned again then nipped his lips. Christ that felt good. He ran his hands down her back and pulled her closer, needing to feel the warmth, the life of her crushed against him. Her hands slid from his shoulders to his back and held him tight in response.

  ‘Ahem. Just so you know, I’m still here.’ Toby’s voice infiltrated the fog of passion and need surging through Hartley, but only enough to make him slow down, to press lingering kisses to her lips, to stroke the hair back from her face.

  ‘Despite the fact I’m a fireman, there are some fires I can’t put out.’

  ‘Who said I wanted you to?’ Hartley said, unwilling to stop entirely. He was holding Erika. Kissing Erika. And she was right there with him. And it was bliss.

  ‘Ah, you might be interested to note that those sirens you hear in the distance are the ambulance. And by the looks of it, another patrol car. I think it might be the Sarge, Coops.’

  That did snap through Hartley’s passion-fog. He pulled back from Erika just enough to turn his head toward the sound of the sirens. Damn it. He knew that patrol car. It was his dad.

  Erika moved out of his arms, but he caught her hand, holding tight. She didn’t fight him. Grim’s lips almost twitched into a smile.

  The patrol car overtook the ambulance and came to a brake-squealing stop on the dusty verge opposite them, a cloud of red dirt spraying up across the potted bitumen. ‘Where’s the fire?’ he called out to the large police officer who exited the car and strode over to them.

  Sergeant Harry Cooper ignored the fireman’s joke, his gaze arrowing in on Hartley and Erika, their joined hands. ‘Is anyone hurt?’

  Erika’s chin lifted and an air of calm descended over her that was truly impressive. ‘Only minor injuries, Sergeant. The airbags deployed efficiently. Fireman Grimshaw here has a head laceration that will need to be checked. He fell over and hit his head on the bumper when he climbed up to the road to catch the license plate of the offending car.’ Toby groaned and rolled his eyes. Erika turned back to him. ‘Are you in pain, Toby?’

  ‘No,’ Grim said, his gaze flicking to Hartley and then the sergeant, before leaning in toward Erika. ‘It would be nice if not everyone knew I was a klutz.’

  ‘You’re lucky Mac isn’t here,’ Hartley said. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked as Erika freed her hand from his and began to work her way back down to the car.

  ‘I just want to get my backpack.’

  ‘I’ll get it for you.’

  ‘No you won’t. I’m quite capable of getting it, thank you,’ and she was down the ditch before he could move. He frowned and made a noise under his breath.

  ‘Did you catch the licence plate?’ the sergeant asked.

  Grim pointed to his head. ‘No, just my head on the edge of the car.’

  The Sarge pressed his lips together in obvious disapproval then pulled out his always present pencil and pad and asked, ‘Can you tell me anything else?’

  Grim scratched his head and winced. ‘It was a white ute with a silver tray. Ford, I think. Quite new. I didn’t see the driver. It all happened pretty fast.’

  Sergeant Cooper grunted. ‘That’s not much use to us. There’s about 100 white Ford utilities licensed to townspeople alone, and that doesn’t include all the vehicles used on the properties for one hundred miles around.’

  ‘This one will have a bit of a dent in the side, and possibly some silver paint from where it scraped against the side of Erika’s car.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The Sarge flipped open his note pad and wrote a few scratchy notes.

  ‘Help me up please.’ Erika had her backpack over her shoulder, a first-aid case in one hand, the other outstretched. Hartley leaned down and helped her up the last section. ‘Thank you.’ She flashed him a smile he felt all the way down to his knees, and then flipping open the little case, began to get out gauze and saline solution. ‘I’ll see to your cut, Toby.’

  ‘You should leave the professionals to do that,’ the sergeant said as the ambulance pulled up. ‘Besides, you should see to yourself. You’ve got a cut on your leg there, girl. I thought you said there were no injuries except for Fireman Clumsy over there.’

  Erika greeted his father’s words with a completely neutral expression. If he hadn’t known better, he’d think she’d never met his dad before and that he hadn’t made her life a little slice of hell. ‘Thank you for pointing that out, Sergeant Cooper. I thought you were ref
erring to potentially dangerous injuries, like Fireman Grimshaw’s.’ She pulled the ‘bandage’ away from Grim’s head—it was the green shirt she’d worn over her plain white singlet that morning and was now ruined—and began to clean the wound with the saline. ‘If you’re interested, the car that ran us off the road was a white Ford Ranger utility with a flatbed tray, license plate number C1S56G.’

  ‘You saw the license-plate number while you were being run off the road?’ Sergeant Cooper asked, his tone incredulous.

  ‘I have an eidetic memory,’ she replied crisply. ‘I remember everything I see.’ She returned to cleaning Toby’s wound.

  ‘Well,’ the Sarge grumped, his pencil scratching across his pad. ‘I’ll follow this up then. If you’ve got everything else in hand here?’ he asked Hartley.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I’ll be off then.’ He turned to go, but as Grant and Steph, the paramedics, passed him, he said to them, ‘Watch that one. Thinks she’s smart enough to take over everyone’s jobs.’

  The paramedics looked bewildered before they shrugged and kept walking. Everyone liked his dad, but they all knew he could be a grouchy old bastard sometimes.

  ‘You banged your head again, Grim? Patching you up is getting to be a habit,’ Steph said as she put down her kit.

  Erika turned to face Steph. ‘He hit his head trying to get the license-plate number of the car. It had nothing to do with being a klutz.’ She glanced back at Toby, nodding and smiling.

  Toby snorted. ‘Thanks, Erika.’

  Hartley laughed at his expression. He’d often felt the same way in the past when dealing with Erika’s cluelessness when it came to social situations. Annoying and adorable.

  ‘Toby not being a klutz. I’ll believe that when I see it,’ Grant snorted.

  ‘It was very heroic,’ Erika continued.

  ‘Sure it was,’ Steph said, smirking, as Toby groaned louder and Erika looked even more clueless. ‘Let’s look at this heroic injury then.’ A moment later, Steph nodded at Erika. ‘You did a good job here.’