Dangerous Echoes

by Leisl Leighton

  ‘Of course I did. I am a qualified doctor.’

  ‘Erika is a forensic pathologist,’ Hartley explained as Steph’s brows rose.

  ‘Lucky there’s nobody here for her to see later,’ Grant joked.

  ‘It’s Grim’s job to not be funny, Grant, not yours,’ Steph said. Erika just looked confused. Steph rolled her eyes and packed up her kit. ‘Well, I think we’re done here. You should get that leg properly seen to.’ She pointed at Erika’s leg. ‘And Toby, you should go to the hospital to get a CT done.’ She held her hand up before Toby had a chance to protest. ‘Standard procedure for head injuries as you well know. We can take you both back if you like.’

  ‘That’s the last thing I need right now,’ Grim said. ‘If Coops can take us back, I’m going with him.’

  ‘Me too.’ Erika took Hartley’s hand again, which got eyebrow raises from the two paramedics. She pulled him toward his car. ‘Are you coming, Toby?’

  Grim waved goodbye to the paramedics, a resigned expression on his face, and followed them to Hartley’s Patrol, hopping in the back seat.

  As they drove down the highway, Hartley said, ‘I’ll organise a tow truck to come get your car.’

  Erika waved her hand. ‘That doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is the reason why someone ran us off the road. It has to be connected to our investigation. But how did they find out so quickly?’

  ‘It’s a small town. Everyone knows everything everyone else is doing.’ Normally that didn’t worry him, but right now, given the town’s gossip mill had endangered Erika and Toby, it worried him a lot. ‘I’ll talk to the Boss. We’ll make sure nothing else gets out.’

  ‘Let’s hope the Sarge can track down that ute.’

  Hartley nodded. A creeping sensation ran down the back of his neck. He had a feeling they would never find the ute. And that Erika and Toby being run off the road was just the tip of the iceberg. ‘Someone has gone to a lot of trouble covering up the murders, and they’ve just shown us they’ll go further to ensure we don’t continue our investigation.’ He took her hand in his, squeezed. ‘You need to be careful. They wouldn’t have expected you to be here or that you’d be so brilliant at what you do, but now they know, they might come after you again.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t care. All I care about is catching those responsible for killing my brother. I’ll trust you to take care of my safety.’

  He stared at her for a moment before returning his attention to the road, his mind playing over her words. Was that true? Did she trust him? He had to know. Because if she did truly trust him, then what they felt for each other really stood a chance.

  But first, he had to make sure nothing more happened to her while investigating these murders. Once that was done, they would see to the possibility of their future together.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The drive back was quiet. When they got to the hospital, Erika wanted to go straight to the morgue, but Hartley insisted she and Toby be checked out by a doctor first. She didn’t argue. She could feel Hartley looking at her and had to work hard not to shake, to want to bury herself in his arms and lose herself to his kiss once more because now the adrenaline rush was fading, all she could think of was the horror of that moment when she’d been driven off the road. It hadn’t been the same as the night her parents had died—it was daylight, she was driving, and the road was completely different. They hadn’t rolled and there were no trees for the car to end up wrapped around, but even so, she’d still had difficulty pulling herself together. Emotions had rushed over her, her strength crumbling around her in a whoosh, the world moving and swaying, but then Toby hurt himself. Seeing his blood, his pale face, had snapped something inside of her. Fury enveloped her, filling the cold emptiness that had been growing bigger and bigger since she’d come back to town. The fury brought with it ice-like clarity and she’d been able to tend Toby, hands as steady as a surgeon’s.

  She needed to get back to that feeling, to not give in to the fear and the panic and the need, that huge, unquentiable need, she’d felt when Hartley had taken her in his arms and kissed her. It had swept over her, swept through her, wiping away all worry, all fear, all doubt, and she couldn’t let it happen again because for that moment, she’d forgotten her purpose. And she was nothing without purpose. It was the only thing that had seen her through all the bad times and it was the only thing that could truly help her now.

  She must solve Peter’s murder. That had to be the only thing that mattered right now.

  Hartley wanted to wait with her to see the doctor, but she made him leave – he had paperwork to finish and leads to follow. By the time Doctor Baker came to do the examination, she had herself under control, answering the doctor’s questions as efficiently as possible.

  ‘You’re fine, but shock could set in,’ the older woman said, the serious look in her pleasant green eyes belying the smile on her face as she finished. ‘I suggest you rest up and take it easy for the next twenty-four hours.’

  Erika almost snorted in her face. That wasn’t going to happen. She had things to do. ‘I’ll take that under advisement, Doctor Baker. Thank you.’

  She hopped off the examination table, slung her backpack over her shoulders and went in search of Toby, but he’d been sent off for a CT. Damn it. She’d been hoping he’d come down to the lab with her and help. She’d just have to go by herself.

  She was almost at the lifts when Hartley turned the corner. She thought he’d still be at the station reporting on the accident. He must have rushed it. He really shouldn’t do that. She changed direction and walked toward him.

  A smile bloomed on his face as he saw her. ‘So, how are you?’

  ‘Well. And you?’

  He chuckled and shook his head. ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘She said what I already knew. I’m fine. A few bruises and the little cut on my leg, that’s all. So we can get back to work right away.’

  ‘All right. What do you want to do first?’

  ‘Go down to the lab and start looking at these new evidence samples.’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ The lift doors opened and they entered. The moment the door closed he took her hand, holding it firm. She knew she should say something, but she didn’t, just curled her fingers around his.

  The lift doors opened on the morgue floor. Instantly, Erika knew something was wrong. There was a strange smell in the air—not the antiseptic scent she was used to. It was stronger, oily. Just like…

  She began to move just as the siren went off.

  ‘Erika, wait!’

  She smelled the smoke before she pressed the green button to open the doors to the morgue. The sprinklers above her clicked and water streamed down over her head as the doors opened. Smoke billowed out of the room, but no flames followed. She couldn’t hear anything over the siren and the noise of the water pouring down from above, but when she darted into the morgue, she immediately located the source of the smoke.

  The boots taken from the bodies and the lab’s computer, smashed and mangled, had been dumped into one corner along with a pile of files, and set alight. What looked like a selection of sample slides and culture dishes were scattered around the lit pile, most destroyed beyond use. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Two of the doors were open in the refrigerated cabinets where the bodies were kept. The two drawers that held Peter and Tyler. They were empty.

  ‘No. No!’ Someone had stolen her brother’s body. Destroyed evidence. This couldn’t be happening. Things like this just didn’t happen.

  ‘Erika! What are you doing?’

  She spun. Hartley was standing behind her, dripping wet. ‘They’ve stolen Peter.’

  He looked around, the fire in his eyes matching exactly how she felt. ‘They couldn’t have gone far,’ Hartley said. ‘We must have just missed them.’

  His words were like electricity, lighting her up, pushing her into motion. She ran past him and out into the hallway. The body snatchers couldn’t
have taken the stairs. That left the lifts. And the only one that would ensure they wouldn’t be seen was the freight lift. Dead bodies were brought in and out of the morgue that way as a matter of course. Nobody would even think to question someone taking out two bodies. She raced to the lift. The floor number on the panel indicated it was at ground level. They might still be up there, loading the bodies they’d stolen. The exit stairs sign glowed green in her peripheral vision. Hartley’s heavy footsteps echoed behind her in the wet hallway. ‘Up here,’ she yelled over her shoulder. ‘They might still be there.’

  She slipped through the door, racing up the stairs, heart booming, as she took them three at a time. She was alive. She was flying. She needed to fly faster. She had to get them. They couldn’t do this to Peter. They’d already taken her brother’s life. They weren’t taking his body too.

  ‘Erika. Wait.’ Hartley’s voice, echoing up the stairs behind her. ‘They could be dangerous.’

  She didn’t care. The cold fury was back. If they were dangerous, so was she. She was a box jellyfish. An eastern brown snake. A poison dart frog. They’d made the mistake of messing with her, and now their time was limited. She would find them, and she would make them pay. She would make them pay. She burst out of the door next to the loading dock.

  It was empty.

  Sirens sounded in the distance, getting louder, the whoop-whoop sound thumping in her head alongside the beating of her heart. Water-soaked hair whipped against her face as she spun around, her backpack thumping against her spine as she searched the horizon for a van speeding away. Water dripped into her eyes, her breath razored her throat. Hartley exploded out of the door next to her, gun in hand. He saw her. Must have read her expression. He lowered the gun. ‘They’ve gone.’

  Yes. The men who’d destroyed evidence, had stolen dead bodies, who had most likely been responsible for killing her brother and were now trying to cover it all up, who had probably run her off the road, were gone. Fury rode over her again as she spun to fully face Hartley. ‘Your security here sucks!’

  He holstered his gun. ‘Yes. Although, in the hospital’s defence, nobody has ever bothered to steal from the morgue before.’

  ‘They’ve done more than steal from the morgue. They’ve stolen from me.’ She hit her fist against her chest, filled to the brim with furious purpose. ‘They’ve taken Peter. They’ve taken him and they’re not going to get away with it. I’m going to catch the criminals who did this and then they’re going to be sorry they ever made the mistake of stealing from me.’

  ‘Erika. You need to calm down.’ He gripped her shoulders.

  ‘No.’ She jerked away from him. ‘I don’t want to calm down. I want to work. I need to work.’

  ‘How will you do that?’ He pushed dripping hair out of his eyes and jerked his hand back to the door, to the mess they’d left downstairs, the burned pile of papers and melted plastic and splintered glass littering the corner of the morgue. ‘The bodies are missing and the evidence is destroyed.’

  She looked back out to the distance, to the endless earth and sky she’d always loved and yet had simultaneously thought of as a cruel glimpse of a freedom that could never be hers. She pushed those feelings down, under the fury, burying them in cold, sharp reason. Fingers curling around the strap of her backpack—thank goodness it was waterproof—she pulled it off her shoulder. Inside were her notes and the samples she’d taken from the explosion site and more, kept safe in a refrigerated thermos. But best of all, her memory stick with her back-up files and the X-rays were there. And her phone with the recording of the autopsy. She patted her bag. ‘They made a mistake. They thought everything was in the morgue, all the evidence, but they don’t know how I work. I keep copies of everything. And it’s all in here.’ She glared fiercely at the road that led from the hospital. ‘If there’s the slightest bit of evidence that leads to the people responsible, I will find it. I will track them down and make them pay.’

  ‘No.’ He stepped closer, gripping the hand wrapped around her backpack strap as if her life depended on it. He smiled down into her eyes, the green in his glinting with something she thought might be pride, pleasure. ‘We’ll track them down and we’ll make them pay. Together.’

  Oh god. His words. They threatened to unravel her, to sweep away the cold fury once again. And without that, she had nothing. She was about to pull away when the fire truck pulled up behind them.

  ***

  Hours later, once the site had been cleared by the firefighters, they re-entered the wet, smoky mess that had been the morgue.

  Everyone—police, firefighters, ambulance officers—who was free had come to help with the clean-up. They worked with clenched jaws and furious eyes, helping to put the morgue back to rights after all the evidence had been photographed, tagged and bagged. The place was too wet to dust for fingerprints, but everything else that could be done had been done. Now all that needed doing was to make a space where Erika could get to work. Most evidence she worked on helped to prove a case, but sometimes it also helped to find the perpetrators. Real life wasn’t like television shows where DNA, blood, particulates and hair left at the scene inevitably led to the suspect, but sometimes, just sometimes, it did. According to Hartley, Ben had interviewed people of interest in the drug trade in the few days since the bodies had been found, but while he was certain they were lying, he had no proof. They didn’t even have enough proof to link these people to drugs going through the town. They needed something, anything, to tie these people to these crimes.

  Erika was their only hope to do that.

  It was strange, but even in Melbourne, working with the coroner’s office and the police, Erika had never felt so much a part of something before. She’d always found contentment in her job, had felt welcomed and esteemed, liked even, but not this kind of fierce sense of belonging to something so much greater than her. It would have been frightening, the kind of thing she would have instinctively run from in the past, except for the fact that she had to find Peter. That alone helped her to focus.

  Finally, the morgue was cleaned up enough so that she could go to work. Thankfully none of the equipment she needed to use, aside from the lab’s computer, had been damaged by the small amount of smoke and the water. She walked with Toby and Hartley to the door to thank everyone, but only Mac and Ben were still there.

  As the door opened to show the two tall men, Toby halted at her side. ‘Ah shit,’ she heard him mumble. She turned to see what was wrong, but he was already walking away back through the morgue to disappear through the X-ray doors.

  She would have followed him to check he was feeling okay, except Hartley pulled her forward.

  ‘Where did the Boss go?’ he asked the two other police officers.

  ‘She’s following up a lead from one of the hospital staff we interviewed,’ Ben said, gaze darting to the closing X-ray door before snapping back to Hartley. ‘One of the cleaners was outside having a smoko when he saw an ambulance back up to the loading dock. He just thought they were unloading another body to the morgue. He finished his smoke, so he went back inside and didn’t see anyone get out of the ambulance. I called the station and apparently one of their ambulances is missing. The Boss is at the station now talking to the paramedics on duty at the time of the incident.’

  Hartley rubbed his jaw. ‘They stole an ambulance so they could steal the bodies without anyone asking questions?’

  ‘Sounds like it.’

  ‘They’ve got some balls. Can you let me know what comes of the interview with the paramedics?’

  Ben nodded. ‘Sure thing. I’ll go and join the Boss now.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to the Cooee with the others?’ Mac asked.

  Ben looked down at his watch. ‘I’m still on duty for two hours. Later maybe. Will you guys be there?’

  ‘I’m going to stay and help Erika and Toby, wherever he’s gone,’ Hartley said.

  Ben shuffled his feet, gaze darting back to the closed X-ray door as he stuck
his hands in his pockets. ‘You don’t need me to stay, do you?’

  ‘No. I don’t like too many people around when I work,’ Erika said. ‘You’d be more of a distraction than a help. Unless you have any knowledge of the pathological or forensic sciences.’ She looked between Mac and Ben.

  Mac made a snorting noise. ‘Afraid I flunked science. Grim in there’s your man for that.’

  ‘Yes, I already know of Toby’s proficiency in the forensic sciences.’

  ‘Yes, Toby is nothing if not proficient,’ Ben said.

  Erika observed a strange look cross Ben’s face, but she couldn’t understand what it was, or why Hartley and Mac were suddenly shuffling their feet and stuffing their hands in their pockets.

  Mac broke the uncomfortable silence. ‘We might not be able to help with the sciency stuff, but do you want us to stick around and watch your back?’

  Erika frowned. ‘Why would I need my back watched?’

  ‘In case word gets out that you are still doing work on samples?’

  ‘That’s unlikely given Harts promised he’d make certain no further information got out about this case.’

  Mac laughed. ‘You’ve been away too long, EJ. Gossip is king here and secrets are never kept for long.’

  ‘We didn’t tell anyone else about the double samples I kept.’ She looked at Hartley. ‘If everyone does their job, there should be no gossip.’

  Hartley’s mouth twisted. ‘What Mac is trying to say is, even if everyone keeps their mouth shut, it will still get out you are here working in the morgue. And if you’re in the morgue, people will guess you’re still working on something pertinent to the case.’

  ‘I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘That’s what we’re here for. To consider the big picture so you sciency types can concentrate on the particulars,’ Mac said, face splitting into an even bigger grin.