Deadman’s Track

by Sarah Barrie

  ‘Huh? Oh, don’t know. It came in while you were out earlier, so I signed for it. It’s for you.’

  He opened the Express Post pack and pulled out a chocolate box wrapped in ribbon. ‘Interesting.’ He looked for a card, shook the bag, but found it empty. ‘Who’d be sending me chocolates?’

  ‘Don’t know, but if you don’t want them, pass them over.’

  He grinned and opened the box. ‘What the—’ He picked up a handful of photos. In the first he was at work, walking towards the office from his car. In another he was at home, pruning back the old wisteria vine. But the one that really got to him had been taken at Calico Lodge as he’d stood by the sick horse with Tess. In the bottom of the picture he could see the barrel of a gun pointed in their direction. As he put the lid down he noticed I won’t tell you again written on the inside.

  ‘Indy.’

  ‘Yeah?’ She looked up, her expression freezing as he tipped the box to show her.

  ‘He’s been following me.’

  She got up to look at the photos scattered on the table. ‘Scare tactics. He wants you to drop the case. We’re getting too close.’

  ‘Yeah and now he’s involved Tess.’

  ‘His first attempts didn’t work, so second option is to focus on people you care about, see if that works. You’re making him nervous enough to go to a lot of trouble.’

  ‘So first the rock through the window, then I’m run off the road, and now this. There’s two of us running this investigation, why concentrate on me?’

  ‘At a guess? Because for the most part I’m behind the scenes, I’m coordinating, I’m putting things together and making things happen, but you’re out on the street, you’re talking to people, you’re the face behind whatever lead has got him running scared.’

  A brief knock announced Emily’s arrival. ‘Hi, Tess is here,’ she said, as Tess walked in behind her. Jared had been hanging for her to arrive, but her timing couldn’t have been worse. Before he could get around the table, both Tess and Emily’s gazes went to the box. Tess stepped closer, her face reflecting shock, then confusion.

  ‘Tess.’ He stepped between her and the photos. ‘Don’t worry about it, okay? We’re sorting it.’

  ‘I have no doubt. Am I allowed to know who wants me dead?’

  ‘This is not about you. It’s about me and the investigation.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Emily said, looking paler than Tess. ‘I shouldn’t have charged in like that.’

  ‘We need to bag all this for evidence,’ Indy told her.

  ‘Yeah, of course.’ Emily left the room.

  ‘Tess, let’s get a coffee,’ Indy said.

  When Tess didn’t move, Jared touched a hand to the small of her back and guided her to the tea room after Indy.

  ‘Did the guy who ran you off the road send that?’ Tess asked.

  ‘Makes sense,’ he said. ‘Trying to scare me.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘No. I’m not scared, just aware I’ll need to be more cautious.’

  She nodded slowly and stared at the table, glancing up with a weak smile when Indy put a coffee in front of her. ‘Thanks. So … is he by any chance a serial killer?’

  ‘Heading in that direction,’ Indy muttered before returning to the kettle to pour two more coffees.

  ‘Only heading?’ Tess said. ‘I’ve faced worse then. Are we still grabbing dinner? Maybe you can tell me a bit more about what’s going on.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tess,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe. You should probably steer clear of me until we’ve got this guy. He might not be making empty threats.’

  Her eyes flashed with anger. ‘Right, except that picture there with me in it clearly says this arsehole knows who I am and where I live. So maybe I’m better off sticking close, right?’

  ‘She won’t back down,’ Indy muttered into her coffee.

  ‘Do you carry a gun everywhere?’ Tess asked him.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘How about you start?’

  He smiled at that, then waited while she answered her phone.

  ‘Tess Atherton.’ Tess’s hand slapped her forehead and her eyes focused on the ceiling. Went round. ‘He said what?’ she asked, voice deadly. After a brief pause, a string of easily decipherable swear words poured silently from her mouth. ‘That’s not true. I understand that but I already told you … Mmm hmm, okay, yes, yes, I would be prepared to discuss it with you, if for no other reason than to talk you out of it. Tonight? Now? I’m not at the lodge right now. I’m in town. Possibly. Hold on.’

  Tess covered the receiver. ‘I need to go talk some kids out of a mid-winter trek. Long story. I might have to skip dinner after all.’

  ‘Is that Riley?’ he asked. ‘Are you going to her place?’

  ‘The shop. Wherever that is. They’re all there.’

  He exchanged glances with Indy. He still wasn’t sure about Tank and Jai nor if or where they fit in to the investigation. ‘I’ll run you over.’

  Tess nodded and told Riley she’d be there shortly. Then she thumped the phone down hard on the table and expelled a long, angry breath. ‘I don’t like the F word. I don’t use it. I think it sounds terrible but very occasionally, very, very rarely, there’s just nothing else appropriate. There’s just not. What a fuckwit!’

  ‘Aaron?’ Indy guessed.

  ‘He pulled out of the hike. Told Riley to talk to me because I had nothing better to do. That as I was such good mates with you, Jared, and you were such good mates with Tank, not only would I be happy to take them, I’d most likely do it at mates’ rates.’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Indy muttered.

  ‘Damn right uh-oh. If he hasn’t already left for Canada he’ll be lucky to make it.’

  ‘He’s just annoyed you turned down his offer to go with him,’ Indy said calmly.

  ‘I tried to be nice about it! Even as I thought, whoa, not a chance. I said I had a life and a career here. I was still calm. I was. But then he said something along the lines of how at this stage in my life I should think about taking some chances before they run out.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Indy frowned into her coffee.

  Jared opened his mouth to ask Indy what she was thinking, but Tess barrelled on.

  ‘And I don’t care if perhaps he has a point. Because he was so damn patronising and sure of himself, like he was offering me this great opportunity and I was going to wither away and die an old maid if I didn’t take him up on it. At that point I should have trodden a little more carefully.’ She fell back heavily in her chair. ‘I should have made him feel better about the fact I was thinking really scary things about his state of mind. But I just wanted him gone. I was so relieved he was going to the other end of the world.’

  ‘And if I know you at all, by the end of the conversation he was well aware of that,’ Indy said with a small smile that had Jared relaxing a little; he’d been sure he’d seen worry flare in her expression a moment ago. ‘Seriously, just forget it. This whole spiel he fed Riley is just his parting shot, his ego soother.’

  ‘He already had that! Made me feel like a liability to Search and Rescue. That was his parting shot. I gave it a nine, mostly for delivery, and I sucked it up.’ Her face darkened into a sneer. ‘This time I want to twist his balls until they snap off and shove them so far up his butt they work as breast enhancements!’ She pushed to her feet and snatched her phone off the table. ‘But first,’ she said and this time the deep breath she took was a calming one, ‘I need to politely address this group. Are you sure you want to come with me?’ she asked Jared.

  He nodded. ‘Absolutely. Let’s go.’

  ‘Jared,’ Indy said. ‘Make sure she goes straight home after dinner.’ Then, less intensely, ‘Tess, don’t make me arrest you. Let Aaron flee the country.’

  ‘Let’s just see how the next half-hour or so pans out,’ Tess said. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  He let her seethe on the way there, or perhaps calm down. Whatever she was doing, s
he was doing it quietly. Watching her handle seeing that photograph had really impressed him. She’d kept it together, kept her head. He supposed that’s what she’d done all that time ago in the police station. But he couldn’t quite shake the earlier conversation with Indy. Something had occurred to her, had bothered her. He wanted to talk to Tess about it, but as he saw the shop come into view, he decided to tackle it later.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. The shops were mostly closed, but a few cars were clustered in front of Tank’s place, so he parked a little way off. ‘You ready?’

  ‘Yep.’ Tess undid her seatbelt but she didn’t move to get out. ‘Jared, sorry about earlier. I was mad but I think I was mostly hurt. Because I’ve tried really hard to go easy on Aaron’s feelings and he just keeps going for the kill shot. You don’t think …’

  ‘Think what?’

  She sighed and shook her head. ‘It’s just the way he’s been carrying on, a part of me wouldn’t be surprised if he was the one who wanted to point a gun at me.’ She laughed at herself. ‘Saying it out loud makes it sound even more ridiculous than in my head. Forget it.’

  Jarred felt ice settle over his skin. Perhaps they were going to have that conversation now, after all. ‘Has he threatened you?’

  ‘No, he wants me back, not dead.’ She laughed it off again. ‘Seriously, he’s just been a bit intense. You’re chasing a murderer who wants to shut you up. That’s been going on longer than my issues with Aaron. Sorry. It was a stupid passing thought.’

  Jared considered her in silence for several seconds. Tess’s concerns for her safety—even just in passing—on top of Indy’s comment had him rethinking what he thought he knew. ‘When does he leave?’

  ‘I’m not sure exactly.’

  ‘I think I’ll make a note to find out.’ He looked into her worried eyes and smiled. ‘Come on, let’s get this over with.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ he asked as they approached the shop. ‘Are you going to take them on this hike?’

  ‘I haven’t decided. First, I want to make sure they know what they’re getting into.’

  ‘I thought you made it pretty clear the other day.’

  ‘So did I. And yet.’

  He held the door open for her and followed her inside.

  Tank looked up from his position behind the counter, receipts and other papers spread out around an open laptop. ‘Tess, nice to see you again,’ he said before turning his attention to Jared. ‘Detective, didn’t know you were coming.’ His tone was friendly enough, but curious.

  ‘Tess and I are planning on grabbing some dinner after this,’ Jared said.

  ‘I see. The kids are in the office at the back. I’ve been kicked out here to work while you discuss the trip. Thanks for coming.’

  ‘No problem,’ Tess said. They headed down a row of shelves with power tools on one side and electrical equipment on the other. The office came into view as they reached the end.

  Riley stood in the doorway, spotted them and smiled, waving them in. ‘Hi, Tess, Detective Denham.’

  ‘Hi,’ Tess said. Several other young people were watching them with interest.

  ‘This is Jasmin and Brock.’ Riley introduced an attractive young couple sitting closely together in one corner. ‘They’re coming with us, along with Alex in the blue jumper and Chris on the floor,’ she said of the two leaning their backs on the wall. ‘Sorry, we don’t have many chairs.’

  Brock got up and offered his to Tess then dragged Jasmin onto his lap to share hers.

  ‘Hi,’ Tess said again. ‘And thanks.’ She sat while Jared leant against the wall, arms folded, relaxed. ‘So I know you’re hoping to do the South Coast Track next week?’

  ‘The fifteenth,’ Riley said. ‘You said you’d take us, right?’

  ‘I said I’d talk to you about it,’ Tess clarified. ‘I want to make sure you know what you’re getting into.’

  ‘We do,’ Riley said. ‘We’ve read all about it and Aaron sent us a heap of information with an itinerary and gear list.’

  ‘Okay, well I can supply any of the gear you would have hired from Aaron, just tell me what you need. But before we get to that, like I said to you at the station, you haven’t picked a very good time of year to do this.’

  ‘We can handle it,’ Brock said. ‘A bit of rain won’t hurt us.’

  ‘If the pretty lady can do it,’ Alex said with a sideways smile for Chris.

  Tess studied the wiry beanpole of a teen with shoulder-length waves of gold hair and the shorter, keg-like Chris before answering. ‘The difference is experience. With rain comes mud and lots of it. You’ll be wading through water, sinking through kilometres of muddy track, slipping and sliding up and down mountains.’

  ‘We’ve done some extreme stuff,’ Chris told her. ‘Cross-country skiing, mountain biking, abseiling. Only one we haven’t done is the Gordon Dam. It’s lined up though.’

  ‘The tallest commercial abseil in the world, baby!’ Alex said enthusiastically, with a high-five for Chris.

  ‘I’ve done it,’ Tess said. ‘Twice.’

  ‘No way!’ Chris said, eyes wide. ‘I want proof.’

  Exasperation crossed her face. ‘Fine.’ She dug out her phone and scrolled through, tapped the screen and dropped it on the table. Jared watched over her shoulder as a video played, showing Tess and two others leaping out over the edge, the rope skimming through their fingers as they flew down the dam wall in long fearless bounds. Then he remembered Tess cowering from the small drop at her abseiling station and thought that, sometimes, life sucked.

  ‘That’s sick,’ Alex said almost reverently.

  ‘In case anyone else wants to question my qualifications I’ve also completed every track in Tassie more than once, have successfully led people into and out of wilderness areas professionally for many years, completed advanced training in wilderness survival and I’m an SES Search and Rescue volunteer.’

  ‘Wait …’ Chris said, eyes narrowed, ‘you’re the hot lady we heard about that nearly died on Fedder, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure who referred to me that way, but you can call me Tess.’ She paused. ‘It’s not the wisest move to be heading out at this time of year.’

  ‘It’s an adventure, right, guys?’ Alex said. ‘Gotta have some stories to tell the grandkids one day.’

  ‘If you go into this unprepared, offspring of any kind will cease to be an issue. I need to know a bit about your experience and how prepared you are. And you two—’ she pointed at Chris and Alex, ‘—you should probably shut up and let the others talk, okay?’

  They exchanged glances, then Chris nodded, looking at Tess with a new kind of awe. ‘Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.’

  ‘What hikes have you done?’ she asked the other four.

  ‘We’ve been on heaps of hikes,’ Riley said.

  ‘What’s the longest you’ve been out?’

  ‘We did an overnight in the Tarkine rainforest,’ Jasmin said.

  Tess’s brow shot up. ‘You mean the one with the meals, accommodation and short guided walks?’

  ‘Yeah, but we can tent it. No problem,’ Jai said.

  ‘Tent?’ Jasmin repeated sharply with a glare at Brock. ‘You said it would be just like the Tarkine.’

  ‘It’s an established track with designated campsites,’ Brock told Jasmin. ‘We’re not bush bashing. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘Actually, the track can be difficult to follow,’ Tess said, ‘especially if the weather turns, which it can, in an instant. The fog can be so thick you can’t see your hand in front of your face, the roaring forties can blow you off the Ironbound Range, the rivers, the beaches, the boat crossings can be hazardous to the point of uncrossable, and that’s if you make it through the deep mud and heavy forest. It’s bound to rain at minimum every second day, probably more. You could get sleet, possibly snow, and the low temperatures can freeze you quicker than help can come to the rescue. If you can’t so much as properly set up
a tent, you might not make it.’ She pinned them all with an impressively serious stare. ‘This is not a stroll in the countryside. It’s a serious trek. Especially at this time of year.’

  ‘Not helping,’ Brock muttered to Tess with a glance at Jasmin’s concerned face.

  ‘Actually, helping is exactly what I do. And yes, I nearly died recently because of someone who didn’t take the wilderness seriously enough. I ended up swinging out over a six hundred metre sheer drop by someone’s jacket sleeve after trying to rescue a young “I can handle anything” guy who thought he’d be “fine”. He wasn’t fine. He’s dead.’

  There was utter silence while everyone took that in.

  ‘Tess, can I talk to you for a minute?’ Tank asked from the doorway.

  Tess walked out and Jared decided to follow. ‘This is insane,’ she told Tank. ‘I can’t prepare them for this in a week.’

  ‘Pay no attention to Alex and Chris. They’re just kids,’ Tank said. ‘And you are hot. You don’t think you’re going to make a goofy teenage kid feel awkward? Come on, this means a lot to them.’

  ‘Look, I met those kids five minutes ago and I’m ready to bet they can’t even be in civilisation without causing an accident. You really want to set them loose in thousands of hectares of harsh wilderness?’

  ‘Riley—’

  ‘Riley’s fine. I’d say she and Jai and Brock would all make it okay. But the others? They all need to be fine out there. All of them.’

  ‘If you really think it’s that dangerous …’

  Tess’s shoulders dropped, her tone calming. ‘Under most conditions it’s not too dangerous if you’re properly prepared; not compared to a lot of the other southwest wilderness hikes, anyway. But it could be really uncomfortable and difficult and they have to be prepared to follow instructions. They’re not heading out there to be miserable, they want an adventure. A good one. If they get sick of it, they can’t just call a taxi and go home. They’re fit and strong and capable, so I’ll take them, if they’re set on it, if the weather forecast stays mild. But Jasmin especially needs to realise this is not glamping. She might be better off staying behind.’

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ Riley said from behind them. ‘And we’re sorry if we didn’t sound like we were taking you seriously. We’re just really keen to go. We’ll listen, we’ll do whatever you think we need to do to prepare.’