The earnestness in Harrison’s expression, the guilt that he was trying to assuage, could be used in her favour. A comment about the prick, about her fears for Ness, and Harrison would jump into action. It would be an easy way for Harrison to feel like he had done something. And she could make it so that Ness never even realised she’d been the one to tip off the cops.
But, as silence fell between them and she watched Harrison struggle to work out what to say, she knew that she didn’t want his help. Not now. He didn’t deserve to be let off the hook, even in his own mind. If something was going to be done for Ness, Maggie would do it herself.
She’d told Harrison she had to get to class. He’d given her his card, told her to stay in touch. The moment she was out the door she threw it in the first bin she saw, along with her untouched coffee.
Now they sat across from each other in the corner booth of a small bar that was Hawaiian-themed and tacky, all bamboo and Tiki statues and draped leis. Elvis played on the speakers – ‘Always On My Mind’. Harrison nursed a light beer but Maggie had gone for water. She didn’t want to dull her senses even slightly for this.
‘You’ve been following me,’ she said.
The twitch of an embarrassed smile made him instantly younger. ‘Sorry. I had to be sure it was you. And to work out if it was safe to make contact.’
Maggie decided to gamble, just slightly. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
‘Partly because I haven’t seen you in years,’ Harrison said. ‘But mainly because several nights ago you blew up a drug dealer’s warehouse. It didn’t occur to you that there were cameras?’
‘I didn’t see any.’
‘You didn’t look across the road, then.’
‘The footage reached Melbourne?’
‘Clearly you didn’t know who you were blowing up.’
‘I knew he was a scumbag.’
‘That much is true,’ Harrison said. ‘Still is, probably, given that we didn’t find his body. More’s the pity. For a long time most of the gear on the market came through a massive Melbourne syndicate, but recently things went south for them. Namely, somebody got the better of their main operator and burned him alive. Cue revenge killings, cue the wrong people getting shot and that’s the end of the Melbourne monopoly. Suddenly Len Townsend’s cartel contacts make him the man of the hour and he goes from low-rent thug to major player.’
‘So you’ve been after Townsend?’ Maggie said.
‘Not me,’ Harrison replied. ‘Just trying to deal with the impact back home. But then his warehouse got attacked. Local cops pulled the footage from the neighbouring joint and there’s this Jane Doe turning a car into a bomb. Nobody had any idea who you were. But I recognised you straight away.’
Her mind wasn’t moving fast enough. If Harrison had passed her identity on to the Queensland police . . .
‘Nobody knows apart from me,’ Harrison said. ‘I put two and two together then flew up. Based on the location, I figured you’d be living in Port Douglas. I sussed out a few different options: namely, the kind of new bar that might be paying cash in hand. In the rarest ever case of a cop being in luck, there you were.’
Maggie considered a couple of different responses, then settled on the only one that mattered. ‘Why?’
‘First, to make sure that you were okay.’
‘And second?’
Harrison didn’t speak straight away. His brow was furrowed slightly, as if considering what to say.
‘Second, I need to tell you something.’
‘I know he’s dead,’ she said.
Harrison leaned back. He interlaced his fingers on the table and looked at them. ‘Do you have any idea who killed him?’
She gambled again. ‘I thought he fell.’
‘In the eyes of the coroner,’ Harrison said. ‘But I’m reasonably confident they’re wrong.’ His hands parted, suddenly. Maggie flinched, but he just put them on his knees. If Harrison noticed her reaction, he gave nothing away. ‘Years back there was this case. At first it was written off as a bunch of unconnected incidents. Some dead junkies and low-rent prostitutes, probably killed in fights or whatever. But after a while, some kid barely out of training noticed similarities between all these murders. Facial mutilations, knife wounds, stuff that wasn’t too far out of the ordinary for a fucked-up speed freak. But there were specificities and eventually your dad got sent to look into it. Did you know any of this?’
Maggie shook her head. Her father had never spoken to her about his job. Not that there was anything especially unique in that. He tended to use his fists for whatever messages he wanted to convey.
‘Just about every cop I’ve ever known has one case that just . . . I dunno, eats at them. Maybe it’s because you see patterns other people don’t; maybe it’s overpowering gut instinct; maybe it’s just this singular reaction to what you’re faced with. But Eric became obsessed with this. Especially after one of his informants got hit. Even after you were born, he barely spent any time at home. He was out on the streets, interviewing potential witnesses, canvassing suspects, all of it. It took him a while but eventually he thought he’d found his man. Terrence Adams was a drug dealer with a record and a reputation for enjoying his own supply a little too much. He knew some of the victims, he moved in the areas they were found and he’d been in prison ten years back for a stabbing that went a bit beyond the basic. Your dad went in to speak to him.’ Harrison grimaced. ‘It got ugly. Eric killed Adams.’
Maggie thought she knew where this was going, but she kept her mouth shut. Let Cooper tell his story so she could work out what she was going to do.
‘Then, a year or so later, another body turned up.’ His voice was flat, resigned. ‘Most of us figured it just looked similar. Your dad didn’t think so, though. As far as he was concerned, he’d got the wrong guy.’
Silence, heavy and fraught.
‘There were no more bodies,’ Harrison said, ‘and most of the higher-ups were willing to go with coincidence. Not Eric. His obsession made him hard to work with. His reputation slipped, the drinking got worse and then your mum walked.’ Harrison rubbed his eyes. Maggie wondered what he remembered. How much he remembered. The grime, the bruises. ‘I tried, Maggie,’ he said. ‘I promise I did. I wanted to be his friend and help, but fuck, it was hard. Eventually I gave up.’
Maggie knew that much. As a kid she had always looked forward to Harrison’s visits. No, more than that. She had hoped for them the way a drowning person hopes for air.
‘Anyway,’ Harrison said, ‘about a week before Eric died, he got in touch. We had a drink together. He had evidence, he said. He was sure he knew who the real killer was. By this point, I’d heard that a lot. Always a different suspect, never anything that would make a judge look twice. A couple of times before, I’d looked into it for him, but I never found anything. But this time, he said, it was solid. He showed me this portable hard drive. I told him to give it to me but he refused. He was rambling a bit by this point; it turned out he had information about your mother on there as well. He ranted about how he was going to find her this time and . . . you know. That was the final proof I needed that he had lost it.’
Maggie didn’t move. ‘What kind of information?’
‘Can’t say for sure. He said he had photos, names, a few potential locations. Given that he’d been looking for her for years and never found her, I wrote it off as another wild goose chase.’
Except there were things Harrison didn’t know. That some of Eric’s previous information had been a long way from wrong. That Maggie had left Melbourne to follow her mother’s trail and found nightmares hidden away in the darkest corners of the country, nightmares her mother had been part of. A community left alone to curdle and become savage, a community her mother had lived in – until she ran. Since then, Maggie had let the pursuit of her mother fade away to a pipe dream that maybe was best left unfulfilled. Maggie had wanted to face up to her and ask why, to finally know and understand how she could have been lef
t alone with him. Knowing what her mother had been part of – and that she had nowhere else to look – had dampened that need somewhat. But now . . . Her heart was beating faster. She willed herself to keep still, to keep her face calm.
‘I told him to take a shower and get help,’ Harrison said. ‘He got angry. I gave him the number of a good shrink. He took that about as well as you’d expect. A week later, someone pushed him down the stairs.’ Harrison’s gaze went to the roof. ‘He had a tonne of booze in his system. Everyone was happy to write it off as an accident. The problem was, that night in the pub he had told me who he thought the killer was. And that was half the reason I told him to fuck off. He was going up against the kind of person who could catch wind of someone gunning for them and decisively act.’
Maggie clenched and unclenched a fist under the table. When she trusted her voice not to waver, she spoke. ‘You think this person killed him?’
‘I think I owe it to Eric to find out.’
It was strange how quietly and unknowingly Harrison had blindsided her. The assumed foundation on which she had built her current way of life had suddenly collapsed. If Harrison was telling the truth, if Maggie hadn’t woefully misinterpreted something, then she was not under suspicion. The reason she had run, the thing that had kept her moving and on edge for so long now, may never have been real. Possibilities she had never even considered were opening in front of her. Picking up where she had left off. A normal life.
But beyond that was the biggest and most complicating factor in whatever she did next: the hard drive. The thing that Harrison wanted also might hold the answer to her question, the question that had led her to leave Melbourne in the first place. Over the past year, it had never once occurred to her that her father, with his disdain for technology and reliance on old-school notebooks, might have more information than the maps and scribblings she had taken from him that night. That there might be something current, something meaningful, something that would allow her to finally face the woman who had abandoned her.
It took her a moment to realise Cooper was still talking. ‘The only reason anybody looked into your father’s death was because you went missing two months beforehand, around the time he was investigating a potential killer.’
The two months. Her smartest move, even if it had been more insurance than anything. She had moved into the kind of dingy sublet where nobody cared about your last name as long as you paid your bills. She had kept her head down and used only cash at the most tucked-away stores. Then she waited. After two months of living like a ghost, she visited her father. Not planning to kill him. But if it went that way, at least she wasn’t vanishing right after, and in the process branding herself a suspect.
Harrison didn’t seem to have noticed her drift off. ‘There was this idea that you’d been kidnapped to try to put Eric off digging any deeper, but nobody was taking his suspicions particularly seriously, so, while you technically remained a missing person, the general belief was that you’d run away.’
‘General,’ Maggie said. ‘Not yours.’
Harrison shook his head. ‘I didn’t know for sure. But whatever else Eric was by the end, he was a good detective, and I’d let myself forget it. If this person had killed both of you . . .’ His expression twitched in a near wince. ‘The point is I didn’t listen to him when I could have. And when I saw you on that video, I had to be sure.’
Maggie would have been touched if she didn’t know something else was coming.
‘The thing is,’ Harrison went on, ‘the man Eric named is still free. The man he claimed to have evidence on. At the very least, I want to see what that was. All of Eric’s belongings have been under lock and key since he died. He left everything to you, and as it isn’t an active murder investigation, I can’t take a look. But I reckon that hard drive is still there. Somewhere.’
There was a tightness to her limbs, a fearful tension that she knew better than to ignore. A warning. She had kept clear of Melbourne for a long time and for good reason.
‘You want me to come back,’ she said. ‘To prove I’m alive so you can find whatever evidence he might have had.’
‘That’s what I’m asking,’ Harrison said, without looking at her. ‘You’re within your rights to say no. But before you do, I would argue it’s in your best interests as much as anyone’s.’
‘How?’
‘To put it bluntly, the money,’ Harrison said. ‘And the house, which you could sell. Eric was no millionaire, but he had a bit put away.’
More than a bit. For every dollar her father had in the bank, he kept another in the hidden safe in their house. His drunken-paranoia fund. What was left of that stash was in the backpack at her feet. The rest – whatever she could get for the house – could give her security. A future.
But no matter what Cooper said, she found it very hard to believe that nobody on the police force had ever considered that she might have killed her father. And beyond that, selling the house and accessing the money would not be as simple as a signature and handed-over keys. For one, she would be announcing herself to the world again. The flashing arrows she had managed to avoid until now would surround her.
But the hard drive would be hers before Harrison’s. Without a warrant, he could do nothing to dispute that, especially if she vanished right after claiming it. And, she found herself reasoning, it was in her best interests to secure it. Harrison’s pursuit of this ‘killer’ might well lead him to the realisation that, like Eric, he had the wrong person. And that in turn might lead him to think differently about who the right person was.
Looking at Cooper, at his expectant, hopeful expression, she felt the tiniest prick of pre-emptive guilt. But it was swiftly offset by the truth she had reminded herself of again and again over the years. That he had known what Eric was and done nothing.
‘What do you think?’ he asked, a slight waver to his voice. ‘Will you do it?’
CHAPTER FOUR
Maggie drove alone through darkness. Even the vague outlines of familiar markers melted away into the night, so insignificant they might as well not have been there. All she saw ahead was the illuminated road fringed with the dark.
Cooper had to return his rental car to the airport and Maggie had gone back to the apartment to pick up her things. From there, the plan was to meet at a location Maggie had given Cooper, a quiet lookout on the road. It hadn’t taken much time to convince Cooper to do things her way. He was clearly just happy she’d agreed to return to Melbourne with him, happy enough to forego flying back and take the long drive down with her. Maggie had pointed out that Cooper could fly alone, but he clearly didn’t trust her to keep her word, just like Maggie wasn’t quite ready to put herself on the radar as thoroughly as taking a plane would do. Cooper must want to catch that killer pretty fucking badly. Or, and this alternative had danced around her thoughts like an ugly taunt, he was lying to her. It was pathetic how much she didn’t want to believe that, especially considering she fully intended to claim the hard drive for herself. But there was some comfort in the fact that it was also unlikely; if he did suspect her, it would have been far easier to bring backup and arrest her straight away.
That was another reason to take the drive together; it would give Maggie time to fully evaluate Cooper’s intentions.
Arriving at the lookout, she parked between trees then turned her attention to the ocean and the dark sky. At this time, the view didn’t look much like the slice of tropical paradise she knew. It looked cold and unpredictable. She sank a little lower in her seat. She knew she was tired, but it was a distant, clinical knowledge rather than any demand on her body’s part that she get some sleep. Even if she’d been drifting off, she would have kept herself awake somehow.
Harrison Cooper. Maggie remembered all too well the instant rush of joy and relief she would feel whenever she heard his distinctive knock on the door – two quickly consecutive knocks, a pause, then three more. Later, in the first of her foster homes, she had emulated that kno
ck herself.
He was usually in a jumper and jeans, a sixpack of beer under his arm. His hair hadn’t been thin back then. It was always messy and his eyes crinkled in a small but real smile when he saw Maggie. Her dad would be a different person around Harrison, laughing and telling stories. Maggie would hang around, almost unnoticed, eyes on Harrison as he relayed little anecdotes from work or home, telling them about the latest trouble his son Aaron had got into.
Maggie had once asked if Aaron could come for dinner too. Harrison had changed the subject. That night her father backhanded her as they were standing in the hallway after Harrison left, telling her never to ask such a fucking stupid question again. ‘What, you think we’re some kind of fucking restaurant here?’
She remembered the little exchanges she and Harrison would share when her father stumbled off to the bathroom. Always silly and brief, but silliness wasn’t something Maggie got a lot of back then.
‘Did you get any bad guys today?’ Maggie would sometimes ask.
‘If by “getting bad guys” you mean “finished off a huge amount of paperwork”, then yeah, I got heaps. You should have seen me.’
‘They’re gonna make a movie about you.’
‘They already have. Haven’t you seen Dirty Harry?’ Harrison would laugh and make his fingers into a gun. ‘“Do you feel lucky, punk?” Only problem was that Clint Eastwood wasn’t quite tough enough to be me, you know?’
She wondered what Harrison thought when he looked at her now. It had been a long, long time since she had even considered how she came across to another person. But seeing Harrison, it was hard not to feel, on some deep and not quite buried level, like that kid waiting with pained hope for every sporadic visit.
Light spread slowly, turning the ocean from grey to glittering blue with veins of flame red dancing through it. Maggie didn’t move. She watched until the sun was up, the sky was clear, and she saw movement in the rear-view mirror. Automatically she reached for her knife, but it was just Cooper, small suitcase in his left hand, his right in his pocket.
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