Taylor was conscious of the time ticking away. ‘So, what now?’ he asked.
Everett took a moment. Taylor recognised the trepidation in his expression and felt empathy for the man, knowing he just wanted to do it right.
Then the detective stood and gathered himself. ‘We know who Sampson is,’ he said, ‘but I still have nothing on the three bodies in the boat.’ He looked back towards Lawson standing on the road. ‘I’ll ask Lawson for a list of men who have left the camp without notice. Maybe the identity of the first three victims lies there somewhere. If I find out who, maybe that can lead us to why.’ He peered down the track. ‘Where does this trail go?’ he asked Jaimie.
She referred to the map in Taylor’s hands. ‘It runs parallel to the main north-south logging road through the camp,’ she answered. ‘Then breaks towards the ridge overlooking the weir.’
Taylor was tracing with his finger along the map to the ridgeline during Jaimie’s explanation. ‘It appears to be a dead end,’ he added.
‘These old tracks can branch out anywhere,’ said Jaimie, shaking her head. ‘Whoever drove this trail recently probably just broke back onto the main road somewhere further along.’
Everett nodded his agreement. ‘I need to secure Sampson’s motorcycle for the forensic team when they arrive.’ He gestured ahead, turned to Taylor. ‘How do you and Jaimie feel about following these tyre tracks?’
It was a logical move. Taylor glanced at Jaimie. ‘You up for it?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ she said, but he noted a trace of apprehension in her voice.
‘Now, remember,’ added Everett. ‘Reconnaissance only. No contact.’ He glanced at Jaimie. ‘Do you have a hand-held radio in the Rover?’
‘Yeah, a set of two,’ she said.
‘Good. Use UHF channel 17, public. For all we know, the emergency channel is being monitored. If you find anything out there, stay clear and report back.’
Taylor could see Everett becoming re-energised as he formed his plan. ‘And then?’ the ranger asked.
Everett took a moment. ‘Then I’ll make a call based on merit …’
Taylor felt he was saying, I have no idea. The detective, obviously noticing the disquiet in the ranger’s eyes, gave him what was clearly intended to be a reassuring look.
‘This case has obviously gone to the next level,’ Taylor said. ‘I think that call should include a push for more resources.’ He patted Everett’s arm. ‘Remind them about the coming storm and how narrow their window is.’
Everett frowned. They could all feel that window closing rapidly.
6
Taylor and Jaimie walked side by side, each in their own wheel channel separated by a corridor of knee-high saplings. The trail was ascending with periodic glimpses of the main road through the plantation pines on their left. It was nearly noon, and the sun gleamed high in the sky, the wind through the rustling canopy growing more animated with a cacophony of moans and whispers above them. Taylor’s eyes traced the tyre tracks, every now and then catching sight of another bent or broken branch. He stopped to drink from his water bottle, then offered it to Jaimie.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I left mine back at the Rover.’ She wiped the top and drank deeply then handed it back.
A familiar sound caught Taylor’s attention. Jaimie followed his gaze towards a drawn-out splintered rasp that groaned to their right. There was a crash, resonating in the ground beneath them, and a squall of sparrows burst out of the brush.
‘Do they cut timber near here?’ asked Taylor. He took the binoculars and focused them through the brush; he could see a plume of dust and a flurry of loose leaves where the tree had fallen.
‘No,’ said Jaimie. ‘Some of these trees are shallow rooted along the rocky ridge line. Once they get to these heights, there’s not enough of a root system to keep them standing against a wind like this.’
‘You know the landscape well,’ Taylor said. They began walking again and he could feel his thigh muscles tightening from the steady climb. ‘So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a park like this?’
Jaimie laughed. ‘I know it’s not one of the prestige Sydney parks, but it’s a good start for me.’
‘You from around here?’
‘No. I was raised a city girl … an only child. My father owned an Audi dealership on the north side of the harbour; my mother had a clothing boutique in the city.’
‘Do you miss it? City life, I mean.’
‘No … I go home for my folks’ birthdays and Christmas. The city’s energy fuels them both, they belong there, but I’ve always been drawn to the wilderness.’ She gazed around as they walked. ‘A career in Parks and Wildlife was the only option for me.’
Taylor related – it was the type of career that chose you, not the other way around. He wiped his brow. ‘Did your folks support your choice?’
‘Dad still thinks it’s a phase I’m going through.’
‘Is it?’
She breathed in a deep lungful of air, like she was devouring the essence of the forest, then exhaled slowly. The curl of a smile formed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I belong here.’
Taylor watched Jaimie walk, sure-footed. He had seen enough rangers come and go to know she was right; Jaimie did belong here. She wore the uniform with pride. Then it struck him just how much, in those dark-rimmed glasses, Jaimie looked like Maggie when they’d met in his first year as a qualified ranger. They’d both had their lives ahead of them. And he’d known in a glance that he wanted to spend the rest of his with her. The tree roots of memories coiled and probed, this time drawing a smile for Maggie.
‘What about you?’ Jaimie asked.
‘Me?’
‘Yeah, what’s your story?’
He thought about the question, frowning. ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he said dismissively. He didn’t want to lay out his life to a relative stranger during a walk in the woods.
‘I don’t believe that.’
He shrugged. ‘Okay … I spent my childhood in the Gippsland bush. Like you, I knew then what I wanted to be. So, a summer job with Parks Victoria turned into a career. I met a good woman who became a great wife … became a dad …’ He petered off, the pain of losing Claire mingling with the usual pang of guilt. Not knowing how to tell other people was suffocating.
‘Kids, huh. How many?’
There it was.
‘One,’ he said. Abrupt. Final. It felt like a betrayal.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘What?’ He stopped, turned to her. What is she drilling for?
She obviously recognised the tense look in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, halting a pace in front of him, her smile fading. ‘I didn’t mean to be so nosy. I just find it hard to believe that an average ranger has been asked to consult on a case like this.’
Taylor felt foolish; this wasn’t about Claire. He sighed and began trekking again. ‘No, I’m sorry, Jaimie. I wasn’t listening.’ He gestured to the trail as she continued walking beside him. ‘That comment you made to the professor yesterday about me being a remote crime scene specialist … I assumed you knew my background.’
‘Just the little I was told by my boss …’
‘Fair enough.’ Taylor stopped walking, distracted by a glimpse of red through the brush on his right. Beyond it was a wall of stone – wave-like – speckled with broken sunlight coming through the broad tree canopy. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
Jaimie looked puzzled. She stepped aside and followed Taylor as he parted the bottlebrush.
He took in the life-sized ochre-red and charcoal-black image painted on the rock. ‘Is this genuine?’
‘Oh, that’s Yilpinji,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘This piece is new to me, but the park has a lot of them in the caves above the river cuttings. Yilpinji is very popular around here.’
‘It’s remarkable.’
Taylor stepped closer, fought his desire to touch the art, to somehow absorb its history through his fingertips. The w
ave rock seemed to whisper with the rustle of leaves, speaking from centuries past. A single figure levitated above the swirls that represented the ground, a shroud of black covering the head. It looked almost biblical. Yilpinji’s eyes were large, dark pools. Staring down at him, they seemed to hold him there, hypnotic, making a connection over the ages. Taylor blinked; shook the feeling off. His thoughts drifted closer to home.
‘Do you know the story behind this drawing?’ he asked.
‘Yilpinji … I guess a reasonable translation is necromancer or occultist, but one that can manipulate feelings of love or hatred through dance and spells. It’s not always easy to put a western interpretation on Indigenous lore.’
‘Like a Hoodoo, huh?’
She turned to Taylor and paused, appearing contemplative and a little disappointed. ‘Case in point,’ she said. ‘We try to simplify the Aboriginal Dreamtime, wrap it up into something we can accept. Even if that something is the drunken imaginings of a bunch of loggers.’
Taylor suddenly felt sheepish. ‘I didn’t mean to be disrespectful,’ he said. ‘My mind is on the case, and that’s a long way from the Dreamtime. I’m just wondering if there’s a connection between the two.’
Jaimie smiled. ‘Oh, don’t listen to me. My mind is probably too far into the Dreamtime. What’s say we meet halfway and see where this trail leads?’
Taylor nodded.
They crested the peak of the ridge and stopped, the sound of the wind louder without the protection of trees around them – but the chime of his phone still intruded. There was something comforting about the sound; a possible connection to home. He withdrew the phone from his pocket, saw Maggie’s name, and smiled warmly as he opened the message.
Very $$$expensive$$$ engine grille
arrived today from USA. We will talk
about it when you get home :(
‘Good news?’ Jaimie asked.
Taylor considered the message, glad he was interstate when Maggie found out how much he had just spent on the Winnebago restoration. ‘My wife,’ he said. ‘I think I have some explaining to do when I get home.’
‘Messy.’
‘Could be.’
‘No, the trail,’ said Jaimie, waving the map in his face. ‘It’s getting messy. This old access trail fans out in multiple directions.’
‘Oh.’ Taylor felt his distraction lift, and slipped the phone back in his pocket. ‘Sorry.’ He looked down at the map, now open before him, and followed Jaimie’s finger to the ridge line where they were standing. The dotted trail broke into different directions and stopped at the waterline below them. Dead ends. That’s when he heard the sound of running water, between wind gusts and the rustle of trees.
He looked down, assessing the descent to a curved weir that held back a body of coffee-coloured water from the storm surge upriver. The water had breached the lip of the spillway between the dam and a concrete blockhouse on the far side, the source of the rising water levels in town. A grated metal walkway with a hand railing was secured above the wall to the basin’s perimeter, bridging the wooded shorelines.
‘That’s Devlins Weir,’ Jaimie said. ‘It was built in the thirties and extended after the last great flood.’ She hugged her arms across her chest. ‘Childish, I know, but I find the place kind of creepy.’
‘Can you drive down there?’ Taylor asked.
Jaimie pursed her lips in contemplation, tracing the trail down with her eyes. ‘It’s pretty rough, so I usually park off the main north-south road. There’s a walking trail that takes you down to the wall.’ She stepped closer to the edge to better view the descent. ‘Doesn’t look like anyone has driven this bit in years.’
She was right. Taylor hadn’t seen any damage to the low brush for a while; about the same time the tyre depressions had vanished. He picked up the binoculars and scanned the area below: the wall; spillway; and blockhouse, its rusted metal doors open a crack. The darkness beyond compelling.
‘What’s in that building?’ he asked.
‘A decommissioned pump station,’ Jaimie answered. ‘I believe it used to supply the water to the town before the storage tanks above it were installed.’
Taylor was scanning the watercourse downriver when he noticed a structure set back in the tree line. He adjusted the focus on the binoculars and saw that it was a small cottage, leaning, its roof partially collapsed. ‘The building downstream,’ he said. ‘Might be worth checking out.’ He looked for any sign of life. ‘Can’t see a vehicle anywhere.’
‘You’re not likely to,’ said Jaimie. ‘Access is by foot only. The forest is full of places like that along the river. Old fishing cabins dating back from before the area was declared a national park. They’re all heritage listed, but those that haven’t been destroyed by past bushfires aren’t very habitable.’
He lowered the binoculars to his chest and looked back down the old trail they had followed, recalling where the tyre tracks had disappeared. ‘Then where has our mysterious vehicle gone?’
‘Maybe the vehicle stopped back there somewhere and Sampson was marched the rest of the way.’ Jaimie shrugged. ‘Do you think we should backtrack?’
Taylor shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I agree with Everett. I believe the blood splatter at the bike is from Sampson’s Achilles tendon. Slashed, like the others. If Sampson made it down there, he was carried, and after seeing him leave the bar last night, I’d hate to see the size of anyone capable of carrying him.’ Taylor turned his attention back to the pump house and cabin below.
‘Your call,’ Jaimie said.
‘It’s unlikely Sampson is down there, but it could be Everett’s primary crime scene where those other men were kept before they were killed.’ He looked at Jaimie. ‘I think we should take a look while we have the daylight.’
Jaimie took the radio from her belt and held it up, her raised eyebrows asking the question.
‘Yeah,’ said Taylor. ‘Call Everett and see if he wants us down there.’
*
Everett could see Charlie Lawson’s face in his car’s side mirror as the site manager guided the grey Bronco ever closer to the community hall’s steps. Sampson’s Harley lay on a khaki tarp, the rear compartment and tailgate open, two mill workers squatting either side of it. Everett held his hand up, and Lawson cut the burbling engine.
A crowd had begun to gather outside the hall. Everett thought that with no ferry crossing, there were going to be a lot of out-of-work loggers and truck drivers about, curiosity feeding their restlessness, and he could feel their judgement of his every decision. He didn’t need the attention, but he could empathise with why he was getting it. Sampson was one of their own, so it was personal to these men. More than likely, they would soon begin to gravitate to the pub two doors away. Bored, drunk and vengeful. Everett recognised reprisal in their eyes and again felt the burden of their expectations.
Lawson stepped out of the Bronco as the other two men spilled out of the rear tray beside the Harley. ‘Where do you want the bike?’
‘Inside,’ Everett said. ‘Back wall from the stage.’
‘Okay, boys,’ said Lawson from the tailgate. ‘On three. One … two—’
‘Gloves!’ Everett yelled, louder than he meant to. The others stopped, glared at him. ‘Please,’ he added. ‘It’s evidence. We can’t risk contaminating it further.’
They continued to pause, looking to Lawson for instructions.
‘For Sampson,’ the detective added.
Lawson nodded his approval and they slipped on the sawdust-stained riggers’ gloves hanging from their belts.
‘Thank you,’ Everett said. He climbed the three steps and unlocked the hall doors, swinging them wide, latching them open against the wall to stop the wind from slamming them shut again. He squinted against the airstream’s swell, sick of its constant presence, then stepped aside to make room.
The radio on his belt clip crackled to life.
‘Detective Everett … Are you there?’ He recognised Jai
mie Barlow’s voice.
‘Yeah, Jaimie. How’s it going out there?’
‘The tracks we were following have petered out, but Taylor wants to explore an old cabin down by Devlins Weir.’
Everett considered the prospect of having two rangers run into his perpetrator. They were unarmed, unqualified and a long way from assistance. He watched the loggers carry the Harley inside the hall, right it, and wheel the machine towards the back wall, leaving a dusty tyre track on the timber floor.
‘I don’t know, Jaimie. You’re a long way from backup if anything happens. And, frankly, any backup I can offer right now is limited.’
He heard further static as the transmitter key was pressed on the other end – a pause – then, ‘Everett, it’s Taylor.’ The ranger’s voice had an edge of urgency and frustration. ‘From what we can see, there’s no sign of vehicle access or personnel in the area. I think it’s unlikely Sampson was taken there, but the cabin and pump house are both plausible primary crime locations for those first three victims. You said it yourself, they weren’t killed down in those boat hulks. I think these sites are worth checking out while we have daylight.’
Everett stared down at his working wristwatch, his thumb drifting unconsciously to the face of Archie’s dead Seiko beside it. Taylor was right – better to inspect it now while they had the light. And, besides, this wasn’t Taylor’s first foray into an open crime case. ‘Okay,’ he said cautiously. ‘Go slow, no risks, treat everything like a crime scene and take plenty of photos.’
‘We’ll be careful,’ said Taylor.
Everett smiled, recognising the attempt to reassure him. ‘Stay safe,’ he said in closing.
Lawson stepped up beside him. ‘That’s it,’ he said, dusting his gloved hands. ‘Do you need anything else?’ He peeled the gloves off.
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