Everett sipped his Coke. ‘I’ll have someone at area command source what they can about the place. Staff and wards.’ He shrugged. ‘Between that and the camp payroll, we’re about to get flooded with names and dates.’
Taylor’s gaze was drawn to the kitchen as he willed his food to the table. ‘I’d kill for that steak right now,’ he whispered.
Everett rested his fork on the edge of his plate. ‘I’ve been thinking about those three wise monkeys,’ he said, sitting back.
That commanded Taylor’s attention. ‘Wise monkeys?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t I tell you? I knew about the eyes and ears on two of the victims, but I later discovered the third had his tongue removed.’
‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,’ Taylor said.
‘Not likely to be a coincidence. I think it’s a part of the message. There are acres of wilderness out there to bury bodies, Taylor. It was arranged for those three men to be found. To scream the message.’
‘Were they witness to something that caused their murder?’ Taylor asked.
‘Yeah, I think so.’ Everett held his stare. ‘But what evil did they possibly witness and not speak of to bring this wrath?’
Heather arrived and placed a steak before the ranger. ‘Take your time with that, Taylor,’ she said. ‘Enjoy.’ She poured him a glass of water, then looked over at the blue-rinse woman. ‘You done there, Mrs Channing?’ she asked as she walked over to hand her the bill.
The men ate in silence. Just for a few minutes, it was good not to think about the case; to just nourish his body with tastes and smells. He mopped the gravy from his plate with the last of his bread roll, almost having to force down the final mouthful. Heather’s apple and rhubarb pie would have to wait for another day.
Taylor looked across at Everett. He was staring out into the street, cleaning his teeth with a toothpick. The man looked weary, but Taylor knew he would probably work through the night on the logging company’s payroll details, searching for patterns. Finding dates that men left their employ without notice would be a high priority. He could sense that Everett’s youthful enthusiasm was struggling beneath the weight of responsibility.
‘I can help, if you’d like,’ Taylor offered.
‘What?’ Everett darted his face around, then rubbed it. ‘Sorry. Miles away.’
‘The pay records,’ Taylor said. ‘I could help you go through them tonight.’
Everett shook his head wearily and Taylor was sure he was about to decline, but then he relaxed in his chair. ‘Why not?’ he said and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I can’t do this alone.’
Everett paid the bill and asked if Heather could make up a meal for Constable Fisher out at the site.
‘Surely you’re not leaving that poor young woman out in the weather?’ she said.
‘Just for tonight,’ he said and slipped her another twenty. ‘I’ll bring her in for breakfast in the morning. Promise.’
‘I’m locking up in a half-hour,’ she said. ‘I’ll take her a hotbox and thermos of coffee on my way home.’
The ranger and the detective stepped outside. A squall struck Taylor’s face, his windcheater barely keeping out the unseasonable cold. They walked in silence, hands in pockets, heads low, to the community hall two doors down. Everett went ahead up the steps, pulled out his keys, then stopped on the landing. Taylor nearly ran into him. Everett spoke, barely audible in the wind.
‘Holy shit,’ he said.
Taylor stepped up beside him and saw three plastic driver’s licences fanned beneath the broad blade of a hunting knife driven into the door. He turned to Everett. ‘Another message?’
The detective stepped closer. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, studying the knife handle, squinting through the dim light. ‘There are initials on the grip.’ He stepped back and met Taylor’s stare, his eyes wide. ‘J. S.’ he said.
‘John Sampson.’
Everett nodded. ‘And I’m guessing those licences belong to our three wise monkeys.’
*
It had been a long day; Taylor felt it in the dull ache behind his eyes. He looked at his watch as he climbed the stairs beside the café to his room. It was eleven o’clock. Weariness was setting in, the day’s hike to the weir taking its toll on tightening muscles. A blur of moths circled the light on the landing, occasionally brushing the bulb with a drumming of wings. It reminded him of the porch light back home. He wondered if it was burning bright now, ready for his homecoming. But the weight of his room key in his pocket reminded him that being at home wasn’t an option anytime soon.
Taylor took a moment to stare across the road and over the levee’s crest towards the river as he riffled for his key. The watercourse appeared to be flowing quicker than it had been in the morning, with most of the derelict jetty submerged except for the taller stays that left whirlpools in the river’s wake. Then he heard a hoot and holler coming from up the road, and recognised the Wiggins boys riding their rattly bikes past the dry fountain and into the square. A little late to be out on a school night, he thought.
He considered the small fingerprints found on Sampson’s motorcycle; he didn’t have any suspicions of the brothers, but they seemed to possess a stealth and wish for adventure that could possibly find them in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet, on the flip side of that same coin, they could also have witnessed more than they knew; wrong place, right time. He thought of the Hoodoo shape-shifting in the night, and wondered what those boys might have seen in their wanderings. With a final hoot, they passed.
Taylor opened the door of his room and stepped inside, turning on the entry light. It was good to be out of the wind and warm inside.
The springs creaked as Taylor sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off his boots. With his foot, he nudged them under the sideboard where the phone sat. He lay back on the bed, hands behind his head, eyes closed as he recalled the men’s faces on the three licences. He’d noted Everett’s careful handling of them after taking photos with his phone. Everything went into clear evidence bags, the names then compared with the camp payroll records. The three names on the licences were also on the record, each of the young men classified as abandoned employment in the status column; they had disappeared from the camp approximately three months apart from each other.
It was unsettling, comparing the photo ID with the corrupt remains inside the buried boat, the men’s humanity – and mortality – brought home by their lifeless stares. Maybe Maggie’s concerns were justified. These are the images that never leave you. The day’s grime was irritating his skin, and he rubbed his face with his palms. Was it just particles of dust and dead skin that vexed him, or was the residue of this case beginning to leave its own stink?
This was the time he missed Maggie most: when the victim’s story began to surface and draw him in. Those three men’s faces drifted off their licences and lodged in his mind, a collective memory there to stay. But his resolve was toughening. A body was just that to him now – dead. Their story was chronicled in the things they left behind, like an employment record or driver’s licence.
And when it’s done, leave it out there … Don’t bring it home. Taylor let himself sink into the doona and tried to relax. His mobile’s ringtone splintered the silence. He focused on the screen.
‘Maggie?’ He propped himself up on the pillows.
‘Daddy, it’s me.’
It was Erin’s voice. She sounded sleepy, and it was way past her bedtime. Taylor felt certain she had taken Maggie’s mobile phone from the kitchen bench, where she usually left it to charge overnight.
He couldn’t help but smile. ‘Where’s Mummy, sweetheart?’
‘In bed.’
‘Does she know you have her phone?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Why aren’t you in bed?’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Why not?’
Taylor felt uneasy as he listened to her steady breathing close to the phone. Claire.
�
��Promise you won’t get mad?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Is this about your sister, sweetheart?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said.
Now it was Taylor’s turn to pause. Why not me? was his first conscious thought. ‘Did Claire speak to you?’
‘Uh-huh … She said that the man you’re looking for is still alive.’
He sat up on the edge of the bed. Sampson. Then recalled Erin’s earlier warning: Be careful. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered.
‘You shouldn’t say that, Daddy,’ Erin said.
Her timid voice sobered Taylor.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t.’ Why Erin? he thought. The two girls were so different, and yet, at the same time, so similar. They shared his and Maggie’s love for the bush, but Claire’s confidence came slowly. She was one to hold back and observe before finding the assurance to participate in the things that eventually defined her and their relationship. Erin, on the other hand, seemed born with that confidence, as if it were passed down by her older sister. There were no hesitant considerations with Erin; she jumped into any situation with the conviction of a seasoned adult. And that was what concerned Taylor most.
‘Daddy … Are you there?’
‘Yes, sweetheart, I’m here. Tell me something. Did Claire say anything else?’
‘Uh-huh … She said you should hurry, ’cause he doesn’t have much time.’
Taylor let the hand holding the phone slip to his side. How could she know about any of this? He looked out the window to his right, and saw the moon high in the sky through the thin curtains. It was a primordial orb of silver that cut through the cloud’s edges like a flashlight through mist, mirrored in distorted ripples on the water’s surface.
Is that same moon shining down on Sampson out there somewhere?
10
Sampson’s eyes flickered open as he struggled to focus on his grey world, frowning at the copper taste of blood in his mouth. He raised his fingers to his face and felt the scabbed crust of his split lip. His mind floated on the residue of drugs left in his system, and he didn’t – couldn’t – fight it. His flesh seemed to crawl on his bones. Where is the Fight? was his first conscious question to himself. The Fight was always there. He tried to will it to the surface, just as he had learned to as a child; willed it to rise and protect him, empower him. Nobody fucks with Sampson! But that wasn’t true. That was the reason the Fight existed in the first place. The Fight was his saviour.
The cold, hard floor pressed at his back, and an ache throbbed at the base of his neck where the needle had penetrated. He winced when he moved, reached for the pain and flinched when he touched it. Memories trickled into his stirring consciousness; a dead past sparked to life, then gone again in the blink of an eye. The cold, hard floor … The pain … It was all too familiar. Somewhere in the fog left by the drug he could hear his father yelling at him; could feel the whisky-fouled spittle smack his face.
Oh, how he needed the Fight right now. That’s who I am … I’m Sampson, the fighter, and nobody fucks with Sampson. But the Fight would not come. The Fight was afraid. Another voice surfaced from the fog. Sampson, as a boy, crying for his father to stop hitting him. Crying for his mother to make the man stop.
Sampson felt grief for that long-ago boy. He hugged his arms to his chest, and recalled the time he finally struck back. It was the day he found the Fight, the day he swore he would never cry again. Nowadays, the past and present merged; the man tried desperately to protect the boy within. But this dark place confused him. The Fight … had abandoned him.
Sampson’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light cast from the moon through a high window in the stone wall – it was still night. Then an explosion of light struck his senses as a naked bulb flared to life; harsh, stabbing. His eyes squeezed shut and he rolled to the side, the abrupt movement triggering a new pain in his heels … much worse … reaching up his legs and into his groin … much worse … and he cried out. ‘MAMA!’
Cry all you like, but Mama never comes, does she?
He clenched his jaw until the pain subsided, exhaling loudly when it became bearable. ‘Ah, shit,’ he muttered when he looked down at his bare feet and saw the dark blood stain on the cement floor. A tear ran into his beard. It left a warm trail. ‘Don’t fucking cry,’ he spat through clenched teeth, recalling his vow. But without the Fight, he was beaten, just another little boy crying for his mother.
This room Sampson found himself in was small. He was lying between two bunks, the thin mattresses rolled up at the head of each bed. He could taste the salt from his tears and wiped it from his lips and cheeks. He took a deep, trembling breath, aware that his next move would invite a world of hurt. He dragged himself to the wall and propped himself up, close to blacking out again.
‘Ah! YOU FUCKER!’ he shouted, and slapped at the side of the bed until the pain subsided enough for him to breathe.
There was a door opposite: steel, with flaking paint. It was difficult to determine the colour in the yellow light; perhaps a dull green. He noticed the sliding panel up high. It reminded him of his 2011 stint in old Grafton prison on an assault charge. Nobody fucks with Sampson. But someone had, and barely lived to tell the tale. Such was the power of the Fight. He had learned to hurt others before they could hurt him. The only legacy his drunken father had left him. What is this place? The fog was rapidly lifting, his thinking growing clearer. His heart pounded in his ears. He was suddenly conscious of his own heavy breathing as it echoed off the walls … the walls, with their scratched rows of days struck through in blocks of seven – so many days, weeks, years … the walls, with their faded chalk drawings – one a child’s, of a Raggedy Ann doll, with a big head of stringy red hair, its face in a grimace.
And yet, its face was like looking into a mirror.
He remembered riding back to the camp last night; over the legal alcohol limit, but far from drunk by his standards. The bike’s motor coughed and cut out suddenly, starved of fuel even though he’d filled up that morning at the marina. He remembered pulling over, stepping off, and putting the Harley on its stand before he turned to walk back to town for help. He remembered the sounds in the forest stirred by the winds, broken underbrush; the good-natured warning before he left the pub; Careful out there, Sampson, watch out for the Hoodoo. Then there was the stabbing pain at the base of his skull; the feeling of falling; the taste of dirt and blood from a split lip when he hit the road, barely conscious; someone yanking his boots off; then the swift cuts at his heels before unconsciousness spared him any more pain.
It all happened so fast; the Fight stolen, the power it possessed stripped from him in a glistening flash of steel. Sampson looked down at his pale fingers, their tips a bloodless blue. His leather jacket was gone, the cold invading his limbs, like ice through cotton. He looked into the button eyes of the chalked Raggedy Ann, his focus rippling with each breath. Then he understood with the clarity of a man before the altar of truth. Hot bile surged up from his stomach, and there was acid in his throat.
This place, he realised … It was not the first time he’d been there.
‘No,’ he murmured as the memory returned. Unwelcomed, and undeniable. He let out a drawn-out sob. He could feel the last inkling of strength he’d possessed waning, seeping out like the blood from his hobbled feet. This was the rabbit hole – a portal to a past he’d rather forget, a place to avoid at all costs. But no. Now he was falling headfirst down that burrow.
Pick one. A voice from that rabbit hole. Go ahead, Sammy, pick one.
He heaved a startled breath as the window in the door slid open with a clang, but only darkness stared back at him. The cold gripped his flesh. ‘I was just a kid,’ he shouted at the darkness, snivelling like he was still one. ‘Just a stupid drunken teenager.’
Something flew through the open-access window in the door and he flinched as it landed in his lap. A Raggedy Ann doll – thin, faded cotton, the stitching stretched and broken in places; red woollen hair
matted; one button eye missing, the absent one’s stitching pulling the fabric, as if winking playfully up at him. On the tattered dress was pinned a note. He read the first line. Remember me, Sammy?
He shook his head and let the tears run freely. Yes, he remembered. Remembered everything. ‘I was just a stupid fucking kid!’ he yelled. ‘I didn’t want to do none of that shit, but the others … they made me.’
He read the next line on the note. Give us a kiss, you said. Just a little kiss, you said.
‘All my life I’ve regretted what I did,’ he said, a strange calmness falling over him. ‘All my life I’ve tried to forget it.’
He read the last line and frowned. Well no kiss is colder than that of the blade.
‘I’m sorry.’ He could hear the scared little boy’s voice merging with his own, timid, resolved; the stocky biker lost in a sea of regret and fear.
The light went out.
Sampson held his breath and listened. It was pitch-black. He glanced up at the high window, the orb of the moon a faint glow behind the clouds – then the latch, loud; and the rasping hinges as the door opened. The licorice blackness stuck in his throat. He pressed himself against the wall, ignoring the pain, could sense someone drawing nearer.
Then he felt it, cold and final: the kiss of a blade across his throat.
11
Everett wasn’t sure if it was the muted morning light that had woken him, or the chirping from his phone. He lay still for a moment, consciousness seeping in as he stretched. The canvas bed was as rigid as a pine plank. His good watch told him it was six am. He sat up to find his phone, glancing around the room, waiting for the phone to chirp again, then saw it on the table by his laptop. The floorboards were cold underfoot, and in places sagged with a fragile creak under his weight.
He had missed a number of texts overnight. One from his mother: Are you eating okay? He smiled. Another from Jaimie offering to help with the case in any way she could. Everett appreciated the offer, but still remained cautious regarding how much information he shared at this stage. He frowned at the last number, not recognising it. He opened the text and felt the hair on his neck bristle.
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