Fisher appeared beside Taylor. ‘I heard a scream. What’s going on?’
Taylor gestured to the arrow in the back wall.
‘What the …?’ she said slowly, then looked towards the window. ‘Circle the wagons.’
Taylor followed Everett outside, nearly running into him when he halted at the roadside – the obstruction, Carl Wiggins. Everett clutched the loose lapels of Wiggins’ overalls in frustration, jolting the man with each exclamation.
‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ He shook the ferryman’s canvas hat from his head.
Taylor ran to Everett’s side. ‘Hey, hey, hey,’ he said, loosening Everett’s grip on the frail little man. ‘Take it easy.’ Wiggins stumbled backwards, favouring his good leg.
‘Ain’t no crime to be out on the streets,’ he said as he steadied himself.
A Jeep Cherokee – tan coloured, maybe 1980s – sped from the opposite side of the road. ‘Shit!’ spat Everett. There were no headlights and it was impossible to make out who was driving. The vehicle fishtailed across the road and roared north towards the plantation woodlands.
Everett ran out into the middle of the road, weapon raised. Taylor waited for the blast from the gun, but could see the hesitation in his expression. Not everyone can pull the trigger so easily, he thought. He wasn’t surprised when the young detective slowly lowered his weapon.
Taylor heard another car start up with a savage rev behind them. It was Constable Fisher’s police car. The Cruiser lurched forwards, stopping beside Taylor and Everett. ‘Get in,’ she said. The constable barely waited for Taylor’s arse to hit the back seat before she sped away with a screech of tyres and a wailing siren. Taylor glanced back at Wiggins, the sneer on the ferryman’s face becoming a smile as they raced off.
On the sealed roads, the Cruiser caught up to the Cherokee quickly. The Jeep had switched its headlights on, the brake lights ahead glowing bright at each bend.
Taylor pointed to the GoPro on the Cruiser’s dashboard. ‘That thing on?’ he asked.
Everett leaned forwards and turned it on, the red LED blinking to life. ‘It is now.’ He then grabbed the hardcover book that was about to slide off the dash and pitched it onto the back seat.
Taylor couldn’t help noticing the cover; he had the same book in his library back home. ‘Didn’t take you for a gardener, Constable,’ he said.
‘As a cop, I think I make a damned fine gardener,’ Fisher said. The Cruiser was still gaining on the old four-wheel drive and was now just a car length behind. ‘I’ve got him,’ she said. Then the road turned to dirt and a plume of dust and stones blinded the windscreen. ‘Jesus!’
‘Take it easy,’ said Everett. ‘The four-by-four will have the advantage now.’
Taylor sat back and finally thought to strap his seatbelt on. This could end badly. Then it happened.
The Cherokee’s brake lights brightened through the dust in a burst of red, so close. Constable Fisher touched the Cruiser’s brakes and overcorrected. The vehicle drifted into a ditch, lifting onto two wheels, then bounced to a stop in the channel.
‘Everyone okay?’ Taylor asked.
‘Shit!’ spat Fisher. ‘Yeah.’
Everett gestured ahead. ‘Check it out,’ he said.
The Cherokee had stopped a hundred metres ahead. The dust had cleared quickly in the wind. The timeworn vehicle was idling in the Cruiser’s headlights, its V8 burbling, growling almost, in a reminder of a time when fuel was cheap and clean air wasn’t high on the western world’s agenda.
‘What are they waiting for?’ Taylor asked.
Fisher accelerated, slowly at first, then a little harder, but the Cruiser was caught firmly in the ditch. ‘Damn it!’ She punched the steering wheel, and was opening the door to get out when the Cherokee backed towards them at speed.
‘Get out!’ Everett shouted.
Taylor leaped from the car a heartbeat after Everett. He hit the dirt, then crawled as fast as he could into the roadside brush. Fisher was firing her weapon, and had got three shots away when the Cherokee smashed into the Cruiser. Taylor looked up in time to see the open door clip Fisher off her feet, her gun flying as she hit the road.
Taylor wiped dust from his eyes and watched as Everett drew his weapon and fumbled with the safety. The Cherokee sped away towards the woodlands. Taylor considered the vast acres of plantation forest and their capacity to hide almost anything with the will to be hidden.
Everett hadn’t taken the shot. Whether he didn’t have the resolve or had decided that the moving target wasn’t worth the bullet, Taylor couldn’t say, but he wondered if there had been a greater reason for the detective not to fire his weapon. He turned his attention to the crippled police car, and the trailing dust from the fleeing four-wheel drive.
Everett and Constable Fisher joined him.
‘Sorry,’ said Fisher. She clutched with a pained scowl at her shoulder, then examined her Glock for damage.
‘Sorry? For what?’ asked Everett.
She gestured to the smashed Cruiser.
Everett patted her back. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sure the force will buy you another one.’ He turned to Taylor. ‘You got Jaimie’s phone number?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Taylor said. ‘I’ll get her to pick us up.’ He found his phone, and was about to call Jaimie’s number when he saw Maggie’s reply.
Love you too … Stay safe.
‘I’m trying,’ he whispered.
15
Back in town, aching and bruised, Taylor stood outside the Royal on the corner. The sound of the wind and the surging river was the only life force that stirred within the blackout. He stood on the gutter’s edge, sandwiched between the Royal’s soft light at his back and the night’s obscurity at his face. There was an imagined warmth at the nape of his neck, like a candle defying the darkness that now cloaked the town before him. The gutter was his borderland, as if taking another step would allow the night to swallow him whole.
Somewhere out there is our killer. A sense of vulnerability pulled at him at the thought and, for a moment, he conjured a faceless figure rushing at him, stealing him from the light. He stared towards the east. The sun couldn’t come quickly enough, but come it would. The night is just the pay-off for daylight, he thought. After all, we need that time in the shadows to know what it is to stand in the sun.
The wind rattled the saloon doors behind him, reminding Taylor of the sanctuary that lay inside. He shook off the melancholy that was creeping in; he needed to focus. Not on the blackout, but on who among them could do such things. He glanced skyward, hoping for a glimpse of the moon between the clouds, then recalled a quote from Mark Twain: Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Enough, he decided, turned and went inside. He saw Everett behind the bar where the arrow had embedded itself in the wall, using the torchlight on his phone to study it. Taylor stepped in beside him, doing his best not to interrupt.
Everett was in the zone, oblivious to Taylor and to Georgie Emery’s tinkering on the peripherals. The ranger knew the man well enough now to know that this was where he liked to be: in the moment, drawing out the residue of truth, opening his mind to the evidence and considering the facts.
The projectile appeared to be top quality, not from your average weekend target shooter. The feathering was tight; fixed in a rigid stem. Taylor suspected that the smooth surface was perfect for capturing prints, but in the dim light it appeared spotless.
‘Clean,’ Everett said, breathing out the word. Then he spoke louder, aiming his words at Georgie. ‘Are you sure no one tampered with this while I was gone?’ Taylor too glanced over his shoulder to where Georgie was sweeping broken glass below the exposed window, squinting against the funnel of wind through the ruptured pane.
She paused and leaned on the handle, annoyed at the distraction. ‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Sent the punters home when you took off after that car.’ With an indifferent shake of her head, she continued
sweeping.
‘Try around the nock,’ Taylor offered. He leaned in closer, pointing to the V in the synthetic tail. ‘That’s where the arrow would be gripped on the draw.’
‘You an expert on arrows now, Taylor?’
‘Parks Victoria sometimes use professional hunters for the culls back home. Some of them prefer a bow and arrow to a rifle.’
Everett pointed to the tip implanted in the timber wall. ‘Look how deep that arrowhead is buried.’ He tapped the edge with a gloved finger. ‘At least two centimetres of penetration into hardwood.’ It took a little jiggling, but he eventually held the blade to the light. ‘I reckon it would take an awful lot of tension to apply that much force to a shot from the other side of the road.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Taylor said. ‘You’re thinking of conventional bows, but most hunters use a compound bow these days. The cams, pullies and counterweights allow for a lot less pull and more stability for a maximum strike force. I’ve seen a similar arrow take down a mature deer at a hundred metres … These things are designed to kill.’
A clatter came from behind Everett as the sound of the wind suddenly muted. He and Taylor turned in unison. Georgie was in the process of nailing a plywood panel across the broken window. She hesitated when she saw them looking at her, hammer raised ready to strike. ‘Hope I’m not disturbing you ladies?’ She didn’t wait for an answer and just continued nailing the panel, swearing under her breath.
Everett returned his attention to the arrow, fascinated by the precise workmanship. He frowned, allowing a notion to form in his head. ‘How wide do you think that is, Taylor?’
Taylor leaned closer. ‘About twenty-five millimetres,’ he estimated. ‘Near enough to an inch in the old scale.’
Everett smiled wearily. ‘I assumed they were knife wounds.’
Taylor frowned. ‘Huh?’
‘When I measured the width of those wounds in the torsos of our three wise monkeys, the width was just under that, but the same on all three victims. Two-point-one centimetres. Allowing for contortion of the decayed flesh over time, they were more likely arrow punctures, not knife wounds.’
‘Just like Sampson,’ said Taylor.
‘Uh-huh. Just like Sampson.’
The bow and arrow was becoming a constant, breadcrumbs on a trail that led to Heaven’s Gate. Tonight’s arrow. Sampson. The three wise monkeys … All the way back to the orphan’s archery practice depicted in the chalk drawings inside the pump house by the weir.
‘Then there’s the question of Alison,’ Everett continued. ‘Our ghost of Heaven’s Gate.’
‘What about that Cherokee?’ Taylor asked. ‘Do you think it’s linked to Alison or the children’s home somehow?’
‘I had Constable Fisher run the plates when we got back. Seems they belong to a silver 2007 Mercedes, not a tan 1982 Jeep Cherokee … The plates are most definitely stolen.’
‘Find the Cherokee, find the shooter,’ Taylor said. ‘There’s no way off the Reach, so that vehicle is still out there somewhere.’
Taylor turned to the boarded-up window, distracted by the plywood bowing with a groan against the elements. It was as if the darkness was trying to get in.
*
Mike Ferguson drove back to the loggers’ camp and eased past the mess hall where most of the cars had parked since their owners were evicted from the pub. He squinted through the dusty windshield, his nose turning up to meet a frown of concentration as he tried to focus with his failing eyes. He had accepted he needed glasses a year ago, bought a pair and never worn them since.
A generator was humming below the building, keeping the beer cold and the mess warm despite the relentless wind outside. Ferguson kept driving, then parked outside his quarters where he cut the engine and lights. The cab was too hot, the heater stuck on high. He cracked the window an inch and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. The rest of the camp was pitch-dark. He sat for a moment, the wind buffeting his rust-crusted Ford Escort like it was a toy.
Ferguson could feel the knot tighten in his belly; the same knot that shitty-miss of a park ranger had pulled on back at the Royal. The arthritis in his knuckles burned like a bitch as he clenched his fists. Who did she think she was, talking to him like that? Embarrassing him in front of the other men … There was a time, bitch, when I would have shown you who I am! He slumped in the seat, rubbing his burning knuckles. Who I was.
But that was a long time ago, a lot of water under the bridge since. He grimaced at the loss of his youth, reminded of how his small stature had haunted his life. The past had a way of creeping back in, the bad things often dominating the good. Girls can be so unkind to short, skinny kids. Thinking of the past brought back their teasing voices. Even now, he wanted to shut them up, once and for all. And he had – but where was that man now? He’s here … Dig a little, you just have to peel a layer or two to see what lies beneath. And, like with the deepest lake, what lies beneath was often darkness.
Ferguson’s eyes were still adjusting to the night, the yard’s details emerging as with developing a black-and-white photograph. He rubbed the bridge of his nose; that helped him focus sometimes. But not tonight. He suddenly wished he had those glasses handy. Shadowy impressions of parked logging trucks emerged in the compound, dormant eighteen-wheelers beside mountains of stacked logs waiting for the saw to shape them into usable lumber; the open mouth of the mill’s conveyor and … a figure standing there.
He bent over the steering wheel, strained to see through the grimy windscreen. It was a trick of the dark, he decided. Then the trick of the dark bounded between the trucks, its open coat trailing like the unfurled wings of a bat.
The Hoodoo …
Ferguson bolted from the cab, having shoved the car door open against the wind, letting nature’s force slam it shut behind him. His heart raced as he almost stumbled ascending the single step to his quarters. He burst inside, pressing his body against the closed door, one hand clutching the handle of the bowie knife on his belt. He flicked the deadlock on, took a strained breath and slowly exhaled.
Right now, the night was his shield. He felt his way along the wall to the cabinet in the corner, fumbled it open and retrieved his rifle, heavy and comforting in his hands. The 30.30 Ruger had been loaded and ready since word of Sampson’s disappearance had hit the camp. Ferguson slid the safety forwards with a satisfying click. ‘Come and get me,’ he whispered.
Mounted to the rifle’s scope was a tactical torch he used for hunting. Fox, deer or Hoodoo … all the same to me. He covered the torch lens with the palm of his hand and tested it, momentarily seeing the outline of his finger bones through flesh. ‘Good, good, good …’ he murmured in a nervous mantra as he inched back the curtains. He concentrated on the parked trucks where he had first seen the figure. Unable to see anything clearly, he peeled the curtains back a little further.
Is someone moving inside the truck’s cab? He couldn’t be sure.
Then the headlights of the facing Kenworth burst to life, the beam piercing his sight, pain like knives plunging to the back of his eyes. He faltered backwards and tripped on the edge of the bed. Spots swam like fireflies in his vision, the sting worse when he clenched his eyes shut. Ferguson dragged himself to the far wall, cradled the rifle in his arms, the truck’s headlights flooding his quarters. Then the headlights went out. He tried to blink the spots away, but his night vision was shot.
Laughter rose above the wind – and he was again taken back to his youth, to being laughed at. Shut up! But no … The laughter was coming from the mess hall, before being hungrily whisked away by a gust of wind. Ferguson patted his jeans, found his mobile and searched for Charlie Lawson’s number. The door rattled with another wind blast – at least he hoped it was the wind. The sound of Charlie’s phone ringing was far more comforting. ‘I can have twenty men here in a heartbeat!’ he yelled at the door.
‘Hi, you’ve reached Charlie. I can’t answer the phone right now, so please leave a—’ Ferguson hung up. ‘Fuck!
’
He edged forwards in the darkness to the windowsill and edged the curtain back. The swarm of fireflies behind his eyes was thinning, but the darkness they flew in was absolute, the biggest features in the yard barely discernible. He checked that the Ruger’s safety was still in the fire position, located the tactical torch switch and reached for the deadlock on the door.
Just have to get to the mess hall.
The wind howled when he opened the door, frigid fingers of unseasonal cold scratching at his face. As soon as Ferguson stepped outside, he flicked the switch on the rifle’s torch. Its concentrated beam pierced the night. He scanned the parked trucks … nothing … took the step down from the doorsill and scanned the compound, the torch beam probing every corner … Still nothing.
Did I imagine the figure in the compound? These murders had everyone spooked, jumping at shadows, and shadows were everywhere on a night like this. He rubbed the bridge of his nose again. The fireflies were all but gone now, the night a little clearer. Then it occurred to him. The truck’s headlights were no imaginings.
There! He saw something move in his peripheral vision, whipped his head in its direction. The hairs on the nape of his neck bristled, the rifle’s torch beam searching, falling on a figure standing beside a One Way sign between two Kenworths. Cursing his failing eyesight, he raised the Ruger’s scope to his eye, but by the time he had the sign in his crosshairs, the figure had vanished.
Ferguson kept the beam between the trucks, glanced back at the mess; he could hear the men inside. It was the sound of safety, and for an instant he wanted to turn and run. But running was what he always did. Imagine, he thought at that moment. Imagine if it was me who stopped this murderer? He would become a legend around here … not a joke anymore.
Ferguson was in no-man’s-land, halfway between the mess and the two Kenworths. A flash of movement between the trucks took his breath away and clutched his heart with a cold hand.
The logger scanned the area through the scope, caught another glimpse of the figure – black on black – and lowered the rifle as it disappeared behind the truck. The man he once was stirred inside him. The sound of murmured voices and occasional laughter resonated from the mess behind him, reminding him that he was the one with the gun. He began the slow walk across the compound towards the trucks.
The Reach Page 16