The Reach

by B. Michael Radburn

  So, this is Paris, Taylor thought again.

  She turned and stared back at Taylor with the beginnings of a smile that was quickly extinguished. She lies. Erin seemed to be whispering along with the wind beneath the eaves.

  ‘I’d like to ask you some questions,’ Everett said to Paris as he slipped his watches back onto his wrist.

  She turned to Everett. ‘Why two watches, Detective?’

  Jesus, thought Taylor; her voice is different. It was deeper than the one she used in her Jaimie persona, and her tone was brusque. The confidence was without warmth, like she was a businesswoman with no time for bullshit.

  ‘I think I’ll ask the questions now, Paris.’

  She held her cuffed wrists up to Everett. ‘They’re a little tight.’ She shook the chain between them like it was a bracelet. ‘Couldn’t loosen them a notch, could you?’

  He pulled the key from his pants pocket and slapped it on the table between them. ‘Show me a little commitment first.’

  Paris cocked her head and smiled sarcastically. She let her cuffed hands fall into the lap of her black jeans. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ She shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Commitment? If I hadn’t walked in here tonight, you’d all still be out there looking for me.’ She glanced up at the stage and its gallery of the macabre. ‘Or, perhaps, cowering from me in the dark somewhere.’ She returned her gaze to Taylor. ‘I’m done with killing. They’re all gone and we’re tired.’

  ‘I just need to clarify a few things, for the record.’ Everett’s voice lacked the confidence of Paris’s. ‘Was it you who killed those men we found in the boat?’

  ‘You really need me to say?’

  ‘Yes, I need to hear it.’

  ‘I killed them … Jefferies, Gant and Kelly.’ She suddenly appeared bored, and slid down into the crook of the seat, restless. ‘They only died once, Detective. I, on the other hand, died a thousand times at their hands.’

  ‘John Sampson?’

  ‘Yes, and Mike Ferguson, and Sister Moore.’ She sighed, looking down at her lap. ‘And that dog Dench.’

  ‘And Constable Fisher.’ Everett said her name with a cold stare.

  Paris’s expression sobered, like a vivid moon crossed by grey cloud. ‘That … That was an accident. She had a gun pointed at me. I … I thought she’d jump out of the way.’

  ‘And yet, you left her there to die.’

  Anger filled her face, and she spoke with a wrathful quiver of her lips. ‘She was prepared to kill me, Detective. I owed her nothing.’

  ‘What about your friend Alison?’

  ‘No!’ Paris straightened in her chair with a defensive glare. ‘She died in the cabin fire. I couldn’t save her.’

  ‘The cabin fire you started?’ Taylor offered with a calmness that surprised him.

  Paris couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘Yes, I started the fire,’ she said. ‘But Alison … She … She couldn’t get out in time.’

  Hearing Paris – seeing Paris – seemed increasingly surreal to Taylor. After all this time inhabiting the shadows, she just walked in and willingly confessed. Something isn’t right. If this was all about killing those responsible for her plight, she could have remained hidden in the forest, changed her appearance again and disappeared, like she had done for the last decade.

  ‘You recovered over time,’ said Taylor. ‘Even reinvented yourself. You could have come to the police seeking a conviction.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ she said cynically. Paris leaned over to Everett. ‘Do you want to tell Taylor here what my chances of a conviction were after so long?’

  ‘You’ll never know because you didn’t try,’ Everett replied.

  ‘You’re right, Detective. I will never know. But I could never be sure of a conviction if I went through the legal channels, but I could be sure if I took matters into my own hands.’ She shook her head, seeming only mildly frustrated, and stared down at her handcuffs again. ‘I had a long time with them to consider their weaknesses; I also had a long time to heal my scars and plan the justice they deserved.’

  ‘You can wrap this thing in a neat parcel of justice all you like, Paris,’ Everett said, ‘but what lies inside that package is still murder.’

  ‘Murder, huh?’ she repeated. ‘No one can possibly understand the motivation behind that word until they’ve walked in my shoes, Detective. Murder is a powerful word, and its promise sustained me during those two years of imprisonment with Walter Dench and his visitors. More so than the disgusting food and tepid water; more so than a stained blanket for warmth, or a pillow that stank of an old man’s whisky breath.’

  ‘Again, though, what about Alison?’ Taylor asked.

  ‘Alison gave up in the first few months – her only conceivable way out was death.’ Paris lowered her head, but her expression remained firm. ‘And that’s exactly how it played out for her.’

  ‘The fire?’

  ‘Yes, the fire.’ Her eyes dulled. ‘You see, fire cleanses. It was a blessing. Alison was strung too tightly to live a full and happy life after what happened to her … to us.’ She closed her eyes at the memory. ‘All that time, Alison wanted to be me, to quash the fear she carried all her life. And, as it turned out, she became my lifeboat when I became her.’ Paris turned to Taylor. ‘A perfect irony, don’t you think?’

  Taylor noted some humanity had surfaced in her expression – a spark of regret that was quickly extinguished when Everett interjected, ‘Alison’s life or death was never yours to determine.’ She revolved slowly to face him again, feeding the tension.

  So, this is Paris. And yet, Taylor felt some empathy for her. No one should go through what she endured.

  ‘Like I said … Walk in my shoes before you judge me, Detective.’ She eased herself back, and extended her cuffed hands. ‘Now … A deal is a deal.’

  Everett picked up the key, and released each cuff a notch. Paris rubbed her wrists as best she could. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘I’m going to suspend any questioning until my team arrives, Paris.’ The detective stood. Taylor thought he appeared to have aged over the past twenty-four hours. Everett guided her around to the exposed water pipe that ran along the wall behind her. ‘Paris, you are under arrest for multiple murders by your own admission. You do not—’

  ‘—have to say or do anything,’ Paris cut in.

  Everett unlocked one cuff and snapped it around the water pipe. ‘However, anything you—’

  ‘—say or do may be used in evidence.’ She waved him away. ‘Yeah, yeah, I know the pitch.’ She sighed. ‘We all love a good cop show.’

  Everett walked away, avoiding any eye contact as he slipped the handcuff key into his breast pocket. It was evident that he wanted both physical and psychological distance between Paris and himself. Taylor took it on board as valuable unspoken advice.

  ‘I’m heading back to the Royal … I’ll get some blankets for Paris,’ Everett told Taylor as he slipped his raincoat off the chair and draped it over his head and shoulders. ‘Lock the door behind me.’ And he was gone.

  Taylor locked the door and pressed his back against it, feeling every breath of wind pushing against the panels. Paris sat in the rim of light cast by the single desk lamp. Her dark eyes were fixed on his.

  What are you hiding?

  *

  The wind tore at Everett’s raincoat while the darkness tore at his imagination. He pulled the raincoat tightly around his shoulders, the elements slapping his face as he marched into the storm towards the nominal lights of the Royal.

  It’s too easy, Everett decided. Paris was in custody, but there was still the missing dynamite to consider. The river pressed at the levee wall across the street. How many floods has it kept at bay? How many more can it control? Everything has its limits, he thought. He needed to buy some time, the very reason he’d decided to stop the questioning. If the town is in danger, perhaps the best defence is keeping Paris close. He looked towards the south. Somewhere out there was the tac-response team, head
ing this way. Just get through the night, he thought. That’s all we have to do. The storm is due to break, and the heavy armour’ll be here soon enough. Paris wouldn’t have handed herself in like that if it wasn’t a part of her plan, and he couldn’t afford to be lured into her game. Perhaps denying Paris that will force her to give up her final secret.

  ‘And pigs might fly,’ he whispered, spitting rain from his lips.

  Then something stopped him in his tracks. I’m done with killing, she had said. They’re all gone and we’re tired …

  ‘We’re tired,’ he said. She’s not working alone!

  Anxiety gripped him, and he wondered how to extract the information without pushing Paris over the edge. That’s why she walked in so cockily … She had no intention of staying locked up for the night. He turned … and then the needle sank deep into his neck.

  Everett pushed the figure away and stumbled. He could feel the needle’s poison surging through his veins already. His legs were heavy at first, then light, his joints losing mobility as they buckled beneath him. He reached for his weapon, and managed to unclip the holster before he collapsed to the walkway and a misty fog filled his mind. The figure stood over him, but too blurred through the fog for him to make out who it was. He could feel his Glock being pulled from its holster, and was helpless to resist; he felt the figure rifle through his top pocket and the weight of the handcuff key disappearing.

  Then the fog behind his eyes seemed to turn into a viscous twilight, before a black, dreamless night prevailed.

  28

  Taylor sat at the end of the trestle table, as far from Paris as possible. The truth was, she frightened him. As much as he wanted to question her further about her motives and how she had committed her crimes, he was equally afraid of the answers – afraid to know just how close she might have got to his family as she’d gathered the necessary intelligence to suck Taylor in the way she had.

  Don’t bring this home …

  He began scrolling through the emails on his phone, and saw one from the first night on the Reach and smiled. It was from Maggie – a picture of Erin blowing air kisses. The text: Good night, Daddy.

  ‘Something from home?’ Paris asked. ‘From Maggie?’ He almost dropped the phone when he realised that it wasn’t Paris’s voice he was hearing; she had seamlessly slipped back into Jaimie’s, as if that persona lay so close to the surface that a scratch of the skin could release it. He looked into her eyes, looking for Jaimie.

  Paris just smiled. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That was cruel.’

  Taylor shifted his gaze to the trestle table; the cap and wig were all that was left of the Jaimie he knew. He shook his head, closed the phone and slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘Cruel?’ he said. ‘I think I got off lightly compared with what you did to the others.’

  Paris remained calm; too calm. She was like someone biding her time while waiting for a bus. ‘You liked her, didn’t you?’

  ‘Jaimie?’

  ‘Yeah, Jaimie.’

  Taylor gestured to the cap and wig. ‘There never was a Jaimie.’

  ‘Sure there was,’ she said, a trace of mischief in her tone. ‘She reminded you of Maggie, didn’t she?’

  ‘Jaimie is a lie,’ he told her, remembering Erin’s warning. ‘Growing up on Sydney’s north side; father’s Audi dealership; mother’s boutique … All lies.’ He shook his head. ‘The sad truth is, you never had to lie, Paris, with everything you’ve been through … You could have told the truth, then other people could have helped you and you might have got proper justice.’

  The air of mischief left her at his words. ‘I guess it’s the victor who gets to write the history of a conflict; of a tragedy,’ she said. ‘And this is the history I chose.’

  ‘You don’t look like the victor, sitting there in cuffs.’

  ‘I had a plan and I achieved it,’ she said. ‘That sounds victorious to me.’

  Perhaps she’s right, Taylor thought. Perhaps there’s only ever been the endgame in her eyes. If so, there was a kind of nobility to her surrender. But he needed to know how close she had come to his family.

  ‘Why so many of my wife’s traits?’ he asked.

  She shrugged, her expression difficult to read in the lamplight. ‘It’s what I do,’ she said in Jaimie’s voice.

  ‘Don’t!’

  Paris baulked at Taylor’s firm response, pausing stony-faced on the cusp of a reaction. But when it came, she was calm and measured, perhaps remembering she was cuffed to the pipes. ‘Inventing Jaimie and creating her role here as park ranger was easier than you think,’ she said. ‘And it made me a trusted member of this town, while still allowing me to keep my distance from it. The ranger’s station was the perfect launch point, and the park vast enough to move and hide in.’

  ‘But how did you explain your presence here?’

  She shrugged. ‘The park access at Devlins Reach has been closed for nearly ten years. I cleaned the cottage up as best I could, purchased the surplus Park’s Land Rover through an online auction, and the good people of the Reach just accepted me.’ She arched her shoulders apologetically. ‘The formal gates are west of here at Wisemans Ferry … I even hinted at this the day you arrived.’

  Taylor couldn’t help but feel stupid. What else have I missed?

  ‘And the similarities to Maggie?’

  She sighed. ‘The bodies in the buried riverboat were found too soon,’ she said. ‘When Detective Everett came here, I made myself available. He told me about you, so I knew you and I would have to work together closely. Intercepting emails, tagging myself in the conversations, all that led me to your Facebook account.’ Her smirk was evident. ‘Your whole family there for all to see.’

  Don’t bring this home … Taylor shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  ‘Tweaking Jaimie to look a little more like Maggie wasn’t hard,’ she continued. ‘A few highlights through the wig, and having the ponytail and glasses. I didn’t want to be her, Taylor; I just needed you to feel comfortable with me, open and … willing.’

  Taylor frowned, feeling vulnerable and a little stupid. ‘Willing?’

  ‘Willing to be guided.’

  And that he had been; there was no denying it. Every dip and turn Paris had guided him through over the course of her killing spree came to his mind in a hurried procession of gut-wrenching memories. She had placed him where she needed him, when she needed him, and fed Taylor the information required to keep both him and Everett at bay. Yes, he’d been willing. He watched a single tear trace down Paris’s cheek. Is this sudden vulnerability real, or just another mask?

  Over the groaning walls of the hall, a knock startled Taylor back to the present. The knocking became more intense and urgent.

  ‘I have to get that,’ he said. He walked to the window and peered out, hoping it was Everett at the door. Without the Jeep’s headlights on, it was difficult to see who was out there. He rapped on the glass to get their attention. The person stepped into view, their back to the driving wind, hunched under a hood. Heather Starling.

  Jesus, Heather, not now, he thought. She lifted a basket with a hotpot and thermos in it, pointing violently into the hamper. ‘Open the door!’ she cried. ‘I’ve brought you and the detective some dinner.’

  Taylor opened the door, holding it against the wind. ‘Now’s not a good time, Heather!’ he cried over the gale. But she had already stepped a foot inside, and looked rather dejected. He thought that she would have made a great door-to-door salesperson in another life.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said as she slipped her way past him. ‘It’s always a good time for a beef stew.’ She lifted the thermos. ‘And, besides, I’m going crazy at the café by myself.’

  Taylor stepped out into the night, searched the street leading to the Royal for any sign of Everett. Nothing. He closed the door and locked it. ‘Jesus, Heather, you’re going to get me in trouble.’ He took out his phone. ‘You shouldn’t be here right now.’ He selected Ever
ett’s number.

  She waved Taylor’s comments away and thrust the basket into the crook of his free arm. ‘Detective Everett will change his mind when he tastes my stew.’

  The call to Everett’s phone went straight to voicemail as Taylor watched Heather slipping off her raincoat. I don’t have time for this. He thrust the phone back into his pocket and stepped in front of Heather.

  With one arm out of its sleeve, she stopped abruptly and peered around Taylor’s shoulders. ‘Who the hell is that?’

  ‘That’s the reason you shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘That and Dench’s Jeep outside, I’m guessing,’ she said.

  Paris moved into the light. Any semblance of Jaimie was gone now. She smiled.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Taylor,’ said Heather, leaning closer. ‘Is that her? Our Hoodoo?’

  She tried to step past Taylor. Does she really think she can march in here and chat to Paris like this is some kind of mothers’ group? He lowered the basket to his feet and took her by the shoulders. ‘I’m serious, Heather. You can’t stay, but you can help.’

  ‘Help?’ Any disappointment in her expression was replaced by a new enthusiasm. ‘Of course I can help.’

  ‘I want you to go up to the Royal and find Everett. He’s been gone longer than he should.’

  ‘Yeah, Heather,’ said Paris matter-of-factly. ‘Why don’t you go get the detective?’

  Taylor turned towards Paris and frowned. There was way too much familiarity in her tone, like she’d known Heather forever. Then Paris raised the uncuffed hand to her cheek and gave a brief wave.

  ‘Night, night,’ she said, just as Heather’s cool hand braced Taylor’s shoulder and a needle plunged deep into his neck. He collapsed with a spasm as his legs became gelatinous beneath him.

  Taylor watched as Heather ran to Paris, although the image was blurred in the dank light he was drowning in. He saw them embrace after Paris fluttered free of the cuffs. Then he saw Paris bound over the trestle table. She perched beside him. He could smell her breath as she leaned close and whispered in his ear, ‘Heather will take you somewhere high and dry while I finish this.’ She cupped his cheek for the briefest of moments, something forming in her eyes. An expression of sorrow perhaps; maybe even regret. Paris smiled warmly, but then the smile faded, and she fled.