Was I just imagining it? I had to be, right?
Pink blood oozing out of a person wasn't physically possible in this universe.
"What kind of person has pink blood?" I whispered as I felt Louis' hand on my arm, dragging me away. I think he said something like, "I should have known you'd come here," but I wasn't really listening.
And all I could think of was: some kind of person who isn't a person at all.
"Lana you can't be here." I was getting dragged over the sand in spite of my best efforts to wedge my boot into the sand for traction like it was an ice axe and I was a hiker about to fall off a mountain ledge. I kicked and kicked again until I finally wedged my heel in. Louis had to stop. I could no longer be dragged.
I wriggled myself free and threw Louis' hand off me. I only just managed not to hit the sand myself.
"Who is that?" I whispered, pointing back at the body. Rain started coming down in thick fleets. All I could think was, the rain will wash the blood away. Then there will be no proof.
"Nothing for you to worry about," Louis said, blocking my view of the woman with the pink blood. "I'll have you arrested in a minute if you don't leave the beach."
A theory was starting to form in my mind, but my mind was racing so fast it was hard to catch the individual thoughts. They were butterflies racing around my humid head, escaping the net.
Pink. Five years.
The crash...
"You need to let me see--" I started to scream, but Louis stood in front of me again and pushed me back.
"Go home, Lana," he screamed back at me.
I don't remember anything after that.
***
May's office overlooked the beach. Prime property -- on any other day at least -- for the firm that kept Tree Valley in business, kept us eligible to be classed as a utopia. Put us there in the first place. The firm that May was the name partner of. I normally avoided places so fancy (not to mention people as fancy as May Brennan was). And I usually made it a point to avoid places that were more than a story tall which Brennan and Co certainly was not. I was standing on the fourth floor, a clear view now that the rain had cleared. This was so high up I was practically getting vertigo.
The beach was closed to the public. Of course.
But I could still see it. The pink smear on the sand. The rain hadn't quite washed away the evidence.
Louis would be livid. They were gone now, he and his gang of four, but that pink stain had to be haunting him. There was too much evidence left behind.
"This can't get out." That's what Louis had said. Of course it couldn't: word of a murder in Tree Valley would ruin our reputation. Might even be the end of our little picture perfect town if those higher up had anything to say about it. It didn't bear thinking about. Yet I was. Maybe Louis was thinking straight with the idea of a cover-up after all.
Maybe I shouldn't go getting in his way.
As though it had read my mind the sun peeked out and said hello by waving its rays right into my eyes. Leave it alone, Lana.
But how could I just pretend I hadn't seen what I had seen? I had to wonder, which was worse:
1. A murder in Tree Valley?
2. Or the possibility that it was actually something far more sinister...
May's voice cut through my thoughts.
"Get away from the window, Lana. They might spot you."
"They're long gone," I said flatly. Then I wondered if she was actually talking about Louis and the detectives. I brought a pair of binoculars up to my eyes and threw caution to the wind -- if someone was watching me, I was going to watch them right back. The binoculars were courtesy of the investigator that worked for May's firm, a guy named Jyson who was retiring in a few weeks to stay home with his new baby. Paternity leave.
May had already told me: "The job's yours, Lana. If you actually get your P.I's license."
I placed the binoculars back down. It looked like any other day in our almost-Utopia. Even the people circling the beach didn't seem to notice anything was amiss. The "closed" sign didn't even raise an eyebrow, didn't even cause anyone to stop and investigate further. They just went about their merry businesses.
I guess that's the problem with a near-Utopia. It breeds complacency. It makes people lose their suspicions.
But it had never made me lose my suspicions. May always said I went looking for trouble, went looking for things that didn't exist. She said it was her duty to drag me back to reality kicking and screaming whenever I went too deep into the unknown depths of my own imagination. She brought me back to the surface and revived me time and time again. But this time I didn't need reviving -- I needed to don my scuba suit and stay under the water, diving.
So I couldn't let her know what I was thinking. Not all of it, anyway. "You're pretty calm considering that a murder just took place in our town, May."
May barely even looked up from her desk. "We don't know that's what happened."
"I don't think people just fall head first into the sand and die," I commented. I suppose it was possible the woman had tripped and fallen on a knife. Or maybe a shark had magically materialised in the fake beach that was two hundred miles away from an actual ocean. That sounded more likely than her tripping and falling to her death on a beach in the middle of the day.
Why had she been the only person on the beach?
Where were the other witnesses?
May shook her head. "I'm not sure bringing you back here was such a good idea."
She always indulged me, though. That's what surrogate-mother types were supposed to do. That's why she'd let me come back to work with her instead of driving me home like a responsible person would have. Not that May was irresponsible. She was the most responsible person I'd ever met. But she had no children of her own and she had a bad habit of doing whatever I asked even when she must have known it was bad for me.
"You've got the best view in town here," I murmured, crossing my arms. "Maybe I'll have to take that job after all?"
That got her attention. She peered at me over the top of her glasses. "You're kidding, right? I thought you said you never wanted to take a full-time paycheck from the company, that, I quote, 'wrecked the traditional way of life in Traralgon.'"
I hadn't heard anyone refer to Tree Valley by its old name in a long time. It almost made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Like speaking the old name would invoke something.
And I don't mess with the paranormal. I don't take part in seances.
"You know not to take my words personally, May."
"I don't," she said with a sigh, returning to her work. "That's why I offered you the job."
I pulled the binoculars back up and studied the pink stain again. "Now that Gun Employment are cutting off my benefits I may have to re-think my moral stance."
"They are what?--" May fired back. "Lana what did you do at Gun Employment?"
I didn't want to discuss it.
"So what do you think May?" I laid the binoculars back down on her desk. "How could a person's blood turn pink?"
She shifted uncomfortably. "You didn't actually see that, Lana."
I tried not to be offended at her questioning of my senses. Well, of my one sense. My imagination could run away with me, sure, but it couldn't override my sense of sight. Even my sense of smell...I frowned as I realized something.
The blood hadn't had the usual sickly, metallic smell of blood.
It had smelled almost...sweet, like cake batter.
Okay, maybe I actually was going crazy.
"Okay, forget the pink blood," I said to May, knowing that was a losing track with her anyway. Anything that didn't have a rational explanation, May just blocked out and refused to acknowledge. "Who killed her?" I asked in a low voice. It didn't seem right to talk about a murder in anything but hushed tones. It was something that none of us had any experience talking about. This kind of thing just didn't happen in Tree Valley. People like Louis Fletcher made sure of that.
I was testing May's patience. She
would rather just pretend nothing had happened. Or that it was "an accident". "Um, here's an idea -- why don't you stay out of it and mind your own business?" Her tone was a little harsh, but it was more maternal than anything. A gentle warning.
I perched myself on top of her desk and picked up a black stapler. "Hey, with my singing career down the toilet I've got all the time in the world to solve mysteries." I cocked my head and shot her a far too forced smile. I know these weren't the sort of mysteries she wanted me to solve. If I took Jyson's soulless job I'd be doing nothing but trailing tax cheats and doing hours of paperwork a week.
"I think the police probably have a handle on it," May replied, returning to her legal briefs. She shook her head as she adjusted her reading glasses. "I don't think they need your help."
Now, that made me laugh. "Louis doesn't have a handle on anything except his own ego. Actually, he doesn't have a handle on that -- it is out of control. And he's never even been on a murder case. How are he and his cronies going to solve Tree Valley's first murder in ten years?" I spun the stapler in mid air and caught it, my palm in the middle of its jaws, the top jaw slamming down on the back of my hand, as I only narrowly escaped getting a silver staple through it.
"Give me that," May scolded, pulling it off me.
I swallowed a gasp as I looked over my shoulder and saw movement on the beach. Slinking quietly back to the window, my suspicions were confirmed: Louis had returned.
With a giant hose.
And within minutes all the evidence had washed into the water. It was drowned. No more sign that the pink blood had ever been there.
My heart raced fast. I almost couldn't believe I'd been right.
This was a cover up.
There was a violent drummer in my chest. He can't get away with this.
I kept the remainder of my thoughts to myself. May didn't believe in anything even remotely connected to the paranormal, and any talk of it made her angry. Extremely angry. She'd been burned badly in the past and any mention of it made her see red. She'd shut me down immediately if I dared to say, what if the girl wasn't even human?
What if the killer wasn't?
"I'll catch you later, May," I said, pulling my leather jacket on.
She looked up in surprise.
"Where are you going? Don't you need a lift home?"
I wasn't going home. I shook my head and headed out the door while she called after me. "Don't forget we have dinner plans later tonight."
There was one person I needed to see.
Only I really, really didn't want to see him.
I left without telling May where I was going.
Chapter Three
Close Encounters Of The Traralgon Kind.
Taj Robinson didn't exactly live in a house. He didn't exactly live anywhere. Nowhere that anyone could reliably call a 'home' anyway.
Technically, the reserve he lived on was not residential. Well, that was putting it mildly. Technically, it was completely off bounds. That was where the spill had happened. Rumor was, even spending a day there could lower your life expectancy by a year. Taj was only thirty-one and he'd been living there for three years. That was a lot of years to take off his life. Technically he should have been dead some 698 years ago.
But he was still alive. I was just one of the few who knew that he was.
And I was the only person who knew where he lived.
The rumors about the toxicity of the Tree Valley Railway Reserve wasn't the only thing that people whispered about, in regards to Taj's choice of home.
They said a lot of things about the Railway Reserve. It was one of the reasons that Taj lived there without inference from the government, and without being told to clear out by the authorities. Everyone was too scared to go anywhere near the place.
Especially the cops.
I had to duck under a chain holding a sign that read 'no entry' to enter the reserve -- that was the only measure anyone had ever taken to keep people out of the reserve. It wasn't locked off, and there were no real physical impediments apart from the muddy clay underfoot which was slippery after the sudden rainfall.
The reserve was large, about a kilometre wide, with a lake in the middle, which, way back in the old days, was the main 'water' attraction of the town before the beach existed. It had once been a tourist attraction believe it or not. Now it was overgrown, full of tangled weeds and overgrown branches that hung too low over the old pathways which, ten years ago, would have been home to strollers and families and dogs on leashes on a day like this.
Now it was a ghost town. Or, a ghost reserve.
I managed to avoid getting my face scratched by the arms of the wild branches and their uncut fingernails as I scrambled towards the lake, trying to remember the exact location of Taj's shack. I needed a map -- I felt like I was looking for buried pirate's treasure. Or a lost, mythical land. There was even fog hovering over the lake, joined to the water by gnarled knuckled grey tendrils, despite the now-clear whether.
Those would have been the toxins I mentioned earlier.
I decided that Taj's shack must be on the other side of the lake. To the best of my recollection, that's where I placed it. So there was nothing for it but to make the terrible journey across the toxic lake with it's grey fingers longing to drag me in.
I tried not to look at the fumes as I set out. My first step and the wooden boards beneath gave way, sagging and creaking underneath. Smog snaked through the cracks and tried to grab me by the ankles. I hesitated, steeling myself before I took another step, my own knuckles white on the soggy handrail. It wasn't as though the lake was particularly deep -- I was just afraid of what might be down there.
Monsters.
I forged on.
"Lana?" Finally, a voice in the almost-darkness, guiding my way. I never thought I'd be so pleased to hear Taj Robinson's voice. It sang to my soul.
Or at least, it would have if it had come from the other side of the lake.
Only it was singing from behind me in the direction I'd just come. I groaned and turned around, still gripping the handrail as the bridge swayed beneath me.
He looked the same. Hadn't aged seven hundred years then. He still had the same mid-length dark floppy hair, bushy eyebrows, and still wore the same camouflage jacket. He was still over six foot, of course; the toxic waste hadn't shrunk him. He was still good-looking but in the way that any sane woman would ignore.
Taj was shaking his head. I couldn't figure out whether he was pleased or appalled to see me. "You've got a lousy set of direction, Lana. Come on, my place is back this way. I'll make you a cup of tea."
***
"You're lucky you didn't fall right in," Taj said, shaking his head as we descended down the side of a clay hill into a valley below where Taj's shack poked through the branches of gumtrees. "I never go to the other side of the lake."
"What's on the other side?" I asked.
"No one has been there in ten years."
I tried to stop myself from sliding so far over that I ended up on my butt as I navigated the steep clay hill. I hadn't even thought to peek into the valley. I also didn't remember Taj living so far down that he was practically underground, like a gnome. Then again, it had been years since I'd visited him.
The clay had an...interesting smell to it. It was like it had soaked up the old dog poop smell of the old town and kept it stored n its cells.
I tried to ignore it as we reached the bottom and passed through the maze of crooked gumtree trunks as the small tin shack came into better view. I wondered how on earth Taj was going to make me this fantastical tea he spoke of. Was he going to light a fire? Fires were forbidden. Not just in the reserve, but everywhere in town. And even though Taj was on the fringe, a fire could still be spotted by those in charge if it stretched high enough.
At least Louis and the cops had their hands full with other matters that day. I was glad of that at least. And not just because I was worried that I might get arrested along with Taj and blow my cle
an adult record. I realized that I really, really didn't want Louis to see me with Taj. Especially not hanging out at his house. Sorry, I mean, underground hovel.
There were scratchy branches covering the entrance which Taj had to navigate. One was particularly thick and acted as a barrier to the door, like a deadbolt. I wondered who on earth Taj could possibly be trying to keep out. No one would voluntarily come here.
Well. I had.
But only under duress. Taj was the only one who could help me.
"Come in," he muttered, holding up the tree branch for me while I ducked underneath it.
"I see you're still living as far off the grid as is humanly possible," I said, trying not to let the branch hit me on the face as we entered the tin shed. It was nicer inside than I'd expected. I mean, it wasn't 'nice' but for a tin shed surrounded by mud and clay, it was relatively clean and ordered. I saw that Taj had a portable gas stove and a teapot perched on top of it. Thank god, there would be no fire.
"I hear you are as well," Taj said wryly as he headed over to the stove and filled the teapot with water from a questionable source.
That made me laugh though Taj put a finger up to his lips to warn me to be quiet. Did he think that people might be listening to us? "Not as far off the grid as you...I'm practically the queen of the grid compared to you," I said as I watched him make the tea. I'd half thought he was going to make it from gum leaves and twigs he'd found outside -- calm down, he's not a witch, Lana -- but he had real life tea bags. Did he go into town to buy them?
Taj's eyebrows unmatted themselves reluctantly as he put the pot on to boil. "It's how I like it."
We'd always been two peas in a pod in that way. Liking our solitude, I mean. Even when Taj had lived in town, and we'd both been students at the university, he'd always been a bit...fringe. Whereas I'd chosen to live on campus, Taj had taken up with seven other students in a sharehouse that was more of a commune than a household, with shared meals and living spaces, along with other things. We'd been friends at the time, and I'd spent a lot of time at that sharehouse, practically living there myself at times. But I say, "practically." A shared bathroom between seven people was too much for me. I like my creature comforts. Taj had never been like that. He'd always been a more extreme version of me.
Pink Blooded: A Lana Pink Mystery Page 2