by Candice Fox
‘We won’t stand idly by and let our voices go unheard,’ the woman said. ‘If all goes well, this will be the biggest gathering of like-minded souls fighting for recognition in the daily struggle against domestic violence in this country. You need to escape the you that you’ve become, Sydney. It’s easy!’
Hooky was distracted from the laptop on her knees by her aunt jabbering away in the kitchen, the low bubbling of her voice rising to a simmer as she walked into the large, immaculate living room, setting cutlery on the table. She was complaining about the ‘sickos’ Hooky was chatting to on the internet. Something about her doing it at home, rather than at the station, made her aunt Ada think Hooky did it because she enjoyed it and not because she wanted to see the men she wrote to cornered, dragged into prison cells, given back some of the pain they perpetuated on their victims.
How can they let you do that at home, unsupervised? Ada asked, her Vietnamese so fast and perfect Hooky had trouble following. Who are these people? What kind of cowboys do they have running this city?
Hooky ignored her aunt. As long as her university grades didn’t slip, Ada had never made good on her promise to confront her bosses at the department about just how much danger she was in and just how much freedom she had to hunt pedophiles online. Hooky made sure her grades were as near perfect as they could be. If the chiefs found out she was messing around with the perps they were watching in her own time, she’d be kicked out of the office for good.
Her fingers flashed over the keys, her eyes following as the words pumped into the small chat box at the bottom of the screen. The chatter, StanSmiles33, had already filled the screen with text in the moments Hooky was distracted. He was hooked, this one.
Hooky thought of the pedophiles she hunted in ‘levels’, so this was the way she reported on them to her boss when she was working alongside officers at the station. Every inter action she made, no matter how casual, had to be reported, the conversations screenshotted and logged in files labelled with screen names for each individual target. Hooky had a small database of images she was allowed to use at the very end of her interactions with her prey – in the days and hours before their proposed first meeting. More often than not, just before meeting in person, one of her chatters would ask her for a racy photograph, a ‘commitment’, something to show that she was ‘real’ and serious about meeting up. Hooky had naked photographs of twelve boys and twelve girls of varying ages and ethnicities, the faces cheekily hidden or obscured, as final bait for her chatters. Hooky knew these children well – the grinning twelve-year-old girl taking a selfie in the mirror, the taut-skinned, serious-looking fourteen-year-old boy posing on a bed. These were for the level-five chatters only. She only ever used them once.
At level one, the target approached Hooky online, or she approached him, for casual chit-chat. School, weather, parents, the latest movies at the box office. Generally, ages weren’t discussed, or if they were the men chatting to Hooky told her they were close to her age range. If she told the target that she was twelve, they often pretended to be fifteen. If she was fifteen, they would say they were seventeen. Sometimes, Hooky had five level-one chatters to report on by the end of a chat session. Level ones often progressed to nothing. There was nothing criminal about an older man lying so he could chat to a younger person online as long as the chat was fairly pedestrian, and there was any number of excuses available to the outed online predator at level one – he wanted to reconnect with his own daughter who’d become moody and detached, so he chatted to young people, tried to get a feel for their worries, their interests. He was curious, maybe, about how young people interacted these days. He was living a fantasy, perhaps. Having an age crisis in his forties and pretending he was young. Didn’t everyone think like that sometimes? What if I could go back? Start again? It was harmless.
For a chatter to progress to Hooky’s level-two file, chat had to be sustained for more than one conversation, and innocuous photographs were exchanged. The chatter would ‘add’ Hooky, or who she was pretending to be – send her a request to be her ‘friend’ or to ‘link up’, to ‘follow’, depending on the site. A flurry of smiley faces celebrated the newly officiated, though still virtual, relationship. At this point, the more experienced online child-groomer backed off a little. Tried to make Hooky comfortable – didn’t want to come on too strong. Connections were sometimes encouraged between Hooky and his other online friends, which often involved just the same chatter using different profiles, trying to make Hooky feel like she was part of a group instead of interacting with an individual. If the guy had friends, he had to be alright, right? Groups and clubs formed. The target sometimes asked where Hooky lived towards the end of this level.
To progress to level three, at which point Hooky flagged the interactions with her chief at North Sydney Police headquarters, the talk had to turn romantic. Sometimes this was within mere hours of the chat being initiated for the first time. Sometimes it was only after months of association. It would begin with the odd love-song dedication or a ‘caring’ message. I was thinking about you today. Invariably the target would search for an opportunity to assert himself as a strong, brave, masculine hero-type. If Hooky’s character had a fight with his or her parents, the target would understand. The target would have experienced the same thing, or worse, from his own parents. If Hooky’s character was being bullied at school, the target would reveal his evil plans for the perpetrators of the harassment. He’d progressively reveal his real age, either in stages, or all at once, confessing that although he’d lied – he was really forty-one – he felt such a connection with Hooky’s character that he didn’t feel it mattered. Age is just a number, right? Often at this point he would want to send money or a gift to cheer Hooky’s character up. To show he cared. So he would obtain Hooky’s address.
At level four, a second ‘location indicator’ was exchanged. The target would ask where the girl or boy went to school or worked, maybe do a drive by of either location, or make a comment to the kid about the location. At level five, plans for a real-life meeting would be discussed. At this time, Hooky would consolidate her file, print out all the information she had, tag it and give it to her boss. And that was the end of her involvement.
There were many benefits to chatting to the perpetrators on her own, away from the office, although Hooky risked losing her job doing it. She could say what she wanted to the perps without having to get approval from the cops sitting with her. She could be more graphic. More intense. The department strictly forbade her from talking to perps on the phone or in video chat at the offices. But when a target requested phone contact, and Hooky refused it, the perps usually got spooked and slipped away.
Hooky didn’t like it when they got away.
When her reports were handed in, the department would link up with the Australian Federal Police and brief them for a joint operation. Sometimes Hooky saw her targets in the newspaper two or three months after she handed over their cases. The Feds never moved until they had everything. Computer files. Polaroids. Videos. Friends. Family. Co-workers. All picked over to within an inch of their lives.
Today, Hooky’s target was ready to take it to level five. She sighed, bored, and drew up a picture she’d used many times before, something from the depths of the police files, something only she had access to. An image with a hundred legal documents attached to it somewhere, marking its confiscation from the girl who’d taken it and the man she’d shared it with – a girl with no idea how much trouble she was getting herself into – and permission from her parents signed away for its use in baiting monsters like the one who had lured their baby. Hooky posted the picture and yawned, wriggled her toes, making the laptop wobble on her knees.
StanSmiles33: Dats nice baby. Really sweet ;)
HelloKitty14: U like? ;) xx
StanSmiles33: Your a beautiful girl. No … your a beautiful woman! No matter what your parents tell you babe I can see the incredible woman you have already become. I cant wait to see m
ore!
HelloKitty14: You always say that lol
StanSmiles33: Stanny wantz ur fanny! :) :) :)
HelloKitty14: Oh har har har real mature
StanSmiles33: You know I’m just joking bae
HelloKitty14: lol
StanSmiles33: Meeting up 4real is my ultimate dream. I can’t lie! One day well do it babe. As soon as you stop being a fraidy cat!! lol
HelloKitty14: haha maybe
StanSmiles33: Just say the word and well run away 2getha:):) Ill treat you like the princess u really are!!!! I cant wait to hold you. Just hold you and make you feel safe. <3
Hooky noticed a small icon flashing in the corner of her screen and sent smiling Stan a quick message telling him her mother had come into the room, which halted chat immediately. She flicked over to another window and drew up a long column of boxes. The software she’d used to hack Imogen’s phone told her she was texting again. Hooky stretched out on the couch and balanced the laptop on her stomach, folded her hands over her chest and half-watched the television as boxes began to fill the screen slowly, one by one.
Imogen: Hey you got those bloods yet?
0447392***: Might as well go after the Hope Diamond than get Eden Archer’s DNA.
Imogen: Any luck with the brother?
0447392***: That was easier. Managed to swipe the shirt he died in from evidence for a couple of hours. Emailing you now. I better get paid quick smart this time!
Imogen: Yeah yeah. Show me the goods!
Hooky tapped her short fingernails on the edge of the laptop, felt half-thoughts zinging and crashing into each other. She drew up a quick news report on Eric Archer’s accidental shooting by Eden Archer in a raid in a church in Randwick. Frank at the edge of the frame, his head in his hands, a paramedic trying to lead him away. Blood all over him. His girlfriend had been murdered only hours before. Hooky took the number from the interaction on Imogen’s phone and ran it through a search engine. Peter Bryson was a low-level administration worker at Surry Hills police station. Hooky watched an email come through to Imogen’s inbox from his work email address. She opened the file and glanced at the DNA profile of Eric Archer.
‘Interesting,’ she said aloud.
A blonde woman was ranting on the television about domestic violence and a charity run in the city. Hooky looked back when the screen began flashing again.
Imogen: Any luck?
A different recipient this time. Hooky waited. Knowing Imogen was waiting somewhere, probably in her office, about to leave work for the day. The text message from the new number came back promptly, like Peter’s.
0415333***: Indeed. The renowned Heinrich ‘Hades’ Archer submitted to a DNA swab over a missing drug dealer in 2011. I’ll email it across when I see payment in my account.
Imogen: You’re a star, Lisa. Sending payment now.
Hooky drew up her online banking surveillance on Imogen and watched seven hundred dollars shift out of her savings account into the ether, heading for the account of a woman named Lisa Louise Gilbert. A quick Google search told Hooky that Lisa Gilbert was an administrator at a small Western Sydney police forensics office.
‘You’ve got little birdies everywhere, haven’t you, wifey,’ Hooky murmured.
Hooky opened the DNA profiles of Eric Archer and Heinrich Archer. A mere glance, to the trained eye, told her they were not father and son. Her face felt hot. She shifted up on the couch and watched more text messages begin to dart back and forth.
0447392***: Interesting little tidbit about that Eric Archer’s profile … :)
Imogen: Don’t leave me hangin’, Peter.
0447392***: Seems it showed up unexpectedly at a crime scene. Well, not a crime scene … exactly. Got a weird little note in the case file. Never followed up.
Imogen: Which crime scene?
0447392***: I said it WASN’T a crime scene.
Imogen: Would you get to the damn point?
0447392***: Whoops! Looks like my good will has run out. Anything further is going to cost you.
Imogen: Oh come on.
0447392***: $500
Imogen: Ok.
0447392***: Transferring now?
Imogen: Alright alright alright alright. It’s done. Now just tell me.
0447392***: Ok. Spot of Eric Archer’s blood turned up at a missing person’s house a week before Eric was killed. Inquiry puts it down to forensic team cross-contamination – Eric wasn’t on the missing persons but one of his offsiders was. They dropped it after he was dead anyway. Never found missing guy. Might be interesting for whatever you’re working on. Missing guy was Benjamin Annous. MPR 446193. Google him.
Imogen: One spot of blood?
0447392***: Yeah.
Imogen: Probably cross contamination. Nice to know, though!
0447392***: Happy to help in any way I can, baby cakes haha.
Hooky waited for Imogen to give an answer, staring at the boxes on the screen. None came.
Tara remembered those frantic moments before boarding, when her excitement and terror were so tangible, so real, it felt as if a cloak of electricity was brushing against her arms, searing at her neck, twisting down her legs. She went to the bathroom six or seven times in the hour she waited at the crowded airport gate, drawing stares every time she moved, a lumbering force of nature. She’d never been on an airplane before. She had almost flown once for a Year Ten science trip to Cairns – ninety students on the Barrier Reef locating, cataloguing and photographing marine life for their end-of-year portfolios.
Photographing marine life? Joanie snorted.
Tara would need two seats, and something like that was just too much for Joanie to take. Tara had looked at the skies through the trees outside the attic windows, hoping she would spot the plane trailing across the depthless blue. She imagined it suddenly combusting, a bright white spark breaking into shimmering speckles like glitter spilt across blue icing. The screams and gasps from below.
It had been around this time that Tara encountered the boy in the park. She was on one of her hunting trips with Joanie. Tara running in the dark. Gasping. Crying. Joanie coming after her, a shadow floating between the huge Moreton Bay figs. Tara swerved at the sight of the long black pole in the trees, suppressed a scream, thinking perhaps that her fantasies about Joanie the stick-insect woman had come true, that the tall black pole moving through the trees was one of Joanie’s arms about to come around and spear her. She stumbled to a stop, mouth open, gasping. The pole swayed, dipped and ducked behind a tree. A boy emerged, carrying it over his shoulder. A boy and a man. They crossed the wide path in front of Tara and walked into the trees.
She looked back along the road. Joanie was nowhere to be seen. She sometimes stopped and tightened her shoelaces. Tighter and tighter as the night wore on, until the cotton laces groaned.
The man and the boy were looking up at the trees. Tara followed at a distance, her heart still hammering, sweat rolling down her chin. She swallowed the sobs that had punctuated her running breaths, stuck close to a tree to observe them.
In the darkness, they spoke softly to each other, the old man setting down his equipment, the small plastic animal cages, the cloth bags. They stood and looked into the tree canopy, pointed, murmured. The boy fiddled with the end of the pole, then turned it, aimed it carefully in the mess of leaves above. In one swift, upward thrust he jabbed at something. There was a squeal. A black bundle fell into the old man’s gloved palms.
Tara gasped. The pair turned towards her.
‘It’s alright,’ the boy said. Tara emerged from the shadows, chanced a step closer. The boy had Peter Anderson’s litheness and solidity about him, the sturdiness of good genes and proud parenting, a spattering of boy-next-door freckles on his nose. He took the black bundle from the old man and came over to her. Tara fought the urge to flee.
‘We’re tagging them,’ the boy said. ‘You wanna see?’
The old man smiled and waited as the teenagers drew closer. Tara’s heart hamm
ered in her neck and cheeks as the boy opened his gloves. A small flying fox lay curved in his hands, the huge fingers of the glove gripping the creature by the back of its furry neck, its leathery, bony wings crumpled and folded in the fabric. The thing was swimming somewhere between sleep and wake, glossy black eyes blinking. A single bead of ruby red blood emerged from the orange fur of its chest and smeared on the boy’s glove. He pulled a tiny dart from the creature’s side and held it for her to see. She took it and looked at it. A tiny plastic vial, the silver spike.
‘We have to knock them out or they panic. Get tangled in the nets. Sometimes they can hurt themselves,’ he said.
She could smell his sweet breath. Tara wondered if she had ever stood as close to a boy as she stood now, his arm almost touching hers. Centimetres from contact. From contracting her germs. Did he know how close he was to being infected by her, the darkness and terror that rippled through her every waking moment? She glanced towards the road, slipping the vial into her pocket as she turned. Joanie was nowhere.
‘Their hearts are really fragile. So we have to be careful with them,’ the boy smiled.
My heart is really fragile, Tara thought. Be careful with me.
She followed him back to the old man, tried to give the boy space, but he seemed insistent on being near her, standing in the infectious cloud of her very being. She watched as they clipped the brass ring around the animal’s tiny clawed feet. The thing was awake now, the fanged mouth opening, stretching, the pointed ears twitching madly, trying to get a sense of up and down.
‘Whoa,’ the boy said, as the black beast began to wriggle in his hands. It gave a squeal and thrashed its tiny head. Tara caught the boy looking at her and she felt the bile rise in her throat.
‘Here, grab on,’ the boy said, thrusting his hands at her. Tara put her trembling fingers around the outside of his warm gloves. She was, for the first time, separated from the touch of a boy by mere fabric. By choice. By strange and inexplicable choice. Her knees shook.