Blood Feud (Little Town)

by JD Nixon

  I pulled out my phone and punched in the Sarge’s number. Straight to voicemail again. Fed up by his lack of response, I jumped to my feet. I didn’t care about his personal problems – he was a sworn officer and had a duty to serve, no matter how inconvenient it was for his love life.

  “Come on, Kevin. We’re going to the Sarge’s place. I’m not entering that house without him here too. If I’m going to get another bollocking, then so is he.”

  I marched to the Land Rover, barely allowing Kevin time to join me before I sped off, my mood every bit as gloomy as the darkness surrounding us.

  Chapter 9

  There were no lights on at the police house when we arrived. I ran up the stairs and banged on the door, pricked by a momentary stab of guilt. The Sarge had few booty calls from Melissa as it was, so for me to potentially be interrupting one was an act of sheer cruelty. But I couldn’t help it – that was life as a small town cop. And he was supposedly on-call, after all.

  A couple of minutes passed before the Sarge answered the door, blinking with tiredness, his hair a curling mess. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only long cotton pyjama pants, which he’d probably hurriedly just pulled on. He became more alert when he saw it was me.

  “Tessie. What’s the matter?”

  “Why aren’t you answering your phone?” I demanded hotly. “People have been ringing you all night.”

  “Sorry. I had things to sort out with Melissa and I guess I forgot to turn it back on again. What’s going on?”

  “There was someone inside Miss G’s house tonight. I think it was a man. Kevin, do you agree?” Kevin nodded. “He ran out of the house, knocking us both over, before climbing over the back fence and disappearing into the bushland.”

  The Sarge ran his hands through his hair, the movement clenching his stomach muscles into tense relief. He swore under his breath. “The Super’s going to kill you.”

  “No,” I corrected tartly. “She’s going to kill us. You’re the one on-call this weekend. You should have caught the call-out, not me.”

  A sheepish expression crossed his face. “Sorry.” Then, as if he’d just properly noticed the young man with me, “You didn’t take Kevin with you on a night call-out, did you?”

  “I didn’t exactly ‘take’ him. He just sort of tagged along. And besides, you’re the one who told me not to do night call-outs on my own,” I reminded him, and then to rub it in some more, “And you weren’t answering your phone, so Kevin volunteered to come with me instead.”

  He didn’t apologise again. I guess I’d made my point.

  “What was this man doing inside? Interfering with the crime scene?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t go inside. I wanted you to come with me before I went in.”

  He sighed. “Okay, give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

  We waited in the hallway while he went back inside his bedroom, not quite fully closing the door behind him. Melissa’s voice, querulous and raised, instantly floated through the gap, met with the Sarge’s quiet but firm voice. Kevin and I exchanged a quick glance before looking away, both of us embarrassed to be witness to further domestic trouble between the engaged couple.

  When he exited the room, he was dressed in jeans, runners and a hoodie too, his utility belt around his hips, his face grim and unsmiling. Melissa, one of the bed sheets wrapped around her, poked her head around the doorway. Her long dark brown hair was tangled with sleep and her large brown eyes flashing with anger.

  “I mean it, Finn,” she snapped. “If you leave me alone, I’m driving back to the city first thing tomorrow morning.”

  He didn’t turn back to her. “Come on. Let’s go,” he instructed us, striding to the door.

  “Finn! Don’t you dare leave me alone!” she shrieked. “I did not come all this way to be ignored!”

  He opened the door and stepped outside, Kevin following close behind.

  Melissa fixed her furious eyes on me. “What the hell is your problem anyway? Every time I come here you turn up in the middle of the night and drag Finn away from me. Can’t you leave us alone for five minutes? I’m starting to think you’re doing it on purpose because you’re jealous of our relationship.”

  Biting back a sharp retort to that absurd comment, I silently slipped out the front door after the Sarge. I closed the door, cutting off her continuing invective, leaving her to rant loudly to herself.

  We piled into the patrol car, the Sarge spinning the tyres in the gravel, he took off so fast. It was a quiet drive back to Miss G’s place, the Sarge fuming and uncommunicative, Kevin horribly embarrassed and probably wishing he was in his car speeding back to the city himself. I was angry, not just at Melissa’s jibe about being jealous, but at her lack of support and understanding for the Sarge. Didn’t she realise that it was not just his job to respond to call-outs, it was his sworn duty? And didn’t she also realise that he was a man who took his duties in life seriously?

  I wasn’t sure whether to say anything or not, so tried to break the silence with a hesitant, “I’m sorry for causing any trouble, Sarge. Maybe I should have just dealt with it myself.”

  His eyes flicked my way and returned to the road. “No, you did the right thing. I meant it when I said I don’t want you doing night call-outs by yourself.” Kevin coughed discreetly. “Or accompanied by inexperienced recruits who seem to be picking up bad policing habits from you already.”

  He pulled into Miss G’s driveway and once again we ducked under the tape and headed up around the back of the house, our path now lit by the powerful beams of our police torches. At the back steps, he stopped and handed me a pair of thin police issue disposable gloves, slipping a pair on his own hands.

  “Kevin, you stay here outside. The less people trampling around the house, the better.”

  The nervous expression that flitted across the young man’s face at that command made me speak up. “Sarge, we can’t leave Kevin outside. There might be a murderer on the loose out here. Give him a pair of gloves and let him come inside too. He knows not to interfere with anything.”

  He fastened his eyes on mine. “Tessie . . .”

  “Please, Sarge?”

  “It’s not a good idea.”

  “We can’t leave him outside,” I wheedled. “What if something happens to him?”

  “I promise I won’t touch anything, Sergeant Maguire.”

  “Please, Sarge?”

  He sighed again in resignation and knuckled me gently on the chin. “Why do I let you talk me into things that are only going to get me in trouble later?”

  I smiled up at him. “Because it makes life more exciting?”

  He rolled his eyes and tossed Kevin a pair of gloves. When he switched on the kitchen light, it became immediately apparent what our intruder had been up to – helping himself to Miss G’s fridge and pantry. Added to the detritus we’d discovered yesterday was now an empty tin of tomato soup, four discarded paper cupcake cases and a mostly eaten packet of sour cream and chives flavoured chips. Two drained and crushed cans of cola had been thrown on the floor.

  “Someone with the midnight munchies?” I wondered aloud, carefully stepping over the cans.

  The Sarge squatted down next to one and examined it closely. “I can see greasy fingerprints all over it. This guy doesn’t care about being identified.”

  “So weird. I mean, everyone knows not to leave fingerprints behind. This guy must be confident his aren’t on file.”

  “Or he just doesn’t care,” repeated the Sarge, standing up again. “Let’s do a quick reccy on the rest of the house.”

  We moved down the hallway, flicking on lights as we went.

  “Can you smell that?” he asked.

  “Cigarette smoke?”

  “Yep. It seems he had time enough to smoke a couple of cigarettes.”

  At the threshold of the bathroom, I called out to him. “Our Goldilocks looks as though he’s been in here too. Oh yuck! I think he used Miss G’s toothbrush.”
>
  I screwed up my nose and pointed to where it lay untidily on the bench top, the lid not replaced on its neighbouring tube of toothpaste. It certainly hadn’t been like that yesterday.

  “Our Goldilocks obviously isn’t as fussy as the one in the fairytale,” he noted dryly, heading towards the front of the house. “The dees should be happy about the amount of DNA he’s left behind. This crime’s going to solve itself.”

  “Good,” I said abruptly, knowing I’d never erase that vision of Miss G in her bed from my mind. It was bound to bubble away in my subconscious, surfacing in the form of regular nightmares. One more to add to my selection, I thought wearily.

  “Tessie, you have to see this,” the Sarge said from the door to Miss G’s bedroom.

  I squeezed into the doorway with him, a bit of a tight fit considering how tall and big he was. Kevin peered curiously over my shoulder.

  “Oh boy, that’s so creepy,” I said softly.

  “Holy guacamole!” goggled Kevin.

  Written in dripping red foot-high letters across an entire wall were three sentences.

  THE DEMON IS REDEEMED.

  THE ANGEL IS SERVED.

  PEACE WILL BE MY REWARD.

  “Is that written in blood?” asked Kevin, and I didn’t think his eyes could grow any bigger without exploding altogether.

  The Sarge stepped into the bedroom and approached the graffiti. He leaned in close and scrutinised it, before sniffing at it. “It’s paint. Acrylic paint, by the smell of it.” He searched around the room, bending to pick up a discarded empty tube of paint and a dirty paintbrush.

  “What do you think it means?” I queried.

  He shrugged, leaning back with his hands on his hips, inspecting the whole wall. “Who knows? Maybe it’s some kind of joke. Did your man look like a Bycraft?”

  “Definitely not.”

  He twisted his upper body to make eye contact with me. “Tessie, you can’t be that positive. It’s quite dark tonight and he rushed at you.”

  I lifted my chin. “It wasn’t a Bycraft. And anyway, none of them can spell that well.”

  “True,” he conceded, turning back to face the wall. “Well, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m stumped. Let’s hope the dees can work it out. I’ll ring them first thing in the morning. I doubt if I could muster enough interest from them to convince anyone to return here tonight.”

  “You’re not going to ring the Super?”

  “No way! I’m not putting myself in her line of fire. Let her find out from the dees. They’re the ones tasked with the investigation, not us.”

  We made a cursory search of the rest of the house, but there were no further signs of disturbances. It appeared as though Goldilocks had broken in, shared a few reflective but enigmatic thoughts with us all in paint, brushed his teeth, and stuffed his face with food. None of us would ever now know what else he might have done if I hadn’t interrupted him.

  I knew every person in this town and I couldn’t fathom the identity of our mysterious intruder. With the house secured again and back in the patrol car, Kevin and I tried to describe him as accurately as possible, considering our brief acquaintance with him.

  We agreed that he seemed young, maybe in his twenties or thirties. We agreed that he was lean and taller than me, but not as tall as Kevin. I thought he’d been wearing jeans and Kevin thought it was track pants, but we both agreed he’d been wearing a t-shirt. We also both agreed he was barefoot and had longish hair to his shoulders. I thought he might have had some kind of beard, but Kevin didn’t receive a close enough look at him to be sure. And that was all we’d managed to observe.

  “It’s better than nothing,” said the Sarge philosophically, turning into his driveway. He cut the engine, but didn’t move, staring through the windscreen at his unlit house. “I wonder if I’ve been locked out.”

  “If you have, you’re welcome to stay at my place. Kevin’s in the spare room, but you can have Dad’s bed for the night,” I offered immediately as we climbed out, experiencing that stab of guilt again about dragging him away from Melissa.

  He locked the patrol car. “Thanks, Tessie. I might need to take you up on that. I’ll be damned if I’m sleeping out on the verandah like some flea-ridden dog.”

  Kevin and I propped our butts against the patrol car while he jogged up his front stairs and tried his doorknob. Locked. He rapped loudly on the door.

  “Melissa, let me in.” He knocked again and stood there for a minute, waiting for some response from her. Nothing. He jogged around to the back of the house, but soon returned, irritation shadowing his features.

  “No luck?” I asked.

  “Let’s go,” he said tersely, marching over to my 4WD. “I’m not waiting around here all night for her to get over her huff. I’m tired.”

  I reversed down his driveway on to the highway and slowly gathered speed. Melissa flew out of the doorway, calling out something we couldn’t hear because we had the windows up.

  “Do you want me to stop and let you out?” I asked.

  “No. Keep driving,” he replied quietly. “Somehow I don’t think my house would be very congenial tonight. I’d rather stay with you.”

  So I drove away, watching Melissa growing smaller in my rear view mirror, shouting after us all the way.

  Exhausted, we all went straight to bed. I dreamed.

  I stood at the bottom of the steps to Miss G’s front verandah, checking my equipment as I routinely did before each call-out. It was pitch black in the night, but light blared from every window of the house.

  The Sarge had woken me from sleep with his phone call from the house requesting urgent back up. I wasn’t sure why he had taken a call-out when I was the one rostered for the weekend, and I was a little miffed that he’d taken a night call-out without me. We usually tried to do them together. I’d hurried over, fretting.

  My phone rang and I answered, hearing Kevin’s insistent voice on the other end. “Be careful, Senior Constable Fuller. There’s someone inside. Be careful, Tess. Be careful. Please be careful.”

  I hung up on him and climbed the stairs, dodging the rotting tread. The front door was slightly ajar, so I pushed it slowly open.

  “Sarge?” I called. “It’s Tess. Where are you?”

  And that’s when I noticed the walls. Abandoning caution, I ran from room to room, increasingly frantic. Each wall in the house was covered with dripping red writing, the same message written over and over on every surface.

  “Sarge? Where are you? Where are you?” I cried, now sick with fear.

  I ran into the kitchen and skidded to a halt. On one of the benches stood a barefoot Melissa, a sheet shaped into a dress draped around her body, her long dark hair shining and bouncing freely down her back, happily humming to herself. She spun around at my entrance and smiled at me. Her white sheet-dress was no longer pristine, but splattered with red, the paintbrush she held in her right hand dripping red down her arm.

  She turned back to finish what she’d been painting, the same phrase she’d written multiple times over every wall – HE’S MINE. When she’d added a final flourish, she faced me again and giggled.

  “I told you he’s mine. And now I’ve made sure you’ll never have him.”

  She giggled again and lowered her eyes to the floor. I followed her gaze.

  “Oh God, no,” I moaned, dropping to my knees in shock. I crawled across the floor to where the Sarge lay on his back, dressed only in long pyjama pants, his arms and legs asunder, his lovely blue eyes staring up at the ceiling, sightless. His now graveyard-pale skin highlighted the vicious gash across his throat and the pool of blood that matted his chest hair and formed delicate rivulets over his stomach and waist as it dripped to the floor.

  I sidled over to cradle his head in my lap, smoothing back his hair, my tears splashing his face. “No, Finn. You can’t leave me. I can’t do it without you,” I sniffed tearfully. “You promised not to leave me. You promised.”

  Melissa clambered down
off the bench and lent over him, her long hair and sheet-dress dangling in his blood. She dipped her paintbrush into his neck wound and climbed back up on the bench to commence a new ‘HE’S MINE’, singing a soft, but cheery song.

  I sat on the floor holding him, crying and listening to that horrible song until I could discern the words she sang.

  “He’s mine, he’s mine, he’s mine,” she crooned to herself as she painted with his blood, smiling and giggling. “He’s mine, he’s mine, he’s mine.”

  I sprang out of bed, gasping for air and reaching for my half-closed bedroom door. But as my hand gripped that solid, real door knob, I snapped out of my reverie. I had a terrible lingering suspicion I’d been about to burst into Dad’s room to run my hands over the Sarge’s neck and chest to assure myself that he was all right and still alive. I stood in my room, hand on the door, my chest heaving, contemplating just how mortifying that would have proven for me. Imagine waking up and finding a colleague with her hands all over you. Imagine what Jake would have said if he’d ever found out.

  Thank God I stopped myself in time, I thought, managing a self-deprecating laugh. But maybe it was time to admit to myself that I needed to seek some professional help about my recurring nightmares, especially if they were going to cause me to act impulsively like that.

  I checked the clock – almost four in the morning. Wound up and knowing I’d never go back to sleep now, I made myself some warm milk and slouched on the lounge, sipping it, not thinking about much at all. I heard footsteps and the Sarge poked his head around the doorway, his hair curling off in every direction.

  “I thought I heard someone up.” He ran his fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to restore some order.