A Time to Run

by J. M. Peace

  Sunday 8:04 am

  ‘And in other news, Queensland Police are investigating the disappearance of one of their own. Constable Samantha Willis has been missing from the Brisbane area since failing to return to a friend’s home in the early hours of Saturday morning. Police urgently want to speak to this man, Donald Black.’

  Janine and Bill were watching the early news on the small TV in the corner of the operation room. All of the staff had paused and the room fell silent as everyone listened. The mugshot of the barman flashed up on screen and Janine hoped that people watching could see the malice in his eyes. Then there was a picture of a ute like his superimposed with his rego number.

  ‘Police are asking any members of the public to call Crime Stoppers if they have seen either Willis or Black . . .’

  ‘That’s unusual, isn’t it? A missing police officer,’ the co-anchor said.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure there’s more to this story. We’ll keep you posted.’

  That was it. They went on to a story about a rugby player who got arrested, clearly having no concept of what they might possibly have done.

  ‘Fuck! Did they have to say she was a copper?’ Janine was incensed. ‘Our media liaison should have known better than that. Fuck! What if she’s still alive and he’s heard that? Can’t we do something about that?’ she appealed to Bill.

  Bill groaned. ‘We can’t tell them exactly what to say. You know that,’ Bill replied. ‘Who knows how they got wind of it? But we were never going to be able to keep it secret in the long term. Of course they’re going to seize on it. It makes it more newsworthy to them.’

  ‘Yeah, but the media unit should have pulled them into line about that one. If he’s still got Sammi and he finds out she’s a cop . . .’ Janine shook her head. ‘I can’t even think about what he might do to her. The media have to know what danger they’ve put her into with that one throw-away line. He’ll be watching the news. I’ll put money on it. He wants to know what we’re up to. Shit. He may even get his kicks from that, watching us try to work it out. It just turns my stomach.’

  ‘It’s too late, Janine. It’s been done. The information is out there and you firing up about it isn’t going to help. Right now, we have to focus on doing our job as best we can.’

  A public appeal was a double-edged sword and not just because they had to rely on self-serving media reports. They might just get the crucial call – someone who had seen Black at a service station in the middle of the night, or pulled up by the side of a road. Anything to point them in the right direction.

  But with each useful call, there might be twenty others loaded with red herrings, people trying to be helpful but with wrong or obscure information. They were still receiving regular calls about Tahlia, and each lead was followed up by Op Echo staff. An enormous number of police hours went into an investigation like this. This was how ‘lucky breaks’ often came about – by sifting through large amounts of information and recognising the pieces that fit.

  Sunday 8:38 am

  ‘Hello, Crime Stoppers, this is Constable Tracey Snell.’

  She was greeted with a pause.

  ‘Hello?’

  If this person hung up, the next call was waiting already.

  ‘Hello.’ It was a woman’s voice, soft and tentative. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to call. I know Don Black.’

  ‘Right. We’re very keen to catch up with him at the moment.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is now, but the woman with him is in serious danger.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘He’s a very violent and dangerous man. I think he was planning to kill me.’

  ‘Oh no. Please go on.’

  ‘I used to go out with him. I had a bad childhood and I seem to attract these brutal men. He got drunk one night and beat me till I passed out. I don’t think I was out for very long, and he didn’t realise I had come around again, cos I stayed still with my eyes closed. He was talking to himself about taking me out to the bush to kill me. It was like he was having an argument with himself about whether or not to do it.

  ‘He said, “She won’t be any trouble to get in the ute”, then “That bitch of a sister will come looking for her.” My sister didn’t trust him and would ring me all the time to check I was OK. Then – I’ll never forget what he said – “She’ll bleed so good and I’ll fuck her to death.” Sorry about the language, but that’s the exact thing he said. I was there for an hour, waiting for the chance to get away. He ended up going to sleep. As soon as he did, I just grabbed my purse and ran. I was terrified. I still am.’

  ‘Did he say anything that might indicate where he was thinking of taking you?’

  ‘No, he mostly just said “the bush”, but he did say something about going out to see the captain, or something like that.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘About a year ago.’

  ‘Did you contact police at the time?’

  ‘No. I know I should have. But I was just so scared. I wanted to forget that part of my life and move on.’

  ‘Would you like to leave your details so a detective can follow up with you?

  ‘I’m still frightened of him. I’ve been scared ever since I left him. He threatened me with some horrible things.’

  ‘But you’ve rung here today. You want to help.’

  ‘Yes. He has to be stopped.’

  Sunday 9:08 am

  Sammi’s angels had dissipated like fog in the daylight, but she still felt their presence. She was not alone. She continued doggedly forward. Her limbs were defrosting in the morning sun. Hope broke like the rays of sunshine through the canopy of the trees.

  How far had she come? The creek was wider and deeper now. The landscape had changed slightly. The trees had thinned out, making Sammi’s passage through the bush slightly easier. Occasional rocks dotted the creek banks, the water running more swiftly as smaller tributaries joined it. Surely it was flowing towards civilisation. She could make it to safety. The barman had not beaten her – the bush would not either.

  She came across a small clearing, a sunny, inviting spot with a little grass. Sammi eased herself to the ground. She lay on her back, interlacing her fingers behind her head to cushion it a little. Paranoia was exhausting. She needed to use this feeling of being watched over. She closed her eyes and immediately fell into a dreamless sleep.

  Sunday 9:12 am

  The Op Echo room was buzzing – everybody seemed to be making phone calls – with Crime Stoppers information starting to trickle in on top of the existing enquiries. Janine had anticipated seeing Jake by now. She didn’t know the other staff well enough to start assigning tasks to them, and she had at least three enquiries she could have asked Jake to follow up. He was often a little late and a lot hungover on a Sunday morning, but she had expected more from him, considering the gravity of this case. She was very pleased to see his number pop up on her phone when it rang an hour after his scheduled start.

  ‘Hey Neeny, how’s it going down there. Any progress?’ he asked.

  ‘Knee-deep in enquiries. Where are you hiding, Jake?’ Janine replied, curtly.

  ‘Why? Do you miss me?’ he teased. Clearly he wasn’t too hungover.

  ‘This job’s about as big as they get and you’re frigging around at the office with your thumb up your bum?’ Janine asked incredulously.

  ‘No, sorry,’ Jake replied, his tone serious now. ‘I had people waiting for me here at eight. They tried to make a complaint last night, and someone in generals did the flick-pass and told them to come see me in the morning. This is the first chance I’ve had to call you,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the job?’ Janine asked.

  ‘An old bloke died last night. It looked like a straightforward natural causes type thing. But now I’ve got his daughter in here claiming her brother murdered Dad to get at his
money.’

  Janine groaned. ‘You’re not going to get down here any time soon, are you?’

  ‘Nah. Sorry. I’ll just do the bare minimum here and get there as soon as I can,’ he said.

  ‘You do what you have to do,’ Janine said. ‘You’re lucky you’ve got a solid excuse. I was starting to get cranky,’ she replied.

  ‘I’d never let you down, Neeny. Not intentionally anyway,’ he answered.

  Janine imagined his grin as she hung up.

  She continued flicking through the reports on the Corbett case, looking for connections. Bill looked like he hadn’t got off the phone since the start of his shift and Janine recognised that he was also caught up and preoccupied with this case. He called her name from the door of his office.

  ‘I want you to be in on this,’ he called, gesturing that she come into his office.

  Janine noticed the phone receiver was off the hook.

  ‘It’s one of the detectives from Caboolture. Someone has found some bones. See what you think,’ Bill said, pressing the button to put the phone on loudspeaker.

  ‘Nev, you’re on loudspeaker now, and I’ve got Janine with me,’ Bill said. ‘She’s working on the Willis case, I just wanted her to hear this too in case it all ties together. So tell us about these bones.’

  ‘Yes, hi Janine. I just had a feeling that you guys might want to know about this, but you can make up your own minds. We had a lady come into the front counter about half an hour ago. She was horseriding through the Yonga State Forest up near Woodford and had a dog with her. She was riding on a trail, but she lets the dog run where it likes. It disappeared off into the bushes and reappeared with a big old bone in its mouth. She takes the bone off the dog and reckons it is a human bone. She’s a retired doctor. She brought it into the counter and I spoke to her there. She actually found it on Friday afternoon, but didn’t bring it in till today. Something about her horse getting hurt and she forgot she’d found it till she saw it in her car again today. I told her it would probably be a bone from a dead roo or a cow. She’s looked down her nose at me and said she knew a scapula when she saw one.’

  ‘Do you think it’s human?’ Bill asked.

  ‘Honestly, I’d be guessing. I’m sure the good lady doctor would know better than me. It looks old though, like it’s been out in the weather for a while. I immediately thought of Corbett. That’s why I called.’

  ‘Yes, excellent. If there’s any possibility that it’s her, we need to treat it as a crime scene, get forensics in first,’ Bill said.

  ‘The doctor is taking a generals crew down to show them where she was when the dog popped up with the bone,’ Nev replied.

  ‘Get onto them, tell them to cordon it off. Have you got a detective to go down and look for more bones?’ Bill asked.

  ‘Yes, me and one of the other blokes can go down,’ Nev said.

  ‘Can you give it priority? If the bone’s human, there’s a fair chance it’s going to be suspicious,’ Bill said.

  ‘Yep. We can head off pretty much straightaway, but it will take us close to half an hour to get out there,’ Nev answered.

  ‘Fine, keep us posted.’ Bill gave the other man the direct number for his extension and hung up. He leant back in his chair and stretched. ‘What do you reckon?’ he asked Janine.

  ‘It could be Corbett, but I wouldn’t have thought the bones would look so old. It’s only been four months.’

  ‘I agree, but the term “old” is entirely open to interpretation. If the bones have been exposed to the elements and wild animals and insects, they wouldn’t have any flesh on them after quite a short time, I would think. Plus we’ve had some hot weather. But we’re speculating. Let’s get forensics on to it.’

  ‘OK, so get a pathologist in and see what exactly they can tell you. Notice I said “you” because I’m working on the Willis case,’ Janine replied.

  Bill smiled. ‘Yes, but I’m guessing this is all connected.’

  ‘It’s not going to be Sammi’s bone, that’s for sure,’ Janine said.

  ‘I know, but if it’s Tahlia’s, then we may have our second location, somewhere to start looking for Sammi. We know he’s taken her somewhere else, somewhere in a ute, with a dog and a dirt bike. Yonga’s not too far from home for him and it is a large location, plenty of places where you won’t be disturbed. Now let’s assume these remains are human, and a skeleton has just been unearthed in the bush. Who is it? How many people have we got on missing persons files? For how many of them do we hold genuine fears? How many were last seen around the Greater Brisbane area? You’ll be able to count them on one hand. My gut tells me that this is linked to Sammi. The sooner we can get fresh information, the better our chances are of finding her,’ Bill said.

  Janine noticed that he didn’t use the word ‘alive’.

  ‘So, what’s next?’ she asked.

  ‘I just wanted to keep you up to speed. It’s in the hands of the crew there now. See if they can find us a body,’ Bill answered.

  ‘It’s a sad thing to wish for,’ Janine remarked as she walked out of Bill’s office.

  Sunday 10:07 am

  There were three people and an animal waiting for Nev and Rob at the trailhead into Yonga Park: two constables, whose names escaped Nev, and an older lady with a kelpie on a lead. Everyone, including the dog, turned to watch the two detectives climb out of their car and walk across.

  Brief introductions were made. The lady was Sylvia, who had brought the bone in and was there to show them where the dog appeared with it.

  ‘I brought Ziggy back with me. If I let him loose where he brought back the first bone, I’ll bet he goes straight back to the same site,’ she explained.

  Nev looked down at the dog who was hopping eagerly from one foot to the other, and exchanged glances with Rob.

  ‘Thanks, but we’ll just get you to show us where the dog . . . where Ziggy appeared with the bone,’ Nev said.

  ‘And that’s why I put him on the lead,’ she said. ‘Come on, it’s not that far in.’

  Nev turned to the constables. ‘You guys need to stay here, and make sure no one else comes up. We need to treat this as a crime scene until further notice. You’d better start a crime scene log,’ he directed.

  They headed up the trail, with Sylvia in the lead. Actually the dog was leading, weaving and sniffing as far as the leash would let him. Nev had to remind himself that the path had been trodden on by potentially hundreds of feet since the woman whose scapula had been found had walked along here. If there was any evidence out here, it would be with the actual remains. If they could find them.

  There was a good chance it wasn’t a crime scene anyway. Suicide was so much more common than murder, and a number of missing persons were just people who had taken their own lives and had not yet been discovered. Or it could just be the bones of some dead animal. That was what Nev was hoping as they trudged along the bush track. If Bill was right, and this was suspicious, it would be a long day. He considered calling his wife now to warn her he’d be home late.

  ‘There,’ Sylvia said, pointing towards a big gum tree. ‘I was going back towards the trailhead. Ziggy was on that side of the trail. I could hear him rustling so he wasn’t all that far in the bush, then he trotted back out there with the bone. I’m sure he came out with it there by the gum.’

  ‘OK, thanks for that. There’s no need to wait, you can go back now,’ Nev said.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t need Ziggy? He won’t do any more damage than he’s already done by accident,’ she said.

  ‘No, really. We need to preserve anything we find as far as possible,’ Nev answered.

  Some people just loved the thrill of being involved, and of feeling helpful. This doctor was proving to be one of them. She was right, the damage had already been done by Ziggy. But that had happened before it was a police investigation. Nev wa
s in charge now and, although she was right – Ziggy would do a quicker search than them – Nev would have some explaining to do if he took that option. He ushered the woman back down the track.

  ‘Thank you so much for your time. You’ve been so helpful, bringing us out here and pointing us in the right direction,’ Nev said, guiding her back down the track.

  ‘Will you at least let me know if you find any human bones? I’m positive it’s a scapula, but it would be nice to know that I had given you the correct information,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. We won’t be able to give you details, but I’ll get someone to let you know if we find any remains,’ Nev said, just to move her along.

  ‘Come on then, Ziggy,’ she said to the dog. ‘We’ll let these gentlemen do their job.’

  Sunday 10:18am

  ‘Hello, Crime Stoppers. This is Constable Tracey Snell.’

  ‘Yes, hi. I think I’ve got some information about that missing police officer.’

  ‘Go ahead, what would you like to tell us?’

  ‘I’m a psychic. I’m not very well known though, I try and keep a low profile.’

  ‘OK . . .’

  ‘The girl is in a basement somewhere. She is still alive but she has a lot of injuries. The house is in the city, I’m pretty sure it’s Brisbane. It’s an old Queenslander, it’s painted a greeny colour and it’s been built in underneath. They dug a basement, but the door is hidden. Look for a turtle. That’s all I’m picking up right now, but I will call back if I see anything else. Will someone follow this up?’

  ‘Yes, we’re following up all leads. This may tie in with something. Would you like to leave your details in case we have to contact you?

  ‘No, I’ll call you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Tracey hung up and put her head in her hands for a full ten seconds before the phone rang yet again.