A Time to Run

by J. M. Peace

  ‘Thank god, thank god,’ Janine whispered.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Bill said. ‘So much of it was your work. We’ve had the best possible outcome. It’s a huge success. I’ll get back to you once I know more.’

  As she hung up, it was like someone had let all the air out of a balloon. Not only did she slump down in her chair, but emotionally, she let go as well. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she let them come.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Sean.

  ‘They’ve found her,’ she said. She stood up and embraced him. ‘Sammi’s alive!’

  It didn’t matter now where she spent the night. She would sleep well. The demons could rest tonight.

  Sunday 7:59 pm

  For the second time in as many days, Sammi fought unconsciousness. She drifted in and out of reality, confused each time by the lights and noise and people she didn’t know. It had been like something out of a movie – a hero in orange rescuing her from imminent death, scooping her into his arms and flying through the air. It had seemed like a beautiful fragile dream. She couldn’t work out whether she wanted to shut her eyes and drift away, or force them open and grasp what was happening. Had she really been rescued? Or was that the dream she didn’t want to wake from?

  The doctors came with needles and tubes and questions. She did her best, but the exhaustion and delusion made it all seem strange, and she couldn’t tell if her answers made sense.

  Then he came and took her hand. Gavin. Her love. He was a rock in the confused eddies of lights and sounds. When she laid her eyes and hands on him, she understood she was finally safe. He wrapped her into a tender hug that was so familiar, it made her cry. Once the tears came, only sleep stopped them. She fell asleep in his arms, his tears mixing with hers.

  Monday 1:03 pm

  Janine went alone to the hospital. Sammi had been airlifted to the Royal Brisbane, so it was a short drive. Janine had insisted that she be the one to talk to Sammi and refused to bring Jake along with her. It was one of the few times she had pulled rank on him. He had tried the dimple smile on her, but repeated exposure had inoculated her against it. He then gave her a hurt look, but she did not relent.

  Although Sammi had no serious injuries – just exposure, scratches and bruises – it was her mental state that Janine was concerned about. At this stage, they were only guessing what had happened to her out in the bush. She didn’t want Jake, with his cheeky grin and inappropriate comments, here. Sammi would feel more comfortable talking to another woman, Janine was as certain of this as she had been of Sammi’s ability to survive.

  Janine paused outside the closed door to room 27B. It was odd but she felt a little bit nervous about meeting Sammi. Although she had only heard about the other woman two days earlier and easily outranked her, for some reason Janine craved her approval.

  Had she made the right decisions? Had she missed some vital clue? She wished for Sammi to be satisfied with her investigation.

  We found her, she’s alive, Janine reminded herself as she knocked softly on the door.

  The door swung open and a man stood between her and a hospital bed. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way. Janine knew without asking that it was Gavin. She had her badge in her hand ready to confirm her identity but they were expecting her anyway.

  ‘Janine?’ Gavin asked. ‘Thank you so much.’

  Janine sensed he was not a hugging sort of guy but he reached out and looked her in the eye as he sandwiched her hand between both of his and held it tight. He stepped aside to let her through.

  Sammi was propped up on the hospital bed under a mound of blankets. She looked pale and tired but her face brightened when she smiled at Janine.

  ‘Hi, Sammi,’ Janine said. She walked across to the bed quickly but then stopped just short of the bed, not sure whether to offer a hand or a hug.

  ‘It’s so good to see you,’ she said. ‘Really,’ she said gently, blinking hard twice.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Sammi said. ‘Thank you doesn’t seem like nearly enough.’ They looked at each other awkwardly. Sammi suddenly threw her arms open wide. Janine responded and they embraced tightly.

  ‘I feel like I know you already,’ Janine said, a catch in her throat.

  ‘You’re one of the reasons I’m alive,’ Sammi whispered in reply. Both had tears in their eyes when they let go of each other.

  Sammi took a shuddering breath and reached for a tissue from a box at her side. ‘I just . . . I don’t know . . . I can’t believe I’m here,’ she said, wiping her eyes.

  Janine nodded. ‘I’m so glad you are. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through to be sitting here talking to me today.’

  ‘I didn’t think I’d make it out of that bush. I thought I was . . .’ Sammi trailed off, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head. Gavin moved to the other side of the bed to Janine and took Sammi’s hand.

  ‘You’re here. That’s all that matters,’ he said, running his hand lightly up and down her arm.

  ‘Yep,’ Janine agreed. ‘Everything else is just details.’

  Sammi rubbed tears from her eyes and nodded, looking down at the blanket.

  ‘Have you seen your parents yet?’ Janine asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Sammi placed both hands on her chest over her heart. ‘Lots of tears. But they figured I’d be busy this afternoon. They’ll be back later on.’

  ‘Do you feel up to talking to me today? We can leave it till some other time,’ Janine said. It was clear this interview was going to be rough for her.

  Sammi shook her head. ‘No, I need to tell this story. For the other girls.’

  Sammi met Janine’s eyes with a direct stare and Janine recognised the strength and determination that had kept her alive.

  ‘OK. Good. We’ve pieced most of the story together, but we still need to clarify some parts and find out how you managed to get away from that psycho,’ Janine said.

  Sammi shook her head. ‘The whole thing doesn’t quite seem real. Except I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Every part of me hurts.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if it didn’t. The doctor said nothing serious though, didn’t she?’ Janine said.

  ‘They reckon they’ll probably discharge me today,’ Sammi replied.

  ‘You’ll be happier at home, won’t you?’ Janine asked.

  ‘Lots of people waiting to see you,’ Gavin added.

  Sammi gave a small smile at the thought.

  ‘So we’ve got this grub in custody, but we need to load him up with more charges to make sure he doesn’t get bailed. We need to find out anything you know about the other girls as well,’ Janine said.

  ‘Yes. I want to tell you everything that happened. You’ve got to nail him for all of it. The other girls need justice,’ Sammi answered.

  ‘Great. Let me know if it becomes too much for you. I’m just going to record it all, if that’s OK with you. You know the drill anyway,’ Janine said.

  She placed her digital recorder on the tray table in front of Sammi and settled herself in a chair next to the bed which Gavin had pulled up for her.

  ‘Before you start,’ Gavin ventured, ‘should I stay?’ He directed the question at Sammi rather than Janine.

  ‘Yes. Please stay. I need you here.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Also, I want you to hear the whole story. I don’t think I’ll want to repeat it anytime soon.’ Sammi looked at Janine. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Janine said. ‘You should have a support person with you.’

  Gavin pulled up a chair on the other side of Sammi’s bed.

  ‘I’ll just get you to start at Friday night,’ Janine said.

  ‘What’s today? Monday?’ Sammi asked. She took a deep breath, which juddered as she exhaled. ‘It’s hard to believe it was only three days ago.’

  ‘It’s b
een a very long weekend for everyone,’ Janine said.

  Gavin nodded. Janine noticed his eyes were red rimmed and bleary. It must have been an excruciating wait for him.

  ‘It was meant to be a girls’ night out, just a break from routine, with an old friend,’ Sammi explained. ‘We both knew that Candy would outlast me. So she’d shown me where the spare key to her house was hidden and I had the phone number for the taxi in my phone. I left the pub without Candy. I was pretty sober by then. I had every intention of turning up to work at midday. I was only going to walk far enough to get away from the noise of the pub, then call a taxi. Then this guy pulled up and offered me a lift. I recognised him as the barman from the pub. I remember he introduced himself earlier as Don. I thought it would be OK to get in with him. He wasn’t a complete stranger – I knew where he worked.’

  ‘Don the barman is in the watchhouse waiting on further charges depending on what you can tell us. Just so you know, we’ve got the right bloke and you don’t have to worry about him anymore,’ Janine said.

  ‘Thank god for that,’ Sammi said. She wrapped her arms around herself as if she was cold. ‘I’m still having trouble accepting that I’m safe. I can’t help feeling paranoid. I keep getting the urge to check under the bed and behind the curtains.’ She hesitated, glancing at Janine. ‘Do you have your gun with you?’

  Janine shook her head, not so much to answer the question as to assure Sammi she wouldn’t need it.

  ‘You’re completely safe. He’s locked up. There was nothing to suggest he was working with anyone else. Unless you know something different?’

  ‘No, it was just him and his dog,’ Sammi said.

  ‘The dog’s dead. He tried to sic it onto the officer who pulled him over in his ute,’ Janine explained.

  ‘That was a savage animal. He had it well trained, though. He tried to make me believe he was using the dog to track me,’ Sammi said.

  ‘I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Can I get you to go back to the beginning after you left the pub? I just need you to fill in all the details,’ Janine said.

  As Sammi started to tell her story, Janine took notes, ticking off the main points they had established. Sammi knew exactly what information Janine needed and stuck to the facts, keeping to chronological order.

  Janine could see her struggling to keep the emotion out of it. The tears were there, just below the surface, but Sammi kept control. That was until she started talking about the other girls and the photos she had seen.

  Gavin reached for Sammi’s hand as she started to cry.

  ‘You have to find them so they can be laid to rest. They need justice. For their families too, to give them some closure,’ Sammi said between sobs.

  ‘We’ll do everything we can. You have to believe that,’ Janine said. ‘You know how big this case has become, how many people will be working on it now. No stone will be left unturned. We’ll load him up with every single thing we find.’

  Gavin poured two glasses of water from a jug on the bedside table. He handed one to Sammi and one to Janine.

  Sammi drank half the glass without pausing, as if to drown the pain. ‘He told me there were four other women. Do you know about all of them?’ She struggled to regain her composure.

  ‘Yes, we think we may have identified them. We’ve still got a hell of a lot of work to do, to pull all the evidence together,’ Janine said. ‘That’s why we need your story as soon as possible. He’ll be remanded on your charges and that will give us time to find all the pieces of the other girls’ stories.’

  ‘I’ll do anything in my power to help get him locked up,’ Sammi said. She covered her face with her hands. ‘How can a person do those sort of things?’ she mumbled between her fingers.

  Janine knew. She figured Sammi had been a cop for long enough too, to know there was that mercifully small section of people who had no empathy, no restraint.

  ‘We’ve got him,’ she said softly.

  One. They got one of those people.

  Sammi haltingly continued with her story. As she talked, Janine was astounded by her clear thinking and stoicism. The barman had clearly chosen the wrong victim. Sammi had kept her head, despite Don’s best efforts to terrorise her.

  Sammi described the barman catching up to her, only to give her another fifteen minutes to run. About when she discovered the tracking device and the inspired idea to float it down the creek. Janine noticed how Gavin listened closely with equal parts of horror and admiration as Sammi described her ordeal. He would never see Sammi in quite the same light again.

  ‘You definitely did the right thing, staying by that creek,’ Janine said.

  ‘Yes, it gave me some bearings. As long as I was next to it, I knew I was headed somewhere, not just going in circles in the bush. I could see the creek get wider and deeper. It felt like there might be a house, or a picnic spot just around the corner. That was so important to me at the time and helped keep me moving. It gave me hope,’ Sammi said.

  ‘Did you hear the motorbike again after that?’ Janine asked.

  ‘No. I really didn’t expect to though. Before, he had been playing a sadistic game. The motorbike was part of it, he intended the sound to terrify me. I’m positive that was part of the buzz for him – he wanted to see pure terror and have complete control. So when I got away from him, the rules changed. Now he had to find me, rather than terrorise me. The motorbike was no longer of any use. He would have had to track me on foot. Without the tracking device, a hiding place like up a tree would probably have worked.’

  ‘Was there any sign of him after you got away from him until we found you?’

  ‘Yes. He came walking up the other side of the river in the middle of the night. I smelt him before I saw him. He was smoking. I always thought he’d keep looking for me after he lost me, but to actually be so close to him again . . .’ Sammi trailed off.

  ‘I didn’t know what other tricks he might have up his sleeve. I was so grateful I had crossed to the other side of the river before then. The dog wasn’t much of a tracker, but even it would have found me if I’d been right in front of them.’

  She pulled her knees up to her chest and tucked the blanket tighter around them. Janine noticed her fingertips were red and chapped, and wondered how Sammi’s feet under the blanket had fared.

  ‘I was exhausted and hungry, and having trouble thinking straight. Initially I just focused on keeping moving, trying to put some distance between him and me. But after night fell, it got so much harder. That was the longest night of my life. I was wearing hardly any clothes and once the sun went down I started to realise just how dangerous the cold would be,’ Sammi said. ‘I tried to keep moving to stay warm. But I was so exhausted that when I sat down for a minute, I just fell asleep leaning against a tree. I think I was lucky to wake up again. The doctor said I’m suffering from hypothermia. It would have been just my luck, to get away from a killer and die in my sleep,’ she mused.

  ‘He was probably counting on that, after he lost you,’ Janine said. ‘I think he was fairly confident you wouldn’t make it out of the bush. You were pretty much smack-bang in the middle of 450 square kilometres of scrub.’

  ‘I don’t know if I could have kept going if I had known that.’ Sammi said. ‘I shudder to think what he would have done to me if he found me while I was asleep or too exhausted to fight back. Do you know when he gave up and left the bush?’ Sammi asked.

  ‘We don’t know for sure. He’s not talking to us,’ Janine replied.

  ‘He must have been so confident that I wouldn’t make it out. He had too much to lose. I knew his secrets,’ Sammi said.

  ‘He was found about midday on Sunday, hours away from the state forest you were in. And he wasn’t headed back home to Brisbane. It looked like he was headed for the Northern Territory border. He was running already before you were found,’ Janine said. ‘So, how d
id you combat the cold?’

  ‘I thought about trying to build a fire,’ Sammi replied. ‘Then I would have had warmth as well as a little protection if there were wild dogs or something around. But the light from the fire would have shown him exactly where I was. I knew I also had to keep moving, keep the blood flowing. It was back to putting one foot in front of the other. I just kept repeating to myself – one more step, just one more step.’

  ‘No wonder you slept till midday today, you poor thing,’ Gavin said, giving Sammi’s hand a squeeze.

  ‘It’s easy for me to say that I just wanted to give up. But when I was actually facing it, I was surprised just how far I could push myself. I desperately wanted to live. So I just focussed on that one next step and kept going,’ Sammi said, a note of steel creeping back in her voice. She paused. ‘I thought I . . .’ Sammi glanced at Gavin, then at Janine, who nodded encouragingly at her. Sammi gave a little shake of her head. ‘I made it through the night. Somehow or other, I just managed to hang in and keep going. Once the sun came up, I found a little spot in the sun and had a nap. I had the feeling that if he had some other way of finding me, he would have done it by now. And everything seems less scary in the daytime. I woke up about two hours later. I had defrosted a little and the overwhelming sensation I had now was hunger.

  ‘I knew if I wanted to keep walking, I needed to eat. And I needed to make plans for the next night. I still had my sharp stick. I didn’t think I would be quick enough or have a good enough aim to hit a bird. I even tried to spear a fish. That ended badly.’ Sammi gave a short laugh.

  ‘In the end, I was sitting in the dirt when a snake came past me. And I thought, this is food, people eat snake. So I hit it with my walking stick, but it was such a piss-poor whack, I didn’t kill it. It turned on me. It reared up and bit me,’ Sammi said.

  She pressed her fingers over a small bandage on her wrist. ‘I could see the puncture marks, I knew I hadn’t imagined it. I started throwing up and I just thought, that’s it. That’s the end. I just collapsed on the ground and got ready to die.’