by Matt Rogers
King paused. ‘I guess I did.’
‘So thank you.’
‘Not a problem.’
King could tell nothing further needed to be said. Billy appreciated what he had done. And that was that.
‘So this woman,’ he said. ‘Kate Cooper. Can I get her address?’
‘You can have whatever the hell you want.’
‘Will I need to borrow your car again?’
Billy shook his head. ‘You seem fit enough. It’s a twenty minute walk from here. Think you can manage?’
‘I can handle that.’
King waited patiently as Billy scrawled a few words on a scrap of paper. He sat the pencil down and passed the note across. It read:
12 Walbrook Drive.
‘How do I get there?’ King asked.
‘Turn left when you leave and follow the road. Eventually you’ll see the street sign. It branches off the main road.’
King followed him out into the post office, which was still just as empty.
‘Been busy?’ Billy said.
Nicole raised an eyebrow. ‘You kidding?’
‘Of course.’
They walked past her and stepped outside. Wind feathered through the surrounding trees, blowing a cool mountain breeze along the main strip. King shivered in the sudden cold. The drone of a small plane passing overhead made him look up. He spotted it, nothing but a tiny speck in a sky full of thick clouds.
He looked at Billy and held up the scrap of paper. ‘Thank you for this. Helps me out.’
‘Just don’t go assaulting her or anything. She’s a nice girl. Works hard. I wouldn’t forgive myself if you turned out to be some psycho.’
‘I think you know you can trust me.’
Billy nodded. ‘This still all seems like a dream. If you’re a man of your word and I never see those bikers again, I’ll owe you for the rest of my life. Will I see you again, King?’
‘Depends, Billy. Good luck with your business. I hope everything works out.’
‘You too … with whatever the hell it is you’re doing.’
And with that King was off. He shook the man’s hand and turned on his heel. It was a calm day in rural Victoria. The middle of autumn. None of the blaring horns or constant murmur of pedestrians or sharp noises of the city. Out here there was just peace and solitude.
A nice day for a walk.
He set off at a brisk pace, channeling memories of hikes he’d made long ago. Those walks had been far worse. Often, he had no idea what he’d be heading towards, or if he’d come out unscathed on the other side. Here in civilian life, he was confident of any encounter. There were thugs and gangsters in society. But these ordinary crooks paled in comparison to the enemies of his past. Even the hitmen from the night before had failed to rattle him. They were simply irritating. He wondered just how different he was to the rest of the population. Perhaps it was irreversible, burnt into his subconscious. Guns and murder and clandestine activity were nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, he felt more at home dealing with these problems than handling daily life.
Forget about it, King, he told himself. Try to move on.
So he listened to the sounds of the world around him as he walked, concentrating on nature. On normality. The buildings on either side grew further and further apart. Before long it was simply the asphalt beside him and scruffy brush all around. Nothing to do but follow the road, which twisted through uninhabited woods.
He thought briefly of the two men he had killed the night before, unable to keep his mind off it. Their bodies would soon decompose in the machine he’d left them in. Wildlife would find them. Or they would rot away. Neither image bothered him in the slightest. They had chosen to shoot at him. He hadn’t deliberately involved himself. He’d done nothing but retaliate.
He dwelled on the altercation, replaying it over and over again in his mind. Before he knew it a gravel path appeared ahead, just wide enough to fit a lane in each direction. It spiralled off into the forest. Sections of the woods had been cleared out to make room for houses. All small and plain and comfortable. Hipped roofs. Wide open yards. Pine trees on all sides.
Kate Cooper was number twelve.
King set off down the path. His boots crunched over the gravel surface, making more noise than the asphalt. It was so quiet in these parts. He felt as if his footfalls were disturbing the residents. Every now and then a bird call would break the silence. Apart from that it was nothing but the sound of his own shoes scuffing against the gravel and the soft whirring of crickets and grasshoppers in the surrounding forest.
There was no-one in their yards. King wondered what these people did with their lives. They weren’t farmers, and it seemed like that was the only thing anyone did around here. Maybe these were the homes of the store-owners.
Maybe one of these houses was Billy’s.
A car sat idly in the driveway of number twelve. King checked the letterbox to see if he had the right place before he approached the front door. He took a look at the vehicle as he passed. Another sedan, similar to Billy’s, this one a Subaru. Another beat-up vehicle on the throes of collapse. King couldn’t remember the last new car he’d seen. Not since the city, which he had left weeks ago.
He stepped up onto the deck and rapped on the door three times, short and sharp. He heard a sudden bustling inside. It seemed he had startled someone.
There was a long pause, longer than it usually takes for someone to answer the door. He waited patiently. He assumed it was odd to have unannounced visitors around these parts. Strangers were rare. Everyone knew everyone.
Finally, he heard the sound of a latch sliding. The door swung open a crack. He could see the chain still firmly attached, preventing an intruder from forcing their way inside. One could never be too cautious. A woman’s face appeared in the gap.
Kate Cooper.
She was slim. Somewhat tall for a woman, maybe five-ten. Five-eleven even. In person she was even more attractive than the brief glimpse King had seen on the cameras. Brown hair, shoulder-length, a freckled nose, skin slightly pale, deep green eyes. He remembered Billy mentioning something about her being from England.
‘Can I help you?’ she said, her accent slightly British.
Her voice was assertive. Confident. King admired that. Through the narrow slit of the door he could see her standing with her chest stuck out. Not timid. Like she was the one in control. Impressive, considering a six-foot-three stranger had just come knocking on her door.
‘Afternoon, ma’am,’ he said.
‘Ma’am?’ she said. ‘What’s ma’am? Who calls people ma’am anymore? Who are you? What do you want?’
For a split second King hesitated, taken aback. ‘Well, I’m awfully sorry. Just wanted to be polite so you didn’t get any bad ideas.’
‘Bad ideas?’
‘I’m a stranger.’
‘No shit.’
King couldn’t help smiling a little. ‘Straight to the chase. I like it. Anyway, are you Kate Cooper?’
Silence. The door stayed firmly where it was.
‘Hello?’ King said.
‘I heard you.’
‘Oh, that’s good. Are you going to answer?’
‘Yes, I’m Kate Cooper. Once again, who are you?’
‘I’m Jason King. I’m a tourist, passing through here. Anyway, I was at the post office earlier this morning and I…’
The door slammed shut in his face.
CHAPTER 13
At that moment, King knew he was onto something. The very mention of the post office had caused an instantaneous reaction. He considered leaving. Kate clearly didn’t care for a conversation.
But this was too significant to just let go. Four men were dead already.
‘Kate!’ King yelled at the door. ‘This is serious! Open the door right now.’
‘Fuck off!’ she yelled back, her voice muffled. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘I don’t know what you’re so hostile about!’
‘Go aw
ay!’
‘Do you want me to get the police involved? I’m just looking for an explanation.’
‘I’ll get the police involved right now. I’m calling the station as we speak.’
‘How do you think they’ll react when I tell them four men are dead from what you did?’
There was no reply. King waited on the porch, poised, ready for the door to open and Kate to comply. But no such event occurred. In fact after thirty consecutive seconds of silence he heard the sound of the back door swinging open.
‘Son of a bitch,’ he muttered.
He took off in a run along the porch. Kate’s house sat in the centre of a wide lot, which meant the deck looped all the way round the structure. He rounded the corner at breakneck speed and made it to the rear of the house in seconds.
Too late.
Kate had retreated to the opposite side of the patio deck. There was enough outdoor furniture in the space between them to make reaching her a cumbersome task. Wooden bench seats surrounded a glass table in the middle and a lattice trellis covered in vines blocked the way. If he charged at her she would have more than enough time to escape. She had a cellphone pressed against her ear, speaking rapidly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him and lowered the phone.
‘Police on their way,’ she said. ‘You’d better get out of here and leave me alone.’
‘Why?’ King said. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide. Police can ask me whatever they want. I’ll tell them the truth.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘The package you delivered to the post office.’
‘It was just a package. You’re talking about four people dying. You’re out of your mind.’
‘Hang on…’
Then King saw it. Fear in her eyes. At that moment everything clicked. She wasn’t part of this. She was just a messenger. Hired help. She thought he would blame her for said deaths, which she had no knowledge of.
‘Don’t kill me,’ she said, barely audible from the other end of the patio. ‘I did everything I was instructed to do.’
‘I’m not trying to kill you,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to help you. What are you so afraid of?’
‘You’re with them, aren’t you?’
‘With who?’
Before she could respond, King heard the screeching of tyres and the squeal of a police siren from the end of the street. The noise scythed through the forest like a knife. An unnatural sound for these parts.
Kate ran.
One second she was ready to answer King’s questions. The next she had turned and bolted for the front of the house. He watched her go, his stomach sinking. The situation had just become a great deal more complicated. He was no closer to discovering any semblance of truth. And there was no doubt that he would be arrested shortly.
The sirens reached a crescendo as the police pulled into Kate’s driveway. King had an idea of what he was in for. He guessed an arrest in these parts was a freak occurrence, something the locals talked about as folklore. Jameson was certainly not the crime capital of Australia.
He knew it would do good to make the arrest as uneventful as possible. Heightened tensions were beneficial to no-one. So he walked back the way he had come. Toward the front deck. Toward the police.
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa!’ a voice shouted as he rounded the corner. ‘Stay right there!’
King stopped in his tracks and raised both hands. Palms out. Demonstrating that he wasn’t armed. ‘I am staying right here.’
The police car parked in the drive looked to be just as old as Kate’s sedan. Its paint had half rusted away and the big black logo on the side reading ‘JAMESON POLICE DEPARTMENT’ was missing letters. The passenger door and the driver’s door both lay open. An officer stood behind each door.
The two of them were far from imposing. A man and a woman. He was just under six foot and scrawny, his uniform at least two sizes too big. She couldn’t have been far over five foot, with an athletic build and brown hair tied back tight. And she looked angry. Far angrier than the guy. She’d been the one to shout at King as he came into view. King didn’t blame her. He was an imposing sight to anyone, let alone someone attempting to arrest him.
‘Mr. King, is it?’ the female officer said.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Ms. Cooper here told me.’ She motioned to Kate, who stood alongside her near the vehicle, sporting a thousand-yard stare. Like she had just looked death in the eyes. Whoever had employed her to deliver the package must have truly terrified her.
‘I don’t know what’s made Ms. Cooper so distressed,’ King said. ‘I simply knocked on her door to ask her a few things.’
‘We can sort that out at the station, I think.’
‘There’s a station here?’ King said.
‘Yeah,’ the male officer said. ‘It’s not on the main road.’ His tone was far less aggressive. Like he hoped it was all a mix-up.
King waited through a moment of awkward silence. The officers had refrained from drawing their guns. Either to reduce the tension of the situation, or because using their pieces was a foreign concept. He could tell they were unsure as to what this was. They’d received a call from a distressed woman, as if she was being abducted. They’d raced here, ready for confrontation. But here was her supposed stalker, standing calmly on the front porch. Waiting for someone to speak.
It was clear they were rusty in the serious-crimes department.
‘Would you like me to come with you to the station?’ King finally said.
‘That would be good,’ the man said.
‘We should cuff him,’ the woman said.
‘Don’t worry,’ King said. ‘I’ll play by the rules.’
‘How do we know we can trust you?’
‘Because I’d be a mile away from here by now if I wanted to be.’
The pair of them had trouble responding to that. King headed for the car. As he got closer he made out the badges pinned to the breast pocket of each officer’s uniform. The man’s read “Officer Dawes”, and the woman’s read “Officer Kitchener”. Kate stood nervously off to the side, shuffling from foot to foot.
‘Back seat?’ King asked as he passed them.
Kitchener nodded.
‘No problem.’
He opened the door and settled his bulk into one of the seats. The car smelt like cheap air freshener, covering the standard scent of an old musty interior. He watched as Kitchener spoke to Kate for a moment. The window muffled her voice but her manner was reassuring, like a parent telling a child that everything would be alright. He guessed she was promising that they would sort King out at the station. That all would return to normal soon enough.
He guessed things in Jameson never strayed too far from normal.
Dawes lowered himself into the driver’s seat as the two women finished their conversation. He glanced back momentarily, checking King’s position, then started the vehicle.
‘Busy day?’ King said.
He smiled. ‘Chaos around here, mate.’
Kitchener got in the car and the smile vanished.
‘Back to the station,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll question him.’
‘Just to clarify,’ King said, ‘am I under arrest right now?’
‘No, you’re not. But just co-operate with us here. You’ve certainly scared the shit out of that poor woman. Let’s sort everything out when we get to the station.’
‘I don’t think I was the one that scared her,’ King said. ‘Something certainly has though.’
Neither officer responded to that cryptic message. Dawes started the engine and pulled out of the driveway. The car handled the gravel well. Far better than Billy’s old sedan.
The trip passed in silence. King decided not to speak. They were heading to the station to speak.
No use wasting words in here.
Dawes turned right out of Kate’s street and headed back to the town centre. They passed Billy’s post office. King got a brief glimpse
through the open doorway. He saw Billy standing rigid behind the counter, staring directly at him. For a brief instant the two made eye contact. King knew what the man was thinking.
What an idiot.
As they left the shops behind, passing the pair of motels at the very edge of the main strip, King noticed an asphalt road he had previously overlooked branching away into the woods. The police car turned down it. It led to another small cluster of residential houses, these a little more modern than those in Kate’s street. He guessed this area had been recently excavated and developed.
At the very end of the street there was a rectangular brick building the size of several houses put together. Large lettering above the entrance read ‘JAMESON POLICE DEPARTMENT’, the logo the same as the one adorning the side of the car. Dawes pulled into an adjoining four-car garage connected to the station. It housed two identical sedans and a police motorcycle.
‘Follow us,’ Kitchener said, her tone authoritative.
‘What else am I going to do?’ King said.
They led him into the station through a narrow door in one wall of the garage. He followed the pair through blank white-washed hallways, each as stale as the last. He caught a quick glimpse of a lobby with identical white walls and a bored-looking male officer sitting behind a reception desk before they ushered him through a thick steel door into a square room, also white. It was furnished with a metal table and four chairs, two on either side.
‘Sit,’ Kitchener instructed.
King sat.
‘So I’m not under arrest,’ he said. ‘Therefore this isn’t an official questioning. What is this exactly?’
‘We’re just talking,’ Dawes said.
He shut the steel door behind him and the pair sat down on the opposite side of the table. King rolled his sleeves up and rested his burly forearms on the surface. The steel was cold to the touch.
‘This is all very informal,’ he noted.
‘You don’t stop bringing that up, do you?’ Kitchener said.
‘I’m used to order. I guess a town as small as this does things a little differently.’
‘Were you a cop?’
‘No.’