Blood Sport (Little Town)

by JD Nixon

  I hurriedly gathered some rocks and placed them in a circle on the spot where the dogs were sitting. That wasn’t the end of it though, because they were off again.

  The Super wasn’t happy. “Fucking hell. I wasn’t expecting a cemetery. We’re not going to be able to keep this quiet. Those fucking maggots in the media will be crawling around here everywhere as soon as they find out.”

  After locating a third possible grave and I’d placed a circle of rocks on it as well, the dogs were content to remain seated, scratching and licking themselves contently.

  “Looks like that’s it, ma’am,” decided the senior handler.

  “Hang around for a while, just in case,” instructed the Super. “We’ll see what forensics say.”

  We waited patiently for the forensics team to turn up, sitting on tumbled logs.

  We heard them well before we saw them, crashing through the bush, swearing up a storm. Four sullen and muddy forensic officers, accompanied by a fed-up Xavier, came to a halt near us.

  “What do we have, ma’am?” asked the most senior one, and she spent a few succinct minutes briefing them. A team of two tackled the first grave, and the other two the second. As they plied their professional skills, we took the chance to return to the road, Xavier kindly giving me a helping hand up the hill. We sat on the bonnets of the cars and drank cold coffee, ate cold pastries and gave the panting dogs a bowl of water. I took a minute to ring the Sarge to tell him what we’d found so far.

  “Kylie’s a very lucky girl,” he said, his voice warm in my ear. “If it hadn’t been for your persistence, she would be buried down there too by now and we’d be none the wiser.” A pause. “And Tessie, I’m really sorry I yelled at you about it.”

  I scuffed my boot on the road. “Aw, that’s all right. I probably deserved it.”

  “Yeah, you probably did.” The smile sparkled in his tone.

  “But I can’t stop thinking about poor Lucy. I should have –”

  “Should have, could have, would have. Tess, you can’t torture yourself for the rest of your life about it. You were virtually working the town single-handedly at that point. Do you really think that anyone in Big Town would have taken you seriously and given you some backup?”

  “I guess not,” I said quietly, obeying the Super’s cutthroat gesture to hang up. The forensics team wanted to show the Super their initial discoveries and I wasn’t missing out on that for anything.

  *****

  Over the next few weeks, the forensics team carefully uncovered the remains of three young female bodies. A crew made up of State Emergency Service volunteers and police academy recruits combed the surrounding scrub with mind-numbing thoroughness for clues once the bush graves were fully excavated. Fortunately for them, the good weather held and they were able to work solidly for the entire time.

  Bussing in the recruits from the city and putting them up in Big Town, utilising every fleabag motel and dodgy guesthouse available, had the Super tearing her hair out, and screaming at everyone who even looked at her at the ruination of her carefully prepared budget. That was until the Police Minister, an attractive well-groomed older woman, graced our television screens, magnanimously stepping in to announce that the State Government would cover all costs related to the recovery of the bodies and the solving of the crimes. I’d never seen Fiona smile before about anything a politician had promised, but she positively beamed from ear to ear on hearing that. She even managed a compliment, stating that the Police Minister was not as much of a pointy-titted, hole-licking media slut as she’d originally thought.

  And speaking of the media, once they were alerted to the story, the Sarge and I were fully occupied in maintaining good order in town and keeping the determined and ruthless journalists from the crime scene. They were relentless and both of us had to even fend off some of the more unscrupulous ones trying to sweet talk us and bribe us into exclusive tip-offs with insultingly small gifts. Didn’t they realise that we’d both worked in the city before? We weren’t impressed with the offer of $100 in disgustingly soiled and crumpled notes. Well, I might have been tempted, thinking about my bank balance, but the Sarge kept me on the straight and narrow. Good for him. I think.

  Never one to miss an effortless money-making opportunity, Rosie, Larissa, Kristy, and Jade Bycraft, and Dorrie Lebutt all stepped forward to sell their stories about ‘romancing’ with the bikies. Unfortunately for them, Pinky Kowalski slapped them with suppression orders as they were considered material witnesses in any future court case against the bikies. Not even the bottom-dwelling journos would touch them after that, something which they somehow yet again managed to blame on me.

  Mountain Road being blocked off for so long worried the Little Town business owners who’d been counting on the coming spring to lure back the tourists after the rainy, miserable winter. Everybody was shocked by what had happened, of course, but nobody wanted it to drag on forever. The tourists were one of the main reasons that the town survived these days, when so many other little towns had given up the ghost.

  I hardly need to say, but of course the Sarge and I lost control of the case, the Big Town police taking over. I still made sure I was involved in any development though, poking my nose into every local investigation and ringing Xavier, Zelda and the Super as many times a day as it took them to lose their patience with me. In case you were interested, it was once a day for the Super, twice for Zelda and a tolerant four times for Mr X, with a decidedly testy fifth time thrown in some days when I was feeling particularly stubborn. The Sarge accused me of being tenacious again, and I’m pretty sure he hadn’t suddenly decided that it was now a favourable description of me.

  Lucy’s body, the first uncovered, was positively identified as Lucinda Storey, aged sixteen, a runaway from a foster home. Sadly, nobody came forward to claim her remains. Her otherwise caring last foster family had reluctantly washed their hands of her when she ran away for the final time, finding her unruly and untrustworthy during her brief residence with them. And while they were naturally shaken at hearing of her terrible death, they were not upset or surprised. The third body, and the first to have been dumped, was eventually identified as thirteen-year-old Crystal Jenkins, another runaway. This time though, a weepy mother and stepfather came to claim her sad little skeletal remains for burial.

  To date, the second body remained unidentified – a Jane Doe, nothing left of her but a heartbreakingly small pile of immature, mostly decomposed bones and a cheap gold-plated charm bracelet that everyone hoped would one day find her a name and reunite her with her family.

  Detectives from the city who worked for the child protection unit – some of the only police authorised to access illegal pornography for investigative purposes – tracked down the snuff films of the other two girls. I never saw those films and I never wanted to, but the Super did and later told me that both girls had died terrible deaths. They had also both been filmed in that same white room – incontrovertible evidence that all three deaths were linked to the Vypers.

  “Sometimes I’m really hopeless at being a cop,” I moped to the Sarge, after we’d heard that news. We sat side-by-side on the back steps of the station, drinking a cup of tea and enjoying the sunshine. It was a beautiful late winter’s day, the promise of spring in the air – clear blue sky, crisp air, mellow sunshine, and contented birds. But I barely noticed. I was gutted by the thought that three, almost four, girls had been murdered in this town and nobody had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Particularly me.

  “Would that be your recruitment campaign slogan?” he teased gently, refusing to feed my brooding mood. “Join the force today and you too could be as hopeless a cop as me. It’s not very catchy. I think it needs a bit more work.”

  That made me laugh, reluctantly. I shoved him with my shoulder and he shoved me back with his.

  “No, but I should have known something was wrong. I know this town back to front.”

  He slung his arm around my shoulders and squeezed.
“Tessie, I think that if she ever had the chance, Kylie would tell the world that she’s glad you’re a cop in Little Town.” He let go of me and stood up, reaching his hand down towards me.

  I glanced up at him for a moment, then gave him my hand. He hauled me to my feet. We faced each other. “I’ll go with that,” I said at last.

  “Good choice,” he said, giving me a gentle push in the back between my shoulder blades. “Now, get back to your desk. You have a mountain of paperwork to get through and I want it all done by the time you leave.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I’ll be here till midnight,” I grumbled loudly, heading back inside, hiding my pleasure at having a partner who cared enough about me to give me pep talks when I needed them.

  “Oh, and Tess?”

  I turned. “Hmm?”

  He smiled at me. “Not so many typos this time, hey?”

  Epilogue

  Although the Sarge and I lost control of the case against the bikies, the Big Town detectives did as well. Much to the Super’s anger, they were forced to hand it over to the city detectives for the follow up on the Vypers members.

  And while I thought there was enough evidence to throw the book at them, the city police prosecutors were much more cautious. They were comfortable prosecuting the men shown in the Kylie film, as they had the eyewitness accounts of both Kylie and me, as well as the corroborating film itself as evidence. But when it came to linking Rusty to Kylie’s abuse, they worried that a crack defence lawyer would argue that his guilt was circumstantial.

  Yes, he was present at the location, but his lawyers might argue that was natural as he was the property owner. Yes, he was caught on film potentially discussing ordering the deaths of Kylie and me, but his lawyers could argue that was circumstantial and a misinterpretation of the conversation. And neither side could use Rusty’s partner in that conversation as a witness, because he had disappeared. Yes, he had been filmed whacking me over the head, but his lawyers would only argue that I’d been an intruder and he’d been defending his property, unaware that I was a police officer.

  Bloody lawyers!

  If only that explosion hadn’t conveniently destroyed all trace evidence, the forensics team might have been able to find some DNA from the murdered girls in the retreat, which would have firmly linked them to the bikies. As it was, there was only Kylie’s and my word that the filming room had even been located in the bikie retreat in the first place. The Bycraft girls, who could have corroborated our statements, refused pointblank to cooperate with police, all with innocent faces claiming that they’d never set foot inside the retreat. The lying bitches.

  The police prosecutors were also concerned that a good defence lawyer would downplay Kylie’s reliability as a witness because of her history as a troubled teen and the fact that she was doped up a lot of the time she had been abused. They might also cast doubt on my reliability, because I’d been on the premises without the knowledge or authority of my superiors.

  Bloody lawyers!

  A dawn raid on Vypers members’ homes by city cops turned up only some firearm and drug contraventions – there were no more frightened young women to be rescued or, frustratingly, any evidence of their involvement in illegal and violently fatal porn. I had a brief phone conversation with the lead city detective and she told me it was now much harder to gather evidence because the Vypers had allegedly moved their activities online and had destroyed their hard copy film.

  The film fragments the Sarge and I had found couldn’t be used as evidence because they hadn’t been recovered in accordance with the law. The website flogging the disgusting movies the bikies had made was owned by a company that was owned by another company, owned by yet another company that was listed offshore. Et cetera, et cetera. The bikies had become modern, sophisticated criminals.

  The best the city dees were able to do was to track down and arrest some of the men who’d appeared in the movies, most of them easily identifiable by their tattoos, including the man with the gold snake ring. But none of them would squeal either.

  It all seemed impossible to solve until Kylie remembered that the man who’d arranged her fake licence had been a Department of Transport employee. That was one consolation at least to the Sarge and me – the licence had appeared real, because it was real, but filled with fake information. And thank goodness for public service accountability, because he was easily tracked through audit trails. He cracked under pressure, admitting to being a purchaser of snuff porn and an associate of the Vypers, grassing on a number of them, including Rusty Fontaine.

  Investigations continue. In a disappointing development, Rusty took flight overseas before he could be questioned, his current whereabouts unknown.

  My fingers remained crossed that eventually justice will be served for those girls.

  *****

  Kylie recovered surprisingly well. She’s shown an unexpectedly steely spine and a genuine determination to get her life back on track again. She cut her long dyed hair, grew it out to its natural colour and went back to school as a normal fourteen-year-old. She returned to the city to live with her mother again, but the relationship remained tense at best.

  We keep in constant contact and I guess I’ve become an important role model in her life. She’s decided that she wants to be either a cop or a social worker when she grows up – someone who can help other girls in need. She’s endlessly grateful for the chance to grow up in the first place.

  Every school holiday since those terrible events, she comes to stay with me to get away from her mother and the city, and we’ve grown incredibly close. She’s like a little sister to me and gets on so well with my other ‘little sisters’, Romi and Toni, that I save like mad to take all four of us to Big Town to stay in a nice hotel for a girls’ weekend every four months or so. Sometimes even Romi’s best friend, Tina, joins us when she can be spared from her family’s avocado farm.

  That gives us all the opportunity to be ridiculously girly together, go shopping, go to the movies or rollerblading or fishing and for the older girls to spy on some different boys to the ones they see every day in Little Town. It also gives Abe a much welcome break from his parental duties and a chance to spend some quality time with Jenny. He shows his appreciation by generously subsidising the weekends away, which is a big help to me. Jake and the Sarge chip in as well, which also cuts costs significantly, and I usually only end up carrying a quarter of the total expense. It’s a good break for all of us.

  *****

  I set up some self-defence courses in Big Town on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. They were partially sponsored by the Big Town police force, which meant that the Super paid for the venue, advertising, equipment and insurance for me. In return I covered the refreshments and any notes I wanted to distribute and handed over a third of my takings to help cover some of the costs. I had to acknowledge the police as a sponsor, which I actually thought lent my training a certain authority, so I didn’t mind.

  I wasn’t prepared for the success of my training though and both courses quickly booked out. I even have a waiting list for the next one.

  *****

  I haven’t seen Melissa in town again so far, although I’ve spoken to her on the phone a couple of times when she’s rung the Sarge at the station and I’ve answered. She hasn’t been very friendly, frosty and abrupt, not wasting her time on any small talk with me.

  The Sarge has made a few trips to the city to spend the weekend with her. But it’s a seven hour drive just to get there and I couldn’t always cover for him, especially after I started the self-defence courses. The travel’s taken its toll on him personally and the constant separation is taking its toll on their relationship. He’s never returned from one of his city trips with the same silly smile that I had after spending time with Jake, but was instead brooding and short-tempered. I asked him once after one trip if they’d set the wedding date yet and he snapped at me that it was none of my damn business and why didn’t I spend more time on my paperwork
and less time gossiping about his private life? Scorched, I kept my mouth shut and didn’t ask him anything about his weekends away after that.

  ~~~~~~

  Ironically enough, the skull that I’d woken up next to didn’t prove to be one of the bikies’ victims, after all. Instead, forensics placed it as a male, aged in his thirties, deceased for well over one hundred years. Speculation in town was rife after that bit of news.

  The popular opinion was that it belonged to Ned Bycraft, who was lynched in 1888 by the townsfolk for murdering Elizabeth Fuller, and so beginning the Fuller-Bycraft feud. Although I refused to express an opinion one way or the other, when I thought back on that newspaper clipping I had from that era, microfilmed from the Wattling Bay Messenger, it never did confirm that Ned Bycraft had been buried by his family. Perhaps the lynchers, one of whom was my ancestor, had thrown his body in the bush after he’d died? Nobody would ever know unless Fiona paid for forensics to test the skull against the current Bycrafts. But after one look at her face, I knew that was never going to happen.

  *****

  I returned home from one of my self-defence sessions on a Saturday afternoon, only to find Dad grinning like a fool. I immediately demanded to know what was going on. I was tired and smelly and just wanted a shower and some dinner.

  He refused to answer, bursting with suppressed eagerness. Irritated, I looked through every room of the house suspiciously. Nothing seemed any different. I went to the back door and threw it open. It was dark outside by then, but I could hear a beautifully familiar contented clucking noise and saw something standing where something so precious had recently been destroyed.