He leaned closer. “Pardon? Did you say, ‘your womb’?”
She nodded, whispered. “Yes.”
“How did you react to that?”
“I reached into my car for the wrecking bar I keep under the seat and held it up in warning.”
His pulse quickened, realising he was a moment away from a confession, but he remained silent, face impartial, giving her the time she needed to continue.
She closed her mouth and didn’t finish her sentence.
After the moment dragged on too long, he asked, “You held the wrecking bar up in warning?”
“Yes.”
“What happened next?”
She couldn’t look at him, went very still and silent, and focused on the chips in the Laminex tabletop.
He waited. Waited for long minutes with unwavering eye-contact. In a softer, warmer, more coaxing voice, he asked again, “What happened next, Tina, when you held the wrecking bar up in warning?”
A deep sigh. When she looked up, her eyes were red, rimmed with tears. Snot leaked from her nostrils.
McKenzie resisted the urge to offer a tissue, not willing to jeopardise the imminent confession, but after another long silence, it didn’t come.
He tried once more. “Did Isabelle threaten you again? Did she try to hurt you?”
Tina broke down, sobbing and crying, shaking her head. She tore tissues from the box and wiped her eyes and nose.
“I understand that this can be difficult to talk about. Your honesty and openness have been commendable. I’m trying to find out what happened that day.” He had one eye-witness statement—a jogger, the man who had first called emergency services—reporting that he had seen Tina strike Juliette. But he was a hundred metres away at the time. After door knocking, there were no homes or businesses with any video footage of the crime scene. Personal security systems were practically unheard of in a town like Gladstone.
“I need to go to the toilet please,” she said.
He hid his disappointment. “Sure. Let’s do that. Would you like a tea or coffee?”
“Some water please.”
A female constable showed Tina to the bathroom, while McKenzie used the spare time to meet with Detective Jenkins in the office adjoining the interview room.
Jenkins lifted her head from the file spread out before her. “How do you think it’s going in there?”
“Really well, until about fifteen minutes ago when she closed up.” He held his thumb and forefinger apart. “This close.”
Jenkins looked at her watch. “It’s only been one hour and fifteen minutes.”
He took a seat on the chair across from her, a desk between them. “Feels a lot longer.”
“Tina’s medical records have just come through.” She stabbed the report with her finger. “Intoxication from high levels of Scopolamine. The doctor questioned her over it and she claimed to have no idea of how she ingested the drugs.”
“What are you thinking?”
Jenkins shook her head. “At this stage, I’m not sure. We need to dig deeper.”
“Agreed.”
McKenzie collected a bottle of water for Tina before he returned to the interview room. He placed it on the desk in front of her and resumed his seat, maintaining a respectful distance. Now wasn’t the right moment to get into her personal space and exert pressure. His immediate goal was to get her talking again.
Tina sipped water from the bottle, then looked at him, expectant.
“You were married to Chris Brooks for a time?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How long for?”
“Fifteen years.”
“But you divorced a few years ago?”
“Yes.”
He cleared his throat. “When I spoke with you at the hospital, you mentioned a four-year-old girl called Kadie Brooks.”
Her cheeks flushed. “I don’t know why I said what I said that day.”
“Which part?”
“That I was her mother.”
“Why did you lie about that?”
She flinched. “I didn’t lie.”
“It wasn’t the truth.”
“I honestly thought I was telling the truth. I think it was the drugs. I think they’ve been in my system for a while.” Her voice was strained, wavering with emotion. “Longer than just that day, because I’ve had some strange things happening and I wonder now if any of it was real.”
“Were you prescribed Scopolamine for any reason?”
She shook her head. “I don’t take drugs. Any kind of drugs. I never have.”
“Could you have accidentally ingested it? I don’t know, via some herbal remedy?”
“No. I eat well. I get sunlight. I stay fit. I don’t take anything else.” She leaned forward, her gaze meeting McKenzie’s face unfalteringly. “I’ve started to remember the things that I’ve said and done over the past few weeks. Unusual things. Really, really unusual things.”
“Like what?”
“I went to Kadie’s grave on the anniversary of her death. I left flowers and a stuffed toy there and cried and felt grief so deep, as though she was my daughter. That’s pretty messed up, don’t you think?”
He didn’t answer.
“Those notes I was finding around the house?”
“The one’s you believe Isabelle was writing?” he asked.
She nodded. Her gaze was pleading. “I had put them into a resealable bag and left them in my desk drawer in the office. I checked and found ripped up pieces of white paper with nothing written on them. I’m not sure if the notes were even real. And now I don’t know if I ever saw Isabelle at my window that night.” Tears filled her eyes. “And here I am today, telling you that I stood face to face with Isabelle…” Her voice was strong even though she was crying. Her cheeks were red. “And yet, Isabelle is alive, and I’m being told I murdered her daughter. I now have to live with that. I have to live with knowing I killed a young woman.”
Detective Inspector McKenzie went very still, though his pulse was racing. “So, when you raised the wrecking bar at Juliette, what happened?”
“She roared, so loud my ears almost burst from the pain of it. She lurched at me. I closed my eyes and swung…” She broke off with a sob, her lips trembling. “I was trying to bat her away. I was so scared. I threw the bar down and hopped into my car. I didn’t look back. Just floored it out of there. But my vision got worse. The whole world was blurry and cartoonish. Waving around like I was underwater. That’s when I turned off the road.” A tremble so strong it almost knocked her off her seat. “But she was there, in the bushes, crawling towards me. I don’t know what I saw, what was real, what wasn’t real...”
“When you swung the wrecking bar and was batting Juliette away, did you hit her?”
Another tremble, a quick nod. “I hit her. I hit her over and over until she fell to the road.”
McKenzie drew a deep breath in. “Tina Brooks, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Juliette Spencer.”
* * *
McKenzie sank onto the chair across from his partner, wanting to feel good about extracting a confession from Tina, but a large, hard stone sat heavily in the pit of his stomach.
“Great work in there,” Jenkins said.
He sighed. “I’ve been a detective for a long time. You know how it is, over the years you learn the ways and minds of suspects.”
Jenkins crossed her arms over her chest and nodded.
“I couldn’t find a hole in Tina’s answers today. Her tears, her fear, had affected me. The hairs on my arms stood on end.” At the end of the day, he was human with human empathy and Tina had evoked his.
Jenkins’s brow furrowed as she leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “What are you trying to say?”
“Tina Brooks confessed to a serious crime today. I had to arrest her, but I’m not going to formally charge her yet. We’ve got a lot of convincing evidence and yet it’s not enough. We’re missing something. Something big.”
/> “How did the Scopolamine make into Tina’s bloodstream?”
“Exactly,” he said. “I think there could be another suspect out there.”
Jenkins pushed her chair back and stood. “Well, without laying charges, there’s only so long we can detain Tina. So, we better work out who that is and fast.”
Chapter 26
“God, this is ridiculous!” Chris said as he paced the length of the floor. He’d barely managed more than a few hours of broken sleep last night. He kept waking from nightmares of Juliette, her face disfigured and bleeding as she laid contorted on the hot bitumen road.
He pulled his mobile out of his pocket, yet again, and checked for messages or a missed-call notification. Nothing.
Yesterday, after he phoned Isabelle, he’d sent a couple of follow-up text messages, but got crickets. He hadn’t been able to wait a moment longer in that tiny hotel room, so he drove to the house. For all he knew, she may have had her phone turned off. But after knocking and knocking, no one had answered.
He had pressed his ear to the timber door and listened. She could have been inside and was avoiding him, so he slipped his key into the lock and went in to check. But the house was silent. No one was home.
A pang of guilt for doubting her. He had assumed Isabelle was most likely meeting with an undertaker, arranging the details of Juliette’s funeral. A correct assumption. Meanwhile, he was snooping around expecting her to be hiding in her cupboard as though he was somehow more important than all else.
With his tail between his legs, he had driven back to the hotel and booked in for another few nights.
He shoved his phone in his pocket. “Screw it.” He was going to drive over there again. He understood that she would be suffering right now, but he was her husband, and her silence didn’t make sense.
Chris arrived at Isabelle’s home and parked. He sat in his car for a while, engine running, looking at the house. He blinked back tears, then went to the front door and knocked.
An older woman answered. He took a step backwards, momentarily disconcerted. He gathered his wits and voice. “Jenny. Hi. It’s Chris.” His cheeks burned hot to be standing on the doorstep of his ‘supposed’ home and yet he’d had to knock.
“I know who you are,” Isabelle’s mother said. She had blonde hair like her daughter but cropped short. Shared the same petite build. He could have been looking into his wife’s brown eyes.
“Right, of course.” A polite but strained smile. “I’ve come by to see Issy.”
“She doesn’t want to speak to you.”
“Well, that’s too bad.” He pushed past Jenny, through the door. She sidestepped in front of him to block his path, but he held her shoulders and gently shifted her to the side. “She’s my wife. Isabelle?” he called out.
Isabelle strode into the living room, her father at her side. Chris’s next breath vanished as he took in her appearance. Black, swollen rings sat beneath her bloodshot eyes. Her face drooped downward. Her hair was limp, oily. Her shoulders hunched like she was compelled to curl into a ball.
“Issy,” he said and went to her, wanting to throw his arms around her and hold her tight to him.
She put her hand up. “Stop. Don’t touch me.”
He froze mid-stride. “I’m so deeply sorry about Juliette. I’m devastated. I can’t believe it.”
“I don’t want you here, Chris. I don’t want you anywhere near me.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What have I done? I had to find out about Juliette from the police.”
Her nose wrinkled, lips twisted as she pointed her finger at him. “If not for you, Juliette would still be alive.”
He stumbled a step back. His mouth flapped open and shut. “I know you’re upset, but that’s one hell of an accusation. I can’t even begin to make sense of that.”
Her father, Richard, spoke up. “Tina was arrested today.” His voice was deep and firm but wavered with emotion.
Chris narrowed his eyes, blinked, unable to process that news.
“For God’s sake, Chris,” Issy screeched. “They’ve arrested your ex-wife for bludgeoning my daughter to death and you still won’t believe it. You’re still sticking up for her.”
“No, that’s not it. I’m shocked. I didn’t… I hadn’t heard anything about Tina being involved, let alone arrested. It’s a shock. That’s all.” He wiped his mouth with his palm. He was finding it difficult to breathe.
“I’m leaving for Tasmania after the funeral—”
“For how long?”
“Permanently,” she said.
“What?”
“You can come over then and collect your things. I’m going to sell the salon. I can’t stay here. I can’t face this house and this town—”
“What about the baby?”
Isabelle’s hand floated to her stomach, a strange expression coming over her. “My body. You’ve forfeited your rights.”
“No way, Issy. It doesn’t work like that. Not one bit.”
“You need to leave,” Richard said. “You’ve caused more than enough trouble.”
“I’m not here to cause trouble. I’m here to console my wife. You’re acting like I’m some sort of bloody criminal.”
“You leave or I call the police and you can sit in jail with your ex and you can rot together.”
“Jesus Christ.” He tugged a hand through his hair. “This is ridiculous. I had nothing to do with Juliette.”
“Get out!” Richard roared, his head shaking, eyes widening with his fury.
Chris held both hands up. “Fine, but you’ve got this all wrong. I’m just as shocked—”
Isabelle charged at him and slapped his face, over and over, his chest, his arms, his stomach. “You did this. You fucking did this,” she screamed with every slap and punch, spit flying from her mouth. “You did this!”
He fended off the assault, careful not to hurt her, and turned, the blows now landing on his back. “I’m going.” He marched to the door, each step like he was walking through glue. “I’m going. I’m going.” He opened the door and shut it behind him.
His head was pounding as he fought to make sense of what was happening. He was panting. All the places Isabelle had hit him were throbbing. When back at his car, he sank into the driver’s seat. For a while, he was unable to move. His world was no longer his own but some dark, twisted hell he had somehow landed in.
Chapter 27
Four days before the murder…
Maddison stood, pillow in her hands, and tiptoed around the bed until she was standing beside her husband, looking down at his sleeping frame. She lowered the pillow, smothered his face, held the ends down as hard as she could, then climbed onto him, kneeling on his chest.
A muffled groan. His arms came at her, trying to claw her away, but she would take all the ferocity for as long as she could. She had been preparing herself to withstand the pain of his defence for months and months.
He punched and pulled, kicked and squirmed, but she held tight, so damn tight. She was strong. Had endurance.
Maddison gasped as she snapped out of her daydream. She was sitting on the end of her bed in the darkened room watching her husband sleep. His breaths were loud and rhythmical. She stood, eyed the pyjamas she was wearing. Her hair was wet.
She had showered, but she couldn’t remember doing so. It seemed like only a moment ago she was in the kitchen, drinking wine, posting pictures on social media and then…
No matter how much she tried to rack her brain for the right memories to fill in the gaps, she couldn’t find them.
A cold rivulet of water dripped from her hair down her back and she shivered. She went to the ensuite for a towel but before she stepped inside, she jumped backwards. Blotches of red, very much like blood, were all over the white tiles beneath her feet.
Maddison flicked on the light, her eyes squinting against the brightness. Her vision was warped, her head spinning. But it wasn’t blood on the tiles, rather pictures had been d
rawn over the floor in bright red lipstick.
She glanced around the room. An open lipstick sat on the basin’s countertop. She stared at her reflection in the mirror; her lips were coated with red.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. With a wet hand towel, she fell to her hands and knees and scrubbed the lipstick away. By the end, her white towel was stained red and ruined, so she carried it to the kitchen and threw it in the bin before Ben or the kids could see it.
She flopped onto a stool and sighed as she wondered if she had drawn those pictures. Of course she had, though she would never remember doing so.
Lucy, after their big night on the town, had been right about Maddison. Right to strike her from her life. Maddison’s destructive efforts to block out that horrible day when Kadie had died were slowly making her lose her mind.
“Oh, Kadie,” Maddison sobbed. “Why did you climb that stupid tree? Why?”
She spotted her phone sitting on the bench. Before she could stop herself, she had arranged an Uber. On her way out the front door, she grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge.
The quiet, suburban street was still and dark as she waited on the footpath. No lights were on in any of the homes. Good, hardworking people. Maddison was once that person. Now, she didn’t know who she was.
If not for Ruby and Riley, she wouldn’t willingly choose that pain every day when there was nothing else left to live for. Life was all about cost-benefit. She was teetering on the edge, trying to hold a balance between the two. If she were to allow the full force of her past to engulf her, the cost of her existence would outweigh all else.
* * *
Maddison stood in the backyard of her old property at Yarwun, looking up at the tree where Kadie was found hanging. She glanced behind her to the quiet house. Windows all dark. Once her home. A new family had moved in a few months after Kadie had died. They knew what had happened there and they hadn’t cared; bought the place anyway because it was going cheap.
Maddison and Ben didn’t sleep another night there after that horrible day. They had moved in with Maddison’s parents until the property sold and they were able to buy another home. Having her parents to help had been a godsend because she and Ben were in no frame of mind to take care of Ruby and Riley in the months after the accident.
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