Thank heaven for full-face helmets. Jack couldn’t stop grinning as he wove his black Ninja through the morning traffic in Surry Hills. Waking up with Ethan beside him had negated so many of Jack’s grumbles about the new job, he was having trouble remembering he was supposed to be cranky about it. He’d laughed his way through a shared shower, smiled over a quick breakfast, and even now, away from Ethan and on his way to work, the simple joy wouldn’t go away, which was nice.
A ping from his implant threatened his happy mood. It was a clear reminder of where his focus should be.
Jack accepted the call, then had to swerve around an abruptly braking SUV, sidling the bike between the big car and a small MG convertible on the other side.
“Jack? You there, mate?” Lewis’s voice came into his head.
“I’m in the middle of traffic, dumbarse.” Squeezing between a couple more pairs of cars, Jack edged up to the line at the intersection, hoping the light went green before he had to come to a complete stop.
Lewis chuckled, but when he spoke he was all business. “Just a quick comms check before you get to the LAC. You get a chance to go over the file again last night?”
“Yes, mum,” Jack muttered aloud, his voice muffled by his helmet. “I did all my homework.” Over breakfast that morning.
The light miraculously turned green, and Jack roared away, getting in front of a delivery truck and cutting across the lane to turn into Goulburn Street.
“Ha-ha. Don’t kill yourself on the way in, okay. If you do, they’d probably want to send me in your place.”
“God save the country if that ever happened.”
“Right? Okay, Home is going silent. Don’t get cranky, record everything, and good luck.”
Smiling wryly at his friend’s agreement, Jack confirmed the orders and signed off. Moments later, he turned into the visitor’s carpark of the Local Area Command for Surry Hills. He parked and, helmet under his arm, went into the building.
The interior was government-building typical. Fluorescent tubes overhead, bland walls interspersed with posters promoting the police force and community involvement, the utilitarian carpet worn down in places from millions of feet, a line of people already snaking away from the reception counter. He had to wait for ten minutes before he reached the head of the queue.
Jack pulled out his ISO ID and handed it over. “Jack Reardon. I was requested to come in by Senior Sergeant Phelps.”
The man behind the desk looked his ID over critically. “We don’t see you guys much around here. I thought you were all in Canberra.” He then checked Jack’s face, making sure he matched the photo beside the badge.
“That’s what we want you to think.”
After a little pause, the receptionist got the joke and sniggered. “Yeah, right. Let me just get you a native guide to take you upstairs. Can’t have you wandering around freely, spying on things.”
“That’s fine.” Jack accepted his ID back and tucked it away in an inner jacket pocket. “We know it all, anyway.”
Another pause, this one mildly sceptical, mildly worried it was true. “Yeah, right,” he repeated. “You can take a seat, Mr. Reardon. Someone will come get you shortly.”
It wasn’t long before he heard his name being called. A uniform stood just this side of a door labelled “Authorised Personnel Only.”
Jack sauntered over, his ID making another appearance. “That’s me.”
The constable, a sun-bleached blond at least a couple of inches taller than Jack, though he slouched self-consciously, motioned for him to follow. “This way. The strike force is on the third floor. Everything beyond this door is restricted access. You will need an escort to move around.”
That was the entire commentary he got all along the corridor, in the lift up two floors, and along another corridor. At a closed door, the constable knocked and waited.
Senior Sergeant Stephanie Phelps wasn’t what Jack had been expecting. Not that he’d had much of an idea either way, but the rounded, medium-height woman with a steel-grey bob and sharp, piercing brown eyes wouldn’t have been his choice. She wore plain clothes, pink and grey sneakers, jeans, and T-shirt with the slogan “Ew, people.”
“Yes?” she asked distractedly, focusing more on the screen in her hand than either of them.
“Ma’am, this is your guest, Mr. Reardon.” The constable’s shoulders hunched in further.
Phelps looked up, her initial welcoming smile fading into confusion before she managed to smooth it over. “Jack Reardon?” she asked as her gaze went over his shoulder. Perhaps the real Caucasian Jack Reardon was hiding behind the Indian man.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack said dryly. This was why he generally went by Nishant in casual situations. It was just easier. If this had been a normal UC operation, he would have gone with a name like Raj or Jaidev, something no one would ever think to question. He began to reach for his ID again. “I can show you my ISO identification, if you wish.”
The poor woman blushed. “Ah, that’s not necessary. I’m sorry, it’s just that . . .”
In the spirit of a good working relationship, Jack smiled. “It’s okay. I get that a lot. Think nothing of it.”
Smiling once more, Phelps said, “Thank you and welcome. We’re very happy you’re here.” To the constable, she added, “Toomey, if you see Adam, give him a kick in the bum. He’s late, again.”
Toomey grunted acknowledgement and shambled away.
“Come in, Mr. Reardon.” Phelps ushered him through the door. “Thank you so much for agreeing to see us.”
“I wasn’t exactly given a choice, ma’am,” he said as he went in.
The room was longer than it was wide, mostly filled by a table that was two separate ones pushed together. Its surface was covered in files and papers, two laptops, and three different phones. There was a mobile whiteboard at one end, covered in writing in several different colours and hands. At the other was a big wall-mounted screen, displaying several of the crime scene photos. On the wall opposite the door were a couple of windows, looking out over the park behind the building. There were only three chairs at the table.
Phelps, in the process of clearing off a corner of the table, stopped and looked at him, eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry. I thought I made it clear it was a request, not a demand.” She sounded apologetic, not indignant.
“No, it’s okay,” Jack hastily said. “It was a bad attempt at humour.”
Her wide eyes didn’t waver for a long moment, and then she blinked. “If you say so. I think you’re going to fit in here, at least.”
“Really?”
“It’s the attempted humour. Adam tries but rarely gets there.”
“Sounds familiar.” Jack counted up the chairs again, just to be sure. “Where’s the rest of the strike force?”
“Running late, as usual.” Then Phelps seemed to pick up on his meaning. “Oh, they cut us back, again. Right now, it’s just me and Adam and he’s only on loan from AFRG. Oh, and now you, as well. Another loaner, but trust me, if you prove you can read and reason at a high school level, I’ll do my best to keep you around, too.”
Jack would have laughed if she didn’t look so serious. “And Adam is?”
“Our profiler.” Phelps motioned him to sit where she’d cleared some space. “Don’t call him that to his face, though. He says it makes him feel like he’s a dog doing tricks at a party.” Once he was seated, she pulled a chair up opposite him.
“Right. A psychologist.” Shit. He’d had enough of psychologists for a lifetime.
Phelps gave him a sharp look. “Not all profilers are psychologists, you know. In fact, few of them are.”
Suitably chastised, Jack asked, “So if I call this Adam a shrink, that’ll be wrong, too?”
“Well, no. He is actually a forensic psychiatrist, but that’s his dirty little secret.” She shuffled some bulging files around. “Okay, this is most of what we’re working with at the moment. I’d rather Adam was here to give you the serial murder talk first, but
beggars, blah blah blah.”
The serial murder talk? Christ.
“As for why you’re here, Mr. Reardon,” she began.
“Jack, please.”
“Right, Jack. Call me Steph, or Stephanie. Just don’t call me Fanny.” She accompanied that with a stern look. Reassured he got the hint, she continued. “You, my new friend, are my secret weapon. Technically, you’re here to provide expert advice on how our offender got into the scenes without alerting anyone. Something which our own investigative teams are more than capable of doing, by the way.”
Jack nodded along. It seemed McIntosh’s theory about why Jack was here was turning out to be right.
“Your real purpose is to give us an insight into the military side of things. Officially, we are not investigating Captain Morrissey’s murder, but if Adam has any chance in hell of producing a working profile, he needs an expert to advise him on that side of things.” Steph gave him a frank look. “Do you have any objections to that?”
Before he could answer, the door opened and a man rushed in. “I’m here.” There was a laptop bag under one arm and a cardboard coffee tray in the other hand. “I bought coffee for everyone. Hope the mysterious Mr. Rear . . .”
Oh. Fuck.
Jack’s stomach dropped all three floors. Quinn, too, looked like he’d been abandoned by his internal organs, and if Jack hadn’t been so fucking shocked, he would have taken a moment to appreciate how thrown the man was. In about three seconds flat, Quinn’s expression went from rueful, through confusion and uncertainty, to end, like a car crash, on pained resignation.
“. . .don likes a long black,” Quinn finished.
Probably attributing Quinn’s vocal stumble as shock at Jack’s ethnic appearance, Stephanie hustled over to help him with his cargo. “About time, Quinn.” She took the coffees and came back to Jack, offering him one. “Jack, this is Adam Quinn, our profiler.” Obviously said to annoy him. “Adam, be nice to Mr. Reardon—we want him to stick around.”
Taking the drink, Jack wondered what he’d done to piss off God, karma, and Murphy so badly. Why, of all the people in the world, did his occasional hook-up from months ago have to be the profiler on this case? Why was Jack, not the only ex-solider with ISO, the one picked by Steph to help them out? Why hadn’t that truck taken him out on the way here? So many whys and no ready answers.
Adam set his bag on the table and approached Jack. “Mr. Reardon, it’s a pleasure.” His tone showed no sign of recognition.
Calling on every measure of undercover training to keep a straight face, Jack stood and shook his hand. “Likewise. Call me Jack. Adam, was it?”
“Dr. Adam Quinn, to be precise. But Adam’s fine. Jack, huh?” He tilted his head, and that penetrative gaze hit Jack. “Paternal family name, right? And a Hindi middle name.”
If Adam didn’t want to feel like a dog doing tricks, he shouldn’t act like one. “Correct. My father’s of English descent, mother was Indian.”
Eyebrows arching slightly at the “was,” Adam thankfully let it pass.
That moment, however, didn’t go by Stephanie unnoticed. “I said don’t piss him off, Adam.”
Not breaking eye contact with Jack, Adam grinned, wide and unabashed. “I don’t think this one scares that easy.”
“No, but piss him off and he could throw you out the window.” Stephanie gave Jack a sympathetic look. “The last consultant we had threatened to do that to him.”
Jack shrugged like it was still a possibility. Adam smirked and then dragged the last chair over and sat next to Jack. Again, Adam’s cologne sparked some pleasant memories, but that was all. Their time together had been nice, but it was well and truly in the past.
“Right, now that we’re all acquainted, let’s start.” Stephanie handed Jack a couple of folders. “Are you aware of a serial killer we’ve dubbed the Judge?”
They went through all the information Jack already knew. Steph filled in most of the details the Office didn’t have the night before, and even before she’d finished, Jack knew why they needed his military expertise. Captain Shane Morrissey had been killed in his residence on base.
“The offender is escalating” was Adam’s first offering to the discussion. “Not in terms of needing more gratification from his victims, yet, but rather in the difficulty of getting to the victims. If he’d kept to housewives and suburban slobs, we would have no need of you. The original profile would still fit, but this changes things. A lot.”
“You’re sure these latest two are the same guy?” Jack asked.
“As sure as we can be,” Steph said. “Which in this business is never one hundred percent.”
“Okay.” Jack was used to working with less than total certainty.
“That’s the basics of our case,” Steph said. “Do you think you can help us?”
“I should be able to offer something—fingers crossed it helps.”
“Good.” To Adam, she said, “Unless you had any stunning revelations last night . . .?” When he shook his head, she sighed. “All right. I’m going to go see Dumay. See if I can’t shake a constable or two free of her clutches to help us.”
Adam chuckled. “Good luck. Remember what happened the last time you did that.”
“You nearly got thrown out a window. I’m hoping for a similar outcome.” She swept out of the room.
“Dumay?” Jack’s belly tightened at being alone with Adam.
“Superintendent Julia Dumay,” Adam intoned, like he was introducing Darth Vader. “Our evil overlord. Actually, that’s not fair. She’s just a victim of an evil chain of command. Every time ADFIS presses their boot down, Dumay’s the one who has to take whatever staff or equipment away from us they disapprove of. Still, if you get the chance to sit in on a meeting between her and Steph, you should. Dumay is a rock, and Steph is the falling rain.”
Grateful Adam didn’t seem inclined to bring up personal issues now they were alone, Jack asked, “So, now what?”
“Now, my friend, you get a crash course in psychos, from yours truly. Buckle up, buttercup. This is gonna get rough.”
Jack didn’t think he’d be able to sleep so he didn’t try. He did the next best thing.
In the break room, he stripped to his undies and, still too twitchy to get into the headspace he needed, started a tai chi sequence. At first, it was hard to get Ethan out of his head. Too many memories from the last month of moving beside him in slow, delicate motions, of watching the tension ease from Ethan’s body, of how the peace it gave them both led to some of the best nights in Jack’s life. But as he concentrated on his breathing, on flowing from one stance to the next, those distractions slipped away. By the time he eased to a stop, a half hour had passed and he felt calm, ready and able to carry on.
Lying down on the lower bunk, Jack worked his way through his body, as he had in the police interrogation room, and relaxed muscle groups one by one. Done, he slipped sideways. The overlay for his implant appeared before his inner eyes. Sitting patiently in one corner was the file Jack had complied in the interrogation room. Not really wanting to acknowledge some of the contents, Jack nevertheless opened the file so its contents could be accessed by a different program.
The cognitive modelling application of the implant wasn’t as powerful as computer-based programs, but it was good enough to help soldiers in the field, and it had helped Jack in his work for the Office, as well.
He set up the goal and parameters of the search, both wanting and dreading the answer it might give him. He was banking on Adam’s assurance that a lot of the time, the answer to a serial murder case was right in front of them, just buried amongst so much other information it took time, and sometimes chance, to uncover it. Jack had been immersed in the case for so long that surely, if they’d already had the answer to who the Judge was but just hadn’t been able to see it, this would work. Perhaps subconsciously, he knew who the killer was and was just incapable of seeing it. Or perhaps, acknowledging it.
Letting the m
odel run, Jack dropped into a deeper trance state. With a model working on a subject so close to Jack’s personal life, it was possible it could incite flashbacks, and Jack didn’t want to be aware if that was the case. If the filing cabinet in the back of his head, filled with all the dark and terrible things he’d witnessed and done over the years was going to bust open, the less mobile he was, the better. No one needed him to wake up punching and kicking, or find him rolled up in a foetal position, sobbing his heart out.
No matter the depth of the trance, nothing would entirely keep the bad memories out Once more, Jack burst into the foyer of the ISO building in Canberra. The assassin named Porsche was making a break for it towards the courtyard and Harry . . . Harry swung around the end of the desk ahead of Jack. It was a memory. Jack knew it even as it all unfolded before his eyes again, and yet he couldn’t stop it. Knowing what was coming, carrying that sick, fatalistic knowledge in his guts, he still wasn’t fast enough to save Harry.
Ping.
The alert from the implant replaced the sound of gunfire and jerked Jack out of the ill-fated scenario. Swimming up through visions of flashing silver and endless pools of blood, Jack shook off the clinging tendrils of the flashback. As he surfaced, he noted that the cognitive model hadn’t finished, just paused while he took care of whatever external problem there was. Going sideways again, Jack opened his eyes and focused on the springs of the bed above him.
Another knock at the door, the sound that had made the implant wake him up. Jack rolled off the bed, automatically reaching for his gun. For a moment, he was back in the ISO HQ, exchanging fire with several bad guys, then Lewis’s “Jack? You awake?” solidified him in the present.
“Yeah.” Jack let the gun drop back to the mattress. “Come in.”
“You don’t look rested at all,” his friend announced when he came in.
Jack hauled on his crumpled jeans. “Just the image I was going for. Anything new? What’s the time?”
“Nothing substantial and just after 10:00 p.m. You got about four hours.” Lewis wandered over and perched his arse on the edge of the small table. “Word filtered up from the depths of the fourth floor. Apparently McIntosh went through Ex Mon like a dose of salts. She left them shitting themselves about failing to catch those CCTV images. You could almost hear Robson crying from up here. The entire department is scrambling to cover their collective arse. Imagine how it looks. They didn’t do their job and now one of our assets has caught a ticket, picked up by no one less than number five on the JSL. I don’t have to tell you, but the name Harraway is being whispered around the place.”
Why the Devil Stalks Death Page 9