Desert Demon (Foley & Rose Book 7)

by Gary Gregor

  Sam looked back at Foley. “That’s him.”

  Foley shrugged again. “Nothing we can do about it now, mate. Except keep looking.”

  “Did that man kill the young lady?” the manager asked, her eyes darting between Sam and Foley.

  “We don’t know,” Foley answered with a shrug. “But it is starting to look that way.”

  “He seemed such a nice man,” Brown said, her eyes fixed on the image frozen on the television screen. “That poor girl,” she added softly.

  30

  Foley glanced across to Sam in the passenger seat. “You’re very quiet. What’s bothering you?”

  “I can’t believe we let that dude go,” Sam answered angrily.

  “We talked about this. He presented as the typical tourist. We had no good reason to pick the bloke up. Stop beating yourself up over this. What’s done is done. We can’t change that.”

  “We should have looked closer,” Sam declared. “Now, two more have died. Lara McKenzie and this latest woman, Samantha Love. We should have looked closer.”

  “In hindsight, maybe we should have. But we didn’t, and now there is nothing we can do about it. Now we focus on catching the guy.”

  “I hope it’s us who finds him,” Sam said.

  Foley took one hand off the steering wheel and indicated the countryside. “He’s out there somewhere.”

  Sam looked at the hot, desolate landscape outside the relative comfort of their vehicle. To the front, a heat haze shimmered on the distant horizon. “We need a chopper in the air.”

  “I rang Yap Yap while you were taking a statement from the station-hand. He said he would organise an air search from Alice Springs,” Foley informed him.

  “He’s had over twelve hours head start,” Sam pointed out. “Bastard could be anywhere.”

  Suddenly, Foley braked hard and pulled over to the side of the road.

  “What are you stopping for?” Sam asked, bracing against the sudden stop.

  “There!” Foley indicated an old, narrow track on their left, heading south. “Tyre tracks.”

  Sam looked over. “Where does that road go?”

  “I don’t know. It can hardly be classified as a road. Let’s take a look.” He opened his door, climbed out of the vehicle and walked to the left-hand side, stopping at the junction of the two tracks.

  Sam followed and stepped up close to his partner and peered down at the intersection. “They look fresh.” He bent low to the ground and regarded a patch of soft, dry sandy soil at the verge where the two tracks met. “You think that’s our perp?”

  “Could be,” Foley answered. “This is a very old track and it doesn’t look like anyone has driven over it in months, maybe even years.”

  “Except for now,” Sam commented.

  “Yeah, except for now. There’s only one set of tyre tracks there in the soft dirt, and you’re right—they look fresh.”

  Sam stood up straight and looked to the south, along the track. “Looks bloody rough. Where do you think it goes?”

  “Maybe to one of those station bores Bianchi talked about,” Foley suggested.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?” Foley asked.

  “Bianchi said he does a station bore run reasonably regularly,” Sam explained. “If there is a bore down there somewhere, this track would look a little more used than it does. I think whoever made these tyre tracks is the only vehicle that has used the road in a very long time.”

  Foley took his mobile phone from his pocket and snapped several photos of the freshly laid tyre tracks.

  “Evidence?” Sam asked.

  Foley nodded. “Yeah. If these tracks were made by our perp, we may need them in any future court case.”

  “Gotta find the bastard first,” Sam stressed. “We gonna follow the tracks?”

  “Yeah. Someone went down this track very recently. I’m anxious to find out who.”

  “Good job we changed our vehicle to a four-wheel-drive before we left Alice Springs,” Sam said.

  “Use your phone GPS and lock in the way point for this junction. Then see if you can reach Task Force and tell them where we are and where we are heading. I have a gut feeling our man is down this track somewhere and I would feel a lot more comfortable if the Task Force dudes were on our tail.”

  Adalhard Jaeger was confused. He stopped where the track he had been following culminated at the intersection with the sealed Lasseter Highway. To the right was the Curtain Springs roadhouse, and further on, Uluru—Ayers Rock. If he turned left, he would get to Erldunda and the Stuart Highway. It felt like he was traveling in circles.

  He edged further out onto the verge of Lasseter Highway and stopped. Should he cross the highway and travel across more rough country? He focused on the country opposite. There was no road to follow over there, just endless kilometres of dirt, sharp rocks, and spinifex grass. He looked to his to his left and then to his right, along the length of Lasseter Highway. Which way should he go? He had all but decided it was time to leave the Northern Territory and head into South Australia. There, he would camp somewhere for a few days and re-assess his plans.

  He looked again to his left. Left would take him back to the Stuart Highway, the shortest way to the South Australian border and beyond. The Stuart Highway, however, would be crawling with police looking for him, particularly if he were fortunate enough make it to the border crossing into South Australia. The police would not want him to escape across any state borders.

  He looked down at his fuel gauge. The needle hovered fractionally below one quarter full. He needed to refuel before he went too much further. Curtain Springs roadhouse, to the right, would be closer than Erldunda.

  He closed his eyes, raised his head, and thought about the crimes he had committed since arriving in this strange, unfamiliar country on the other side of the world from his homeland. Somewhere, amid the thoughts and images that surfaced, the faces of his parents intruded briefly, and he wondered why he felt no remorse for callously taking their lives. Perhaps there was a modicum of regret in terms of his mother, but whatever regret did push through to the surface of his consciousness was quickly overshadowed by the sense of achievement and satisfaction at the murder of his father.

  Slowly, Adalhard lowered his head and opened his eyes. Unwittingly motivated by the ever-present, now uncontrollable desire to take another life, he turned right and accelerated towards Yulara and far distant Western Australia beyond.

  Peter and Jane Brockman were celebrating their wedding anniversary. Thirty years married was a milestone in their lives worth celebrating they’d agreed, and a three-month caravan holiday into the Northern Territory and beyond, to the attractions on offer on the coastal fringe of Western Australian, was a wonderful way to do that. Both Peter and Jane fell instantly in love with the Northern Territory, Uluru, and the Olgas in particular.

  Using the Yulara campground as a base, they trekked the almost ten-kilometre base walk of Uluru twice in three days and, now, it was time to visit Kata Tjuta—the Olgas. Kata Tjuta was a Pitjantjatjara word meaning ‘many heads’ and was a collection of thirty-six large steep-sided, dome-shaped rock formations millions of years in the making, and considered a sacred ‘men’s place’ by the traditional aboriginal owners.

  There was a time when Kata Tjuta offered the adventurous tourist a choice of twelve scenic walks into and around the site. Today, only two walks remained on offer: a 2.6-kilometre return Walpa Gorge walk and the 7.4-kilometre Valley of the Winds circuit walk.

  The Brockmans were newly converted bush-walking enthusiasts and embarked on as many walks as they could fit into their travelling itinerary. At the Olgas, they completed the Walpa Gorge walk and then stopped to rest and have a light picnic lunch they’d brought with them from Yulara before attempting the longer, somewhat more challenging, Valley of the Winds walk.

  Once rested, they looked forward to walking off their lunch and staying late into the day to view the much talked about sunset over
the Olgas. Right now, at this time of their lives, with their two children grown and making their own way in the world, they talked as they walked about how much they were loving the trip so far and how much they looked forward to what future days and weeks might hold as they continued the journey. The scenery around them was awe-inspiring and everchanging, and the terrain varied from reasonably easy-going to somewhat more difficult.

  For the most part, they seemed to be alone, only sporadically coming across fellow walkers. There was something about the perceived solitude of the place they walked through that added to the enjoyment of trekking through this beautiful, ancient place. They vowed that in the last couple of days of their visit to this wonderfully, spiritual place, they would come back to the Olgas and complete both walks again before they had to move on to the next exciting chapter in their travels.

  Suddenly, they were no longer alone. Pre-occupied with their conversation and closely watching the rough, rocky track lest they stumbled and fell, they did not see the stranger until he stepped out from behind a formation of large boulders grouped on one side of the track. Startled, the Brockmans stopped and gazed about. There was no one else around. There was just the two of them … and the stranger.

  “Hi,” Peter Brockman greeted.

  His wife smiled at the man.

  The stranger did not speak. From somewhere behind his back, he produced a gun and raised it until the business end was pointed directly at Peter Brockman’s face.

  Brockman reached for his wife’s arm and dragged her protectively behind him. “What do you want?”

  Adalhard Jaeger did not speak. He smiled at Peter Brockman and then pulled the trigger. The bullet entered Brockman’s head just above his right eye. His legs folded at the knees and he fell face-down onto the rocky walking trail. His wife, Jane, in a fruitless attempt to arrest her husband’s fall, reached desperately for him as he toppled forward.

  Jane tried to scream but no sound came from her open mouth. She glanced at the stranger and saw only dark, malevolent eyes staring back. The stranger’s eyes were the last thing she saw before she collapsed and fell on top of her beloved husband, blood oozing from a hole in the centre of her forehead.

  31

  Sam Rose fumbled for his phone and flipped it open. On the screen was a photo of Sarah Collins.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Sam greeted.

  “Where are you?” Sarah asked.

  “In the middle of bloody nowhere.”

  “How far are you from the Olgas?”

  “The Olgas? The Olgas are behind us. We’ve just come out of the bush and are heading east, towards Erldunda.”

  “Turn around,” Sarah ordered.

  “Turn around? Why?”

  “I’ve got two tourists down, halfway through one of the walks here at the Olgas.”

  Sam switched the phone onto speaker so Foley could hear the conversation. “What happened?”

  “Husband and wife. Shot. Both of them,” Sarah explained. “One shot to the head.”

  “Jesus!” Sam cursed. “Our perp?”

  “Has to be. I think he’s still in the area.”

  Sam looked at Foley. “The Olgas, Russ. As fast as you can.” He turned back to his phone. “What makes you think he is still there?”

  “You gave me his vehicle rego. number,” Sarah replied quickly. “It’s still in the carpark out here.”

  “We are on the way,” Sam said, bracing himself against the tight fast U-turn as Foley whipped around and headed west towards Uluru and the Olgas. “How many troops have you got with you?”

  “Six,” Sarah answered. “I’ve got two sitting on the suspect’s vehicle, two conducting a search of the area for any tourists partway through a walk, and two manning a roadblock, stopping vehicles entering the area.”

  “Good girl,” Sam said. “We’ll be there as soon as we can. Have you notified Yap Yap?”

  “He is my next call,” Sarah replied.

  “We have a task force unit searching over near Stuarts Well and a Forensics team working the crime scene” Sam told her. “I’ll contact them both and divert them to your location. In the meantime, stay safe. We want this bloke badly but he’s not worth dying for.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Okay, we’ll see you soon,” Sam disconnected and turned in his seat and looked at Foley.

  “This has got to be our perp, Russell.”

  “Yeah, let’s hope so,” Foley responded solemnly. “I hope Sarah and her chaps will be okay. If it is our perp, I don’t expect him to give up quietly.”

  “I hope you are right. If he resists, he needs to be aware that we are not going to run away and hide.”

  “I expect he already knows that,” Foley stated gravely. He reached out, flicked on the blue police warning lights, and pressed his foot harder on the accelerator pedal.

  Adalhard felt the very first flutters of anxiety deep in his belly. Perhaps a walker had stumbled across the two bodies and notified the police, and now they were here, far sooner than he expected. Must have come from nearby Uluru, he supposed. There were two cops sitting in their vehicle, parked close behind his Toyota. He could never reach his vehicle without being spotted. The nose of his vehicle was close to a low single-rail fence and the cops were parked too close behind him. He was trapped.

  Once, there were twelve tourist walks winding and meandering through the numerous gorges separating the huge domes. Adalhard had read on a large tourist information board posted at the entrance to the area that the Walpa walk, and the Valley of the Winds walk, were now the only two scenic walks open to the public. Ten walks were closed to save the fragile environment and to allow access to the aboriginal owners so they could conduct their ancient and sacred ceremonies. At the entrance to each of the closed walks, yet another sign had been erected warning people not to enter lest they offend the ancient cultural law: Tjukurpa.

  Adalhard read one such sign and chose to ignore it. He moved deep inside the narrow winding gorge and stopped where the walls were so close, they cast a permanent shadow to the floor of the gorge. It was cooler in here, where little or no sunshine entered.

  Adalhard looked up the steep-sided walls and saw what looked like a ledge protruding from one wall, out into the void. On the outer edge of the ledge, several large boulders balanced on the precipice, looking like they might topple and fall at any moment, only to get jammed against both sides of the gorge. It was a good place to hide, he decided.

  He took the .45 from the back of his waist, unscrewed the suppressor from the barrel and dropped it deep into his pocket, and then tucked the handgun securely into his front waist. He looked again at the boulders above and rubbed his hands across the surface of the wall immediately to his front, feeling the smoothness of the surface beneath his fingers.

  Locking his back against the wall behind him and his feet against the wall in front, he pushed himself up with his legs. His back slid up the smooth, weathered wall behind him each time he pushed and straightened his legs. The ledge was about halfway up the side of the gorge wall and Adalhard, being a fit and strong man, found the going reasonably easy. Soon, he reached the lip of the ledge and reached up and held tight to the edge. Holding on only by his fingertips, he lowered his legs and hung suspended above the gorge floor. With strength generated through his muscled arms, he swung one leg up onto the narrow ledge and pulled himself up.

  For a few moments, he lay on his back, staring up at the daylight several metres above and waiting for his pounding heart to settle to a normal rate and his rapid, shallow breathing to subside. Eventually, he sat up and, sliding on his backside, pushed himself behind one of the largest boulders clinging perilously to the ledge. The boulder looked like it was about to topple over the lip of the ledge but had more than likely been perched there since the Olgas were formed, many millions of years ago. He peeked cautiously around one edge of the boulder, towards the distant carpark and, from his position, had an unobstructed view of the entrance and the whole
public parking area.

  He leaned back and rested his back against the gorge wall behind him. In the confined space, he was unable to fully straighten his legs, but he was relatively comfortable and more than satisfied that he could not be seen from below. In effect, he was trapped amid the ancient formations of the Olgas and it was now a case of staying hidden and avoiding capture until he could find another way out of the area.

  As he watched the public carpark area below, two more cops parked their vehicle across the entranceway, effectively blocking the area from any approaching vehicles. In total, he estimated the police presence to be seven strong, including the lady cop who seemed to be in charge. There would be more on the way, he was sure of it.

  Spending the night, perhaps more than one night, hunkered down, cocooned in his compact hideaway out of sight of searchers, was not something he wanted to think too deeply about. He was safe here, he believed, but in stark contrast to the heat of the day, the coming night would be freezing cold. He wore only light clothing and there was no room on the ledge for him to exercise to generate body warmth.

  He knew there was a very real possibility he might have to stay more than one night. Any search the cops made would not be a quick ‘look-see’ search. The Olgas covered a large area and it would take a long time to conduct a thorough search. They would not find him, regardless of how long they took to search, he was certain of that. As long as he stayed where he was, high above and out of sight amongst a formation of large boulders, he would remain safe.

  When the cops eventually left, they would take his vehicle with them and that narrowed his options significantly. With no water and no food to sustain him, he could not walk out of the area. When the tourists were finally permitted back into the park, he would steal a vehicle and make good his escape—he might even have the opportunity to kill again before he left. That would be embarrassing for the police, he thought. All the time they spent looking for him and he would have been right there under, or indeed above, their noses all the time.