Greenlight

by Benjamin Stevenson

  ‘Involved?’ Lauren said quietly.

  ‘Four months ago.’ Jack took a breath, last truth. Empty now. ‘I found something.’

  Lauren hit him the way grieving women hit men. On the shoulder, fists curled but pounding flat slaps with their wrists. The quiet violence one inflicts in public. When she was done, she laid her head against him. He put an arm around her. Not quite a hug. Selfishly, more to shield her from the bar than to comfort her. It was also the reason he’d sat beside her in the booth. So she couldn’t storm out and make a scene. Her back shuddered up and down. She was crying.

  ‘You knew?’ she said, after peeling Jack’s arm away and sitting back up. Her nose was red. ‘I asked you if you knew anything else. I fucking asked you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That’s why you were so confident Curtis was guilty when you got here. You were more than confident.’ Her hands were trembling.

  ‘Yes. It was planted, but it still places her there. I knew she hadn’t been dumped.’

  ‘And you knew that. All this time.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘None of this had to happen.’ She looked at him in awe, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘None of this had to happen,’ she repeated. ‘I just shot my own brother to save you. Everything I did, for nothing. And it’s all your fault in the first place.’

  Jack didn’t say anything. Because she was right. If Jack had handed in the evidence in the first place, Curtis would still be in jail. Then whoever killed Alexis wouldn’t have a cover-up. Because of Jack Quick, another killer was set to walk free.

  That’s what you do, isn’t it? James Harrison’s words raced through his mind. He felt the muscles under his jaw tense. You get people like me out of jail.

  People like James Harrison. People like Curtis Wade.

  Lauren was recovering from the shock.

  ‘Oh, you’ve fucked this one,’ she said in one long exhale. She spun her glass side to side. ‘You’ve really fucked it.’

  ‘It’s not finished. Hush still has the evidence we need.’

  She peered at him, trying to figure out his angle. Whether he was just telling her what she wanted to hear because he needed an ally. He was just like James Harrison – guessing at the answers until he landed the right one. Lauren was quiet. Was she weighing up whether she would have done the same, had she seen the pink laces poking from the shrub? Jack couldn’t tell. Had never learned to read her.

  ‘Fuck, Jack,’ she said. ‘Move.’ She nudged him. He slid out of the booth and stood. ‘I need some water. Air. The bathroom. Whatever. I need something. Space.’ She brushed past him.

  ‘Lauren —’

  ‘Just give me a minute to myself, all right? I need to think about what you’re telling me.’ She hissed, set to storm off, noticed the people around, changed her mind and turned back, leaned into him. ‘You know, I was the only one on your side. The only one who would pat you on the back and say: It’s not your fault. Well, it really is, Jack. All of this, it is all you. And that’s the way you wanted it. You never gave a shit about me or Alexis or Eliza. How many people have to die to fix your career?’

  She stomped towards the bathroom. Ian moved a few paces on the bar, asked her where she was going.

  ‘I’m going to wash my fucking hands!’ Lauren yelled, fanning them in his face.

  Ian, twice her size, almost physically crumpled, the yield rippling through him. Jack sat back down. A few people shot glances.

  People had been telling him he was selfish since the beginning. Winter had. Even Curtis himself. That he had a perverse need of ownership over the crime. But, like it or not, he was tied up in this town now. He affected it in tangible ways. Andrew had told him something similar, atop the silo, the first time they’d met. His words glimmered inside Jack, felt important, but he couldn’t pin them down. All this time he’d reached out of the television screen and affected real people – made Andrew Freeman look like a criminal, Ian McCarthy look incompetent, and Alexis, in her own words, look like a bit of a superstar.

  Andrew’s words came back to him. You’ve cost a lot of people their jobs.

  But not Alexis. She was probably the only person he hadn’t made look bad. In fact, he’d done the opposite. Getting Curtis out of jail had been a huge break for her career.

  Something Lauren had said too. Something Peter had. All his memories colliding, fireworks in his synapses. Some meaning, simmering just below his consciousness. He looked around the bar. At the gathering of people here. Mary-Anne. Brett Dawson. Andrew and Sarah Freeman quiet in the corner. They’d actually tried to be on his side. Even Ian, who, if Jack hadn’t have stolen the files, was trying to lead Jack to the axe; Jack could feel his hurt from across the room. The only one missing was Curtis.

  It’s all about you, Lauren had spat. He’d never had any problem accepting that it was his fault Alexis had died. But she’d phrased it differently. How many people have to die to fix your career?

  No. It slowly came over him, TV blaring in the background. How Lauren had said it, did that make sense? No. No. No.

  It was his fault. But in a different way. This wasn’t some egocentric application of grief. Curtis walking free had tarred a lot of people with a brush of incompetence. Some more severely than others. Some, perhaps, enough to kill over. Maybe Alexis had merely pissed someone off – a bad break-up – and that had sealed her fate. Their real motive hidden underneath the opportunity of it all, but, hey, squeeze in a little personal revenge while you’re there. But the real motive was to stage the crime scene to rekindle Curtis’s guilt. The copycat was about restoring order. Trying to put Curtis away for a crime he’d already committed by framing him for a new one. Framing a guilty man.

  His father’s words clicked in as well: Grown adults lie to make themselves look better. The copycat was twelve-year-old Jack, standing on top of the Fist, looking down at his brother’s swastika of a body. The same lie. For reputation’s sake. Reputation. Jack was here to fix his career, sure. But someone else was seeking redemption too. Someone Jack had ruined.

  Alexis hadn’t been murdered because she’d sent Curtis Wade to jail for four years, she’d been killed because she got him out.

  Grown adults lie to make themselves look better.

  You’ve cost a lot of people their jobs.

  How many people have to die so you can fix your career?

  And, suddenly, he knew who Hush was. Why Alexis had to keep them a secret, professionally. Her funeral – things Jack had dismissed as irrelevant filled in the final blanks. He knew. In fact, sitting in the Royal, he was looking right at them. It was someone whose career Jack had damaged, and who knew that a new murder was a way for them to prove themselves. To fix their career. Be a hero. His hands shook as he withdrew his phone, placed it on the table, face up, and started tapping at it. He looked around the bar. This would work. And then what? Move fast. Maybe they’d have time. Lauren was making her way back to him, a look of resolve about her. He held up a finger as she approached. She didn’t ask what he was doing. She watched on.

  Jack dialled the number he’d saved for Hush.

  A beat of silence.

  In the pub, a phone began to ring.

  It was a tinny ring. Almost an echo. As Jack had known it would be.

  Because the ring wasn’t coming from the pub itself.

  It was coming from the television speakers.

  On-screen, Ted Piper fumbled with his jacket pocket, sheepishly turned to the camera and said: ‘Sorry, I always forget to turn it off.’

  Exhibit E:

  Interview Transcript: Andrew Freeman Preliminary Interview: 09/11/14

  Andrew: Eliza picked for us for a six-month period over the previous summer. She was nice enough, but I don’t remember her distinctly from the others. They’re all about the same, you see: same age, same smells. Backpackers. I think she was heading up north afterwards, maybe Byron – lots of them do that. They just rent a van and go. So I’m not sure if I’m conf
using her with others.

  Interviewer: And after her employment with you was terminated (interrupted)

  Andrew: Finished. I didn’t fire her. If you’re writing that down.

  Interviewer: After her employment with you finished up, you didn’t see her again?

  Andrew: No. I never did. Until I saw her on the news, that is.

  PREVIOUSLY

  Alexis breathed heavily through her nose, slowed, and held two fingers to her wrist. She had a wristband for her heart-rate, but she still liked feeling it fade.

  She was always pleased when she convinced herself to get up, jog, and be home before the sun rose. The regret of drawing herself out of soft sheets quickly erased by the endorphins. It also made her feel superior, that she’d achieved something before the city stirred. She slowed to a walk as she turned into the lane behind her house.

  She often went this way at the end of a jog, because otherwise she’d have to unlock two gates instead of just hauling the garage door up. She could also leave her sweaty shoes in the garage. It didn’t escape her that, for someone who went running before sunrise, she revelled in these shortcuts. She’d earned them. She’d also earned a cigarette, she figured.

  There was someone standing in the lane.

  ‘Hey!’ she said, thinking someone might be casing her place, and hoping a short word would keep the waver out of her voice.

  Half shielded by a row of bins, they looked imposing. But Alexis recognised them as she stepped closer. ‘Oh. You can’t come around here like this.’

  They nodded. Alexis fished her keys from her pocket, crouched, and unlocked the garage by twisting the anchor-shaped handle to the side.

  ‘I know things didn’t turn out the way you wanted,’ she said, standing. ‘But the case is over now. We don’t have to see each other again.’ Still no response, so Alexis fished. ‘Okay. You want closure? I get it. Why don’t you come in for a coffee? But let’s keep things professional.’

  Then she bent down to lift the door, and the blunt end of an axe thundered into the back of her skull.

  SEPTEMBER

  Like a race-car driver, Jack was starting to memorise the turns and the feel of the highway back to Sydney. Vanessa Raynor’s show was live, a duration of sixty minutes. Accounting for make-up removal, general politeness – shaking hands with producers, making sure to get booked again – and flogging a can of Coke from the green room, they had much less time than the two-and-a-half hours the drive usually took. Jack flogged it, got the drive down to an hour forty-five. PB.

  Lauren had fabricated a story about getting Jack’s asthma medication from his car. Ian had tried to stop them, but Lauren had stood defiantly in the doorway, firm and stoic as if carved, and said: Shoot me, then. And Ian had relented, because it was either that or place them both under arrest, and he didn’t know which would get him in more trouble. Lauren had to run and pick up Jack’s car as he could hardly jog to her place with his broken rib. By the time Ian realised they weren’t coming back, they were out of Birravale, the steady crump of a police helicopter overhead, heading the opposite direction.

  Once it snapped together, it was rushing at him fully formed. People spray-painting Ted’s office windows was just the start of the blowback. The vicious public response. Not getting through to Ted’s office phone. Jack had thought it had just been unplugged because it was ringing off the hook, like Alexis’s, but now he realised why it was disconnected. His filthy car. The ever-tattering blue suit. Ted was still on TV, but his profile had only spiked after Alexis had died. And he needed that profile, considering he’d just purchased a multimillion-dollar property. Jack’s hindsight crystal-clear, he remembered Ted getting changed for Alexis’s funeral in the car park. The man, face covered, lathering his hair in the outdoor shower. Shampoo. It had always struck Jack as incongruous that Ted was a surfer.

  He wasn’t. Ted Piper was living out of his car.

  His nose-diving profile, coupled with missing a few payments on his new mansion, could have been enough to put Ted out on the street. Living in his car, and hiding it, may have been better for his public image than bankruptcy. Just for a few weeks, until he could set things right.

  It wasn’t a surfer or a backpacker at the outdoor showers: but Ted scrubbing up because he needed to show up to the wake. The only facilities he could use. After, at the wake, loading up on food. Because he was hungry. He was doing a good job of hiding it, but Jack had cost him his career.

  Jack had given a lot of people fifteen minutes of fame. Ted’s just happened to be at a quarter to midnight.

  It was that simple. Ted had gone rogue, running his own investigation to put Curtis back behind bars, rescue his reputation and get his career back on track. To no longer be the dodgy prosecution lawyer Jack had made him out to be – the antagonist that Jack had needed to create, to drive the drama, episode to episode. The problem was, Ted had to create the investigation himself. In order to solve a murder, well, he needed a murder to solve.

  And Alexis, she would have had to keep their relationship a secret. The head of the defence and the prosecution sleeping together? That was grounds for a mistrial, surely. Jack didn’t know the ins and outs of lawyers and professional misconduct, but it sounded bad, even to him. And when she’d broken it off, maybe that was the final straw. Then it was easy. Ted had an intricate knowledge of the case. He knew the axe was the one piece of evidence that had never really played out. He stole it. Repurposed it for a new murder. All Ted had to do was play a character. Probably, eventually, come forward as a hero. But Lauren and Jack had stopped him planting enough evidence, and that must have waylaid his plans. So he had to wait for the police to prove Curtis guilty, and then he’d swan in and pick up the prosecution. He would have been biding his time until he was in the clear, and Jack, with all his bravura crime-solving, had almost done it for him. These were such carefully constructed heroics. The slow-motion replay of Ted lunging across the stage at Jack, breaking his nose. That wasn’t anger and hurt spilling over. That was all for show. Ted was reclaiming his place in the narrative as the Good Guy. He was crafting his own story. Fuck. Jack wondered who he’d learned that from.

  Jack told Lauren all of this on the drive. She nodded, her eyes half-hooded. She offered only one piece of commentary.

  ‘Well, then, you made your villain after all.’

  The network’s car park was multistorey. It was mostly empty on a Sunday night. A few headlights reflected the sunset, glints between the concrete grid. Vanessa’s crew. The Monday breakfast producers. Not many others. There was street parking, too. A novelty in Sydney. Jack’s pass worked on the boom gate. The rumble of the city traffic – that constant Sydney groan – dimmed as they rolled into the bottom floor.

  Fitting, that it would end here. Where it started. When he hit that single key: delete.

  He told Lauren they were looking for a silver SUV. The filthy one, he said. One that looks lived in. They prowled the ground floor, which was designated for visitors and disabled parking. Jack half expected to find Ted’s car there, arrogantly parked across two disabled spaces, but it wasn’t. Maybe even murderers have standards. No silver SUV. He checked the time. Vanessa’s show would have ended by now. Had Ted already gone?

  ‘Fuck this,’ Lauren said, as they started up the ramp to Level 2. ‘This place have stairs? Will they be unlocked?’

  Jack nodded. The ramp levelled. Lauren held a palm up. Stop. She got out.

  ‘You start at the top. I’ll work my way up and meet you in the middle.’

  Jack had no time to argue, the door had already shut and Lauren was jogging to the far end of the floor. Jack turned the car around and spiralled up, glancing in at each floor out of curiosity. Forests of grey pillars flickered past, like the trees on the Wades’ driveway, like the bars of a prison cell. He got to the roof. Circled it. Empty. He wound down a level. Circled it. Empty. Down another level. Circled it. There it was.

  Ted’s silver SUV. Rubbish park, Jack thought. The
car’s nose was in, splayed across the lines in the near-empty car park. Jack reversed into the spot opposite. Did Ted know what car he drove? He couldn’t be too cautious. Besides it was too suspicious to park this close. He migrated a few spaces further on and parked again. He got out.

  This level’s forest comprised green pillars. White blocky number 7s were spray-painted on each one. He wished Lauren was here, but she’d got out on the second floor. How long would it take her to check five floors?

  He walked over to Ted’s car, approaching on the opposite side of the car to the elevator, just in case Ted popped out unexpectedly. If that happened, he would have at least a moment’s protection. He looked through the back window. Fast food containers. Paper cups. A sleeping bag, unfolded. A sports bag, half-zipped, tongue of a jumper sleeve slithering out. A towel slung over the backseat. Folders everywhere. Papers. Handwritten notes. Lived in. Jack moved to the backseat windows. Could feel his blood through him, down to his fingertips. His body thrumming, the familiar fear that had been, for so long, of his own body. Every sense heightened. Every heartbeat. Whump whump.

  A shrill beep almost gave him a heart attack. All four corners of the car flared orange. The doors unlocked remotely.

  Jack dropped to the ground. Knees cold on the concrete, poised as if on starting blocks. Pain shot through his side. Footsteps clunked across the car park. A murderer slowly walking towards him. Ted was swinging his keys. He was actually whistling.

  There was no mistaking his guilt now. Because Jack had seen something through the window. Though Ted had pushed it under the seat, half-wrapped in a towel, the object had been immediately familiar. The shape of it. The two tones of the wood, maroon fading to oak.

  Curtis Wade’s axe.