‘Yes.’ I stumbled off him, wiping sweat from my eyes. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes!’
The giddy exhilaration of my win lifted the weight of the Last Chance case, of my brother’s case, right off my shoulders in an instant. For a second I felt free. When I fought, I felt strong. I felt that I could take care of myself. I was a warrior.
Kash was dusting sand out of his ear when I came back to myself. Back to the shitty hole in the desert, the middle of nowhere, far from where I needed to be. My smile faltered, as with painful clarity a little voice in my head reminded me that though he was clearly an idiot, a stubborn and ignorant being, this man was supposed to be my partner. We were supposed to be working on this thing together.
I offered my hand to Kash, but he didn’t take it. He gave me a hateful look and walked off towards the car.
Chapter 29
WHITT TURNED THE page of the psychologist’s report before him, the clatter and crash of the prison visitors’ centre pushed back in his mind until it was only a dull hum in his ears.
Beyond the plexiglas, a door opened at the end of the small corridor. Samuel Blue was shuffled to the chair before the detective. Whitt put the psychologist’s report in his briefcase and pulled out his notebook and pen.
‘How you going, Edward?’ Sam gave a tired smile. The two had met in the courtroom briefly the day before, exchanged a phone call.
‘Oh, you know. How are you? That’s the more important question.’
‘I really need that money you were talking about on the phone.’ Sam leaned forwards so that his mouth was centimetres from the speaker holes in the glass. ‘I’m hot property in here, and the only thing that’s going to keep the other cons off my back is protection money. I’ve used up the cash Harry gave me.’
‘Are you still receiving threats?’ Whitt asked.
‘ Daily. Staff and inmates now.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah,’ Sam sniffed. ‘I know the drill – Harry told me. Protection money in prison is a lifetime deal. You pay once, you have to keep paying. But I need to at least keep drip-feeding these guys some cash or I’m not going to survive to see the rest of the hearings.’
‘I’ll move some money into your account this afternoon.’ Whitt made a note.
‘I don’t know how to fight.’ Sam seemed distracted, rubbing his palms together hard. ‘I’m a fucking graphic design expert. I haven’t been in a scrap since I was a kid. Harry’s the fighter.’
‘I spoke to her this morning. She’s desperate to get back here.’
‘She should stay as far away as she can.’ Sam locked eyes with Whitt. ‘I never wanted her here in the first place. Whoever’s doing this to me, they’ll be after her next. Someone’s got to want to see me suffer big-time to put this much effort into a frame-up. I’d suffer pretty badly if anything happened to Harry, right?’
Whitt tapped the side of his page thoughtfully with his pen. He worked through his words before he spoke. Tried to keep them diplomatic. Supportive.
‘So you still think someone is framing you?’
‘It’s the only explanation,’ Sam said. ‘They went into my apartment. They planted those things. Someone abducted those girls when I was in the same area. They must have been following me.’
‘It’s …’ Whitt cringed. ‘It’s a lot of effort to go to. To do this to you.’
‘ You’re telling me, mate.’
‘I mean, you have no idea who it is?’
‘No clue.’
‘How can someone be that angry at you, and you have no idea who they are?’ Whitt asked. ‘Whatever you did to them must have been a supreme betrayal to warrant this. Something really, really bad.’
Sam’s lips twitched. Whitt could see a hidden anger flickering there, pulsing like a heat behind the man’s eyes.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘I never said that.’
‘Because Harry said you were on our side.’
‘I’m on Harry’s side,’ Whitt swallowed hard. ‘And Harry’s on your side.’
‘Right.’ Sam nodded, his jaw ticking with barely contained fury. ‘Well, mate, you’re correct. Whoever is framing me has gone to an awful lot of effort. They must hate me really bad. And it would be ridiculous for me to have no idea what it was, unless of course I never knew how angry they were in the first place.’
‘OK.’ Whitt nodded. ‘I see your point.’
‘What if it’s an ex-girlfriend?’ Sam shrugged. ‘Someone I broke up with, who I thought was OK, but who really wasn’t? You know, people can get these crazy stalker women. What if, all these years, she’s hated me for leaving her. And I never knew it. And the hate has just been festering and festering.’
‘Hmm,’ Whitt said.
‘Imagine how many sick and twisted people I might have offended in my ordinary everyday life who I have no idea have harboured this … this vendetta against me. I’ve had students over the years who have plagiarised assignments for my classes. They were expelled because I caught them out. Because I brought their work to the Dean, and he cancelled their enrolment.’
‘Right.’
‘There was a guy …’ Sam was almost rambling now, his eyes wandering over the scratched surface of the glass between them. ‘Another applicant for the position at the university. Maybe he blames me for not getting that job. Maybe this goes back further than that. Maybe it goes all the way back to when I was a kid moving around in and out of care. What if someone got placed in a family, or didn’t get placed in a family, because of me?’
‘Sam –’
‘What if –’
‘Sam, I think you’re winding yourself up now,’ Whitt said, touching the glass where the prisoner’s knuckles rested. ‘You’re right. If it’s a frame-up, it could be anyone. This person is sick. Why they’re doing it to you may not be as logical as we’re expecting it to be.’
Sam tapped his wrist on the table before him, making the cuffs clatter rhythmically on its surface. He was panting. On the edge of losing it completely. Whitt made notes in his notebook, glancing up now and then at the frightened man’s eyes. It was all very convincing, Whitt thought. If Sam’s distress wasn’t real, it sure was a good act.
Chapter 30
HE DIDN’T EVEN feel the impact. Whitt was walking across the darkened car park towards the elevator of his apartment building when suddenly it seemed that the lights went out. He only realised he’d been hit when he tried to move and felt the oily, wet surface of the asphalt beneath his face. He shifted and the pain in his head made itself known, a huge, thumping ache.
Terror sparked through him. He saw blood on the hand by his face, his own hand, numb. Whitt tried to rise and a voice stopped him.
‘Not so fast,’ a gravelly voice said. ‘You’ll make yourself yack.’
Whitt slid carefully into a sitting position, propped himself against the wall by the elevator. There was a man leaning against the bonnet of someone’s car just metres away, a slice of pizza in one hand and a cardboard pizza box balancing on the flat of his other palm. Unkempt blond hair. A dusty leather jacket. Big boots. Whitt took the details in slowly, his mind refusing to come to full consciousness all at once.
He did, indeed, feel like ‘yacking’. He felt the back of his skull tentatively with his fingers, noted the blood soaking his hair. His briefcase, wallet, phone, gun. It was all gone. He found his glasses and slipped them on.
‘Did you do this?’ Whitt asked.
‘Heh! No. I’m not a fucking coward. I use my fists.’
‘I was … hit with something?’
‘You been slocked,’ the man said. ‘Congratulations.’
The man rolled a lump of asphalt he’d been toying with under his enormous black boot across the space between them. It came to a stop near Whitt’s knee. He picked up the chunk of rock and looked at it, dazed.
‘Whoever it was that hit you, he was an ex-con.’ The man took a bite of his pizza, chewed while he talked. ‘You learn to slock a guy in prison. Back in the day, you’d do it with a padlock. In a sock. Hence, “slock”. Plenty of locks around prisons. Makes a convenient, disposable weapon. Take your sock off, load it up, swing it up, over, and down on the guy’s head. Dump the lock, put your sock back on.’