‘He’d have left it open. Surely he didn’t plan to grab her, drag her all the way over to the van, drop her on the ground and expect her to lie there while he pulled the door open.’
‘How sure was she that the van door was closed?’ Tox asked. ‘She took a blow to the head. She fainted afterwards. That’s one of the main reasons the police rejected her story, because they think she was confused.’
Whitt shrugged helplessly. Tox considered Whitt’s words. Then he walked back to the group of students and plucked up the camera again.
‘Hey, we need that!’ one of the girls cried. ‘It’s due next week!’
‘It’s worth a shot,’ Tox said. ‘Let’s get a BOLO on the green sedan. See what turns up.’
Whitt was rubbing the bridge of his nose as they ascended the fire stairs, a headache pulsing behind his eyes.
‘Oh shit!’ he said. ‘My glasses!’
He jogged up the stairs, remembering the clatter of his glasses as Tox knocked him sideways in the struggle for Sandy. He searched between the cars, bent low and looked under greasy tyres. He spotted them deep under a blue Camry. Before he could get down, Tox put a hand on his chest.
‘Not in that fancy outfit.’
Whitt watched as Tox crawled under the car, dragging himself forwards on his belly on the asphalt. He seemed to linger under the vehicle a little too long, the legs of his filthy jeans unmoving.
‘ You alright under there?’
Tox scrambled out from under the car, threw the glasses at Whitt’s chest. He jogged around the back of the Camry, head low and eyes narrowed, like a hound.
‘What is it?’
‘This channel,’ Tox said. ‘This drainage channel.’
He pointed to a narrow drainage channel cut into the asphalt, covered with a blackened and oil-covered grille. Tox all but dove under a car two down from where they had stood. Whitt heard the scrape of iron.
Tox reappeared, grinning triumphantly, smeared with grease, and holding a broken phone.
Chapter 58
IT WAS TIME to go. Time to risk it all. Caitlyn had tried to bargain with her captor. She’d tried to reason with him. Hell, she’d even tried sympathising with him, attempting to understand the kind of sickness a mind like his must have. She understood that she had become an animal to him. An inconvenient pet. He didn’t speak to her. His eyes hardly ever found hers anymore. He was beginning to feed her only every second day. It was clear to Caitlyn that her captor didn’t know what to do with her now. She wouldn’t survive waiting for him to decide. This was it. She would have to put everything on the line. Fight or die.
Fighting meant lying as still as she could on her belly in the middle of the floor, the wine bottles smashed all around her. The sour, eggy smell of expired alcohol was making her eyes water. She lay for hours before she heard the footsteps in the corridor. Hesitant, soft. She heard him shifting back the things he used to block the doorway, the scrape and thump of the biggest thing, the rattling and jangling of the smaller things. His hands on the locks. Caitlyn closed her eyes and eased a long breath into her aching lungs, let it slip through her lips. Softly, softly, she thought. If she screwed this up, it was all over.
She felt no fear. One way or another, it was about to be over.
Chapter 59
I SAT UP in my fold-out bed on Snale’s porch, listening to the sounds of the night-birds and clicking away at my laptop. I was sending enquiries about Sam’s case. Whitt had emailed a list of leads that he and Tox were working on. A green sedan. A broken phone. The fight with Jace Robit’s people, and the optimistic tone of Whitt’s email, had lit a fire in me. Earlier, I’d managed to get a fifteen-minute phone conversation with Sam, and my brother sounded healthy, and calm despite the catcalls in the background. I sent a request to my chief, Pops, to have the security guard from the car park re-interviewed by Nigel’s team. I wanted to get in touch with the detectives in the Gold Coast chasing down sightings of Caitlyn McBeal, to find out if there was any truth to the rumours.
From a thin mattress on the floor beside my bed, Zac Taby spoke up, breaking my concentration.
‘So you work on the town’s case all day, and you work on your brother’s case all night,’ he said.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘ When do you sleep?’
‘Sleep is for losers.’
‘True.’
The Taby parents had been mortified first that their son had escaped lockdown at their house, then that he’d been chased like a dog by people from the town. They had been happy to turn him over to us.
‘If my typing is keeping you awake, you’re welcome to move your mattress away from mine,’ I told the boy. ‘No one invited you to sleep this close to me. Frankly, it’s weird.’
‘No way, man,’ the boy said. ‘I’m stickin’ next to you. You’re my guard dog now. You whooped some freakin’ arse out there. I’m not leaving your side for nothin’.’
I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or annoyed by my description as a ‘guard dog’. It had a certain truth to it. I’d have liked to be a guard dog. Unthinking, unquestioning, a loyal hound who followed someone I loved at all hours of the day, searching for threats and receiving treats in return for my service. It seemed a blessedly uncomplicated life.
I heard a grunting, snuffling sound, and Jerry the pig appeared in the doorway to the living room. The huge animal tested the air with its snout a few times as Zac and I watched. Then it lumbered with effort down the single stair onto the porch and took up residence by the teenager’s side, crashing to the ground, a mountain of hairy flesh falling. It seemed the coolest place to sleep that night was by my side.
‘How much did you say all that gold was worth?’ Zac asked, his chin resting on his hands on the pillow. The boy had found the rocks on Snale’s kitchen table and marvelled at our explanation for them, his mouth hanging open and eyes wide. He’d watched us stash them away behind a handful of books in Snale’s living room cabinets.
‘About eighty thousand bucks, I think.’
‘We could just, like … take it.’ His voice was low, conspiratorial.
‘What?’
‘Why not?’ He rolled onto his side. ‘You and me. We could split it. Get the fuck outta this lame-ass town.’
I laughed aloud. ‘That’s a nice fantasy you’ve got there, but forty thousand dollars isn’t a lot of … money.’ My words faltered. I was wrong. To some people, it was a lot of money. It was enough for my mother to sell out her only son to the press. To endanger his life, possibly contribute to his eternal damnation, at least in the eyes of the public. It wasn’t the kind of money you could run away forever on, though. Or was it? What kind of plans did this young man have? How far was far enough from his miserable life in this loveless town?
‘If we stayed together, though, it’d be eighty,’ he mused, a smile playing about his lips.
‘Oh, right,’ I smirked. ‘I see. You and me, a dusty old convertible, running away across the country together. Staying in dodgy hotels, escaping our problems in each other’s arms.’
‘Hell yes!’
‘Please,’ I sighed. ‘I’m old enough to be your mother.’
‘Isn’t that kind of hot, though?’
I slid a leg out from under the blanket and kicked him in the side.
‘Shut up, idiot boy.’
Chapter 60
THE BOY FELL asleep quickly, undisturbed by the pig’s snores. I lay on my side in the dark, eyes open, staring at the wall. Soon enough, I sighed and picked up my phone, sent a text.
If you refuse the magazine interview, I’ll pay you fifty thousand, I wrote. I can’t let you sabotage Sam’s defence.
I waited. In time, the phone vibrated in my hands and the screen lit my face.
How soon can you get it? my mother asked.
I’ll transfer it tomorrow, I wrote.
I’d prefer it in cash, she replied.
I’ll bet, I thought.
Chapter 61