He’d learned little more about Tox’s deadly reputation, the murders he was supposed to have committed as a child. The man’s records were sealed, and rumours of the event varied wildly. It seemed far more fashionable to simply join the masses and hate Tate ‘Toxic’ Barnes than it was to be certain of the facts. Whitt was certain he didn’t hate Tox. But he was far too nervous to like him, either.
‘Alright, listen up,’ Chief Morris said. The squat old man commanded the attention of the room. Young officers who had been laughing and chatting turned around in their seats. ‘We’ll make this short so you can get back out on the road. We’re getting a lot of calls from members of the public who have seen men fitting the EFIT description of McBeal’s abductor. You’re doing a good job attending to them. We’re hoping to hone the search now with some new information we’ve just received.’
Tox seemed to get part of his biscuit stuck in his throat. He thumped his chest with his fist. Whitt winced.
‘Forensics have done a sweep of the Pinkerton Hotel. Even though we’ve restricted the analysis to the underground basement where Caitlyn was kept, there are still hundreds and hundreds of prints, and we can’t tell which ones are relevant. It’s taking time to narrow them down. We’ve been fast-tracking the prints through the national database and some interesting characters have started turning up. We’ve shown their pictures to Caitlyn, but she hasn’t identified anyone. It’s likely some of these guys might have changed their appearance since they were last in contact with police. Some of the photographs are very old.’
Six images sprang onto the screen. All white men with the dazed, tired look of inmates appearing for mugshots, their mouths downturned and eyes distant. Three were bearded. One wore thick-framed red glasses, smiling with missing front teeth.
‘Take a good look,’ Chief Morris said. ‘Some of these guys are off the grid. Long-term addicts, ex-cons. This one, Regan Banks, has a murder charge from fifteen years ago. This one, Malcolm Donovan, does too. All the others have served time. Robberies, assaults, that sort of thing. But one of them might be our guy. You’re going to split into teams and each track one of these guys down, bring them in for questioning.’
Chief Morris pushed a button on a nearby laptop and another screen full of dead-eyed men appeared. Someone was walking through the tables handing out printed copies of the faces.
‘We need to nab this guy before he does any more damage. This isn’t over, people,’ Chief Morris said. ‘Not by a long shot.’
‘I’m gonna split off,’ Tox said through the remnants of a second biscuit. ‘Gotta go check on Harry’s place. You wanna come?’
‘No, I’m going to stay here.’ Whitt rubbed his face, pushed his fingers into his eye sockets and massaged the muscles there. It had been twenty-four solid hours since they found Caitlyn McBeal. Thirty-six or so since he had slept. They had been out most of the day driving around, following operational calls, running in and out of buildings looking for men with shaved heads. His temples were throbbing. ‘I’m going to put my head down in the coffee room so I can be here if they get a call.’
‘Right.’ Tox gave Whitt a slap on the arm and yanked his flak jacket off. He dropped it on the tabletop beside his partner. ‘I’ll be back later.’
Whitt watched his partner go without knowing that he wouldn’t be back at all.
Chapter 90
IT WASN’T OVER for Regan.
He stood by the windows of the discount electronics store and watched the pictures flashing on the huge flat screens, ran a hand over his shaven skull. Twelve men the police wanted to speak to in relation to the abduction of Caitlyn McBeal, and possibly the Georges River killings. In the top right-hand corner of the screen, he saw his own face. Regan was sunken-cheeked and scruffy-haired in the picture, wearing the beard he’d grown in remand to try to make himself look fiercer than he really was. A wide-eyed teen being photographed for intake at Long Bay Correctional. He remembered the corrections officers taking the shot, fifteen years earlier, how terrified he’d been. He’d been able to hear the catcalls down the hall from where he stood. The men, waiting for him.
It had been an apprenticeship in pain. Years learning how to take it, how to experience pain in so many unique and creative ways. When they’d come for him on his last days, Regan had looked at the man in the mirror on the wall of his cell. A master of suffering.
As he’d left the cell block that had been his home, Regan had felt his muscles tightening, hardening. He’d walked through the administration block to collect his belongings and felt his fingers lengthen to talons. Through the transition cages, he’d felt black wings unfurling from his shoulderblades. In the car park where they left him, free to go wherever he pleased, his eyes had begun to burn with bloody, furious tears.
Regan realised that all along, he’d been designed to evolve into the thing he was now, this monster. His time in prison had been a natural steeling process. An incubation period. A thing as hard as him needed to be forged. All goodness needed to be squeezed from it. Empathy. Passion. Weakness. Standing there in the parking lot in the dark, the distant sounds of the waves crashing against the cliffs beyond the prison, he closed his eyes and remembered Sam Blue. All the time he’d been locked away, Regan hadn’t dared call his friend’s face to his mind. He’d been afraid of the fury that would come. The bloody memories. He remembered Sam, and knew only that he needed to find him.
Regan stood looking at his own face on the television screen now. Inevitably, the news story shifted and there he was. Beautiful Sam, with his downcast eyes and hollow cheeks.
Regan put a hand on the window and bent low, focused on the tiny pixels that made up the man’s face.
Sam. His soulmate.
Chapter 91
KASH AND I drove back down the main street after our surveillance on the Robit property. There were patrol officers in the town, borrowed from towns all around, talking to people at their fences. Mick the bartender was leaving his house with an armful of towels, watching us roll by, his big belly making a single circle of sweat on his T-shirt where the flesh dipped inwards at his navel.
I pulled Kash’s arm, gesturing for him to stop. From the street outside the little house across from Victoria Snale’s property, I could hear children playing inside. As I went to the door, the young mother I’d seen the night Zac Taby lost his life shouted from somewhere towards the rear of the building.
I knocked and two young ones, maybe three and four years old, ran to the screen door and stared expectantly up at me. I’d seen these golden-haired children that night in their pyjamas. The mother was tired when she came to the door, uncomposed, expecting someone else. She remembered me.
‘ I’m Harriet Blue,’ I said. ‘This is my partner, Elliot Kash.’ She opened the door. The kids tumbled out, seemingly very impressed with Kash, a thickly muscled superhero towering above them. There was no sign of a dad here.
‘Mary Skinner,’ the mother said, smiling. ‘You two, get back in here.’
The kids giggled and ran into the cool, dark hall. I followed Mary past a wall of framed photographs, backpacks hanging on hooks, a wooden rack inadequately small for the dozens of dusty shoes piled onto it. We went to the kitchen and she didn’t offer us coffee. She was uncomfortable. Picking at fingernails split from nibbling.
‘You probably know why I’m here,’ I said.
‘The bombings.’ She glanced towards the door as something crashed in one of the bedrooms. ‘It’s terrifying. Have you got a suspect yet?’
‘We’ve got some leads,’ I said. ‘But I think maybe you could lengthen them for me. I don’t know if you remember what you said to me two nights ago when I was out there on your porch.’
Mary had tucked one arm into her ribs, the other tight against her chest. She opened the fridge to give herself somewhere to look.
‘I don’t remember anything much except the blast,’ she said. ‘I was watching out the window when it happened. I saw you fall. Are you OK? I mean,’ – she examined my broken arm – ‘nothing permanent?’