Blood Sport (53 page)

I opened my mouth to speak when she turned away from me, no longer listening. “
Bum!
Make yourself fucking useful for once and go buy me a coffee. Get one for everyone. Go to the same place you bought coffee from that day when Tessie went berserk. That coffee wasn’t as vomit-inducing as you’d expect in a one-donkey town.” Her eyes flicked to me briefly and I could tell that it was killing her to admit that small concession about Little Town. So when I dared to smirk a little, she immediately jumped down my throat. “What the fuck are you waiting around for, Tessie? Get your arse moving! Find that spot for me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I scrambled to obey. Closing my eyes, I thought back to that freezing, wet morning when I dragged Kylie up from the steep bushy incline.
Think!
What did I see when I reached the road? I remember looking both ways before deciding that I was definitely on Mountain Road, but how did I know that? There were a few roads heading towards Mount Big, but only Mountain Road took you to the Lake and the base of the mountain. It came to me suddenly – it was the width of the road. Mountain Road was wider, being used by a lot of tourists in the warmer months. The other roads led to private properties and were much less travelled and narrower in comparison, some not even sealed.

That realisation didn’t really help me much though. There was only one thing to do and that was to walk from the fifteen kilometre sign back up the slope towards the mountain and hope that I recognised something. Understandably, nobody was thrilled with that plan.

The senior dog handler chatted to me about the two dogs they were using as we walked. They were both German Shepherds and both were dual-trained general purpose/cadaver dogs. He had worked with his dog, Blossom, for six years and the other handler had worked with hers for five years, so they were both experienced dogs nearing the end of their working careers. The affection he shared with Blossom was touching. I guess that you would become very attached to an animal that you trained and worked with every day.

Curious and thinking about that skull, I asked him whether the dogs were able to pick up any scent from completely skeletonised remains.

“Depends,” he explained. “Cadaver dogs
have
found skeletons, but obviously they’re much better at finding bones when there is still some tissue attached or the surrounding soil still contains leached nutrients from the body.” His eyes rested on me briefly. “I’m no forensics expert, but from the sound of it I don’t think that skull could belong to the girl you saw alive late last year.”

“Oh. Really?” That was disheartening. There was no hope that Lucy was still alive because she’d been murdered in that movie, but I’d hoped at least that we’d be able to find her remains and give her the dignity of a proper burial. And maybe even to reunite her remains with her family, if they cared. “Do you think that means that Lucy’s not there or that there’s even
another
person down there as well?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Like I said, I’m no forensics expert. But I have seen a few remains in my day, and that skull sounds as though it would be more than just eight months old.”

That was food for thought, and I quietly pondered the depressing possibility that there could be two bodies buried around here. As we approached the general area where I must have emerged from the bushland, both dogs veered off the road, sniffing at the same spot on the edge of the ravine. When we drew closer, we could see broken branches on a bush to the right and some well flattened grass. Any drag marks had been obliterated by the heavy rain.

“I’m pretty sure that’s the place, ma’am. It looks as though something was hauled through the bush there.”

The dogs led us down the incline, following the path I’d taken to climb upwards. We all stopped when I recognised the large tree where I’d found Kylie, and I was able to vaguely recall the direction from which I’d ascended. The dogs confirmed this and we all headed lower to the approximate location that I’d regained consciousness. Everything looked different in the light and sunshine and I wasn’t entirely confident that I was taking them to the right spot.

The ground was still slippery and muddy and it wasn’t long before we were all covered in mud splatters.

The dogs sniffed around experimentally, heading in one direction, but not finding anything interesting. They turned and moved in the other direction, towards the mountain instead. After a few difficult minutes pushing through the thick wild growth, the dogs more eager than any of us, Blossom found the skull that I’d woken up next to. We all crouched down to examine it, the Super gently poking it with a stick.

“Find out where forensics are,” she ordered Xavier, checking her watch. “They should have been here by now.” She looked down at the skull. “Tess, I could be wrong, but I don’t think this belongs to the girl you saw last year. The skeletonisation seems too advanced. So that leaves us with two interesting questions: who the fuck does this belong to and where’s the rest of them?”

We took a breather for a moment while Xavier was on the phone, having to move around until he found a strong enough signal. As we waited for him to finish his call, we speculated idly on whether the skull had been scavenged by animals from a shallow grave or if the body had just been dumped in the bush like Kylie and me.

“They’ll be here soon,” Xavier assured and we pressed on, all scratched from branches and now dirty, each one of us having slipped over at least once on the rough ground. Before long, the dogs stiffened with suppressed excitement, a frenzy of sniffing following.

“Something around here, ma’am,” called the senior handler and we held back, letting the dogs have free reign in the locality. They both honed in on the same area and sat on their haunches, panting happily.

“You can see that the ground’s been disturbed, but not for a while,” I mused. “It’s slightly lower than the surrounding ground, but has since been revegetated.”

“It’s not a dead rabbit or something, is it?” the Super asked the senior handler suspiciously.

“No, ma’am! These dogs can tell the difference between animal and human remains,” he shot back, insulted on behalf of Blossom.

“Nobody buries dead rabbits, ma’am,” Zelda dared to point out, earning herself a rebuking glance for her trouble.

“Looks as though we have ourselves a bush grave, people. Tessie, you go up top and wait for forensics. They’ll need help bringing all their shit down here. It’s a fucking nightmare of a crime scene. Nah, scratch that. You’re no use with your arm in that sling. X, you go. Tessie can stay with me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said and obediently started climbing the incline, hauling himself upwards by hanging onto branches. She was right – it was going to be a difficult crime scene to investigate.

The dogs strained at their leashes, surprising the handlers. The senior handler turned to the Super in question.

“Give them their noses,” the Super ordered and the handlers and animals were off again. “Tessie, mark this spot so we can find it again.”

I scrabbled around for something that couldn’t be overlooked. The best I could find was a forked branch that I jammed into the earth, before taking off my sling and wrapping it around the forks.

“You need that,” the Super said patiently.

“I’ll put it on again when we return here,” I promised.

We followed the dogs through the bushland. It was the same as last time – the dogs sniffed around, both heading for the same spot before sitting down again.

“Shit,” said the Super panting, hands on her hips. “Another one? Mark this off too, Tessie.”

I hurriedly gathered some rocks and placed them in a circle on the spot where the dogs were sitting. That wasn’t the end of it though, because they were off again.

The Super wasn’t happy. “Fucking hell. I wasn’t expecting a cemetery. We’re not going to be able to keep this quiet. Those fucking maggots in the media will be crawling around here everywhere as soon as they find out.”

After locating a third possible grave and I’d placed a circle of rocks on it as well, the dogs were content to remain seated, scratching and licking themselves contently.

“Looks like that’s it, ma’am,” decided the senior handler.

“Hang around for a while, just in case,” instructed the Super. “We’ll see what forensics say.”

We waited patiently for the forensics team to turn up, sitting on tumbled logs.

We heard them well before we saw them, crashing through the bush, swearing up a storm. Four sullen and muddy forensic officers, accompanied by a fed-up Xavier, came to a halt near us.

“What do we have, ma’am?” asked the most senior one, and she spent a few succinct minutes briefing them. A team of two tackled the first grave, and the other two the second. As they plied their professional skills, we took the chance to return to the road, Xavier kindly giving me a helping hand up the hill. We sat on the bonnets of the cars and drank cold coffee, ate cold pastries and gave the panting dogs a bowl of water. I took a minute to ring the Sarge to tell him what we’d found so far.

“Kylie’s a very lucky girl,” he said, his voice warm in my ear. “If it hadn’t been for your persistence, she would be buried down there too by now and we’d be none the wiser.” A pause. “And Tessie, I’m really sorry I yelled at you about it.”

I scuffed my boot on the road. “Aw, that’s all right. I probably deserved it.”

“Yeah, you probably did.” The smile sparkled in his tone.

“But I can’t stop thinking about poor Lucy. I should have –”

“Should have, could have, would have. Tess, you can’t torture yourself for the rest of your life about it. You were virtually working the town single-handedly at that point. Do you really think that anyone in Big Town would have taken you seriously and given you some backup?”

“I guess not,” I said quietly, obeying the Super’s cutthroat gesture to hang up. The forensics team wanted to show the Super their initial discoveries and I wasn’t missing out on that for anything.

~~~~~~

Over the next few weeks, the forensics team carefully uncovered the remains of three young female bodies. A crew made up of State Emergency Service volunteers and police academy recruits combed the surrounding scrub with mind-numbing thoroughness for clues once the bush graves were fully excavated. Fortunately for them, the good weather held and they were able to work solidly for the entire time.

Bussing in the recruits from the city and putting them up in Big Town, utilising every fleabag motel and dodgy guesthouse available, had the Super tearing her hair out, and screaming at everyone who even looked at her, at the ruination of her carefully prepared budget. That was until the Police Minister, an attractive well-groomed older woman, graced our television screens, magnanimously stepping in to announce that the State Government would cover all costs related to the recovery of the bodies and the solving of the crimes. I’d never seen Fiona smile before about
anything
a politician had promised, but she positively beamed from ear to ear on hearing that. She even managed a compliment, stating that the Police Minister was not as much of a pointy-titted, hole-licking media slut as she’d originally thought.

And speaking of the media, once they were alerted to the story, the Sarge and I were fully occupied in maintaining good order in town and keeping the determined and ruthless journalists from the crime scene. They were relentless and both of us had to even fend off some of the more unscrupulous ones trying to sweet talk us and bribe us into exclusive tip-offs with insultingly small gifts. Didn’t they realise that we’d both worked in the city before? We weren’t impressed with the offer of $100 in disgustingly soiled and crumpled notes. Well, I might have been tempted, thinking about my bank balance, but the Sarge kept me on the straight and narrow. Good for him. I think.

Never one to miss an effortless money-making opportunity, Rosie, Larissa, Kristy and Jade Bycraft and Dorrie Lebutt all stepped forward to sell their stories about ‘romancing’ with the bikies. Unfortunately for them, Pinky Kowalski slapped them with suppression orders as they were considered material witnesses in any future court case against the bikies. Not even the bottom-dwelling journos would touch them after that, something which they somehow yet again managed to blame on me.

Mountain Road being blocked off for so long worried the Little Town business owners who’d been counting on the coming spring to lure back the tourists after the rainy, miserable winter. Everybody was shocked by what had happened, of course, but nobody wanted it to drag on forever. The tourists were one of the main reasons that the town survived these days, when so many other little towns had given up the ghost.

I hardly need to say, but of course the Sarge and I lost control of the case, the Big Town police taking over. I still made sure I was involved in any development though, poking my nose into every local investigation and ringing Xavier, Zelda and the Super as many times a day as it took them to lose their patience with me. In case you were interested, it was once a day for the Super, twice for Zelda and a tolerant four times for Mr X, with a decidedly testy fifth time thrown in some days when I was feeling particularly stubborn. The Sarge accused me of being tenacious again, and I’m pretty sure he hadn’t suddenly decided that it was now a favourable description of me.

Lucy’s body, the first uncovered, was positively identified as Lucinda Storey, aged sixteen, a runaway from a foster home. Sadly, nobody came forward to claim her remains. Her otherwise caring last foster family had reluctantly washed their hands of her when she ran away for the final time, finding her unruly and untrustworthy during her brief residence with them. And while they were naturally shaken at hearing of her terrible death, they were not upset nor surprised. The third body, and the first to have been dumped, was eventually identified as thirteen-year-old Crystal Jenkins, another runaway. This time though, a weepy mother and stepfather came to claim her sad little skeletal remains for burial.