Blood Tears (8 page)

“
A
ute, huh?” I repeated, busy scribbling, wondering if this could
have something to do with Dave’s carjacking.

“
Yeah, it’s an old workhorse of a vehicle, so it could be
someone’s just abandoned it and walked away.”

“
Possibly. Can you give me some more specific directions?
Sergeant Chives and I will take a mosey on over and have a
look.”

I took some more
details and filled in Baz while I grabbed my cap and the patrol car
keys. Baz plucked them from my hand.

“
Aw,
I never get to drive anymore,” I moaned. “It’s not
fair.”

“
Super’s orders. I understand you had a few unauthorised
chases.”

“
So
what? Doesn’t mean I should never be allowed to drive
again.”

“
I’m
just following orders.”

“
Now
you know why I don’t want to talk to the Super if they’re the sort
of orders she’s dishing out.”

He locked the front
door. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, but she has your best
interests at heart.”

“
Sure
she does.”

“
Tezza, just go with the flow for once. Suck it up, and before
you know it, your disciplinary time will be over.”

“
It
will always be there, recorded on my personnel file though, won’t
it,” I said glumly. “It’s hardly going to do wonders for my
career.”

“
It
never stopped Fiona from getting promoted, did it?”

“
I
s’pose not.” I looked at him. “Did you really wrangle her, or are
you just bullshitting to make me feel better?”

He winked. “You never
heard it from me. And it’s not my job to make you feel better. It’s
my job to make you behave better. Now, where are we going?”

We followed Valmae’s
instructions, pulling up behind the casually parked ute.

“
That’s Dave’s ute, all right,” I said, stepping out and
walking over to the driver’s seat. The door opened on my first try.
“It’s not even locked. And look, the key’s still in the
ignition.”

“
Maybe it broke down?” Baz said, poking his head through the
open window of the rear seat.

I turned on the engine,
only to be met with a red fuel light. “Nah, ran out of petrol by
the looks of it.”

“
Here’s his wallet,” Baz said, groaning as he lent down to
pick it up off the floor. “Not a cent left in it, and no credit
card either.”

“
Hope
they didn’t gouge Dave too much on the credit card. He’s not
exactly rolling in it.”

I pulled out my phone
and rang him, letting his mother know when she answered that we’d
found his ute, and breaking the bad news about the missing
money.

“
So,
our two teens got this far and then lost their wheels. Where’d they
go next?” I looked around me, seeing nothing but bushland on either
side of the highway.

“
I
think we better ask around at some of the properties closer to
here,” Baz decided.

“
But
I already rang everyone out here. Nobody knows
anything.”

“
Better check again.”

And so, after securing
Dave’s car, we spent the rest of the day tramping around from
property to property, asking the farmers if they’d noticed anything
strange over the last week or so. The only thing even remotely
interesting was the disappearance of a very elderly bicycle from
one property’s outlying shed, but as it was a surplus piece of
equipment, the apologetic farmer couldn’t even remember the last
time it had been sighted.

“
Well, that was a complete waste of time,” I complained as we
returned to the patrol car.

“
Had
to be done.”

“
So
where’s the girl? And does the poor thing even know about her
boyfriend yet?”

“
That’s the kind of news I don’t like telling people.” He
glanced around at the bushland, frowning. “I don’t like the idea of
a young girl out here in the wild by herself either.”

“
Maybe someone’s taken her in?”

“
And
not telling us? Why? From all accounts these two were strangers in
town. There couldn’t be a person around here who doesn’t know that
we’re trying to find out information about some strangers in town.
It just doesn’t make sense.”

“
So
she’s living rough?”

“
Perhaps.”

“
Poor
thing.”

“
She
was an accomplice in a carjacking and mugging, remember,” he said
dryly.

“
True. But Dave said she was crying all the time. Doesn’t
sound like a hardened criminal to me.”

“
Maybe the boy was forcing her to be with him.”

“
Dave
didn’t think she looked coerced.”

“
Well, Tezza, it’s a real mystery to me. Let’s get on back to
the station so I can ring the dees.”

“
Maybe we should organise a search. Perhaps we could track her
down. She’s the one person the dees would want to talk
to.”

Baz looked around him
again with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “I don’t know. Just the
two of us in all this bushland? It sounds like an impossible
task.”

“
So
what do we do? Just wait until she shows herself?”

“
What
choice do we have? We’ll let the dees know that we’ve found the
car, but not the girl. And they can decide how they’re going to
handle it from now on.”

Back at the station,
Baz had to answer the call of nature once more, so left me to ring
Mr X and Zelda. Mr X sounded uncharacteristically testy, frustrated
by their inability to identify our dead teen.

“
Someone
has to know who he is,” he fumed. “Zelda and I
have been poring over the missing persons database for days, trying
to find a match. But we don’t even know what this kid looked
like.”

“
We
know there’s someone who does know who he is, but we can’t find
her, and have no idea where she’s hanging out.”

He sighed heavily.
“She’s probably miles away by now if she had any sense. Look, we’ll
send forensics to your place to see if they can lift any prints
from the ute. Maybe our kid had a record.”

“
Bit
sad when that’s what you’re left hoping for in a case involving a
teenager.”

“
Zelda and I are working six cases at the moment. Believe me
when I say that I am
not
fussy about how a case
cracks.”

“
Just
let me know if I can help at all. I feel responsible for this kid’s
death, and the least I can do is try to give him back his name, and
let his family know what happened to him.”

“
It’s
not your fault, Tessie.”

“
That’s what everyone says, but you didn’t see that kid
getting splattered. That’s not something anyone is going to forget
in a hurry.”

“
Sounds like everyone’s feeling cheery at the moment. So,” he
paused, “how’s it going with Baz the Wondercop?”

“
Just
brilliant. I’m having a ball.”

That raised a laugh in
him. “Oh well, if it helps you get off the brass’ shitlist, it will
be all worthwhile in the end.”

“
I
don’t know if it’s going to make much difference. I think I’m now
permanently on the brass’ shitlist,” I said wryly.

“
Uh-oh, speaking of shitlists, here comes the Super, and she
does not look happy,” he said hurriedly, lowering his voice.
“Better scram. See you, Tessie. Look after yourself.”

“
X,
get off the fucking phone, and explain to me why –” I heard the
Super bellow before I was left listening to the dial
tone.

Chapter 6

The next fortnight
passed slowly. Baz, the human gluestick, shadowed my every move as
we re-questioned everyone in town about our two mysterious teens.
But we had no more luck finding any answers than we’d had the first
time we’d done it.

The most exciting thing
that happened during that time was the arrival of the promised
forensics team to dust over Dave’s ute. As Mr X and Zelda
accompanied them, I was thrilled when Baz allowed me to tag along
with them for the day as they went around re-questioning all the
townsfolk again, even though they’d already interviewed them by
phone. I guess Baz decided that a couple of detective sergeants
could keep an eye on me as well as he could. In any case, I
scrambled out of the station before he changed his mind, leaving
him to deal with our paroled reportees and Young Kenny’s routine
visit.

But that fourth bout of
being asked, and answering, the same questions left some of the
townsfolk feeling rather cantankerous, and not bothering to hide
it.

“
I’ve
told Officer Tess
everything
I know twice already,”
complained an increasingly belligerent Valmae, giving the two dees
a death-stare, and impatient at being interrupted from her pressing
duties on the family’s avocado farm.

“
We
just need to hear about you noticing the abandoned ute one more
time, Mrs Kilroy,” replied Zelda in her cool, implacable detective
voice. “Perhaps you saw the two teens we’re currently trying to
track down.”

“
I
didn’t see them!” she almost shouted in exasperation. “I’ve
told
you that three times already. The ute was abandoned
when I first noticed it. I told Officer Tess that when I reported
it to her.”

I shot her a tight,
sympathetic smile when I thought Mr X and Zelda weren’t
watching.

The owner of the
missing bicycle was equally curt when they made him go over his
story again as well.

“
I
don’t have anything else to tell you,” he insisted. “I noticed the
bike was missing, but I can’t say when, because I don’t go out to
that shed regularly. I told Officer Tess all this already, and I
have nothing to add.”

That said, he turned
his back on them to continue tinkering with some piece of farming
equipment I couldn’t identify if I tried.

“
What
a waste of a day,” moaned Zelda, slipping into the front seat of
their unmarked car. “Let’s go back to Wattling Bay and do some real
work.”

“
Before we do, let’s go speak to that guy who was carjacked
again,” decided Mr X, checking his mirrors before pulling out on to
the highway. He glanced at me in the rear view mirror. “He’s some
kind of kiddie fiddler, isn’t he? That probably doesn’t make him
very reliable as a witness.”

“
He’s
not
a kiddie fiddler,” I spoke up, aggrieved by his
implication. “It was all a huge misunderstanding. He had a drunken
urge to pee, but unfortunately picked the park next to the primary
school to do it in. School wasn’t even out at that time, so there
weren’t any kids around, just parents waiting for the bell. That’s
why the magistrate gave him a probation period, which he’s since
served out. He lives a quiet life with his mother and has never
done anything wrong, or caused any trouble, apart from that one
unfortunate incident. And I’ve never heard even a whisper that he
preys on small children in any way, and believe me, the townsfolk
would have let me know if he did.”

Dave’s mother opened
the door to us at their old timber house. The residence had seen
better times, but like most of the small farmers in the outlying
districts of Little Town, money was tight for Dave, and he was
always just one bad crop away from severe financial stress. I could
appreciate that.

“
Yes?” asked Mrs Gatton, eyeing Mr X and Zelda with suspicion.
Dave and she wouldn’t receive many unexpected visitors, living as
far out as they did. Her rheumy eyes shifted to me, the one
familiar face in the bunch. “Is everything all right, Officer
Tess?”

But before I could open
my mouth to assure her, Mr X stepped in. “I’m Detective Sergeant
Guylen, and this is Detective Sergeant Mills. We’ve come to
interview David about his experience with the carjacking. And you
are . . .”

“
Mrs
Shirley Gatton. Dave is my son,” she huffed angrily, her eyes
darting my way again in reproach. “And you’ve already interviewed
him at great length. You can’t have forgotten that, surely? He had
to spend the best part of a day driving to Big Town to the police
station at your demand.”

“
Now,
Shirley, no need –” Mr X started, trying to be
conciliatory.

“
Excuse me, but I did
not
give you permission to call
me by my first name. It’s Mrs Gatton to you.”

Mr X blushed slightly
at the rebuke, but I wasn’t surprised. Mrs Gatton was of the same
generation as my Nana Fuller, and I knew that tiny, much-loved
curmudgeon would
never
have allowed a younger person, or
someone she didn’t know, to address her with such familiarity.

“
We’d
just like to corroborate his story again, Mrs Gatton,” tried
Zelda.

“
He
has a farm to run. He can’t just drop everything because you people
don’t take proper notes of your interview with him the first time
around.”

“
Mrs
Gatton,” I said gently, laying my hand lightly on her arm. I could
feel it trembling beneath my fingers, and I didn’t think it was
from anger. She was afraid, and perhaps her son’s humiliating
experience at the hands of the justice system had left her worrying
about him whenever the police came calling. “The detectives just
want to see if Dave’s remembered anything else about that incident.
That’s all. It’s really important that we explore all possibilities
to identify that poor boy. I’m sure you’d agree with that. He has a
family out there who haven’t yet heard the terrible news about him.
And, at this stage, Dave’s our main witness.”