Riggs Crossing (20 page)

Chapter 49

Incident Report

Patient: Samantha Rose Patterson (aka Len Russell)

Caseworker: Lyyssa Morgan

Samantha’s maternal grandmother, Rose Gibson, arrived unannounced at IWYR despite an agreement that she would let the Department arrange a meeting when Samantha appeared psychologically ready. As Samantha has recently shown markedly fewer symptoms of Attachment Disorder, exhibiting less hostility toward others and establishing bonds with mentors, the planned meeting would have occurred within the next month. This was explained to Rose Gibson, but she demanded immediate access to Samantha, threatening legal action if I did not comply. To avoid further escalating the situation, I escorted Mrs Gibson to my office and established some ground rules for her meeting with Samantha.

Samantha was understandably surprised at Rose Gibson’s sudden appearance, and demanded to know why she had not been told about her grandmother, or about the ongoing investigation into her father’s death. When I informed Samantha that hospital staff had tried to do so, she reacted with shock, anger, and a return to the passive-aggressive silence she demonstrated in her early days at IWYR.

I left Samantha and Rose Gibson alone in my office for a short time, as per my agreement with Mrs Gibson. Neither Samantha nor Mrs Gibson was forthcoming as to the content or tenor of their meeting. Rose Gibson left contact details and said Samantha was welcome to call or visit, but behaved in an abrasive manner.

Samantha made a derogatory comment about Rose Gibson’s appearance after she left the Refuge, and has since said that she will no longer participate in weekly psychotherapy sessions.

Samantha has been at the Inner West Youth Refuge for nearly one year. Her psychological trauma may be irreparable, but she possesses considerable intelligence and determination. She is old enough to choose to live with any of her biological family, or to move to a less-structured living situation, such as a halfway house. Samantha may continue to stay at IWYR if she agrees to comply with the weekly psychotherapy sessions that are part of IWYR’s charter. I recommend that a panel including myself, representatives from the Department, and a Child Advocate explain Samantha’s options to her and allow her to make her own decision.

Chapter 50

I’ve done a fortnight’s worth of algebra homework. I can’t concentrate on it anymore. I keep thinking that I’m not a Leo, I’m a Cancer. As if that matters.

I remember the book of Chinese astrology that I tea-leafed from the Refuge library but could never get into. I flip through the book and find the table that lists all of the years. Year of the Snake, Horse, Rat, Monkey. The year I was born is the year of the Ox. I look in the index and find the chapter. Key attributes of the Ox:
steadfast, solid, plodding, methodical.
Great, I’ve struck out with Chinese astrology, too.

I go back and find the chapter devoted to the Dragon. Passionate, confident and independent, the description reads.
Gifted with an extraordinarily intense personality, Dragons often have ambitious plans and are usually strong enough to accomplish them. This Sign’s strong temper can be hard to stand against, yet Dragons are also quick to forgive. Dragons are lovers of nature and animals, and often prefer extended journeys to quick tourist jaunts
. The pages show photographs of Chinese artwork featuring dragons embroidered on tapestries and painted on to porcelain vases. I close the book. Is all astrology a crock of shit? Or was I born in the wrong month and wrong year by mistake?

I’m tired but I’m afraid to go to sleep. I light a candle, turn out the overhead light, sit on my bed and stare into the candle flame.

When I close my eyes, I see a parade of painted Chinese dragons against the purple-red background of my closed eyelids. A dragon flies through the air, soaring above the clouds, then lands on a misty mountaintop and waits in silence.

I’m supposed to sleep over with Megan Wilson, but Megan has an asthma attack and has to go to the doctor, so Daddy comes to take me home. When Daddy and I get back from town, something is wrong. Reggie isn’t barking like he always does when he hears us come back, and the phone is ringing.

Daddy picks up the phone. I start to go outside to see where Reggie is, but Daddy tells me sharply to go to my room.

‘Mate, I’ve been ringing you every five minutes for the past three hours!’ Ernie’s voice is loud enough that I can hear it.

I don’t go to my room. I quietly walk into Daddy’s room and very carefully pick up the phone.

‘You’ll probably find your dog’s dead.’

‘Yeah,’ Daddy whispers.

‘That’s part one. The rest is like I tell you. Drury and his mongs have been waiting for you to drive past. I don’t know how you got past ’em coming up the hill. You need to get out of there now.’

‘I can’t drive past that bastard in me own car, he’ll know it,’ Daddy hisses.

‘I’ll send Craig. He owes us one. Matter of fact, he owes us about half a dozen. He’ll be over in twenty. Be ready when he gets there.’

I put the phone down and run to my room.

Daddy comes to my door. ‘Poss, we’re going to Sydney for a while,’ Daddy says in a strange voice. His eyes wander around the room, then come to focus on the bed. ‘Put your heavy coat on. And take that blanket and a pillow.’

I take the blue blanket and a pillow from my bed. I stand for a moment looking at my bookcase full of books and the wicker basket with all the teddy bears and stuff I’m too old for now.

‘Come on, Poss.’

We sit in the lounge room and wait. Daddy loads his rifle and puts an extra clip in his jacket.

‘Dad, where’s Reggie?’

‘Reggie’s over at Ernie’s place.’ Daddy’s voice sounds raspy and broken. I know Reggie isn’t really with Ernie.

We hear it at the same time. We can tell by the sound that it’s not Drury’s four-wheel drive. Daddy looks at me and nods. I pick up my blanket and pillow, he picks up his rifle, and we walk out the front door.

The car pulls into the driveway, right up to the house. Craig flashes the headlights twice, then lights up the inside of the car for a second so we can see it’s him. Craig’s about twenty. I’ve seen him at Ernie’s place a few times. He looks scared. Really scared.

Daddy puts me in the back. ‘Don’t sit on the seat,’ he tells me. ‘Keep down.’ There’s no place on the back seat for me to sit anyway, the car’s full of clothes and stuff. I lie on the floor of the car.

Daddy bangs the door shut after me and opens the driver’s door. ‘Move over, Craig, I’m driving till we get to Tamworth. You changed the plates on this thing?’

Craig says something to Daddy and lights a cigarette. Daddy throws the car into Drive and we roar back down the track. We’re going fast, taking curves at a sickening speed and sliding out on the dirt. I can tell we’re almost to town when we start driving in a straight line.

I can’t get comfortable on the floor of the car even with the blanket and pillow, and I’m cold. There’s a jumper in the pile of clothes on the seat, so I struggle out of my coat and put the jumper on, then put my coat on over the top.

I think we’re almost to Wollomombi when headlights appear behind us, then flash to high beam.

‘Christ, they’re on our tail,’ Daddy says.

It’s the people who killed Reggie.

‘Lose ’em!’ Craig yells. ‘You gotta do something!’

‘Shut up!’ Daddy hisses, then pulls over, puts the car into Park, and leaves it idling.

‘Give me that thing.’

Craig hands Daddy the rifle and slides down in his seat. Daddy slides the bolt into the rifle.

‘Soon as I get out, put your foot on the brake,’ Daddy tells him. ‘I need the brake lights to see their car.’

‘What? Why?’ Craig sounds like he’s about to cry.

‘I’ll put one through the radiator. They won’t be going far after that.’

Daddy speaks to me in a low voice without turning his head. ‘Poss, get under that blanket. Don’t move till I get back.’

I pull the blanket over my head. Daddy throws the car door open and jumps out. There’s a rifle shot and the sound of a windscreen shattering, and what sounds like tiny little pebbles showering down all over our car. A car door opens.

‘Good shot, Drury!’ Terry yells. ‘I’ll finish him off.’ Two more gunshots.

No.

Craig jumps out of the passenger side. There’s another rifle shot.

‘What the hell was that?’ Terry’s yelling. He’s deaf from the gunshots.

‘There was another bastard in there. But not anymore.’ The voice is hard and ugly. Drury. The pig dog man. I don’t know his face. In my mind I see the head of a pig dog on a human body. A pig dog will tear you to pieces.

‘Is he dead?’ Terry’s still yelling. He can’t hear Craig moaning and saying, ‘Please, no, I don’t want to die.’

‘Just finish the prick off.’

Three more shots.

No.

‘Right. That’s got ’im. See, Drury? Told ya I was a good shot!’ Terry’s still yelling. He sounds crazy.

‘Wake up to yourself and chuck ’em in the trailer. NOW! And throw the tarp over them.’

There are sounds of dragging, lifting. Another voice I don’t recognise says, ‘This bastard’s heavy. Hey, he’s pissed himself,’ and someone laughs and I cry silently underneath the blanket.

‘That thing’s still idling, innit?’ Drury says. ‘Good. Pull on full left lock, then knock it into Drive. It’ll go straight down into that gully. We’ll deal with these two pricks up the road a bit.’

‘Where’s that brat of his?’ someone says.

‘Camped with Steve Wilson’s kid, tonight,’ Terry says. ‘Heard it from the barman at the Commercial Hotel.’

The car clunks, the engine takes a load, and I stay quiet and still under the blanket as the car rolls forward and falls into blackness.

The dragon glides, the dragon soars. I ride on the back of the dragon, back to when I was six.

I’m in front of Daddy on the motorbike and Reggie is racing alongside us. ‘Go, Dad!’ I yell. Daddy stops the bike under a tree and sets me down. Reggie runs around us in a circle, because he’s so happy to be with us.

The scream I’ve been keeping inside me ever since the car went over the cliff comes out and Lyyssa comes running up the stairs and unlocks my door with her master key. Then I’m sobbing and Lyyssa is holding me and telling me it’s okay. She doesn’t ask any questions or try to get me to talk. Her face looks soft and tired. I think she’s been crying, too.

Daddy and Reggie are dead. Daddy may have been a cropper, but he loved me. Reggie was just a cropper’s guard dog, but he was a good dog who protected us. And no one will ever love me as much as they did ever again, not even if I grow up to be as rich and beautiful and successful as Clarissa Hobbs.

I understand now why I’ve never trusted Lyyssa. The way Daddy lived, he could never really trust anyone. He taught me to be suspicious. If anyone asked you too many questions, it meant they were looking to take advantage of you or dob you in or rip you off. I guess that’s why he pulled me out of school, because he was afraid I’d let it slip that he was a cropper and he’d get arrested.

‘Samantha, I’m sorry,’ Lyyssa says. She doesn’t say for what, but I understand.

I nod. ‘I’m sorry too.’

Lyyssa leaves the room for a few minutes, then comes back with a pot of herbal tea and a mug. She sets them on my night table, tells me that she’s downstairs if I need her, and softly closes the door as she leaves.

Chapter 51

I get up but I’m not awake. I go to sleep but don’t dream. I eat scarcely anything. I watch TV but don’t remember afterwards what I watched. I try to read but don’t understand what I’ve read. I walk along University Road but don’t notice anything around me. I go to lessons with Miss Dunn and can’t concentrate on what she’s saying to me. I know she’s worried about me and has called Lyyssa to ask what’s the matter.

It’s six weeks since Easter. Every day is cold rain.

I ride the 355 bus to the stables at first light on Tuesdays and Thursdays, muck out the boxes, have a dressage lesson on Dex. Sometimes I cry into a horse’s neck when I’m grooming it, but only if it’s a nice horse, and only if I’m sure no one’s around.

If Ray knows anything about what’s happened to me, he doesn’t say so. He talks to me during lessons and tells me what to do with the horses, but he doesn’t break the quiet.

The police start coming to see me about once a week. I guess these police are the straight kind. If they were the bent kind, they would have killed me already.

They tell me they’ve made two arrests. One is Drury, the pig dog man. The other is nobody I know. I tell the police about the business Terry did with Daddy, and how Daddy beat him up in the bottle shop because Terry ripped him off, and how I heard Terry’s voice the night of the accident. I tell them about seeing Terry in the 7-Eleven on University Road, and how I think it was him that tried to run me over in the Nohant garden. The police find Terry and arrest him. I have to testify at his trial, but I don’t have to be in the same room with him.

The police ask me to tell them as much as I can remember about the shooting. They always have a female officer there. I guess she’s supposed to calm me down if I start crying. But I don’t cry.

They ask me lots of questions. What did Daddy say before he got out of the car? How many gunshots did I hear? How could I tell whether it was a rifle or a pistol being fired? Who said what after which gunshot? When did I feel the car start to move? Sometimes they ask me the same question several times. They can see I’m getting annoyed, so they explain to me that this is a normal part of police questioning. They need to make sure your answers are consistent. If your answers are inconsistent, it means your memory is faulty.

They listen carefully and record everything I say. I never tell them what Ernie said about Drury having the Riggs Crossing coppers in his pocket. Ten to one on, they’ll know that already. I’m not dogging on anybody who doesn’t need it.

Finally, the female officer explains what they think happened. When the police arrested Drury, they looked over his car and noticed that the rego sticker was a re-issue, so the windscreen must have been a replacement. The police found the bloke in Tamworth who replaced the windscreen and interviewed him. The windscreen man said he’d never seen a broken windscreen before where there was not a single piece of glass inside the vehicle. The windscreen had been shattered outwards, not inwards. The coppers reckoned this meant that a shot was fired from inside the car. When the windscreen man asked Drury how this happened, Drury said he didn’t know. The windscreen man remembered that. It was weird for someone to bring in a vehicle with a smashed windscreen, and not know how it got smashed.

The coppers also said that they found Daddy’s weapon in Drury’s house. Ballistic examination showed that it had not discharged a round since its last cleaning.

The female officer says that this, taken together with what I said about the sequence and number of shots, indicates that no shot was ever fired into Drury’s car. This means that Daddy never got to fire a shot.

Daddy miscalculated. He thought he was fast enough to disable Drury’s car, then jump back into Craig’s car and drive away. It shouldn’t have taken three or four seconds on a lever action or a repeater. He thought that if Drury was going to try and shoot him, that he would get out of the car first. But Drury knew not to muck around. He shot Daddy from inside his own car, as soon as he could aim. He didn’t care about shattering his own windscreen. He was playing for bigger stakes than windscreens.

Then Terry shot Daddy at close range with a pistol even though Daddy was already dead. Then Drury shot Craig the second he jumped out of the car. Terry fired the shots that killed Craig.

Drury was a real crim and an expert shot. Terry was a little thief and a wannabe who couldn’t have hit the side of a barn from six metres away, but Craig was less than three metres away. And even then it took Terry three shots to do the job.

They never found the trailer from Drury’s vehicle. Drury would’ve burnt it to get rid of the DNA.

The police also tell me that there was an article about the accident in the
Tamworth Advocate.
The article mentioned that an unidentified girl, me, had been found in the wreck. That’s most likely when Drury and Terry realised I’d been in the car. Terry probably thought he’d make a hero of himself to Drury by getting rid of me. Or maybe Drury told him to find me and kill me. We don’t know yet.

It didn’t take long for people in Riggs Crossing to figure out that the girl in the car was Mick Patterson’s kid, but everyone was too scared of Drury to say anything.

The police finally go away. They give me their business cards to call them if I need to. They also give me a card for a professional counsellor to call. I keep the police officers’ business cards and throw the counsellor’s card in the trash.

Lyyssa and a man from some government department tell me that the land Daddy owned has been sold, and the money put in trust for me. The house we lived in burned down. I nod and say nothing.

One day I’m walking home and see a fruit bat dead on the street. I look up and see another fruit bat, dead and hanging by one leg from the power line. They were mates, and were both electrocuted when they landed on the power line. One fell, the other didn’t. In death, their eyes are open, staring at each other. The one hanging from the power line stares downward at his wife. Maybe he saw her fall just before he died. The one on the ground stares up at her husband. Maybe she died just after she hit the ground. I start to wonder why I couldn’t have died along with Daddy.

This is the way things have been for the three weeks since my grandmother came, since I found out what happened to Daddy and Reggie.

Then another visitor comes.

‘Samantha?’ This time when Lyyssa comes for me, I’m not writing a
Clarissa Hobbs
episode. The day after my grandmother came to visit, I ripped the
Clarissa Hobbs
episodes out of the notebook, tore them up, and put my notebook at the bottom of my desk drawer. I’m staring out the window at nothing when Lyyssa knocks.

I open the door.

‘Samantha? There’s someone here to see you.’ Lyyssa has changed in the last fortnight, too. Her eyes are darker, her face thinner, her skin paler. All her bounce and cheer has gone, because I made her feel like she couldn’t possibly help me, no matter how hard she tried. I told her I was sorry afterwards, but that doesn’t really change anything. Now, I feel like I’ve just told a five-year-old kid that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus. I wish we had the old, silly Lyyssa back.

‘It’s a man named Ernie,’ Lyyssa says. ‘He knew your father. He’s waiting in my office, if you’d like to see him.’

Ernie.
I thank Lyyssa and run down the hallway and down the stairs. Ernie is standing in Lyyssa’s office, looking out the window.

‘Ernie!’

Ernie turns. It’s the face I remember, only sadder.

‘Sam.’ He opens his arms and I run to him and start to cry. Ernie holds me for a while, then when I’ve calmed down we sit on Lyyssa’s couch.

‘I didn’t know where you were,’ Ernie tells me. ‘I knew what happened to your dad, and I knew who did it. But I didn’t dare go to the cops.’

I nod. I know what Ernie means. Daddy told me that you can never really trust the police, because you never know which cops are bent. Suppose Ernie had told a cop which drug dealer murdered my father, and the cop was being bribed by that very same drug dealer? Then Ernie would be dead, too.

‘They burned our house down, didn’t they? And they killed Reggie.’

‘Aw, Sam.’ Ernie’s face creases. ‘They shot him, it was over in a second. He died protecting you. That’s the way a dog like Reggie would’ve wanted to die.’ Ernie swallows hard and wipes his eyes. ‘Bastards.’

I think of the outside dunny overlooking the Nymboida River, the kettle that I burned my hand on, the blue blanket on my bed. ‘I don’t ever want to go back there again.’

Ernie shakes his head. ‘No, Sam. You stay in Sydney. Riggs Crossing’s for ferals and croppers. I sold up and moved to Gosford. I run a garage now.’ ‘Can I come stay with you?’

Ernie looks embarrassed. ‘Sam, you’re a young lady now. A guy like me can’t have a young girl living in his house, it wouldn’t look nice.’

A slideshow of Ernie’s girlfriends flickers through my mind.

‘Sam, you’re a smart kid. They tell me they’ve got university professors teaching you stuff that most eighteen-year-olds can’t get their head around. You buckle down and study.’ Ernie hugs me again, says he’ll keep in touch, and then he’s gone.