The Dead Tracks (55 page)

    But
then his grip loosened.

    Not
much, but enough.

    Nerves
fired in my hands. Prickles of sensation drifted into my fingers. And I could
feel the shovel again. The wood. The iron. The
weight
.

    I gripped
it as hard as I could and launched it off the ground towards him. The blade was
side-on, the thin width of it leading first. It cracked against his skull,
behind his ear, and his fingers sprang from my throat immediately; a bear trap
flipping open. His eyes rolled up into his head. He wobbled. Then he slumped
sideways and hit the wet ground about an inch from the thirteenth grave.

    Above
me, the gentle patter of rain started, popping against the canopy, coming down
in a fine spray against my face.

    Otherwise,
the Dead Tracks was silent.

    Police
arrived on the northern edge of the woods ten minutes after I called them. I'd
dragged Crane's body back to the storage building and tied him up, then found
Megan and brought her back up to the surface. We huddled together, away from
him, under what remained of the roof. By the time Jamie Hart's head popped up
from the air vent, his body covered in a white crime-scene boiler suit, Crane
was awake but drowsy. Blood ran from his face, mixing with the rainwater
pelting down through the open roof. Hart came over, a uniformed officer
flanking him, and told Megan that they were going to take her somewhere safe.
She looked at me for some kind of assurance, and when I told her that
everything was going to be okay, she whispered a thank you and they led her off
and out of sight. A minute after that, I was in handcuffs.

    Three
hours later, Hart and Davidson were facing me in an interview room. I was tired.
I'd barely slept in over thirty hours, and I could feel every minute of it.
They'd already taken away what I was wearing as evidence and sent a uniformed
officer back to my house to pick up a spare set of clothes. But new clothes and
machine coffee didn't help. What my body wanted most was to shut down and
recharge.

    'How's
Healy?' I asked.

    Hart
had been filling out some paperwork, but he looked up at the mention of the
name. He set his pen down, bony fingers tapping out a rhythm on the table. Tour
partner in crime,' he said quietly.

    'Is
he alive?'

    Neither
of them said anything for a moment.

    Then
Hart started to nod. 'Yes, he's alive - but he's in surgery. When he wakes up,
he'll probably wish those knife wounds had been a couple of inches to the
left.'

    A
knock on the door.

    They
both looked up as a uniformed officer let Liz in. She was dressed in a black
trouser suit with a cream blouse, her hair against her shoulders. She looked
fantastic. She'd come straight from the office: in one hand was a briefcase; in
the other a laptop bag. I was pleased to see her — and not just because she was
my lawyer.

    She
looked at me but didn't smile. You okay?'

    I
nodded.

    She turned
to Hart and Davidson. 'I sincerely hope the tape isn't running'

    Hart
shook his head. 'No, we haven't start-'

    'Good.
Because I want some time to talk to my client. And that means not here, and not
with you two taking notes.' She glanced over her shoulder. 'Is there somewhere
my client and I can go where we will have some privacy?'

    I
could see Davidson twitch. He preferred me the first time they'd brought me in:
on my own and lawyer-free. Hart smiled - trying to play the game - but it was wasted
on Liz. She just stared at him, and both Hart and Davidson realized in about
three seconds that she was the real deal. Hart, a little resigned, leaned back
in his chair and then turned to the uniformed officer. 'PC Wright, please show
Ms Feeny and Mr Raker to Room C.' He glanced at Liz. 'Just let me know when
you're ready.'

    She
nodded once, then led me out.

    I
spent an hour going over the case with her. Every detail I could remember. She didn't
say much, which only added to the atmosphere between us. I'd never seen her
like this. She just typed everything into her laptop, asking me a couple of
times to spell names or go back over certain events. This wasn't the Liz I
thought I knew.

    When
we were done she leaned back in her seat and studied me. 'You're in a lot of
trouble here.'

    I
nodded. 'I know.'

    'Where's
this Healy guy?'

    'In a
hospital.'

    'Is
he dead?'

    'No.'

    She
placed her hands on the table. 'Have you got anything to barter with?'

    'Maybe.'

    'What?'

    I
told her about the women, how they'd been linked by the task forces — and how
the police had kept all the information buried.

    'Bloody
hell,' she said when I was finished. Her dark eyes were fixed on me, her mind
turning things over. She read a couple of lines of whatever she'd written on
her laptop, then looked at me again. 'Can I ask you something?'

    'Of
course.'

    She
paused. A finger moved to the laptop's screen. 'Why do you do this?'

    I frowned.
'It's my job.'

    'No,
I don't mean that. I mean…' She stopped for a second time and pulled her hair
away from her face. 'I understand it's your job to find people. I understand
that.'

    She
looked at me, her eyes focused, but didn't say anything. I smiled at her, and
she smiled back — but not in the way she normally did.

    'What's
the matter, Liz?'

    Her
eyes flicked back to her laptop.

    'Liz?'

    Finally
she looked up. 'You remember the last time we were in a room like this?'

    'Sure.'

    'Last
year, on that case up north. You remember that?'

    I
held up my hand and showed her my nails. 'I've got the scars here to remind
me,' I said, smiling, trying to cut through whatever it was that had settled
between us.

    'After
we were done with that, I thought about what you did, about how far you were
prepared to go to finish what you started on that case.' She glanced at me. 'I
know you weren't completely honest with me about what went on. I know that. But
that's fine. You gave me enough to work with, and we got you off, and that was
all that mattered. I kind of filed it away as something that we might need to
revisit later on down the line, if anything ever… happened between us.'

    She
traced a finger along her bottom lip.

    'But even
if you never
did
tell me what happened there, it wouldn't really bother
me if it was just a one-off.' She faced me. 'But it's not going to be a
one-off.'

    'Liz,
it's my job. This is what I do. I don't…' It was my turn to pause this time. I
reached across the desk and took her hand. She pulled it away. 'I find people.'

    'You
find
screwed-up
people, David. You put yourself on the line, your
body
on the line, and you hope, somehow, you're going to come out the other
side still breathing. And I don't care about the lies and the details you leave
out. What I care about is
why
you do it.' She stopped and looked at me
for a long time. 'Why do you do it?'

    'I
have other cases.'

    '
Do
you?'

    'Of
course I do.'

    'How
many since that last one?'

    'Four.'

    'In
ten months?'

    'That
last one…' I looked down at my fingernails. 'It took a lot out of me. I needed
time to recover. But cases like that, cases like this…' I smiled. They're
unusual.'

    'But
you still take them on.'

    'I can't
predict how they're going to turn out. If I could do that I wouldn't be finding
missing people, I'd be doing the Lottery every week.'

    'Yeah,
but most people would turn around and walk away when things started going
south,' she said. 'Do you think anyone else would have teamed up with Healy,
stuck two fingers up at the police and headed right into the lair of a
psychopath like Glass?'

    'He
needed to be stopped.'

    'By
the police.'

    I
reached for her, and this time didn't let her wriggle away. 'Sometimes you need
to do things because they're right — even if they're not
legally
right.'

    She
had her head down, facing the table, hair spilling past her ears. I squeezed
her hands, trying to get her to look at me. But she didn't. She stayed still.
Silent.

    'Liz?'

    Then
she looked up. 'I can't compete with her.'

    I
frowned. 'What are you talking about?'

    'Derryn.
I can't compete with her, David.'

    'What?
You don't
have
to compete with —'

    'You
don't have that mechanism that tells you when enough is enough. You don't know
when to stop. You're trying to plug holes in the world because you know what
it's like to lose someone, and you think it's your job to stop anyone else
suffering the same way. You're doing this for
her,
David. That case up
north was for her. And this one is too. You're plugging the hole she left
behind by taking on other people's pain. And I can't compete with that.'

    I let
go of her hands. She looked at me, a tear breaking free, a watery streak of
mascara following in its wake. I stared back, unable to articulate. Unable to
come back with any argument.

    Because
I knew, deep down, she might be right.

    The
interview took two and a half hours. Liz sat beside me the whole time, stopping
me if she felt I needed to be redirected away from something harmful. Hart and
Davidson came at me hard, like attack dogs, trying to catch me out, trying to
lead me into blind alleys and oneway streets. They both played on my
relationship with Healy. They tried to make it sound stronger and more
purposeful than it was. They used the moment outside the safe house when Healy
had pulled a gun to underline their case, Hart making mention of how I'd done
nothing to dissuade Healy.

    'I
told him to put the gun away.'

    'Once,'
Hart said. 'Half-heartedly. The second time, when you saw what I was telling
you to do, you ignored me. Then you ran off into the sunset with him.'

    'I
felt—'

    'You
felt a kinship for him, David.'

    'No.'

    'You
believed what he was doing was right.'

    'No.'
I sighed.

    'Then
why did you do it?'

    I
paused, glanced at Liz and then back to them. 'I felt his actions were wrong —
but his reasons were right.'

    Davidson
snorted. 'How do you figure that?'

    'I
think he was frustrated.'

    'With
who?'

    'With
you.'

    Silence
descended. It was hot in the room, and the only sound now was the whirr of an
air-conditioning unit.

    'Look
at it from his point of view,' I continued. 'You brushed his daughter's
disappearance under the carpet with the other seven, but you didn't even have
the decency to link her to Glass.'

    A
tremor passed across the room.

    Davidson
whitened. Hart crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. 'What are you
talking about, David?'

    'You
know what I'm talking about.'