The Mak Collection (166 page)

So Damien was back. Well, so was Makedde.

And she was eager to find out just which of his ‘old ways’ he was indulging in. Bad habits were hard to break. She had a few ideas about how to find out just what he had been up to.

The case. Get to the case you are being paid for.

Now it was Adam Hart’s turn to have his internet imprint investigated. Mak had already typed Adam’s name in a simple search, and found 125,000 hits from around the world. It was too common a name. When she narrowed it down to Australian hits, she found a link to Facebook, clearly showing the missing boy’s face. It had been easy to find him electronically, but would be more difficult, probably, to get a response from her ‘friend request’, as it was called. If he was indeed alive and well, and able to access the internet, she might get some communication going. To do that, she first had to get him to accept her as a friend. She hoped Tobias could be of help in that regard. It was a bit of a long shot, but if Adam was logging on, he might just reply to her message or accept her Facebook friend request and end up in communication with the very investigator being paid to track him down. In the meantime, though, Mak had access to seventy-five of his Facebook friends whom she could now ask about him. It was virtual door knocking.

Mak flicked through what she could find on Adam Hart, aware that this process was precisely the same kind of search newspapers and other media routinely did every time some kid turned up dead or disfigured in a hideous, national interest tragi-story. They just looked them up and pulled personal photos of them off the social networking sites to accompany the story.

She hoped she could find Adam before that profile photo was printed everywhere, with the caption Found Dead: Adam Hart. Photo courtesy of Facebook.

Beep.

Beep.

Mak’s phone rang, and she tensed. She pushed her laptop away and picked up her mobile. It was Karen, calling her already.

‘Hello,’ she answered. ‘Thanks for coming over. I’m sorry if—’

‘They finally found the guy who did it,’ Karen said abruptly.

‘Did what? Who?’

‘The guy who killed your Meaghan Wallace. He’s been found, so you can stop looking for him.’

Mak digested that.
They found Meaghan’s killer?
‘The guy Simon Aston said did it? He said it was a hitman, right?’

‘A small-time thug, really. He had a few priors. Was known to police. Probably hadn’t done a lot of heavy work before,’ Karen told her, while Mak madly scribbled notes. ‘He must have screwed something up, though. His remains were found in the back of his burned-out car, charred and badly decomposed. And I do mean
badly decomposed
,’ she said. ‘From the photos, you could hardly tell he was human. There was almost nothing left of him or the vehicle. It was a miracle they could make an ID.’

Mak locked onto the new information about the case with a rush of adrenaline. ‘His name?’

‘Warwick O’Connor. Positive ID.’

‘So he was in the back seat of a car. Killed? A car accident? What happened?’

‘No,’ Karen explained. ‘He was in the back, as in the
boot
of the car. The trunk, as you Canadian types call it.’

If he was in the trunk, that could only mean that someone had quite literally dispatched the dispatcher. She imagined
how terrifying it would be to be trapped in the trunk of a car. A burned-out car? Was it burning when he was still alive?

She shivered.

‘When did they get an ID?’ Mak asked, suspicious that Andy had known this key information and not passed it on to her. Before his suicide, Simon Aston had confessed to organising a hit on the witness Meaghan Wallace, and had given a name, but the man he pointed to had disappeared. And now he’d shown up dead in the back of a car. How could anyone ever know if he had really been guilty of anything? Dead bodies could not defend themselves.

‘After our convo I had a sniff around. As you know, I was part of the original investigation,’ Karen explained. ‘But it’s a closed case now, and nobody told me about this new detail. Jimmy said he did the death knock yesterday. O’Connor’s wife was none too impressed that it had taken so long to ID him.’

Mak wondered if Karen’s friendship with her had prevented anyone telling her earlier. She didn’t want to be a reason for her friend to be ostracised.

‘Karen, I can’t thank you enough for telling me. I know our conversation got a bit tense…I’m sorry for that.’

‘You’re back in Sydney, and I’m so glad,’ Karen said. ‘Just…
be careful
. You seem on edge.’

Mak frowned. Karen had a way of cutting past her defences and saying the most alarmingly apt things.
But what exactly am I on the edge of
? Mak wondered to herself, too afraid to ask Karen’s opinion.

‘You do know that we can’t know if he actually did it, or it was a setup,’ Mak said.

There was a pause on the line. ‘I know.’

‘Thank you, Karen. I appreciate the call.’

Mak hung up, excited by this first glimpse of new information.

So the guy who had been hired to kill Meaghan Wallace, or had been framed for the killing, was now conveniently dead. The guy who confessed to setting it up was also conveniently dead. In fact, every one of the key people involved in the case had ended up dead one way or another.

Except Mak.

Early evening on day two of Makedde’s investigation into Adam Hart’s disappearance, things were about to get interesting.

Mak was to meet Adam’s ex-girlfriend, Patrice, a woman his mother had failed at first to mention, and only grudgingly gave Mak the phone number for, once Mak mentioned her name. It appeared, if Tobias’s information was reliable, that she had been quite central in Adam’s recent life. Her name was Patrice, not Patricia—Tobias had that wrong—and she was four years older than Adam. She had sounded at least moderately helpful when Mak had called, and was a natural next stop. Hopefully meeting Patrice would give Mak more insight into Adam and his previous attempt to leave home.

Mak waited only a few seconds before the intercom was answered.

‘Come on up,’ the female voice said as the door buzzed, unlocking. Mak stepped into the building foyer.

Built in the nineties. Decent place. Not fancy.

She climbed two flights of stairs, found Apartment 308, and was about to knock when the door opened.

‘Hi.’

Patrice was an attractive young woman. She had a wholesome student look about her: large brown eyes, brown hair held back in a headband, good skin. Mak imagined her in a library somewhere, perhaps having finished a healthy game of tennis with some fetching young man who would let her win.

‘Thanks for agreeing to speak with me,’ Mak said.

‘Sure.’

Patrice sat down at her dining alcove and Mak took a seat opposite.

‘I have to leave in about ten minutes,’ Patrice began, sounding a bit short.

Okay, so that’s how it’s going to be.

Mak would have to cut straight to the point, which wasn’t always the best way to build rapport. ‘I appreciate your time, Patrice. I won’t keep you long.’

The young woman crossed her arms. ‘Look, I know this is about Adam but I don’t see what the point is because I don’t know anything.’

Mak nodded.
Great, she has her arms crossed defensively already.
‘You two dated for a while?’

Patrice nodded a silent yes.

‘I mentioned on the phone that I’m looking for him on behalf of his mother, and, because you dated for a while and knew him quite well, I thought I would ask you—’

‘I broke it off, like, a year or so ago.’

This is interesting
, Mak thought. According to Tobias’s story, admittedly vague, they had stopped dating no more than seven months earlier. Was Patrice being evasive for some reason?

‘I’m not a cop, Patrice, and you aren’t in any trouble. I just want to find out where Adam might have gone. I want to
make sure he’s okay.’ There was a nod, something that seemed like a positive sign of co-operation. Patrice even unfolded her arms. ‘Where did you two meet?’

‘The cafeteria at uni,’ Patrice answered.

‘And you started dating?’

‘Yeah.’

One-word answers really suck, Patrice
.

‘When was the last time you heard from Adam?’

‘Ages ago,’ she answered.

Ages ago. What is this ages ago? Does no one speak with reference to the normal passing of time?

‘Ages being one month, one week, one day?’ Mak pressed.

‘
No
.’ Patrice seemed cross. Those pretty eyes grew dark. ‘Not a day. Like, ages ago. Months.’

When a subject was being difficult in an interview, it was wise to wonder why. Did this young woman have anything to hide? Had she taken a dislike to Mak for some reason? Was she really so rushed? If so, why had she agreed to meet Mak?

‘So you haven’t heard anything from him in the past week. No notes? Emails? Phone messages?’

‘No. Why would I?’ Her response was immediate. ‘He didn’t write about me in that stupid diary of his, did he?’

Mak felt a touch of excitement.

Diary…There
is
a damn diary and I have to find it
.

Patrice opened up a touch. ‘Look, I liked the guy, but you know…he’s so
straight
. He doesn’t drink. Nothing. He doesn’t have a car. After I moved out of home, I just didn’t think we had much in common any more.’

Four years was not that much of an age difference, except when you considered that Adam was still living at home and
riding a bicycle. Patrice might have found her lifestyle being cramped by her younger boyfriend’s limitations.

‘Did he leave home? To be with you?’

Patrice bit her lower lip briefly.

‘Patrice, it’s okay. You can tell me; you won’t get in any trouble.’ Mak leaned forward sympathetically, and waited for more.

‘You said you’re not a cop, right?’

‘I promise you I am not a cop. I only care about finding Adam.’

‘Okay. Look. About a year or so ago, Adam decided to move in with me. Or maybe it was six months ago, I can’t remember. Anyway, he knew his mother wouldn’t approve, so I guess he just left and didn’t say goodbye, which I certainly didn’t make him do. That was his idea and I thought it was a bit…dramatic. It only lasted a week anyway. Not even. He is just
so straight
. It would never have worked.’

Mak considered that. ‘What do you mean by “so straight”?’

‘Like he would never drink or smoke or anything.’

‘Pot?’

‘Exactly. And I started bugging him about it. Eventually he agreed he would try it. So there is this party at my friend’s house and we’re all there. Adam doesn’t smoke fags, right? So we put some hash in a piece of bread, folded and toasted it. No big deal. Easy. And then an hour later he tells us he still can’t feel a thing. He is like, totally sober. So we did it again—another bud in some toast.’

Mak was no drug expert but she could see where this was going. If the drugs were ingested with food, they would take a long time to reach the stomach and take effect.

‘Finally it hit, like another hour later, and he completely freaked out. Adam was going on and on about how he couldn’t feel his tongue and he couldn’t talk. He said his hands were numb and he couldn’t breathe. He just freaked out. It was so uncool.’

‘You were embarrassed?’

Patrice nodded.

‘And then what happened?’ Mak prodded.

‘At the end of the night we all had to head home, but I’d been drinking, so he was the designated driver. Anyway, we got pulled over by the cops, and this cop, he actually shines his light across the floor of the car, and there it is, the rest of the hash. And Adam is driving and doesn’t even have a valid licence. Can you imagine? I thought we were really screwed. Then this cop just gives us a warning to drive carefully and waves us on. Adam went cold on the whole thing after that. He went home to his mother the next day. I broke it off with him after that. I mean, he was acting like a child.’

Mak nodded. ‘I haven’t found his diary yet. Do you know where he keeps it?’

‘I don’t know. Used to be under his bed.’

Mak had checked there already. She would check again.

‘I doubt his mother knows about it. There’s a lot she doesn’t know about him. She just tries to stifle his every creative impulse.’

‘What kind of other things wouldn’t she know about?’

At this, Patrice recoiled.

‘You won’t tell her any of this, will you?’

‘I just want to find him safe. That’s my job.’ She avoided the issue of disclosure. ‘Would there be anywhere else he might hide things, like his diary?’

‘Unless he took off with it, I’m guessing it should be somewhere in his room.’

Hidden in plain sight? Mak wondered.

‘Thank you, Patrice. That was very helpful.’

Yes, very helpful, actually.

Mak sat on the lonely loveseat and sipped strong tea that she didn’t want, as Glenise Hart searched her face for answers about her son’s disappearance. Mak wanted answers, too

‘Thanks for letting me take another look in Adam’s room, Glenise. But first, I need to ask you a few questions about Patrice.’

‘
Well
,’ Glenise piped up. ‘I
was
surprised when you phoned to ask about her. They are no longer together, you know.’

‘Yes, she told me. But tell me, what did you think of her?’

‘Well, she was a nice girl. But…’ Glenise trailed off. Clearly she had not approved. ‘They went out for nearly a year. It was Adam’s first real relationship. He suffered over her. I think it was the first time he’d had his heart broken.’

By the look of that photo on the beach, Adam was quite capable of breaking hearts himself, Mak thought.

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Glenise said. ‘He doesn’t talk to me about things like that.’ She fidgeted a bit with the pleat in her pants. ‘They split up about six months ago. I haven’t heard from her since. He didn’t talk about it, but I knew he was upset. He lost weight for a while there. He became even more…introverted, I suppose.’