Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(27)

Kash had tried to convince me all evening that Adeel Taby, Zac’s father, was a worthy avenue we needed to be looking into. Ektor Corp, the company he worked for, had its hands in oil and gas extraction in the Middle East, and there were rumours of the company’s interest in arms dealership. I reminded him that I was in charge. We’d made a deal. Taby’s parents didn’t interest me as suspects.

I pressed open the diary again and touched the tiny, fluid handwriting, ran my fingers over the printed images of mass shooters glued onto the pages. The handwriting didn’t look like Zac Taby’s. But I wasn’t an expert on that. The diarist and Zac shared a propensity to push overly hard on the paper, dent the pages, make it difficult to read the words in the left-hand side of every page.

The diarist had made a close analysis of the actions of Elliot Rodger, who’d killed six people and injured fourteen others on a rampage through Isla Vista, California. Rodger had stabbed his three housemates, then gone after young women in a sorority house nearby, punishing any women he could find for all the sexual rejection he’d faced in his life. The diarist’s commentary was more critical of Rodger’s killings than it had been for the other shooters. There was a list of ‘mistakes’ on the right-hand side of the page, under a map of the killer’s route of terror through the city.

Most victims random, not personal.

Undignified video confessional before shooting. Sounds desperate.

High-risk initiation – could have been caught after stabbing housemates.



I made a note to check what sort of counselling services were available in the area, both to teens and adults, and what the levels of depression and suicide were in the region. The diarist seemed particularly interested in leaving a good-quality manifesto of their ideas and complaints, their reasons for doing what they were planning to do. They would only plan on doing that if they didn’t see themselves being around to talk about those things in the aftermath.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attacking kids at their high school who had taunted them. Elliot Rodger attacking girls who had rejected him. I googled Seung-Hui Cho and watched excerpts of his video manifesto on YouTube.

You have vandalised my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option.

These young men weren’t trying to inspire people. Each of them would kill themselves after their attacks. They wanted vengeance. It wasn’t terrorism. It was payback.

I shifted my papers around, found my phone and looked through Whitt’s email from earlier in the evening about meeting Tox. A tiny smile played about my lips. My heart had been aching to be home, and now I had a new reason to dream of myself there. The incomprehensible partnership of Whitt and Tox: a man who never went anywhere without a personal manicure kit, and a man who I’d seen walk around with blood all over his shirt for two straight days. Wherever the two went with the leads I had given Whitt, one of them would meticulously gather the tiny breadcrumbs of every possible scenario while the other walked ahead of him, kicking down doors and shoving people out of his partner’s path.

When my phone rang, I expected it to be Whitt, but it was a number I didn’t recognise. I walked out to the front porch and sat on the step looking at the stars.

‘Harry,’ a voice said. ‘It’s me.’

My heart twisted in my chest.





Chapter 37


THE LAST TIME I had seen my mother had been on the street corner outside my apartment in Pyrmont. Her hands had been wrapped in bandages, and her hair had been a thin, burgundy nightmare. A fresh tattoo on her neck. She’d wanted to live with me. I’d had to turn her away. She’d stayed overnight with me before, but I’d awakened to find all my valuables and cash gone and my front door wide open.

I didn’t know what to say to her at first, now that she was on the phone. I had tried to contact our mother when Sam was first arrested, but she hadn’t responded. I’d wondered if she was dead. There was not a centimetre of the Australian landscape that wasn’t saturated with the media coverage of the Georges River Killer and his dramatic capture. I looked at the stars and sighed.

‘Are you there?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How can I help you, Julia?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call me Julia,’ she said. ‘It’s bad manners.’

‘Is there something that you need?’

‘I don’t need anything, baby. I’m calling to see how youse are. You and Sam.’

Why don’t you take a guess?

‘We’re fine,’ I lied. ‘Was there something else?’

‘I tried to go to the courthouse today, but I was too late. They’d shut the doors. I want to visit Sammy but I’m not on his visitors list. Can you get him to put me on?’

‘You’re not worried you’ll be arrested as soon as you walk in the door?’ I asked. ‘You’ve still got warrants out.’ My mother’s crimes of choice were burglary and car theft. She was wanted in four states.

‘I need to see him.’

‘Well,’ I sighed, ‘you could give it a shot.’

‘I’ve been crying for days and days,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s been hard to contact youse both. After I saw the headlines, I was just fucking out of it. You know? I just lost it, mate. I went to bed and I pretty much haven’t been up in months.’