Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(15)

Rosetta Poelar had disappeared from a side street off of Parramatta Road, near the university’s veterinary science building. CCTV inside a bicycle shop captured Sam walking through the area just fifteen minutes before Rosetta was last seen.

Sam had been at the right place, at the right time, for all three abductions. Police had been watching him, and they didn’t like what they saw. He was single. He was antisocial. He had a history of juvenile crime. If he was as violent as his sister when he lost control, he might be deadly. The task force had jumped in and made an arrest even if the evidence was flimsy. The media had been hounding them for progress. Even a false arrest at that point would have been something.

That night, things took a turn. The police had found worrying evidence inside Sam’s apartment – some violent porn, a rape dungeon–style set-up in his back bedroom. Those things were circumstantial. There was no evidence of any of the girls at Sam’s place, and no evidence of Sam on any of their bodies. But the prosecution could physically place him near all three abduction sites. What were the odds?

I woke from a sweaty half-slumber and slid my notebook out from under my pillow. I flipped through the crime scene photographs of the girls’ bodies sprawled on the banks of the Georges River. I looked at the trees on the opposite bank, a blur of pale eucalypts in the photograph. Fine grey sand and murky brown water. This place meant something to the killer. What had it meant to us?

My childhood had been full of rivers, fields, national parks. Often, Sam and I found ourselves in large families with multiple foster children lumped together with biological children. When child services found a willing foster carer, someone who was reliable, they sent them as many kids as they could possibly handle. Sam and I, two moody, aggressive white kids, would become part of an odd collection of youngsters all under the care of one foster couple. With so many kids in tow, traditional means of entertainment were off the cards. Going to the movies was too expensive. The families would take us to parks, rivers and long, empty beaches. Sam and I had spent time at the Georges River, but that time hadn’t been any more meaningful than it had been anywhere else. At least, it hadn’t to me.

Maybe there were things about Sam I didn’t know. We’d been separated now and then, sometimes for up to a year, when families wouldn’t take us both. Maybe there was another Sam, a brother grown out of those blank spaces in his life, the ones I hadn’t witnessed.

An evil Sam.





Chapter 22


THERE WAS LITTLE to say to Kash and Snale when I arrived in the kitchen in the morning. Kash was reading the Herald on his iPad, a two-page spread about my brother.

‘We’ve got to go,’ I said, drawing on my cap.

As we started walking into town, Kash lagged behind us, talking on his phone. I eavesdropped on his conversation, trying to distract myself.

‘You can’t take that. I bought it. You – But, Tenacity, baby, let me talk for a second, will you?’

Tenacity. I’d heard that name before. When I first learned Tenacity Bridge’s name, I thought she’d probably had a mother who’d thought she was cool landing her daughter with a moniker people would cringe at for the rest of her life, like mine. My secret shame, ‘Jupiter’, was at least my middle name and not my first, and I’d been able to hide it for most of my life.

The Tenacity I knew had been a victim I met in my work in Sex Crimes. A young man named Alex Finton had climbed in through her bathroom window one night and sexually assaulted her in her bed. I wondered silently if the woman Kash was talking to on the phone was the same one. How many could there be?

I was drawn out of my daydream by the crowd gathered out the front of the town pub, squinting in the sunlight. They turned angry faces on Kash and me. A sneer twisted the lips of the nearest person. It was only then that I noticed almost all of them were carrying rifles.

‘There they are,’ said one man, advancing towards us.





Chapter 23


‘WE WANT TO know what the hell’s going on.’ The man jutted his chin at me, turned and sized up the much larger Agent Kash. ‘We’re hearing the whole bloody town’s about to be attacked, and we’re seeing Sydney’s sent exactly two coppers to protect us. This is bullshit!’

‘Whoa, hold up.’ Kash put a hand out. ‘I’m not a cop. I’m a trained federal agent specialising in counter-terrorism.’

‘Terrorism?’ The group glanced nervously at each other, shifted their rifles. ‘Is it a terrorist?’

‘No.’ I stepped between them. ‘There is nothing to suggest right now that –’

‘Them Muslims,’ someone seethed. ‘I knew it’d only be a matter of ti–’

I didn’t have the patience for this. I was about ready to snap when a man broke in to the group, short and pot-bellied with thinning ginger hair.

‘Let’s keep this under control, huh, Jace?’ He put a hand on the rifleman’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure these officers know what they’re doing.’ The man turned to me, offered a hand. ‘I’m John Destro. Everybody calls me Dez.’

‘Dez is the mayor,’ Snale told me.

The man laughed, showing teeth so straight and white they could have been dentures.

‘Well, technically Last Chance is too small to appoint a mayor. I call myself that but I don’t get the salary.’ He smiled warmly. ‘I run the post office. So I’m the most powerful guy in town.’