Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(61)

‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘What’s your point?’

‘My point is that I saw the evidence, Detective Blue. The duct tape on the bed. The messy sheets. The video camera. It was sick. I have nightmares about what happened in that apartment. I find it mildly infuriating that you’ve stuck by your brother all this time, that’s all.’

‘Nothing happened in that apartment,’ I said.

‘Maybe we should just –’ Kash said.

‘What’s your explanation, then?’ Glen said. ‘I’ve heard you say your brother is being framed. You must believe he was framed by this guy the police are hunting right now, the shaven-headed guy, the one who abducted Caitlyn McBeal. The guy who told her he was Sam’s partner. So, what, this guy abducts these girls right from under your brother’s nose and savagely murders them and dumps them like pieces of trash. He waits until Sam goes to work and he says, “Ha ha! Now’s my chance to do it again!” He abducts Caitlyn, and he’s all ready to do his nasty business on her, when “Oh, hot damn!” Sam’s been arrested! Shit! Holy moly! This wasn’t in the script!’

‘Mate,’ – Kash stepped forwards, put a hand out – ‘just back down.’

‘So the guy thinks, Shit, I’d better high-tail it over to Sam’s place and plant that evidence I was going to plant before the police raid the place!’ Glen was waving his hands theatrically now. He waited for me to give him some kind of answer. But no words would come.

‘Isn’t it more likely,’ Glen said, ‘that Sam was going to go home that night and this man with the shaved head was going to be there, and they were going to kill Caitlyn McBeal together? You’re violent, Detective. Everybody knows that. Isn’t it more likely that your brother is violent, too, than the gentle, misunderstood innocent man you say he is? Let’s be real!’

There was an old and familiar Harry who would have stepped forwards and uppercut the man before me. A swift and hard skyward thrust. But when I called on her, I found her too tired to wake.

I turned and walked towards the car, heard Kash calling after me as I got in. This time, I didn’t have the strength to fight, to face my troubles. I ran.





Chapter 94


LET’S BE REAL!

I drove through the desert, being real.

Yes, my brother had confessed to the murders of three beautiful young women who studied at the same university he worked at three days a week. They’d disappeared, as Glen the Forensics arsehole had said, from right under my brother’s nose. It was ‘likely’ these things had happened because my brother had killed them.

Yes, an awful collection of violent sexual pornography was found in my brother’s apartment. It was ‘likely’ this was because Sam himself had acquired that material. Because he liked it. Because he’d used it to fuel his fantasies. Because he was a killer.

Yes, it was ‘likely’ that whoever the man with the shaved head was, he’d told Caitlyn McBeal that he was my brother’s partner because he was, indeed, my brother’s partner.

Yes, it was ‘likely’ that Sam was violent, because I was violent.

That he had a dark edge, a beast inside, that he could not control. A vicious internal guard dog, identical to the one that had started growing inside me almost from the moment I was born. It was a hellhound, a ferocious thing that I unleashed whenever I needed to. I’d let him free as a child when foster fathers and older brothers crept into my bedroom at night. When kids at new schools ragged on me. When the men I hunted in my job got away with what they’d done to their victims, and someone had to pick up the slack.

My dog was dangerous. It leapt out before I could stop it. Sometimes I could wrangle it back. But the beast had done such a good job over the years protecting me, it was too strong and wild now for me to ever hope to tame.

Did Sam have a beast inside? Had it gone feral on him? Got a taste for blood it couldn’t sate?

No. I would never believe that. Could never, ever believe that.

Because if it could happen to him, it could happen to me.





Chapter 95


AGAIN I CAME upon Jed Chatt’s house without meaning to, and I pulled in to the driveway with horror, realising I’d probably been under the gaze of his rifle for the last kilometre without thinking about it. The crosshairs trained on my face. I wiped at my cheeks and found tears. This wasn’t good. I got out and walked up the rocky slope, still arguing with Glen in my mind. Digger the dog burst into a sprint from where she had emerged at the side of the porch, barking happily at me.

‘Oh, you.’ I wiped my nose. The dog jumped and pawed at my waist and I rubbed her furry head. ‘I’m sorry about before.’

Jed Chatt came out the front door of the house and stood watching me, a general look of disapproval on his face.

‘I told you to rack off,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ I said, leading the dog towards him. ‘People do that.’

He rolled his eyes, weary, and strode back into the house, letting the screen door slap shut. I noticed how remarkably the house had changed. The porch had been swept bare and the old barbecue was gone. The dog followed me inside.

The lanky, long-jawed man was sitting on the faded couch now with an assortment of plastic parts in front of him, tiny screws and brightly coloured joints. A baby’s play gym half-assembled, some of it still in the shipping box beside him. There must have been so much of this activity in the time since I had seen him last. Gathering up, sorting, squaring away his own things. Making room for the new life that had joined him.