The Dead Tracks

Chapter Sixty-nine

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.