Hush Page 17

  “Oh God!” she squealed.

  “I’m sorry!” Whitt held his hands up. Even in the dark of the car he could see her mascara was running, see the tension in her throat as she suppressed sobs. “I’m Detective Whittacker. Remember me?”

  Shania Mallally held the steering wheel for a long moment, staring straight ahead, her body now and then shuddering with tears. She got out of the car and stood with him, the sound of the roaring ocean reaching them from a few streets over.

  “I can’t—do this—right now,” she cried like a child, unable to catch her breath. “I—just—”

  “Who told you?” Whitt asked. He chanced putting his hands on her arms, giving them a squeeze.

  “One of—the—other detectives.” She glanced around, probably wary of people she knew in the streets. “Spader. He just—He just—He just—”

  “He just came out with it,” Whitt said. “Laid it on you.”

  Shania nodded.

  “Yeah, he’s not really the empathetic type.” Whitt rubbed the woman’s arms. “But it would have been a real shock either way, I guess.” She fell against his chest unexpectedly and he held her. As he did so he wondered if she was hiding her face from a young couple who passed, the tall bearded man giving Whitt a look of solidarity as he went.

  Inside the bar he sat rigidly, refusing to look at the wine list at his elbow while she explained it all. She didn’t even notice when he didn’t order himself anything, gulping her martini like medicine between sobs. They were the only people there, and the bartender made himself scarce.

  “I’ve seen her,” Shania Mallally said. “The girl. He brought her around the house while I was there. He said she was a client. They had meetings. I suppose she was looking around the place and imagining herself moving in. Sunbathing in the pool area. Making lunch for the girls and sending them off to school. He might have been fucking her in the upstairs office while I watched television downstairs. Oh, Christ.” She wiped at her eyes. “Detective Spader wanted to know if Louis had a second phone that he’d used specifically for the affair. As if I’d know!”

  “A second phone is pretty common, for affairs,” Whitt said. He was finding himself scratching around for something comforting to say to Shania. “The police wouldn’t need the handset exactly. Just the number.”

  “Listen to you,” Shania sniffed. “Looking for clues. You’re trying to find her too. She’s probably shacked up with some other wealthy lawyer. Found a bigger goldmine to dig.”

  Whitt pursed his lips. The bartender was watching them from the other end of the bar, polishing glasses, intrigued by Shania’s harsh tone.

  “My understanding is that this girl is a long-term drug addict. That she has a baby she frequently loses custody of.”

  “That’s right,” Whitt said.

  “Addicts.” Shania sniffed, wiped her eyes again. “They’re weak people. Louis used to deal with them early in his career. They never really straighten out.”

  Whitt shifted uncomfortably in his chair, slid the wine list away from him down the bar. “I think you might be stereotyping, Mrs. Mallally.”

  “It is true that the current lead on her whereabouts is bikies from the Outback? I mean, are you serious?”

  Whitt could smell the martini on her breath. There was a siren in his head, ringing louder and louder as the minutes passed, wailing his need for a drink.

  “I’ve barely seen him in weeks, you know.” Shania drained her martini. “I thought it was this huge case tying him up. Now I know the truth.” She gave a rueful laugh.

  “The corruption thing?” Whitt grasped at anything that might distract her from the affair. “I’ve seen some of it on the news.”

  “It’ll be his biggest-paying defense to date. It was supposed to change everything. I suppose it will. I’ll fight for half of whatever he gains from it in the divorce.”

  She explained the case. The company was called VISKO, an Australian-grown security firm that had begun its life providing on-site security to shipping warehouses and marinas around Sydney Harbour. VISKO’s CEO, a petite, well-dressed up-and-comer named Antonio Santarelli, was the Aussie migrant dream realized—he’d worked in his father’s shoe shop to put himself through business school. Through his twenties and into his thirties, Santarelli had grown VISKO security from a fifty-man team to a fifteen-thousand-man empire that watched over warehouses, shopping centers, universities, stadiums, and small airports all over Australia.

  “So what’s Santarelli charged with?”

  Shania held up a finger, paused before she recited. “Section 249B(1) of the Crimes Act prohibits an agent from corruptly offering or receiving any benefit from another person as an inducement, a reward, or on account of doing or not doing something, or showing or not showing any favor to any person in relation to the affairs or business of the agent’s principal.”

  She broke into laughter. “Are you impressed?” Shania slapped Whitt’s knee. “This is my second martini, you know.”

  “Actually I believe it’s your third.”

  “I was in law school but I dropped out.” She sipped her drink. “That’s where Louis and I met.”

  “So Santarelli paid a bribe?” Whitt asked.

  “Sydney Airport was due to renew its security license with a company called Wake Services. It was a big, big contract. All Australia’s other airports tend to follow Sydney with their food and cleaning and security services. We’re talking tens of thousands of jobs, specialist teams on the metal detectors and the baggage handling and parking and the tarmac. Everything. Santarelli wanted the job, so he paid a guy, the CEO of the airport. Drew Bortfield, I think his name was. Weird name, Bortfield.” Shania was growing bored, her mind wandering, her gaze becoming sadder as she looked at her empty glass. “Anyway, Bortford got caught by the anti-corruption squad. He flipped on Santarelli. Bortfield, I mean.”

  “Something like that could take down Santarelli’s whole business,” Whitt mused. “It would be a big case. Your husband’s probably looking at millions of dollars in legal fees.”

  “Yes. What a waste.” Shania smoothed her hair back and looked Whitt right in the eyes. “All that money, and he’ll blow it on flowers and jewelry and nice cars for his little junkie girlfriend. She’ll probably snort the whole lot up her nose, if she’s not dead already.”

  “OK.” Whitt stood. “I think it’s home time for you, Mrs. Mallally.”

  “No way.” She stood with him, tried to grip the hand that was passing his credit card over the bar. “We’re not going home. You’re coming with me. I know the night manager at the Park Hyatt. We could get a cab…?”

  “I’m driving you back to your house and seeing you to the door, Mrs. Mallally.” Whitt put an arm around her, guided her to the exit of the bar.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” She shrugged his arm off. “I’m offering myself to you. Don’t you think I’m beautiful?”

  “You certainly are,” he said.

  Shania stopped him in the street just before they reached his car. Her eyes were big and wet again. “Don’t tell me. Your heart belongs to another, or some bullshit like that?”

  “You could say that, I guess.” Whitt smiled.

  Chapter 71

  SOME PARTS OF the Australian desert are just sand, miles and miles of it, red and peaked and valleyed by wind like the Sahara. Someone told me once that there are even herds of feral camels out there in the vast empty middle, making their strange, wide tracks across the landscape. But the desert I stood in with Whitt the next morning was not empty. It was crawling with life. From where we stood I could see some kind of sandy lizard flattened on a rock in the sunshine, a collection of red ants working on a mound, and dust-colored rabbits on the faraway rise hopping in and out of bushes that had razor-pointed edges. The land fell gently away from us, rocky and spiky and treacherous, and then rose to a small hill. I could hear the nearest transmission tower humming. It was strangely loud. I wondered if I was soaking up cancerous ra
ys both from the tower and from the boiling sun on the back of my neck.

  Tox Barnes was standing on what remained of the searing blacktop, holding the photograph of Jax Gotten against the skyline like a surveyor.

  “This can’t be it,” I said.

  “Why not?” he asked. “Looks like it to me.” He came over and showed me the photograph again, pointed to the little hill in the distance.

  “If this was a bikie body-dumping ground, the Silver Aces crew would be crawling all over it, trying to move their evidence,” I said. “Look at our tire tracks. There’s an inch of dust on the plain. No one’s been out here in weeks.”

  “If they have a body-dumping ground at all,” Whitt chipped in.

  “Jax Gotten must know by now that I’ve got a copy of that photo from his computer,” I said. “He’d have thought to check his sent items. He’s not going to let us come and discover whatever it is that he’s buried out here.”

  “He may not know yet,” Tox said. “And if he does know, he might figure there’s no way for us to identify where the site is.”

  I folded my arms, not convinced.

  “The bikies wouldn’t be crawling all over it,” Tox continued, sitting on the hood of Whitt’s car. “They’d be taking care to stay as far away as possible. Nigel’s team is tracking them, and they’d know that. They’re going to be on their best behavior, and that means staying away from their body dump sites.”

  “Didn’t you say that the woman in the Forensics lab said it’s a million to one you can match that image to an actual spot on the planet?” Whitt asked. “With all the variables?”

  “She did.” Tox nodded. “But I think we’re onto something. I can feel it.”

  “You can feel it?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “How is Tox Barnes the most optimistic one of us out here today?” I asked Whitt. In the distance, a Forensics van and a canine-unit truck were creating a dust cloud as they headed toward us.

  “He’s in a good mood. He’s had an appointment with Doctor Luuurve,” Whitt said.

  “Oh, yes.” I grinned at Tox. “He’s juiced up on her sweet, sweet medicine.”

  “Diagnosis: extreme infatuation,” Whitt said.

  “Prescription: vigorous bed rest,” I said.

  Tox didn’t bite. He was holding the photo up to the horizon again.

  A crew of Forensics officers and a dog handler assembled at the side of the road, unhappy faces, eyes downturned to their work. There was an expected muttering of dissent as the men from the Forensics van unloaded bags and boxes of equipment on the dirt road and the dog handler wrestled a crate with a beagle in it down from the back of her car.

  “I thought beagles were drug dogs,” I said, trying to make conversation. It was clear to me from the team’s faces that they knew who I was and didn’t want to work with a suspended cop who should rightfully have been in jail. The presence of Tox Barnes, the New South Wales Police’s favorite punching bag, wouldn’t have helped matters. But I’ve always found that a hard job is best started with a cheerful attitude, even if it eventually must dissolve into misery and spite. The dog handler gave me a heavy, bored sigh as she shut up her truck.

  “Any breed of dog can be a cadaver dog. Training and attitude, that’s all there is to it.”

  “Are we really working off a photo?” one of the Forensics guys said. “We heard Caroline at the Surry Hills lab basically had to throw a dart at a map to get Barnes off her case.”

  “This is a waste of time,” another said, wiping sweat off his neck with the collar of his shirt. “If I get heat stroke I’m claiming compo.”

  “Let’s send the dog out first.” Tox walked over to the dog handler. “We’ll do a grid, check off this area. There are a couple of other spots along the line of transmission towers that Caroline said we should search. Right elevation, right ground conditions. Shouldn’t take until nightfall to get it all completed.”

  I looked at my watch. It was nine in the morning. It was going to be a hellish day in the heat. The dog handler bent and unlocked the dog’s crate, and the beagle trotted out importantly, did a lap around Tox’s ankles, tail wagging. We watched it walk off the dirt road to the edge of the desert, maybe a meter into the wilds and no more.

  Then it sat, hard and fast, like a little soldier snapping to attention. Butt slammed on the ground. Chest out, head up, tail dead still.

  The dog handler looked bemused. She glanced at the sprawling desert before us, collecting a dog leash in a spool in her hand.

  “All right, Sprocket. Let’s go. Time for work.” She pointed at her boots. “Come, Sprocket.”

  The dog sat, facing the desert. It turned its head and looked over its shoulder at her. The men and women around me waited in silence.

  “Come, Sprocket,” the handler said again, tapping the heel of one of her boots against the toe of the other. The dog looked at her.

  “What’s he doing?” Tox asked.

  “He’s…” The handler squinted at the horizon, shielded her eyes from the glare. “Well, he’s alerting. He’s supposed to sit like that when he hits on remains. But I haven’t even started the search yet. I haven’t even told him to start looking.”

  The little dog sat and stared at the landscape ahead of it. We all watched it.

  In time, Tox picked up a shovel that had been leaning against his Monaro and walked off the road into the desert.

  Chapter 72

  MY PHONE RANG at midday. I had just got into Whitt’s car and turned the engine on, blowing dust and sand off my clothes as I jacked the air conditioning up to maximum. My clothes were damp with sweat. Everyone’s were. We had been working tirelessly in the desert sun for hours, each of us infected with an energy and determination that defies personal grudges and dark histories and the threat of heat stroke. Outside the car window, the Forensics team were sticking flags in the sand, gesturing toward their truck, arguing about what to do when they ran out of flags.

  “Spader,” I said. “What do you want?”

  “I’m hearing things about a gravesite,” Nigel said.

  “You heard right. We’ve called in more resources,” I said. “Tox had a hunch about a photograph we took off Jax Gotten. We came out here looking for Tonya and Rebel’s graves, maybe. Instead we’ve found a mass grave. There are…” I looked out the window, shook my head. “There are so many bodies out here. Maybe a dozen so far. All skeletal. Tox walked into the desert and stuck a shovel in the ground and turned up a radial bone, first fucking shot. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Explains why Gotten has bolted,” Nigel said.

  “He’s what?”

  “He’s bolted.” Nigel sounded depressed. “We’ve got a manhunt on here.”

  “Your team was supposed to—”

  “Don’t start,” he said. “Just don’t.”

  “Well, don’t let Louis Mallally bolt, will you?” I snapped. “He’s not off the hook yet. There’s a reason we can’t find a second phone. And one of Mallally’s associate lawyers was defending—”

  “Just shut up, Blue,” Nigel said. I opened my mouth to blast him but he cut over me. “Get in your car and come here. I’m going to text you an address.”

  “I can’t go there. I’ve got a mass gravesite. Did you not hear me?”

  “Uh-huh.” He sounded distant. “Just leave Tox and Whitt there and get to where I’m telling you to go, right now.”

  “You sound weird,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?” I was starting to feel a strange shakiness creeping up from my fingers into my arms. This was the first conversation I’d had with Nigel Spader, perhaps in my entire career, in which he hadn’t tried to shoot me down me with some pathetic insult.

  “They found Tonya,” was all he said.

  Chapter 73

  I DROVE LIKE an insane person, veering onto the wrong side of the road to overtake trucks on the highway with my teeth gritted, heading for a marker on a map in the Western Sydney suburb of Toongabbie.
As I passed through a wide, tall gate heading toward boom gates and a weigh station, I read a sign that said Suez Waste Management. The smell coming through the car’s air conditioning was suddenly sour and sweet, the familiar reek of garbage I’d thankfully encountered only a few times in my career.

  I’d trawled waste disposal sites for evidence before. Knives, photographs, guns, handbags thrown into city skips following rapes and murders. I prayed as I drove through the boom gates and parked between two police cruisers that I’d be looking for such an item again. But as Nigel Spader spotted me from a huddle near one of the large sorting buildings, I knew from his face what was happening. He was wearing gloves and forensic booties. He peeled the gloves off, pocketed them and lit a cigarette on his way to greet me at the car. I watched him approach in the rear-view mirror, unable to move, hoping somehow that if I stayed where I was the awful truth might stay where it was too, in the unknown future.

  I popped open my door and he leaned on the frame. I looked at him hopefully. He shook his head.

  “The baby?” I asked.

  “We’re still searching.”

  Chapter 74

  A LIGHT RAIN started falling, misting, swirling in by Nigel’s breath. There were flecks of shredded paper in the mud everywhere under my boots, like fallen snow, little letters and numbers discernible on some of the tiny pieces. I got out of the car, threw my phone back on the seat. My shocked brain’s hyper focus on tiny details and the cool, cloudy sky in contrast to the searing heat I’d been in only hours ago made the whole situation seem unreal. The men standing by the corner of the sorting building were actors in a play waiting for me to join them. Harriet Blue enters stage right. They looked at me sadly, the usual hatred gone. Death does that. Makes everyone equal.