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“Oh, that’s Sam and Debbie.” Sierra pointed to an older couple coming toward them. “My neighbors,” she clarified when he gave her a confused look. Of course, now he remembered. Sierra jumped out of the car to greet her friends, and he followed. She embraced the gray-haired woman, and the tall man patted her back in a fatherly gesture. It was nice to see Sierra had someone who appeared to care about her. Up till now, Reed had thought she’d seemed quite alone. He was glad that wasn’t the case.
“This is Officer Kapua,” she said, and the tall man, Sam, held out his hand to greet him.
“I’ve heard about you. The new cop on the block is hard to miss,” Sam said gruffly. “Sad to meet you under such circumstances, though.”
A car approached down the dirt track, driving fast, straight toward them, stopping all conversation. It was a white four-wheel-drive with a green National Parks and Wildlife sign on the side.
“Oh, shit,” Sierra said softly as a young, blonde, good-looking man stepped out of the car. She ducked her head and moved behind Reed. Was she hiding from this guy? He had on a dark-green weatherproof coat and khaki pants, and he was pulling on a cap with the same Wildlife logo as the car as he strode towards them.
“I’m Blake Tendall, the ranger in charge of this area.” He extended his hand toward Reed. “I just heard the news over the two-way. I came over as fast as I could, to see if I can be of any assistance.” He cast a quick glance around the rest of the small gathering, his gaze stopping when he came to Sierra, eyes widening with surprise.
“Sierra?” Blake seemed to blurt out her name without conscious thought. Reed watched the interplay with interest. The guy looked as if he’d been caught off-guard.
“Blake,” she said, acknowledging him with a nod. She was polite, but aloof. There was definitely something going on here. Something he needed to find out about. Later.
The kid had his mask of efficiency back up in place within seconds.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“I was just talking to Sam and his wife, Debbie.” Reed gestured to the older couple who’d also been watching the interplay between Sierra and this new guy with as much interest as he was.
“Yes, we were the ones who found the bones. Shall we show you?”
“Yes, lead the way, Sam. Can you three please stay behind us?” Reed asked. “The rest of you, please stay where you are,” Reed said to the gathering crowd. “We need to keep the scene as clean as possible.” Some of them nodded in agreement, but most of them stared at him speculatively. Weighing him up. The new cop. Reed slipped his hand into his pocket as they followed a barely-there trail into the dense scrub by the edge of the road. His fingers found the warm shape of his lucky penny. He let the worn edges slip though his fingertips. It calmed him, as it always did. Reminded him things would turn out the way they would, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do about it. Stressing about things he couldn’t control wouldn’t do him any good at all.
He was glad Sam was leading the way; he would’ve been lost in the first few minutes. The bush was thick and dense, overhung with the high branches of the towering eucalyptus trees above. It took them less than five minutes to come up against a wire fence line. How the hell were they going to climb this? Now he understood Sierra’s comments about it being one of the least likely places to look for a body. How would a killer get the body over this fence? He glanced back and saw Sierra, her face pinched and unhappy, with Blake following silently behind her. What was going on between those two?
“There’s a gate around here.” Sam indicated the direction.
“Yes, but not many people know about it, we like to discourage everybody from going in here,” Blake called out from behind them. Trying to be helpful or trying to exhibit his knowledge? A bit like a peacock fluffing up his feathers. Reed couldn’t decide. But he was definitely getting the vibe the ranger was here to prove a point. He was young and enthusiastic, but maybe he was taking his job just a little too seriously. Either that, or he was showing off for Sierra’s sake. By the look on her face, she wasn’t in the least bit impressed. Reed followed close behind Sam as they circumnavigated the fence.
“We almost didn’t go in,” Sam conceded. “But then Deb said what if the little girl had crawled under the fence? Or got through one of the holes. Wombats sometimes dig under the fence, and they can leave a hole big enough for a child to climb through. Deb said what if she was lying in there, hurt and couldn’t move, and we bypassed her because we didn’t want to disturb the Glossies? But I was really doubtful. I mean how would a little girl even get all the way out here?”
“I said we were told to search every square inch of our area, and that’s what we were going to do,” Deb interrupted. But we wouldn’t have found the bones if we hadn’t been searching in the grid pattern, either.” She looked at Reed. “You know what that is, of course, the grid pattern?”
He nodded. It meant each person in the team searched in a long line, all keeping parallel and at a designated distance from each other. The gap between searchers changed depending on who or what they were looking for and the type of terrain. He guessed in this case they were probably less than ten meters apart.
“Because I was holding my line,” Sam said. “I stepped over a log, rather than going around it, which is what I would’ve done if I’d been out walking normally. That’s when I saw them, poking out from beneath the log.” He gave a visible shudder as he spoke. “My heart nearly stopped beating for a second. Then I yelled for Deb to come and look.”
“What did you see?” Sierra spoke for the first time.
“Fingers. A hand. I saw a hand poking up out of the ground.” Sam’s face went pale at the memory. “I think something had been digging around beneath the log. You know, like an animal. Because the earth had been disturbed. Perhaps whatever it was uncovered the…body.”
“Did you touch anything? Disturb the site?” Reed knew his tone was too curt, but he needed to know.
“No. I knelt down to get a better look. But as soon as I saw what it was, I backed the hell away.”
Reed could sympathize. Most normal people never got to see a dead body. And when they did, they were completely freaked out by it.
“Here’s the gate.” Sam stopped next to a section of the fence, but Reed couldn’t see anything at first. Then as Sam’s fingers went to work unhooking loops of wire he began to make out the cleverly camouflaged gate. If you didn’t know it was there, a person would’ve been hard pressed to find it with the naked eye. Now he knew it was here, he could see the grass flattened around the entrance, where the search group had gone through.
“Who knows about this gate?” Reed asked.
“Only a select few,” Blake replied, as Sam was still busy unwiring the gate for them. “Us, the Park Rangers, of course. And all of the Friends of The Glossies.” Blake indicated to Sam and Debbie. “Plus a few others, mainly people interested in the birds or the habitat.”
Reed’s mind went into overdrive as he digested this fact. If there really were human remains inside this enclosure, then it might narrow down the field of suspects considerably. Sam finally got the gate open, and Reed followed him through the narrow opening.
“It’s over here.” Sam motioned for Reed to follow him. The undergrowth was thick in here, coming up past his knees. And the towering trees—Sierra had told him they were sugar gums—grew thickly as well, their large trunks making for an obstacle course as he wound his way between them. One of the trees had fallen and now lay sprawled ahead of them. The large, dead log was almost too big to step over, and now Reed suddenly understood what Sam had meant about wanting to go around it. Sam walked along the length of the log, peering over it at times, until he found what he was looking for. He stepped back and pointed. A chill ran down Reed’s spine at the look of grim distress on the older man’s face.
