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FINN GRITTED HIS teeth and tried not to yell at the young Constable Willow. The guy wasn’t being nearly as careful as Finn would’ve liked as he stood guard inside the camp. He was supposed to be preserving the scene, stopping other people from entering, but every footprint he left behind, everything he touched, had potentially contaminated the site. This wasn’t Finn’s crime scene, however, and he couldn’t say anything in front of all these people.
It was nearly the middle of the night, but the place was lit up like Grand Central Station. Portable floodlights had been stationed in all four corners overlooking the camp, the loud hum of their generators making it hard to talk in a normal tone. The site was inundated by police from all divisions and units. The same team from forensics was back, as well as the homicide boys, and some big brass Sergeant from the Cairns station, along with no less than two junior cops, who were getting their first look at a proper full-on murder scene, plus the other two who’d carried out the warrant to search the other night. Detective Sampson had returned, this time flanked by another, slightly older female detective sergeant named Coldwater. Looked like the top brass no longer trusted Sampson to handle this on his own. They were talking to Mack and Dale over on the opposite side of the camp. Finn idly wondered how many cops it took to process one crime scene.
His gaze searched for Indy until he found her, standing, pale and drawn, next to the horses. It’d been a long night. It wastime to take her home. Wait. He stopped that overprotective thought in its tracks. Indy was a strong, independent woman. Just because he was getting close to her, because she was getting under his skin, didn’t mean she was his to protect. He readjusted his thoughts. It was time for themallto head back to the stock camp. All three of them had spent the night telling the same story to what felt like ten different cops about how the crows had led them to come looking for the camp. At least Nash and his offsider, Willow, had been the first to arrive, and Finn hurriedly filled him in with everything he suspected about this illicit camp. He trusted Nash not to tell anyone who wasn’t already in the know about Finn’s true role here.
He still needed to update the sarge, and his sat phone was back in his tent. Undoubtedly, his boss would’ve heard rumors of what was going on out here through the grapevine already, but he needed to give him the finer details, so Mike could negotiateagain, to keep Finn’s undercover persona a secret, as well as work with the team to find out what they knew. And he needed to decide whether to tell Mike what he’d found inside the shelter. It was incriminating evidence, but he might be the only person who understood its relevance.
“Senior Constable,” Finn said, beckoning Nash away from where he was staring intently down at one of the forensics team, who was carefully peeling back a section of the corpse’s clothing to reveal the bloated, blotchy skin on his chest.
Nash stepped gingerly over to where Finn was standing. “Are we free to leave, sir?” he asked, deferring to Nash, just in case anyone was watching.
“Yes. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve got everything I need,” he said, blue eyes meeting Finn’s with a steady gaze. “You’ll have to check with Sampson, though. He’s running the show. At the moment,” Nash added. They both understood that Detective Sergeant Coldwater was hovering over Sampson,watching his every move, ready to swoop in and take the investigation away from him at the slightest wrong step. Finn felt sorry for Sampson, but decided he couldn’t really blame his superior. A single murder investigation had blown up into a complicated case, with multiple victims and a possible link to an international drug syndicate, and perhaps it was above the level of what Sampson was capable of handling.
“I still can’t believe a crow tipped you off,” Nash said with a quiet laugh. “And if a country cop like me is finding that hard to swallow, you can bet those city boys are downright disbelieving.”
Finn shrugged and gave a wry smile. “We’ve got plenty of witnesses that’ll tell them the same story,” Finn replied, referring to the rest of the muster crew who’d seen the eyeball lying in the dust. “Things happen a little different in the outback,” he joked.
“I’m sure I’ll be seeing more of you over the next few days,” Nash said. Then he narrowed his eyes slightly and lowered his voice. “This thing gets more interesting by the day. I wouldn’t mind a quiet chat sometime. Off the record.”
Finn raised his eyebrows, but said nothing more. He wondered if Nash knew something he wasn’t letting on to the rest of his peers. Either that, or he had questions that only Finn could answer.
Five minutes later, after checking with Sampson that they were free to leave, he and Indy mounted up. Indy would lead Mack’s horse Picasso back to camp, and Mack would catch a ride home with Dale. When they might make it home was anyone’s guess. Now that the police had finished questioning them, Finn thought Dale might be staying on as much to find out anything more he could about the case, as to appear helpful. Sampson and the other cops were trained to remain tight-lipped, but just by hanging around the camp and listening in to the forensics guy’s comments, telling Sampson or homicide what they’d found onthe body so far would give away hints. On how this guy died. And who killed him.
“Are they any closer to identifying the body?” Indy asked, once they’d moved away from the floodlit river bed. Darkness engulfed them as soon as they left the bubble of light, and he lifted his head to get his bearings. There was the outline of what he’d nicknamed Repeater Hill directly in front, and there was the low saddle they’d crossed through earlier. A full moon was slowly rising in the dark sky, and while the bush looked different at night, he didn’t think they’d have any problem finding their way home.
Finn shook his head by way of an answer to Indy’s question. Like he’d said before, they’d probably need dental records to confirm absolutely who this guy was. They sure as hell wouldn’t be relying on any facial recognition; the man’s face was practically eaten off. Finn shuddered, as he remembered and then tried to rid himself of the image. When he’d first arrived on the scene, it was clear the man was dead; had been dead for at least a couple of days. But protocol dictated he check for signs of life. So, he’d leaned in to try and find a pulse. He’d gone for the wrist instead of the carotid artery, as it seemed some large carnivore, perhaps a dingo, had lunched on the man’s neck.
“There was no ID on the guy. I checked his pockets before Nash got here,” he revealed. Finn had even gone so far as gingerly rolling the corpse over using a stick to see if there was anything in the back pocket of his jeans. He knew he was contaminating the crime scene by doing so, but he needed any information about this man he could get. Just in case homicide was slow to pass on any clues. He needed to be on top of every small detail. If this man was linked to Wombat’s murder, and to the drug shipments—as Finn suspected that he was—and they worked out his identity, it might lead them to someone farther up the chain of command.
“Even if they did know who he was, they need to alert the next of kin first. It’ll be days until we find out a name,” he replied with a sigh.
“Yeah, that might be true for normal people,” she countered. “But, surely, with your connections…?” She let the question hang in the air.
“We’re certainly doing the best we can to find out,” he told her. “But I’m more worried about who the other guy in that camp was,” he mused. “And where he might’ve gone.”
“You mean whoever murdered the guy on the ground?”
Shit, he hadn’t really meant to say all that out loud. He didn’t want Indy to worry unnecessarily. “We can’t jump to conclusions,” he said hurriedly. “Just because we think there was someone else there, they could’ve been an innocent bystander. Or they could’ve been attacked themselves and fled, leaving the other guy to take the brunt of the assault.”
“Oh, right. I didn’t think of it that way,” she mused, her voice the only sound beside their horse’s soft hoofbeats in the dark night. “But if the missing manisthe killer, surely he’s long gone by now? It’s been days since that guy was murdered.”
That was the assumption all the other cops were under. But Finn wasn’t quite so sure.
Indy watched his face, and as if she caught his sudden hesitation, she said, “Are we safe out here? That missing man isn’t still around, is he?” She suddenly sat up straighter in her saddle, casting an uneasy glance at the surrounding bush, pushing Gypsy a little closer to his horse.
“You’re with me,” he said, puffing out his chest, and thumping it, Tarzan style, in an attempt to make light of the situation. “Of course, you’re safe.” He reached across and grabbed her hand, squeezing it gently.
Her nervous expression morphed into one of cynical amusement. “Yeah, right, you’re my hero,” she said, butsqueezed his hand back for a second before letting it go. The touch was fleeting, but her warm hand left an impression on him long after it was gone. Her eyes flashed in the moonlight and for some strange reason, he suddenly wished he really could be her hero. He wanted to reassure her. Tell her he’d protect her no matter what. The stupid thing was, there was a deep, kind of growly voice he’d never heard before in his head, telling him to get her out of here. Get her away from this camp and whatever kind of danger lurked behind every tree. He had no right to tell her what to do. And his gut had no right to demand he shield her, because she wasn’t his to safeguard, no matter how much that voice kept telling him she was. There was no way she’d want to hear any of the macho bullshit that was circling around in his gut at the moment, and so he clamped his mouth shut.
But she may well be correct to be worried. Finn glanced down at the small leather pouch he’d attached to the back of his saddle. Everyone assumed it contained a water bottle, when, in fact, he’d stashed his handgun in there. There was no way he was going out into the bush to investigate the source of a human eyeball without some kind of insurance. At least he was confident he could keep Indy safe, if anything…untoward happened.
“Maybe I should’ve brought the dogs, after all,” she murmured.
“No, you made the right decision not to bring them,” he replied, shuddering at the thought that Digger might’ve found the body first and run around the camp willy nilly, destroying footprints and other evidence, perhaps even snacking on the corpse.
“Are the two murders connected? I mean, was it the same person who killed Wombat and this guy?”
“Not sure about either of those questions. Once the coroner comes back with a definitive time of death, that’ll help us figureout if he was killed on the same night as Wombat.” Which would make the coincidence too big to ignore.
