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Lexi screamed and dropped the night stick as her phone vibrated on the bed. Nahla growled and exited the room with her tail raised high. Lexi inspected the caller’s number before answering. “Hi.” An unnatural croak scratched against the words.
“Why am I at the police station?” Kelly Lomas demanded.
“I don’t know?” Lexi framed her reply as a question.
Kelly let rip with a stream of vile swearwords. Not unusual for Lachlan Mortimer’s lawyer. She ended with, “Because your father called me. Why in hell would the police arrest a priest?”
Lexi’s heart landed in her stomach with a thud. She pictured Kelly’s ash blonde hair rising into a messy bun, her wide mouth pulled into a grimace. She wore designer clothes suited more to a Los Angeles barrister than a Hamilton lawyer. Lexi’s throat constricted. “They arrested Garima?” she whispered.
“Yeah, they did,” Kelly snapped. “I’m wearing half a pedicure right now. This had better be good.”
Lexi released a groan. “Have they charged him?”
“No.” Heels clicked against a concrete surface. “I just arrived at the police station. Lexi, what are they holding him for? Your father didn’t know the facts.” She didn’t give Lexi a chance to respond before providing her own comic, inappropriate suggestions. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. He battered someone with his rosary? Or his bible?”
“No,” Lexi groaned. “Someone murdered his colleague yesterday. A church lady found the priest’s body in the skip. Garima didn’t kill him. Me and Mrs Barrymore can alibi him. I liberated him from her company and stayed with him until after the discovery of the body. He had no time to kill anyone.” Lexi swallowed. She hadn’t considered the time Garima spent alone with the vacuum cleaner in the vestry. Would Mrs Barrymore mention it in her statement? “He didn’t do it,” she protested again.
“I don’t really care.” Kelly’s heels increased their tempo. “It’s my job to get the police to release him. His guilt or innocence is irrelevant.”
Lexi pursed her lips. Lachlan kept the formidable lawyer on a retainer. Her philosophy fitted with his ethics. Or rather, his lack of conscience. “Garima didn’t kill Father Donald Douglas,” Lexi stated with more confidence. “I left a statement for Detective Inspector Grunwald at the watch house near the church. A junior officer took one from Mrs Barrymore yesterday.” Lexi touched her painful jaw and winced. She’d left Rojas rolling on the bathroom floor. Perhaps he’d slunk away instead of listening to something which might help Garima.
Lexi swallowed. “Kelly?” Her voice held a strange tautness. “Remember that evidence I left with you a while ago?”
The clacking heels ceased. “Yes.”
Lexi pictured Kelly’s wide painted mouth and her features made youthful by expensive plastic surgery. Her alertness filtered through the connection. “You might need it,” Lexi said.
“What’s happened?”
Lexi exhaled. “Just concentrate on helping Garima for today. We’ll talk later.”
“Are you in danger? I can speak to Lachlan.”
“No!” Lexi cut her off. “You promised. Let me know how Gari is, won’t you?”
Kelly swore and ended the call. She possessed the most extraordinary vocabulary for such an expensive lawyer.
Lexi took her phone into the kitchen. She limped to the cupboard where she kept Nahla’s kibbles. The cat circled her feet in feline desperation. “What’s the problem?” Lexi stalled beside Nahla’s mat. Three bowls sat in a row, all filled to the brim with her favourite biscuits. Lexi’s jaw pulsed as she bent to pick up the nearest bowl. She lifted it to her nose and sighed. “Oh, I get it. My brother didn’t sleep.” She spun in a slow circle to inspect her kitchen. White streaks covered the marble surfaces. “He’s gutted my kitchen,” Lexi murmured. She offered Nahla a wan smile. “And he washed out all your bowls with lemon cleanser. Your most detested scent.”
It took far longer than usual to dump the wasted cat food into the dustbin and load the bowls into the dishwasher. Every movement seemed to jar Lexi’s jaw or her throat. Unable to find a single item of crockery which didn’t smell of lemons, she made a rough pile of kibbles on the wooden floor. Nahla stared at them in disgust.
“It’s that or nothing,” Lexi growled. She retrieved her laptop and plugged in the charger. It whirred to life while she made an extra strong coffee. The date at the bottom of the screen caused sadness to wash over her. She slumped into the chair. Fifteen years since Randal’s death. Lexi’s fingers stilled over the keyboard. That day changed her forever.
An image rose into her mind without warning. Randal’s blond curls danced in the wind as he described something exciting. He’d waved his arms around as he spoke, effervescent and alive. Lexi never questioned his love. She’d adored him since primary school. His death ripped the guts from the local farming family. And it destroyed her.
She reached for her phone, drawing it towards her in an exaggerated slow motion. His mother sold the farm after losing her husband and eighteen-year-old son. A legacy gone with the stroke of the coroner’s pen. Accidental death. Lexi called up the number she used only once a year. The words spilled into the message as though dragged from her soul.
‘I haven’t forgotten.’
Lexi meant it. Even Tarant hadn’t eviscerated the memory of her eternal farm-boy. For the first time, she mentally thanked Lynn for returning. A relationship with Tarant couldn’t work long term. Randal remained in her heart, always eighteen, always enthusiastic, and very much alive.
Needing a distraction, Lexi pushed away her phone and returned to her laptop.
One new post appeared on the Hamilton East Community Page. Lexi scrolled past another lost cat appeal but found nothing of renewed interest. She shifted her attention to examining the image in question.
The changes she made using her photographic software sharpened the smiling faces. Facebook degraded the JPEG file format to make it fit their requirements. Lexi had done all she could without the original. Zooming in, she scrolled every millimetre of the photograph, inspecting the location and the faces. Heavy black and navy filters characterised the 1990s. The comments had identified all but two of the children. The ensuing back-and-forth conversation allowed her to mark four of them as deceased. Samuel Barnard had enjoyed access to the community page for three years. He must know already the friend he sought still lived. Otherwise, why bother?
Lexi pushed herself back in the chair with a sigh. The wooden spindles dug into her spine along the same line as the toilet cubicle. She groaned and dropped her head onto the table. In desperation, she phoned Tarant. She left the phone on the table and activated the speaker.
“Lex.” His tone sounded softer. More pliant than she expected.
“I’m working on this Facebook photograph,” she started. Best to keep the conversation on track from the beginning. “From what I can tell, Samuel Barnard is a grandfather. The children in this photograph look around ten years old. So, they’re in their forties now. But he claims he’s searching for a lost friend.” She shook her head. “This makes little sense. The age ranges are all wrong.”
Tarant growled low in his throat. His thinking sound. “What about a parent of a child in the photo?”
“Nope.” Lexi nixed the suggestion. “Only two of the children in the photograph remain unnamed. Once people recognised the other kids or shared their memories of the camp, they tagged the individuals and their relatives. Most of them are on Facebook. It’s easy to enquire about a connected person in the comments.”
“Go back to the start.” Tarant sighed. Lexi imagined him leaning back in his chair and resting his boots on his desk.
She gritted her teeth, hating how he treated her as his student. But she obeyed. “Twelve children attended a Christian camp at Rangiriri in May 1995. The comments attached to the photograph name all but two. Four of the twelve died in the intervening years.”
“That leaves six identified and two without names.” Tarant stated the obvious, and Lexi wrinkled her nose.
“Here’s the question,” she mused. “Who is Samuel Barnard searching for?”
“And why didn’t he contact the original poster?”
“Exactly!” Lexi examined her notes. “A Larry and Joanne account posted the photograph a month ago. They found it in an old album when they moved house.” Lexi switched to the profile and scrolled through the albums and comments. “They’ve left everything public. Idiots!” She made gagging sounds at a gory image of a naked baby covered with afterbirth. The action hurt her throat. “Yep. Joanne had a daughter last year.” She blinked at the smiling picture of a proud but exhausted Joanne.
“Is she in the camp photograph?” Tarant asked.
“She tagged herself on the front row when she added the picture. What do you suggest? If Barnard didn’t contact her directly, is it appropriate for me to do it?”
Tarant blew out a thoughtful breath. “Do it. But don’t mention Barnard. Private message her and make something up.”
“Okay.” Lexi’s index finger hovered over the button to kill the call.
“Lex?” His deepened voice masked some hidden emotion. “How are you?”
“Sore,” she grumbled. “I’m hoping Rojas hurt far more than me today. May his groin pulsate with stabbing pains for an entire week. I might ask Garima to add it to the prayer chain.”
Tarant laughed. “Well, he’s dropped me like a hot brick,” he said.
Lexi stilled. “What?”
“About four years ago, he discovered a way to run registration and identity checks on the police system without getting flagged. I asked him about that motorbike last night and well, I won’t read his reply aloud.”
Lexi sat up straighter in her chair. “You used your bent cop brother-in-law for our confidential surveillance work?” Her tone sounded harsher than she intended. “And now he’s cut you loose?”
Tarant cleared his throat. “Yeah.” Shame crackled through the connection. “Stupid, hey?” His chair creaked. “I never gave him details of cases.”
“But you gave him vehicle registration numbers and sometimes names,” she breathed. “It’s a tiny step for him to backtrack through all that information and join the dots. We’ve had cheating parliamentarians and dodgy bankers. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“You think he’ll try to blackmail them?” he whispered.
“No.” Lexi heaved out a ragged breath. “I think he’ll come for you. I hope you have deep pockets, Tarant. You might need them.”
