I linger outside and walk a lap around the station, thinking about everything Janet said. The ringing in my head returns as the threads of that fateful evening ten years ago merge with what I know about last Saturday night. I begin another lap, wanting to keep moving. White sunlight bounces off the windows, the cars and the tin roofs of the sheds.
Sally, Greg, Tommy, Abbey, Rick. Is Daniel the clue to this whole thing? The animosity between he and Rick could have been an act. Daniel went to his house the morning after Abbey disappeared—maybe they nutted out a plan, then Rick got cold feet and Daniel attacked him. Aiden might have been involved.
I think about Tommy and the drawer full of pills. Is his behaviour toward me territorial, or is he afraid of what I might uncover? In all of our conversations he has abhorred Daniel’s domestic violence, suggesting that the man should be locked up, but maybe he’s been covering a mutually beneficial relationship. What did Daniel see the night Sally and Greg went missing? Is it possible that Tommy forced him to pull his statement? And maybe got to Meg too?
Or maybe I’m just chasing my own tail as I grow increasingly desperate.
Think, think. Was Abbey just a troubled girl who decided it was all too much, or does her attack on the salon prove she was violent enough to kill Rick? Had Daniel’s relentless abuse finally broken her, causing a primal darkness to erupt? Perhaps Rick had done something that reminded her of her father and caused her to snap.
I think back to the footage of Abbey arriving at the police station last Saturday night: her desperate movements before she disappeared into the night. I look over to the front of the station. It’s set back from the road, and several trees line the gravel driveway. I remember what Erin said about seeing Abbey here that Sunday, her bike propped against the tree as she stared at the station.
My gaze drifts from the security camera positioned over the door to the parked cars, as I trace its line of sight with my eyes.
An icy thought splinters into my chest. The timeline—it always comes back to the timeline. How had Tommy beaten Lane to the party on Firestone Drive? I remember watching the footage remaining after Abbey had gone: the shadow moving in the bottom left of the screen, the delay in the glow of Lane’s headlights appearing before he drove the squad car to meet Tommy at the house party. What was Lane doing? Had he used the bathroom before he went? No, if he had he would appear on the footage in the station again. I reel around, looking between the station and the sheds.
I think of Lane’s keenness to work a night shift, his supposed guilt about not driving Abbey home. The artwork in the salon window. The girl with the blonde dreadlocks wrestling the canvas out of her boot yesterday morning. Lane’s hand down her skirt at the pub. His girlfriend.
I rush back into the station. My sun-drunk eyes reduce Grange and de Luca to blurry outlines.
‘Where are the keys to the sheds?’
They both stand.
‘In the safe,’ stammers Grange.
‘Get them. Now!’
I don’t wait for their reaction but go into the tearoom and pull the roster off the wall, flicking back to the week before last. My heartbeat pounds through every part of my body: Lane worked that Sunday shift.
His hand, held out to her on that video—calming, authoritarian, but not for the reason I suspected. Oh my god. I flick forward to last week’s roster. He was scheduled on at 6 am Monday. I close my eyes. I never asked who picked up Rick’s voice message first.
Grange is talking on the phone. As I return to the main room, he says, ‘That was weird.’
‘What’s weird?’ I demand.
‘The shed keys aren’t in the safe, so I called Lane to see if he knows where they are.’ Grange blinks, his long eyelashes fluttering. ‘And he hung up on me.’
The crunch of metal makes me wince. The three of us stand back as Xander the locksmith yanks a severed metal hook from the holder of the second shed.
He turns to us, grinning. ‘Nothing else you need busted open?’
‘Thanks, Xander,’ I say, ‘you’ve been a massive help.’
I wait for him to get back into his truck before I pull the door open. It creaks ominously and a cloud of hot air swirls out. De Luca and Grange peer around me into the darkness, as I stare past the shelves lined with plastic crates full of papers, an old fan and two broken chairs.
A bike is propped against the back wall of the shed, covered by a plastic tarp.
‘I don’t understand,’ says Grange.
‘Lane,’ de Luca murmurs, her face white.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘But why would he lie about the bike?’ asks Grange. ‘Why would Abbey?’
The piercing ringing in my mind has become a sharp headache that settles behind my eyes.
‘It was a cover,’ I say, walking back to the station. ‘Grange, secure this scene. Take photos and call Tran. We need to get a forensic team here asap, so we’ll need her muscle.’ I run up the front ramp, calling out behind me, ‘De Luca, come with me.’
‘We’re going to his house?’ she asks.
I nod. ‘I’ll drive. Can you get a trace put on his phone? And check if his squad car can be tracked.’ Something else briefly surfaces in my whirlpool of thoughts, but I can’t catch it. I simply grab my bag and race out the front.