The unexpected assault of the cellphone going off next to my head wrenched me violently into the here and now. I’d been in the middle of a rather unpleasant dream involving me, the police-squad room and the sudden realisation I wasn’t wearing any pants. This would be bad at the best of times, but in this dream, I was addressing my colleagues about the Bateman case. They hadn’t noticed yet, and my mind had been going rapid-fire, trying to think of a way to get out of the predicament before I made a total fool of myself. My panic was reflected in the twisted mangle of sheets I found myself entwined in on waking. It was dark, my heart rate was through the roof and my hands shook like a druggie on a severe downer. Despite this, the cellphone’s intrusion had done me a favour.
The time on the display screen glared 5.14 a.m. Who the hell rang anyone at this time of the morning? Good news never came at this hour. My mind leaped immediately to Dad.
‘Hello?’ I said, my voice foreign and raspy.
‘DC Shephard?’ Oh God, that sounded formal.
‘Yes.’
‘Dunedin Watch House.’ The chest tightness eased a fraction, but the other ill effects of the adrenaline rush remained. ‘Look, there’s been a bit of a development at the circus.’
‘What’s happened?’ It must have been bad for them to be calling in off-duty officers at this time of day.
‘A fire, someone’s torched the place. It’s pandemonium, you need to get there straight away. The owner specifically requested you.’
Shit.
It was quite possibly the strangest and most surreal sight I’d ever witnessed. It would have been oddly beautiful if the ramifications weren’t so hideous.
The orange and red hues of the still-leaping flames shimmered through a billowing pall of black smoke and cast the pre-dawn sky aglow in a Dante-esque vision. The now-exposed poles of the big top, jutting up like bones amid the still-burning carcass of the tent, reflected the staccato flashes of red and blue made by the fire units and police cars crowding the scene. The flames hadn’t restricted themselves to the main attraction and I could make out two trailer homes and the ticket office alight as I pulled up to the scene.
The sight was bad enough, but when I opened the car door and got a hit of the audio track, my blood ran cold. The sound of the animals screaming yanked at some primitive part of my being and I found myself running towards the conflagration as fast as I was able. Fire fighters, police and staff were swarming like ants in seeming disorder. I saw a face I recognised from the previous day’s interviews and grabbed at her arm as she ran past, terrified.
‘Where’s Bennett?’ I yelled.
She tried to pull out of my grasp, before recognition crossed her face and she stopped still, sobbing. ‘Cassie, he’s after Cassie.’
Shit, the elephant. I sprinted around the side of the main area to where she’d been secured when I last saw her. The area was full of roadies, frantically moving the animals away to safety, but I could see no sign of Cassie. The air was rank with the stench of burning plastic, a lung-searing, eye-watering miasma. It must have been the seating in the big top that was fuelling the flames.
I grabbed at another hand and yelled, ‘Bennett, where’s Bennett?’
My eyes followed the pointing arm and I got a glimpse of the manmountain heading away in the opposite direction. I ran after him, weaving through the throng of desperate, wild-eyed people. After colliding with a semi-clad man also at full tilt, I picked myself back up off the ground, the air knocked out of me. The sound of the monkeys’ screeching grated at every nerve ending in my body like a thousand nails scratching blackboards. I tried to ignore that and the pain in my knee and continued on.
‘Terry,’ I yelled out, ‘Terry, wait.’
His head swung around and I saw desolation etched into his face. He grabbed me by the shoulders when I caught up to him.
‘Cassie, she’s gone berserk, you’ve got to help me.’
‘What do you mean she’s gone berserk?’
Tears rolled down his stricken face. ‘A burning chunk of tent canvas landed on her. She’s pulled her chain, she’s hurt and panicked. She’s already trampled someone.’
Shit.
‘What can I do?’ I asked, not having any clue as to how he thought I could deal with a four-tonne rampaging elephant. It was then I noticed that he’d been trying to hide something under his coat. He pulled out a shotgun, a single-shot, 12-gauge shotgun. My eyes dropped to the gun, then raised back to his face.
‘We’ve got to catch up with her.’
‘Which way?’
He pointed across the Oval towards the highway bordering the far side and the major intersection on to the Southern Motorway. It didn’t take much imagination to work out how much havoc she could cause there even at this hour of the morning. I took off running across the sports ground and assumed from the heavy footfalls behind me that Terry Bennett was following. I hoped she hadn’t travelled too far, as once she got out to the road there were a myriad of directions she could go in. I wondered what Terry meant by ‘trampled’. Accidentally hurt in the rush to escape? Or had she been driven to do someone serious harm?
Evidence of her path was nearby as I broke through by the low hedge bordering the road.
I ran up to the van, which was tipped over on the driver’s side. The windscreen was broken and a man was scrambling out through the shattered glass.
I helped him get to his feet. There was sizable dent in the side of the vehicle, now pointing skywards.
‘Are you alright?’ I asked. There was blood running down the side of his head, but otherwise he seemed uninjured.
‘Huh? Bugger me, I just got hit by a fucking elephant. I’m sure it was an elephant. What the fuck’s an elephant doing in the middle of the road?’ Under normal circumstances if any driver had uttered those words to me, I would have had them lined up for an evidential breath test.
‘Which way?’ I asked. ‘Which way did she go?’ I heard Terry thunder up behind me, breathing so hard I thought his lungs would explode.
‘That way, I think.’ He pointed further south along Anderson’s Bay road towards the peninsula. ‘Fuck me, that was an elephant, right?’
‘Yup.’
She had headed towards the most-open ground. It should make her easier to find than if she’d gone into the industrial area, where there were lots of places to lose her. It seemed absurd to think of losing something the size of an elephant, but then, this was turning into one hell of a strange day. I peered up the road and saw a distant set of headlights make a sudden swerve to the right. There was only one thing I could think of that would cause that kind of manoeuvre.
‘Come on, she’s this way.’ I took off on foot again. Thank God, it was early morning and there weren’t many cars around. I did a quick check then darted across the huge intersection that led onto the motorway on my right. The chaos she could cause in peak traffic didn’t bear thinking about. The rail overpass loomed ahead and I got about fifty metres further up the road when I heard a strangled shout from behind me. I swung around in time to see Terry Bennett hit the ground and roll, hands clutching at his chest. By the time I got back to him his breaths were laboured and gasping, his ashen colour obvious despite the orange cast thrown by the overhead sodium street lights. Beads of perspiration joined to form small rivulets of sweat running down the sides of his face.
‘Shit, Terry, hang on, I’ll go get help.’
‘No, no.’ He clutched for his chest again and then my arm. ‘Sorry, arggghh.’ With his other hand he thrust the shotgun at me. ‘I’ll be okay, go.’ He tried to nod in the direction of Cassie. ‘You have to,’ he gasped.
‘No, I can’t do that. Don’t ask me to shoot her.’
‘She killed people. She’s injured, she’s panicked and she’s dangerous. You have to do it. You have to.’ He grit his teeth, sucking in air between them, while tears flowed from the corners of his eyes.
He was right, and it had to be done before she did more harm. I could hear sirens in the distance, as more emergency services headed for the scene. But there was no one else here now who could deal with this except me.
‘How?’ I said quietly. ‘Head or heart?’
‘Head.’
‘With a shotgun?’
‘They’re rifled slugs, they can do the job.’
‘How many rounds do I have?’
‘Two. One’s already loaded, the other’s in my coat pocket.’
Jesus.
I felt in his pocket until I found the other round. The size of it gave some reassurance.
‘You’ll be okay?’
He nodded, the movement clearly causing pain. ‘You have to get this done before she hurts someone else.’ His breathing, already laboured, shuddered with sobs. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The sight of this broken man and the thought of the task ahead led me to do something I would never have believed possible, considering my feelings towards him. I bent down and kissed Terry Bennett on the forehead. When I looked up, I could see the van man running towards us. Hopefully, he’d be able to get some help. Right now, my priorities were elsewhere. I got up, and holding the shotgun army-style in front of me, began to run up the road. Despite the nearness of so many police and emergency staff, I’d never felt quite so alone. I’d often gone out hunting with my dad and brothers on the farm, but there was one hell of a difference between potting a few possums and the odd deer, to having to hunt down an elephant – an elephant I considered to be a friend.
The night sky tinged watery blue at the horizon, which along with the orange fiery glow to the north, the distant sirens and the toots from passing motorists added to the surreal nature of the situation. I supposed, to people who had just seen an elephant on the road, the sight of a woman running with a bloody great gun was not so out of the ordinary.
How would Cassie react to the sight of me? Would she recognise me? I thought elephants were supposed to have poor vision, and it was still pretty dark. Could she smell me? Would she recognise a gun, see me as a threat? Maybe, with the state she was in she’d see any human as a threat. If the first round missed or didn’t drop her I was going to have to reload real fast. If I stuffed this up completely, there was no plan B, and I could be left with an injured and very pissed-off elephant. ‘Stop it, Shep,’ I muttered aloud. I was thinking too much. I had to focus, trust my instincts and not succumb to analysis paralysis.
Suddenly, there she was: two hundred metres ahead of me, standing in the middle of the road, her back towards me, seemingly mesmerised by the headlights of oncoming traffic. Several cars had pulled over onto the side of the road – I only hoped no one would be stupid enough to get out of their car and approach her.
‘Don’t be dumb, please don’t be dumb,’ I said to myself as I upped my pace. Now I was closer I could see she was waving her head and trunk from side to side. She slapped at the ground with her trunk. I read that as not a good thing.
I approached the first pulled-over car. The occupants looked panicked and I realised they weren’t comforted by the presence of a chick with a firearm. Wearing civvies didn’t help there. I’d just grabbed what was on the floor when I got the call – a red top from the night before and jeans. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my warrant card, holding it up for them to see as I got to the driver’s window. He was on his cellphone, and I could guess to whom.
‘You talking to the police?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘Please, I need to talk to them.’ He dutifully opened the window and handed the phone over. ‘Detective Constable Samantha Shephard, Dunedin CIB.’
‘Central despatch. What’s the situation?’
‘I’m tracking an escaped elephant from the visiting circus. The circus has been set alight and the animal is injured and panicked. It has killed people already and I am armed with a rifle and intend to destroy the animal.’ I heard the driver of the car utter an expletive.
‘Do you need an Armed Offenders call-out?’ Could I do this by myself? I didn’t want to, but I could see Cassie had turned and was moving in this direction. I was going to have to act now.
‘I’ll need back-up, but the situation is urgent and I’m going to have to do this now.’ I handed the phone back to the bewildered-looking man. ‘Tell them exactly where we are and get the hell out of here.’
A nerve-shattering screech erupted from Cassie, sending my heart rate into the stratosphere. She was on the move and in my direction. Did she recognise my voice? Something had sparked her interest enough to get her headed this way. I’d been kind to her, given her some company and attention. Surely that would work in my favour. But something about her body language suggested otherwise.
I didn’t want to have to do this in full view of the cars that had pulled up for the spectacle. They had no idea how real the danger was, but I didn’t have the time to trot backwards and forwards across the road to tell them to bugger off. I wondered if I could get her into a side street, or even the warehouse car park, but I didn’t have enough ammunition to fire into the air to get her moving and anyway, it looked like time was running out.
She was a hundred metres away and picking up pace. Shit she could move fast.
Head shot, Terry had said. Easier said than done when she was thundering straight for me. Stand or kneel? Stand, in case I missed and had to run and reload. I thanked my lucky stars for a misspent youth having shooting competitions with my brothers. But even though I rated my skills as a marksman, the fact I only had one back-up round made me more than a little nervous. Okay, she was fifty metres now, and whatever was happening in her head, it was very apparent she’d decided I was the one she wanted to see, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t for a pat and a rub. Her head was up, her ears out and she meant business. A dark stain that must have been blood was spreading down the front of her head. How close did I let her get? Forty metres. I could hear her footsteps and her exaggerated huffing. All other noise disappeared as I honed my attention in on the centre of her head, tracking her movements. My brain registered her speed, made the calculation and estimate of seconds before she was on me.
I pulled the shotgun up to a shooting position, heard the loud click as I cocked the hammer, sighted over the top of the barrel. She was so close.
Her footsteps vibrated through the ground and up my legs.
My heartbeat pulsed through my ears.
I sighted down the barrel.
Finger on the trigger.
My heart beat.
Cassie’s face.
Heartbeat.
Footsteps, closer.
Heartbeat.
I breathed out.
Sighted
Squeezed.