CHIEF TREVOR MORRIS sat at his cluttered desk and gripped his head, looking at the report from two patrol officers in Lidcombe. In the early hours of the morning, the pair had briefly encountered his rogue detective, Harriet Blue, and predictably failed to bring her in. In five weeks, it had been the only confirmed contact.
Oh, Harry, he thought. I’m so sorry.
He should have been the one to tell her that her brother was dead. He had a special kind of relationship with the unpredictable, hotheaded officer he’d found in his local boxing gym fifteen years earlier. The new kid on the block in Sex Crimes, his only female detective in that department. Chief Morris had agreed to train her in the boxing ring. She’d started calling him Pops, and yes, he’d felt almost like her father. He’d found she could already hold her own in a fight. It had been her fury he’d had to tame, her fast, clumsy rage.
It hadn’t been much of a leap for Harry’s rage to evolve into a need for revenge.
He turned in his chair and perused a collection of articles he’d pinned to a nearby corkboard detailing the city’s reaction to Regan Banks’s escape.
Police bungle Regan Banks arrest, deadly serial killer still at large.
Two found dead; scene suggests Regan Banks alive and well.
Where is Harriet Blue? Speculation rife detective is in league with killer.
The public had never liked Harry. Had never believed that a Sex Crimes detective didn’t know her brother was a serial killer. Sam Blue had been in the middle of his trial when Regan Banks had surfaced. Harry and her few supporters had been claiming Sam was being framed by a tall, broad-shouldered man with a shaved head. They knew Regan was a killer. He’d killed as a teen, and now a woman had only barely escaped his clutches, telling investigators Regan had spoken about Sam Blue. Had Sam been innocent all along, the victim of a setup? Or was the Georges River Killer actually a two-man team? The answers weren’t coming anytime soon.
“What a mess.” Morris shook his head as he turned and looked at another corkboard, the various crime scenes touched by Regan’s hand. The pictures of his pretty victims, pale and still on morgue tables. “What a fucking mess.”
“Yes, it is an incredible mess,” someone said.
Pops looked toward the doorway. Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Woods stood there with his hat in hand, the various buckles and attachments to his jacket gleaming in the harsh overhead light.
Pops stood, smoothing down his tie, feeling sweat already beading beneath his shirt. Before he could begin the necessary greetings, Woods cut over him.
“Get your things together,” Woods said. “You’re out, Morris. I’m taking over.”