Eden had spent a long time finding the perfect apartment to call her sanctuary, and she was obsessively protective of it. Admitting people was always an ordeal. Although she wasn’t stupid enough to keep trophies of her playtime in the night, she was well aware that she had unconsciously written the secret of what she was in her paintings, her sculptures, her notebooks full of sketches. They contained violence. Sadness.
Much of what she explored in her art was how to capture those precious moments with her victims that she could treasure: here agony, here hopelessness, here rage. She enjoyed toying with raw emotions. Never were they so raw as when a victim knew death was coming, had accepted it, had nothing left to lose from submitting to it. It amused Eden that so many storybook victims were fierce and heroic at the end, defiant in the face of their reaper. No one was, in her extensive experience. But perhaps she had been playing too long with cowards.
With only eight hours to relish in her sanctuary, Eden wasn’t going to waste it sleeping. She needed a battery change and to report in to the station. Rye had called a stop-work so the irrigation system could be fixed and it would be tight getting out and in again without being noticed. While she waited for Juno, she would burn off some of her frustration. She hungered for making art the same way she hungered for the kill.
She worked at the huge trunk of an ancient red eucalyptus she’d rescued from the clutches of someone she was sure had desired the wood for overpriced outdoor furniture. She’d been dying to try out a delicate little miniature chainsaw, suitable for wood artists and ice sculptors, but all she could think about as she curved out a figure from the wood was how nicely the device would go through bones.
She didn’t hear her doorbell over the growl of the little thing but the flashing red bulb she’d installed above her door caught her eye, and she lifted up her goggles. She was sweating. She left the chainsaw running as she approached the door and pulled it open, hoping the rumble of the machine might diminish the need for any unnecessary conversation.
Juno. The computer nerd. Eden glanced behind him into the hall and didn’t see Frank. She let her confusion show on her face. The guy looked intimidated by her dust-covered apron, the oversized gloves, the chainsaw humming away in her fist. She revved it a little to get him talking. He cleared his throat and readjusted the leather satchel hanging from his shoulder.
“Got your batteries,” he said. Handed her a tiny package. She slipped it into the pocket of her apron and tried to close the door. His voice stopped her.
“Everything working correctly?”
“Seems to be.”
“Can you, um . . .” He glanced at the chainsaw. Eden followed his gaze. “Do you mind?”
Eden switched the chainsaw off. Left it hanging from her arm, a menacing prosthesis.
“Did you, uh . . . I told Frank about Michael Kidd.”
“Frank and I have spoken.”
“Right, of course you have.” The boy nodded, an exaggerated bobbing, and scratched at the back of his neck. He really was very orange, Eden thought. Furred with it lightly, like a newborn pup. He was a marker for the difference in human genetic breeds, carrying with them colors and tinges and lengths and widths. She found herself squinting, trying to get a better look at him.
“Is there anything else?” she said.
“Look . . . I’ve been . . . spending a lot of time with you lately. You know. Like, um. Frank said that when you, uh, you do a lot of surveillance you can sometimes get closer to people than you really are . . .” He was struggling now, looking everywhere but her face. Eden enjoyed it. “So yeah, you know, I get it. I get that over the last couple of weeks I’ve been spending more time with you than you have been with me, really. But, like, I’ve got to put it out there. I’d like to spend more time with you. Outside work. You know? And have you spend time with me.”
Eden squinted. Licked her lip. Tasted the microscopic layer of wood dust there, an ancient dead tree, something she understood better than most people. She shut the door in Juno’s face and walked back across the apartment to the stairs. Let the chainsaw roar.
Dr. Stone had come to know my knock. I could tell from the smile she had playing about her lips when she opened the door. I slipped inside, into the dark, and let her lead me down the hall with her slender fingers. We fell into whispers in the kitchen, up against the bench, memorizing the nooks and crannies of each other’s necks and ears and shoulders with our mouths, our noses. She smelled like sleep, like the safety of freshly washed sheets. She lit a candle by a windowsill cluttered with tiny, overflowing houseplants and took two wineglasses from the back of the fridge.
“How’s the case?”
“Not good.”
“This could go on for years. These late-night visits.”
“What a tragedy for you.”
She laughed. Bit my bottom lip lightly.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“No idea.”
“They want to take it off us. Hand it over to regional. They’re saying one of the girls is hiding out in Perth. We’ve tried to confirm it. It’s all nods so far. When they get hold of her it’ll be swept off my desk. You’ll never hear of it again.”
“Something tells me you won’t let that happen.”
“No.”
“Eden?”
“No. No one wastes her time.”
“It’ll come good.”
“It will. Something will happen. Some mistake. You never know how close you are until it’s over. A phone call might do it. An overheard whisper. It’s like those guys you see in movies trying to dig through the bottom of prison cells with a spoon. They don’t know how deep they have to go. One day they make one last scrape. There it is. Precious earth.” I leaned back against the counter, drank the wine too fast.
“You’re not trying to dig out of prison, Frank. At least you shouldn’t be.”
“I’m digging up something.”
“But what are you burying at the same time?”
“I’ll ask the questions and I’ll construct the metaphors, thank you very much,” I pointed to my chest.
She smiled, ran her fingers up under my shirt, over my ribs. I let her pull it over my head. Run her nails up through my hair. I felt taken care of in her presence. Maybe it was the whole doctor thing. The certificates on her walls. The expensive waiting-room chic of the apartment. Maybe this was good. Maybe this was what I needed. Someone to take care of me, someone who I didn’t need to feel responsible for. Imogen was pulling my belt off. I scooped her off her naked feet and listened to her laugh against my neck.
It had been a day so long and so hot and so useless to the investigation that Eadie felt flattened, as though a great weight was lying on top of her in the bed and refused to give her more than the necessary inches to breathe. A day of being ridden like the horses she cared for—mostly by Pea, who somehow had an eye on every shortcut she tried to take, every stall she didn’t clear fast enough, every beast under her care who looked unhappy.
In truth, all of the animals were unhappy, and it had nothing to do with Eadie’s care for them. They were waiting, all of them, for the weather to break, for the humidity to ease. Paint was running. Cows were moaning. Wood was seeping mold. The flies attacked everything, clung to eyelashes and clustered around sweating bellies, walked over food and the rims of beer bottles.
Eadie lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling and thought about the missing girls’ bones. She was at that reckless point now, that exhausted point, where she fantasized about going out in the dark and simply digging, anywhere, just so that she was doing something meaningful toward catching the men, giving closure to the families, stopping the same from happening again. It had been ten solid hours of horse shit and the old woman’s watchful eyes. She hadn’t laid eyes on Jackie. She’d seen plenty of Nick.
At sunset, when she returned to the cabin, he came from wherever he’d been working and took up a milk crate in the shade of the van at the edge of the nearest cluster, fifty meters or so from her door. He stared at her windows. She stared back at him through the lace, standing well back in the dark of the kitchen. Hours passed. She had dinner in the caravan, showered with her ears pricked and her knife on the counter by the camera pendant. She dressed and come back to the stalemate. Someone had given Nick a beer. He sat with his elbows on his knees, just watching.
All right, asshole, she thought. Watch this.
Eadie went into the tiny kitchenette, switched on her television, and raised the volume. She drew the blind over the window, shut the doors to the bedroom and the hall, and then brought out the rusted toolbox under the kitchen sink. Rolling up the van’s carpet, she pried up the edge of the internal door to the storage hatch beneath. Eadie squeezed into the empty compartment, feeling spiderwebs collapse all around her in the corners of the rusting base as she descended into the dark. She took a dusty breath, pulled the hatch closed, and felt for the latch holding the outside door at the back of the van.
Ten minutes, Eadie guessed, she was in the dark. The nuts on the inside of the hatch door were rusted and required plenty of spit and swearing. She got the top two undone and bent the door forward, then slid out into the long grass. She left the hatch hanging and crawled under the fence and into the field. Skirted the field back toward the farm.
There was no one near Nick’s van. Everyone was over at Jackie’s. It was Master Chef night. They would be gathered there in the darkness like they were the night she’d arrived, wretched laughing mouths and glowing eyes lit by the screen. Eadie glanced about, then slipped into Nick’s van.
There was no possibility of switching on the lights. Her hands fell on dirty dishes and mugs and cups in the kitchen sink, fluttered to the curtains and then the blinds. Tiny cracks of orange light flooded the tiny space as she twisted the knob, opening the blinds. Her fingers were wet with sweat. Eadie squinted and came face-to-face with a spread-legged poster of a large blond woman. Hundreds of other porn pictures ripped and clipped from magazines were stuck messily and overlapping on the kitchen cupboards. They seemed to consume the man’s interest, those at the back turning hard and browning from sun exposure. Eadie opened the bedroom doors and glanced at the gray, sweat-stained sheets.
The DVD cupboard was by the bathroom annex—a tiny tower of shelves, neatly arranged cases. Cheaply made kids’ cartoons, animated series starring foxes and birds and badgers and bears in classic fairy tales. Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella. Little Red Riding Hood. Eadie selected Sleeping Beauty and popped open the case. A disk labeled with marker: MICHELLE.
Eadie panted, remembered herself, and checked the windows again. She popped open Cinderella and read the name. DANICA. Shoving the cases back into the shelves, she ripped out others, popped them open and slammed them closed. JOANNA. NONIE. STEPH. PENNY.
No Keely. No Erin. No Ashley. Eadie clenched her fists, shoved the cupboard door closed.
Eadie lay now in the early morning light and felt too tired to sleep.
When the soft knocking came she was on her feet before she knew what the noise was. The snuffling and whimpering behind the frosted glass told her there was no danger. She pulled open the door and Skylar came rushing in like a sweaty damp beast released from a trap.
“What’s the matter with you?”
She switched on the rangehood light. The girl was drooling blood.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she slobbered. “I can’t do this.”
Eadie’s hands were prickling as she went to the freezer. She popped the ice cubes from the frame and poured them into a dish towel.
“What was the blue about?” she asked.
“Ev-ery-thing,” Skylar sobbed. “Everything. Is. Go-ing. Wrong.”
“Calm down and hold this on it.”
“I. Can’t.”
“Stop talking. You’re safe now. Just lie here and be quiet.”
The girl lay down on the left side of the bed, by the cameras.
Eadie curled beside her. Didn’t touch her. Thought probably she should. Human beings touched each other when one of them was sad, she knew, but something about it seemed dangerous to her. She couldn’t care about the girl. Wouldn’t.
The girl was snuffling, letting tears and melted ice run down her neck. The bruise was deep in her cheek, probably rattling loose molars. A good sideswipe. She’d been knocked about before, Eadie could see in the dim light from the kitchen. Something had split her brow long ago on the same side.
“What did you fight about?”
“Money. His ex. You.”
“Me?”
“He doesn’t like you.”
“Most people don’t.”
“I want to get out of here,” the girl said, her eyes on the door.
“We can make it happen.” Eadie folded her hands on her chest. “Let’s make a plan.”
“I don’t want a plan.”
“Have you got any family out there?”
“I don’t want to be with my family.” The girl looked at Eadie. Wet fierce eyes. “I don’t want to plan. I don’t want to pack. I just want to go. I want to just . . . run. With you.”
The girl sat up. Eadie sat up with her.
“I can’t take care of you,” Eadie said.
“We can take care of each other.”
“Girl, you’ve got the wrong idea.”
Skylar grabbed Eadie’s cheeks, forced the kiss upon her. Salty with tears and shuddering with panicked breath. Eadie sat frozen and felt her mind closing, felt the shutters of her sanctuary coming up one at a time. This is how it was with her, the slow shutting down of a machine with a hidden glitch, a thing destined to attempt again and again to get moving, to function as everything else functioned—but unable to, always unable to, because of that missing part. The closer something inched to her, the harder she faltered. She reached up and took the girl’s hands down from her face.
“Girl,” she said again, “you’ve got the wrong idea.”
Skylar looked at her eyes, fat tears rolling down her round cheeks. They lay down together in the gloom, back to back, and let the thunder roll them into an exhausted slumber.