Blood Feud (56 page)

We hugged awkwardly as we sat there. He stood and bounded down the stairs, casting a glance back at me before sliding into the driver’s seat.

He drove off the property and out of my life, waving and tooting the horn as he left. I remained sitting on his stairs, watching his blue car until it wasn’t visible anymore, silent tears pouring down my face.

I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

Epilogue

I was a total monster after the Sarge left town, snappy and morose with everyone, even Dad. I couldn’t seem to find any joy in my life and I wasn’t particularly interested in looking for any either.

They say misery loves company, but I didn’t and I spent more and more time by myself. I lost a fair amount of weight because I exercised almost obsessively, jogging for long periods, sometimes even twice a day, losing myself in the mindless, repetitive physical effort. Now and then, I’d let myself into the Sarge’s house to use his gym equipment. More often than not though, I’d end up not exercising, but wandering around his house, touching his things and wishing he was still here. His furniture and belongings looked as abandoned as I felt.

People began to tiptoe around me or even avoid me and that was fine with me. Tourists to the town didn’t find the friendly, relaxed country cop they expected, but a hard life-bitten bitch unmoved by any explanations they offered up for their transgressions with their hopeful smiles. I issued more infringement notices in the first two weeks after the Sarge left than I had the entire previous nine months.

Sick of me knocking back their invitations, one Friday after work Ronnie kidnapped me and drove me to Big Town to spend the weekend with Fiona and him. I refused to speak to Fiona and hadn’t since that awful day in her office, so she kept out of my way. But late at night on their back deck, both of us nursing a beer, Ronnie and I talked about the Sarge and what his leaving town meant to me. I hadn’t realised how badly I’d needed to discuss it with someone I trusted.

I told him I couldn’t really understand the Sarge’s reasoning behind not appealing against his suspension. I felt that in Fiona’s office, I’d sacrificed my career by defending him and he’d saved his by abandoning me.

Ronnie vehemently disagreed, explaining it in the same terms the Sarge had – by being cooperative, he ensured the investigation would run more quickly and smoothly and this could be a positive factor affecting the outcome. By the end of the weekend, Ronnie convinced me that the Sarge had thought his decision through carefully and chosen the path that could have him returning to Little Town as soon as possible. Knowing that made me feel better about the enforced separation and I almost began to believe that he would come back here one day. Almost.

To date, the PIU investigation remains ongoing.

~~~~~~

Once the press release was issued about the death-by-cop of Dylan, the media swarmed into Little Town looking for the Sarge, even though he hadn’t been named. But police stations are leakier than a homemade canoe, and obviously someone at Big Town had tipped off the press about his identity.

A recent spate of similar incidents involving a mentally ill person being killed by police made Dylan’s story highly topical. I’d been given strict orders not to speak to the media under any circumstances, but to refer all questions to the Media Liaison Unit. I was happy to comply, sick of having microphones and digital recorders thrust under my nose every time I left my house or the station. I even caught some journalists trying to break into the Sarge’s house. Marianne told me that brief TV footage of me saying a terse “no comment” as I pushed through the media scrum to enter the station had even been broadcast in the capital city’s news.

As with most stories where there was no fresh oxygen each night to keep public interest burning, it eventually died down, the media pack moving onto newer, juicier topics. So in that respect, I begrudgingly admitted that the plan to not feed the flames by forcing the Sarge to disappear had been a success.

~~~~~~

The day after the Sarge left town, a sheepish Mike Amour turned up at the station. I’d completely forgotten about the lost hikers after everything else that had happened. In the circumstances, I didn’t greet him with any signs of friendliness.

He apologised profusely and advised me that although they’d told Abe they were tackling the Summit, what in fact happened was they discovered a critical piece of walking equipment had broken. Instead of walking the track, they’d decided to drive to Big Town to see if they could find a replacement and had ended up staying there overnight. They’d neglected to ring Abe to let him know they hadn’t gone on the walk as planned.

The Sarge and I hadn’t found them because they hadn’t been on the track in the first place.

“I guess you’re pretty pissed off with us,” Mike said, trying out a charming smile.

I stared back at him, stony-faced. “You guess correctly.”

That wiped the smile off his face. “Are we in trouble?”

“I should charge you for the cost of the search.”
And for the cost of me losing my partner
, I thought bitterly. “But I’ll settle for a donation to the local SES unit. Start passing the hat around. You can give Abe the money on your way out of town.”

And with that hint hanging heavily in the air, I returned to the back room, leaving him standing at the counter gaping after me.

~~~~~~

About a week after the Sarge left, I drove to Mr Krysztofiak’s property to offer him my personal condolences for the tragic loss of Dylan. He seemed smaller, shrunken, as if his guilt over the death of his great-nephew had sucked the life from him.

He informed me that although the family wanted only a small, unobtrusive funeral for Dylan, somehow the media caught wind of the service. Journalists harassed and plagued them, spoiling what was meant to be a quiet and respectful remembrance of a poor tortured soul.

Not sure I wanted to know the answer, I hesitantly asked him if the family blamed the Sarge and me for Dylan’s death. It was a question weighing heavily on me for days. I would have understood if Dylan’s family bayed for our blood during the PIU investigation.

Mr Krysztofiak assured me that Dylan’s parents were sadly sympathetic, having their own experiences with him in a psychotic state. He told me the Sarge had rung both him and Dylan’s parents from the city, and although he was gagged from discussing what had happened on the mountain, he had taken the time to extend his condolences.

The elderly man clasped my hand before I left and apologised for the Sarge’s suspension, all which left me feeling even more depressed for the rest of the day.

~~~~~~

Even if he hadn’t strictly kept his promise to think of me every day, the Sarge sent me enough emails to make me think he had. At least five or six landed in my inbox each week as Melissa and he travelled through Europe and North America. I didn’t answer any of them, though I read them all more than once, savouring each morsel of news and photo of them in exotic locations. It was hard to tell from his emails how things were going with Melissa, but I guessed that extended periods of travel as a couple would either help them grow closer or divide them even further.

He sent me gifts from the different places they visited – small, beautiful and expensive souvenirs, carefully wrapped and complete with sweet hand-written notes from him explaining the provenance of each particular piece and why he’d chosen it for me. Receiving each new one was about the only thing that made me smile these days and Joanna became one of the few people I welcomed at the station. The collection brightened up my desk, reminding me of him every time I set eyes on it.

~~~~~~

Haunted by endless nightmares in which I was trapped and mutilated by various Bycrafts because my hair became tangled in bushes, I begged Gretel to cut it much shorter. She was quite skilled at the art, having tossed up between being a hairdresser or a teacher in her younger days. And although she did a good job and I loved my new soft bob, it turned out to be a miserable experience. She hadn’t stopped moping over the Sarge since he’d left, virtually on the point of tears during the whole haircut talking about him. It seemed I wasn’t the only one missing him. I decided there and then to avoid Romi as much as possible for a while.

~~~~~~

The Bycraft blowback from Denny’s death was fierce. I’d known that the Bycrafts, still reeling from the recapture of Red, would cast the blame for Denny on me, even though I wasn’t responsible. But I hadn’t been prepared for the level of vicious hatred directed at me. Windows were broken at our house, our letterbox was repeatedly ripped out of its mounting, notes threatening to torture and kill me were shoved under our front door and human excrement smeared on our 4WD and flung at our house.

A red-eyed, drunken Lola Bycraft even flew at me when I shopped at the local grocery store one evening, trying to scratch my eyes out and screaming at me that I was a dirty murdering whore. She was only persuaded to go home and sleep it off after I roughly restrained her arms behind her and smooshed her face up hard against the frozen food fridge.

I took to locking the station doors again when I was at work and wearing both my gun and my knife wherever I went, even when off-duty. The attacks tapered off somewhat when I started retaliating, smashing out headlights and tail lights on various Bycraft rust-buckets with my baton, immediately following up by issuing vehicle safety infringement notices that involved hefty fines. Any Bycraft who complained about the injustice faced the muzzle of my Glock.

The worst thing of all for the Bycrafts – and I must admit to feeling a certain amount of sympathy for them about this – was the refusal of the coroner to hand over Denny’s body so the family could bury him. That seemed strange as they’d released Dylan’s body to his family, and I wondered if it may have been because the forensics officers were trying to confirm that the same knife killed Denny and Miss G.

~~~~~~

Things were frosty between Jake and me for weeks. I insisted on paying for the repairs to his ute, a four figure bill he stiffly handed me at the station one day and which effectively wiped out my savings account. At the same time, in direct interrogation from me, he defiantly confirmed he’d lied about visiting Red in jail, accusing me of not even being willing to understand how important his family was to him.

He was dead right about that.

Just when I began to sadly ask myself if Denny’s death was the wedge that split us, Jake turned up on my doorstep one night.

We lay apart on my bed, fully clothed, and talked about Denny. I told him everything that happened that awful afternoon and night and he cried, each tear carrying a world’s weight of grief and guilt for his younger brother. I shifted over and held him tightly, letting him cry out his pain.

“I used him, Tessie,” he snuffled, wiping his eyes. “I knew he kept tabs on you because he worried about you and I made him tell me what you were doing. He didn’t want to, but I bullied him into it. I used him and I didn’t appreciate him, and now he’s gone forever.”

“I know, honey-boy. It’s hard to lose someone you love,” I soothed, stroking his hair, my own eyes filling with tears for him, for Denny and for myself.

We ended up making slow, pensive love, the pleasure of the sex almost peripheral to our desperate need for emotional comfort from each other. And afterwards we slept soundly in each other’s arms, reunited.

~~~~~~

Red Bycraft was expedited through the court process and happily is resident again in the city’s maximum security prison, now marked as a high-security prisoner. Yet somehow he still manages on a regular basis to send me letters containing his usual threat that he’s coming for me. I add each new one to the pile.

~~~~~~

After receiving Red’s latest, I took the letter from Tommy out of my drawer and read it again. Then I sat down to pen a reply.

Tommy

Thank you for your letter and your apology about Nana Fuller’s death. I want you to know that I accept your apology and respect you for having the courage to write to me and offer it.

I’
m so sorry about the tragic death of Denny. I know it must be hard for you to be so far away from your family at a sad time like this. I was with Denny to the end, and all I can say is that he died a hero. You should be very proud of him.

I’m glad to hear you are hoping for a fresh start when you’re out of jail. I’m happy to help in any way I can to assist you get on your feet and away from Little Town.

Yours sincerely

Tess Fuller