Fall (14 page)

Frank balked. Masculinity in peril.

‘One of us has got to be zero. Cop thing. No beer for you, shithead.' She jabbed Frank in the ribs. He gave her a relieved look. ‘He'll take the snacks though.'

Frank followed her into the huge eastern room, stopped only to take in its high ceilings, the windows above the shelves crammed with books slowly darkening with the coming rain.

‘What does this guy even do that he can live like this? What is it? Old money?'

‘Probably something like that.' Eden flipped her laptop open on a coffee table set between two red, oily leather wingback chairs. ‘Don't get distracted. We're here to get information and then we're leaving.'

Frank was looking through a brass telescope at nothing, fiddling with the dials. He touched a huge open notebook and Eden watched him slowly realise the instrument had likely been microscopically tuned to follow particular comets and stars. Her partner went stiff all over, shuffled guiltily to the seat beside her.

‘You've been warned about touching things you're not supposed to.'

‘Look at the guns, Eden.' He pointed to a rack of twelve ornate rifles wedged between two pillars of books. ‘There are guns all over the goddamn house. There's a cabinet of semi-automatics near the laundry chute. We don't have this many guns in our armoury at HQ.'

‘Mmm.'

Bood entered with a plate of nibbles and set them beside the laptop. He pulled one of the wingback chairs into the semicircle made by Eden and Frank's chairs. Frank set upon the crackers and cheese like he hadn't eaten in days, collecting crumbs on his knees and the floor around his feet.

‘So, Frank, you'll have caught on by now, I'm sure, that Bood here's an enthusiastic big game hunter,' Eden began. She drew up her email account and extracted images of Ivana Lyon and Minerva Hall's puncture wounds that the pathologist had sent through. She set these beside each other on the screen. She turned to the big man. ‘I hoped maybe you could tell us something about the tranquilliser used in capturing these
two victims. I've got a toxicity report from the coroner, but we're not even close to being able to identify the brand of chemical used from the distribution alone.'

Eden sat back and let Bood take charge of the laptop. His brow was heavy, dusted with strawberry blond eyebrows that met over a long, wide nose. There was grey creeping into the sides of his short beard and spotted through the fur at the back of his neck. Eden turned away, and as she did caught Frank examining the big man with the same idle curiosity. He was a fascinating man to look at, not only in his scale, but in the objects and images that surrounded him and how they played about his features and movements. Bood lived among decorated corpses, big cats, deer, silky buffalo, large animals, small animals, predators and prey alike. Comparing his own shape and movements with the animals that surrounded him was unavoidable. His hands came together and he rested his chin upon them, careful to think through his response before he gave it.

‘Well, it's a smaller dart,' Bood began. ‘I can tell from the wounds. Darts of around 1.5cc won't break the skin when they're extracted. Most tranquilliser darts have a rubber stopper on the needle so the animal can't pull or knock the dart out when it falls. It goes in, and the rubber stopper stops it coming back out before all the chemical can be released into the animal's system. This dart didn't have a stopper. So it was a small quick-acting dart rather than a large slow-release dart.'

Frank took a notepad from his pocket and began writing.

‘Whoever's using the darts must have some idea what they're doing,' Eden said. ‘Or they would have gone over the top. Shot for an overdose, rather than have their victim limp away on an underdose. Am I right?'

‘Right,' Bood said. ‘It's a tricky thing to calculate. You've got to understand the nature of the animal itself. How its blood flows. Its epidermis. You can't hit a crocodile and a human with the same dart. Some darts will penetrate tough skin, like reptile skin. Some darts will penetrate softer skin. Some darts are good for animals with fur, feathers – some are better for hairless creatures. Something delicate was needed for human skin, and a delicate dart was used here. If you're going to do this, you've also got to consider dosage. How fast does the heart beat? Was the animal resting or running? Was it frightened or calm? The rate of uptake will be affected by how quickly the chemical is absorbed into the bloodstream. You don't want to hit a resting tiger with a slow-uptake tranquilliser or the thing will come around and have you for dinner.'

‘It sounds as though if you're wanting the thing to survive, you've almost got to have the level of knowledge of an anesthetist,' Frank said.

‘Even if you don't want the animal to survive, using the right tranquilliser is fairly standard practice.' Bood leaned back in his chair. ‘Despite what you might think, most professional hunters aren't very big on animals suffering unnecessarily. Or on wasting expensive chemicals with overkill.'

‘Can you speculate about a weapon?'

‘Probably something gun-fired. If your victim was on the move, a jab stick or a blow pipe would have been out of the question. Particularly for a beginner. With the gun, you've got the scope and with some models the possibility of a quick re-fire. Have you got the toxicology report?'

Eden handed over a wad of papers she'd wrestled from the depths of her laptop bag. Bood sat back and read them quietly.
In time he stood up and went over to one of the pillars of books beside the fireplace. He pulled the shelf towards him to reveal a small neat cabinet of handguns. Frank and Eden followed. Frank nestled in beside the bigger man, looked at the lit shelves of tiny colourful syringes, the bottles and the screw-on feather stabilisers attached to each individual dart.

With both men blocking the cabinet, Eden looked at her hands. She had time to think about that night in Tasmania, the moment she rose from the water for what was certainly the last time and saw Bood's hand reaching, the cold resolution on his face. For a long time afterwards she thought about why he'd saved her, and decided, in the end, it was because there was no sport in watching her die that way. Most psychopaths Eden had known were forever considering how best to maximise their own entertainment, their own pleasure. Bood had watched her until he failed to be entertained, and then drew her out from her predicament, seduced by the idea of a future playmate perhaps. Maybe even a lover. The big man had to know now that Frank admired him. The thoughtful hand to his chin and theatrical snap of his fingers as decisions were made were all part of the show. He turned and in his hands he had a number of tiny capped syringes. Frank watched him select a gun from the upper shelves, a narrow long-nosed pistol with a wooden handle.

‘So,' Bood said, ‘I know what it isn't. It isn't anything else I've got here, and I've got a fair sample of the Australian market in this cabinet. There's a chance, a good chance, that the dart you're looking for is one of these.'

The trio returned to the chairs by the laptop, Frank and Bood beside each other this time. Bood laid the syringes
out neatly, twelve in all. They were all various shades of pink or yellow.

‘These are all paralysers,' Bood said. ‘They're low calibre and they're low dose. From the levels in the report and the wounds in the photos, I think we're getting close to the mark here.'

‘Great,' Frank said, picking up the syringe closest to him and examining it in the light of the windows. ‘Can we get any closer?'

‘You said you had footage of the strike?'

‘Maybe,' Eden said, going back to her email. ‘We've got this.'

She opened the file from the Domain security team and selected the video of Minerva Hall stumbling, almost falling, righting herself, and running on across the scope of the camera focused on a path that led to the back of the Art Gallery. Bood reached over and ran the video again, then twice more, intent on the screen. Eden brushed his fingers as she took back the laptop keyboard. She accessed the settings to slow the video down. Bood watched the woman on the screen running, seeming to trip, stumbling, pushing herself off the wet asphalt with her right hand, her fingertips, settling back into her run. At the very edge of the frame, Eden saw the same hand that had righted the runner reach down towards the back of her right thigh. Then she was gone.

‘We don't even know if this is the moment.'

‘Oh, it's the moment,' Bood said. He sat quietly for a few seconds considering the syringes before him. Then he selected one of the fainter pink vials, uncapped it, and stuck it into the side of Frank's neck.

‘Morris.' Eden grabbed at the big man as he and Frank rose together, but it was too late. Frank stumbled backwards,
grabbed at the dart in his neck, his eyes moving frantically from Bood to Eden.

‘Shit!' Frank pulled out the dart. Looked at the thing in his fingers. He swayed. ‘Shiiiit.'

Then he fell.

‘You fucking arsehole, Morris,' Eden snarled. She pushed Bood out of the way and pulled back the coffee table. Frank had flopped onto a Persian rug in front of the fireplace, his top button popped and ankles crossed from twisting sideways to try to catch the shelves to stop his fall. Eden put her hands on his chest. As she did his left leg gave four sharp twitches, rocking his whole body. Then he was still. Her partner's eyes were locked on the ceiling.

‘He's fine,' Bood said. He stood over Frank, his hands in the pockets of his trousers. ‘It'll be two, three minutes maximum.'

‘That was completely inappropriate.'

‘Did you want answers, or guesses?'

‘Tell me, then, for Christ's sake.'

‘You saw those three or four little jolts of the leg there?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's what you call a tell,' Bood said. ‘It's like a signature. It makes the brand distinct. There are complex chemical reasons why some drugs have signatures, but I couldn't begin to tell you what they are. Some brands of morphine make people nauseated. Some influenza medicines make people drowsy. Maduline makes your legs twitch.'

‘Maduline?'

‘I'm almost certain,' Bood said. He lowered himself back into the chair, pushed the cursor of the video back to its original place. ‘Her heartbeat is elevated because she's running. So absorption,
and therefore side effects, are much faster. You see here? Her right leg. Twitch twitch. She doesn't reach down to feel what hit her – so the dart probably has an anesthetic tip. She reaches more towards the knee, the top of the thigh, because her leg suddenly twitches against her will. It's Maduline. I'm sure of it.'

Eden watched the video. Watched Minerva Hall's right leg give two tiny kicks as she shifted to her left, pushed off, righted herself. Like she was shaking water from her shoe. Trying to kick off fingers suddenly gripping at her heel. Frank gave a groan beside her. She uncrossed his legs for him.

‘Maduline is a fast-acting, fast-absorbing tranquilliser,' Bood said. ‘It is burned out and gone in mere minutes. Animal handlers use it when they want to subdue an animal instantly, but not have that animal lying around anesthetised for hours afterwards. The occasions for use of this drug are fairly small, so you'll only find a couple of stockists in Australia. You might use Maduline if you had a deer tangled in a wire fence, for example. You subdue the animal, free it and it moves on. If you were to use something else, the animal might suffer. Might become prey. It's also good for health checks for migrating stock.'

Frank rolled onto his side and clawed his way into a sitting position. There was drool on his lip. He wiped it off and shook his head.

‘Christ. Fuck me.'

‘You'll feel absolutely fine in a minute, my friend.' Bood grinned at Frank, who could return only a tired stare. ‘What you've had is almost like an oversized jellyfish sting. You'll be up and moving before I finish this beer.'

‘I think I'd have liked a bit of warning,' Frank slurred, licked his lips. ‘Shit. Jesus. Jee-sus. That was terrifying.'

Eden watched her partner righting himself uncertainly, gripping the back of the chair nearest to him, unsure about his new friend and his propensity to unexpectedly hit people with paralysing drugs. He gripped his way around the chair and sat down, rubbing the sides of his skull.

‘It was like my whole body dropped from underneath me.'

‘My sincerest apologies.' Bood reached over and patted Frank's hand a couple of times, the way a man might reassure his elderly father. ‘But given the choice, I thought it more gentlemanly to let you take the hit than to impose such an experience on our dear Eden here.'

‘Those girls,' Frank said. He covered his eyes. Eden and Bood waited in silence. Frank ran his fingers through his short shaggy hair. ‘The killer wanted to stun them. Wanted them mobile in a few moments so they could … so they could experience it.'

‘It sounds like you're after a very nasty kind of hunter,' Bood said. He glanced at Eden.

‘A real prick,' Frank laughed gently.

Eden felt grateful for a moment for Frank's ever-trusting spirit. Frank was like that. Forgiving. Easily led into the darkness, into pacts he never knew were forming around him until it was too late, until he had bad choices to make and only the least worst to choose. It was why, she knew, Imogen would use him. Because he bore the kind of basic good-heartedness that begged to be used. He would have done well to be raised in the country, Eden thought, where people were like him. Trusting and uncomplicated. But he'd migrated from the Western suburbs to the city and taken with him the tragic ill-fit of an honest heart in an evil world. The two men were
talking again, the homicide detective and the killer. Frank explaining the horrifying yet thrilling sensation of being tranquillised like it was a skydiving adventure he'd signed up and paid for. A once-in-a-lifetime plunge. Almost proud that he'd survived it.