Limbo (16 page)

‘I see three cops, some yellow tape, what I presume is Hailey’s body covered in a sheet…’

‘What about at the peripheries?’

‘Bush?’

‘And?’

Joy looked at the picture hard until finally she saw it. A thing so commonplace on highways it didn’t even register. ‘The sign,’ she said.

Dash grinned. ‘That’s my Rose.’

At the edge of the shot was a distance marker. A small, green, triangular road sign that stood only about a meter high. These signs were spaced every five kilometres to indicate the distance left to the nearest location. The sign in the photo said R 30.

Rockhampton thirty kilometres.

‘So we just have to find the sign and…’

‘We’re in the right spot,’ Dash nodded. ‘I’ll make a private detective out of you yet.’

‘No offence,’ Joy said as she shoved the picture back in the glove box. ‘But after this is all over, I’ll be perfectly happy to never see your face again.’

Joy realised it was the truth. No matter what latent attraction bubbled between them, she knew she wouldn’t be pursuing any kind of relationship, sexual or otherwise, with Dash. Not when they were at such completely different stages of their lives.

He clutched his chest. ‘You wound me.’

‘Well that’s what you get when you make me leave without breakfast.’

Dash rolled his eyes. ‘It’s not even seven in the morning. I’m sure you’re not going to die if you don’t eat for a few hours.’

‘My blood sugar levels disagree. I can already feel my liver working overtime to find my cells some more sugar. I can hear them.
Feed me.’
Joy put on a weak, whiney voice. ‘
Feed me,
Dash.’

He shook his head. ‘Crime scene first. Then I’ll feed you. But we have to get it to go because I need to be back in time for Katie.’

Joy smiled.
‘Get it to go
is my favourite phrase!’

***

They reached the crime scene within fifteen minutes of leaving Rockhampton and in the end Dash spotted it easily because someone had erected a little white cross beside the road engraved with Hailey’s name. He hadn’t noticed it last night in the dark.

The traffic was still quite sparse as he pulled over on the southern side of the thirty kilometre marker and they got out of the car. Neither of them said anything as they stood and looked down at the single white cross, which looked smaller still amid the large bushland canvas that surrounded it.

‘It’s so sad,’ she murmured.

Dash nodded. ‘Yes.’ Nobody deserved this. Being shot in the head and dumped like a bag of garbage on the side of the road.

They both stared for a while longer until a car whizzed past them on the highway. ‘So…same as yesterday? Just seeing what pops?’ she asked. ‘Or are we looking for something the cops might have missed?’

‘They won’t have missed anything,’ Dash said. ‘They’ll have combed the entire area. Just let me know if something gives you a shiver.’

She rolled her eyes at him. ‘You
do
know I’m not psychic, right?’

Dash looked down at her. ‘Joy…you
do
know that
normal
people don’t see ghosts right?’

‘So that makes you psychic too?’

He shrugged. ‘I think that we all have differing levels of psychic abilities. But Hailey didn’t appear to me. She appeared to
you.
So who knows…maybe that makes you more in tune with this case?’

‘No. I
saw
her yes, but that’s it. I don’t get spine-tingly, woo-woo feelings, I never have. I don’t have premonitions. I can’t…read your aura or your mind.’

Dash laughed. ‘Really?’ He dropped his gaze to her breasts briefly. ‘You can’t read what I’m thinking?’

Her exasperated sigh was comical. ‘Well, maybe…but anyone with a set of ovaries could probably read you.’

‘All I’m saying is just have a look around. A crime scene is just another piece of the puzzle. Even if nothing leaps out now, it could do down the track.’

‘But is it really a crime scene? If Hailey wasn’t murdered here then surely this is just a…dumping scene?’

‘It’s still a crime scene, just of a different kind and there’s still evidence and facts to be gathered from it.’

‘Okay then.’ Joy looked from side to side. ‘I’ll take a wander.’

Dash watched her as she turned and walked a short distance towards the car. She looked robotic, like she felt stupid even being here, but he was pleased she was — despite last night.

When he’d woken to his alarm this morning to find her still on her side, her back to him but sans covers, her top leg thrust forward, pushing her perfect ass up and directly at him, he’d doubted his sanity. But if the two of them were really going to find Isabella Richardson then having her here
was
sane.

‘So…’

Dash turned to face her as her voice carried to him in the still morning air. She was frowning. ‘So?’

‘Whoever dumped Hailey here was probably coming from the Rocky direction?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Well to dump her here they would have to have been travelling on this side of the road. If they were coming from the other direction, travelling north, they’d have been on the opposite side. They’d have had to stop, pull her out of the car, cross over the road then dump her here.’

Dash smiled at her perceptiveness. ‘True.’

‘It would take much longer than just pulling up on the side of the road and throwing her out. They’d risk a car coming along and spotting them. So does that mean maybe that they’re in Rocky? Or somewhere north of here?’

‘It could mean that,’ Dash nodded. ‘Or it could just mean that they were smart enough to think about that and wanted to be sure everyone else thought they were north of here too. Maybe they’d really come from the south but did a u-turn just up the road a bit then dumped her where they did to throw us off the scent? Or maybe late at night they just crossed over to this side of the road, did the deed then did a u-turn and hightailed it back south.’

‘Hmm. Yeah. I guess.’ She looked around again. ‘I don’t even get why you’d dump a body on the main highway. Why not dump her somewhere no-one was ever going to find her?’

A car heading south whizzed past them, fluffing Joy’s pink fringe. ‘Good question. Maybe they panicked or were lazy. Or arrogant? Maybe they were feeling the heat and thought giving us Hailey would satisfy enough people or give the cops too much to do to worry about searching for Isabella.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Who knows, maybe they were emotionally invested in Hailey enough to want to return her to her loved ones? If they’d been building a relationship with her over six months, maybe they were grateful to her, maybe they…felt they owed her that.’

Joy snorted. ‘Returning her
not
shot in the head would have been a much better way to show their gratitude, don’t you think?’

‘Oh I didn’t say it wasn’t fucked up.’ Dash crouched down to study the dirt area near the white cross.

‘You say that so casually. Like this isn’t even the worst of fucked up you’ve seen.’

Dash glanced up at her. ‘I was a cop for seventeen years. A homicide detective for ten. Unfortunately this isn’t.’

She looked away as if she couldn’t bear the thought. Not that he could blame her. Joy had probably been through some bad times with her druggie ex but this was a whole other level of bad. ‘Are you getting anything?’ she asked.

Dash looked around him at the scrub, dirt and bitumen that had cradled Hailey Richardson in her undignified end. ‘Nope. You?’

She shook her head. ‘Nope.’

‘Alright.’ Dash stood. He knew it was a long shot but he’d hoped something here might trigger something in Joy. Despite her protests about not being psychic, she was clearly more open to that kind of crap than he was.

‘Let’s go,’ he said turning towards the Volvo.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘
Breakfast
. My blood sugar level thanks you.’

Dash snorted. ‘You should still be riding that sugar high from the half a packet of Chupa Chups you devoured last night.’
He
still hadn’t recovered from two hours of Joy sucking away, cheeks hollowing, her lips moist.

‘It takes more than a few lollipops to get me buzzing.’

Dash grimaced. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for him.

***

They stopped at the nearest roadhouse. Mindful of needing his hands to drive, Dash ordered himself a black coffee and a muffin and although he’d spilled crumbs in his lap he managed to keep himself relatively tidy. Joy, on the other hand, ordered a bacon-and-egg roll and a caramel thickshake, both of which she scarfed down with much gusto.

By the time the last of the roll had been devoured her fingers were covered in sauce, egg yolk and bacon juice. Thankfully Dash had exercised some forethought and the second she looked like she was going to go for another pornographic display of finger-licking he produced the stack of napkins he’d snatched at the last moment.

‘Oh, thanks,’ she said and used the napkins instead of her fingers, for which his peace of mind was most grateful.

Then she shoved another lollipop in her mouth.

Lord have mercy on his soul.

‘Music,’ he said, as her cheeks hollowed again in his peripheral vision.

She obliged, leaning forward to turn on the stereo system and hit the play button on the CD. The irony of Don Henley crooning ‘Desperado’ was not lost on him. But at least it drowned out the wet, sucking sounds she made as she slurped on the Chupa Chup.

***

Five hours later with all but one lollipop ingested, Joy managed to persuade Dash to divert to the McDonald’s drive-through at Gympie. She ordered a Big Mac, large fries, a Coke and a McFlurry with Oreos.

He shook his head at her as he passed her food over. ‘You eat more than a Labrador with a tapeworm. You should be the size of a house.’

She grinned. ‘Lucky for me I have one of
those
metabolisms.’

Yes, but what about her coronary arteries? God alone knew what her triglycerides were.

Once she’d demolished her heart-attack-in-a-box and they were back out on the highway again she pulled the last Chupa Chup out of the bag.

Dash groaned internally.
For fuck’s sake
. It was a lollipop too far.

Something had to give.

Seriously, he was going to just pull the car over to the side of the highway and kiss her breathless if she so much as took another lick. Something which would probably come as quite a surprise to her, given her complete obliviousness to the situation.

Dash didn’t like surprises.

Neither, he suspected, did Joy.

So his plan was to distract her from opening the bloody thing in the first place.

Which would do it? The case or the ex?

‘I was wondering if you wanted to talk anymore about what you said last night? About your ex?’

Her fingers stilled on the crinkly wrapper.

Score.

She turned her head to face him. ‘You’ve barely spoken to me in five hours and now you want to talk about my ex?’

Okay. Clearly what was discussed in Rockhampton
stayed
in Rockhampton. Fine by him. She wasn’t his responsibility. She wasn’t
his sister
. And she was old enough to know her own mind. If she wanted to talk — as she had done last night — then she’d talk.

Her attention and her fingers returned to the lollipop wrapper. ‘There’s something nagging at me,’ he announced. Her fingers stilled again. ‘About the case.’

Which wasn’t a lie. He’d been driving along thinking about it, something pecking at the back of his brain. Something, probably tiny and apparently inconsequential, that he just knew didn’t fit.

‘There’s something wrong that I just can’t put my finger on.’

He felt her scrutiny once more. ‘At the scenes?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ Because he didn’t. ‘But I know this feeling.’

It was the feeling he’d sometimes got on cases when he knew the answer was right in front of him but he hadn’t been able to see it. And it had rarely been wrong.

‘It’s like a…hunch. I’ve learned to trust it over the years.’

‘Okay.’ She shoved the lollipop back in the bag, throwing it at her feet. ‘How about we talk about that? Would it help?’

‘Maybe. Bouncing things off somebody else can sometimes help to jog something loose.’

He’d often been in a major incident room when someone was going through all the evidence out loud and something had clicked into place. And frankly anything that kept him from death-by-lollipop he was more than happy to countenance.

‘Well, let’s start at the beginning,’ she said bringing her legs up until she was sitting cross-legged in the seat, her Doc Martens tucked under her, her body angled towards him. ‘What if we go through everything we know, out loud? With our two heads maybe something will click?’

‘Maybe.’ Why not? It sure as shit beat where his head was at the moment.

They spent the next half an hour going through everything Dash had been through the day before as he’d stood in front of his board of death (as he, too, was now coming to think of it) and added in what they’d gleaned from the Night Owl visit and their road trip.

Nothing was forthcoming but the nagging feeling persisted. ‘Tell me what Hailey told you again,’ he said, as a large road sign proclaiming Brisbane to be one hundred kilometres away flashed by.

Joy shut her eyes as she tried to recall everything Hailey had told her. ‘She said Isabella was still alive. That
they
had her. That she didn’t know where because they’d put a balaclava over her head and that Isabella wasn’t in any danger because they loved her.’

Dash tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, digesting the information, but there was nothing but a big blank, immovable wall. ‘There’s something I’m missing,’ he growled in frustration, shoving a hand through his hair.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Maybe you’re trying to think about it too hard? Maybe it’ll come to you later when you’re…making tea or talking with Katie? When you’re not thinking about it?’

‘Probably,’ he conceded. That had happened to him often enough to know it was sensible advice but Dash had never been known for his patience. ‘Let’s go over it again anyway,’ he said.