Stabbed. Left for dead in the woods.
I see my teacher’s eyelids shut, chalk falling from her fingertips. The cop leans in, voice taut.I need to speak to Travis.
And Minnow.
“Yeah, I remember her.”
“I see her in town every now and then,” Heath says. “She lives ’round the corner. Retired now.”
That’s not quite true. She retired that year. That month. One lazy afternoon, Trav and I passed a pineapple juice box back and forth, taking small sips to make it last. Amy sat stiffly between us, elbows tucked in, trying to read. Trav slurped the rest, juice dripping from his chin. He blew up the paper carton until it was bloated and whistling. Then he crushed it between his hands, and it exploded like a gunshot. Amy bolted from her seat, white-faced, sweating. Miss McKenzie looked up from her yogurt, said nothing.
And a month later, all of us were gone. I don’t remember what month it was. I should.
“What about her?” I finally ask, digging my toes into the sand.
“That journalist went to see her.”
Slowly, I lift my head. “When?”
“Yesterday.”
Yesterday I was poking around Dad’s room until Heath came home. We took Jessie to beach 2, spent the afternoon fishing for mullet.
I fix my eyes on Trav. He’s sitting up on his board, looking at the sky.
“The journo’s been following these shark attacks. He covered Mum’s…death, too. He’s probably looking into Hannah’s attack, trying to get a quote. Miss McKenzie is a long-term resident,” I tell him, tell myself. “It’s good to get quotes from the locals. For the story, I mean.”
Heath’s eyes settle on me, steady, quiet, and too still. “No. He’s not investigating Hannah,” he says. “He’s investigatingyou.”
THEN
The silent girl sits on a plastic chair in the principal’s office, both hands wrapped around a Coke can. The uneasy policeman sits opposite, forearms resting on the desk. “I know it’s been a bit hard at home lately, Minnow.”
She blinks at him like an insect, wordless.
He clears his throat, reaches self-consciously forward to pat her arm. Police can question children without parental consent, but he feels guilty just the same.
Her skin is smooth and cold. He draws his hand back. “Tell me about your mum.”
“She’s gone.”
“She’s been gone before,” he says. “I’m sure she’ll come back.”
Danielle Greenwood always comes back. Still, they’ve spoken to her shithead husband, Peter. Hauled him in for questioning, twice. Listened to him swear and snarl, wounded for himself and not at all for his missing wife. “Always the bloody husband, isn’t it? She’s shot through, and it’s not the first time, either.”
And dammit, he’s right. Colleen Holloway admitted as much. Danielle usually fled to her house after her bastard husband hit her. But not always.
The afternoon Danielle went missing, Peter was snapper fishing off theDeep Sea.Eyewitness saw the boat at beach 1. They’re fairly confident Peter was skippering it. Fairly.
“Charge me with somethin’ or get farked,” Peter Greenwood had snarled.
But they have nothing to charge him with. And they can’t keep bringing him in here with no new evidence. There’s no body. Nocrime scene. Just a woman with a DV history who’d finally had a gutful and left.
And good on her.
They’re keeping an eye on Peter. Dragging his dodgy mates in for questioning, and they’re getting a bit bloody sick of it. Especially Terry Hargrave. Terry’s a good sort, and he’s not happy at all about this Danielle business. Bit soft on her, he was. And now she’s gone, dead or fled, and either way, her husband’s to blame. If I were Peter Greenwood, I’d be really bloody worried about Terry Hargrave.
The cop isn’t too worried about Danielle. But he’s sweating bullets about her daughter.
