I waited. Fry struggled.
‘What are you telling me, Fry?’ I pressed, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck slowly start to stand on end. Goosebumps rushed down my arms as the officer spoke.
‘It’s him,’ Fry shuddered. ‘I saw it in his eyes. It’s him.’
EVAN
Russell emerged from the bush and walked back towards us, Fry trailing behind him. Fry’s head was down and shoulders were up like he’d just been smacked and told to get a hold of himself, which I wouldn’t have put it past Russell to do. Dodge and Lee and I were standing between the Hilux and the cruiser, lit by a big, white full moon.
‘Where’re Kalowski and Knowles right now?’ Russell asked Dodge.
‘They’ll be here in a sec,’ Dodge said. ‘I told them to go lights and sirens off. What’s going on in there?’
Russell explained what Fry had told him. We all stood on the road in silence for a second or two, coming to terms with it.
‘He was just standing there in the dark?’ I asked.
‘Maybe two metres away,’ Fry nodded.
‘But he didn’t point the gun at you.’
‘No. But it wasn’t … he wasn’t carrying it down by his side. It was up in his hands. Ready to use.’
‘He didn’t say anything threatening?’ Lee asked.
‘His face was not right,’ Fry insisted. ‘The smile. The eyes.’
‘That’s not …’ Dodge began to say.
‘He had cammo on,’ Fry added.
‘You didn’t tell me that,’ Russell said.
‘It’s only just coming back to me,’ Fry was trembling hard. ‘Face paint. Like he was doing a … an army operation. I’m tellingyou that he didn’t … he didn’t come down the road a-a-and say “Hi” like a normal person would. He was off the road. He’d snuck up, and when I spotted him he smiled, and …’
Fry’s voice trailed off. Russell shot me a conspiratorial look of concern. For a half a second, we were on the same team. Two brothers, trying to discern if our shaken colleague was adding new details into his strange story about a man sneaking around on his own property to justify the terror that had incapacitated him, or if this was a real account we should accept with grave seriousness. I waited for Russell to fire-breathe Fry to ash for being overly dramatic, but he didn’t.
‘It’s him,’ Fry said.
‘That’s a big call,’ Dodge said gently.
‘I want to get this guy in hand,’ Russell said. ‘I don’t like him. Not the stuff the people are saying about him down the pub, or this weird-arse shit tonight; sneaking up on the local coppers. I want to snatch Branch up and have a proper look at him. What do we know about the property?’
‘That’s just the thing …’ Dodge worked the back of his neck, embarrassed, eyes restless. ‘I’ve never been in. And from what Lee’s just been telling me—’
‘No one’sbeen onto the property,’ Lee cut in. ‘The talk at the pub tonight was that, you know, that’s just something about Branchy. He doesn’t let people onto his land.’
‘Oh, and I wonder why that is?’ Russell said. ‘Because he likes to run around dressed like he’s at war? Is this guy your garden-variety weirdo, or does he have sovereign citizenship delusions, or what?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘So he could have anything going on in there,’ Russell said. ‘Anything from sex slaves that he’s farming to make skin suits, to a cache of weapons he’s stocking up for the apocalypse.’
‘Nobody knows,’ Lee said.
‘And it’s not their fault that they don’t know,’ I said. Russell turned his dark eyes on me. The moment we’d been on the same team was a distant memory now.
‘You’—he pointed at me—‘go back to the pub. Round up the officers that are embedded in the crowd.’
