‘Whythe helldid you come onto the property?’ Russell shook his head at me. ‘I thought I must have clipped you when I heard your voice out there.’
‘You were pretty close.’ I showed him the tear in the shoulder of my T-shirt.
‘I thought you were him.’ Russell’s voice was intensifying. ‘I could have—’
‘Don’t leap down my throat too fast.’ I put a hand up. ‘You went in long before I did.’
‘I was following that pudding-brained, cretinous gastropod Louis Dodge,’ Russell said, turning to Fry in a way that made the smaller officer wince. Russell put an arm out and pointed into the dark. ‘He’s off in that direction, lying in the bottom of a hole with a bear trap on his leg. Go and see if he’s all right, Fry. And if he is all right, bring him here so I can strangle him.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Fry went off. My brother eyed me for a moment in silence, with blood dripping off his chin onto the front of his shirt, trying to decide, perhaps, whether he should go ahead and re-launch into berating me for coming onto the Branch property anyway. Then he said, ‘I’m somewhat pleased that you’re not dead right now, Evan.’
I gasped, clutched at my heart, did a little mock stagger back. ‘My god.’
‘Don’t,’ he warned. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
‘That’s the nicest thing I think you’ve ever said to me, Russell.’
‘Get in here and look at this place with me.’
‘Who is this new, emotionally vulnerable, deeply sensitive Russell Powder?’
‘Do itquietly,’ he snapped.
RUSSELL
The front of the Branch property was a hive in two hours flat. Locals who had heard about the shooting, cops from surrounding jurisdictions there to secure the scene, ambulance crews who had come to tend to the injured. There was talk of bringing in a bomb squad, but I wasn’t a part of that. Together, Fry and Evan took over the scene direction, because apparently I was too covered in blood to be worth listening to. Dodge was hauled off on a stretcher, giving prattling protestations that he was fine, that he’d be back before sunrise, that all he needed was a few stitches in his calf. I saw, from my vantage point on the back of a different ambulance, that the left leg of Dodge’s jeans was black with blood from the knee down. I guessed there might have been more than simple stitches in his future. I was annoyed at being taken out of the game for the simple crime of bleeding from every surface not covered in fabric. Ambulance people kept approaching me and trying to wipe my face and shine lights in my eyes. I gave a flat-toned and colourless statement to a couple of cops from Gosford, who recorded the whole thing on their body cams, then we all turned to watch as Branch’s body was loaded into a third ambulance under a dark blue sheet.
I saw Gail Caplan coming too late. I got up and tried to walk away anyway, but she skewered me in place with a look as she marched angrily from her personal car.
‘And here I was thinking my night couldn’t get any worse,’ I sighed.
‘Yournight?’ She pulled up short. ‘Oh, that is rich. I’ve been at the bludgeoning on the waterfront all day. Then I get a message telling me you entered a suspect’s property, knowing it was hostile, without backup. Your partner got caught in a bear trap, and you shot the suspect dead.’
‘That’s about the sum of it.’
‘Fuckme, Russell!’
‘No thanks.’
‘In twenty-four hours you’ve punched a junkie and shot a rural lunatic.’ Gail’s nostrils were flaring. ‘What’s next? You gonna harpoon a paedophile?’
‘You got one handy?’
‘What? A paedophile or a har—Look! Enough! I am beyond tired of your shit. You know that? I was thinking on the way here that I understand completely now why your mother called you Gun. You’re a cold, loud, trigger-happytool, and you present aconstant dangerto everyone around you. Whenever you doanything, you ruin someone’s day!’
I had to smile at the creativity.
‘The dead guy,’ Gail said. ‘Is he the killer, at least?’
‘It sure looks good,’ I replied, which is something I said when I meant that something had all the right appearances and not much else.
I described what I’d seen on my walk-through of the house with Evan. I’d found Branch breathing his last gurgling breaths in an airless and bare room. The wardrobe was open, and it and Branch and the floor were all full of bullet holes. In the living room, there were cardboard moving boxes and plastic tubs scattered everywhere, maybe twenty of them, full to the brim with women’s underwear. I’d stood in the glow of overhead lights that were slick with tobacco tar and cooking grease, and lifted a piece of underwear out of the nearest tub, examining it. Blue polka dots on white, with a lace trim, the elastic a little worn from wear.
‘Twentyboxes of women’s underwear?’ Gail gazed at me, her head cocked.
‘By my estimation.’
