‘Is it his underwear? Like, has he been wearing it, or …?’
‘I don’t know, Gail.’
‘Why was it …’ She shook her head, trying to fathom it. ‘Why was it lying around in tubs like that?’
‘If I had to guess, I would say he was trying to pack up the household and get out of town before my people came knocking about Chloe,’ I said. ‘But halfway through, he gave up. Figured it was too big a task. So he decided to go fullDeliveranceon us instead. Enact “Operation Crazyfuck”, which it looks like he’s been cooking up for some time. That’s my theory, anyway. The underwear was being packed into boxes in the living room, but there were other things being packed up elsewhere. The kitchen was half done. The bedroom was full of photographs that had already been loaded into tubs.’
‘Photographs?’
‘Tens of thousands of them.’ I nodded. ‘Maybe hundreds of thousands.’
‘What were the pictures of?’
‘Women in their natural environment.’ I wiped at blood that was trickling down my neck. ‘I didn’t look at too many. But I got the gist. Women photographed through windows or between the slits of curtains. Undressing. Cooking dinner. Sitting around. Putting children to sleep. There were women that were older, and there were kids, too. Always females.’
Gail just stood staring at me, her mouth slightly open.
‘He’s been creeping around taking pictures of women through their windows at night,’ I went on. ‘Probably in the cammo. Treating it like a secret operation. From the settings, the furniture in the pictures and the clothes on the women, I’d say he’s been doing it for decades. And the underwear, it’s all used. It seems to range from big granny knickers to undies for little girls. He’s probably spent decades doing that, too: pulling them off clotheslines, or maybe raiding them out of laundromats.’
‘Jeeesus fuuu …’ Gail let her hands slap by her sides, stared off towards the crowd gathering at the police tape. ‘So what … what …why?’
‘I have no idea, Gail.’
‘This is going to totally eclipse the bludgeoning.’ She pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘A guy who stalks women in their houses with half his spare time, and runs around rigging his property with booby traps with the other half. This is going to go international. The press will be feverish.’
I nodded, studied the blood on my hands, black beneath my fingernails. Cops nearby were describing the scene to newly arrived colleagues, who were gawping just like Gail had been. The officers had marked on a rough drawing that was being handed around where the known bear traps were, and where the house was, and which parts of the property were unexplored. I listened to that for a while, playing with my nails.
‘You’re quiet,’ Gail said. I realised she was looking hard at me.
‘I just killed a guy. It makes you contemplative.’
‘Go get some sleep.’
‘No.’ I jumped down from the deck of the ambulance. ‘I want my team to get out there and do some DNA swabs. And I’m looking for a young guy who was seen in the pub that I haven’t identified yet. And I’m waiting on—’
‘But it’s over.’ Gail gestured to the Branch property gates. ‘Are you kidding me? This is your guy right here, Rus. The briefing I got said he was the only person on the ground last night to speak to the victim. And then you come out here and findthis? Come on!’
‘Yeah, maybe.’ I shrugged. ‘Like I said, it looks good. But I don’t like things that look this good. If you look harder—I mean, really stare at it—you start seeing imperfections.’
‘Like what?’
‘There’s no violence,’ I said. ‘There are no home invasions, no stabbings and no rapes on Stephen Branch’s rap sheet. From what I’m seeing of the inside of that house—the undies and the photographs—he seems to be a looker. Not a doer. The worst he’s everdone in town is sleaze onto a couple of women at the pub. Aside from that, he’s never actuallydoneanything of note.’
‘He just lured you and your guys into anApocalypse Now-themed death maze!’ Gail scoffed.
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Theone timehe’s ever done anything violent, he appears to have spent several years planning it, and he’s perpetuated it against a couple of men.Andhe wasn’t very good at it. He took five or six shots at me overall. Nothing hit. He lost sight of me completely at one point. That slip-up cost him the game. What happened to Chloe Lutz was a crime of opportunity. Something squeezed into a very tight window that would only have opened up on the night it happened. It was conducted by someone who was waiting for their moment, and knew what they were doing, and had probably done it before.’
‘You’re out of your mind.’ Gail shook her head.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’re going to go somewhere and get some sleep.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘You’re sleeping, and your people are sleeping, too,’ Gail snapped. ‘I bet you came out here and pulled that “Nobody sleeps!” bullshit like you always do. I’m not having it.’
‘Yes, you are.’
