The Stolen, page 8
‘Bloody hell!’
‘Find him?’ Wozza paused the film he was checking.
‘He’s carrying Ethan and going into the fish and chip shop.’ I couldn’t believe the proprietors hadn’t come forward.
‘We need to go and talk to them,’ Wozza said, reaching for his keys.
I stopped him. ‘We need to see where else he went or see if he spoke to anyone first.’
Wozza grumbled and went back to checking his footage.
‘There he is, walking past the pharmacy.’ Woz turned his screen around so I could see Josh McCreedy with the baby in one arm and a bag of takeaway in the other.
The footage was a little grainy, but as soon as Josh walked out of the frame, Norma and Dawn emerged from the pharmacy. ‘Gee, they just missed him,’ I said, wondering how many others narrowly missed the chance to intervene that day.
‘No one said they saw him, but these images might jog some memories.’ I took some screenshots of Josh and Ethan and sent them to the printer.
‘Hey, check this out.’ There was a note of excitement in Wozza’s voice. He swivelled his screen and we both watched Josh McCreedy, with his stolen baby and his takeaway food, stop and talk to another man in the street. The man was of medium height and build, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt. Fair hair. The clock on the screen clicked over as the two stood together. One minute. Two minutes. Then Josh adjusted the baby on his hip and the two men walked off in the same direction.
We printed a picture of the man talking to Josh and headed back to town to try to find out who he was, and to canvas who had seen or talked to Josh McCreedy at lunchtime yesterday.
‘It’s a good sign,’ said Wozza as we trawled down the main drag looking for a place to park.
‘What is?’ I spotted a car park up ahead and pointed.
Wozza hit the indicator and headed for it. ‘That he bought fish and chips. I mean, if you were planning to murder your baby, would you really start with fish and chips?’
‘I hope you’re right. At the very least, it’s a delaying tactic.’
‘We know he didn’t pass the baby on to someone else at lunch, because the photo at the silos was taken after this.’
The picture of Josh talking to the man in the white T-shirt lay in my lap. I had no idea who he was but I hoped he had talked Josh out of doing anything stupid.
First, we headed to the fish and chip shop. When we’d visited earlier, the small Greek woman behind the counter had said in broken English that she hadn’t seen Josh. But now she was gone and in her place was Nick, the Greek owner.
‘G’day, Nick,’ said Wozza.
‘Wozza!’ said Nick as if he was greeting a champion. ‘How’s my favourite customer?’
Wozza looked a little embarrassed and quickly asked about Josh McCreedy, showing Nick the photo of Josh.
‘Sure I remember him,’ said Nick. ‘He come in here all the time. What you say his name is?’
‘Josh McCreedy,’ I said.
‘Sure. He was here yesterday. But until then, I never knew he had baby.’ He gestured a stubby finger towards the photo I held up.
‘Have you heard that the baby is missing?’ I asked. Nick’s body language and tone suggested he hadn’t.
Nick looked shocked and clapped a hand to his mouth. ‘No! Not the one they talk about on the radio? Is this him?’
‘Yeah, mate,’ said Wozza. ‘That’s him.’
Nick shook his head in wonder.
‘Do you remember what Josh ordered?’
‘Two hamburgers, chips, four dimmies.’ Nick counted the items on his fingers. ‘Two Cokes. And milk but I not let him buy.’
‘He wanted to buy milk?’ I asked.
‘For the baby. He had a baby bottle in a pocket of his hoodie and he wanted to buy milk.’ Nick looked over at the fridge on the customer side of the counter. In among the array of soft drinks was a section with bottles and cartons of milk. ‘But I say, “Your baby too young for milk. Hurt his belly.” I have grandson. I know.’ Nick pointed to the corkboard on the bench next to the fryer. There were several pictures of a round-faced, dark-haired baby who was clearly adored.
‘So what did you do?’ asked Wozza.
‘I make him a bottle,’ declared Nick proudly. ‘We have formula here. His baby was hungry. He sit there and feed him.’ Nick pointed to the bench seat behind us. ‘By the time I cook his lunch, the baby drank bottle.’
An enormous feeling of relief almost overwhelmed me. To know that Josh had made an effort to feed the baby was another good sign.
‘Did he say anything to you about the baby?’ I asked.
‘I ask him questions while I was cooking. But then more customers came in and …’ Nick shrugged. ‘I get feeling he not know a lot about baby. But I also get feeling he love baby.’
‘What made you think that?’ There was a glint of hope in Wozza’s question.
‘Tenderness,’ said Nick. ‘I watch him sit and feed baby and smile and coo. Just like I do with my grandson.’
Next stop, Filmore’s Pharmacy. Norma and Dawn were at the front counter, helping holiday-makers choose sunscreen and jellybeans from the display. Wozza eyed the jellybeans keenly. I knew chemist jellybeans were a favourite of his. One of many.
As soon as the customers cleared, we moved to the counter and showed Norma and Dawn the screengrab we’d taken of them following Josh McCreedy up the road.
‘Oh my.’ Norma put a hand over her mouth in shock. ‘I didn’t notice him. Did you, Dawn?’
Dawn looked horrified. ‘We were right there,’ she said. ‘We could have …’
Wozza was quick to jump in. ‘You weren’t to know,’ he said.
‘What about him?’ I asked, pointing to the man Josh had been talking to. ‘Do you recognise him?’
Dawn shook her head, but Norma looked thoughtful. ‘He seems familiar but it’s a bit hard to see at that angle.’
‘Care to take a guess?’ Wozza pushed.
‘I’ll give it some thought,’ said Norma. And that was the end of that.
Back at the office, I rang Maddy. ‘He fed the baby,’ I told her. ‘We talked to Nick at the fish and chip shop and he told us that Josh wanted to buy milk but Nick knew Ethan was too young for milk and made him some formula.’ I could hear Maddy burst into tears.
‘It’s a good sign,’ she finally replied. Then her voice sounded a little stronger. ‘A very good sign.’
Over a cup of tea, Wozza and I discussed what we had so far. Josh had been attentive towards the baby and had fed him. Then, it appeared, he had walked openly around town.
‘How much do guys eat?’ I asked suddenly.
Wozza patted his middle. ‘A lot, usually. Why?’
‘It’s Josh’s fish and chip shop order. Two hamburgers, chips, dim sims. Two Cokes. Could he have arranged to meet the guy in the white T-shirt? They meet after he comes out with the order, then walk off together.’
Wozza pondered that. ‘Nick’s hamburgers are monsters. Even I would struggle to eat two. And the chips and dimmies as well. You could be onto something.’
The office phone rang. Wozza took the call, made some grunting noises in response to whoever was on the other end, then hung up and turned to me. ‘They’re sending reinforcements up from Melbourne. Just what we need—city slickers.’
At the mention of the city, my thoughts turned unbidden to Daniel. I wondered if they’d send him, given Amanda’s accident. Daniel was a detective inspector. In our last big case, he had appeared just when we needed him and no one had guessed at our history. No one could see how his presence knocked me out of my orbit. I picked up my phone from where it was charging on my desk and tapped on his message from yesterday, then typed a response before I could stop myself.
Not sure I’ll have time to talk this weekend. Baby kidnapping. I pressed send.
Immediately, the three dancing dots appeared. Then my phone vibrated with a message.
Following the case from town. Watched you on the morning news. D
I put my phone face down on my desk.
Wozza looked up. ‘Everything all right?’
I nodded but didn’t say anything. How did I feel about Daniel following my work? I didn’t know. My mind operated with such sharp clarity, except where he was concerned. When we separated, I badly missed his friendship and professional advice, but I did not miss the way he made my head spin.
Wozza brought over printouts of the photos Josh had posted on Insta and added them to the pile on my desk. I studied our aerial map of the town and pointed to the silos, the site of the final photo. Wozza lined up the printouts in order. First there was baby Ethan lying on the front seat of the car. The caption was: Revenge. Next there was Ethan squirming as Josh took a selfie of them both at the cliff tops of the Devil’s Corner. The caption read: You want to be independent, now you can. It was more of a veiled threat than the other captions. Then there was the picture by the abandoned roadhouse. Josh held the baby around the middle, and it looked like Ethan was trying to wriggle out of his grip. The caption was: Payback’s a bitch. How does it feel? And then the fourth and final photo by the grain silos. That last caption read: It’s over. I’m gonna end it. The photocopies of the screen captures all showed Maddy’s pleading comments as soon as he posted.
Please, please bring my baby back.
We can talk about this.
Don’t hurt him.
Please, Josh.
It was so heartbreaking. Wozza stood next to my desk and I could tell he felt it too. There were no quips. No mention of cake. Just a steady intake of air followed by the sound of it sighing back out of him. I studied each photo, remembering that the one near the Devil’s Corner was the one Maddy said Ethan was an hour overdue for a bottle, but now we knew Josh was about to head into town to try to feed him. Something didn’t fit. The revenge messages didn’t mesh with the cooing, attentive father that Nick had seen in the fish and chip shop. Could Josh have been lashing out at Maddy but not intending to harm the baby? Suddenly, I noticed something about the fourth photo near the silo. Sometimes you look at something over and over and don’t notice anything. And then you do.
‘Look at that,’ I said, pointing to Josh holding the crying baby. Unlike in the other two photos that featured him and Ethan, Josh was set back. And, most importantly, one arm was holding the baby and the other was by his side.
‘Bloody hell, it’s not a selfie,’ said Wozza, finally realising. ‘Someone else took that photo.’
My finger traced the bottom of the image. There was a dark shadow. ‘Look!’ I could just make out a silhouette of a hand holding a phone.
‘We need to trace any phones that were pinging off the same towers his was.’ Wozza picked up his phone, barking orders to whoever answered.
‘This is good, right?’ I said as soon as he hung up. ‘Because if someone was there with him for that final photo, then they could have the baby.’ And if they did, then the baby might be okay.
Our jubilation was interrupted by Randall. ‘Here are the statements from the two witnesses at Josh’s crash scene. There’s something weird about what they saw.’
I took a look at them and agreed.
RECORDS OF INTERVIEW
Record of conversation between Senior Constable Stuart James and Kellie Maddox, conducted on Birchip Road at scene of collision, 13 January, 3.11 pm
Oh god! I’m still shaking. Sorry. Um. I was driving down Birchip Road towards town. I needed to get to the supermarket before the storm. I drove over that crest just there … and bloody hell, there was this green Gemini headed straight towards me. I swerved. Honked my horn. But you know what? It looked like the driver had passed out or something. I saw him veer off the road and I pulled up over there … and he just went spinning into the ditch. It was like watching the whole thing in slow motion. The car flipped and flipped like in the movies. I rang triple zero straight away. I was too scared to go over there. No one could have survived that crash.
Record of conversation between Senior Constable Stuart James and Sofia Maalak, conducted on Birchip Road at scene of collision, 13 January, 3.25 pm
And yeah, I saw it happen too. I was riding my horse along the gully. Lucky we weren’t too close when the car came over the hill. It just flew off the road and kept going then it hit the gully and just flipped. I went over to the wreck to see if I could help. So awful! I think I’m going to throw up. I’m going to need therapy to get that image out of my head. Or maybe beer. That’s the last time I ever watch collisions on YouTube. Once you’ve seen the real thing …
Record of conversation between Senior Constable Stuart James and Senior Constable Charlie Wright (Air Wing), conducted at Deception Bay police station, 13 January, 5.13 pm
At 2.25 pm today, we spotted the wrecked Gemini from the air as we were coming in from the east. We landed the helicopter and provided ground assistance. We were asked to stay around to provide air access to the Major Collision Investigation Unit upon their arrival, which we did. Aerial photographs were taken of the crash site.
CHAPTER 11
THE GRUMPY CAT CALENDAR
When I called the hospital to check who was doing the postmortem examination—or, more to the point, to check who wasn’t—it turned out Dr ‘Wonky’ George Gilbert, who we always hoped was unavailable, was on holidays, and Doc Caldicott would be responsible for the examination of Josh McCreedy.
While I was on the phone, I asked to be put through to the emergency department, and got an update on Amanda. She was in surgery, they said. I would need to call back later. We went one better and called in to see her on our way to the hospital morgue. Our badges meant we bypassed the usual wait and got a quick audience with the head of the ED. Amanda’s surgery had gone well. She was resting comfortably and wouldn’t be able to be interviewed for several days. They were still concerned about her head trauma. This meant that the wait to see if she was okay wasn’t over. Neither was the worry.
For Christmas, Wozza had bought Doc Caldicott a new calendar for the mortuary. In the post-mortems we’d been to, last year’s puppy calendar was our go-to for line-of-sight adjustment. Wozza had found another funny animal calendar for this year. Ms January was a big tabby cat wearing a pink shower cap. The cat had a grumpy what-the-hell look on its face. Wozza nudged me and pointed at the calendar. I had to admit, the funny cat was better to look at than the shattered body of Josh McCreedy.
‘Doc, we’ve got eyewitnesses saying he seemed to be unconscious prior to the collision,’ Wozza told Doc Caldicott.
‘Interesting,’ said the doctor as she ran a gentle hand over the dead man’s forehead. ‘We’ll have a look to see what might have caused that.’
The mortuary assistant had left a pile of torn clothing and some personal items on a large paper bag. Wozza and I gloved up to pick through the pockets and see what Josh had left behind. Wallet. A single key, which I wondered might be the one missing from Maddy’s fake rock. No car keys, but they would have been left in situ in the wreck.
An iPhone with a cracked screen. I tapped on the screen and it came to life. I was careful to avoid the lower part of the screen; when the camera app was in use, that’s where the unknown person at the silos would have tapped to take a photo. We’d have it examined for fingerprints.
‘Is it a face ID?’ Wozza asked. ‘We can do what we did this morning.’
‘Worth a try,’ I said as I took it over to the table, tapped the screen again and waved it over the still and lifeless face of Josh McCreedy.
Nothing.
‘Might need body heat,’ said Doc Caldicott.
I held it close to my own face for a moment then quickly put it in front of Josh’s face. Still didn’t work. His features were distorted enough to stop the facial recognition software, I guessed.
‘Gimme a try,’ said Wozza, holding out his hand.
‘Just don’t touch where the camera button would be.’ I knew I sounded anxious.
His forehead creased in concentration as he pressed 123456. The screen sprang to life. ‘Yes!’ Wozza cried as if he’d kicked a goal. Then he lowered his fist pump and mumbled an apology to Doc Caldicott.
She acknowledged his silliness with a nod, then got down to business. ‘A car is a deadly weapon,’ she said, looking down at the damaged young man.
Wozza returned the phone to the pile of Josh’s belongings. ‘If it makes you feel any better,’ he said, ‘the car didn’t escape unscathed.’
‘A little,’ said the doc. She began her external examination. She noted a lot of damage. Serious head trauma. Legs shattered to the bone. Crush injuries. Broken neck. ‘That’s interesting,’ she said into the small dictaphone she used to record her findings.
‘What?’ Wozza dragged his eyes away from the cat in the shower cap. ‘Oh geez,’ he muttered as he looked closely at the injuries.
‘There’s not as much bleeding as I would have expected. We’ll see what it looks like on the inside.’ She picked up the instrument that would slice Josh McCreedy open.
Grumpy cat. Pink shower cap.
‘Just as I thought,’ said Doc Caldicott. ‘The lack of internal bleeding … maybe your witnesses saw a dead man prior to the crash, not an unconscious man.’ She continued to probe and cut.
‘If he died before he went into the ditch, what could have caused that?’ I asked.
Doc Caldicott paused in her cutting. Her voice a little muffled under her surgical mask, she said, ‘Could be any number of things. At his age, heart attack and stroke are less likely. Drug overdose, maybe?’ She leaned closer to the body and inhaled. ‘There’s a faint odour of … beer, I think. There’s SUDEP … do we know if he’s epileptic?’
Wozza tore his eyes away from the cat calendar and glanced at Doc Caldicott long enough to ask: ‘What’s SUDEP?’
The doctor resumed the examination, probing organs. ‘Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy. It’s rare but we see it from time to time. It means that, as much as we might’ve looked, there’s no definitive cause of death.’
