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  “Oh yeah.” August stared out the window for a bit. “I don’t care much for his opinion.”

  Jake smiled. “I gathered that.”

  “He handed down a finding that stopped a case in its tracks.”

  Jake eyed August for a second. “And you didn’t agree?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Was that on a case related to these?”

  August gave a nod. “I believed so, yes.”

  “And he didn’t agree?”

  August’s face pinched, then he shook his head. “No.”

  “Could you ask for a second opinion? As the lead detective—”

  “I wasn’t lead on that case. It wasn’t a cold case.”

  Jacob frowned. “But it was related to these cases?”

  “Yep. Same MO, same two items left behind. A note and a cross. But it was a body, not human remains.”

  “A fresh case?”

  August flinched at that. It was the tiniest of reactions, but Jacob saw it. “Yeah.”

  “Isn’t Bartlett a forensic anthropologist? What was he doing on an ME case?”

  “He was in charge, and he has some double degree or whatever. I don’t even know,” August mumbled. “The division didn’t have a lot of funding, and a decade ago, the medical examiners and forensics worked together. Actually, I was lucky to get any of them to listen to me or to even investigate. The big brass didn’t want to waste time or money on anything I gave them.”

  “Why?” Jake asked. “You had a spree of homicides. That should have been enough for them to give you all the manpower and funding they had.”

  “Homicides made to look like gay suicide,” August replied. His tone was sharp and bitter. “They didn’t give a shit about us. Probably happy some psychopath was killing us off.” He sighed. “In the end, I gave a reporter an anonymous story and it was front-page news.”

  “I remember that!” Jake said, smiling. “That was you?”

  August nodded. “Yep.”

  “Did your bosses know it was you?”

  “Sure. Well, they knew but they couldn’t prove it. They tried to squeeze it out of the reporter,” he furthered. Then he smiled, “But the reporter was a guy I knew who did drag at Dusty’s on a Friday night, and I can tell you, there ain’t no one alive with more grit and fire than a drag queen. That was why I chose who I chose.”

  Jake barked out a laugh. “That is the best thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Yeah, well, it certainly didn’t earn me any favours in the department.”

  “I bet it didn’t. I’m surprised you weren’t relegated to traffic duty for . . . well, forever.”

  August smiled at that. “They tried. But the voice of the public can be powerful. I was given the cold case unit after that, mostly to shut me up, so it was a win for me. See, the difference between me and them was, I didn’t join the force to make friends or for the force to become my family. I joined to do a job. And if that pisses people off, then I can only assume I’m good at my job.” His smile faded and his eyes grew focused on something out the windscreen that Jacob couldn’t see. August’s voice was quiet, all smiles gone. “And I have my family. A family that someone started picking off, one by one, making it look like suicide so no one would care. That’s why I can’t let them win. I don’t give a fuck how many toes I tread on. I want justice for these people who were murdered.”

  “Me too,” Jacob said quietly.

  They drove for a while without another word and it wasn’t long before they arrived in the city of Coffs Harbour. “It must have taken guts,” Jacob said, breaking the silence. “To be out and proud in the police force when they weren’t so accommodating.”

  “Dunno about guts,” August answered. “I was just me. I didn’t know how to be anyone else.”

  Jacob smiled at that. “I used to look up to you. You were gay, out, and a successful cop. Everything I wanted to be. And I’m not even embarrassed to admit it. Well, I kind of am. To your face, that is. But you guys paved the way for cops like me.”

  August gave him a dubious look. “You can’t tell me you’ve had it easy.”

  “What? Being Aboriginal, and gay, and a cop?” Jacob chuckled. “Take your pick which one people have the biggest issue with. Actually, don’t bother. It’s like a wheel of judgement. Take a spin, round it goes, where it stops, no one knows.”

  August almost smiled. “Does that bother you?”

  “Nope. But I don’t care what people think. Just means I have to be better than them.”

  “At what?”

  “Everything.”

  August did smile at that. “You and I aren’t too dissimilar, Porter.”

  Jake grinned and repeated August’s words back to him. “I’m just me. I don’t know how to be anyone else.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t change. And the more someone hates you, the better than them you need to be, because nothing’ll piss them off more than you being more successful than they are.”

  “What do you think gets me out of bed to run 5k before breakfast after three hours’ sleep?”

  August sighed and it was a mostly happy sound. “Can’t say I’ve ever been that committed to pissing people off.”

  Jake chuckled and slowed the Patrol to a stop at the kerb. “That’s the house, right there.”

  It was an older style brick and tile. The gardens were neat, the lawn mown, the curtains open.

  Jake took a moment to collect his thoughts about what news they were about to deliver. A slew of lines went through his head, how best to phrase this, how to lessen the blow. How did someone tell a parent they’d found the body of their missing child? Even eight years later . . . would it lessen the weight of it? Or would it be worse? From the haunted look August had in his eyes, he figured he felt much the same. “Well, there’s no putting off the inevitable,” Jake said.

  They walked to the front door in silence, and Jake took the lead. He knocked, and when a lady answered the door, it was Jacob who spoke. “Mrs Ahern?”

  She gave a nod and opened the door a little wider. She was perhaps in her late fifties, with short grey hair. She wore jeans and a grey jumper that looked old and loved. She tried to smile, but there was knowing in her eyes.

  Jake held up his badge and ID. “I’m Senior Constable Jacob Porter, and this is Detective August Shaw. We spoke on the phone.”

  “Please, come in.”

  She led them inside to the front sitting room. The sofa was floral and there were crocheted cushions, and it seemed too old for a woman in her fifties, but then again, Jake had no idea how much losing a child would age someone. Or maybe she’d inherited the furniture, maybe she got it all from a Vinnies Op Shop. Jake wasn’t one to judge. He just noticed that it was older . . .

  Or maybe she’d stopped living the day her boy went missing.

  They sat and Jake steeled himself for one of the hardest things he’d ever had to say. “Mrs Ahern, we’ve found human remains, a body . . . and we’ve had forensics run DNA tests. We believe it’s Perry.”

  Mrs Ahern nodded, and she gave Jake a smile. “It’s okay.” She swallowed hard and got a little teary. “I knew. I knew from the very beginning. When he’d been missing a week and hadn’t called or let anyone know where he was, I knew then.”

  “Because he’d always let you know where he was?” August asked.

  “Always. Even if it was just for one night. He’d always call when he got to where he was going. He’d call before he made his way home.” She let out a shaky breath. “Like I told all the policemen at the time, he was going dancing with his friends. He never drank much. He’d experimented with some drugs at uni but didn’t like how they made him feel. We had no secrets. He told me everything. He went out that night. Kissed me on the cheek before he left and said he’d be home around three in the morning. But he wasn’t. And sometimes…” She hedged. “If he found someone to go home with, he’d call me. Every single time. Just to say he’d see me in the morning. But he didn’t come home, and
he didn’t call.”

  “And Perry’s father . . . ?” Jake asked.

  “He left when Perry was five. Haven’t seen him since.” She looked at both men. “You said DNA?”

  “His DNA was filed for the Working with Children register.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, her eyes glazing back to a memory only she could see. “He did prac for his classes. I remember now . . .”

  “Can you remember the names of the mates he went out with that night?”

  “Oh yes. They’d been friends for years. Harvey Lynn and Adam Pollard. They were inseparable. Adam moved away a year or two later, but Harvey still calls around at Christmas time. I’d always hoped he and Perry would get together, but they were just friends apparently.”

  “Mrs Ahern, do you have a photograph . . . ?” Jake asked, but then Mrs Ahern looked to the end wall where the gas heater was. The mantel was covered with photos. A small boy playing tennis, a boy in a high school photograph, a teen with bleached blond hair pulling a face, a blond guy in a university gown. “May I take photos of those photos? Just on my phone. That way I don’t need to take an actual photo with me.”

  “Yes, of course,” she replied.

  August obviously looked a little closer than Jacob. “He had braces?”

  “Oh yes. Hated them every second. Just a moment,” she said as she disappeared out the door. She returned a second later with a brown photo album. “He used to laugh at me saying all photos were digital now, but I’m old fashioned.”

  She sat back down and opened the photo album. She flipped through a few pages, then turned it to face Jake and handed it to him. “Here he is with his metal mouth, as he used to call it. And the next pages are the most recent. He graduated from university. He was very excited about his new job. He was starting with the LGBT kids as a counsellor. He’d worked so hard to get that job. It was his dream and he didn’t want to move away . . .” She smiled sadly, and when her eyes filled with tears this time, one slid down her cheek. She dabbed it away. “Do you know who did it?”

  “Did what?” Jake asked.

  She blinked. “Who hurt my boy?”

  Jake didn’t know how to even suggest that it had been made to look like a suicide . . .

  “Mrs Ahern,” August intervened. “You said Perry just graduated?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Just a few months before he went missing.”

  “And he was gay?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Yes. And before you ask, yes, I knew. I knew since he was four years old, and I loved him all the same. He was a good boy. Had great friends, boyfriends, been to Pride parades. I even helped him sew his outfits. We even picked out sequins and tulle together.” She took a breath and recomposed herself. “He’d help anyone, everyone. It was his nature. He was kind and everyone loved him. I can only think that was his undoing . . . that maybe someone asked for help or for directions, and he went to help.”

  August nodded. “Did he by chance break his arm as a child?”

  Mrs Ahern took a second to adjust to the subject change, then she smiled and rolled her eyes. “Fell out of a tree I told him not to climb. He was seven.” Then her smile died away. “Why?”

  “The remains we found,” August said gently, “showed a childhood injury to his arm.”

  She nodded and looked to her hands in her lap.

  She knew. She knew it was her boy . . .

  Jake turned the page in the photo album and stopped at one photo. There was Perry with his arms around a guy and a girl, all of them laughing for the camera. He was wearing a shirt that had a rainbow with I like boys written on the front. Jacob tapped it and August frowned.

  “This shirt,” Jake prompted, showing the photo in question.

  Mrs Ahern nodded. “He loved that shirt.”

  “He was wearing it the night he disappeared,” August suggested. “The same shirt was found on his body.”

  She nodded and cried a little. “I bought him that shirt for his birthday,” she said, wiping away another tear. “He wore it to the clubs all the time.”

  August gave her a second before he asked, “Mrs Ahern, was Perry religious at all?”

  The question surprised her. “No. Not at all. No one in our family is. If anything, Perry was opposed to it. He didn’t tell people who or what they could believe in, but he wasn’t inclined.”

  “Did he like poetry by chance?” August asked. “I know that’s kind of random. But did he have any Robert Frost poetry books?”

  “Poetry?” She smiled fondly. “He liked Green Day and Linkin Park. I only know the names because I’d iron his band T-shirts.”

  Jacob really liked this woman. She was genuine, and it was pretty clear that everything she did revolved around her son. Which made this so, so much worse.

  Then August cleared his throat. “Mrs Ahern, I need to ask you something that may seem insensitive, and I do apologise, but it would help our case.”

  She frowned. “Okay.”

  “Do you think Perry would have ever taken his own life?”

  Her mouth fell open. She wasn’t just shocked. She was offended.

  August quickly followed up with, “I’m sorry for asking. I can see he was well loved, and he was making plans for the future, and that’s not typical suicidal behaviour. Did he suffer with depression or anxiety?”

  “No.” Mrs Ahern shook her head and she cried again for a moment, then took a breath to calm herself. “Can I ask you something, Detective?”

  August nodded. “Yes.”

  “Have you ever lost a child?”

  August shook his head. “Not a child, no.”

  “But someone you loved?”

  August held her gaze, his face etched with a sadness that matched hers. “Yes.”

  “And you knew them. You knew what they loved, what they hated. You knew every whim, every fear, every dream. You knew them.”

  August nodded, though he didn’t speak.

  “Then you know the answer to that question.”

  August nodded. “I do. And I am very sorry for your loss, Mrs Ahern.”

  Given the meeting had come to an end, Jacob quickly took some photos of the photos in the album, then went to the mantel to photograph the shots in the frames. “It’s just for our records. We had a DNA match, but this will confirm.” He didn’t want to explain the chain of evidence process, crossing every t and dotting every i ten times over.

  August looked closer at the photos, particularly one of Perry holding a tennis racquet, then shot Mrs Ahern a look. “Was Perry left-handed?”

  “Yes.” Her smile turned sad. “Like his mum.”

  August went back to the sofa and sat beside her. “Is there someone I can call? Can I make you a cup of tea?”

  She patted him on the thigh. “I’ll be okay. Sheryl next door will be over the second you leave, don’t worry.” Then she sighed. “You know, I knew. I knew from the very beginning. It’s still sad, and I miss him every second of every day. But this is almost closure.”

  “Almost?” Jake asked, not really meaning to say it out loud.

  “When you find the bastard that hurt my baby, when they’re brought to justice, and when they pay for what they’ve done, then there’ll be closure.”

  August gave a hard nod, like he understood, and they said their goodbyes. August got to the door. “I’d like to call you next week, if that’s okay. Just to see how you’re doing.”

  She seemed pleased with that. “Thank you, dear.”

  They walked out to the Patrol and climbed into their seats. Jacob had so many questions . . . not just about the case—God knew there was a lot to unpack there—but about August. He’d loved someone and lost them. And somehow the weight that August Shaw seemed to carry around with him now appeared to form a little easier to understand.

  Jake started the engine. “Where to now?”

  “I’d like to track down the two friends Perry was with that night, but first I’d like to call around and see Nina and Bartlett,” he replie
d. The gleam in his eye was a happy mix of determination and anger. Jacob had a feeling he was about to bear witness to August giving some serious arse chewing.

  He wasn’t disappointed.

  Chapter Nine

  August couldn’t describe how he felt after seeing Mrs Ahern.

  His own grief felt fresh and raw, and his need to right all the wrongs felt like deep abrasions all over his body. Like road rash, his skin and flesh stripped down to the bone.

  Whether Jacob was processing his own thoughts and this new information about Perry Ahern, or if he could feel the waves of unrest rolling off August and decided peace was a safer option, August wasn’t sure.

  But the silence gave August some time to cool his temper and get his thoughts in order. When they arrived at the same car park they’d been to yesterday, Porter shut off the engine. “You okay?”

  “Not really,” August answered. He could have lied and pretended, but he was done with games. And honestly, he didn’t have the energy to lie. “Mrs Ahern deserves better. Perry Ahern deserves better.”

  “He didn’t kill himself.”

  August met Porter’s gaze and shook his head. “No. He didn’t.”

  “How do you think Schneider and Bartlett will take the news?”

  August inhaled deeply. “I don’t care if they don’t like it. Actually, I hope Bartlett says something to piss me off so I can punch him in the fucking mouth.”

  Porter let out a low whistle. “Getting suspended won’t help our case.”

  “It’ll make me feel better though.”

  Porter laughed and opened his door. “Come on then. And I’d rather you didn’t punch anyone. I hate paperwork and I have footy training at six tonight.”

  “I’ll try my best,” August said as he got out. But he didn’t make any promises.

  When they walked into the office, August looked through the door and saw Nina and Bartlett inside. She was touching her gloved finger to the skull, leaning in and studying something, and Bartlett was at another table and had his back to the door.

  August knocked but didn’t wait to be invited in. “Nina,” he said by way of greeting.