Kate ran.
One second she was ready to answer King’s questions. The next she had turned and bolted for the front of the house. He watched her go, his stomach sinking. The situation had just become a great deal more complicated. He was no closer to discovering any semblance of truth. And there was no doubt that he would be arrested shortly.
The sirens reached a crescendo as the police pulled into Kate’s driveway. King had an idea of what he was in for. He guessed an arrest in these parts was a freak occurrence, something the locals talked about as folklore. Jameson was certainly not the crime capital of Australia.
He knew it would do good to make the arrest as uneventful as possible. Heightened tensions were beneficial to no-one. So he walked back the way he had come. Toward the front deck. Toward the police.
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa!’ a voice shouted as he rounded the corner. ‘Stay right there!’
King stopped in his tracks and raised both hands. Palms out. Demonstrating that he wasn’t armed. ‘I am staying right here.’
The police car parked in the drive looked to be just as old as Kate’s sedan. Its paint had half rusted away and the big black logo on the side reading ‘JAMESON POLICE DEPARTMENT’ was missing letters. The passenger door and the driver’s door both lay open. An officer stood behind each door.
The two of them were far from imposing. A man and a woman. He was just under six foot and scrawny, his uniform at least two sizes too big. She couldn’t have been far over five foot, with an athletic build and brown hair tied back tight. And she looked angry. Far angrier than the guy. She’d been the one to shout at King as he came into view. King didn’t blame her. He was an imposing sight to anyone, let alone someone attempting to arrest him.
‘Mr. King, is it?’ the female officer said.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Ms. Cooper here told me.’ She motioned to Kate, who stood alongside her near the vehicle, sporting a thousand-yard stare. Like she had just looked death in the eyes. Whoever had employed her to deliver the package must have truly terrified her.
‘I don’t know what’s made Ms. Cooper so distressed,’ King said. ‘I simply knocked on her door to ask her a few things.’
‘We can sort that out at the station, I think.’
‘There’s a station here?’ King said.
‘Yeah,’ the male officer said. ‘It’s not on the main road.’ His tone was far less aggressive. Like he hoped it was all a mix-up.
King waited through a moment of awkward silence. The officers had refrained from drawing their guns. Either to reduce the tension of the situation, or because using their pieces was a foreign concept. He could tell they were unsure as to what this was. They’d received a call from a distressed woman, as if she was being abducted. They’d raced here, ready for confrontation. But here was her supposed stalker, standing calmly on the front porch. Waiting for someone to speak.
It was clear they were rusty in the serious-crimes department.
‘Would you like me to come with you to the station?’ King finally said.
‘That would be good,’ the man said.
‘We should cuff him,’ the woman said.
‘Don’t worry,’ King said. ‘I’ll play by the rules.’
‘How do we know we can trust you?’
‘Because I’d be a mile away from here by now if I wanted to be.’
The pair of them had trouble responding to that. King headed for the car. As he got closer he made out the badges pinned to the breast pocket of each officer’s uniform. The man’s read “Officer Dawes”, and the woman’s read “Officer Kitchener”. Kate stood nervously off to the side, shuffling from foot to foot.
‘Back seat?’ King asked as he passed them.
Kitchener nodded.
‘No problem.’
He opened the door and settled his bulk into one of the seats. The car smelt like cheap air freshener, covering the standard scent of an old musty interior. He watched as Kitchener spoke to Kate for a moment. The window muffled her voice but her manner was reassuring, like a parent telling a child that everything would be alright. He guessed she was promising that they would sort King out at the station. That all would return to normal soon enough.
He guessed things in Jameson never strayed too far from normal.
Dawes lowered himself into the driver’s seat as the two women finished their conversation. He glanced back momentarily, checking King’s position, then started the vehicle.
‘Busy day?’ King said.
He smiled. ‘Chaos around here, mate.’
Kitchener got in the car and the smile vanished.
‘Back to the station,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll question him.’
‘Just to clarify,’ King said, ‘am I under arrest right now?’
‘No, you’re not. But just co-operate with us here. You’ve certainly scared the shit out of that poor woman. Let’s sort everything out when we get to the station.’
‘I don’t think I was the one that scared her,’ King said. ‘Something certainly has though.’
Neither officer responded to that cryptic message. Dawes started the engine and pulled out of the driveway. The car handled the gravel well. Far better than Billy’s old sedan.
The trip passed in silence. King decided not to speak. They were heading to the station to speak.
No use wasting words in here.
Dawes turned right out of Kate’s street and headed back to the town centre. They passed Billy’s post office. King got a brief glimpse through the open doorway. He saw Billy standing rigid behind the counter, staring directly at him. For a brief instant the two made eye contact. King knew what the man was thinking.
What an idiot.
As they left the shops behind, passing the pair of motels at the very edge of the main strip, King noticed an asphalt road he had previously overlooked branching away into the woods. The police car turned down it. It led to another small cluster of residential houses, these a little more modern than those in Kate’s street. He guessed this area had been recently excavated and developed.
At the very end of the street there was a rectangular brick building the size of several houses put together. Large lettering above the entrance read ‘JAMESON POLICE DEPARTMENT’, the logo the same as the one adorning the side of the car. Dawes pulled into an adjoining four-car garage connected to the station. It housed two identical sedans and a police motorcycle.
‘Follow us,’ Kitchener said, her tone authoritative.
‘What else am I going to do?’ King said.
They led him into the station through a narrow door in one wall of the garage. He followed the pair through blank white-washed hallways, each as stale as the last. He caught a quick glimpse of a lobby with identical white walls and a bored-looking male officer sitting behind a reception desk before they ushered him through a thick steel door into a square room, also white. It was furnished with a metal table and four chairs, two on either side.
‘Sit,’ Kitchener instructed.
King sat.
‘So I’m not under arrest,’ he said. ‘Therefore this isn’t an official questioning. What is this exactly?’
‘We’re just talking,’ Dawes said.
He shut the steel door behind him and the pair sat down on the opposite side of the table. King rolled his sleeves up and rested his burly forearms on the surface. The steel was cold to the touch.
‘This is all very informal,’ he noted.
‘You don’t stop bringing that up, do you?’ Kitchener said.
‘I’m used to order. I guess a town as small as this does things a little differently.’
‘Were you a cop?’
‘No.’
‘You were something, that’s for sure. I can tell from the way you speak.’
‘I can’t say what I was.’
‘The military?’