Chapter 23
23
Grey
If hotel front desks had silent panic buttons like they did at petrol stations, Grey was certain the receptionist had pressed it a while ago. If he ordered room service, she was going to spit and piss in his coffee, after she’d filtered it through arsenic.
‘One bedroom,’ he said again, exasperation clinging to every word. ‘Two beds.’ His composure was one of the things about himself he regarded highly. As was his ability to act under pressure, to keep his cool, to always know what to do. It was as though all of those pieces of him had been scrambled when he’d flattened into Max Conrad in the garden. Some kind of knock to the brain.
‘I’m sorry, sir.’ She sounded like a surgeon about to call time of death. ‘The luxury suite is all we have left at this time of night. Normally we don’t allow check-ins after—’
‘Yes I know , you don’t allow check-ins after nine p.m. Your colleague was quite clear about that, as was the one who served us after he ran off crying. Do you want me to remind you who I work for and who is funding this expense?’
‘Please extend my sincere apologies to Mr Barbarani. But aside from turning other guests out of their beds or sawing the deluxe queen bed in half, I am afraid you are out of options.’
‘We’ll take the saw, thank you.’ Grey set his work credit card down on the mahogany desk.
Max swiped the keys from the worker. ‘Thank you for your hospitality,’ she said, then stalked off towards the elevator, the room key hooked around her thumb.
‘I’ll sleep on the floor.’ It was the first thing she’d said to him since their conversation in the prison car park. ‘This carpet’s gotta be comfier than the prison mattress. It’ll be a real treat.’
‘This is bullshit.’ Grey tossed his jacket on the chair and looked out the enormous black windows to the city lights glittering like sunken jewels along the river.
Neither of them put anything on the bed.
‘I told you. I’ll get my own room and you can strap an ankle monitor onto me.’
‘You’ll gnaw it off.’ He clamped his jaw. Stop rising to the bait.
‘Greyson.’
He wouldn’t respond, not this time. Carefully, he unzipped his duffel bag and drew out the coroner’s report, placing the print-out delicately on the coffee table. He couldn’t read a single word.
‘Greyson.’
‘Take the bed. I’ll be up late reading these, so I probably won’t even go to sleep.’
He could feel her behind him as he sat in the chair. He read the first sentence of the report six times, none of it going in.
‘I’ll stand here all night if I have to. Can you just let me explain?’
‘Why?’ He turned to look at her. Probably quicker than she’d been expecting, because she flinched, and he felt like an arsehole. ‘Why do you want to explain? What does it matter what I think?’ He hadn’t been sure what words would come out of this pit of seething magma inside him. Not those, though.
‘Because ...’
Interesting – she was surprised too. But if there was one thing Grey could trust about Maxella Conrad, it was that she would always have an answer to everything.
‘Because we still have the same goal.’
‘I don’t want Kaine Skinner dead.’
‘But you want the Barbaranis alive.’
‘Which is a very different thing.’ He tried to throw the report down but as it was only three stapled pages, it fluttered to the floor in a very undramatic manner.
‘I never said I’d kill Skinner.’ She turned away, her arms folded across Nella’s silk shirt, her chest rising quickly like she’d been running. ‘Libby just ... assumed I would, and I never corrected her.’
‘ Riiight . You’re playing Libby Johnston, not me.’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that. Except for the part about not playing you – that’s true.’
‘You’ve been playing me ever since you tried to stop me from helping a drunk girl into a car.’
‘I haven’t had a chance to play you, not when you’ve had your mind made up about me since you found out my name!’
It was long before that, Grey thought. It was since he first saw her face. Felt her long dark hair against his neck as they fell off the trellis, saw the intricate tattoos winding up and down the soft skin of her arms. He had decided not to trust Max Conrad long before he’d known who she was. His father’s voice had been the loudest thing in his ear.
The city lights were glinting in her green eyes as she looked out onto the water. Grey swallowed as he tried to look away. There was something indelibly sad about that look.
‘Libby thinks I’ll kill Skinner because of what I did to go to prison, but I never said that. I don’t expect you to believe me. I can ... understand why you wouldn’t.’
The room shifted as though they were feeling the effects of an earthquake thousands of kilometres away.
‘You shot someone,’ he said.
‘Yes.’ She was so still, he didn’t even see her lips move.
‘In self-defence?’
‘The first shot was ruled self-defence and in line with reasonable force. The last shot wasn’t.’
‘And so Libby thinks you tried to kill him outright?’
‘Most of the country thinks I tried to kill Evan Terrace outright.’
Evan Terrace. The name was familiar. ‘So what really happened?’ Somehow he was standing in front of her, palms out, like he was offering something.
A smile cut like a gash across her jaw. ‘You cannot seriously be asking that.’
‘I am.’ His voice was hoarse. He didn’t know why he couldn’t just let it go. Let her go.
‘Just google my name, Greyson. I’m surprised you haven’t done that already. In fact, I don’t actually believe you haven’t done that already.’
‘If there’s anyone who knows about how much the media gets it wrong, it’s me.’
In more ways than you’ll ever know.
‘I can’t talk about it. I’ve never ...’
‘You’ve never talked about it?’ He could relate.
‘Well ...’ She folded her arms. Max Conrad off guard, unsure of what to say, was a sight to behold. ‘I told my lawyer.’
‘Who was your lawyer?’
‘Jameson Gunter.’
‘Gunter? Gunter? Christ, I’m surprised you didn’t go away for ten years with that idiot.’
‘You know him?’
‘Nella does. He’s useless.’
‘Yeah, well, he’s who I got assigned. I didn’t exactly have a Barbarani trust fund behind me.’
‘Your parents couldn’t help?’
‘They’re dead. Thank god.’ She must have caught the look of horror in his face, and quickly added, ‘I mean that they didn’t have to see this happen to me. They died in a car crash when I was sixteen.’
Was that why she’d been so strange in the car? Her breath catching every time a truck roared past? Wringing her hands when there was someone too close in the rearview? He’d dismissed it as anxiety about going back to prison. He’d dismissed a lot of things about her.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t say that.’ She glanced out the window. ‘I hate that.’
‘Sorry.’
She raised an eyebrow.
He cleared his throat. ‘I know what you mean – people used to say it to me about my mum, then about my dad.’
‘Your parents are dead too?’ Her gaze softened.
‘Dad is, definitely. Mum, who knows? She left when I was too young to remember her. Everyone always acted like I should be mourning her too.’
‘Must have been a total chick magnet though. Lots of girls out there looking for a guy with mummy issues,’ she said, deadpan.
‘Yeah, I like to think dear old Mum was looking out for my sex life when she abandoned us.’ Even trying to sound light-hearted, the pain ripped through in a humiliating rupture he hoped she couldn’t detect.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Don’t say that. I hate that.’
It wasn’t a truce exactly. But it felt like they were lowering their weapons. His invisible rifle sliding from his shaking grip. Why couldn’t he hold onto anything with her? It was like hanging off a slippery cliff; he was destined to fall.
‘So you told your lawyer the truth. Why didn’t he use it in court?’
She blew out, unclasping the button at the back of her top. Everything in Grey tightened, but it didn’t do anything to the structural integrity of the shirt, the silky fabric just loosened slightly around her neck.
Thank God.
She massaged her neck where the fabric hung loose. Had she slept at all last night? ‘Because I told him not to.’
‘You wanted to go to jail?’
‘I’m not a character on Orange is the New Black , Greyson. Of course I didn’t want to go to jail.’
Just tell me, he wanted to scream. Just bloody tell me the truth .
‘Evan Terrace was my best friend’s husband. Jackie and I had been joined at the hip since uni.’
‘You went to university?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I know you don’t get out much, but it’s not the 1800s anymore. Women are allowed to go to university. We can even drive cars!’
‘No. I just ...’ I need to know. I need to see you. She was a shadow that kept slipping through his fingers, every time he had almost coaxed her into the light. It was his job to illuminate shadows before they became threats. ‘I didn’t realise you had to go to uni to be a cop.’
‘You don’t. I was going to be a lawyer. Changed my mind midway through third year, because I wanted to help on the front line. Jackie stayed though. We lived together for a while, but then I got posted to the country. I was her maid of honour at her wedding – I didn’t know Evan that well, but he seemed nice enough. They always do.’
‘Men?’
‘Monsters.’
Grey waited, desperately holding himself back.
‘In hindsight, the signs were there.’ She busied her hands untangling knots through her hair, still not making eye contact with him. ‘She’d cancel plans last minute, saying she was sick. She used to wear ... well, less was always more – she had the hottest body – but she started covering up. I don’t know if it was him controlling her or if she was trying to hide the evidence. But he hit her right across the face when I was over once. I’d gone to the toilet, but there was no toilet roll so I went back out to the kitchen, because I knew she’d keep it in the pantry like she did when we were living together. I wasn’t meant to see. Obviously.’
‘What happened?’
‘I told him I was calling it in. I made her go pack a bag. He grabbed me by the hair and slammed me against the counter.’ She pointed to her chin.
Grey stepped closer. The pieces of him that wanted to run, to put as much distance between them as possible, were crumbling like dry kindling in the burning wildfire inside him. His father’s warning voice a dying scream inside the charring embers.
The thin white scar he’d noticed before now looked haunted, like a falling crescent moon. Before he knew it, the scar was beneath his skin as he ran his thumb across it. A soft but desperate movement, maybe in some vain hope her skin would whisper the truth to him. Or maybe he just wanted to touch her.
I need to understand.
She shivered, and it was with every morsel of strength left that he didn’t do the same. He wrestled with two competing voices desperate to growl out of him: I’m sorry and: Give me his address. Now.
‘I’ve been in worse situations on the job.’ Her voice was rough, but she didn’t push his hand away. He traced the scar one last time before dropping his hand. ‘I should have dragged her out of there.’ She shook her head.
‘If you did, statistically, you’d both be dead.’ He recoiled against the clinical nature of his own response. But distance was essential, especially now.
‘I know. That’s what she told me the next day. Evan had called my boyfriend at the time, Damien, to say I’d had too much to drink and I’d slipped and hit my head on the counter. Told him I was dazed and disorientated and saying all sorts of bullshit.’
‘And he believed that?’
‘He and Evan were best mates. I met Damien through Evan and Jackie. He believed Evan – reckoned I’d misunderstood the situation. Overreacted.’
‘You’re serious?’ Was this boyfriend still in the picture? Had he sat in court during the trial? Why hadn’t he picked her up from jail?
‘He wasn’t a bad guy. If someone had told me Jackie was a child trafficker or a killer, I wouldn’t have believed them, no matter who they were. It’s almost impossible to believe the people you love are the villains you see on the news. Damien had known Evan since they were in kindy.’
‘He still should have believed you.’
She shrugged off his adamance in a way that made him want to roar. Instead, he swallowed and waited.
‘The next day, I called Jackie. I told her she needed to leave him, that I’d help her, I had contacts, but she refused.’ Max shrugged. ‘I told her it was my responsibility as a cop to report it. But she’s a lawyer – she knew it was her decision as the victim, and she told me she’d never speak to me again if I turned him in. She said the system couldn’t do anything except make a shitty VRO he’d break anyway, that I’d make it worse. And she was right.’ She walked over to the window abruptly.
‘Max, if it’s too hard to talk about ...’
‘It was a month later.’ She was now right up against the glass doors, one bare shoulder leaning on the sky. ‘We were responding to a call – some intruder who’d stolen a wallet or something, I can’t remember. Then another call came through – suspected domestic. My partner Cal and I were closest, so we took it. I didn’t even look at the address.’
‘It was Jackie’s house?’
‘Yeah.’ Her breath was shaky. ‘I should have said something to Cal, but shit, we got there and the lights were on, and the neighbour who’d called it in was standing out on his porch in his dressing gown and I just got this ... rage. We did the whole “Police, open up” thing, and it was Cal who made the call to go in when no one responded. The neighbour said he’d heard screaming and then glass breaking, so we made the decision.’
Grey could tell she’d recounted this moment many times before. To lawyers, probably, to colleagues, to a judge, defending her instincts to protect.
‘It was so quiet, except for the dishwasher – I remember the sound of the dishwasher. That’s the thing I remember the most, how goddamn quiet it was. Jackie hated silence, she always had something playing – music or the TV. We saw her first. She was on the lounge room floor, bleeding – he’d thrown her through the coffee table. Then we heard drawers slamming in the kitchen.’ She closed her eyes. ‘The kitchen was on the left. From the way we’d come in, Cal was closer to Jackie in the lounge, while I was on the kitchen side. So I turned left, and that’s when I saw Evan. He had a steak knife in his hand and his eyes were ... his eyes ...’
‘Max ...’
‘He called me a cunt. I can’t remember much of what he said after that. I just remember my own voice, saying what I’ve said hundreds of times before – everything they taught us in the academy, everything I’ve watched senior constables do when there’s a weapon. Cal was still with Jackie, she ... she was in a bad state. Paramedics were still five minutes away, so his focus was completely on her.’
Grey swallowed. ‘So he never saw what happened?’
Max shook her head. ‘It’s my word against Evan’s.’
‘What’s your word, Max? What happened?’
She smiled. A sad, half smile the same shape as the moon scar on her jaw. A smile that told Grey she didn’t expect him to believe her at all. ‘He charged at me. The knife was still in his hand, I swear it was, even though he told the jury he never had it, even though it was on the bench when back-up came. I put it on the bench after – I don’t know why – but the rest, the rest of what you heard is true.’
‘You shot him.’
‘It was the first time I’d fired my gun, except in the academy. And the judge agreed it was the right call. If he had a weapon, it was what I’d been trained to do.’
If.
‘It was self-defence.’
‘The first shot was self-defence.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘The last shot wasn’t.’
‘It was self-defence,’ he repeated.
‘I don’t even remember shooting twice. I just remember wanting him dead. All I could see when I pulled the trigger was Jackie. All I could think was, I’m saving Jackie. If it had been anyone else, any other guy, I don’t know if I would have shot twice. My lawyer asked me that. I still don’t have an answer. I still don’t know. Sometimes, I wonder ...’
The moment swelled, like a bubble you blow as a child, thinking it will last forever in all its rainbow glory. Grey realised he was holding his breath.
‘... sometimes I replay it, and he doesn’t have a knife. Sometimes I think maybe I filtered that part in, to absolve myself, to justify it. Maybe it had been on the bench the whole time. It was all a blur. But there’s a difference, right? No matter what, there’s a difference between shooting an unarmed man who might have done something bad, and shooting someone coming at you with a knife.’
‘You did nothing wrong.’ His voice was strained; he wanted her to believe him so badly it was like an ache in his chest. ‘How did Evan’s violence not factor into the trial?’
‘Because of Jackie.’
He let out the air in a rush. ‘You’re not serious.’
‘Don’t.’ Max held up a hand. ‘ We will never understand what it’s like to be a victim of ... a survivor of ... that. Do not even try to say she was in the wrong. She loved him, she knew what he did was wrong, but she was pregnant. She couldn’t risk him doing anything to hurt the baby.’ Max rubbed her eyes. ‘She came to visit me, once, before the trial – that day I saw Libby with the boy in the hoodie. She said she didn’t expect me to lie but that she had made her decision about Evan. They were going to counselling, she said. He was going to get therapy for his anger issues. They were staying together for the baby. She needed me to be her friend. Not a cop.’
‘You weren’t acting like a friend, you were acting like a martyr,’ Grey said harshly. ‘She couldn’t ask you to sacrifice yourself for her when she clearly wasn’t willing to do the same for you.’
‘I did six months for my friend’s life, Grey. I think that’s a pretty fair trade – especially after I almost killed the father of her child. And are you really one to lecture me about sacrificing yourself for people who would never do the same for you?’
He shook his head. ‘You lost everything.’
‘Isn’t that what love is?’ She turned to face him. ‘You’d die for it?’
He swallowed. ‘Some people might.’
She held his gaze. ‘So now you know why Libby thinks I’ll kill her husband.’ She sighed, wringing her hands. ‘But I suppose while I’m spilling my guts, there’s some other things I have to tell you.’