2. Tyler
At the end of the crumbling concrete driveway, I parked my cop car parallel to the three other cars near the front entrance to the abandoned Angelson Orphanage main building. One of the cars belonged to Captain Watts, but I didn’t recognize any of the other vehicles. With my photographic memory, I would know if they’d crossed my path before.
I grabbed my phone, then scribbled on my pocketbook to confirm my pen worked before I shoved both into my vest top pocket, climbed out of my vehicle, and locked the door. Centered over the doorway to the main building was an angel statue that had been decapitated. Given the rotten crimes committed here, somebody probably hacked off the head.
The vandalism would be justified.
I crossed the gravel to the six stone steps that led up to the grand entrance which was flanked with two large stone pillars. The building would have been impressive when it opened one hundred and twelve years ago.
The orphanage had been abandoned for the last forty-one years. Many windows were cracked or missing altogether. Dead vines riddled the outer walls and looked like cancerous veins crisscrossing the red bricks.
At the top of the steps, as I pressed the button on my remote to confirm my car was locked, I scanned the dense foliage around the building. Angelsong had been built on fifty hectares of remote land that was at least two hours away from the nearest major town.
On the drive out here, I’d pondered whether the orphanage’s remote location had been part of the problem behind the systematic child abuse carried out here. The authorities probably couldn’t be bothered to make the journey, and when they did, the assholes committing the crimes would have had plenty of notice of such arrival, allowing them time to hide any incriminating evidence.
The property owner at that time, who had inherited this land from his father, died twenty-two years ago, aged eighty-four. He had bequeathed his entire estate to his sister, his only living relative. Muriel Cunningham was seventy-one when she inherited this property which was plagued with a shocking history, and, according to my research, the spinster had never even set foot on the land. She was now ninety-three and living with full-time care in an elderly home, so she was unlikely to ever visit.
Given the size of the property and the Edwardian architecture of the grand building, which was rare in this part of Australia, the property would be worth a small fortune . . . if it wasn’t for the gruesome atrocities committed here, that was.
Forty-one years ago, the abused kids were whisked away and farmed out to foster families dotted all over Australia. The only crime I had concrete evidence of was the serial numbers that had been tattooed onto the kids’ wrists when they first arrived here. The discovery of the tattooing was the abuse that officially shut down the orphanage.
I had a rotten feeling we were about to uncover more proof of the brutal crimes that had evaded justice for forty years.
Wind whistled through the broken windows above, adding to the dread inching up my spine. I stepped through the open door onto black and white checkered tiles covered in decades of dirt and dead leaves. A reception desk was on one side and a set of stairs was on the other. Silence filled the room like a thick cloud.
Where is everyone?
“Hello. Where are you guys?” My voice bounced around bare walls.
I strode across the checkered tiles toward a faint glow at an open doorway and stepped into an immense hall with rows of tables that were covered in dust. High on the rafters above, pigeons cooed and swooped between the massive beams that stretched across the room.
A low drone carved through the silence, and I tried to peer through one of the four large arched windows that lined the back wall, but a thick film made visibility impossible. As I strode between a row of tables, I pictured young orphans sitting here with their backs straight and their knees knocking together.
The air seemed to be weighted with lingering fear.
The poor kids must have spent every day scared out of their minds. It was no wonder some of the adults who spent their childhood here were mentally affected. But it didn’t excuse the dreadful crimes some of them committed either.
I had been lucky to have loving parents who made a conscious decision to have just one child. They worked in stable jobs, came home every night, and barely ever fought. I had a great childhood. Mom and Dad were like my best friends, and I used to call home at least twice a week.
Until my fuck-up drove them into hiding and forced me to stop communicating with them.
At the rear exit, I stepped back into the sunshine. In the distance, a small digger was turning the soil at the edge of a dense forest. I marched through the long grass toward the tree line that formed a perimeter around the buildings.
A white van was parked near the trees with its back doors open, and the large flatbed truck parked beside it was how the digger had been transported here.
Eight people were nearby, but I only recognized two of them: Aria, from Wolf Security, and Captain Watts, my boss.
One man operated the digging machine. A man and a woman each pushed ground-penetrating sonar like they were lawnmowers as they scanned ten feet into the earth beneath them. Another man was the official photographer, and he was focused on the building I’d just come from. Two more men leaned on shovels, waiting for their turn to dig.
Being a cop was like that; sometimes you needed patience and had to stand back and observe until the moment to strike presented itself. I didn’t like waiting, not when it opened an unfettered mental highway to my mistake that put a permanent bullseye on my back.
My dad had warned me about the dangers of my career choice, but I would never have believed just how deadly it could be.
Dad had served forty years as a cop. The last thirty were as a detective, and the final five as police captain. Once I had declared that I wanted to follow in his footsteps, he started sharing some of the worst crime scenes he’d attended. He hoped his insight would scare me off joining the force, but it had the opposite effect. I wanted to put bastards behind bars. I’d done a damn good job until one stupid decision tarnished my career forever.
Aria turned to me as I approached, and her expression told me all I needed to know. They’d found human remains.
“Sorry I didn’t get here earlier,” I said as I neared. I hated being late, but I hated having unfinished business even more. Before I’d left home this morning, I’d written up my report on the dipshit I’d arrested yesterday who had been two times over the limit when he’d driven his car down the boat ramp and nearly drowned himself.
My report had taken longer than I’d penciled in when my investigation revealed that the car the idiot had written off had been stolen from his ex-wife, adding more charges to his rap sheet. He was in for one hell of a hangover when he woke in his cell this morning.
My shift doesn’t start for four more hours, but my attendance here was much more important than the gym session and five-mile run I’d planned to do for the rest of my morning.
“You timed it well,” Watts said. “The damn digger only arrived ten minutes ago.”
“Does that mean you found something?” Nodding toward the digger which had started to scrape away the top layer of dirt, I used my phone to take a couple of photos.
Aria nodded. “It looks like a child. The ground penetrating equipment?—”
“I have another one.” The woman pushing the sonar called from twenty feet away and then pierced the ground at her feet with a small red flag. Pacing three paces the other way, she pushed a second flag into the dirt. She wrapped yellow crime scene tape around the gum tree next to her, which had a trunk large enough that if it was hollow, she could step inside it.
“Goddammit.” Aria groaned. “Sometimes I hate it when I’m right.”
Watts shook his head, grumbling under his breath as he marched toward the forensics officer.
A small boy appeared in the distance, between two giant trees.
I clenched my jaw. You are not real. Not real.
I repeated the mantra until the vision absorbed into the foliage.
For two years, I’d been trying to eradicate Wesley from my mind.
He was there to stay forever.
And I deserved it.
“You okay?” Aria asked. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
“Yes, I’m just surprised you found a body so quickly,” I said, improvising.
“Yeah, makes me worry about how many we’ll find.”
“Do you have any idea how many kids didn’t make it out of the orphanage?”
“I’ve had Cobra trying to work that out for weeks.”
“Cobra?” I asked.
“Sorry, I still use their callsigns sometimes. Cole Tanner. He’s my research specialist.”
I nodded. Watts had told me that Aria was ex-army, and she’d previously held a position high up in the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Aria had some serious credentials behind her, and she ran her own agency. Wolf Security. I made a mental note to ask her about the interesting name she’d chosen for her agency sometime.
“Cole’s trying to match the names that were documented as being admitted to the orphanage with the names of those who were farmed out to foster families when it was shut down. However, there were no computer records four decades ago, and most documents were only kept for the standard seven years. So the minuscule paper trail that remains is dodgy, to say the least.”
I tried to imagine tracing records without computers but couldn’t. My father would have some ideas that could help . . . if it was safe to contact him.
“From what little I already know about this place, the minimal records could also be deliberate,” I said.
“Yeah. We’ve only just scraped the surface of what went on here. It’s going to be a minefield. I can feel it.” She turned toward the building.
On the third level, movement shifted behind one of the windows. I was a beat off mentioning it when I stopped myself. Nobody was inside. Never before had I seen two visions of Wesley in one day. Maybe this place was crawling with ghosts, making him feel at home.
I hated that I was justifying his appearance. Even though I knew the visions were a toxic combination of my imagination and my guilt, I couldn’t get rid of him.
I had never believed in ghosts until I’d created one.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Aria said.
“Same.” During my years as an undercover cop, I’d been to places that made my skin crawl, and I’d seen some things that made me try to vomit out the images.
Angelsong Orphanage wasn’t a patch on any of them.
“I have another one,” the technician called as he speared a small red flag into the ground.
Captain Watts groaned so loud I heard it from thirty feet away.
“Was anyone ever arrested for tattooing the orphans?” I asked.
“Yes. Two men and two women. One man killed himself before he went to jail. The remaining three were murdered in jail.”
Scowling, I shook my head.
She cocked her eyebrow in a silent question.
“They were probably murdered because of what they did to those kids, but those bastards should have lived in hell, and fear, for the rest of their lives.”
She drilled her dark eyes into me, probably trying to read my mind.
I hoped not. My guilt would be a massive black stain on my thoughts.
“Found another one.” The male ground sonar operator raised his arm.
“I’ve seen enough,” Aria said. “I knew this was going to be bad, but four hidden graves in ten minutes . . .” Shaking her head, she peered through a gap between two giant gum trees. “God knows how many are buried out here.”
“They didn’t even try to spread the bodies out,” I said, following her gaze.
“That’s what worries me. This whole area could be riddled with victims.”
“How many coroners do you have under your control?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “I only have Whitney at the moment.”
She nodded at the man standing beside the hole created by the digger.
I’d met Whitney a few weeks ago during my investigation into the bodies that were removed from a shipping container that had been salvaged from the ocean. He looked like he’d aged ten years since I’d last seen him. The poor bastard had probably been pulling double shifts for weeks to identify those young victims.
“Do you know if Cole has uncovered any more information about Alice Turnur?” I asked.
“Which one?” She shook her head. “Actually, it doesn’t matter. We don’t have any more information on Alice, who lived in this orphanage, and then escaped from the hospital after we caught her. And unfortunately, we don’t even have the real name of the young victim in the shipping container who used Alice’s name on her passport.”
“Have you had any luck tracking down who made the false passport?”
Aria shook her head, then frowned at me. “You know it’s all connected to that bastard Zǐháo Chui, don’t you?”
“So I’ve heard. I also heard you were the one who cracked open his crime syndicate.”
“Fat lot of good that did. He’s still yanking our strings.” She clicked her fingers. “Actually, has Ryder had a chance to chat with you?”
“Ryder from Border Force?”
She nodded.
“Not lately. Why?”
She glanced over at Captain Watts who was beside the technician with the sonar. The pair of them were studying the screen.
“What about Watts? Has he mentioned Chui’s yacht to you?”
“I know Chui died when the yacht sank with him trapped inside.”
“Hmmm.”
“What, Aria? Just tell me.”
“I’d rather the instruction came from Watts. He’s your captain.”
“Doesn’t matter who gives it to me. If it helps find the bastards who’ve taken over Chui’s drug empire, then I want to know.”
She scooped her long, dark ponytail over her shoulder. “Yeah, but you probably won’t be happy with this one.”
“Now I really want to know.”
“Found another one.” The female technician raised her hand.
Watts peered at us, and the scowl on his face was deadly. I had only been posted at Rosebud Police Station for four months, but I’d seen Watts in action enough to know he was a good cop. He’d demonstrated that when he’d arrested two corrupt officers who had been working with Chui, right under the captain’s nose.
“Listen, I don’t want to get Watts on the wrong side. He’s dealing with some serious crimes at the moment, so he’ll give you the job when the time is right.” Her eyes seemed to pierce my brain. “But I will stress, we need to keep absolute secrecy about the plan.”
“Seems like you’re nervous about it. I heard you were fearless.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets and peered across the crime scene. “I learned the hard way that you can’t trust everyone you work with. I trust Watts, and I do not want to piss him off.”
I raised my hands. “Okay.”
“And for the record, I’m not fearless. I’m cautious. From what I know about you, you’ll understand.” She marched away, aiming for Captain Watts.
What does she know about me?
My police career had been altered to remove any record of my undercover operation, including the name I’d assumed and the pictures of what I’d looked like for those three years. Very few people would have access to the complete information.
Dread scurried up my spine.
Aria had connections in high places, but if she could access information that had been redacted from my file, then the woman who wanted me dead could, too.
At the end of my deep undercover operation, I’d been offered a choice of where I wanted to be stationed. Maybe twelve hundred miles away wasn’t enough. Or maybe I should have chosen another career, which had been highly recommended to me. But I’d wanted to keep my badge and my weapon so I could keep searching for Nikki Bolton and arrest her whenever she crawled out from the rock she was hiding under. Or put a bullet through her callous heart, which I should have done when I’d had the chance.
Clenching my jaw, I smacked that pointless bullshit from my mind and strode to the pit that was gradually growing bigger.
The coroner kneeled beside the hole.
“Hi, Whitney,” I said as I took a couple of photos of the pit.
He frowned at me, then recognition crossed his expression. “Hey, Tyler.”
“Have you reached the body yet?”
“Not yet. It’s about six feet down, so we’re nearly there.”
“Is it a child?”
“The imagery of the skeleton looks to be, yes. Stand back.” He indicated with his hand.
The arm of the digger reached out, and the attached bucket scraped another inch of dirt away. Whitney gave a nod, and another layer was removed.
“Stop!” Whitney yelled.
The bucket lifted out of the hole, and I lowered to my knees beside Whitney.
At the bottom of the pit was the unmistakable curve of a small skull. The poor child hadn’t even been wrapped in cloth or plastic before he’d been buried.
Whitney climbed into the hole, scraped away dirt with his gloved hand and a small brush, then carefully extracted the yellowing skull.
When he turned it over, the large chunk missing from the back of the cranium suggested a possible cause of death. The size of the hole was big enough to have been inflicted by a sledgehammer. I took more photos, zooming in on the skull.
I witnessed seven brutal murders while I was undercover for Operation Vivid. All but one of those murderers were either dead or serving life in jail for their crimes.
My blood boiled over what happened to this poor, innocent child.
He or she was probably killed decades ago, but their murderer could still be walking amongst us.
As well as the bastards who helped cover up this murder.
I had been ordered to lay low until the bitch who wanted to execute me was either captured or killed. But time was running out for this victim, and I had every intention of finding their killer.
Even if that meant stepping back into Nikki Bolton’s crosshairs.