Chapter 3
Juniper
There really should be a plan you can look up for what to do after you kill somebody.
Running away seems genuinely the right path if you want to wave a banner saying, I did it.
Not running away is scary as fuck though.
You wait for the door to burst open, full of cops brandishing guns. For hours, my heart rate seems to have been set on high.
It’s dark now, and having cleaned the ute as thoroughly as I could using the vacuum and the downstairs hose, I’ve left it parked in the underground garage beneath the apartment block.
I’ve tossed the vacuum bag in a distant bin.
I’ve eaten, I’ve thought and thought, and now I’m stuck with wondering how to find his friends.
If my stupid life is worth anything, it is going to be for this. Finish it.
I smile. If only I could just do some face-smashing, fancy flying kick on them both.
They’re rich like Nathan is…was, I assume. Weren’t they in some of the press photos from the trial?
Facial recognition might help, if I can even do that. Not being a government spy, I’m lost here.
Try. I have to try. Unless I want to go ask a psychic for help, or swim down to the phone where I let it sink. Under the sea, in fathoms of water. Fish it out, then magically suck the info from his phone?
I use Google and search: can anyone use facial recognition to match photos?
Yes.
I can? Where I’m sitting on the sofa, I suddenly feel like I’m floating, dizzy.
“Wow. Great. Now I just need some photos to do this with.”
Which is when I realize that doing even this, within hours of his time of death, could be incriminating, if anyone checks what I’ve been doing.
I let my head drop back and swear as I stare at the ceiling. It is what it is.
I keep going until I find the trial photos, and those two men lurk in the background of a few, but their names are missing from the captions. Of course they are, Baxter and Ethan were nobodies there.
I get hits from my first search. Lots of hits.
Ethan Morrow.
Baxter Anders.
Rich and British, they have been photographed at celebrity events at Cannes, at the Oscars, and more. They seem to be investors in several companies.
“Now I know who you are.” I exhale. Are they rapists though? Detectiving that part will be harder.
There is only so much you can accomplish sitting on a sofa and tapping away at a keyboard.
I don’t know anything more about the assault, only that there were three of them in the video and that it happened in that shallow, stony creek bed.
Did the cops ever search it? Water-worn rocks roll under their feet and under her.
It’s somewhat blurred, and I can hear slurred, or seemingly slurred, words.
Laughter, too, and threats. I can see arms, hands, shoes, a cock or two, a few knees, but mostly it shows Riley.
Most of her clothes are gone, and she looks dazed and helpless.
My dear dead friend. Who I never helped.
Watching it takes a toll.
Before long, I am all out of tears and exhausted.
Too much stress messes with you. To keep up the appearance of normality, I answer a few texts that come in and agree to walk some dogs, though I ignore the OnlyFans notifications.
I chew my bottom lip. I need money, so I should keep doing those, satisfying the eager clients.
It just seems wrong to be getting all sexy when she is waiting for me to… to what? Avenge her from the grave?
Yes. Precisely that.
I gulp down some of the wine I poured earlier then rest the cool glass on my forehead. I put down the glass to rub away the grit in my tired eyes and yawn. What else? How do I do this? How do you find out who did something that happened years ago?
I don’t know. Maybe I can think better tomorrow.
I fall asleep on the sofa, and when I wake in the morning the laptop is dead because the battery is getting old, and I guess it stayed on after I slept? I really should update it. I plug it in. Then I remember, I have work to get done today. Non-murder-related work.
“Shit!” I jog to the kitchen to find cereal, milk, and make myself tea.
Sitting at the table, I check the news, and there is nothing about Nathan going missing, or his body being found. The first will happen. The second? I can’t face thinking about it.
I barely have time to gobble muesli and shower before I’m running down the two flights of stairs. The lift is slow and at the top level. My gym shoes are in the ute. Thank god.
I pull them on, sockless, and gun the engine as I exit, only to jolt to a halt as a motorbike revs by in the street outside.
What’s the first walking assignment? Aaron Loxland, the rich guy in the new mansion on the beachfront.
He is kinda hot in a nerdish way—tall and lean but muscled enough to appeal.
The man with the golden retriever called Lucy.
Money always helps. I’m a sucker for that.
I tsk at myself. Last time he wore surfer shorts and a red T-shirt with a periodic table of all the elements on it.
CAN YOU EAT IT was written on the shirt underneath the table.
I’m still not sure if that was meant to be a sexy innuendo, though I did learn that lead and uranium are not edible. He smiled when he saw me trying to read the smaller text.
He is a bit creepy? The house only sold maybe six months ago.
He’s hung three or four kinky paintings in the entrance hallway and stairway foyer.
Women in bondage and either naked or in black and red latex or flimsy underwear.
It isn’t anything openly lewd in a stuff-yourself-with-a-dildo way, but it is terribly suggestive.
I’ve done worse. I cannot possibly complain or call that creepy.
His house looms at the end of the crescent among the palm trees, in all its cubist glory with those two stories of white concrete and sandstone. An edifice, my old English teacher would’ve called it. Mrs. Grechen? And that is a blast from the past, my grade twelve English teacher.
I brake and come to a halt. As the engine throbs, waiting for instructions, I recall it isn’t the paintings that say creepy.
It was how he studied me as I took the dog lead from him.
I was certain he was eyeing my ass as I walked off.
So I’d looked over my shoulder and caught him.
He didn’t smile then, didn’t change expression, just locked eyes with me until I broke and swung away. Now that was odd. Chilling even?
My nipples have scrunched in, and now I’m unsure if I’m chilled or aroused by the memory of him staring at my ass. That I’m also wearing a short flouncy skirt for this job says my subconscious has ideas, maybe ideas about him.
I’m a murderer. Flirting with guys is out of the question, stupid, and horribly inappropriate, until I sort myself out.
Within a few seconds of me driving up, the steel gate for the car starts to slide away to left and right. Once I drive through, it closes slowly behind me. A black Jaguar is parked on the wide concrete expanse before the three-door garage, and I stop beside it.
As soon as I push the buzzer beside the front door, Mr. Loxland opens it. This time he’s dressed in faded jeans and a white, buttoned shirt. I raise my hand and smile. Was he waiting on the other side? No dog is in sight.
I peer around him. “Is Lucy ready, Mr. Loxland?”
“Call me Aaron, please, Juniper. She’s inside. I just have to get the lead on her. And thank you for coming at short notice.”
“No problem, Mr. Loxland…Aaron. Happy to help. She’s an easy dog to walk. Most people make it a regular thing.” I’m quietly suggesting there, but he ignores it.
Loxland. It’s an unusual last name, yet I have this feeling I’ve heard it before.
He strolls beside me as we head up the gray-and-black-flecked white tiles in the hallway, before indicating a door to the left that opens off the foyer, near the foot of the stairway.
The house is silent. If he has visitors, or anyone else living here, they are quiet.
Or perhaps this place is well insulated?
We enter a large living room with comfortable, pale-green sofas and armchairs, two walls of bookcases filled with books, and two straight-backed wooden chairs with covered armrests.
No dog is visible, though I have to walk past a tall man in long pants and an olive-green shirt.
His biceps threaten to tear the fabric of his sleeves.
His black hair is short, his face seems cemented with stern lines, and his mouth is set in a slight grimace, as if he’s recently drunk a cupful of sand.
A scar. It’s a scar that twists his mouth and runs to beneath one eye. I nod to the formidable stranger, expecting to be introduced but Mr. Loxland…Aaron leads me further in, as if he thinks we will sit and chat.
Puzzled, I search for the dog, half expecting her to be lying on the floor space surrounded by the sofas.
But no. No dog. Only a red-and-white rug.
Lucy will drool on that and make short work of the white, which only makes me wish I had a pet even more than usual. Only the rich bother with white rugs.
I stop dead and frown when Aaron sits on the opposite sofa. He then stretches forward to pat the seat of the wooden chair facing him.
“Sit down, Juniper. We have things to discuss.”
“What? Your dog? What is this?”
The chair he patted looks supremely antique and uncomfortable.
I hear a soft noise behind me. Suspicious, I’m turning, swinging to check on the stranger, since who else would that be, when a hard arm locks about the front of my neck at the same time as someone grabs my left wrist and twists it up behind my back—painfully so.
“What the—” I choke out as Aaron rises. He forces up my chin, then sticks a wide piece of tape over my mouth.