Chapter 59

I WENT TOthe back of the boat and sat beside Tox as we passed through the heads of Sydney Harbor. Somehow he still smelled of cigarette smoke. One side of his hair was plastered to his head, while the other, where he’d been shot, stuck up in wild spikes. There was blood all through his chest hair.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“Meh.” He shrugged.

He pulled the shirt away. The bullet had carved a vertical line up the side of his face from his jaw to his hairline, burning the flesh on either side, a straight gouge that looked half an inch deep. It was a grisly wound. Something he would wear well.

“Wow, that’s disgusting.” I reached out. “Can I touch it?”

“Get off.” He shoved at me. “Freak.”

I looked out at the waves, and the words came easily. Seemed to flow out, unlocked by my exhaustion. I told him I knew about Anna Peake and her son. His victims. I knew that Anna had been heading west on the A32 highway toward Katoomba on a bright Tuesday afternoon when she’d driven under an overpass where Tox Barnes had been standing with a group of other little boys. He was the smallest in the group. Six years old. The oldest had been nine. The boys had been tossing pebbles onto the tops of cars as they drove underneath, cheering and laughing as the rocks clinked and bounced on rooftops and hoods, no idea that what they were doing was incredibly dangerous. They’d gotten over the thrill of raining pebbles on the cars when one of the boys dropped a pebble the size of a penny onto the windshield of Anna Peake’s car. The crack of the rock on the glass had been so sudden, so startling, that Anna had swerved and gotten the afternoon sun in her eyes. She had gone across the double lanes and right into the path of an oncoming truck. The boys had rushed to the other side of the overpass and watched her car burn, the mother and her little boy inside.

The five boys had been interrogated by police. The town had called for the oldest boy on the bridge to face criminal prosecution. In the end, none of the boys had been charged. They were so small, and so terrified by the awesome power of their actions, that the police had taken pity on them.

All of the boys had changed their names legally at some point between the deaths of Anna and her son and their adult lives. Terrence Brennan became Tate Barnes. The name change had not destroyed his past completely. Though his involvement in the killings had been suppressed, it had arisen when he’d tried to become a member of the New South Wales state police. The panel of admissions experts who’d approved Tox for service had been obliged to keep his childhood horror a secret. But it had leaked, like all secrets do. It had grown in size, warped, twisted. People had added things. Some had said the boys had stabbed the woman. Beat her. Raped her. Kidnapped her. The boys had grown older. Younger sometimes. New versions of the story had been passed down every year from older cops to the recruits in their charge. Like all rumors, it had its own life. No one knew the truth.