Chapter 8

THE EFFECT OFseeing Tate Barnes right in the middle of what I already considered my crime scene was like being maced. My eyes stung and my throat closed with panic. I’d never met the man before, but I knew the shaggy blond hair and the leather jacket from stories I’d heard. There were hundreds of variations on the story of Tate Barnes. It was a terrible tale about a crime the man had committed that he’d tried to hide from the bosses during his academy application. It was said that, as a child, Tate and a group of his friends had murdered a mother and her young son.

I turned away and grabbed at my face, tried to suppress a groan. I needed this guy out of my crime scene. Now. He straightened and offered me his hand.

“I’m Tox Barnes,” he rasped. It sounded as though his throat was lined with sandpaper.

“You actually introduce yourself as ‘Tox’?”

“I find it minimizes confusion.”

I’d heard the nickname, but I hadn’t expected him to embrace it. Officers called Barnes “Toxic” because any officer who agreed to work with him was essentially committing themselves to a lifetime of punishment from their fellow officers. General consensus was that Tox Barnes should never have been allowed into the force. Those who had worked with him were harassed relentlessly by their peers. He was the fox in the henhouse. Aligning yourself with him meant you were on the side of a predator.

I’d heard that there was nothing the administration had been able to do to stop Barnes from being a cop. He’d aced his application, and he’d committed the murders so young his record had been expunged. But that didn’t mean the rest of the force was going to sit by and let a murderer operate in their midst. He was the enemy, and if you joined him, you were the enemy, too.

“Listen, Tox, I’m Detective Harriet Blue.” I shook his rough hand half-heartedly. “I’m going to need you to clear out of this scene. Chief Morris has put me on it.”

“Meh,” Tox said, and returned to crouching.

I waited, but nothing further came, so I bent down beside him and glanced at the body.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“I said, ‘Meh,’” Tox replied. “It was a dismissive noise.”

I was so shocked, so furious, I hadn’t even taken in the sight of the girl on the sand before us. My eyes flicked over her naked chest, unseeing, as I tried to get my mind around the reality of the situation. She looked midtwenties, beautiful, dark-haired. She was wearing only a pair of panties. She was a Georges River girl. I knew it. I needed to get this parasite of a man off my case.

“You don’t understand,” I said, “this is my crime scene. This is my case. And I don’t work with partners.”

“Neither do I,” he said, as if it were a matter of choice.

“Right.” I sighed. “So you can give me a brief on what you’ve observed, and then I need you to beat it and take your dismissive noises with you.”

Tox seemed to smirk in the dark as he stood and walked around the back of the body. I couldn’t tell if he’d heard me or not. At the edge of the police tape, twenty yards away, my fellow officers were watching carefully to see if I’d cooperate with their nemesis, thereby giving them permission to make my life a living hell. I noticed some journalists among the crowd. The uniformed patrol officers securing the scene were so interested in Tox and me that they weren’t even pushing them back.

When I turned around, I saw that Tox had a pocket knife. He flicked open the blade with a snap, and slashed at the girl.