Chapter 10

I FOLLOWED TOXback to the body of the girl and stood facing away from the crowd. My mind was swirling. Sure, Tox knew his stuff. He’d already started developing a theory, helping my case enormously within only minutes of the scene being cordoned off. But as I glanced at the cops behind me, I knew I couldn’t keep him around much longer or I’d never get the thing solved. Working with Tox Barnes wouldn’t throw a wrench into the works. It’d throw a whole toolbox.

As far as I’d heard, people now and then were forced to work with him. But he was a burden that one took heavily, and offloaded as soon as possible. You found a way to transfer out of partnership with him, or soon enough you would begin to find your job almost impossible. People started avoiding you in the coffee room. Losing your reports, delaying your lab results. Accidents would begin to happen—someone would spill coffee on your laptop, bump your car on the way out of the parking lot, forget to include you in weekend get-togethers.

I’d just turned to him to ask him again to leave when I noticed he was smoking a cigarette.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Put that out! You’re in my crime scene.”

He grunted.

“You’ve just had that hand in a dead girl!”

“That was this hand.” He lifted the other from his pocket, waved it, pulled the cigarette from his mouth with the clean one. “For a detective, you’re pretty blind to details. Me? I’ve noticed everything there is to notice about your hands. Chewed nails. Swollen knuckles. No sign of a wedding ring, probably ever.”

“Look.” I leaned close. “I don’t like you. I don’t want to work with you. I’ve heard bad things, and they appear to be true. You should have waited for an autopsy to confirm your findings. There’s a process, and it’s in place for a reason.”

“I don’t like to waste time,” he said. “And that’s exactly what you’re doing now, jibber-jabbering at me. What station you work at?”

“Surry Hills,” I said.

“Right.” He clapped me hard on the shoulder as he turned to leave. “I’ll see you there first thing.”

He wandered off, and the police officers lining the tape watched him go. When he was a good distance away they ducked under the tape and started setting up to do their jobs. I stood stunned in their midst, no idea what I should do next. The photographer snapped a picture of me standing over the body, my arms folded.

“That guy’s a murderer, you know,” he said, adjusting his lens. “Killed a mother and her young kid. Beat ’em to death. Tox was seven.”

“Yeah, so I hear.” I was badly craving a cigarette of my own now. I hadn’t smoked in years. But no one around me was offering anything but hateful glances.

“Guy like that’s gonna do it again,” the photographer said. “You don’t start that young unless it’s in your bones.”