Felicity Young - Take Out

‘Wait on,’ Stevie said. She’d moved to the other side of the car while he was talking. ‘What’s this from?’ Squatting on her haunches she pointed to a slash of green on the driver’s door. The surrounding dent had been circled in black marker pen.

‘Yes, we thought the dent looked recent, last couple of weeks, anyway—that’s why we highlighted it,’ Pruitt said.

‘Can you take a paint sample?’ Stevie asked.

‘Not at this stage, no.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because everything points to this being an accident. Tests like that cost money.’ He hesitated. ‘Let’s get out of here, continue this in the office.’

Stevie and Fowler exchanged glances and followed him to a demountable in the middle of the yard next to a large tin-roofed workshop with open sliding doors. ‘That’s where we do the inspections,’ Pruitt explained. A pair of booted feet stuck out from underneath a jacked-up concertina of metal. The frenetic sound of a horse race from the radio followed them into the adjacent office until the closing door cut it off.

The air in the room was oily and close. It would have been more comfortable outside. Stevie flopped into a worn swivel chair.

With the flip of a wall switch an air conditioner rumbled to life and Stevie took a gulp of musty cool air. Pruitt poured them tea from a thermos flask. ‘Kettle’s broke,’ he apologised as he rested the thermos on a grey filing cabinet. An out-of-date calendar hung on the wall above it. Faded and flyspecked, Miss November 2001 had seen better days.

Pruitt must have seen Stevie glancing at the nude. ‘The public don’t get to come in here,’ he said, colouring slightly.

The tea tasted of unwashed thermos, the milk suspect. Pruitt, sensing her squeamishness, slapped his thigh as if to say bad luck and all that, and gave her a look as suffocating as the office in which they sat. She knew the man meant well, but like any morgue technician, he wasn’t used to handling grieving friends and relatives.

He hefted a cardboard box from the floor and placed it on the grey metal desk. ‘These are the possessions retrieved from the boot of her car.’ Professional once more, he was easier to take. Stevie watched him closely as one by one he withdrew an assortment of items from the box: a clipboard with patient files, a medical bag with an inventory of contents, all appearing to be there, he said. A small overnight bag held jeans, T-shirts, underwear and toiletries.

‘And these,’ he placed a large evidence bag upon the table, ‘were in the front of the car.’ He began to extract the bag’s contents, placing them on the surface of his desk. ‘We have a handbag found with the clasp still closed. In it were some cosmetics, a purse containing credit cards and ten dollars twenty-five cents in cash, a hairbrush, a near full packet of cigarettes and a Ventolin inhaler. The phone we got your number from, Sergeant Hooper, was on the passenger side floor, along with a takeaway food container, a towel and an empty can of Coke.’

‘The Ventolin was in her handbag you say?’ said Stevie..

‘Um, yeah.’

‘And where was the bag found?’ Fowler asked.

‘Also on the passenger side floor, though it could have easily fallen from the seat during the impact.’

‘And the autopsy clearly stated that an asthma attack was the cause of death?’ said Fowler.

‘No, not exactly, just that her lungs indicated she was having an asthma attack when she died—that’s what caused the accident. Her phone shows that she had attempted to call emergency services, but couldn’t get through. Death itself was by...’ he stopped, slapped his thigh again and sighed. ‘Well, do you want to read the report yourself?’

Stevie made eye contact with Fowler and they shook their heads simultaneously. She attempted to detach, to force herself to think like a detective. As she sat on the swivel chair in the poky office, she swung from side to side, running her ponytail through her fingers. ‘I’ve seen her have asthma attacks before. As soon as she feels one coming on, she reaches for her inhaler.’

‘But the inhaler was still in her bag,’ Fowler said. ‘And the bag was found closed. It’s like she didn’t even attempt to reach for it.’

‘Why didn’t she pull over to the side of the road and get it? Surely she would have done that before dialling 000?’ Stevie directed the question to both men.

Fowler shrugged. Despite the cool air rattling around them, crescents of sweat stained the underarms of his white shirt.

Something caught Pruitt’s eyes from the demountable’s window. He got up from his desk and peered through the security screen. Stevie followed his gaze. A police four-wheel drive towing a mangled wreck pulled up outside the locked gate. ‘Make yourselves at home, folks,’ Pruitt said as he thumped across the hollow floor to the door, opening it to a stream of sunlight. ‘Another delivery; I’ll be back shortly.’

The detectives sat for a moment in silence after he’d gone. Stevie’s mind travelled back to the mild asthma attack Skye had suffered in the Pavel house just before they’d discovered the baby. ‘Why would Skye have a sudden, severe asthma attack when she was driving?’ she asked.

Fowler shook his head. ‘I guess people get asthma for a variety of reasons: allergy, exercise...’

‘But she was in the car; there can’t be too many allergens in there. And driving could hardly be called strenuous exercise.’

‘What are you getting at, Hooper?’

‘Skye had her attacks when she was frightened or anxious. Something must have frightened her out of her wits when she was driving, making her too scared to pull over to get the inhaler from her bag. That’s why she had the crash.’ She looked Fowler in the eye. ‘Pruitt’s a mate of yours, right?’

Fowler opened his hands. ‘Well...’

‘Reckon you can get him to delay that report to the coroner for a few days?’ She eased off the swivel chair and felt in her jeans pocket for her penknife. The demountable’s floor bounced under her feet as she headed for the door, not waiting for Fowler’s answer.

‘Hey, wait, Hooper, where are you going?’ He moved to follow.

She indicated for him to stay put. ‘When he comes back, just tell him I’ve gone to find the ladies room, okay?’ (Image 12.1)

Image 12.1

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Surprisingly enough Stevie’s parking spot at Central hadn’t been stolen in her absence. Things must be looking up, she told herself as she jogged the short distance to the Chemistry Centre, the envelope of paint scrapings burning a guilty hole in her pocket.

The Chemistry Centre was a long, low building of concrete blocks and curling pipes. Blood, tissue and urine samples, gunshot residues, suspect drugs and anything else requiring detailed chemical analysis were all delivered to the laboratories here. The facilities were available to the private sector as well as the police, but despite this knowledge, Stevie felt jittery and furtive. It would be typical to bump into anyone she knew, or caught in a tangle of red tape before she got where she wanted to be. She started to rehearse what she’d say to her boss if she were hauled before her again. This is an entirely different case ma’am, she’d say. I had no idea the death of Skye Williams and the Pavel cases were connected.

Bullshit they weren’t.

By the time she arrived, she’d managed to smooth some of the jagged edges of her nerves. She took a calming breath and pushed her way through the door into the poky reception area. After explaining the reason for her visit she presented her driver’s licence for scrutiny and filled out the request form in her small untidy hand. Nowhere did it ask the reason for the requested tests. Stevie bounced from one foot to the other as she waited to be processed. She should have expected this. You couldn’t get into any kind of government institution in a hurry these days.