yelled the disgusting insult has baited me. He captured my tight, twisted face, the ferocity in my eyes.
I’m shaking with adrenaline now. Sweat prickles across my lip. Moisture dampens my armpits.
“Justice for Martin! Justice for the Cresswell-Smith family!”
And suddenly I see them near the doors. Martin’s parents. His sister stands on one side of the couple, his brother on the other. Shock stalls me as I meet his brother’s gaze. The genetic echo is startling. It’s as though Martin is standing right there, looking down at me from the courthouse doors, judging me, admonishing me from beyond the grave. Martin would look exactly like his brother in a few more years if . . . he were alive. The idea carves a hollow into my stomach.
How does this even happen to someone?
When did it begin?
Did it start with our move to Jarrawarra Bay, when the spotted gums burst into blossom and the flying foxes came?
No, it started well before that . . .
Watch the shells closely, Ellie, I say in my head, channeling my father’s voice, clarifying my focus. Because life is a shell game, and in a shell game only the tosser wins. Never the mark. You’re either the tosser or the loser.
I plan on being the tosser in this confidence trick. Slowly I glance up at the imposing building that houses the wheels of justice. I imagine the faces of the jury across from me.
You’re all going to let me walk out of here. Because I’m going to sell you my story.
Just watch me.
THEN
LOZZA
Over one year ago, November 18. Agnes Basin, New South Wales.
The Jarrawarra Bay police boat carved a smooth V into the dark water of the Agnes River. Senior Constable Laurel “Lozza” Bianchi stood on the starboard side of the boat with Constable Gregg Abbott. She watched the deepening shadows among the mangrove trees tangled along the north bank. There were four on board. Constable Mac McGonigle was skippering them under direction from Barney Jackson, the old crabber who’d found the body and made the triple-zero call.
The late afternoon pressed down heavy with humidity. The air tasted fetid on Lozza’s lips. Everything lay eerily silent, apart from the growl of their engines and the occasional soft thuck against the hull as they hit and sliced through one of the big jellyfish that floated with the tidal currents toward the sea. The jellyfish were the size of volleyballs and trailed frilled tentacles barbed with venomous stingers.
Smaller saltwater channels fed off the tidal river, twisting like a labyrinth into the heart of the mangrove flats. Lozza knew the silty channel bottoms teemed with mud crabs whose shells could grow as broad as a man’s head. Both omnivorous and cannibalistic, the muddies were aggressive scavengers with claws powerful enough to crush shells. And snap fingers. Whatever awaited them deep in the dank shadows of the estuary would not have been left untouched by those muddies.
They passed a listing old jetty. Rotting pilings stuck out of the water. Shags perched atop the pilings, hanging their black wings out to their sides to dry as they watched the police launch pass.
Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Gregg glanced up. “Think the storm will blow in?” he asked.
Lozza followed his gaze. Two fish eagles wheeled high above towering eucalypts, the raptors silhouetted against streaks of clouds turning violent vermillion and orange as the sun slid toward the horizon.
“Hell knows,” she said quietly. “But it’ll be dark soon. It would help to get a look at that floater while there’s still some light.”
“Bloody foxes will fly as soon as that sun slides behind those trees,” Gregg said. “At least they aren’t as bad here as south of Jarra.”
As if summoned by her partner’s mention, a colony of giant fruit bats exploded out of the eucalypt canopy and swarmed in a shrieking cacophony into the sky. Almost simultaneously, cockatoos and lorikeets began to screech. The earth seemed to exhale and shift, and a slight breeze stirred. The mood on the river changed.
“I hate them,” Gregg muttered as he squinted up at the swarming creatures. “They fight the whole night in the spotted gum outside my bedroom window. Like bloody witches bickering in a coven. And they stink.”
Everyone was on edge over the giant flying foxes that had mysteriously migrated en masse to the region recently. They’d begun arriving in swarms when one of the gum varieties had suddenly blossomed, and then more and more of the megabats had come flying along the highway like a portent