Black & Blue: BookShots (Detective Harriet Blue Series) Read Free

victim?’
    The cop waved me on. Another car was coming up behind me. I stood on the gas and zipped down the slope, almost swerving on the corner where the dirt began. I couldn’t wait to get to the crime scene. If the victim was a young woman, it meant the Georges River Killer had struck again.
    And I was going to get him this time.

CHAPTER 7
    I PARKED CLOSE , unwrapped my knuckles and strode up to the crime scene with my heart pumping in my ears. I didn’t even bring my scene kit. I had to know as much as I could, as fast as possible, so that I could get Pops to put me on the case. The Georges River killings were splashed all over the newspapers, and so were the idiots who had control of the case – a group of loutish guys from Sydney Metro Homicide who wouldn’t give me so much as a whiff of what they had.
    I didn’t want the notoriety these cops seemed to enjoy so much. I wanted to be involved in catching what was probably the most savage serial killer in our nation’s history. Young, beautiful university students were going missing from the hip urban suburbs around the University of Sydney campus. Their savaged bodies were turning up on the banks of the Georges River three or four days after they disappeared. My brother spent two days of his working week teaching undergrad design students at the university, and lived in their midst in the hip suburbs around Newtown and Broadway. I’d talked to Sam about it a lot, about how the girls in his apartment building were terrified, begging the landlord to put cameras up outside the block, walking each other to and from their cars in the late hours.
    It might have been arrogant, or naive, but I felt as if there was something I could contribute. Though my conviction rate in sex crimes wasn’t good, that was part of the culture of the court system. I was a good cop, and I could practically smell the Georges River Killer haunting the women of my city. When the police came knocking on that evil prick’s door, I wanted to be right there to see his face.
    The first thing I noticed that was wrong with the scene was the edge of the police tape. It was far too crowded. Half the officers who should have been in the inner cordon were standing at the outer cordon, talking and smoking in the dark. I recognised a photographer from my station loitering uselessly by the lights rigged up over the scene. A fingerprints specialist was sitting under a tree eating a burrito out of a paper roll. What the hell was everyone doing? I ducked under the tape and came up beside the only officer in the crime scene. He was crouched over the body.
    When he turned around, I saw that the man by the body was Tate Barnes.
    The walking embodiment of career suicide.

CHAPTER 8
    THE EFFECT OF seeing 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 minimises 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