The Sudden Dark

Eighteen

It was closing in on midday, the sun burning naked and high in the sky. It would be a long drive out to Heathcote; I went fast but careful out of the city limits, splitting onto the rural roads south, bearing along the flat hills and farmlands that began to grow out of the concrete.

If Rusty Mclaughlin wanted a place out of the way and out of mind, he couldn't have done much better than a rented shed in Heathcote. And as he was forming a gradual impression in my mind with what I'd learned from Shirley, and from Sam, there were any number of things running around my head he could have used his shed for. Or that he still had kept in there.

I found Stone Road, a little dead strip of crumbling asphalt running at the back of a lonely string of country houses. It was an out-of-the-way road, perfectly buried away from being turned onto if you weren't trying to find it.

At the end of the road it began to spring large double sheds and small warehouse garages, most with signs for rent or notices of privacy staked clear in front of them. I stopped my car along the road and went on foot to inspect them individually.

After a long while of wandering down the road, the heat putting a sheen of new sweat across my brow and down my back, I found a long and flat shed at the peak of the road, sitting under the cozy sway of a broad hanging Eucalypt branch, and with a weathered clipboard fixed on one of its walls stating that the unit was currently under the lease of a B. Mclaughlin.

The two rolling garage doors at its face were padlocked, and the door to its side was keyed. There was no car close by to suggest that he was laying in wait inside; though, out of spurious interest, I knocked at the door anyway. And as I expected, there was no answer.

There was, however, a damp muffle that I could hardly hear call from inside after I did. I knocked again. It muffled louder.

That was it. I braced myself, put a foot hard into the ground, and bulled my shoulder at the hinge of the door.

It did nothing but put a ringing pain burning through my left arm. So I swallowed a breath, bit a lip, and turned to try my other shoulder.

This time the door burst open and I stumbled inside. My arms were searing now, both of them, but I was inside the dark cavern emptiness of the shed. There were dusty tarps covering rusted cars, empty paint cans and supplies, steel cabinets with scattered tools; nothing of interest, everything you'd keep in a shed and forget about.

Except for the muffles. I followed them carefully through the winding labyrinth of interior debris, dodging shadows and weaving darkness until I could hear it louder, clearer. It came at the end of the room, between a stacking of pallet crates and cardboard boxes.

A figure writhing on the ground. A girl.

She was on her stomach and had her wrists and ankles bound behind her in duct tape. I knelt down and cut them loose with a nearby boxcutter, and helped the strip off her mouth as well.

She was weary and red-eyed, but turned up to me and said with a weak voice, 'Didn't think I'd see you again.'

'I could say the same thing,' I said back. 'Last time we met, we didn't get to say goodbye.'

She sat up and rubbed her wrists, and her eyes. 'Come on,' she said. 'We've got to get out of here.'

'Is he coming back?'

'He will eventually.'

I helped her up, and steadied her trembling walk as we made our way back into the sunlight and up the road toward my car.

'Rusty Mclaughlin,' I said. 'Why didn't you tell me about him?'

Maddie was shielding her eyes against the blaring sun; I was guessing that she'd been a guest in Mclaughlin's shed since her disappearance the night before. 'I don't know,' she said wearily. 'I don't know what anyone knows anymore. I'm just trying to stay alive at this point.'

'Spose I'm glad I could help you with that, if nothing else. Rusty brought you here after paying us a visit last night, that right?—you, me, and Clive?'

She nodded. 'Shot Clive dead and stole me away. Figured he thought you were dead, too, or else you'd have a couple of bullets in you as well. Guess you should thank Clive for that.'

'Yeah, I guess.'

I started my car and directed us back toward the city.