“As you say, I’m gonna study the file and that map when it gets here, send out a few enquiries and see what turns up.”

Peter screwed up his already screwed up face. “You know something, you know where she is don’t you?”

“No, no, I wish I did, but I’ll have a better idea by tonight so go on, stop wasting time and go grab a kip.”

“Okay, you’re the boss, boss.”

Barnes pored over the report again, memorising every little detail and ignoring the increasing bustle around him. The breaking morning brought Policemen in from patrols and their replacements ready for another day. He knew they’d be looking at him as word spread he was now based with them, not to mention the big black rig blocking most of their car parks. They probably knew nothing about him other than he was an FBI Agent, and that made him a curiosity. All manner of local, interstate and commonwealth authorities had tread the boards here at one time or another, but an actual Special Agent of the FBI was a rarity indeed. He recalled Viviennes’ voice and frowned.

“She ain’t scared anymore, confused is all, and a mite angry too,” he muttered.

“Sir?”

It was the young constable from the front desk. Barnes looked up at him.

“Nothing. What is it son.”

“Sir, the Super is here asking for you and Mr Gallagher.”

“Where, where is Pete?”

“Ah, he’s in the truck sir, it’s parked out back in the compound.”

“Don’t disturb him.” Barnes stood up. “Can I leave these…”

“Yes, they’ll be right there sir, I’ll look after them. This way.”

Chapter Fifteen. “Rise and Shine”

Barnes punched in the door code and pressed his eye to the scanner. He and Gallagher were the only ones programmed to be accepted by the retina scanner and it was a good backup for the security-coded door. He stepped quietly into the pantech and noted the subdued lights. Most of the equipment was either shut down or in low power mode awaiting their call to action again. The sleeper cab could be accessed from the pantech but he could see the little hatchway was closed and secure so he strove to remain as silent as possible.

Two steps from his work station at the front of the pantech, he froze as the hatchway sprung open and a blaze of light struck him in the eyes.

“Morning boss.”

Barnes immediately saw Petes’ craggy smile when he switched off the torch, and lowered the Browning 9mm pistol he held in the other hand.

“It’s afternoon.”

Pete looked surprised. “I was tired. Didn’t hear nothing until you came through that door. First time I slept in this damn thing and it was worth waiting for.”

“If it was beauty sleep you were hoping for I hate to tell you it didn’t work.”

“It’d take more than sleep to fix this cranium of mine boss. Don’t I know it. So what’s the go, what’s happening?” Pete levered himself through the hatch and took the proffered coffee out of Barnes hand. “Weren’t testing me now were you?”

Barnes ignored the latter. Of course he had been. He unfolded the tourist map and placed it down onto his cluttered work desk, pointing at a small red X.

“That’s where she called us from.” He pointed at another red mark, a circle. “That’s where I thought she’d gone to ground.”

“A caravan park?”

“Inside,” he gestured at the police station “they tell me that the entire area is full of holiday apartments and high rises, predominantly empty this time of year. So she could be anywhere. She could be almost next door to us and we wouldn’t have a clue.”

“But …?”

Barnes pulled another larger map from his jacket and overlaid it on the desk. There were two red Xs and three red circles on this map. He pointed to the Xs first.

“This is her house at Helensvale. This is the shopping centre she disappeared from three days ago. I sent out requests asking for any unusual reports of break-ins in the area immediately around the shopping centre, and after sifting through them, Barnes rolled his eyes, I came up with these three possibilities. First, a council trailer park at Southport, a Chinese Takeout in Biggera Waters, and the trailer park here almost beside the shopping centre. I dismissed reports if things had been stolen or damaged, not the MO of our girl.”

“And …?”

“And we are jumping into a car and going to check them out now, before dark.”

“Before dark?”

“Yeah, it’s nearly three, you slept a full eight hours sleeping beauty!”

“You, you met Rob then?”

“Yep, and a good thing too, but c’mon, we’ll talk in the car – you’re driving. I don’t think I’m up to this driving on the wrong side of the road yet.”

Pete drove straight up the highway through the Surfers Paradise tourist strip and into Southport, a pretty if less than developed calm water area, as distinct from the more popular beach suburbs immediately south and along the remainder of the Coast. Barnes told him that if this were mainland USA the houses and high-rise apartments would have been overlapping the water. He filled him in on the discussions with Superintendent Bailey, and passed on the message that he would catch up with Pete tomorrow, on his return from a meeting at the State Police Headquarters in Brisbane. Meanwhile, the search and overt activity for Vivienne would be scaled down to support for themselves only, as requested. This had been an excellent response and Barnes had appreciated the lateral thinking of Peter’s friend.

They arrived at the Council Van Park on the edge of the water. It was a stunning setting as the sun low in the sky behind them making the calm estuary sparkle. The Manager showed them several vans that had been broken into and vandalised in the past week, and Barnes shook his hand and thank him profusely, promising action by local Police as he hurried back to the car. Pete gave him a quizzical look as he closed the door on the still ranting Manager.

“Not our girl?”

“No.”

“You wanna tell me why boss?”

“The Chinese Takeout, they’re waiting for us.” He looked at Pete and grinned. “I told them not to touch anything until we got there, and that was eleven o’clock this morning. They might be getting a mite touchy by now.”

“Takeaway.”

“What?”

“Takeaway, we call them takeaways not takeouts. Now tell me why this wasn’t our girl?”

“She wouldn’t have vandalised anything Pete, perhaps breaking a lock to get in would be all, but she doesn’t want anyone to know where she is. So why would she draw attention to herself by damaging her hideout? Besides, the vandalism began before she came onto the scene.”

“She could have done it to make it look like the vandals.”

“No. She’s smarter than even she thinks she is. If she’d seen the damage she wouldn’t have felt safe enough to stay here in the first place – she would have moved on.”

“Ah, the other caravan park you circled on the other map?”

“Yep. There, the Asian takeout, takeaway,” he pointed. “Damn it, they didn’t wait.”

Pete parked in front of the little restaurant and Barnes raced inside. Happily he noticed the boxes of supplies piled on tables in the restaurant. He apologised profusely to the little man waiting in the kitchen doorway, the small face of a child peering around his legs. The owner confirmed what he reported on the phone this morning. Someone had broken in through the back door, and after stealing or consuming almost every morsel of food, had cleaned up afterward. The only food left were the top leaves of a celery stalk sitting beside the fridges, the teeth marks evident on the stalk. Barnes deposited the celery into a small plastic bag. He apologised again and walked out the front door, trailed by Pete who had remained totally silent during the five minutes in the shop.

“You’re excited boss. You think it was her?”

Barnes ignored him and walked around to the rear of the shops. He walked over to the dumpsters. Underneath a bag of garbage, he found yesterday’s newspaper on top of a carrot bag full of crushed cans, food remains and two flattened milk cartons. He extracted an onion with a single bite mark and left the remainder. The onion followed the celery stalk into its own little plastic bag.

“What are we doing boss.”

“She was here Pete, she was here. She found the newspaper here too with the headline article about her, and that’s what made her ring last night looking for me. I had them trace this mornings phone call but I forgot to ask about the one last night. I bet it came from around here somewhere.”

“How can you know that? It looks to me like someone just stocked their pantry, larder.”

“They didn’t, she didn’t, she ate it all on the spot. Look at the onion man, how famished must she have been to bite into that?”

“Still doesn’t mean it was her.”

“No matter, c’mon, let’s get to the next trailer park.”

“Van park, caravan park we call “em.”

The Manager of this park was a nonchalant fellow, and drawled in an accent that Barnes could almost equate to the mid-west back home. The major difference was Barnes could have understood someone from the mid-west. He gathered enough of the gist from the man’s painfully slow observations to recognise that it had to be Vivienne. His excitement grew by the minute with each new discovery. The Manager stood aside after showing them the van in question, a broken lock the only visible damage.

“Okay, now I’m beginning to see the connection. She’s neat, like a good housewife would be expected to be. She even made the bed. And you see over the vacant lot there,” Pete pointed, “is the Franklins store she escaped from.”

“She never slept in the bed,” Barnes stated matter of factly, and he knew without looking where the shopping centre was. He’d already made a mental note from the map back in the pantech at Police Headquarters, dismissing it at the time. He was certain the Police search would have included such an obvious location, even though it was not documented in the report. “She slept on the floor.”

Pete looked at him sceptically. “I know you know that boss, but why would she do it when there’s a perfectly good bed to sleep on right beside her, and how can you be so goddammed sure that’s what she did?”

“I just know Pete, trust me, I know. Drive me past the other trailer park on the way back to the truck will you? I want to see if it fits her comfort zone. Then I need to do some analysis on the food from the takeout.”

“You gonna make veggie soup with it? I’m famished. You eaten?”

“You, we can grab a burger on the way back to the truck. Or you’ll have plenty of time afterward – before the stakeout.”