The Quiet People by Paul Cleave

Author:Paul Cleave
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Upstart Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Forty-eight

Only they don’t get started. Kent is laying out photographs of Zach’s bedroom and the toybox when there’s a soft knock at the door. A moment later it opens, and Thompson leans in. It must be important for him to interrupt. Perhaps Lisa Murdoch didn’t make it. She flicks the recorder off and heads into the corridor.

“We have a situation,” Thompson says.

“Lisa?”

He shakes his head. “A few minutes ago calls were made to the tip line, both concerning Lucas Pittman.”

Lucas Pittman. She recognises the name. He was one of the convicted paedophiles interviewed over the last few days, but was cleared from the investigation. He has convictions for robbery, for breaking and entering, and for assault. It’s his conviction for drugging and sexually assaulting a minor that got him put away for ten years. “I don’t like where this is going,” she says.

“No. And you’re not going to,” he says, and as he says it, they’re walking into the taskforce room where other detectives have started to gather, some on phones, some tapping away furiously at laptops. “Two callers, one saying he heard a child crying, the other one Pittman’s neighbour who said he saw Pittman behaving erratically.”

“Why am I only learning about this right now?”

“Because I only learned about it one minute ago, and two minutes ago there was nothing to learn, only now those officers are at Pittman’s house. It’s empty, so they went in.”

Which they can do without a warrant, because Pittman is a registered sex offender, and two witnesses have called to say they believe they’ve seen or heard evidence of a crime. “Get to the part I’m not going to like,” she says, even though she hasn’t liked any of this so far.

“They just found Zach Murdoch’s missing bag hidden under a bed. It’s definitely the kid’s bag. Has his name written inside it, and that toy ghost Murdoch called about is in there too, and his glasses.”

Her stomach sinks. They’ve been wrong about everything. The only misdirection has been them looking to lay blame where it wasn’t warranted, and now one person is in custody who shouldn’t be, and another is fighting for their life.

“Neighbours say Pittman tore out of there in a hurry. We got patrol cars out looking.”

She feels sick. “We need to get out there,” she says, and then grabs a chair and sits down to stop herself from falling. She needs a moment first.

“And go where? He could be anywhere.”

“We messed up,” she says.

“We don’t know that. We don’t know Pittman wasn’t working with the Murdochs.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“We can’t know anything for sure.”

“He took their son, Ben. He took him, and he did everything he could to make the Murdochs look like they’d done it, and we ate it up. All of it.”

Before Thompson can respond, Detective Vega comes into the room. “The neighbour who called it in says he was peeking over the fence because he heard Pittman stomping around his yard, like he was looking for something.

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