Signals on Chandos Drive

“You can follow a car all day, but the real chase starts when the message leaves their hands.”

Sliding back into the driver's seat, I felt the seatbelt catch slightly before pulling across my chest. The mechanism needed oiling—it had that slight resistance it always developed after sitting in the sun too long. Sarah was already staring at me, her expression halfway between impatience and anticipation. She gave me that look. The look that said Talk. Now.

"Well?" she pressed, her voice edged with urgency.

She wasn't just eager. She sensed something. That twitch in the air detectives get when the chaos starts to organise itself—when the random starts feeling like a thread worth pulling. For all our differences, that hunger was something we shared. She needed this to go somewhere. So did I.

The case had been frustrating us both for different reasons. Sarah wanted action, resolution, the satisfaction of a puzzle solved. I wanted vindication—proof that my instincts weren't failing me, that the obsessive focus that had consumed the last forty-eight hours was justified rather than symptomatic of something darker.

I couldn't help the grin that tugged at the corner of my mouth. Couldn't stop it even if I'd tried.

"Well," I said, letting the pause stretch just enough to annoy her, "it seems we are about to find Jamie Greyson."

Saying his name aloud didn't make it feel any less implausible. The whole thing defied logic. No triangulated signal pings. No forensic trail. Just a half-arsed traffic stop that spat out the one lead we'd been chasing since the beginning. A breakthrough by accident. As if all the blood and sweat we'd poured into this case had been irrelevant compared to dumb luck.

The randomness of it bothered me more than it should. I'd always believed in systematic investigation, in the patient accumulation of evidence, in following procedure until the truth revealed itself. But here we were, stumbling into the heart of the mystery not through diligent detective work but because a woman had driven recklessly out of a bottle shop car park at the exact moment we happened to be watching.

Sarah rolled her eyes, half-playful, half genuinely miffed. "Well, where's the fun in that!?" she said, throwing up her hands in mock exasperation.

The tone was light, but the undercurrent was real. She wanted this to be difficult. Not for the sake of misery, but because difficulty meant meaning. Complexity meant merit. A tangled mess was something you could solve. Randomness... you just had to live with.

I understood the feeling. There was something unsatisfying about easy resolutions. They didn't test you. Didn't prove anything about your capabilities. If Jamie simply opened the door and said "Oh, sorry for the confusion," we'd have wasted days on a non-case. Worse, I'd have wasted days becoming someone I didn't recognise.

I turned the key, and the engine murmured to life, purring like a cat that didn't trust you yet.

The starter motor had that slight hesitation it always developed in cold weather. The dashboard lights flickered on—fuel gauge showing just under half, engine temperature climbing slowly towards normal. The familiar ritual of starting the vehicle, preparing for pursuit.

"Not everything has to end with murder and crime," I said, my voice dry, the truth of it landing harder than I meant it to.

We'd all known officers who'd been pulled under—addicted to the adrenaline, the darkness, the high that came with high-stakes cases. It was seductive, in a grim kind of way. You started seeing routine police work as filler—background noise between the 'real' stuff. Sarah wasn't there yet. But sometimes she danced close to that edge.

Sergeant Claiborne had warned me about it once, years ago when I was still proving myself. "The worst thing that can happen to a detective," he'd said, "is to get so good at the dark stuff that ordinary life stops making sense." I'd dismissed it at the time as the philosophy of a man who'd seen too much. Now I understood what he meant.

"I know, I know," she muttered, arms folded across her chest. "But I haven't investigated a murder yet. I thought maybe this might be my first."

There was something almost childlike in the honesty of it—not naïve, just raw. She hadn't meant it to sound morbid. It was ambition, not bloodlust. The kind of thing you think you need to tick off to prove to yourself you're in the right career. A rite of passage.

Sarah was twenty-nine. Young enough to still see policing as a series of achievements to unlock rather than a grinding accumulation of small failures and partial victories. Young enough to think that working a murder would clarify something about her capabilities, would mark a transition from junior detective to something more substantial.

"Well, looks like you're about to be disappointed... Officer," I replied, emphasising the last word to underline the professional restraint we were expected to uphold, regardless of our personal feelings towards a case.

She gave a tight smile, knowing exactly what I meant. The reminder sat between us, unspoken but understood: we were here to serve, not to chase stories for our own sense of relevance. It was easy to forget that in the fog of investigations. Easy to start assigning weight based on drama rather than outcome.

Silence settled between us, not uncomfortable, just... focused. I eased us into the lane behind Gladys's car, keeping a conservative distance, the lights and sirens long since extinguished. Just two unmarked cars winding their way through the afternoon traffic, one after the other.

The traffic was light—typical for a weekday afternoon in Glenorchy. A few tradies heading home early, probably having started at dawn. A mother in an SUV with children visible in the back seats. An elderly man driving exactly at the speed limit, hands at ten and two. Normal people going about normal lives, unaware that two detectives were following a potential breakthrough in a missing persons case.

The route took us up Berriedale Road—steep, coiled like a spine along the hillside. I kept my gaze locked on the back of her Mazda, noting every acceleration, every minor swerve. Sarah sat quietly, her eyes scanning the road, probably running the same silent mental calculus I was.

The road climbed steadily, each bend revealing a slightly higher vantage point. Berriedale Road was one of those Hobart streets that felt more like a mountain pass than suburban infrastructure—narrow, winding, with insufficient shoulder and alarming drop-offs. The kind of road that rewarded familiarity and punished distraction.

Outside the windows, the suburban sprawl of Glenorchy began to thin. Boxy 1970s homes gave way to newer developments, spaced wider, with well-kept hedges and tired-looking garages. Through the gaps in the trees, behind us the Derwent River shimmered like brushed metal, winking in the sunlight.

The view was spectacular when you had time to appreciate it—the river cutting through the valley. But I wasn't here for the view. My attention remained locked on the silver Mazda ahead, the vehicle that was either leading us to resolution or deeper into confusion.

My hands tightened slightly on the wheel. I was already rehearsing the possibilities. If Jamie was at home, if we found him standing in a kitchen full of saucepans and garlic bread, what the hell did that mean? That Louise had lied? That Kain's disappearance was unrelated? That someone had fabricated a narrative where none existed?

Or worse—that we were only just beginning to see the edge of something much deeper.

The scenarios multiplied in my mind, each one branching into further complications. Jamie could be home, perfectly fine, wondering why his sister had reported him missing. Jamie could be home but hiding something—Kain's whereabouts, perhaps, or some other complication we hadn't anticipated. Jamie could be genuinely missing, and Gladys could be leading us into an elaborate deception. Or Jamie could be dead, and we were about to walk into a crime scene disguised as a dinner party.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Sarah exclaimed suddenly. "Does it look like Gladys is texting to you?"

Her voice cut through my thoughts, dragging me out of the spiral of hypotheticals I'd been running in my head. The Derwent, the winding road, the potential reunion with Jamie—all of it faded as I snapped back to the here and now. Sarah was leaning forward, posture alert, eyes narrowed with sharp concentration. Her training kicked in like muscle memory—those years spent on general duties patrol had hard-wired her to spot distracted drivers long before they'd even fumbled for the indicator.

I squinted through the windscreen, trying to match her line of sight. There—just barely visible through the rear window of the silver Mazda, a faint, rhythmic glow. The ghost of a lit screen.

The angle made it difficult to see clearly, but the quality of light was distinctive. Not the steady illumination of dashboard instruments, but the flickering glow of a phone screen. Someone typing. Someone distracted.

"Yeah. It sure looks that way, doesn't it?" I muttered, my voice lower now, all amusement gone.

It wasn't just a traffic violation—it was a complication. A red flag waving in the periphery of what had, up until now, felt like an unexpected stroke of luck. The road here was treacherous: tight bends, minimal shoulder, a steep embankment falling away to one side. One wrong move, one distraction, and a car could be airborne before the driver even realised what they'd done.

But there was something more immediate gnawing at me—why was she texting? Who was so important that she'd risk not only a fine, but a potentially fatal crash?

"Lights or just keep following?" Sarah asked, her hand already hovering near the console, her energy ready to surge forward.

A tactical line in the sand. If we lit her up now, we might interrupt the message, prevent whatever damage a warning could do. But if we let her keep going... we might learn more. Who she was talking to. What was being said. Whether Jamie was really at the other end of that conversation.

The dilemma only lasted seconds.

Gladys's car jerked sharply to the left, the sound of rubber against bitumen grated against my nerves like teeth on tinfoil.

The movement was violent enough to suggest she'd taken her eyes completely off the road. Not a momentary drift but a genuine loss of control. The Mazda's left side tyres caught the gravel shoulder, sending up a small spray of stones that pinged against the crash barrier.

"Shit. We'd better pull her over," I said, already guiding the wheel with one hand as my other reached for the switch.

This wasn't theoretical anymore. Public safety trumped strategy. That last lurch toward the edge had made the decision for us. One more swerve like that and we'd be scraping her off the retaining wall—or worse, calling in a recovery team to extract her vehicle from the bush below.

Sarah hit the lights. Red and blue strobes cut across the incline, flickering against road signs and windscreens as we closed the distance.

The lights reflected off the Mazda's rear window in pulsing waves—blue, red, blue, red. The effect was hypnotic, almost kaleidoscopic.

Still, Gladys kept going—either unaware, or unwilling. Her car wobbled again, drifting close to the gutter.

For a moment I wondered if she was going to run. The thought crystallised: what if this wasn't distracted driving but deliberate evasion? What if the woman we'd stopped for a random breath test was now attempting to flee from police?

Sarah thumbed the siren. A sharp, rising wail peeled out into the air—commanding, unmistakable.

The sound cut through everything—windows, distance, determination. It was the auditory equivalent of a hand grabbing your shoulder and spinning you around. Impossible to ignore.

And finally, she responded.

The Mazda slowed. Then, with a sudden, jerky motion, she turned left into Chandos Drive.

No signal. No slow descent. Just a hard pivot onto the quieter street.

We followed.

The afternoon light slanted across the rooftops, warm and flat. Shadows stretched long behind letterboxes and wheelie bins. Windows caught the sun in shallow glints. A child's bike lay abandoned on a lawn, its front wheel still slowly spinning. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked once, then fell silent.

It was a suburban stillness, not eerie—just paused.

The kind of street where nothing usually happened.

Until now.

I brought the car to a stop behind her, tyres crunching to a halt on the gravel-flecked asphalt. The engine idled with an impatient hum, the red and blue lights continuing to rotate lazily across the curve of the road, washing over the tree trunks and brush like a surreal disco.

A curtain twitched in a nearby house. An elderly woman appeared at a window, hand shading her eyes as she tried to make sense of the lights. Within minutes, others would follow. The neighbourhood watch network activating, spreading word that police had stopped someone on Chandos Drive.

My jaw tensed as I opened the door, boots hitting the bitumen with a dull thud. I could feel the tension in my limbs—not quite adrenaline, but a readiness, a heightening of every sense. The air was cooler here, scented faintly with eucalyptus and engine oil. The kind of scent that always felt like the prelude to something about to go wrong.

I glanced back at Sarah as she reached for her door handle, clearly ready to join me.

"You wait in the driver's seat," I instructed.

She gave me a look. The kind she usually reserved for bureaucratic roadblocks or poorly made coffee—something between disbelief and protest. Her eyes flicked toward the Mazda with naked interest, the prospect of confrontation already lighting a fire behind them.

"Just in case she decides to do a runner," I added, tossing her a line I knew would hook her.

And sure enough, it worked. Her expression shifted from frustration to anticipation, like a dog catching the scent of the chase. Her hand hovered just above the gear stick, ready, watching. I didn't need to see the grin curling at the corner of her mouth—I could feel it.

Sarah lived for the possibility of pursuit. The thought of a chase—lights flashing, adrenaline pumping, the pure simplicity of hunter and prey—that was her element. She was already mentally preparing, already calculating angles and speeds and where Gladys might try to go if she bolted.

I shook my head faintly as I turned away, part amused, part exasperated. Sarah thrived on motion, on action, on the possibility of pursuit. And if I was being honest, a small part of me understood the draw.

But I didn't want a chase.

I wanted answers.

And if Gladys Cramer had just warned someone we were coming, then I'd have to fight for every bloody one of them.