The Echo Beneath the Stone

"It’s always the beautiful places that hide the ugliest truths. The trick is remembering that before you knock on the door."

"CITY632, approaching the Jeffries property now," I spoke into the radio, my voice emerging with a steadiness that felt like a performance, a careful construction layered over the tumultuous chaos roiling beneath. My vocal cords shaped the words with professional precision whilst inside, adrenaline and fear churned together into something toxic and electric, flooding my bloodstream with a mixture that made my hands want to shake and my vision sharpen to crystalline clarity.

I clung to a single thread of hope—fragile as spider's silk, just as likely to snap—that Gladys was right about Luke's ignorance regarding Cody's death. Cody. Christ. The name alone sent ice through my veins, brought back the weight of that night, the choices made in darkness that I couldn't unmake, couldn't undo, couldn't even fully acknowledge in the harsh light of day. It was all I had to hang onto in this chaos: the desperate prayer that Luke didn't know, that we could still salvage something from the wreckage we'd created.

"Copy that CITY632. Proceed with extreme caution. Backup is on its way," the dispatcher's voice crackled through the radio, each word adding another layer to the tension that was already building up inside me like water behind a dam about to burst.

The road curved ahead, and then we saw it.

As we approached the property, my gaze fell upon the grand entrance, and something deep in my chest tightened. The two words—"Jeffries Manor"—were etched into a metallic slab, the letters weathered but still legible, balancing precariously between the iron arms of an aged archway that had witnessed God knows how many arrivals, how many departures, how much history steeped in shadows and secrets.

"Jeffries Manor," I repeated softly, the words leaving my mouth in a whisper that was barely audible over the engine's low rumble and the gravel crunching beneath our tyres.

A cold shiver ran up my spine—not the pleasant kind, not the anticipatory thrill of adrenaline, but something darker, more primal. The kind of chill that your body gives you as a warning, an animal instinct that something is fundamentally wrong with this place. The manor loomed ahead through the trees, an edifice of old secrets and untold stories, and its presence somehow magnified the gravity of our arrival. It felt less like we were approaching a crime scene and more like we were crossing a threshold into something we weren't meant to disturb.

The archway itself seemed to watch us pass beneath it, judging, weighing, finding us wanting perhaps. I had the irrational thought that it recognised me somehow, that these iron gates had seen my grandmother Jane pass through them in her youth, and now here I was, decades later, arriving with a gun and a badge and blood on my conscience.

We drove carefully up the rocky dirt road that wound its way up the side of the hill, each jolt and bump transmitting through the car's suspension into my body, a physical reminder of the rough, untamed nature of this approach. The tension in the car was palpable, thick enough to choke on, as each of us prepared mentally for what might lie ahead. Karl's hands gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity, his jaw set in that way that told me he was running through scenarios, calculating risks, preparing for violence.

The road, uneven and untamed, seemed to mirror the unpredictability of our entire investigation. Nothing about this case had been straightforward. Every answer had led to three more questions. Every discovery had revealed deeper layers of complexity, of complicity, of corruption that ran through everything like rot through old timber.

The short drive culminated at a striking sandstone building that seemed to rise from the hillside like it had grown there organically over centuries: Jeffries Manor. Its new extensions, added to both the front and back of the house, lent it an air of modern elegance and confidence, architectural ambition grafted onto colonial bones. Yet despite these contemporary additions, it stood before us like a stately home from another era entirely—dignified, imposing, and laden with silent stories that pressed against the windows from inside, desperate to be told.

The sandstone glowed warm in the afternoon light, but there was nothing welcoming about it. The manor had the look of a beautiful woman with murder in her eyes—all surface grace concealing something far more dangerous beneath.

As Karl pulled up and stopped under the shade of a large gum tree—its silvery bark peeling in strips, its leaves whispering secrets in the breeze coming down from the hills—I quickly unbuckled my seatbelt. The click of the mechanism releasing felt abnormally loud, final somehow, like the sound a gun makes when you chamber a round.

The urgency of the situation propelled me out of the car door before I'd fully processed the movement, my hand instinctively reaching for my gun. Every sense was heightened to an almost painful degree—I could smell the eucalyptus and the dust, could hear the rustle of dry grass in the paddocks, could feel the weight of my service weapon as if it had tripled in mass. Every instinct screamed readiness, that primal part of my brain that had kept humans alive for millennia now flooding my system with cortisol and adrenaline.

"No gun. Not yet," Karl cautioned me, his voice firm as he too climbed out of the patrol car, his movements controlled and deliberate. He held a hand up, a clear signal for me to follow his lead, to trust his experience, his instincts.

I wanted to argue. Every fibre of my being was screaming at me to keep my weapon drawn, to be ready, because Luke Smith wasn't just some ordinary suspect and this wasn't just some ordinary call-out.

We approached the house with caution, our steps measured and deliberate, falling into that peculiar rhythm that partners develop—moving in sync without needing to coordinate, each covering the other's blind spots instinctively. The afternoon sun slanted across the sandstone façade, creating shadows that seemed to pool in corners and doorways like liquid darkness.

The grandeur of Jeffries Manor was both awe-inspiring and deeply intimidating. Its walls, rich with history and secrets, seemed to be watching us, silently assessing our every move with the weight of generations bearing down. The manor, with its elegant sandstone and new architectural flourishes, stood as a testament to the passage of time and changing fortunes—old money adapting to survive, colonial wealth reinventing itself for the twenty-first century whilst never quite shaking the blood-soaked foundations it was built upon.

It felt like stepping into another era, yet the urgency of finding Luke kept me firmly grounded in the terrible present. The juxtaposition was unsettling in ways I couldn't quite articulate—this beautiful, historic building that should have been a museum piece or a tourist destination, now the stage for whatever fresh horror awaited us inside.

As we moved closer to the entrance, I was acutely aware of the contrast between the manor's serene exterior and the potential danger that awaited us. The juxtaposition was deeply unsettling, a visceral reminder of how appearances can be profoundly deceptive, masking the true nature of what lies beneath. How many times in my career had I learned that lesson? How many pleasant façades had concealed abuse, murder, depravity? And yet each time it still managed to catch me off-guard, still managed to disturb something fundamental in my worldview.

My grandmother Jane had lived in an era when houses like this represented the pinnacle of society, when colonial architecture was something to aspire to rather than a reminder of convict ships and dispossessed First Nations people and fortunes built on exploitation. I wondered what she would make of me now, approaching this monument to Tasmania's colonial past with my hand hovering near my gun, my mind full of dark thoughts and darker deeds.

"He's in here," called out an older woman's voice, piercing the stillness just as we were about to knock on the front door of Jeffries Manor. The voice came from the direction of a shed that stood off to the side of the manor—a newer structure, timber and iron, incongruous against the sandstone elegance of the main house.

Both Karl and I turned toward the sound with practiced synchronicity, our attention instantly redirected, bodies pivoting, hands moving automatically to ready positions. There, standing outside the shed door in a shaft of sunlight that seemed almost theatrical in its timing, was Louise Jeffries.

She was wielding a very large kitchen knife—the kind you use for carving roasts or, my mind supplied unhelpfully, for defence against intruders. Her posture was tense, every muscle visibly rigid beneath her clothes, and her eyes were fixed on the shed with an intensity that bordered on mania. She looked like someone who'd been standing there for hours, guarding that door, willing the thing inside not to escape.

"Want to use those guns yet?" I asked Karl, only half-joking as we cautiously approached Louise. My hand hovered near my gun holster, ready to act if the situation escalated. The afternoon air felt thick, heavy with approaching violence, with decisions that couldn't be unmade.

"Louise Jeffries," Karl addressed her authoritatively, his voice calm but firm, projecting that particular blend of authority and reassurance that good coppers develop over years of talking people down from ledges, both literal and metaphorical. "It's time to hand the knife over," he told her, motioning for her to hand it over to me.

"I've got the bastard trapped inside," Louise declared, a sense of triumph bleeding through the terror in her voice as she waved the large kitchen knife around with far less care than the situation warranted. The blade caught the sunlight, flashing like a mirror, and I found myself tracking its movement with the kind of focus you reserve for venomous snakes.

As I cautiously reached forward to take the knife from her—moving slowly, telegraphing my intentions, trying not to spook her into doing something we'd all regret—I noticed how Louise's hands trembled uncontrollably. Her facade of control was slipping like a mask made of wet paper, revealing the true extent of her terror beneath. Her hands quivered like leaves in a gale as she handed over the knife, and I could see the whites of her eyes, the sweat beading on her upper lip despite the coolness of the afternoon.

The knife was heavier than I expected when it settled into my palm, its weight somehow obscene, its edge wickedly sharp. As soon as the weapon left her grasp, Louise crumbled under the weight of her emotions like a building whose supports had finally given way.

"I can't find Brianne!" she cried out, her voice cracking with emotion, fracturing around the edges of the name. It struck a chord deep in my chest, sent a spike of alarm straight through my professional composure.

"Brianne?" Karl echoed, seeking clarification, but I could hear the edge in his voice, the same alarm I was feeling.

"Kain's fiancée," Louise managed to say, her voice strained with distress, each word seeming to cost her something. "Luke came here to talk to her and now she's gone too."

Gone too. The implications of those two words settled over me like a shroud. Another disappearance. Another person vanished into the black hole that seemed to follow Luke Smith wherever he went. How many was that now? Jamie Greyson. Kain Jeffries. And now potentially Brianne Sitch, pregnant with Kain's child, carrying the next generation of the Jeffries family inside her.

"Take her back inside the house," Karl instructed me, his voice indicating the urgency of keeping Louise safe, of securing the witness before we confronted whatever was waiting in that shed.

I gently took Louise by the arm, mindful of her fragile state, feeling the tremors running through her body like electrical current. She was coming apart at the seams, held together by nothing more than adrenaline and terror and the thin veneer of social conditioning that told her to hold herself together in front of the police.

"Come inside, Louise," I prompted softly, guiding her towards the manor with a careful touch, trying to project calm I absolutely didn't feel.

Reluctantly, Louise allowed herself to be led back inside the house. As we left the shed behind, her arm shook increasingly with each step we took, the tremors intensifying until I could feel them resonating through my own body, her fear transmitting itself through the point of contact between us like a contagion.

The walk from the shed to the manor's entrance felt impossibly long, each step taking us further from Karl and whatever confrontation was about to unfold. My mind raced with dark possibilities—Luke armed and dangerous, Karl going in alone, shots fired, blood on sandstone, another body added to the count. I wanted to turn back, wanted to be there covering Karl's approach, but I had a job to do here, a witness to secure, protocols to follow even when every instinct screamed otherwise.

"Is there anybody else home?" I asked Louise as we entered the living area of the manor, my eyes immediately beginning to scan the space. I moved to the first of the windows and began to pull down the blinds, aiming to secure the room and provide us some sense of safety, however illusory.

The living area was everything you'd expect from a colonial manor—high ceilings, ornate plasterwork, antique furniture that probably cost more than my annual salary. But right now it just felt like a trap, all these windows offering sightlines in, all these doors offering entry points. We needed to lock it down, make it defensible, create a safe space in case this all went sideways.

"Yes," replied Louise, her voice trembling as much as her hands. "Thelma."

The name meant nothing to me immediately, just another potential complication in an already complex situation.

"Do you know where she is?" I asked, my eyes continuing to scan the room for any signs of movement or other potential threats, my training taking over, running through threat assessments automatically.

"Upstairs in her room," she responded, her voice small, defeated.

"I'll need to check on her," I said, my mind already racing with the logistics of ensuring Thelma's safety whilst also keeping an eye on Louise and staying alert for any developments outside with Karl and Luke.

Louise began to pace in circles, her movements erratic and disjointed, following no discernible pattern. Her hands moved frantically in front of her, fingers clutching at air, at invisible phantoms, whilst her mouth uttered incoherent sounds that might have been words once but had degraded into something more primal—keening, really, the kind of sounds that animals make when they're in pain or terrified beyond reason. Her state was alarming, and it was crucial to bring her some level of calmness before she spiralled completely into hysteria.

I'd seen this before—witnesses pushed past their breaking point, minds trying to process trauma they weren't equipped to handle. Sometimes they came back from it. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they spent the rest of their lives in psychiatric facilities, reliving these moments on endless loop.

Standing in front of Louise, I grabbed her hands tightly, grounding her with my firm but gentle grasp, trying to anchor her to the present moment, to reality, to something solid in a world that had suddenly become liquid and terrifying.

"Louise," I said firmly, trying to cut through her panic, to reach whatever part of her was still capable of rational thought. "Louise, look at me."

For a moment, she continued to squirm, her eyes darting around the room, seeing threats in every shadow, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps that sounded like sobs. But then her eyes met mine, and there was a brief flicker of recognition, a momentary pause in her disarray. In that instant, I saw behind her terror to the woman she'd been before today—competent, capable, probably the kind of person who ran charity committees and organised family gatherings.

"I need you to make sure all of these blinds are down and all the doors are locked. I need to go and make sure that Thelma is okay," I told her, my voice as calm as I could manage, giving her a task, something concrete to focus on. People needed purpose in crisis; it gave them something to do besides fall apart.

Louise nodded, a semblance of understanding crossing her face, something sparking back to life behind her eyes.

"Can you do that for me?" I asked, needing her confirmation, needing to know she understood the task.

"Yes," she whispered, nodding again more assuredly this time, grasping at the lifeline I'd thrown her.

"I'll be right back," I reassured her, releasing her hands and turning towards the staircase.