The Line Beneath the Glass

“Every rule looks clear until you’re close enough to see your reflection in it.”

As Terry disappeared into his house, I turned once more towards Luke's silent fortress. The house, now glowing under the pale gold wash of early sunlight, looked deceptively benign—ordinary even. Just another split-level home in a suburban street, the kind you'd see duplicated with minor variations in developments across Australia. Nothing sinister. Nothing wrong.

But my mind was alive with questions, each one clawing at the next, forming an increasingly tangled net of speculation that threatened to trap me in paralysis if I let it.

Who was the woman in the truck? What was her connection to Luke, to Jamie, to this house? What was she bringing into it—into this house, where not even a coffee mug seemed out of place, where the very air felt curated? And what connection did her visits have to Jamie and Kain's disappearance? Were the deliveries before or after they vanished? Were they part of preparing for something, or cleaning up after something?

The answers, I felt with near-certainty, were not outside this house. They weren't going to be found through more interviews, more surveillance, more patient waiting. They were within. Behind those walls, in rooms I couldn't see, wrapped in black plastic bags I'd counted from outside.

And someone was ensuring they stayed that way. Someone was actively maintaining this facade, stage-managing the house's appearance, controlling what could be seen and what remained hidden.

Terry's unexpected appearance behind me—it hadn't just startled me. It had exposed me, revealed how compromised my operational security had become. How long had he been watching before he spoke? That single question unspooled into several more, each more uncomfortable than the last.

Had he seen me peering through windows like some sort of stalker? Had he watched me climb the fence, trespass onto the property? Had he followed me from his own property under the cover of shadow, tracking my movements, only announcing himself once satisfied with the imbalance of power, once he'd determined that confrontation would be safe?

My training screamed at me about how badly I'd fucked this up. Situational awareness compromised. Alertness dulled by fatigue. A uniformed retiree in slippers had got the better of me, had approached within speaking distance without my noticing, without my registering his presence until he chose to announce it.

Christ, Karl. You're better than this. You know you're better than this.

But clearly I wasn't. Not today. Not in this state. Not when exhaustion and obsession had eroded the professional standards I'd maintained for twenty-three years.

I forced the thought aside, pushed down the self-recrimination that threatened to paralyse me with doubt. Reoriented on the task at hand. Back to the house. Back to the question I couldn't let go: who had I seen behind those blinds?

The face had been real. I was certain of it. Not hallucination. Not fatigue-induced pareidolia. An actual person, watching me watching them.

I returned to the back-bedroom window, crouching low, feeling my knees protest the position with sharp reminders that I'd been awake too long, moving too much, pushing my body past reasonable limits. The frost still clung to the glass, creating patterns that distorted the view slightly, adding another layer of obscurity to what I could see.

The interior revealed itself once again, a dim canvas of absence. No bodies, no figures. No movement. The blinds at the front—where the original movement had originated, where the face had appeared—remained closed. Whoever had watched me from the shadows had vanished without a trace, as if they'd never been there at all.

But the room I could partially see through this back window was not quite as I'd left it in memory.

Something was wrong. Different. Changed in ways that shouldn't be possible if the house was truly abandoned.

The black bags.

I counted. Once, quickly, heart starting to hammer again. Then again, more carefully, making sure I wasn't making a mistake, wasn't miscounting in the dim light and weird angles.

"Seven," I whispered. The word clung to the inside of my throat, thick with dread.

There had been four. Five at most. I was absolutely certain. It wasn't guesswork. I'd counted them the previous day during my unauthorised entry. Had mentally noted their size, their shape, their placement against the wall. The image was clear in my mind—four bags, possibly five, stacked somewhat haphazardly as if they'd been placed there over time rather than all at once.

And now there were seven.

Three more added since I'd last stood here. Since yesterday.

That fact alone was incontrovertible. Undeniable. However much I might question my own judgment on other matters, however much exhaustion might have compromised my perceptions, I knew how to count. Seven was not four. Seven was not five.

And someone had been here to do it. Someone had entered this house—or been in it all along—and added three more black bags to the collection whilst I was watching, or whilst I'd briefly left, or during the hours of early morning when exhaustion had briefly claimed me.

The implications arrived in a slow, sickening wave that made my stomach clench and my skin prickle with cold that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature.

Someone had entered or remained inside this house since yesterday, and they were doing something they did not want discovered. Adding to the bags. Disposing of something. Concealing evidence. It wasn't that the house looked lived in—it didn't. The kitchen was still pristine, the surfaces still gleaming, everything still in its place with that unnatural perfection.

My hand, braced against the window frame for balance, tightened into a fist. The cold metal pressed into my palm hard enough to hurt, but I welcomed the sensation, used it to anchor myself in the moment, to keep my thoughts from spiralling into speculation without evidence.

I'd seen scenes like this before. Too many times. Neat houses with dark secrets. Picture-perfect lounges that hid rotting truths. My early years in the force had introduced me to enough well-kept properties masking domestic horrors to strip away any illusion that neatness meant safety, that order meant innocence.

I'd seen clean tiles soaked in hidden blood, scrubbed but not well enough, revealing their secrets under luminol. Fridges filled with body parts wrapped in freezer bags and labelled like legitimate food. Bins stacked just like this—quiet, suffocating heaps concealing things no one wanted uncovered. Children's bodies. Weapons. Evidence of crimes that seemed impossible in spaces that looked so normal.

The bins. Always the bins. That was where people put what they didn't want found, operating under the logic that rubbish was invisible, that once something was designated as waste it stopped being examined, stopped being questioned.

Instinct drove me forward, but law dragged me back. I stood at the threshold of a choice that could not be undone, balanced on the knife-edge between detection and trespass, between duty and violation.

I was unarmed. Off-duty. Without a warrant. Without authorisation. Without backup or oversight or any of the procedural safeguards that were supposed to prevent exactly this kind of cowboy behaviour.

And yet, I was standing before what I knew—not suspected, not theorised, but knew with the certainty of experience and instinct—was a potential crime scene.

And yet, legally? Nothing. A face at a window that I couldn't prove existed. Some black bags that might contain nothing more sinister than ordinary household waste. A nosy neighbour and a few whispers. On paper, presented to a magistrate, it was barely enough for a welfare check. Certainly not enough for a warrant. Not enough to justify the kind of intrusion I was contemplating.

But Jamie was missing. Had been missing for days, with no contact, no sightings, no digital footprint. Gone as thoroughly as if he'd never existed.

Kain was missing. Twenty-three years old, expecting his first child, vanished whilst checking on his uncle. No explanation. No ransom demand. No body.

And this place—this unnaturally silent, surgically clean house—sat at the nexus of both disappearances like a spider at the centre of its web. Drawing them in. Consuming them. Hiding the evidence of what had happened.

Still, the risk hovered like a storm cloud about to break, dark and heavy with consequence. If I broke in without a warrant and found nothing, if those bags contained nothing but ordinary waste, my career would unravel. Internal Affairs would have me in an interview room by end of day. Suspended pending investigation. Psychiatric evaluation. Possible criminal charges for breaking and entering.

If I broke in and found something—a body, a clue, actual evidence of foul play—it would likely be inadmissible, tainted by the method of discovery. The entire case could collapse because I couldn't follow procedure, couldn't wait for proper authorisation. Any halfway competent defence lawyer would have it thrown out before trial even began. Fruit of the poisonous tree.

It could sink the entire investigation. Could let whoever was responsible walk free because I'd been too impatient, too convinced of my own righteousness, too willing to bend the rules I'd sworn to uphold.

My fingers flexed, then curled against my thigh, nails digging into the fabric of my trousers hard enough to hurt. The physical sensation helped centre me, pulled me back from the edge of decision into a space where I could still think, could still weigh consequences.

If I was caught.

That was the phrase that hovered, like an infection behind the eyes, spreading its poison through my thoughts. If I was caught, Claiborne would bury me. Would have no choice. He'd been patient with my methods, had given me latitude that other senior officers wouldn't have, but this would be indefensible.

Internal Investigations would not be lenient, not with my name now pinned beside the words "Senior Detective." Not when I was supposed to be a role model, a mentor to younger detectives, an exemplar of proper procedure. The higher you rose, the further you fell. The more authority you held, the more your violations mattered.

Sarah would be forced to distance herself. Would have to testify about my recent behaviour, my obsession with the case, the way I'd been pushing boundaries. Our relationship—professional and personal—would become evidence of compromised judgment. Everything we'd built would be examined and found wanting.

My past with Jamie—however deeply buried, however carefully I'd concealed it—would be pulled into the light, examined under a microscope until the distinction between truth and suspicion blurred completely. The Moggill Creek incident. The transfer to Tasmania. The questions about why I'd been so personally invested in this case from the beginning. Everything I'd worked to keep hidden would be exposed, dissected, used against me.

And yet...

There were seven bags. Not four. Not five. Seven.

And someone was watching me this morning. Someone who shouldn't be there according to every official account, every statement we'd collected.

And the house was being used, even if no one wanted it to appear that way. Even if the staging was designed to suggest abandonment, vacancy, ordinariness.

This wasn't paranoia. This wasn't exhaustion manufacturing threats out of shadows. This was experience. This was instinct honed by years in the field, that sixth sense every good cop developed—the moment when hairs rose on the back of your neck and your body whispered: You're not wrong. Trust this. Trust yourself.

I stepped back from the window slowly, breathing through clenched teeth, trying to ground myself in the physical sensations of cold and exhaustion and the ache in my knees from crouching too long.

This house was lying. The whole situation was a carefully constructed falsehood, a performance staged for an audience that wasn't supposed to look too closely.

And I needed to catch it in the act. Needed to penetrate the facade and find the truth beneath, whatever that truth might be, whatever it might cost me.

Despite my better judgement, curiosity—and something deeper, darker, more compulsive that I didn't want to examine too closely—took over. It was no longer just a detective's instinct, no longer the measured professional assessment I'd been trained to employ. It was hunger. Raw, desperate, all-consuming hunger for answers that had been denied me for fifteen years.

It was obsession. The kind that destroyed careers and relationships and lives, the kind I'd seen consume other detectives until there was nothing left of them but the cases they couldn't solve. The kind I'd sworn I'd never fall victim to.

And here I was, falling. Had already fallen. Was lying at the bottom of the pit looking up and pretending I could still climb out whenever I wanted.

I reached out towards the back-bedroom window's fly screen, fingers brushing the frigid aluminium frame with something approaching reverence. It felt old and tired, like it had weathered more winters than it deserved, like it was barely holding on to its original purpose. The metal was cold enough to sting even through my skin, cold enough to leave marks.

My hands worked instinctively, automatically, seeking weakness, a vulnerability in its construction that would grant me silent access.

And there—at the bottom corner—the slightest give. The frame had warped from age, or perhaps from some earlier attempt at entry. The metal yielded beneath the pressure of my fingers with a reluctant creak that sounded explosively loud in the quiet morning but probably wasn't audible beyond a few metres.

"Aha."

The word escaped me, louder than it should have been, triumphant and foolish in equal measure. I immediately winced.

The screen gave way, folding outward with gentle insistence as I applied steady pressure, and for a moment I felt a thrill—an absurd flicker of triumph completely inappropriate to what I was doing, like a teenager sneaking back into a party after curfew. Like someone who'd solved a puzzle rather than someone who was committing a crime.

My fingers curled behind the frame and eased it loose, each centimetre of progress coaxed with care.

Then it happened.

A vibration against my thigh. A familiar buzzing that cut through the concentration like a gunshot, like an alarm sounding, like the universe itself objecting to what I was doing.

My grip, loosened by surprise and the awkward angle I was holding it at, simply let go. The screen dropped, tumbling away from me in what felt like slow motion, rotating as it fell.

It clattered to the concrete like a thrown frying pan, metal ringing out through the cold air with a sound that seemed to carry for kilometres. Sharp. Metallic. Unmistakably artificial. The kind of sound that made dogs bark and curtains twitch and neighbours reach for their phones.

I flinched as if I'd been struck, every muscle in my body tensing, heart leaping into my throat with such force I could barely breathe.

My phone. Of course. My hand scrambled into my pocket, fumbling for it like a guilty schoolboy caught doing something forbidden, already knowing who it would be, already feeling the weight of that knowledge.

Sarah.

Her name lit up the screen like an accusation, like a summons, like the voice of my conscience given digital form. It might as well have said: What the hell are you doing, Karl? What the hell are you thinking? Stop this. Stop this right now before you destroy everything.

I didn't answer. Couldn't answer.

Answering would mean hearing her voice, and her voice would have pulled me back, reminded me of oaths and regulations, of the chain of command, of the rule of law. All the things I was trampling over in real time. All the principles I'd claimed to believe in, claimed to uphold, claimed made me better than the criminals I pursued.

My thumb jabbed the decline button with more force than necessary, and with that single action I sealed a kind of internal breach—a decision that felt like closing a door behind me, knowing it locked from the other side. Knowing I couldn't go back through it even if I wanted to, even if I changed my mind, even if I realised I'd made a terrible mistake.

Sarah would see the declined call. Would know I was avoiding her. Would draw conclusions about why, about what I was doing that I didn't want her to know about.

Those conclusions would all be correct.

I knelt to retrieve the fly screen, hands now shaking visibly, trembling with a combination of adrenaline and cold and awareness of how badly I was fucking this up. My breath clouded in front of me as if in disbelief at my own actions, as if even the air was expressing its judgment.

The frame had bent on impact, just slightly—but enough that it no longer sat flush, enough that it was obviously damaged. Another mistake. Another blemish. Another marker of guilt that would be visible to anyone who looked, anyone who cared to notice.

I tried to push it back into place but it wouldn't sit properly. The warped frame refused to align with the window tracks. I was making things worse. Every attempt to undo felt like doubling down, like compounding the original error with subsequent errors until the pile of mistakes became too large to hide, too obvious to deny.

I was no longer concealing my presence—I was scrawling it across the scene in jagged handwriting. Leaving a trail a blind person could follow. Creating evidence that would inevitably lead back to me.

And then came the worst thought of all. The one that didn't belong to any official manual, that violated every principle of proper policing I'd ever learned.

Maybe this is good.

The thought arrived fully formed, seductive in its twisted logic, offering a way to transform disaster into opportunity.

If Luke came home and reported a break-in, we'd have cause. A formal report. Uniformed officers responding to a legitimate call. Forensics examining the scene. A legitimate reason to get inside, to conduct a proper search with all the legal authority we currently lacked.

The damaged fly screen would be evidence of attempted entry. The broken window—if I broke it—would be evidence of actual entry. We could search the house under the pretext of investigating the break-in. Everything I found would be admissible because it would have been discovered during a legitimate investigation of a reported crime.

The thought revolted me even as it formed, even as I recognised its horrifying logic. And yet, I didn't stop it. In fact, I gave it breath. Let it grow. Nurtured it into something that felt almost like justification.

The line I'd always sworn to uphold—between investigation and violation, between duty and crime—blurred into abstraction. My reasoning turned in on itself, folding like bad origami, each fold making the structure weaker rather than stronger. Creating something that looked like logic but was actually just desperation wearing a cheap disguise.

I was doing what needed to be done, I told myself. For Jamie. For Kain. For the truth. For all the victims who'd been let down by procedures that moved too slowly, by rules that protected the guilty as often as they protected the innocent.

Even as my conscience hissed bullshit. Even as some part of me that still functioned properly screamed that this was wrong, that I was wrong, that I needed to stop before I did something that couldn't be undone.

And then I did it.

Without another thought, without the strength to pull myself back from the brink, without the will to resist the compulsion that had been building all night, I drove my elbow through the glass.

The sound was immediate and grotesque. A sharp crack that I felt as much as heard, the window resisting for a fraction of a second before structural integrity failed. A short squeal of pressure yielding to force—and then the shatter, like ice sheets breaking in the Derwent, like the sound of something precious being destroyed.

Glass exploded inward and outward simultaneously, glittering in the morning sun like diamonds, like snow, like evidence of my crime catching the light and turning it into accusation.

My coat sleeve offered little protection. I'd thought the thick wool would shield my arm, but I was wrong. Splinters tore through fabric and into skin with the ease of knives through butter. I felt the sting immediately, sharp and bright and undeniable. Saw blood bloom through the fabric like ink in water, spreading in patterns that would have been beautiful if they weren't horrifying.

Pain grounded me, cleared the fog that had descended during the long night. Brought me crashing back to reality from whatever fever dream I'd been operating in. Made me aware of my body, of my position, of what I'd just done.

But the act was done. Final. Unmistakeable. Irreversible.

There was no putting the glass back together. No pretending this hadn't happened. No explaining this away as anything other than what it was: deliberate destruction of property. Breaking and entering. Criminal trespass. All the things I was supposed to prevent, I had just committed.

Across the fence, I imagined Terry's lace curtains twitching, his face appearing at the window, his hand already reaching for his phone to call it in. Already describing the dangerous man who'd represented himself as a detective and then proceeded to smash a window in broad daylight.

Somewhere in the street, I expected an engine to start, a door to open, a shout of Oi! Someone responding to the sound of breaking glass, coming to investigate, finding me here with blood on my sleeve and a broken window at my feet.

But nothing came.

I didn't wait. Didn't peer through the broken window to see what might be visible inside. Didn't cross the final threshold from outside to inside.

The realisation of what I'd done was already overwhelming everything else, drowning out the curiosity that had driven me this far. I'd crossed enough lines. Going inside would be crossing one more, and somehow that felt like a step too far, a violation I couldn't rationalise or justify or explain away.

I simply picked up the fly screen, hands moving on autopilot, operating without conscious thought. Left it propped against the wall like a discarded excuse, like evidence I was too tired to properly conceal. And walked away.

Back to my car.

I started the engine with a trembling hand, feeling the ache in my wrist with each movement, the cuts on my forearm announcing themselves with sharp stabs of pain. The engine coughed, hesitated, then caught. The dashboard lit up with its familiar array of lights and indicators, mundane and ordinary and completely at odds with what had just happened.

And I drove.

Away from the house. Away from Terry's watchful eyes. Away from the broken window and the evidence of my crime. Away from the questions I'd wanted to answer and the truths I'd wanted to find.

The house behind me shrank into the distance, visible in my rear-view mirror until I turned a corner and it disappeared from view. But the weight of what I'd done clung to me like frost on skin, cold and sharp and impossible to shake off.

I'd broken the window. Broken the rules that defined me as something other than the criminals I pursued. Broken the separation between cop and man, between procedure and impulse, between duty and obsession.

And when the questions came—because they would, inevitably, unavoidably—I wasn't sure I'd have an answer that would satisfy anyone.

Least of all myself.