Three Messages After Dark

"People who've stopped caring about consequences don't behave predictably. That makes them more dangerous, not less." — Detective Inspector Sienna Blackwood

The first report came in at twenty-one forty-seven.

Stout was at his desk, the station quiet around him — the day shift gone, the night shift settled into its rhythms. His secure phone vibrated.

Webb.

Subject stationary at residential address since 17:40. Single occupancy confirmed. No visitors. Vehicle in driveway. Lights on, curtains drawn. No movement observed externally since 19:15.

A woman on administrative leave sitting in her house on a winter evening. Stout read it, set the phone down.

At twenty-two nineteen, the phone vibrated again. Draper.

Intercepted SMS exchange — source device registered to S. Lahey, recipient device registered to G. Cramer. Timestamp: 22:14–22:17. Content follows.

Stout opened the attachment.

22:14 — Lahey to Cramer: I have Cody. Tomorrow. Where do you want to meet?

22:15 — Cramer to Lahey: Myrtle Forest. The same place. 4pm.

22:17 — Lahey to Cramer: I'll be there. Do you have what you promised?

No reply after the third message.

Stout read it twice. Then a third time because the words weren't changing and he needed them to change.

I have Cody.

Not the remains. Not the evidence. Not any of the clinical, distancing language a detective would use when referring to a body in an active investigation. His first name. Two words that carried the weight of a person known, a person held, a person being transported across a city by a woman who should have been sitting in her house doing nothing.

Sarah Lahey had Cody Jennings' body.

She'd texted about it on her own phone. Her personal, registered, traceable phone. To Gladys Cramer's personal, registered, traceable phone. No burners. No encrypted applications. No tradecraft. Two women talking to each other the way people talked when they weren't thinking about who might be listening — because they didn't believe anyone was.

Stout was on his feet before he'd made the conscious decision to stand. He called Sienna.

"Check your secure device."

He heard the pause. The sound of her reaching for the phone, opening the message, reading.

"Jesus Christ."

He'd never heard Sienna swear. Not once in five days of the most complicated investigation either of them had ever worked. The words landed in his ear and told him exactly where she was — past the composure, past the measured register, into the place where a detective confronted the reality that a colleague had taken a dead man from a morgue and announced it in a text message.

"She already has him," Stout said. "The Victorians have been on her since late afternoon. She's been in her house since five-forty. Which means she took him before we started watching."

The silence that followed was the sound of an operation discovering it was already behind. Five hours of surveillance. Five hours of Webb and Garrett watching a quiet house with drawn curtains while the woman inside sat with a stolen body already secured somewhere — her garage, her car boot, a storage unit, a location they hadn't identified and couldn't search without revealing the operation.

"When did she take him?" Sienna said. "We need a timeline. If she's been home since five-forty, she had the whole day before surveillance was established. She could have walked into the morgue this morning. She could have done it yesterday. We don't know."

"We need to confirm he's actually gone. We're reading a text message — she says she has Cody, but we need eyes on that morgue drawer before we build an operation around something we haven't verified."

"Agreed. But carefully. Any official inquiry goes through channels she might hear about. The Royal is two hundred metres from where you're sitting — if the morgue staff start making calls, if hospital administration gets involved, if anyone in this building catches wind that a body is missing from an active investigation —"

"Then everything we've built collapses. She finds out we're watching and she bolts."

"Or worse. She destroys the body and we lose the physical evidence connecting her to Jennings entirely."

Stout paced the length of his office. Four steps to the wall. Four steps back. The secure phone pressed to his ear, the intercepted messages burning in his mind. I have Cody. Tomorrow. Where do you want to meet?

"Myrtle Forest," he said. "She's meeting Gladys at Myrtle Forest. Tomorrow at four."

"I saw."

"The same place. That's what Gladys said. Not an address. Not directions. A reference — a location they both know. The same place where Gladys abandoned her car during the Collinsvale pursuit. Karl and Sarah were both part of that chase. They were both there when Gladys disappeared into the trees."

"And now Gladys is calling Sarah back."

"Sarah's trading. She has the body. Gladys has something she's promised. Do you have what you promised? — Sarah wants something badly enough to steal a corpse from a hospital morgue two hundred metres from a police station and drive it into a forest."

"What could Gladys possibly have that's worth that?"

"I don't know. But these aren't people running an operation, Sienna. They're using their own phones. Their own numbers. Gladys didn't even reply to the last message. They're not calculating risks because they're not thinking about risks. They're thinking about whatever they need from each other and nothing else."

"That makes them more dangerous, not less. People who've stopped caring about consequences don't behave predictably. They act on what they feel and they don't think about what happens next."

Stout stopped pacing. Stood at his desk. Looked at the three messages on the secure phone's screen — words that had transformed a surveillance operation into something urgent, operational, and running on a clock that would hit zero at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon in a forest where the winter light would already be failing.

"We need to be at Myrtle Forest tomorrow," he said.

"Yes. But I can't authorise an armed intercept operation based on a text message. I need to know if that body is gone. And if it is, I need to know who took it. Because if Sarah walked into the Royal Hobart Hospital morgue and removed a body from an active investigation, that's one thing. If someone else removed it and delivered it to her, that's a different operation entirely. Different variables. Different threat assessment. Different number of people we're dealing with tomorrow."

"And if the body is still there?"

"Then either she's planning to take it before four o'clock tomorrow, which means we have a window to catch her in the act. Or she's telling Gladys something that isn't true, and the meeting at Myrtle Forest is about something else entirely. I can't plan for any of this without knowing what's actually in that drawer."

"Then we go now."

"Yes. Now. Tonight. Pull Garrett — Webb holds observation on Sarah overnight. You and Garrett go to the Royal. You've got the local authority, he's got clean credentials that won't trace back to this operation. Get into that morgue, and if the body is gone, get access to their security footage. I need to know three things before morning — is the body gone, who took it, and when."

"And if it's Sarah on the footage?"

"Then I start the authorisation process the moment you confirm it and I'll have an operational plan ready by oh-six-hundred. But not before. I'm not deploying armed officers to a forest based on three unconfirmed text messages words on a screen. I need evidence."

"Understood. I'll contact Garrett now."

"Stout. Be careful at the hospital. If the night staff realise a body is missing before you've seen the footage, you lose control of the information. Check the drawer first. See the footage second. Contain it."

"I know how to manage a scene, Sienna."

"I know you do. That's why I'm sending you."

The line went dead.

Stout pocketed the secure phone. Picked up his keys. Pulled his jacket on — the badge shifting against his ribs as the fabric settled, that constant pressure, that second heartbeat — and walked out of his office into the empty corridor.

He called Garrett on the secure device as he took the stairs down.

Garrett answered on the first ring. The low background hum of a car heater running, the particular stillness of a man sitting in the dark watching a house where nothing was happening.

"I need you," Stout said. "Webb holds observation solo. Get yourself to the Derwent Entertainment Centre car park. Fifteen minutes."

"What's happened?"

"I'll brief you in the car."

A pause — three seconds, maybe less. The sound of Garrett processing a request that broke protocol and deciding to trust it.

"On my way."