4338.210 · July 29, 2018 AD
When the Fence Builder Didn't Come Home
Jenny Triffett walks into Hobart Police Station desperate for help—her husband Nial vanished after a mysterious phone call, and now their dog is gone too. But the system has no time for her fears. A single text message becomes a bureaucratic barrier, turning genuine terror into dismissed concern. Until Detective Karl Jenkins, haunted by his own transgressions and recognising a pattern no one else will see, steps forward to listen.
Sometimes the most dangerous thing isn't what people hide—it's what they refuse to see.
When Jenny Triffett's husband doesn't come home from a fencing job, every instinct tells her something is catastrophically wrong. Nial wouldn't abandon their almost four-year-old son without explanation. He wouldn't leave during bedtime story hour. He wouldn't send a text saying "don't wait up"—words he's never used in all their years together.
But the police have heard it all before: worried wives, wandering husbands, explanations that emerge after a few days. A text message becomes proof of life, concern becomes paranoia, and Jenny finds herself dismissed by the very system meant to protect her.
Detective Karl Jenkins shouldn't take this case. He's already crossed lines he can't uncross, his wrist bandaged beneath a leather glove, guilt from this morning's break-in still fresh. But when Jenny speaks Nial's name, Karl hears echoes of other names, other disappearances, other families told to wait whilst the pattern tightens.
This quest follows two perspectives through a single desperate morning: a wife fighting to be heard, and a detective who recognises the shape of something darker emerging from the fog of routine dismissals.
