Page 73 of Last Shot

‘In hindsight, the signs were there.’ She busied her hands untangling knots through her hair, still not making eye contact with him. ‘She’d cancel plans last minute, saying she was sick. She used to wear ... well, less was always more – she had thehottestbody – but she started covering up. I don’t know if it was him controlling her or if she was trying to hide the evidence. But he hit her right across the face when I was over once. I’d gone to the toilet, but there was no toilet roll so I went back out to the kitchen, because I knew she’d keep it in the pantry like she did when we were living together. I wasn’t meant to see. Obviously.’

‘What happened?’

‘I told him I was calling it in. I made her go pack a bag. He grabbed me by the hair and slammed me against the counter.’ She pointed to her chin.

Grey stepped closer. The pieces of him that wanted to run, to put as much distance between them as possible, were crumbling like dry kindling in the burning wildfire inside him. His father’s warning voice a dying scream inside the charring embers.

The thin white scar he’d noticed before now looked haunted, like a falling crescent moon. Before he knew it, the scar was beneath his skin as he ran his thumb across it. A soft but desperate movement, maybe in some vain hope her skin would whisper the truth to him. Or maybe he just wanted to touch her.

I need to understand.

She shivered, and it was with every morsel of strength left that he didn’t do the same. He wrestled with two competing voices desperate to growl out of him:I’m sorryand:Give me his address. Now.

‘I’ve been in worse situations on the job.’ Her voice was rough, but she didn’t push his hand away. He traced the scar one last time before dropping his hand. ‘I should have dragged her out of there.’ She shook her head.

‘If you did, statistically, you’d both be dead.’ He recoiled against the clinical nature of his own response. But distance was essential, especially now.

‘I know. That’s what she told me the next day. Evan had called my boyfriend at the time, Damien, to say I’d had too much to drink and I’d slipped and hit my head on the counter. Told him I was dazed and disorientated and saying all sorts of bullshit.’

‘And he believed that?’

‘He and Evan were best mates. I met Damien through Evan and Jackie. He believed Evan – reckoned I’d misunderstood the situation. Overreacted.’

‘You’re serious?’ Was this boyfriend still in the picture? Had he sat in court during the trial? Why hadn’t he picked her up from jail?

‘He wasn’t a bad guy. If someone had told me Jackie was a child trafficker or a killer, I wouldn’t have believed them, no matter who they were. It’s almost impossible to believe the people you love are the villains you see on the news. Damien had known Evan since they were in kindy.’

‘He still should have believed you.’

She shrugged off his adamance in a way that made him want to roar. Instead, he swallowed and waited.

‘The next day, I called Jackie. I told her she needed to leave him, that I’d help her, I had contacts, but she refused.’ Max shrugged. ‘I told her it was my responsibility as a cop to report it. But she’s a lawyer – she knew it was her decision as the victim, and she told me she’d never speak to me again if I turned him in. She said the system couldn’t do anything except make a shitty VRO he’d break anyway, that I’d make it worse. And she was right.’ She walked over to the window abruptly.

‘Max, if it’s too hard to talk about ...’

‘It was a month later.’ She was now right up against the glass doors, one bare shoulder leaning on the sky. ‘We were responding to a call – some intruder who’d stolen a wallet or something, I can’t remember. Then another call came through – suspected domestic. My partner Cal and I were closest, so we took it. I didn’t even look at the address.’

‘It was Jackie’s house?’

‘Yeah.’ Her breath was shaky. ‘I should have said something to Cal, but shit, we got there and the lights were on, and the neighbour who’d called it in was standing out on his porch in his dressing gown and I just got this ... rage. We did the whole “Police, open up” thing, and it was Cal who made the call to go in when no one responded. The neighbour said he’d heard screaming and then glass breaking, so we made the decision.’

Grey could tell she’d recounted this moment many times before. To lawyers, probably, to colleagues, to a judge, defending her instincts to protect.

‘It was so quiet, except for the dishwasher – I remember the sound of the dishwasher. That’s the thing I remember the most, how goddamn quiet it was. Jackie hated silence, she always had something playing – music or the TV. We saw her first. She was on the lounge room floor, bleeding – he’d thrown her through the coffee table. Then we heard drawers slamming in the kitchen.’ She closed her eyes. ‘The kitchen was on the left. From the way we’d come in, Cal was closer to Jackie in the lounge, while I was on the kitchen side. So I turned left, and that’s when I saw Evan. He had a steak knife in his hand and his eyes were ... his eyes ...’

‘Max ...’

‘He called me a cunt. I can’t remember much of what he said after that. I just remember my own voice, saying what I’ve said hundreds of times before – everything they taught us in the academy, everything I’ve watched senior constables do when there’s a weapon. Cal was still with Jackie, she ... she was in a bad state. Paramedics were still five minutes away, so his focus was completely on her.’

Grey swallowed. ‘So he never saw what happened?’

Max shook her head. ‘It’s my word against Evan’s.’

‘What’s your word, Max? What happened?’

She smiled. A sad, half smile the same shape as the moon scar on her jaw. A smile that told Grey she didn’t expect him to believe her at all. ‘He charged at me. The knife was still in his hand, I swear it was, even though he told the jury he never had it, even though it was on the bench when back-up came. I put it on the bench after – I don’t know why – but the rest, the rest of what you heard is true.’

‘You shot him.’

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