Vivienne. Just an ordinary suburban housewife… no more

He went to the side of the road and waved past the first couple of black and whites, then a matching Buick to his own came screeching around the corner, only just managing a screeching halt when the driver saw him. His immediate thought was the cornering composure and speed of even a lowly black and white was far better than their ‘environmentally friendly’ Buicks. Somebody saved a few Government dollars by purchasing compact sedans but just pushed this investigation into a financial loss amounting to a sum that would have bought ten bloody Buicks, he thought scornfully.

“How far?” the driver enquired.

“Too far, unless we can get a chopper over him in the next minute or two. I reckon he’d have disappeared down some little by road and lay low under some cover after that. Damn, damn it to hell, I could have had him, I was right on his tail,” and he slapped the roof of the newly arrived Buick.

“C’mon, we’ll go for a cruise, see if we can catch the local yokels. You never know, one of them might have some brains and radioed ahead for a roadblock or something.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright, hang on.”

He dawdled back to his now slowly steaming Buick, grabbed his bag from the back seat and popped it into the boot. He switched off the strobe and dropped it onto the dash and closed all the windows before finally using the key to activate the central locking. He kicked some more dirt at it, then went back to its twin and jumped into the passenger seat. The driver floored the accelerator that slammed his new passengers’ door closed and his back into the seat. He reached for his seatbelt as the driver activated the siren again.

“Don’t think we need to hurry. Told you, he’s long gone. A regular Houdini this one.”

“How long you been chasing him now?”

“Off and on, about four years. Trouble is that he’s smart, real smart. He only surfaces just before budget time. He knows we won’t have the cash to make a serious effort at catching him. As soon as the budget is approved and the money comes in, he disappears.”

“This is close as you got?”

“Yeah, yeah it is. I saw him, I saw him face to face. I’d dreamed of that day but in my dream I was slapping cuffs on him.”

“Witnesses back there say he drew a gun on you. They said you had every right to shoot. Why didn’t you?”

“He knows, he knows I don’t want to kill him, he knows that. And now I know too, I know he doesn’t want to kill me. He likes me chasing him, that’s his game. It’s a new game now that we’ve been face to face.”

“You, you ever shot anyone, you know, had to shoot someone before?”

He looked at the driver. He saw a young man, maybe mid-twenties, dark suit, black tie, light coloured shirt. A small bulge under his right armpit showed he was wearing a shoulder holster, and was left handed. He’d bet good money the kid also had a back up in an ankle holster. He didn’t look down – didn’t need to. He was good with people. No, that was totally inaccurate. He was good about people, he wasn’t good at all with them.

“Son, even if I had, I wouldn’t go bragging about it to anybody. Killing is not a trophy, it’s a travesty. I don’t expect you to understand that but there is better ways than shooting someone.”

The kid sneered. “Yeah right, that’s good coming from you.”

He glanced again at the kid, okay, so he knew about Waco Texas, that didn’t matter – the whole world knew what a disaster Waco had been.

“Well they probably taught you about that one at the Academy didn’t they son? But I’ll bet they taught you during the lessons about What Not To Do. And I never shot anyone there at Waco either, didn’t have to.”

“Ain’t you Foster Barnes, the biggest baddest dude to come out of the FBI since the gangland days of the thirties? Ain’t you the active Agent with the most kills ever recorded since then? Ain’t you the one that shot all them..?”

“That’s enough kid.”

He used the voice of authority, the one with a little tremor of menace he knew would get through. It worked perfectly, the kids mouth plopped closed as if he’d reached over and whacked him under the chin. The kid even looked surprised at his own impulsive reaction, and was a little sheepish at letting his boyish enthusiasm override professional courtesy.

“Son, let’s try this again and I don’t mind you tellin’ anybody that I told you this. It’s in the official reports – I never shot no one, what you heard was wrong. Ah, told you he’d get away.”

They’d rounded another tight bend and were confronted with the black and whites parked diagonally across the road, one behind and one in front of the carefully parked Camaro in the centre of the road.

“They got him, they got him!” The kid yelled exuberantly as he braked to a halt but Barnes knew better as soon as he saw the scene.

“There’s no damage kid. He’s gone, long gone.”

Foster Barnes followed eventually. He watched from the passenger seat, first as the kid almost sprinted to where the uniforms were peering over the cliff face. He could almost hear the explanations before they told him, rounding the corner to find their quarry had disappeared, but not before leaving his vehicle in a precarious position for traffic coming in both directions. Foster Barnes slid across to the drivers’ seat and shut down the siren. He backed the Bureau Buick up about forty yards so that oncoming traffic would have some warning of the blocked road. The red strobe would earn its keep here for a little while until he could get a black and white to replace it. He strode up to the expectant kid and two uniformed cops. One of the other two was inspecting the Camaro, the other remained in his black and white on the radio.

“He’s gone. They think he jumped over in a hang glider or something.”

Foster nodded. He already knew. He turned at the sound of his name.

“Special Agent Barnes? Special Agent Barnes? You? You’re Foster Barnes?”

“Yes Officer?”

“There’s a patch through, on the radio. DC wants to talk to you. They said you should get into the present and carry one of them there mobile phones. I told “em they don’t work up here never how, even ifs ya do have one.”

He proffered the microphone from his vehicle and Barnes walked over. The cop seemed like he wanted to hang around, so Barnes narrowed his gaze and stared at the officer until he took the obvious hint and returned to his buddies standing with the kid at the cliff edge.

“He’s a mite touchy. He’s THE Foster Barnes huh boy? Don’t look like much to me. Uhuh, here he comes, that was quick.”

They watched as the small man in the dark suit strode toward them from the Police Car. Even allowing for parallax, Barnes appeared to grow as he approached them, though he only had to move some twenty yards. His slight frame and average height no longer seemed so obvious as he strode purposefully toward them. When he stopped, legs slightly apart, arms swinging restlessly at his side like a gunslinger from the old west, he didn’t appear surprised as they gawped up at him.

“Kid, we gotta go now. Looks like I’ve gotta catch a flight to Australia.”

Chapter Seven. “Feeding Time”

It had been almost three days since she’d eaten. Out of sheer habit she was hungry. There had been no hunger pangs, no desire for food but she knew she had to supply herself with sustenance and not depend on this newfound euphoria encompassing her, the heat she felt had been her buddy and her only companion. She knew instinctively it was wrong to rely on something so heavily when she had little or no cognisance of its limits or abilities. She also knew she couldn’t stay in this little caravan forever, completely silent and unmoving lest she be discovered. But mostly she was frightened at what her actions might be should some innocent party stumble across her. She had no desire to hurt anybody. In fact she abhorred violence and the events of the last few days had sorely tested her moral values. The continuing internal battle she fought with herself would be sorely tested again as her days of freedom mounted.

She got up from the floor of the van. Her body clock told her it was around 1a.m., about the same time every night when Tricia would call for her. Without the slightest doubt, she knew Brett would be at Tricias’ cot right at this very moment. Brett was a great Dad and was slowly growing to become a fabulous one. Like most new fathers he had started off slow, if only because he didn’t know what to do. But as the months went by, she realised he had accepted more and more responsibility for his daughter – and for his wife. For his family. He began to take over some of the night time feeding schedules, using the expressed milk and warming it like she’d shown him, and he was much readier to take Tricia with him when he disappeared down the shops to grab a paper or some milk. A mother knows how important those precious few moments of peace are. Very few fathers do.

She desperately wanted to go home and see them both.

Vivienne walked out of the van park and wandered in the direction of the beach, almost three kilometres away she knew. About half way was a small shopping centre, much smaller than the one over the road where she’d been cornered in Franklins. There were a number of small takeaway cafes, and a convenience store. She was certain she could access them without risk. She walked in the shadow of buildings and tree lines where available, and straight along the footpath under the streetlights as quickly as possible when there was no cover. There was little to no traffic, she had already recognised that from previous evenings listening from the floor in the little van. Tonight proved no different.

She prised off the back door from a small Asian restaurant after first screening the café through the front shop window. There was no evidence of motion detectors or wiring to door contact switches so she opined straight away that there was no burglar alarm installed. This was no liquor shop or newsagent, and a twenty-four hour convenience store was just around the corner so she thought the risk was minimal. The door swung open quietly and Viv jumped inside and closed it immediately, jamming it at the bottom with the handle of a conveniently placed wok. Anybody, a security patrol or police driving or walking past would see only the closed door, normal as they would see it on any other night. They would get a surprise if they tested their weight against this particular door.

She found several left over dishes, a surprising amount of fresh fruit and vegetables and plenty of raw, cooked and steamed meats in the fridges. To keep noise to a minimum, she ate everything cold as it came from the fridge. Once she began she was insatiable, even consuming a large tureen of some kind of curry, something she’d avoided since impending motherhood and Tricia’s subsequent birth.

She sat on the cool vinyl over concrete flooring, her back against the coolness of the stainless steel fridges. She munched on the last remaining item, a stick of celery. She looked at the leafy stem and spied some canned goods piled along a shelf above the workbenches opposite. She absently tossed the stem over her shoulder. There was a large bench mounted can opener, and it was so easy to use Viv thought she had to get one for her own kitchen. The assorted cans of fruit lay scattered and empty across the workbench, and she realised she had eaten absolutely everything there was to eat. Except the raw meat – she’d spared herself that exercise. She put her hands on her tummy, and apart from the unnatural warmth she was now used to, her belly felt normal. She wasn’t full to bursting as she felt she ought to be. She glanced around the kitchen. A now empty twenty kilogram carrot bag became her garbage bag, and she piled the crushed and empty cans on top of the orange and lemon rinds, carrot tops, lettuce, cabbage and celery leaves, and the single onion she had accidentally bitten into during her haste at the smorgasbord. She munched absently on some prawn crackers as she wandered from the kitchen to the restaurant, dragging her garbage bag with her. She spied the glass front fridge and drank two of the 1 litre cartons of milk, the crushed containers also placed into the bag before heading back to the kitchen.

On the little table immediately beside the kitchen door, was the local newspaper. Yesterdays’ headlines leapt out and knocked her squarely between the eyes.

Killer Mum Remains at Large

Vivienne sunk into the chair staring at the paper. She finally snatched it up and took it with her before realising she couldn’t read the smaller type in the almost darkness. She abandoned the carrot bag of rubbish in a large dumpster at the rear of the shops, and clutching the newspaper and almost empty bag of prawn crackers, stole under the streetlight at the corner of the building. She began to read.

“This is bullshit,” she muttered.

Chapter Eight. “Welcome to the Gold Coast”

Foster Barnes was frustrated. He hated frustration. He hated bureaucracy, his most common cause of frustration. He sat in the sleeper section of the huge black rig, wondering why he had even bothered coming to this wretched place.

Forty-eight hours ago he had been in the sunny warm climate of an Hawaiian winter, albeit chasing one of his career challengers, the one that had escaped him in the Camaro. Now he wished he were back there again. The promise of what awaited him in Australia seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

A bank of radios to his left squawked and fluttered continuously. Their flashing LEDs’ advised him of the constant radio traffic from airport, marine and police, as well as all forms of public access frequencies. Computers monitored the chatter, continually searching bands of the spectrum and zeroing in on conversations, eliciting single words that may indicate his prey had been located. Positive responses were recorded on computer to be replayed and analysed at his leisure. Identification of multiple words of interest from a single conversation would automatically and immediately be amplified through his headset, until he manually rejected them. There had been nothing for almost two days. Not a single word except lazy conversations between patrolmen commenting on the case, or users of citizen band radios across the country gossiping about his quarry – and the astonishing things she had done.

Foster Barnes was frustrated. Frustrated and excited too, as this was the one thing, the one person he had waited his career, his life, to discover. He heard the tap of the security code, and the hum as the retina scanner operated before the pedestrian door shooshed open, and the craggy faced features of Peter entered the truck. Barnes eyed him off, knowing that even though Pete had come from the night outside, his vision inside the giant pantech would be limited by the fact that apart from a squillion tiny, flashing LEDs, it was in pitch black darkness.

“You here Boss?”

Foster thought he may stay silent – he could already tell Pete had nothing good to pass onto him. But he liked this man, really had enjoyed their ten hour jaunt up the highway with him. It was certainly not Petes’ fault the investigation had gone nowhere.

“Here Pete.”

“I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. Which would you like first.”

Pete walked unerringly toward him, even though Barnes remained invisible in the darkness. He stopped about a metre away and looked him squarely in the eyes.

“You knew I was here.”

“Wasn’t hard boss. You ain’t moved in near twenty-four hours. Get any sleep at all?”

“Nope. Tell me the bad news.”

“After piss fartin’ around with the state cops yesterday, it looks like we’ll finally get cooperation from them.”

“That’s the bad news? That’s good.”

“Not really. The cooperation will be limited to passing on any reports. And if they pass on reports near as efficiently as they found us a parking bay, I reckon we’ll hear about anything of interest, oh, about New Year if ya get my drift.”

“That isn’t so bad.” Foster slid a lever and a soft red light bathed the two of them, enough to see clearly but not enough to disturb their night vision. He waved at the surrounding technology. “I’ll find out as they do anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah. No doubt.”

“The good news then?”

“They’ve got us a permanent parking space, permanent until this is over one way or t’other anyway.”

Fosters eyes did brighten. It was good news. They had arrived at the Broadbeach Police Headquarters early yesterday, very early, and the greeting had been less than cordial. They were now parked outside the little Federal Police building at Robina, a few kilometres inland. It was located in a fairly new area, however the truck was not secure. The building itself was almost completely surrounded by ongoing excavations and construction that interfered with the reliability of the equipment and made discretion impossible. A huge black pantech behind an equally big black prime mover was obvious enough, but being parked behind a Federal Police building, with the automatic aerials, antenna, and receiver displays activated on the roof made the vehicle as conspicuous as a cat at a rodents only party.

Exacerbating this was a large sign in front of the nondescript building announcing it to all and sundry as the Australian Federal Police. In the immediate proximity were a major shopping centre, high school, and combined railway station and bus terminal ringing the building, and therefore the truck as conveniently as a sporting stadium. And the truck was the home team everyone would want to see play.

“Excellent! Where?”

Peter dropped his very large head. Foster realised he’d already heard the good news. The words that followed confirmed his worst fear.

“Right here Boss.”

Foster ripped off his head set and tossed it against the wall cursing loudly. He stood up and brushed past Pete and stalked up and down the centre of the pantech swearing loudly at bureaucracy, Australia, Police Forces, koala bears and anything else remotely related to his current location and predicament. On his second lap, the overhead speakers squawked longer than usual, automatically activated by the removal of his headset and the provision of enough key words to be retransmitted directly. Barnes stopped dead and cocked his head. He held one finger up to Pete to be quiet.

“Playback,” he commanded.

There was a moments pause then a short conversation followed – two Police Officers in a brief radio exchange.

“Yeah, can’t wait to get off. Hey did you hear the woman Vivienne rang in?”

“You’re kidding?”

“No way, I was in the Operators Room when she called.”

“What did she say?”

“It was pretty short. She asked for the FBI guy, Foster Barnes, and hung up when she was told he wasn’t there.”

“Fuck hey, just like that? What about the Broncos game this…”

“Save,” Barnes commanded and looked at Pete. “Can we get a car or do we have to take the rig back in there?”

“It’s the middle of the night boss. The office is closed here, there’s no cars.”

Foster Barnes began another tirade.

Chapter Nine. “The Phone Call”

Vivienne read and reread the article in disgust, finally flinging the paper away as anger consumed her. She was shocked to find out that a Policeman had died, and more horrified that his death was pinned on her. The incident replayed over and over in her mind, and on every occasion she recalled her relief at seeing the Policeman moving, well and truly alive, the disgust on his face at the embarrassing position he’d found himself.

After the confrontation with Brett, Vivienne had driven off, shouldering him out of the way as effectively as a front row forward. She realised now the only reason he had been that close was because she had gone toward him. He looked too frightened to have approached her. She had to cool down and the decision to leave was impulsive but based only on the desire to keep her daughter and her husband safe. Safe from her.

Her intention had always been to return, go back after she’d cooled down. Only five minutes down the road a Police Car coming in the opposite direction screeched to a smoking halt, slewed across the grass divider and set off after her, leaving a heavy blue smoke haze as the spinning tyres converged from grass to bitumen. Her first thought was that Brett had called them, her own husband had called the Police he had been that frightened. She knew instantly that regardless of what she may have done, Brett would never do that. It had to have been the nosy barstard over the road, Wallace.

“I should have crushed his bleedin’ car,” she thought.

Vivienne squeezed between a number of cars putting them between her and the chasing Police. She rounded a fast but blind corner, saw the traffic lights change to orange and drove straight through, satisfied her pursuer would be slowed even more. She watched in the rear view mirror as the traffic appeared, slowing for the lights, then the contrasting speed of the Police Car that took to the verge in either an attempt to avoid collision, or as a calculated risk in continuing pursuit. Whichever, the result was the same as the surrounding cars became aware of the flashing lights and screaming siren and took avoidance action. Unfortunately (“fortunate for me,” she thought), the very last vehicle clipped the tail of the Police Car and sent it spinning off down a grass verge, before safely coming to a mud splattered and steaming halt in the adjacent paddock.

She’d driven on, collected more traffic around her and heard another siren a minute or so down the road. She accelerated around a few cars after spying the chasing motorcycle and arrived in front of Harbour Town Shopping Centre – and a major lights controlled intersection. Two lines of stationary traffic lay in front of her and Vivienne realised too late that she wasn’t going to stop in time. Her little Hyundai mounted the concrete lane divider, all wheels locked up, and somehow avoided rolling or jumping off into oncoming traffic. Her motorcycle cop faired worse though, laying his bike down and sliding between the stationary cars. Viv jumped from her stalled car, bellied on the concrete divider with all four tyres inches clear of the road. Ten metres down the road, she saw the cop rise groggily to his feet between the vehicles and lean on the bonnet of a convenient Lexus. He looked around, searching for her, but apparently embarrassed also at his predicament if his sheepish looks to the surrounding drivers were any indication. Viv had run into the shopping centre where her escape from the Franklins Supermarket had occurred.

It was the image of that policeman alive and well, groggy maybe, bruised definitely, but alive that was most vivid. Viv picked up the paper again and smoothed the pages, her eye catching a line she’d glossed over the first time.

“… Federal Bureau of Investigation expert Special Agent Foster Barnes arrived in Australia early this morning to assist the authorities in the speedy apprehension of Vivienne…”

She had been livid at that line when she’d read it the first and all subsequent times. The entire article referred to her as Vivienne, as if they knew her as an intimate friend, yet the inference throughout labelled her a murderer. Even the damn headline called her Killer Mum. She stalked to a payphone and dialled triple zero, the operator took her name and the “nature of the emergency” and put her through to the Police.

“This is Mrs Curtis, Vivienne Curtis. I want to speak to Special Agent Barnes.”

“Who?”

“The FBI guy, Foster Barnes.”

“No, your name Maam. Who did you say you were?”

“I’m Vivienne.”

“Yeah sure. Now Maam we are very busy and prank calls…”

She dropped the handset back into the cradle, slumped to the cool concrete floor and sobbed, for the first time in three days she cried.

Chapter Ten. “International Diplomacy”

“I don’t give a fuck if it’s four o’clock in the morning, my boss wants to speak to your boss and he wants him right now.”