‘Hi, Jonesy,’

‘Wendy.’ Leighton smiled warmly. ‘In you come. Now, if the boss has sent you to woo me back to work …’

The dispatch officer laughed heartily at the idea as she entered the house. As she moved by him, Leighton noticed she was clutching a manila envelope.

‘I think if the boss knew I was here, we’d both be spending the night in the cells.’

‘Too true. Now, you grab a seat, and I’ll fix you a drink.’

‘It’s okay, Jonesy,’ Wendy said, as she sat on the coffee-coloured sofa, ‘I’ve got two teenagers in the car, who are itching to get to Taco Bell for supper.’

‘Sounds good.’ Leighton smiled to conceal his lie.

‘Judging by the yummy smell in here, you’ll be eating better than us.’

‘I’m not sure. My creations can often go either way.’

Leighton sat opposite the woman, who bore the troubled expression of someone carrying bad news to pass on. It was an expression he knew well.

‘Listen, Jonesy. That note you left the other day about checking out that bus …’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, the Chief picked it up at reception, and went crazy. He told Lenny after your retirement you were now a member of the public, and you can’t make demands on police time. He even ripped up your note, and tossed it in the trash behind reception.’

Leighton rolled his eyes. ‘Guess I should have shown up for his goddamn party.’

Wendy smiled. ‘You know him too well.’

‘Hey, it’s fine.’ Leighton shrugged. ‘I didn’t want anyone getting into bother on account of me. I’ll get on to checking out the bus myself.’

Wendy shook her head. ‘Don’t worry - we backroom rebels in dispatch don’t pay too much attention to the Chief. I just want you to be careful. You can’t just show up the station, without the Chief trying to run you out of town.’

‘Thanks, Wendy.’

‘Anyway, the thing is, Lenny fished out the note and brought it to me, and I did a bit of digging - off the record.’

‘And?’

‘I mean it, Jonesy, you’re a charming old bastard, but this never came from me.’

‘You have my word,’ Leighton said, and held a hand to his heart.

‘This gets out, and you’ll have my family to feed, and they take some feeding.’

Wendy leaned across and handed Leighton the manila envelope.

‘What’s this?’

‘I spoke to Kevin Harris over at the Traffic Control Centre - our kids used to play in little league together, and I used to pick up his two, along with my own brats, so he owes me a favour or two.’

‘Don’t we all?’ Leighton said.

‘I gave him the details and locations, and he emailed me the camera views from the bus depot and the major roads through the city.’

Leighton opened the envelope, withdrawing a bundle of black and white prints of areas of the city. Each image featured details of time and location in neat white letters on the bottom right corner.

‘They’re in order,’ Wendy continued. ‘If you look at the first one, taken at Escondido, you can see the bus entering the depot. The next photograph shows it leaving the depot, sixty-six seconds later.

Leighton nodded, and then, flicked through several more pictures. ‘I don’t see it in any of the other prints.’

‘Exactly!’ Wendy leaned forward. ‘Your bus left that depot, but didn’t show up on any of the major routes. I don’t know where the hell it went after that, but it certainly didn’t come through Oceanside after leaving the terminal.’

‘You sure?’ Leighton frowned.

‘The camera doesn’t lie, Jonesy. That bus just vanished.’

‘How weird?’

‘Yeah, talking of weird, I have two teenage mutants in a car, who will be drooling on my leather trim by now.’

As she stood up, Wendy glanced around. ‘Hey the place looks nice, Jonesy. You expecting company and tidied up?’

‘No,’ Leighton chuckled. ‘I like tidy.’

‘Yeah?’ Wendy sighed. ‘You must be the only man on the West Coast who does.’

Leighton walked her to the door and as she turned to leave his doorstep, he took Wendy’s hand.

‘Thank you for doing this.’

Wendy brushed her other hand dismissively in the air.

‘I mean it,’ Leighton said softly. ‘I never made many friends at the precinct, but you’ve always been good to me.’

‘Ah, you’re better than you think, Jonesy. Just take care of yourself.’ She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and hurried to the car.

After Wendy had left, Leighton did not return to the stove to complete preparing the rest of his dinner. Instead, he went to the refrigerator poured a tall glass of rum and ice, and returned to his sofa. He then spent almost an hour looking through the twelve grainy photographs. When he had finished his drink, he went to a kitchen drawer and returned with a phonebook. He sipped his rum as he flicked through the pages and stopped at the Asian Restaurant section.

19

Prior to the real physical experience which followed, there were three initial stages to Charlie Taylor’s terror. The first was his physical situation. He awoke to find himself weak-limbed, and lying on his back in the darkness of some man-made structure. A throbbing pain deep in his head seemed strong enough to temporarily obliterate any memory of how he had arrived at this location. The fact he had been wrapped in plastic sheeting, like a slaughtered pig, and placed in the bowels of the rumbling bus as it travelled miles into the hills was, perhaps fortunately, unknown to him.

Despite his mind still being shrouded in the remnants of the tranquilliser, he was vaguely aware the building was large and dark, stretching perhaps twenty feet in all directions around him. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Charlie twisted his head and stared to both sides, trying to locate some point of reference. He could distinguish large grey squares attached to the distant walls. Each of these squares seemed to feature a regular pattern of dark spots. Something about this pattern seemed familiar to Charlie, and he had to search through the fog of his mind to find the association.

The terror rose within him when he realised that the walls were lined with sheets of egg cartons. Eleven years earlier, Charlie had played bass guitar in a couple of bands in his senior year at Oceanside High School. On Tuesday afternoons, he and the other guys would rock out in a small practice room lined with the same type of egg cartons. It seemed so remarkable to him at the time that, outside of the room, no sound could be heard, even when the guitars were screaming out within.

The realisation that the walls of his prison had been sound-proofed triggered Charlie’s second wave of terror. He decided to get out of this place, regardless of how numb his limbs felt, but as he attempted to move his legs and arms, he found himself unable. For a moment, he wondered if he was actually paralysed – which, upon reflection, would have certainly been better – however, his hands moved freely below the wrist. Charlie shifted his trembling head enough to see his hands were attached, by orange cable ties, to the table, which felt hard and cold beneath his sweating skin.

It was then he began to comprehend he was not lying on some makeshift surface; it was a stainless-steel table, like those found in surgeries or industrial kitchens.

Charlie’s final stage of terror came when, in his new stage of panic, he twisted around far enough to see what was located over each of his shoulders. There were two black tripods. One featured a large black video camera, on which a small red LED light was blinking; the other held a massive light bulb surrounded by the type of white umbrella used by photographers. As he realised the horror of his situation, Charlie began to thrash crazily against his unforgiving restraints until his face was scarlet, dripping with sweat, and his heart was hammering against his rib cage. If he hoped to have any chance of escape, he would have to calm down and try to think clearly.