what. But would they kill one of their own to protect the rest?
After what Savannah had said about the mother thinking she wasted oxygen by just being alive, it was a distinct possibility. Like so many victims of chronic abuse, Savannah had broken down that night. All it had taken was the smallest show of compassion.
The doorbell rang again. Kate Farrer didn’t wait for an invitation inside.
“I guess you know that one of the Harbourns died tonight and she had your card in her purse.”
Bad news traveled at breakneck speed in the police network.
“Are you investigating the crash?” Anya asked quietly in the hallway.
“Should I be?”
Kate moved through to the lounge room and the officers stood. After waving them to sit again, she helped herself to another mug from the kitchen and returned.
Anya briefly described Savannah’s injuries and her broken left arm, which emergency had pulled back into place and plastered, the bruises to her face and the scalp wound that needed suturing.
The younger constable referred to his notes again. “It appears that the woman who crashed tonight didn’t have a cast on her arm.”
“Could we be looking at mistaken identity?” For one moment, Anya hoped that it was not Savannah in the car.
Kate sat on the coffee table facing the lounge. “Family already identified the body.”
Anya felt her stomach tighten again. “It’s more likely she took off the cast to hide the fact that she had seen a doctor. It’s not uncommon among abuse victims when they go back home. I assume the car was an automatic. But if she had to turn the wheel suddenly, she couldn’t have done it with that left arm.”
Kate poured herself a coffee. “She’s the only one of the Harbourns to fly the coop. Are you saying the old couple she boarded with beat her up?”
Anya knew what Kate was getting at. “No. But what I know is only hearsay and won’t hold up in court.”
The detective sipped her coffee. She was now running the discussion. “I want crime scene to go over that car for any signs of a collision before it crashed. We could be looking at a homicide.”
“The accident team is still at the scene,” the younger officer announced.
His partner spoke next. “We can check speed cameras in the area, see if they captured the Colt. It could give us an idea as to how fast she was going before the accident.”
Kate tugged the back of her hair. “She may have been driving with a broken arm but that doesn’t mean this was an accident. She was part of family of psychopaths. We’re looking at three of them for the Goodwin homicide. The fourteen-year-old almost had her head cut off after being raped.”
Both men lowered their heads as if humbled.
Kate finished her coffee. “You could also help out by checking surveillance of service stations, ATMs, banks and anyone else in the area with a security camera. We might get lucky and see if another car was following Savannah.”
The three stood, thanked Anya and left. As she closed the door, Anya remembered the fear when she had seen the uniforms at the door. Had Noelene Harbourn experienced the same terror, or had she already known that her daughter was dead? She had no way of understanding a mother who could hit her already beaten daughter for “complaining.”
She remembered seeing an interview of a bushwalker whose arm had been trapped under a rock in a remote location. He described amputating his own limb with a pocket knife in order to live and get to safety. Sacrifice one arm for the rest of the body.
The Harbourns had an incredibly strong survival instinct for which Savannah may have just paid the ultimate price.
23
From the images of Savannah Harbourn’s car on the news, the make and model of the vehicle were unrecognizable. The engine had been driven back into the front seat, a four-door car reduced in length by half. It was no surprise the driver had been killed.
A more recent model would have had airbags, but they were unlikely to have saved anyone with crushed legs and severe chest or head trauma.
In spite of Savannah’s broken arm, Anya refused to accept this could have been an accident.
Unable to sleep, at first hint of daylight she drove to the crash site. Turning into the road on which Savannah died gave her an eerie feeling.
Parkland lined with trees was on one side, with a school the length of the block on the other. No wonder there were no witnesses to the crash. At night, the area would have been deserted save for passing traffic.
Round a bend, black skid marks were visible on the opposite side of the road. Twenty meters long, they veered to the left on a verge, then disappeared.
This is where Savannah had been killed.
School didn’t start for at least two hours, so Anya parked her car and crossed the now quiet road. She walked down the small dip to where the Colt had hit the tree outside the park, a distance of only ten meters from the road. The trunk showed little damage apart from an indentation around hip level.
Even at low speed the Colt would have been crumpled on impact with an immovable object. The surrounding ground had been disturbed by the accident squad, ambulances and police. The foliage had all but been destroyed.
At the base of the tree sat two bunches of flowers. One, daffodils; and the other, plastic poinsettias, the type that are all over gift shops before Christmas. She photographed them with her phone and bent down to see if either had cards attached.
The daffodils had a letter wrapped in cellophane.
Anya had to admire Violet Yardley. Despite being raped by Savannah’s brothers and not being helped by the person she considered her best friend-after the ordeal, Violet could forgive. Anya doubted if she were capable of being that generous in similar circumstances.
The plastic poinsettias had one printed word on a card.
The flowers could have been placed there by anyone, family or friends, even a child. Presumably plastic flowers were meant to last as a permanent reminder of what had occurred, but the base of the tree wasn’t visible from the road. The solo word was haunting.
Anya couldn’t get the same question out of her mind. She checked the GPS on her mobile and plotted the route between the elderly couple’s home where Savannah boarded and the Harbourn family home. They were only eight streets away.
Back in her car, Anya followed the route to the Harbourn home. Turning right at a set of lights, she noticed broken orange plastic, again on the opposite side of the road. She pulled over outside a house and parked. The pieces didn’t look as though they had been run over, and may have been fresh.
She called Kate, who was already up. “I’m near last night’s accident site and I think she could have been rear- ended at a set of lights about a kilometer away. It could explain why she was speeding.”
Kate was silent for a few seconds. “If she were rear-ended, she’d be more likely to stop because it wasn’t her fault. She was caught speeding so we know how fast she was traveling. Even you said she had a broken arm, which was an accident just waiting to happen.”
“I understand that, but bear with me a moment. What if she were being pursued? Was anyone else photographed speeding at the same time?”
“Unless you can find someone who saw the accident, there’s nothing to suggest anyone else was involved. The squad was all over this last night. There was only one set of skid marks. One car. Hell, maybe the one responsible
