After making arrangements for Wendy’s bag to be brought to the hotel’s storage room, she checked out.
During the short ride to the airport, she began to wonder about defying the police inspector’s request to remain on Hamilton
Island. She wondered if security people at the airport might try to stop her. But there was no problem and she boarded the plane for Brisbane without any incident.
In Brisbane she had a short wait before she boarded a commuter plane with only twelve seats. At a little after nine in the evening, the plane lifted off the tarmac, and headed due west toward Charleville, a town situated on the edge of the broad expanse of the Australian outback.
While Marissa was flying over the Great Dividing Ran 9e, a series of mountains separating the narrow, lush coastline from the rest of Australia, Ned Kelly and Willy Tong climbed the stairs in the mostly darkened FCA clinic and headed for the deserted administration area. The door to Charles Lester’s office was ajar. The two men walked in unannounced.
Charles looked up from a puddle of light emanating from his brass desk lamp. The shadows made his deep eye sockets appear blank like a man with no eyes. His mouth beneath his heavy mustache was clamped shut with the corners downturned.
Charles was not happy.
“Sit down!” he ordered.
Ned flopped casually into one of the chairs facing the desk while Willy leaned up against a bookcase.
“I just heard what happened on the evening news,” Lester said.
“You’ve managed to make things worse. First, you only got rid of one of the women. The one you let get away is talking about her friend’s death being deliberate because she saw you two blokes. The police, it seems, are investigating.”
“How were we to know one of them would come out of the water while we were throwing in the chum?” Ned said.
“It was a bit of bad luck. Otherwise it would have worked. We tossed in enough bait to summon every shark from the entire Coral Sea.”
“But eliminating one and raising suspicions is not what you were supposed to do,” Lester snapped.
“Now it is imperative rather than merely advisable that this second woman be eliminated.
It said on the news that her name was Dr. Marissa BlumenthalBuchanan.”
“I know which one it is,” Ned said.
“The sheila with the brown hair.”
“You want us to go back to Hamilton Island and hit her?”
Willy asked.
“I want you to do whatever it takes,” Lester said.
“What if she’s already left the island?” Ned asked.
“I doubt she’s left with an investigation underway,” 1,ester said.
“But let’s call the hotel. You said she was staying at the Hamilton Island Resort?”
“That’s the one,” Ned said.
Lester picked up his phone and, after obtaining the number, called the hotel. To his dismay he learned that Mrs. Buchanan had already checked out.
Lester stood up and leaned over his desk.
“I want you mates to clean this affair up. Ned, you start looking for this woman in the usual hotels, here and in Sydney. Use our government connections to find out if she’s left the country. Willy, I want you to visit Tristan Williams and hang around. This Mrs. Buchanan had originally talked about finding the man. If she were to have a conversation with him, a bad situation could conceivably get far worse.”
“What if she’s already left the country?” Ned asked.
“I want her disposed of,” Lester said.
“I don’t care where she goes, the States or even Europe. Is that clear?”
Ned stood up.
“Perfectly clear,” he said.
“It’ll be a challenge.
But then, I like challenges.”
April 9, 19907:11 Am.
Marissa woke up feeling exhausted. She had not had a good night’s sleep. She had checked into a tidy motel in Charleville and, though her bed was comfortable, she’d hardly done more than doze. Every time she closed her eyes, she’d see that great white shark. The few times she managed to fall asleep, she’d be shocked awake by a nightmare vision of Wendy in the shark’s jaws. Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, she did sleep fitfully for almost three hours.
Although she wasn’t hungry, Marissa forced herself to eat some breakfast before setting out for the car rental office.
As she walked down the street in Charleville, Marissa had the feeling she was in a time warp and was back in a Midwestern town in the United States fifty years previously. The quaint Victorian character that she’d expected to see in Brisbane was evident in some of the homes and office buildings. The air was clear and bright, and the streets were free of litter. And the early morning sun was hot enough to suggest what its noontime power would be.
At the car rental office in the Shell station, Marissa rented a Ford Falcon. She asked for a map, but the attendant didn’t have one to offer.
“Where are you planning to go?” he asked in a slow Queenslander drawl.
Windorah,” Marissa said.
The man looked at her as if she were crazy.
“What on earth for?” he asked.
“Do you know how far it is to Windorah?”
“Not exactly,” Marissa admitted.
“It’s over two hundred miles,” the agent said.
“Two hundred miles of nothing but wallabies, koos, and lizards. Probably take you eight to ten hours. Better fill up that reserve tank in the trunk. There’s also one for water. Fill that up just to be sure.”
“What’s the road like?” Marissa asked.
“Calling it a road is being generous,” the agent said.
“There’s a sealed strip, but there’ll be a lot of bull dust Not much rain this season. Why don’t you give me a ring tomorrow from Windorah?
If I don’t hear from you I’ll let the police know. There’s not much traffic out there.”
“Thank you,” Marissa said.
“I’ll do that.”
Marissa drove the car back to her room. She found it awkward driving on the left. Once she was there she had the proprietor ring up the Royal Flying Doctor Service for her. She made sure there hadn’t been any emergencies to interrupt Tristan Williams’ schedule.
After filling her reserve gas and water tanks, Marissa drove straight through Charleville and picked up the road to Windorah.
As the agent had said, near the outskirts of town the paved road suddenly narrowed to a single lane.
At first Marissa somewhat enjoyed herself. The sun was behind her and not in her eyes, although she knew that would change as the day wore on. The solitude of the land was a good balm for her raw emotions.
The road was a sandy orange color and it sliced across the channel country, an arid, desertlike expanse of space cut by curious, narrow-ribbed valleys or arroyos that carried away the meager rainwater in the rainy season. Birds were everywhere, taking flight as she bore down on them. She even began to see the fauna that the agent had mentioned. Occasionally she passed a water hole ablaze with the color of hibiscus.
Despite the dramatic scenery, monotony soon set in. As the miles passed, Marissa began to be relieved that the car rental agent had agreed she would call when she got to Windorah.
Marissa had never traveled through a more desolate area in her life; the idea of the car breaking down was truly frightening.
The driving wasn’t easy, either. The rough road meant she had to struggle with the steering wheel. The dust billowing in her wake eventually started to work its way into the car, covering everything with a fine layer.
By noon she was sure the temperature had climbed well over a hundred degrees. The beat created the illusion of rolling undulations.
There were other natural distractions as well; later in the afternoon she had to slam on the brakes, coming to a sliding stop to allow a pack of wild boar to continue to cross the road.
At a little past eight in the evening, after eleven hours of driving, Marissa began to see meager signs of civilization.
Twenty minutes later she pulled into Windorah. She was glad to be there, although the town was hardly a scenic oasis.
At the center of town stood a one-story green, clapboard pub cum hotel with a wooden veranda. A sign proclaimed it as the Western Star Hotel. Across the road from the Western Star was a general store. A little farther down the way was a gas station that looked like it was circa 1930.
Marissa entered the pub and endured the stares of its five male customers. They had paused in their dart game and were looking at her as if she were an apparition. The pub owner came over and asked if he could help her.
“I’d like a room for two nights,” Marissa said.
“Do you have a reservation?” the man asked.
Marissa studied the man’s broad face. She thought he had to be joking, but he didn’t crack a smile. She admitted that she didn’t have a reservation.
“There’s a boxing troupe in town tonight,” the man said.
“We’re pretty busy, but let me check.”
He went over to his cash register and checked a notebook.
Marissa glanced around the room. All the men were still staring at her. None of them moved or said a word. They didn’t touch their bottles of beer.
The man came back.
“I’ll give you number four,” he said.
“It was reserved, but they were supposed to check in by six.”
Marissa paid for a night’s lodging, took the key, and asked about food.
“We’ll fix you up something here in the pub,” the man said.
“As soon as you freshen up, come on back.”
“One other question,” Marissa asked.
“Is the Wilmington Station close to town?”
”
“Tis,” the man said.
“Quite close. Less than three hours’ drive due west.”
Marissa wondered how many hours it would take to get to a distant station if it took three to get to a close one. Before she went to her room, Marissa used a public phone to ring the car rental agent to say that she had made it.
She was pleased to discover that her room was reasonably clean. She was surprised to see mosquito netting draped over the bed. Only later would she learn how important it was.
The rest of the evening passed quickly. She wasn’t very hungry and barely touched her food. She did enjoy the ice cold beer.
Eventually she found herself in friendly conversation with the men in the bar.
She was even persuaded to join them at the boxing show, which turned out to be an opportunity for the locals to box with professionals. The ranchers would win twenty dollars if they were able to last three one-minute rounds, but none of them ever did.
Marissa left before it was over, appalled by the violence the drunken men subjected themselves to.
The night was terrible. Marissa was again bothered by horrid dreams of sharks and Wendy being eaten. On top of that, she was tormented by drunken shouts and fights outside her door. She also had to do battle with all manner of insects that somehow managed to penetrate the netting around her bed.
By morning, Marissa was even more tired than she’d been the day before. But after a shower and some strong coffee, she thought she could face the day. Armed with directions from the hotel owner, she drove out of Windorah and headed to the Wilmington Station on a dusty dirt road.
The cattle ranch looked just as she imagined it would, consisting of a series of low-slung wooden sheds, white clapboard houses with sheet-metal roofs, and lots of fencing. Many dogs, horses, and cowboys were in evidence. Over the scene hung the unpleasant but not unbearable ripe, musty odor of cow dung.
In contrast to the staring disbelief her arrival caused in the pub in Windorah, Marissa was shown every possible hospitality at the cattle station. The cowboys, referred to as stock men literally fell over each other trying to help her, getting her a beer and offering to take her to the makeshift airstrip for the doctor’s scheduled noon arrival. One of the stock men explained their behavior by telling her that an attractive unaccompanied female showed up at a cattle station about once every hundred years.
By eleven-thirty Marissa was out at the airstrip, sitting in her Ford Falcon under a lone gum tree. Out in the sunlight closer to the strip was the Wilmington Station Land-Rover. Just before twelve, she got out of the car and left the tree’s shade. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she searched the pale blue sky for a plane.
The day was just as hot as the previous one and just as cloudless.
Nowhere could she see a plane. She listened hard but the only thing she heard was the breeze through the acacia.
