Free Split by Tara Moss Page A

exaggerated. They took the figures on sexual harassment, date rape and everythingelse and rolled it into one nasty-looking package. It made it look like we were hitting girls over the head with our clubs and dragging them by the hair. This campus is as safe as any. Safer than most.” Gosper turned to find the security guard nodding absently. He was looking in Makedde’s direction.
    “I’m sure it is,” the man said, “I’m sure it is.”

CHAPTER 12
    Sergeant Grant Wilson hated mobile phones. He’d rather wear a pager or an archaic walkie-talkie or even a satellite dish than one of those damned devices. He was convinced that the stupid things would give him a brain tumour, but his daughter, Cherrie, said he was just a Luddite and he should get over it. But he needed one now.
    He was leaving McDonald’s weighed down with a foam tray supporting an English McMuffin, hash browns and a tall Coke when the pesky thing rang. “Bloody hell…” he muttered, then hurried towards his car so he could rest his breakfast on the roof and dig around in his pockets for the phone. He didn’t consider any call on his mobile to be a good sign, especially in the morning. He figured that either Amanda was having some sort of trouble, or else Mike had something dire to tell him. He caught it on the sixth ring.
    “Wilson,” he answered gruffly.
    “Grant…we found another one,” came the voice on the other end. It was Mike.
    Grant closed his eyes and leaned heavily against the side of his cruiser, nearly tipping the big Coke over as the vehicle shifted with his weight.
    “Oh, Christ.” He exhaled and the rush of air made a strange sound in the phone. “Hang on, Mike, I’m just getting in my car.”
    Grant pinched the phone between his shoulder and ear while he fished around in his pockets a second time, this time for his car keys. When he had unlocked the car and got in, he asked, “Same spot?” without really wanting to know the answer.
    “Well, not exactly. Close by though. Within a coupla hundred metres. It’s a woman as well.”
    “A woman,” Sergeant Wilson repeated. His eyes rested for a moment on the little laminated wallet-sized photo of he and his wife, Amanda, taken a few years earlier, before she got sick. He kept it propped up on his dashboard.
    “The dogs found her,” Mike was saying. “She’s only a few weeks old, they figure. So that places her before the Walker girl but well after the other Jane Doe.”
    “No identification?”
    “She wasn’t wearing too much in the way of clothes considering the weather. Just jeans and a T-shirt. Couldn’t find anything in the pockets. She was a real mess.”
    “I see,” Grant said. Since Susan Walker, they had discovered another two bodies. How many more would there be? “We need an expert,” he mumbled.
    “What?” Mike said.
    “I said, we need an expert. This is going to get uglier. I can feel it.”

CHAPTER 13
    Makedde popped the lid on a bottle of Visine artificial tears and tossed her head back. She raised the little clear bottle over one eye— plop —and then the other, and her aching dry eyes accepted the liquid gratefully.
    Must sleep. Must sleep.
    She wanted to be alert for the conference, and she cursed herself for not being able to get some good shut-eye the night before. There was no time for napping now—it’d have to be the trusty caffeine hit once again.
    “Excuse me…”
    Mak looked up. Liz Sharron, one of Dr Hare’s assistants, was standing at the lectern at the front of the room, talking into the microphone. She had been in charge of some of the organisation of the conference. She was smiling, and her red corkscrew hair bounced as she spoke.
    “Dr Hare and a couple of the other speakers are running a few minutes late,” she announced. “Traffic.”Liz rolled her eyes, ever the entertainer. “ We expect them in about twenty minutes. Sorry for the delay.”
    Yup, coffee break, Makedde decided. She went to stand, but one of her black