Despite the pressure tactics Mitch came up empty, both suspects sticking to their story, professing their innocence. Neither had heard of these people and just wanted to be freed.

After spending an hour with each man, Mitch stormed out, frustration etched on his face.

‘Nothing new?’ asked Chandler as Tanya began to shut down the equipment. All that was left was to review the evidence again, trek up to the shack, or track down a witness who might be able to place Heath or Gabriel at the scene of a disappearance.

‘Do you think he’s robbing them?’ asked Tanya, as they left the booth.

Chandler turned to her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Kidnapping them, torturing them to reveal their details and then stripping their accounts?’

‘Nothing we’ve seen points to a financial motive. It’s obvious that neither have access to great means, given how they were dressed.’

‘So if it’s not money, what is it? Revenge? Bloodlust?’

‘Maybe just plain lust,’ said Chandler. ‘A sex game gone wrong?’

Stalking around the office as if spoiling for a fight, Mitch shot Chandler down immediately. ‘There’s no evidence from either suspect of anything like that taking place. We didn’t find any implements or devices of that nature in the wreckage either.’

‘Nothing except the stick up your arse,’ replied Chandler.

A hush fell over the office.

Mitch finally broke the silence, turning to the office. ‘What we have here is a partnership,’ he announced, ‘or a former partnership. Each is now trying to frame the other.’

‘I’ve already considered that,’ interrupted Chandler. ‘There’s nothing to connect them—’

‘Other than the crime scene and their matching stories?’ said Mitch. ‘No, there was a partnership and there was a falling-out. It caused a disagreement and each blamed the other. It explains why their stories are so similar.’

‘I don’t see them working together. They’re scared of—’ started Chandler but Mitch had already moved on and was lecturing one of his team, MacKenzie, a young man who looked barely old enough to shave. Or maybe he had been cowed enough by his boss to regress back to being childlike. Mitch was instructing him to organize a press conference with the vultures outside.

What Chandler had been about to say had been playing on his mind for a while but the discussion with Tanya had brought it to the fore. If Gabriel and Heath were in fact working together as some sort of dual killing machine and then had a falling-out, each would have a different story of how they got to the woods, stories conjured up independently of each other. Mitch might have thought himself smart but Mitch was wrong. He was being driven by the story rather than the evidence. One of them, and only one of them was the true victim and the killer was piggy-backing their story. There was no other explanation.

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