“The car’s badge is the little picture on the front and the side.” He pointed to the bonnet of the car. I looked and saw a silver shield with red and yellow blocks. “Sometimes companies, they used to swap designs of cars. Saves time, money. They just take the same car and put their own badge on it.”

I was trembling all over. I looked to Linda, who seemed as confused as I was.

“So two cars can look exactly the same but be different brands?” I said.

“Yeah,” Sharon sniffed.

“Oh Christ.” I went to my phone, struggled to find the internet browser. “Oh Jesus. Then maybe it wasn’t a Ford Falcon. Maybe it wasn’t a fucking Ford Falcon. Maybe it was something else.”

I searched Ford Falcon XF 1988 rebadge.

The Nissan ute was a badge-engineered version of the XF Falcon utility sold by Nissan in Australia from August 1988 to 1991 …

“The Nissan ute.” I opened my email. Followed the link to the database search engine. My fingers were making damp prints on the screen. The keyboard wasn’t working. “The Ford Falcon was the same as the Nissan Ute.”

Carroway, Chloe. Glen Alpine. Nissan Ute. 1988. REN 555. Blue.

“Blue.” I shoved Linda in the chest. “Blue! Blue! It’s fucking blue!”

The beating was short, but hard. Amanda tried to curl into a ball, but Jay kicked her in the back, legs. She shuffled across the floor, trying to escape him. She could barely hear Bran in the background, his voice moving as he paced.

“Come on, man. Oh Jesus. Come on, bro.”

When there was a pause, Amanda rolled onto her knees. There was glass on the floor here, small pieces of it working their way into her exposed arms and legs.

“What kind of a pussy,” she huffed, “beats a woman with her hands tied?”

That really broke him. She could hear the breath coming out of him in low, heavy growls as he pounced on her.

“Oh yeah? Oh yeah?” He was frantic, flipping her and ripping the tape off her wrists. “I’ll show you a fucking pussy!”

His hand on her skull, a death grip, banging.

Pip stood on the bank of the creek behind the Barking Frog Inn, looking at a pair of pink Converse sneakers sitting, side by side, on the soil. She’d begun to grow concerned with Amanda’s silence on the phone at around midday. The two had planned to meet at the Shark Bar, Amanda in the seat she owned, Sweeney trying to distract her from the day’s many newspapers. There were good leads she wanted to follow up on. Conkaffey had passed on some interesting criminal links he’d discovered in the backgrounds of a couple of the bar’s regulars. She wanted to bring Amanda in to reinterview the men at their houses. Then there were the shell casings found in the forest a kilometer from the Barking Frog. They were waiting on analysis of them. Michael Bell had asked for another meeting. There was much to do, and Pip felt invigorated after a good night’s sleep. But Amanda was missing in action. She might have pressed on without her weird, unpredictable little partner. But Amanda had become like her magic feather. She felt more confident, more in control with the woman by her side. She’d wondered as she dozed off the following evening if a partnership between her station and Conkaffey and Pharrell Investigations might be possible. Maybe through Pip, the hostility of the Crimson Lake force toward Amanda might be lessened. Her colleagues might be able to truly see Amanda’s value. Anything seemed possible.