Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

looked like he was run over by a road train. If it hadn’t been for his wasted legs, even his wife wouldn’t have recognized the bastard.”
    Abruptly Archer was glad that Hannah hadn’t come to Broome with him. He had left her teaching English to eager children whose laughter and sparkling black eyes were like a tonic after all the grim memories of Len. Archer wished he could have stayed. He missed his niece’s innocence and uninhibited smile. But Summer was half a world away, and Len’s body was in the merciless here and now.
    “If Len had been your brother, would you be investigating his death any differently?” Archer asked.
    Thick, blunt fingers rubbed over the cop’s newly shaved face. He sucked on the cigarette and exhaled smoke. “I’d be crying.”
    Archer almost smiled. “So it was just an accident, is that it?”
    “Bloody right. And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.” Dave’s hand came up suddenly, cutting off any reply. “Look, Yank. I’m not going to pretend that the world isn’t a better place without that sorry sod. But if I was inclined to make trouble about his death—and I’m not—I’d be talking to his widow. Is that what you want?”
    For a moment Archer didn’t trust himself to speak. Jet lag was gnawing at him like a hangover, Hannah had been terrified beneath her brittle calm, and now this short-tempered Outback constable was threatening her.
    “Harassing Mrs. McGarry would be stupid. You’re not a stupid man,” Archer said evenly. “May I see the body now?”
    “You flew a long way to look at a dead man.”
    “Yes.”
    The cop waved his thick, sunburned hand, trailing a flag of smoke. “Go see him, mate. He won’t care. Nobody will.”
    With wary cop’s eyes, Dave watched Archer walk away. He didn’t know what was on the Yank’s mind. He didn’t want to know. Working as a constable out beyond the Black Stump had taught him that there were two kinds of men: bad men, and bad men to cross. Bad men didn’t worry him.
    Men like Archer did.
    * * *
    The place where Len’s body was being stored looked like what it was, a processing plant for the Kimberley shorthorn cattle that ran through Australia’s West like a hoofed red plague. But it wasn’t the right season for slaughter, so the meat locker was cold and empty except for three cyclone victims. Two were fishermen. One was Len. All three were covered with what looked like old sheets. The unexpectedly powerful storm had overloaded the tiny funeral home. Bodies destined for cremation had been shunted off to less plush surroundings.
    “He’s the one over there,” the teenager said, his voice as rough as his red hair. He was too young not to be intimidated by death and too old to admit it.
    “Thank you,” Archer said. “I’d like to be alone with him for a time.”
    “No worries, mate,” the kid said, relieved. “Close the door hard when you leave.”
    Archer waited for the door to close—hard—before he went to the table where Len lay. Even without the kid’s instructions, he would have known it was Len; below the torso, the sheet was nearly flat on the table. He flipped the covering down far enough to see the face and chest.
    He grimaced, but not for himself. The thought of Hannah finding this mangled, battered flesh made him want to cry out in protest. She didn’t deserve to have that horrifying image sink into her mind, wellspring of future nightmares.
    No one deserves all the good or the bad that comes their way. You take it the way it comes, one day at a time.
    Hannah’s words echoed in the raging silence of Archer’s mind. They didn’t calm him, but they made it possible to let go of some of the anger and shove the rest of it down with all the other brutal images breeding nightmares in his own darkness.
    Silently, fighting for the emotional distance that was necessary for what he must do, Archer studied what had once been his half brother and mentor in the bleak arts of survival. He remembered Len as a Viking—big, brawny, brawling, laughing like a madman one moment and stone silent the next. All of the silence and some of the brawn remained. Across the shoulders and in the arms, he was as powerful as Archer. The thick mane of blond hair had gone white in great, ragged streaks. Whatever marks rage or laughter might have left on Len’s face had been erased by the brutal hammering his body had taken before and after he died.
    The piece of oyster shell lay beside Len, as though