Shawn's Law (22 page)

“Good-bye, Shawn.”

“Good-bye, Harley. And I’m sorry, okay? Please remember that.”

Shawn

Sobbing out my broken heart and getting hit by my sister.

Oh, yeah. And ending up in hospital—but that’s just a given with me.

L
ISA
NOTICED
immediately.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded when I opened the door the following Saturday. It had been six days since Harley had said good-bye, and I had regretted every single minute.

“What do you mean?” I tried to bluff it out as she followed me through the house and into the backyard, where the kids immediately began to play chasey. I’d moped around the house for days, not showering, not shaving, not sleeping, and not eating. But knowing that Lisa would be over had forced me to at least attempt to freshen up. I had shaved that morning and I thought I looked decent.

She gave me a narrow-eyed stare. “Something’s up. I can tell.”

“Nothing’s up. What’s up with you?” I meant it in the nine-year-old, you-smell-no-I-don’t-you-smell type of way. Then I noticed my sister was pale with dark circles under her eyes.

“What do you mean?” she quickly answered, echoing my earlier cry and looking very guilty.

“You,” I told her. “You look sick. What’s wrong?”

To my shock and horror, my sister sagged into the chair at the patio table and looked like she was going to cry. I wanted to know what was wrong, but I wasn’t really interested in being the shoulder she sobbed on. We didn’t have that kind of sibling relationship. She covered her face with her hands and muttered something behind her palms.

“What? I didn’t hear that,” I questioned as I sat.

She heaved a huge sigh and removed her hands. Her eyes were swimming with tears. “I said my period was due a week ago.”

“Eew.” I gasped and wrinkled my nose. “I don’t need to know those sorts of details. That’s girly stuff, and thank goodness I don’t ever have to put up with that pain and bother.”

My loving sister leaned over and slapped me on the back of the head. Sisterly love and all that. “Dingbat. My period was due a week ago. It hasn’t come. Use that brain of yours and try to think of a reason my period would be late.”

I rubbed my scalp where it was stinging and groused, “Ow. Why did you have to hit so hard? I have no idea why your period is late. Don’t these things happen sometimes? Or when you are preg…? Oh.” I felt like slapping myself again, but Lisa had done a pretty good job the first time.

“Yes. Oh.”

“Oh,” I echoed, trying to think of something to say. “I’m taking it that this was not planned?”

She gave me an exasperated look, then turned her head to look at her children. Although Izzy was nicely playing among the raised garden beds, Vinnie had obviously decided he was hungry and was tasting the soil under my tomato bush. The black dirt was running down his chin with rivers of dribble and spit, staining his red shirt. However, it was his twin who took the title of being the grossest child who ever visited. He was squatting on the path with his nappy pushed down around his ankles. A suspicious odor wafted our way.

“Zek,” Lisa cried and jumped up to stop him, but her dash was cut short as she stopped, paled dramatically, and clamped her hand over her mouth. She looked around frantically and spotted the bucket I used for gardening. I bolted before the sight of my sister vomiting could scar me for life.

I turned and dashed inside to find something to clean up the variety of messes outside. Twenty rolls of paper towel and six packets of wet wipes ought to do it.

An hour later Lisa had stopped heaving enough to ask me again, “So, what’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” I chirped with false cheeriness. I was in the kitchen slicing apples to stew, since my apple tree only knew two words—feast and famine.

“Shawn?” My sister’s voice had a warning tone to it.

“Yes, Lisa?”

“What did you do?”

I looked at her with my best I’m-innocent face. “Why is it always something that
I’ve
done? Could it have not been something that was done to me?”

“No. Because I know you, Shawn. You self-doubt until you destroy anything good around you.”

“Do not.”

“Do.”

“Do not.”

I was waiting for the “Do” from Lisa, but it never came. Instead she was off her chair, stalking down the hall toward my painting room.

“No.” I raced after her, but it was too late. She opened the door and saw. Anyone who has lived with me knows that I draw when I’m stressed. The more drawings there are, the bigger the stress. I had lived in that room for the last six days.

I stopped before I reached the door and sagged against the wall in the hallway, knowing exactly what Lisa was looking at. I’d completed around fifty drawings of Harley. Some were mere sketches, some were colored, and a couple were painted. I’d tacked them up all over the walls so I was surrounded by him while I was in the room.

The pictures were varied—some with him clothed, and many where he wasn’t. Some were just his face, and others were full body. Some were with him alone. In others, I’d drawn myself.

But they were my memories: Harley up a tree searching for nesting hollows. Harley sunning himself naked in the privacy of his own backyard. Harley throwing a ball in the park for Picky and Louie. Harley gardening with my mum looking on. Harley building a sandcastle with the twins. Harley holding me gently after we’d made love.

“Shawn? Is there something I should know about?” Lisa’s voice was gentle.

I swallowed the huge lump in my throat. “Nope.” The word came out wobbly and shaky.

“Did something happen between you and Harley?”

Did she have a couple of days to spare while I told her? “Kinda.”

“Did you two break up?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

I closed my eyes and dropped my head back until it hit the wall with a decent thud. “He walked out after he talked to Rory.”

“What?”

I swallowed, and confessed. “I deliberately allowed him to think I was still in love with that psychopath.”

Lisa reached over and hit me again. This time across the chest. “What? Why did you do that?”

I slumped down the wall until I was sitting forlornly on the floor. Lisa closed the door of the painting room and joined me. I gathered my courage and told her.

“Do you remember the octopus?”

“Duh,” my sister huffed. “It was only a week ago. How could I forget? Plus you got your ugly mug in the paper about it.”

I ignored the insult. “Harley yelled at me. He told me that I do stupid things on purpose. He got so angry with me, Leese.”

“I get angry with you too, Shawn, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t love you.”

I smiled sadly. “But I’m your brother, you’re stuck with me. I don’t want Harley to spend his whole life being angry with me. Because it’s true—I do stupid things sometimes. Not on purpose, but I do them not realizing how stupid they are until afterward. I can see Harley watching me. Watching to make sure I don’t trip over the crack on the path. Watching to make sure I don’t deliberately stick a knife in a power socket. I’m stupid sometimes, but not that stupid, Leese. He acts like I’m Vinnie’s age and I need constant watching over.”

“I’m sure it’s not like that, Shawn. He’s just watching over you because he loves you and worries about you.”

“I know. But he shouldn’t. He doesn’t need to spend his whole life worrying about me and getting angry. I’m not a good boyfriend. I cause him heart attacks on a regular basis, and he’s told me endless times that I’m not good for his blood pressure. He shouldn’t have to put up with that.”

“But he loves you. Maybe he
wants
to put up with that, Shawn? Have you thought about that? Have you asked him what he wants?”

I shook my head. “No. Because maybe he’s not good for me either, Leese. He makes me feel bad about myself. I don’t want that. I want a boyfriend who’s proud of me no matter what I do.” I sniffed and wiped at my dripping nose. “Besides, it’s too late now. He found out about Rory and he ran.”

Lisa slung her arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer to her. “If he makes you doubt yourself that much, then good riddance is what I say. You need someone who will support you and love you for who and what you are.”

I loved her for lying to me.

It was the afternoon before Shawn’s Law woke up and decided that it hadn’t caused enough havoc in my life. It started with a phone call from the lead detective on the active file of Rory Davidson. Although Rory had confessed and been convicted of four murders, there were numerous missing persons from that period who the police wished to link to him. Unfortunately without a body it was hard to do. The victims, being young and gay, were also frequently homeless or without family support. It was often hard to track the last known movements of these men, because it took months before someone filed a missing persons report.

The police had four solid leads—four missing persons they were sure belonged to Rory’s deviant acts—but they needed either a confession or a body. And I was helping. So far, during our taped conversations, Rory had let drop a couple of hints. An ex-boyfriend of his called Tim, who worked up north, was probably a missing man by the name of Timothy Hastings. Rory had told me the last time he’d seen Tim was when he “dropped him off” a few miles north of Dongara. The police had been secretly searching bushland up that way for weeks.

He’d mentioned two other ex-boyfriends during our calls—Jerry and Richie. The police believed “Jerry” was a missing person named Francis Gerald. They didn’t know who Richie was.

Now Rory had let another clue drop to Harley. Michael. It was a new name, but one the police thought related to a missing surfer named Michael Gentry. Rory had said during his conversation with Harley that I was hot. Harley thought Rory was commenting on my body. He wasn’t. It was his game. I’d tell him that I visited somewhere, and he’d tell me if I was cold or warm—which the police hoped referred to where he’d hidden another body. I’d never been hot before.

After I told the police about Rory’s latest hint—which was probably dropped because Rory was extremely jealous of Harley—they immediately listened to the recorded call between Harley and Rory, then launched a search of the area around the bay where I found the octopus. The search had been fraught with red tape, since a large part of Rottnest Island is sacred Aboriginal ground. The Island had been used as a prison for Aboriginal people during the European settlement of Perth, and there were plenty of bodies buried in the small area.

The phone call after lunch was from the police, letting me know they’d found a body, no more than five years old, which would correspond with the missing person of Michael Gentry. They warned me that they wouldn’t know for certain until forensic testing was carried out, but it would be reported in the media, probably as soon as that evening.

I was happy but sad. I was happy that perhaps another family could know the fate of their loved one, but sad that a person was now confirmed dead.

I walked outside to tell Lisa the news.

My family was out in the garden. Mum was showing Izzy how to plant turnip seeds—yay, more turnips—while the twins ran amok. Zek was giggling like mad, trying to run from Vinnie, but unfortunately he scrambled onto the raised garden bed and in among my new capsicums. The new plants were small and each supported by a thirty-centimeter-tall bamboo stake, and I could just imagine my nephew falling and getting one of those in his eye, so I jumped up and lifted him off the ground to save my plants.

“Here you go, Zek. Not in Uncle Shawn’s plants, okay? Run on the path.”

“Okay,” he said happily and raced off.

I moved to jump off the raised ground, but Shawn’s Law was there to prevent me. The wooden planks that I’d used to make the garden beds had swollen with moisture and were no longer sitting tight. The plank moved, pushed outward and dumped me backward onto the precious plants I’d just saved from Zek. I felt something snap underneath my body weight and grimaced in pain and shock.

I hit the ground with a thump.

For long seconds I lay there, taking stock of my body parts to check for injuries. Back. Check. Neck. Check. Face. Check. Hands. Ouch, stinging. Bum. Ouch, hurting. Legs. Ahh… why does my leg not feel right?

I sat up gingerly and looked down. There was red.

“Shawn!”

Surprisingly the scream came from my mother. I looked up with a smile. It was the first time in days she’d remembered my name. But the simple act of turning my head was not good for my dizzy brain. I blinked, and physically had to focus on lifting my eyelids again.

“Oh, fuck. Shawn.”

I opened my mouth to reprove my sister for swearing again in front of the kids. But she wasn’t there. She was already racing toward the house. Huh?

I felt wetness on my leg. My mother was kneeling at my side, crushing the nearby eggplant as she scrambled to push her hands against my leg.

“Mum?” I asked in confusion.

“It’ll be all right, Shawn. Just let me do this.”