There Is More Light Than Dark

Chapter Seventy Six

Sunday August 21

The next morning McCoy met Lewis at the station at 8 am.

Doctor Wang had called McCoy as he sat on the bed the night before and confirmed the DNA of the body they had retrieved matched the samples that had been taken from the car of Doug Prosser.

They were both a match for Peter Sampson.

It had hardly been a surprise but it was nice that their judgements and leaps of circumstantial evidence had proven to be correct. Lewis' call on the reasons for Vincent's choice to stay at the house seemed spot on.

Vincent, or Mason, knew he'd be there. Not just at the house, but right there on the road.

McCoy was pleasant with Wang but too tired and disjointed to get excited by then. For her it didn't matter – her business was done.

He'd phoned Lewis to tell her and they had spoken about going through the boxes of paper and materials that McCoy had taken from Vincent's childhood bedroom – trying to find something to point them towards what he might do next. If they'd agreed that he had the capacity to kill his father and a group of people in Italy they had every reason to think there might be more to the story. More that stood in the path of Mason Stepper.

But why Italy? Why these people in particular? What had they done?

Harper Lewis had been enthusiastic – not only was she starting to feel some genuine recognition but she had an ace up her sleeve she planned to tell him about. Her research in the city a few days before had pointed her towards something that fitted more so now since the call from Detective Bernardi had come through, but she still wasn't entirely sure how.

Italy held a key, that was for sure, but she needed Bernardi's number to get more information – information that could well give her the absolute picture of what Vincent was doing. But she wanted to be sure before she brought it to the table – Roger Lewis has always insisted she get her house in order before she invited people over.

They rifled through boxes until nearly midday, again stacking piles of things that seemed to hold no relevance on one side of Lewis' desk and various small piles of papers and cuttings on the other side that either of them thought held some interest.

Lewis watched McCoy as he licked his thumb and put piece after piece on the 'irrelevant' stack as if in a trance. She saw his phone sitting on the chair beside him and waited for an opportunity.

She'd ordered the XL coffee for them both as they drove in that morning and knew it would be a matter of time before he needed to go.

When the boxes were finished and the stacks of items to consider further sat there and taunted them neither had left the table. Neither had blinked.

McCoy looked at the papers and sighed.

'Fuck.' He looked up at her and she could see his eyes were weary; heavy. Delicate.

She saw the need to prove something to someone that she saw every morning she had looked in the mirror since Roger had died, but in her eagerness to seize a moment she missed it.

Just like she missed it every morning since Roger had died.

'You know, Lewis, I think we need to go back to his fucking house and have another look around. I mean, this guy could be anywhere.' He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. 'I.... I don't know what the fuck we're looking for.'

But he did and he wanted to have a closer look at that room where he had first felt what had turned out to be something that mattered.

'I gotta take a piss and we'll get going – you wanna drive?'

'Sure, Detective, no problem.' Lewis nodded and started to pull together he pieces they had considered worthwhile. She watched him carefully as he walked down the hallway out of sight. The door to the toilet banged shut and she silently thanked Victoria Police for being cheap enough to lay hard vinyl in the hallways of justice, the prospect of hearing him in time a good chance.

She flicked through his call register and found the one from Italy yesterday. Too smart to take a shot of his screen in case he had need to look at her phone for any reason, she put the number into her address book under 'Sampson lead' and placed his phone carefully back where it had sat on the chair.

By the time he was back she had the keys in her hand and the smallest box they had with the things they might need to follow up on and was heading for the elevator as he brushed back past her.

He ran to the door she held open and gave her a nod as he adjusted the collar of his shirt.

The floor started to drop away and they both felt the combination of gravity taking them hostage and the flutter of something brewing.

'So, Lewis. What the hell do you think we're looking for here? I mean, we know he's a fucking maniac and all but where is he going to go now? What are we going to find?' It was part genuine enquiry, part test of where she was at with the case.

And for the first time he felt definite that she was likely to give him something that he needed. On the case, at least. The denial of the contribution she had already made was tough to continue but straight from the Dean McCoy playbook. He never felt like he needed much but that was a well-practised technique he'd carried over from the days his mother had been sick. And it had served him well.

Lewis knew it meant a lot that he had asked her for something that mattered. Not just to the case, but to him. But she was well past blushing.

'Well, Detective, I really don't know. But...' And she wanted to tell him what she had already found but she needed to call Bernardi first to make sure she wasn't going to lose what she'd gained. 'We need to find where he's gone. Did Bernardi say anything about that when you spoke with him yesterday?' She was pushing the envelope here but needed to be better informed when she called him.

'No, he said that the worker who found the fire had looked for where Sampson had gone briefly but he'd run back to the barn to see if he could do anything. By the time he realised he couldn't save any of them and called the fire brigade Vincent was gone. And he had the little girl with him.' He stopped to consider things as the doors chimed open and they headed to the exit door from the basement of the station into the carpark. The cold air whacked them across the face. 'I've got to call him back, see what else they have found.'

Lewis said nothing and hoped he wouldn't think to do that any time soon. She needed to get to Bernardi first. She handed him the box to distract him just in case and pressed the unlock button on the key to find the car. It chirped two rows back and they headed for it, side by side.

As she rolled out of the car park and turned right to head to the Sampson house they both had an anticipation that they held the trump card – that the jump was theirs for the taking. Neither stopped to consider that Vincent Sampson might just be the beneficiary of their fragile dance around being the one to prove to the other they could do it.