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    â€˜Can’t say more, you know that. But trust me that it wasn’t him. Like I said, he’s harmless.’
    â€˜Okay, but . . .’ He was looking at her as though she were a child refusing to believe in the absence of the werewolf in the wardrobe. ‘What if it wasn’t this Rox guy? Just now, I mean. I didn’t get a good look at the car. It could have been . . .’
    He sighed, grabbed his phone off the dash, dialled, smiled at her as he spoke. ‘Rox, Riley here. Yeah, yeah, shut up for a sec and listen. You been out making a nuisance of yerself? You know what I mean. Hollering and kerb-crawling? Scaring girls.’
    May sat still, hot all over. The tinny braying from the other end of the phone scratched at her spine.
    Riley guffawed, shook his head. ‘You’re a right grub, mate. Need to cut that shit out, yeah? I mean it. If I catch you creeping around like that I’ll – You better believe it . . . I’ll . . . Yeah, yeah. Just keep your dirty thoughts to yourself from now on.’ He slid the phone into his pocket. ‘Okay?’
    â€˜What?’ May said.
    â€˜Definitely Rox. And he’s nothing to worry about.’
    â€˜If you say so.’ She opened the door, put her feet on the ground.
    â€˜But hey, just ’cause he’s harmless doesn’t mean it’s safe for you to be running alone like that. Especially at night. Good-looking girl, no phone, no nothing. Not real smart given the current circumstances.’
    â€˜Okay. Sorry.’
    â€˜I’m not having a go. You do what you like, free country and all that. Just that we don’t want another Bella Michaels on our hands, do we?’
    â€˜No.’ She got out of the car. ‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said, thinking inside inside inside inside .
    â€˜Not a problem. You stay safe now.’
    May closed the door and then jumped and fell back against it when she saw the body wrapped in plastic poking out from underneath the bonnet of the four-wheel drive next to where she stood.
    â€˜You right?’ Riley called from inside his car and she blinked and saw it was only a lazily dumped bag of garbage. She felt his eyes on her back and more eyes digging into her from inside the hotel reception. She couldn’t bear to walk all the way across the car park to get to the path to her room. She cut across the metre-wide strip of pebbles and native plants, shuddered as fronds tickled her ankles like soft strands of hair.

    AustraliaToday.com
    Sister pleads for help in finding Bella’s killer
    May Norman
    8 April 2015
    The grief-stricken sister of murdered Strathdee woman Bella Michaels has pleaded for public help to bring the 25-year-old’s killer or killers to justice.
    Standing between homicide detectives outside Strathdee police station, Chris Rogers’ voice broke as she responded to a journalist’s question about how she felt on identifying her sister’s body. ‘You seem to be a human being. Try imagining what it would feel like for you. Then understand that this feeling will never go away. That moment when I saw her, it’s forever. It’s part of me now.’ She then began to sob and appeared to lose her balance and stumble towards the microphone stand before a female police officer steadied her and led her back inside the station.
    After Ms Rogers departed, Detective Sergeant John Brandis continued the conference by briefing the assembled media on the facts of the case. Police believe Ms Michaels was murdered on Friday night or in the early hours of Saturday morning after being abducted outside the nursing home where she worked. Her body was found near a highway exit on Monday morning.
    Det. Brandis confirmed that Ms Michaels was sexually assaulted multiple times in the hours before her death and said that it is possible more than one person was involved in those assaults.
    Responding to questions, Det. Brandis said police had