The Dry (20 page)

“What've you found?” Falk asked Raco. The sergeant told him, and Falk nodded, impressed.

“It was there in plain view the whole time,” Raco said. “It just slipped through the cracks with everything else happening that day.”

“Yeah, well, it was a busy day. Especially for Jamie Sullivan, it seems.”

Sullivan's head shot up as they entered. His fingers were clenched around his cup.

“Right, Jamie. I want to make it clear to you that you're not under arrest,” Raco said briskly. “But we need to clear up a couple of things we talked about the other day. You remember Federal Agent Falk. We'd like him to sit in on this chat, if you're willing for that to happen?”

Sullivan swallowed. He looked back and forth, not sure what the right answer was.

“I suppose. He's working for Gerry and Barb, right?”

“Unofficially,” Raco said.

“Do I need my lawyer?”

“If you like.”

There was a silence. Sullivan's lawyer, if he even had one, probably spent fifty weeks of his year dealing with property disputes and livestock contracts, Falk thought. This could well be fresh territory for him. Not to mention the cost per hour. Sullivan seemed to come to the same conclusion.

“I'm not under arrest?”

“No.”

“All right,” Sullivan said. “Just bloody ask. I've got to get back.”

“Good. We visited you two days ago, Jamie,” Raco began. “To talk to you about the day Luke, Karen, and Billy Hadler died.”

“Yes.” There was a fine sheen of sweat on Sullivan's upper lip.

“And during our visit, you told us that after Luke Hadler left your property at about 4:30
P.M.
, you stayed behind. You said”—he checked his notes—“
I stayed on the farm. I did some work. I had dinner with Gran.
”

Sullivan said nothing.

“Is there anything you want to say to us about that at this point?”

Sullivan swiveled his eyes between Falk and Raco. He shook his head.

“OK,” Raco said, and he slid a piece of paper across the desk. “Do you know what this is?”

Sullivan's tongue darted out and ran over his dry lips. Twice. “It's a CFA report,” he said.

“Yep. You'll see here on the date stamp it's from the same day the Hadlers died. Every time the firefighters are called out, they log one of these. In this case, they were responding to an emergency alert. You can see that here.” Raco pointed to typed lines on the paper. “And below, the address they were called to. Do you recognize the address?”

“Of course.” A long pause. “It's my farm.”

“According to the summary”—Raco picked up the report—“the fire crew was called to your farm at 5:47
P.M
. They were alerted automatically when your gran activated her panic button. They arrived to find your gran alone in the house with the stove alight. It says here they put it out, calmed her down. Tried to call you, got no answer, but then you arrived back at the house. That was at 6:05
P.M.
, according to this.”

“I was in the fields.”

“You weren't. I called the guy who wrote the report. He remembers you approaching from the main road.”

They all stared at each other. Sullivan broke away first, looking down at the table as though an answer might appear. A lone fly circled over their heads with a tinny drone.

“I was in the fields after Luke left at first, but then I went for a bit of a drive,” Sullivan said.

“Where?”

“Nowhere really. Just around.”

“Be specific,” Falk said.

“Out to the lookout. Nowhere near the Hadlers' place, though. I wanted some space to think.”

Falk looked at him. Sullivan tried to meet his gaze.

“That farm of yours,” Falk said. “How big is it?”

Sullivan hesitated, sensing a trap.

“Couple of hundred acres.”

“Pretty big, then.”

“Big enough.”

“So tell me why a man who spends twelve, fourteen hours a day on a couple of hundred acres of fields needs any more space to think?”

Sullivan looked away.

“So you reckon you went for a drive. Alone. What's your excuse for keeping that quiet?” Raco said.

Sullivan glanced at the ceiling, considering and rejecting his initial response. Then he held his palms out and looked them both in the eye properly for the first time.

“I knew how it would sound, and I didn't want the hassle. To be honest, I was hoping you wouldn't find out.”

For the first time, Falk felt like he was hearing the truth. He knew from the file that Sullivan was twenty-five years old and had moved to Kiewarra ten years earlier with his late father and grandmother. More than a decade after the day Ellie drowned. Still.

“Does the name Ellie Deacon mean anything to you?” he asked. As Sullivan glanced up, a look flashed across his face too fast for Falk to read.

“I know she died. Years ago. And I know—” He nodded at Falk. “I know Luke and—and you—were friends with her. That's about it.”

“Luke ever talk about her?”

Sullivan shook his head. “Not to me. He mentioned her once or twice, said that he had a friend and she drowned, but he didn't talk about the past much.”

Falk thumbed through the files until he found the photo he was looking for and slid it across the table. It was the close-up of the interior of Luke's truck's cargo tray, zoomed in tight on the four horizontal marks near his body.

“Any idea what they are?” Falk said, and Sullivan stared at them.

Four lines. In two columns of two on the interior side of the tray, about a meter apart. Sullivan didn't touch the photo. His eyes ran over the image, as though trying to work something out.

“Rust?” he ventured. He was neither convinced nor convincing.

“OK.” Falk took the photo back.

“Look, I didn't kill them.” Sullivan's pitch rose. “Luke was my mate. He was a good mate to me.”

“Then help us,” Raco said. “Help Luke. Don't make us waste time looking at you if we should be looking somewhere else.”

Wet circles had seeped out under the arms of Sullivan's blue shirt. The whiff of body odor drifted across the table. The silence stretched out.

Falk gambled. “Jamie. Her husband doesn't have to know.”

Sullivan looked up, and for a second there was a ghost of a grin on his face.

“You think I'm shagging someone's wife?”

“I think if there's anyone who can confirm where you were, you need to tell us now.”

Sullivan went very still. They waited. Then the farmer gave a tiny shake of his head. “There's not.”

Not quite right then, Falk thought. But he also got the feeling he wasn't entirely wrong.

 

 

“What's worse than being fingered for a triple murder?” Falk said half an hour later as they watched Sullivan get into his four-wheel drive and pull away. The interview had gone around in circles until Sullivan had folded his arms. He'd refused to say a word other than insisting he needed to check on his gran or call someone to make arrangements.

“Yeah, he's scared of something,” Raco said. “Exactly what, is the question?”

“We'll keep tabs on him,” Falk said. “I'm going to head back to the pub for a while, go through the rest of the Hadlers' files.”

When in doubt, an instructor of Falk's had always said, follow the money. It had been sound advice. Raco lit a cigarette and walked with him to his car, parked on a patch of land behind the station. They rounded the corner, and Falk stopped dead. He stood and stared, waiting for his brain to process what his eyes were seeing.

Across the doors and the hood of his car, the message had been carved over and over into the paintwork. The letters flashed silver in the sun.

WE WILL SKIN YOU KILLER SCUM

21

Gretchen stopped whatever she'd been saying, her mouth frozen mid-word as Falk drove his damaged car into the pub parking lot. She was talking to Scott Whitlam on the pavement as Lachie played around her feet. In his mirror, Falk could see them staring as he parked up.

“Bugger,” he said under his breath. It was only a few hundred meters from the police station to the pub, but it had felt like a long journey through the center of town. He got out of the car, the silver scrapings in the paint winking at him as he slammed the door.

“Oh my God. When did that happen?” Gretchen ran up with Lachie in tow. The little boy waved at Falk before turning his wide-eyed attention to the car. He reached out a stubby finger to trace the carved letters, and to Falk's horror began sounding out the first word before Gretchen hastily pulled him away. She sent him to play on the other side of the parking lot, and he reluctantly sloped off to poke things down a drain.

“Who's done this?” she said, turning back.

“I don't know,” Falk said.

Whitlam gave a low sympathetic whistle as he walked slowly around the car.

“Someone really went to town. What did they use? Knife or screwdriver or something?”

“Yeah, I really don't know.”

“Bunch of bastards,” Whitlam said. “This place. It's worse here than in the city sometimes.”

“Are you OK?” Gretchen touched Falk's elbow.

“Yeah,” Falk said. “Better than the car, at any rate.” He felt a stab of anger. He'd had that car for more than six years. Nothing flashy, but it had never caused him any trouble. It didn't deserve to be wrecked by some country moron.

WE WILL SKIN YOU

Falk turned to Whitlam. “It's about something from the past. This girl we were friends with—”

“It's OK.” Whitlam gave a nod. “I've heard the story.”

Gretchen ran a finger over the marks. “Aaron, listen. You need to be careful.”

“I'll be fine. It's annoying, but—”

“No. It's worse than that.”

“Yeah, well. What more are they really going to do? Skin me?”

She paused. “I don't know. Look at the Hadlers.”

“That's a bit different.”

“Are you sure? I mean, you don't really know.”

Falk looked to Whitlam for support, but the principal gave a shrug.

“It's a pressure cooker round here, mate. Little things become big things faster than you expect. You'd know that, though. It wouldn't hurt to be a bit careful. Especially with both things coming on the same day.”

Falk stared at him.

“Both things?”

Whitlam shot a glance at Gretchen, who shifted uncomfortably.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I thought you'd have seen them by now.”

“What?”

Whitlam took a square of paper from his back pocket and handed it to him. Falk unfolded it. A hot wind rustled the dead leaves around their feet.

“Who's seen this?”

Neither of them answered. Falk looked up.

“Well?”

“Everyone. They're all around town.”

 

 

The Fleece was busy, but Falk could hear McMurdo's Celtic twang rising over the cacophony. He stopped in the doorway behind Whitlam.

“I'm not entering into a debate with you, my friend,” McMurdo was saying from behind the bar. “Look around. This is a pub. This is not a democracy.”

He was clutching a handful of screwed-up fliers in his large fist. They were the same as the one burning a hole in Falk's pocket, and he had to fight the urge to take it out and look at it again. It was a crude reproduction, probably photocopied five hundred times at the town's tiny library.

Across the top in bold capitals were the words:
RIP ELLIE DEACON, AGE
16.
Below was a photo of Falk's father aged in his early forties. Next to it was a hastily taken snap of Falk himself that appeared to have been shot as he left the pub. He was caught in a sideways glance, his face frozen in a momentary grimace. Underneath the photos in smaller type were the words:
These men were questioned about the drowning of Ellie Deacon. More information needed. Protect our town! Keep Kiewarra safe!

Earlier in the parking lot, Gretchen had given him a hug.

“Bunch of absolute dickheads,” she'd whispered in his ear. “But watch yourself, anyway.” She'd scooped up a protesting Lachie and left. Whitlam had ferried Falk toward the pub, waving away his protests.

“They're like sharks in here, mate,” Whitlam had said. “They'll pounce at the first sign of blood. Your best move is to sit in there with me and have a cold beer. As is our God-given right as men born under the Southern Cross.”

Both now stopped in the entrance. A large purple-faced man, who Falk remembered had once turned his back on Erik Falk in the street, was arguing across the bar with McMurdo. The man stabbed a finger emphatically at the fliers and said something Falk didn't catch, and the barman shook his head.

“I don't know what to suggest, my friend,” McMurdo said. “You want to protest about something, you get yourself a pen and paper and write to your MP. But the place to do it is not in here.” He moved to shove the fliers in the bin, and as he did he caught Falk's eye across the room. He gave a tiny shake of his head.

“Let's go,” Falk said to Whitlam and backed away from the entrance. “Thanks anyway, but it's not a good idea.”

“Think you might be right. Unfortunately. Christ, it's like
Deliverance
round here sometimes,” Whitlam said. “What are you going to do?”

“Hole up in my room, I suppose. Go through some papers. Hope it blows over.”

“Stuff that. Come and have a drink at mine.”

“No. Thanks, though. It's better if I lie low.”

“Nope, that doesn't sound better at all. Come on. But we'll take my car, eh?” Whitlam fished out his keys with a grin. “It would do my wife good to meet you. It might help reassure her a bit.” His smile dimmed a fraction, then brightened. “And anyway, I've got something to show you.”