The Dry (24 page)

On-screen, Karen straightened and stood completely still for a moment, one hand on the car roof, her back to the camera. Her head tilted forward a fraction, and she brought a hand to her face. Made one small movement with her fingers. Then another.

“Jesus, is she crying?” Falk said. “Rewind that bit, quick.”

No one spoke as they watched it again. Then a third time, and a fourth. Head down, two small flicks of her hand.

“I can't tell,” Raco said. “It looks a bit like she could be. But she could as easily be scratching her nose.”

They let the tape run on this time. Karen lifted her head, took what could have been a deep breath, then opened the driver's door and climbed in. She reversed out of the space and was gone. The parking lot was empty again. The time stamp on the tape showed she and her son had less than eighty minutes to live.

They stared at the footage, skipping over long stretches during which no one came or went. The school receptionist emerged ten minutes after Karen, then nothing happened for about forty minutes. Eventually, the teachers started heading to their cars one by one. Whitlam identified each as they appeared. The caretaker returned, put his bag back in the trunk, and drove away just after 4:30
P.M
.

Eventually, Whitlam's car was the only one left in the lot. They sped ahead on the tape. Shortly after 7:00
P.M.
, Whitlam himself appeared on-screen. He was walking slowly, his head down and his broad shoulders slumped forward. In the seat next to Falk, the principal exhaled. His jaw was clenched tight as he watched the footage.

“It's hard to look at this,” he said. “By then, the Clyde cops had called to tell me Billy and Karen were dead.”

They watched on as Whitlam slowly got into his car and, after a couple of false starts, successfully reversed out and drove away. They let the tape run for another ten minutes. Grant Dow was nowhere to be seen.

 

 

“I'll be off, then,” Deborah called from reception, handbag clutched over her shoulder. She waited a moment but received only a vague grunt in response. Falk looked up and gave her a smile. Her manner toward him had thawed in the past few days, and he felt they'd had a breakthrough when she'd brought him a coffee as she fetched one for the others. He suspected Raco had had a word.

Raco and Constable Barnes barely reacted as the station door slammed behind her. The three of them were each at a desk, staring at their computer screens as grainy images played out. They had taken all the available footage from both cameras at the school, then headed into town.

There were three CCTV cameras in Kiewarra's main street, Raco had told Falk. One beside the pub, one near the council offices, and one over the door of the pharmacy storeroom. They'd collected the footage from each.

Barnes yawned and stretched, his bulky arms reaching toward the ceiling. Falk was poised for the grumbling to start, but Barnes simply turned back to his screen without complaint. Barnes hadn't known Luke or Karen, he'd confided to Falk earlier, but he'd given Billy Hadler's class a talk on road safety a couple of weeks before his death. He still had the thank-you card from the class, including Billy's crayon signature, on his desk.

Falk stifled a yawn himself. They'd been at it for four hours. Falk was concentrating on the recordings taken from the school. He'd seen one or two interesting things over the hours. A pupil taking a secret piss against the principal's front wheels. A teacher scraping a colleague's car with her own, then hastily driving away. But no sign of Grant Dow.

Instead Falk found himself repeatedly watching the footage of Karen. She had arrived and left three times that week—every day but Tuesday, which was her day off, and Friday, by which time she was dead. Each day was much the same. At about 8:30
A.M.
her car would pull up. She would get the children out, gather backpacks and sun hats, and disappear off camera in the direction of the school. Shortly after 3:30
P.M.
the process would be reversed.

Falk studied her movements. The way she bent over to talk to Billy, one hand on the little boy's shoulder. He couldn't make out her face, but he imagined her smiling at her son. He watched the way she cradled Charlotte as she transferred her baby daughter from car seat to stroller. Karen Hadler had been a nice woman before she was shot in the stomach. Good both with children and finances. Falk felt certain Barb was right. He would have liked her.

He obsessively rewound the footage from the Thursday, the day Karen and her son had been murdered. He played and replayed the tape constantly, analyzing every frame. Was that a slight hesitation in her step as she approached the car? Had something in the bushland caught her eye? Was she squeezing her child's hand tighter than usual? Falk suspected he was jumping at shadows, but he continued to watch over and over. He stared at the image of his dead friend's blond wife and silently willed her to pick up her cell phone and call the number she had scribbled on the receipt. He willed his past self to answer. Neither event happened. The script remained unchanged.

Falk was debating whether to call it a day when Barnes dropped the pen he'd been twirling and sat up in his chair.

“Hey, check this out.” Barnes clicked his mouse, winding back the grainy film. He had been combing through the material from the pharmacy camera, which was trained on nothing more exciting than a quiet back alley and the door leading to their supply room.

“What is it? Dow?” Falk said. He and Raco crowded around the screen.

“Not exactly,” Barnes said as he set the footage running. The time stamp showed 4:41
P.M.
on Thursday. Just over an hour before Karen and Billy Hadler were found dead.

For a few seconds the video looked like a still image, showing nothing but the empty alley. Suddenly a four-wheel drive flashed past. It was there and gone in less than a second.

Barnes rewound the footage and slowed it down. He froze the image as the car reappeared. It was blurry and at an awkward angle, but it didn't matter. The driver's face was clear. Through the windshield, Jamie Sullivan stared back at them.

 

 

The light was fading by the time Falk and Raco got to the alley, but there wasn't much to see. They'd let Barnes call it a day after a job well done. Falk stood under the pharmacy's CCTV camera and looked around. The small road was narrow and ran parallel to Kiewarra's main street. On one side it backed on to the real estate agent, a hairdresser's, the doctors' office, and the pharmacy. On the other, parcels of scrubland had been turned into makeshift parking lots. It was completely deserted.

Falk and Raco walked the full length of the lane. It didn't take long. It was accessible by car at both ends and connected with the roads leading east and west out of town. In rush hour it would offer a perfect rat-run to cut through town without hitting the main drag. But this was Kiewarra, Falk thought, and it didn't have a rush hour.

“So why did our friend Jamie Sullivan want to avoid being seen in town twenty minutes before the Hadlers were killed?” Falk's voice echoed off the brickwork.

“A few reasons come to mind. None of them good,” Raco answered.

Falk peered up at the camera's lens.

“At least we have some idea where he was now,” Falk said. “He could have gotten from here to the Hadlers' place in the time frame, couldn't he?”

“Yeah, no problem at all.”

Falk leaned against the wall and tilted his head back. The bricks had soaked in the heat of the day. He felt exhausted. His eyes were gritty when he closed them.

“So we've got Jamie Sullivan, who claims to be Luke's great mate, lying about where he was and caught sneaking around on camera an hour before his friend was shot dead,” Raco said. “Then we've got Grant Dow, who admits he couldn't stand Luke, alibied to the back teeth while at the same time his name is in a dead woman's handwriting.”

Falk opened an eye and looked at Raco.

“Don't forget the driver of the mysterious white truck who may or may not have seen Luke Hadler cycling away from the river at the crossroads twenty years ago,” he said.

“And that.”

They stood in silence for a long while, staring up the alleyway as though the answer might be graffitied there.

“Stuff it,” Falk said, pushing himself away from the wall and standing straight. It was an effort. “Let's work through methodically. First we drag Sullivan in again and ask him what the hell he was doing on camera in a back alleyway. I've had it up to here with that bloke messing us around.”

“Now?” Raco's eyes were red-rimmed. He looked as tired as Falk felt.

“Tomorrow.”

 

 

As they cut through a narrow passageway back to the main road, Raco's phone rang. He paused on the pavement and dug it out.

“It's my wife. Sorry, I'd better take it.” He put it to his ear. “Hello, my beauty.” They'd stopped outside the convenience store. Falk jerked his head toward the shop and mimed a drinking gesture. Raco nodded gratefully.

Inside, the shop was cool and quiet. It was technically the same store Ellie had worked in, spending her evenings punching the price of milk and cigarettes into the register. They'd put up posters of her face in the window after her body was found, collecting for a funeral wreath.

The layout had changed so much since then it was almost unrecognizable. But Falk still remembered coming to chat with her behind the counter, as often as he could find an excuse to. Spending his money on things he didn't want or need.

The shop's ancient fridges had been replaced at some point by open chillers, and Falk now lingered beside them, feeling some of the fieriness evaporate from his skin. His core remained uncomfortably high, like the hint of a lingering fever. Eventually, he picked up two bottles of water and selected a slightly curled ham-and-cheese sandwich and a plastic-sealed muffin for dinner.

Falk turned to take his purchases to the counter and groaned silently when he realized he once again recognized the face behind the register. He hadn't seen the shopkeeper since they were both stuck behind desks in the same sweltering classrooms.

The guy had less hair now, but his heavy features were still familiar. He'd been one of those kids who was slow on the uptake and quick to anger, Falk remembered as he cast about desperately for his name. He suspected, with a flash of guilt, he'd been the punchline of Luke's jokes from time to time, and Falk had never troubled himself to intervene. He forced a smile onto his face now as he walked up and put his goods on the counter.

“How are you going these days, Ian?” he said, managing at the last moment to pluck the guy's name from the ether as he pulled out his wallet. Ian something. Willis.

Willis stared at the items as though he'd forgotten what to do.

“Just these, thanks, mate,” Falk said.

The other man said nothing but instead lifted his head and looked past Falk's shoulder.

“Next,” he called in a clear voice.

Falk looked around. There was no one else in the shop. He turned back. Willis was still staring determinedly into the middle distance. Falk felt a hot flash of irritation. And something else. Shame, almost.

“All right, mate. I'm not trying to cause you any grief. I'll buy these, and I'll be out of your hair,” Falk tried again, pushing his dinner closer over the counter. “And I won't tell anyone you served me—Scout's honor.”

The man continued to stare past him. “Next.”

“Really?” Falk could hear the anger in his voice. “This town's dying on its feet, and you can afford to turn down a sale, can you?”

The shopkeeper looked away and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Falk was considering taking the items and leaving the money on the counter, when Willis opened his mouth.

“I heard you were back. Mandy Vaser reckons you've been bothering kiddies in the park.” He tried to sound disgusted but couldn't disguise the malicious glee in his voice.

“You are joking,” Falk said.

His old classmate shook his head, resuming his stare into the middle distance. “So I'm not interested in serving you. Not today, not ever.”

Falk stared at him. The guy had probably been waiting twenty years to feel superior to someone and wasn't about to waste his chance, Falk realized. He opened his mouth to argue, then stopped. It was the very definition of wasted energy.

“Forget it.” Falk left the items on the counter. “Good luck to you, Ian. You'll need it round here.” The door chime rang behind him as he pushed out into the heat.

Raco had put his phone away and looked from Falk's empty hands to the expression on his face.

“What happened?”

“Changed my mind.”

Raco glanced at the shop and back to Falk, comprehension settling in.

“You want me to have a word?”

“No, leave it. Thanks, anyway. I'll see you tomorrow. Work out the plan for Sullivan.”

Falk turned, feeling more unnerved than he wanted to admit about the exchange in the shop. He was suddenly keen to get away from there, even though all that was waiting for him was a long evening in his tiny pub room. Raco eyeballed the shop once more, tempted, then looked back at Falk.

“Look. Come for dinner. Round mine,” Raco said. “My wife's been on at me for days to ask you.”

“No, honestly, it's OK—”

“Mate, either I argue it out with you now, or I argue it out with her later. At least I've got a chance of winning against you.”

25

Forty minutes later Rita Raco placed a steaming bowl of pasta in front of Falk. She moved away with a feather-light touch on his shoulder and returned a moment later with a bottle of wine. They sat outdoors around a small pine table covered with a colorful cloth as the sky turned a deep indigo. The Racos lived in a converted former shop at the far end of the main street. Walking distance to the police station. The back garden housed a lavender bush and a lemon tree, and fairy lights strung along the fence gave the scene a festive glow.