by Candice Fox
‘Amanda.’
‘Anyway, less than a month ago you took out a life insurance policy on Richie.’ Amanda locked eyes with Henry as she fiddled with a corner of the Scotch box. ‘Did you not?’
Henry paused, then nodded slowly, gripping his cup with both hands. I watched, battling the sensation that I was losing my handle on the situation, as Henry poured himself another nip.
‘Why did you call an insurance investigator?’ I put my hands out, trying to keep up.
‘The guy’s getting divorced.’ Amanda gestured to Henry like it all made perfect sense. ‘He’s had to break ties with Sara and reset his entire life. New bank accounts. New mortgage arrangements. That also means updating his insurance policies. I wanted to see if he kept both Richie and Sara on his policy. It’s not a half-bad plan: bump the kid off, wait a month or so and then bump the wife off. Write a suicide note in her name expressing regret for killing the kid – bingo-bango, collect the payouts for both. Two birds, one stone.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’ I hid my head in my hands.
‘You did take Sara off your policy,’ Amanda said to Henry. ‘But it turns out Richie was only on the former policy for accidental death and suicide. Now he’s on it for wrongful death – including homicide or negligence occasioning death. He’s been upgraded!’
I gripped my hair with both hands. Henry let air ease through his lips, his eyes locked on his hands.
‘Did you not think –’ Amanda poked her head forward, trying to meet Henry’s eyes ‘– that mentioning the insurance upgrade to someone before this very second might have been kind of, maybe, just a little bit, I don’t know … incredibly important?’
‘I didn’t mention it because I knew …’ Henry’s lip trembled. He drank the Scotch in one. ‘I knew it would cause trouble. It didn’t mean anything when I took the policy on. I called up the insurance company to separate my policy from Sara’s, and they just mentioned that I could keep Richie on my policy and upgrade his cover really easily. Cheaply. They had some kind of deal going.’
‘A deal?’ I asked. I felt nauseated.
‘A special sale. You know these insurance companies,’ Henry pleaded. ‘They sell you whatever they can. They said I could cover the wrongful death of a dependent for only a small amount extra per month. The woman was really pushy on the phone.’
‘How much is the payout?’ I asked quietly.
‘A million schmackos.’ Amanda jigged her eyebrows up and down.
‘But the policy only pays for a dependent,’ Henry sighed. ‘Sara currently has full custody.’
‘So why’d you get the policy?’ Amanda asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Henry put his cup down and folded his arms on the tabletop, hid his face in them. His shoulders heaved with sobs. ‘I don’t know.’
We drove south. I watched Amanda, on her new bike, disappearing into the distance or weaving in and out of traffic, her lean body angled forward and her gloved fingers dancing on the handlebars to music she was playing under the helmet. Now and then I would pass her standing at a highway lookout, surveying the landscape, her hands on her hips and her boots spread apart like a superhero looking out over the city under her watch. Once I passed her sitting sideways on the bike outside a petrol station, eating a pie out of a tin-foil tray, her chin jutting forward and eyes sliding sideways as I went by waving.
Of the five known sex offenders living in a fifty-kilometre radius of the White Caps Hotel on the night of Richie’s disappearance, none were spotted on CCTV in or around the hotel. None of their cars were captured on traffic cameras in the area, and none of their credit or debit cards showed transactions at any of the bars or restaurants nearby. As they had done with me, the police had tracked the phones of these men and discovered their whereabouts in the critical time period, and then widened the search for offenders outside the fifty-kilometre exclusion zone.
A name turned up. Todd DeCasper. His car’s numberplate was picked up on a traffic camera on Reservoir Road, a major arterial into Cairns. The time logged was 5.21 pm.
Todd DeCasper had already been interviewed by the police, and had, by all accounts, been cooperative. But it’s surprising what a person will remember sometimes when they tell their story to a different party a second time – and perhaps what they’ll change or leave out.
Chief Clark had asked us to speak to Todd DeCasper because he thought the man might be distrustful of police, and would perhaps be a little more receptive to someone in my situation. I believed he was right.
Mr DeCasper, as his students called him, had been a Year 6 teacher at a public school in Zeerich, in the mountains behind Cardwell, a couple of hours south of Cairns. He was an artistic kind of guy, which his pupils appreciated – he encouraged them to see, feel and experience the things they learned, rather than leaning heavily on reading and writing skills. When they studied ancient Egypt, he arranged a mock archaeological dig for them in the school playground, burying clay artefacts in the sand. When they learned about pirates, he dressed as a bedraggled sea captain and led the students in an invasion of another classroom. He was well-liked by staff – ever the cheerful volunteer at the fundraising barbecue, and the organiser of enormous, colourful cards signed by all staff to celebrate pregnancies, retirements or promotions across his cohort.
Later, when interviewed for the newspapers, Todd DeCasper’s colleagues would acknowledge that they had at times witnessed a darker side to him, but how much of this was invented or embellished to suit the narrative of his public disgrace, it was hard to say. There were stories about him drinking too much at the teachers’ Christmas party, becoming belligerent and sleazy, and apologising profusely the next day with a series of remorseful visits to specific classrooms at lunchtime. They talked about him having apparently no romantic life to speak of, shying away from blind dates the other staff tried to organise and flat-out shrugging off the flirtations of a visiting teacher who took an interest in him. When I heard these stories, I was sceptical. A rash of the same types of tales had come out after my arrest, of me fighting with my neighbours over parking spaces and making physical threats, of me meeting with drug dealers on suburban street corners and getting into cars with unsavoury types.
In truth, it was Todd DeCasper himself who had raised the alarm about his secret life. He had walked into the Zeerich police station on a Saturday morning and asked to speak to a supervising officer about reporting a serious crime. He’d been edgy, evasive, wanting to speak in ‘hypotheticals’ and refusing to be recorded. He’d wanted promises of protection, and the police had told him he’d been watching too many movies. They’d told him to spit it out, and, in a brightly illuminated back room, over a styrofoam cup of coffee, he finally did.
Todd DeCasper was attracted to children. He’d known this for some time, probably ten years. He’d realised, when he finally moved out of the university classroom where he’d obtained his education degree and into the active school classroom, that he felt more than just a creative, protective, nurturing interest in children. There was something more. Something bad.
He went online for diagnosis, hoping to find treatment options, sitting sweaty and short of breath as he clicked through every link, not wanting to stumble onto anything that might get him into trouble. He found psychologists, expensive ones, who were mostly out of state. He wrote down their phone numbers but never called them. Todd inched his way towards the less visible websites. He found a chat room. Then he found a man living not an hour’s drive away who wanted to listen to his story.
Their first meeting was awkward. Neither Todd nor his new friend Barry could say the word, and turning the conversation too swiftly towards the point of their connection made both of them fall back into soulless small talk. Though they hadn’t actually made any great leaps in supporting or understanding each other, just sitting with Barry in a roadside bar, knowing someone else out there had his same problem, gave Todd reassurance.
For a year, Todd and Barry met at the same bar, at the sam
e table, and over beers they spoke about their urges. Todd found that Barry was the more confident one, that he got carried away and would sometimes fantasise openly. Sometimes Todd didn’t stop him. Todd told Barry he was terrified of offending. That the opportunity to do so was rife. He asked Barry if he should leave his job as a teacher, whether the sacrifice was worth it to protect the children that he put at risk simply by being in the same room as them. Barry didn’t have any solid advice. He just wanted to talk about himself.
One day Barry came to the bar shivering and wired. Todd wondered, initially, if he was on something. They made small talk, and when that ran out, Todd asked Barry what was wrong with him. Barry came out with it, almost without hesitation. He’d offended against a co-worker’s kid.
Todd stayed up all night, lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling, too cold without blankets and too hot with them on. The next morning, he’d walked into the police station. After his statement was given, and all the personal details he had on Barry filled out neatly on an official statement, Todd was read his rights by his interviewing officer and placed under arrest.
He was smaller than I’d imagined. But I suppose I’d been unfair in assuming that someone at the centre of such a colossal storm had to be of a certain height and weight. Todd DeCasper was waiting for us on the steps at the front of his house, hidden from view from the street by a lemon tree, a cigarette trailing smoke from one hand, a leaf twirling idly in the fingers of the other. He was a battered, windswept mid-forties. The property was shaded and cool, a Spanish-style stone place nestled in the mountains, the neighbouring houses barely visible through the surrounding foliage. I’d learned from reading Todd’s file that the place had belonged to his deceased mother, and was in her name, which wasn’t DeCasper. A good hideout, but one that wouldn’t last forever. As I pulled into the driveway, I could already see a man across the street raking leaves who was taking an interest, probably on the lookout since he’d noticed police cars here yesterday.
Todd’s downfall had come after mine, so the public hadn’t been as interested in the story. I’d read the news about his arrest in the papers in the prison common room, the article followed by an opinion piece by a current affairs commentator wondering if there was an epidemic of child sex offenders in the public service. Todd had only been incarcerated at the watch house for a couple of weeks, arrested under the suspicion of acts against children, but not brought up to the court on charges. Police had delayed charges until they had something tangible to prove that Todd had offended, telling the court in his absence that he was a self-professed danger to children. Todd, apparently wanting to do whatever he could to please the police, didn’t apply for bail. Though Todd’s life was turned upside down in pursuit of some proof he had acted on his urges, he was never formally charged. This didn’t stop his story from reaching the national news while he was locked up. He had ‘outed’ himself to the entire country without ever having been charged with anything.
But, as I knew intimately, a man didn’t need to be convicted of a crime for the whole world to hate him for doing it.
Six months had passed since Todd’s arrest on the day I walked up his driveway. He had the short, messy beard of a man on the edge, the heaviness and darkness of the hairs a stark contrast to his pale skin. He was lean and dressed in baggy clothes that smelled of mothballs when I shook his hand, the garments probably packed away and lovingly stored by his mother when he went into custody.
‘I thought you said you had a partner,’ he said, looking around me down the street.
‘She’ll be here any minute,’ I said. ‘Let me warn you now – she has absolutely no tact. She’s likely to be insensitive towards you.’
‘I don’t expect sensitivity,’ Todd murmured, his cigarette burning into a long cylinder of ash. ‘Not under the current circumstances. You’ve got a boy missing. There’s no time for tact.’
I took out my phone, pretended to hold it to the light to read an email and took a picture of DeCasper for my records. Todd’s agreeable attitude was strangely annoying. He offered me a cigarette, and I shook my head, the politest refusal I could manage.
Amanda rolled up and parked her bike on the pebbled driveway, shaking her hair out of the helmet. She grinned at Todd like they were old friends.
‘What’s up, Teach?’ she asked.
The house was full of dust. It lay in a fine sheet over everything, coating a glass ashtray on the table beside the couch and the lids of the transparent plastic tubs stacked against the wall. The stasis of Todd’s life, the days without the morning commute, ringing bells, coffee in the staffroom, lines of kids walking from the classroom to the football field, the field to the hall. The only thing that moved was the pendulum in an old grandfather clock. I stood and looked at the tubs, a dozen or so of them, filled with colourful stacks of paper and swathes of cheap fabric. Marker labels on the sides of the tubs. Ancient Rome – Years 5–6. Antarctica – Year 4. There were folders of tattered papers, rolls of stickers in gold and fluorescent colours. Amanda popped a box open without asking and peeled a sticker that read You’re a star! off a roll, sticking it to the breast of her T-shirt.
‘I’m a star,’ she mouthed to me behind Todd’s back, jabbing a thumb proudly in her chest.
‘I don’t know what I’ll do with all the teaching resources I still have,’ Todd said, sinking into a well-worn groove in an ancient brown couch on the other side of the coffee table. ‘I haven’t had time to sort them.’
‘You haven’t had time?’ Amanda raised her eyebrows. ‘In six months?’
‘Oh, you know.’ Todd sighed. ‘The motivation, I mean. I’ve been passing the time as I can. Watching a lot of television. Reading. I’d hate to see them go to waste, though. They’ll be of some value to someone. You don’t get much of a budget in the public system. The costumes are handmade. My mother did the pirate one.’
‘Mr DeCasper,’ I said, taking a seat on the couch opposite, ‘I understand police have already been out here and spoken to you. Is that right?’
‘Todd’s fine. Yes, they came yesterday. They had me sign a statement. Walked around the yard a bit. They didn’t tell me much about the case itself, but I’ve read some stuff about it in the papers.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Amanda, who was snooping through the photographs on the mantelpiece. ‘Can I get you guys a cup of coffee? You’re welcome to take a seat.’
‘She’s fidgety,’ I said. ‘She likes to wander.’
‘It’s a terrible thing,’ he said. ‘Disappeared right out of the hotel, they think? And nothing on the cameras? It’s so scary. I imagine the police will be doing the rounds of all the people of interest in the area. They came to your place, did they?’
I felt a spark of pain, like a needle poked into the back of my skull. ‘No. They had no reason to come to my place.’
‘Of course, of course!’ Todd held a hand out. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I just –’
‘I’m not a paedophile. I’ve never admitted to being a paedophile. And there’s never been any evidence to suggest that I –’
‘I just meant –’
‘Never mind.’ I inhaled slowly. ‘Mr DeCasper, I believe you were in the vicinity of the White Caps Hotel at the time of Richie Farrow’s disappearance. That’s bad news.’
‘It really is,’ he sighed. He watched Amanda as she neared the television set, a three-foot-wide, ancient wood-veneer job. I’d had a television like that in my room when I was a kid. It had been heavy, unmoveable, the remote only responding to every third or fourth push of the buttons. Amanda bent and ran a hand over the curved grey screen, making a tink-tink-tink sound as she knocked on the glass.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit down?’ Todd asked.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, smiling and walking around the back of the couch I was sitting on.
‘You know,’ he said, looking at his hands in his lap. ‘I realise that I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself. But I do feel a little sorry for myself som
etimes. I did the right thing, at least to my way of thinking. I knew I had a problem, a big problem, and I tried to tackle it. I’ve never committed a crime against a child. I’ve never committed a crime at all, actually. And when I came to realise that my friend, someone I trusted very deeply, had done something awful, something criminal – well, I went right to the police, didn’t I?’
I said nothing. Amanda picked up an orange china cat from a table by the end of the couch, examined it and set it back down.
‘They couldn’t charge me with anything,’ DeCasper continued. ‘Talking to someone in a pub about your … your predilections … that’s not a crime. I’ve never looked at child pornography or exchanged it with anyone, and believe me, the police tried everything they could to disprove that. They interviewed all my students, present and past, and they talked to all my colleagues and my family members. They even went to Tasmania and spoke to my young cousins. I haven’t seen those kids in years.’
‘Todd,’ I said.
‘I feel like I did the right thing.’
‘It was the right thing,’ I said carefully. ‘Reporting your friend.’
‘You’re a star, Mr DeCasper!’ Amanda gave him a thumbs up.
‘He’s in jail now,’ Todd said. He looked at the curtains, the shadows of leaves playing on the lace. ‘Where I was. Same cell block and everything.’
‘Why were you in Cairns last Friday night, Todd?’ I asked. He didn’t answer immediately, was fixated on the window like he was watching something across the street. Amanda had moved back to the television, turned and rested her butt against the huge machine.
‘I deliver oxygen tanks,’ Todd said suddenly, as though he’d had to fish around for the information in his disorganised mind. ‘That’s what I do now. I’m lucky to have a job. I don’t have any direct contact with the company. I’ve never met the bosses. I get an email in the morning with the addresses, and I load up the tanks and drive them out. They’re mostly emphysema patients, but sometimes it’s hospitals with bulk or emergency orders. You’d think it would have convinced me to give up smoking.’ He gave a short, half-hearted laugh. ‘I’ve actually started smoking cigars. You’ve got to have some vices, haven’t you?’