The Dry

by Harper,Jane

  “Why didn’t Luke kill Charlotte?” Falk said.

  “The popular money’s on conscience and guilt kicking in.”

  Falk walked out, back across the hall to Billy’s bedroom. He stood at the bloodstain in the corner, turned 180 degrees, and strode back across the hall into Charlotte’s room.

  “Eight steps,” Falk said. “But I’m pretty tall. So we’ll call it nine for most people. Nine steps from Billy’s body to where Charlotte was lying like a sitting duck. And Luke would’ve had the adrenaline going, blood pumping, red mist, the works. So nine steps. The question is, is that enough time for a total change of heart?”

  “Doesn’t sound like enough to me.”

  Falk thought about the man he’d known. What had once been a clear picture was now distorted and fuzzy.

  “Did you ever meet Luke?” he said.

  “No.”

  “He could change his mood like flipping a coin. Nine steps could be eight more than he needed.”

  But for the first time since he’d returned to Kiewarra, Falk felt a pinprick of genuine doubt.

  “It’s supposed to be a statement, though, isn’t it? Something like this. It’s personal. He murdered his entire family. That’s what you want people to say. Luke’s wife of seven years is bleeding out on the hall floor and he’s spent—what, two minutes? Three?—turning the bedroom upside down to murder his own son. He’s planning to kill himself when he’s finished. So if it was Luke”—he hesitated slightly on the word if—“why does his daughter get to live?”

  They stood for a moment, both looking at the mobile hanging still and silent above the empty cot space. Why slaughter a whole family bar the baby? Falk turned it back and forth in his mind until he could think of a few reasons, but only one good one.

  “Maybe whoever was here that day didn’t kill the baby because they just didn’t need to kill the baby,” Falk said finally. “Nothing personal about it. Doesn’t matter who you are, thirteen-month-olds don’t make good witnesses.”

  6

  “They’re not crash hot about me coming in here generally,” Raco said with a note of regret as he put two beers on the table at the Fleece. The table lurched lopsidedly under the weight, slopping a centimeter of liquid over the scratched surface. He had been home to change out of his uniform and had returned with a thick file labeled Hadler under his arm. “I’m not great for business. Everyone always has to make a big show of putting their car keys away.”

  They glanced over at the barman. It was the same large, bearded bloke from the night before. He was watching them over the top of a newspaper.

  “Policeman’s lot. Cheers.” Falk raised his glass and took a long swallow. He’d always been able to take or leave the booze, but at that moment he was glad of it. It was early evening quiet in the pub, and they were holed up alone in a corner. On the far side of the room three men stared with bovine blankness at greyhound racing on the TV. Falk didn’t recognize them, and they ignored him in turn. In the back room, the slot machines blinked and whistled. The air-conditioning was blowing Arctic cold.

  Raco took a sip. “So what now?”

  “Now you tell Clyde you’ve got concerns,” Falk said.

  If I’m guilty, so are you.

  “I go to the Clyde cops now, it’ll send them straight into arse-covering mode.” Raco frowned. “You know what’ll be going through their heads if they think they’ve stuffed this up. They’ll make a gymnastics team, bending over backward to prove their investigation was sound. I know I would.”

  “I’m not sure you’ve got a choice. Something like this. It’s not a one-man job.”

  “We’ve got Barnes.”

  “Who?”

  “My constable at the station. So that’s three of us.”

  “That’s only two of you, mate,” Falk said. “I can’t stay.”

  “I thought you told the Hadlers you would.”

  Falk rubbed the bridge of his nose. The slot machines behind him clanged more loudly. He felt like the noise was inside his head.

  “For a couple of days. That means one or two. Not for the duration of an investigation. An unofficial one at that. I’ve got a job to get back to.”

  “Fine.” Raco spoke like it was obvious. “Stay for the couple of days, then. It doesn’t have to be anything on the books. Do what you said you’d do on the money side. As soon as we get something solid, I’ll go to Clyde.”

  Falk said nothing. He thought about the two boxes of bank statements and documents he’d taken from the Hadlers’ place that were now sitting upstairs on his bed.

  Luke lied. You lied.

  He picked up their empty glasses and took them back to the bar.

  “Same again?” The barman hauled his bulk off a stool and put his newspaper down. He was the only person Falk had seen working in the place since yesterday.

  “Listen,” Falk said as he watched a clean glass put under the tap. “That room I’m in. Likely to be available a bit longer?”

  “Depends.” The barman set one beer on the counter. “I’ve been hearing one or two whispers about you, my friend.”

  “Have you.”

  “I have. And while I welcome the business, I don’t welcome trouble, see? Tricky enough running this place as is.”

  “The trouble won’t come from me.”

  “Just comes with you?”

  “Not much I can do about that. You know I’m police, though?”

  “I did hear that, indeed. But out here in the sticks at midnight with a few boozed-up fellas looking for trouble, those badges mean less than they should, you get me?”

  “Fine. Well. Up to you.” He wasn’t going to beg.

  The barman put the second glass on the counter with a half smile.

  “It’s all right, mate. You can untwist your knickers. Your money’s as good as the next man’s, and that’s good enough for me.”

  He gave Falk his change and picked up the newspaper. He appeared to be doing the cryptic crossword. “Take it as a friendly warning, though. They can be a funny lot around here. You find yourself in hot water, there’s not always a lot of help at hand.” He eyeballed Falk. “Although from what I hear, you don’t need telling about that.”

  Falk took both glasses back to the table. Raco was staring moodily at a soggy beer mat.

  “You can lose the look,” Falk said. “You’d better fill me in on the rest.”

  Raco sat up straighter and slid the folder across the table.

  “I’ve pulled this together from all the stuff I’ve got access to,” he said.

  Falk glanced around the pub. It was still half-empty. No one nearby. He flipped it open. The first page had a photo of Luke’s truck taken from a distance. A pool of blood had collected by the back wheels. He closed the file.

  “Just give me the highlights for now. What do we know about the courier who found them?”

  “He’s looking as clean as you’d want to be. Works for an established delivery firm. Has been for two years. He was delivering recipe books Karen had ordered online—that checks out. He was running late, last delivery of the day. First time he’d made a delivery to Kiewarra. Says he rocked up, saw Karen lying in the doorway, chucked up his lunch into the flower bed, and jumped back in his van. Made the emergency call from the main road.”

  “He left Charlotte in the house?”

  “Reckons he didn’t hear her.” Raco shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t. She’d been alone for a while. Might have cried herself out by then.”

  Falk turned to the first page of the file. Kept it open this time. He’d always assumed Luke had been found in the truck’s driver’s seat, but the images showed his body flat on its back in the cargo tray. The tailgate was open, and Luke’s legs dangled over as though he’d been sitting on the edge. A shotgun by his side pointed toward the mess where his head would have been. His face was completely missing.

  “You right?” Raco was watching him closely.

  “Yeah.” Falk took a long drink from his beer.
The blood had spread across the bottom of the cargo tray, settling in the metal ridges.

  “Forensics find anything useful in the tray?” Falk asked.

  Raco checked his notes.

  “Other than lots of blood—all Luke’s—nothing particular noted,” he said. “I’m not sure how well they looked, though. They had the weapon. It was a working vehicle. He had all sorts of stuff in the back.”

  Falk looked again at the photo, concentrating on the area around the body. Barely visible along the left interior side of the tray were four faint horizontal streaks. They looked fresh. Light brown against the dusty white paintwork, the longest was maybe thirty centimeters, the shortest about half that. They were in pairs of two, each pair about a meter apart horizontally. The placement wasn’t particularly uniform. The right-hand streaks were dead straight; those on the left had a slight angle.

  “What are these?” Falk pointed, and Raco leaned in.

  “I’m not sure. Like I said, truck would’ve carried all sorts.”

  “The truck still here?”

  Raco shook his head. “Sent to Melbourne. It’ll be cleaned up by now for sale or scrap, I reckon.”

  Falk looked through the photos, hoping for a better view, but was disappointed. He read over the rest of the notes. Everything appeared fairly standard. Other than the hole in the front of his head, Luke Hadler was a healthy male. A couple of kilos over his ideal weight, slightly high cholesterol. No drugs or alcohol in his system.

  Falk said, “What about the shotgun?”

  “Definitely Luke’s gun used on all three of them. Registered, licensed. His fingerprints were the only ones on it.”

  “Where did he keep it normally?”

  “Secured lockbox in the barn out the back,” Raco said. “The ammo—at least the Winchester stuff I’ve found—was locked away separately. He was pretty big on safety by the look of things.”

  Falk nodded, only half listening. He was looking at the fingerprint report from the shotgun. Six crisp ovals embroidered with tight whorls and lines. Two less clear, slight slippage, but still confirmed as belonging to the left thumb and right little finger of Luke Hadler.

  “The fingerprints are good,” Falk said.

  Raco caught his tone. Looked up from his notes.

  “Yeah, really solid. People didn’t take too much convincing after seeing them.”

  “Very solid,” Falk said, sliding the report over the table to Raco. “Maybe too solid? The guy’s supposed to have just killed his family. He would’ve been sweating and shaking like an addict. I’ve seen worse than these taken under evidence conditions.”

  “Shit.” Raco frowned at the prints. “Yeah, maybe.”

  Falk turned the page.

  “What did forensics find in the house?”

  “They found everything. Seems like half the community had traipsed through there at one time or another. About twenty different fingerprints, not including partials, fibers everywhere. I’m not saying Karen didn’t keep the place clean, but it was a farm with kids.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “The last person to see Luke alive was this mate of his, Jamie Sullivan. Has a farm to the east of town. Luke had been helping him shoot rabbits. Arrived in the afternoon about three, left about four thirty, Sullivan reckons. Other than that, around the Hadlers’ house there’s really only one neighbor who could have seen something. He was on his own property at the time.”

  Raco reached for the report. Falk felt a heavy weight in his stomach.

  “Neighbor’s a strange bloke, though.” Raco went on. “Aggressive old bastard. No love lost for Luke, whatever that’s worth. Not at all keen to assist the police with their inquiries.”

  “Mal Deacon,” Falk said. He made a point of keeping his voice even.

  Raco looked up in surprise. “That’s right. You know him?”

  “Yeah.”

  Raco waited, but Falk said nothing more. The silence stretched on.

  “Well, anyway,” Raco said. “He lives up there with his nephew—bloke called Grant Dow—who wasn’t home at the time. Deacon reckons he didn’t see anything. Might have heard the shots, but didn’t think anything of it. Thought it was farm stuff.”

  Falk just raised his eyebrows.

  “Thing is, what he did or didn’t see might not matter, anyway,” Raco said, taking out his tablet and tapping the screen. A low-res color image appeared. Everything was so still that it took Falk a minute to realize it was a video rather than a photograph.

  Raco handed him the tablet.

  “Security footage from the Hadlers’ farm.”

  “You’re kidding.” Falk gaped at the screen.

  “Nothing fancy. Barely a step up from a nanny cam really,” Raco said. “Luke installed it after a spate of equipment burglaries around here a year ago. A few of the farmers have them. Records for twenty-four hours, uploads the footage to the family computer, gets wiped after a week if no one actively saves it.”

  The camera appeared to be positioned above the largest barn. It was directed toward the yard to capture anyone coming or going. One side of the house was in shot, and in the upper corner of the screen a slim slice of driveway was visible. Raco skipped through the recording until he found the spot he was looking for, and paused it.

  “OK, this is the afternoon of the shootings. You can watch the whole day later if you want, but in a nutshell the family leaves the house in the morning separately. Luke drives off in his truck just after 5:00 A.M.—headed out to his own fields as far as I’ve been able to tell. Then shortly after eight, Karen, Billy, and Charlotte leave for school. She worked there part-time in an admin role, and Charlotte was in the on-site day care.”

  Raco tapped the screen, starting the footage. He passed Falk a pair of earphones and plugged them into the tablet. The sound was poor and muffled, as wind buffeted the microphone.

  “Nothing happens during the day,” Raco said. “Believe me, I’ve watched the entire thing in real time. No one comes and no one goes until 4:04 P.M., when Karen and the kids get home.”

  In the corner of the screen, a blue hatchback trundled by and disappeared. It was on an angle, visible only from the hood down to the tires. Falk could just make out the front number plate.

  “You can read that if you freeze it and blow it up,” Raco said. “It’s definitely Karen’s car.”

  Above the electronic crackling, Falk heard the thud of a car door slamming, followed a moment later by a second one. Raco tapped the screen again. The image jumped.

  “Then it’s all quiet for nearly an hour—again, I’ve checked—until … here. 5:01 P.M.”

  Raco pressed play and let Falk watch. For a few long seconds all was still. Then a shape moved in the corner. The silver pickup truck was taller than the hatchback and only visible from the headlights down. The number plate was visible. Again, the vehicle was there and gone in less than a second.

  “Luke’s,” Raco said.

  The image on-screen was completely static, although the footage was still rolling. There was the thud of an invisible car door again, then nothing for an agonizing twenty seconds. Suddenly a dull boom crashed in Falk’s ears, and he flinched. Karen. He felt his heart thumping in his chest.

  The scene was still again as the timer continued to tick over. Sixty seconds gone, then ninety. Falk realized he was holding his breath, willing there to be a different ending. He was both frustrated and grateful at that moment for the poor sound. Billy Hadler’s screams would be the haunting kind. When the second boom came it was almost a relief. Falk blinked once.

  There was no movement. Then, three minutes and forty-seven seconds after the vehicle had first appeared, it rattled away through the corner of the screen. The back wheels, the bottom of the tray, and the number plate of Luke Hadler’s vehicle were all perfectly visible.

  “No one else comes or goes until the courier thirty-five minutes later,” Raco said. Falk handed the tablet back to him. He could still hear the muffled booms ringing in h
is ears.

  “You seriously think there’s doubt after seeing that?” Falk said.

  “It’s Luke’s truck, but you can’t see who’s driving it,” Raco said. “Plus the other stuff. The ammunition. Killing Karen on the doorstep. The search in Billy’s room.”

  Falk stared at him.

  “I don’t get it. Why are you so convinced it wasn’t Luke? You didn’t even know him.”

  Raco shrugged. “I found the kids,” he said. “I had to see what Billy Hadler looked like after some monster killed him, and I’ll never be able to unsee that. I want to make sure the right thing’s been done by him. I know it seems crazy, and look, odds are Luke probably did do it. I admit that. But if there’s a tiny chance that someone else has done this and got away with it—”

  Raco shook his head and took a long drink.

  “You know, I look at Luke Hadler and on the surface he had it all—great wife, two kids, decent enough farm, respect in his community. Why would a man like that turn around one day and destroy his family? It makes no sense. I just can’t understand how someone like him could do something like that.”

  Falk rubbed a hand over his mouth and chin. It felt gritty. He needed a shave.

  Luke lied. You lied.

  “Raco,” he said. “There’s something about Luke you need to know.”

  7

  “Back when Luke and I were kids,” Falk said. “Well, not exactly kids. Older than that. Sixteen, actually—”

  He broke off as he sensed a swell of movement at the other end of the bar. The place had filled up without Falk noticing, and when he looked up now more than one familiar face glanced away. Falk felt the ripple of disruption a moment before he saw it. Drinkers lowered their eyes and shuffled aside without complaint as a group moved through the crowd. At the head was a meaty bloke with sludge-brown hair topped by sunglasses. Falk felt a cold trickle seep through his guts. He may not have recognized Grant Dow at the Hadlers’ funeral, but there was no mistaking him now.