The Dry

by Harper,Jane

  “Knocking off early?” Raco called when they got inside, the annoyance evident in his tone.

  The receptionist, in her sixties but with the improbable coal-colored hair of a young Elizabeth Taylor, raised her chin defiantly.

  “I was in early,” she said, stiffening slightly in her position behind the counter. Handbag over her shoulder like a soldier’s weapon. Raco introduced her as Deborah. She didn’t shake hands.

  In the office space behind her, Constable Evan Barnes looked up guiltily, clutching his car keys.

  “Afternoon, boss,” Barnes said. “’Bout that time, isn’t it?” His voice was overly casual, and he made a big show of checking his watch. “Oh. Yeah. Still a couple of minutes to go yet.”

  A big man with a fresh-faced complexion and curly hair that stuck out in unfortunate tufts, he sat back down at his desk and started shuffling paper. Raco rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, go on. Bugger off,” he said, lifting the counter hatch. “Have a good weekend. We’ll just have to hope the town doesn’t burn to the ground at one minute to five, won’t we?”

  Deborah straightened her spine like a woman fortified by the knowledge she’d been in the right all along.

  “Bye, then,” she said to Raco. She gave Falk a tiny curt nod, her gaze firmly on his forehead rather than his eyes.

  Falk felt a cold bead of understanding drop somewhere in his chest. She knew. He wasn’t really surprised. Assuming Deborah was Kiewarra born and bred, she was the right age to remember Ellie Deacon. It had been the most dramatic thing ever to happen in Kiewarra, at least until the Hadlers’ deaths. She’d probably tutted over coffee as she’d read the newspaper articles under Ellie’s black-and-white photo. Traded nuggets of gossip with neighbors. Perhaps she’d known his dad. Before it happened, of course. She wouldn’t have admitted to knowing the Falk family afterward.

  Hours after Luke’s face had disappeared from his bedroom window, Aaron lay awake. The events ran through his head on a loop. Ellie, the river, fishing, the note. Luke and I were shooting rabbits together.

  He waited for it all night, but when the knock came at last, it wasn’t for him. Falk watched in mute horror as his father was forced to wash the fields from his hands and accompany the officers to the station. The name on the note did not specify which Falk, they said, and at sixteen, the younger one was technically still a child.

  Erik Falk, a willowy and stoic man, was kept in the station for five hours.

  Did he know Ellie Deacon? Yes, of course. She was a neighbor’s child. She was a friend of his son’s. She was the girl who was missing.

  He was asked for an alibi for the day of her death. He’d been out much of the afternoon buying supplies. In the evening he had popped into the pub. Had been seen by a dozen people in a handful of locations. Tight enough, if not quite watertight. So the questions continued. Yes, he had spoken to the girl in the past. Several times? Yes. Many times? Probably. And no. He could not explain why Ellie Deacon had a note with his name on it and the date of her death.

  But Falk wasn’t only his name, was it? the officers said pointedly. At that, Aaron’s father fell silent. He clamped down and refused to say another word.

  They let him go, and then it was his son’s turn.

  “Barnes is on temporary transfer from Melbourne,” Raco said as Falk followed him under the hatch to the office. Behind them, the station door slammed shut, and they were alone.

  “Really?” Falk was surprised. Barnes had the wholesome milk-fed look of a homegrown country boy.

  “Yeah, his parents are in farming, though. Not here; somewhere out west. I think that made him the obvious choice for the placement. I feel for the guy really; his backside barely touched the ground in the city before they sent him up here. Having said that—” Raco glanced toward the closed station door, then reconsidered. “Never mind.”

  Falk could guess. It was a rare day when a city force sent its best officer on a country temporary transfer, especially to a place like Kiewarra. Barnes was unlikely to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Raco may have been too tactful to say it, but the message was clear. In this station, he was pretty much on his own.

  They put the box of Karen’s and Billy’s belongings on a spare desk and opened it. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. At the window, a fly bashed itself repeatedly against the glass.

  Aaron sat on a wooden chair, his bladder nervous and aching, and stuck to the plan. I was with Luke Hadler. Shooting rabbits. Two; we got two. Yes, Ellie is—was, I mean—my friend. Yes, I saw her at school that day. No! We didn’t fight. I didn’t even see her later. I didn’t attack her. I was with Luke Hadler. I was with Luke Hadler. We were shooting rabbits. I was with Luke Hadler.

  They had to let him go.

  Some of the whispers took on a new shape then. Not murder, perhaps, but suicide. A vulnerable girl led up the path by the Falk boy was a popular version. Pursued and used by his slightly odd father was another. Who was to say? Either way, between them they as good as killed her. The rumors were fed well by Ellie’s father, Mal Deacon, and grew fat and solid. They sprouted legs and heads, and they never died.

  One night a brick was thrown through the Falks’ front window. Two days later, Aaron’s father was turned away from the corner shop. Forced to walk out empty-handed with burning eyes and his groceries piled on the counter. The following afternoon, Aaron was followed home from school by three men in a truck. They crept behind him as he pedaled his bike faster and faster, wobbling every time he dared look over his shoulder, his breath loud in his ears.

  Raco reached into the box and laid out the contents in a line on the desk.

  There was a coffee mug, a stapler with “Karen” written on in Wite-Out, a heavy-knit cardigan, a small bottle of perfume called Spring Fling, and a framed picture of Billy and Charlotte. It was a meager offering.

  Falk opened up the frame and looked behind the photo. Nothing. He put it back together. Across the desk, Raco took the cap off the perfume and sprayed it. A light citrusy scent floated into the air. Falk liked it.

  They moved on to Billy’s belongings: three paintings of cars, a small pair of gym shoes, a beginner’s reading book, and a pack of coloring pencils. Falk turned over the pages of the book, not at all sure what he was looking for.

  It was around that time he realized his father was watching him. From across the room, through a window, over his newspaper. Aaron would get the feathery sense across the back of his neck and would look up. Sometimes Erik’s gaze would flick away. Sometimes it wouldn’t. Contemplative and silent. Aaron waited for the question, but it didn’t come.

  A dead calf was left on their doorstep, its throat cut so deep that the head was almost severed. The next morning, father and son bundled what they could into their truck. Aaron said a hasty good-bye to Gretchen and a longer good-bye to Luke. None of them mentioned why he was leaving. As they drove out of Kiewarra, Mal Deacon’s white truck followed them for a hundred kilometers past the town limits.

  They’d never gone back.

  “Karen made Billy come home that afternoon,” Falk said. He’d been thinking it over since leaving the school. “He was supposed to be out playing with his friend, and she kept him home on the day he was killed. How do you feel about chalking that up to coincidence?”

  “Not good.” Raco shook his head.

  “Me neither.”

  “But if she’d had any idea what was going to happen, surely she’d have got both kids as far away as possible.”

  “Maybe she suspected something was up but didn’t know what,” Falk said.

  “Or how bad it was going to be.”

  Falk picked up Karen’s coffee mug and put it down again. He checked the box, felt around the edges. It was empty.

  “I was hoping for something more,” Raco said.

  “Me too.”

  They stared at the items for a long time, then one by one, put them back.

  13

  The cockatoos were shrieking in the
trees when Falk left the station. They called each other home to roost in a deafening chorus as the early evening shadows grew. The air felt clammy, and a line of sweat ran down Falk’s back.

  He wandered along the main street, in no rush to reach the pub waiting at the other end. It wasn’t late, but few people were about. Falk peered into the windows of the abandoned shops, pressing his forehead against the glass. He could still remember what most of them used to be. The bakery. A bookshop. Many had been completely stripped out. It was impossible to tell how long they’d stood bare.

  He paused as he came to a hardware store displaying a line of cotton work shirts in the window. A gray-haired man, wearing one of the very same shirts under an apron with a name badge, had his hand on the Open sign hanging on the door. He paused mid-flip as he noticed Falk assessing the merchandise.

  Falk plucked at his own shirt. It was the same one he’d worn to the funeral, and it was stiff from being rinsed out in the bathroom sink. It stuck under his arms. He went inside.

  Under the harsh shop lights, the man’s warm smile froze mid-grin as recognition kicked in a moment later. His eyes darted around the deserted shop, which Falk suspected had been as empty for most of the day. A moment’s hesitation, then the smile continued. Easier to have principles when you’ve got dollars in the register, Falk thought. The shopkeeper guided him through the store’s limited apparel selection with the thoroughness of a gentleman’s tailor. Falk bought three shirts, because the man seemed so grateful that he was prepared to buy one.

  Back on the street, Falk tucked the purchases under his arm and continued on. It wasn’t much of a walk. He passed a takeout that seemed to offer cuisine from any corner of the world as long as it was fried or could be displayed in a pie warmer. A doctors’ office, a pharmacy, a tiny library. A one-stop store that appeared to sell everything from animal feed to gift cards, several boarded-up shopfronts, and he was back at the Fleece. That was it. Kiewarra’s main hub. He looked back, toying with the idea of giving it another pass, but couldn’t work up the enthusiasm.

  Through the window of the pub he could see a handful of men staring indifferently at the TV. His bare room was all that was waiting for him upstairs. He put his hand in his pocket and felt his car keys. He was halfway to Luke Hadler’s place before he knew it.

  The sun was lower in the sky when Falk parked his car out the front of the Hadlers’ farmhouse in the same spot as before. The yellow police tape still hung from the door.

  This time, he ignored the house and walked straight over to the biggest of the barns. He peered up at the tiny security camera installed above the door. It looked cheap and functional. Fashioned from dull gray plastic with a single red light glowing, it would be easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there.

  Falk imagined Luke up on a ladder, fixing it to the wall, angling it just right. It had been positioned to capture as much as possible of the entrances to the barns and the shed, where the valuable farm equipment was stored. The house was merely an afterthought, the small slice of driveway captured by accident. The farm wouldn’t go under if thieves stole the five-year-old TV. Losing the water filter from the barn would be another story.

  If someone else had come along that day, had they been aware of the camera? Falk wondered. Could they have been there before and known what would be captured? Or had they just been lucky?

  Luke would have known his truck’s number plate would be recorded, if he had been the one behind the wheel, Falk thought. But by that point, maybe he simply didn’t care. Falk walked across the yard and did a complete circuit of the outside of the house. Raco had been as good as his word at keeping out prying eyes. Every blind was drawn and every door locked tight. There was nothing to see.

  Needing to clear his head, Falk left the house behind him and tramped out across the fields. The property shouldered the Kiewarra River, and up ahead he could see a copse of gums marking the boundary. The summer sun hung low and orange in the sky.

  He often did his best thinking on his feet. Usually that involved pounding the streets around his city office block, dodging tourists and trams. Or clocking up kilometers around the botanic gardens or the bay when he was really stumped.

  Falk knew he used to be at home in the fields, but now it all seemed very different. His head still felt crowded. He listened to the rhythm of his steps against the hard ground and the bird calls echoing from the trees. The shrieks seemed louder out here.

  He was nearly at the boundary when he slowed his pace, then stopped altogether. He wasn’t sure what made him hesitate. The line of trees in front of him stood shadowy still. Nothing moved. An uneasy feeling crept up Falk’s shoulders and neck. Even the birds suddenly seemed hushed. Feeling a little foolish, he glanced over his shoulder. The fields stared back blankly. The Hadler farm stood lifeless in the distance. He’d walked the whole way around it, Falk told himself. There was no one there. There was no one left in that place.

  He turned back in the direction of the river, a feeling of foreboding still fluttering in his chest. When the answer came, it crept up slowly, then thundered home all at once. Where Falk stood now, he should be hearing the rush of water. The distinct sound of the river carving its way through the country. He closed his eyes and listened, seeking it out, willing it to materialize. There was only an eerie nothingness. He opened his eyes and took off at a run.

  He plunged into the tree line, pounding along the well-worn trail, ignoring the whip and sting of the occasional overgrown branch. He reached the riverbank, breathing fast, and pulled up short at the edge. There was no need.

  The huge river was nothing more than a dusty scar in the land. The empty bed stretched long and barren in either direction, its serpentine curves tracing the path where the water had flowed. The hollow that had been carved over centuries was now a cracked patchwork of rocks and crabgrass. Along the banks, gnarled gray tree roots were exposed like cobwebs.

  It was appalling.

  Struggling to accept what his eyes were telling him, Falk clambered into the cavity, hands and knees scraping against the baked bank. He stopped in the dead center of the river, in the open void where the heavy ribbon of water had once been deep enough to close over his head.

  The same water he and Luke had dived into every summer, wallowing and splashing as they soaked up its coolness. The water he had stared into for hours on bright afternoons, fishing lines dangling hypnotically, with his father’s sturdy weight at his shoulder. The water that had forced its way down Ellie Deacon’s throat, greedily invading her body until there was no room left for the girl herself.

  Falk tried to take a deep breath, but the air tasted warm and cloying in his mouth. His own naïvety taunted him like a flicker of madness. How could he have imagined fresh water still ran by these farms as animals lay dead in the fields? How could he nod dumbly as the word drought was thrown around and never realize this river ran dry?

  He stood on shaky legs, his vision blurred as all around the cockatoos whirled and screamed into the scorching red sky. Alone, in that monstrous wound, Falk put his face in his hands and, just once, screamed himself.

  14

  Falk sat for a long while on the riverbank, letting a numbness seep over him as the heavy sun dipped lower. Eventually, he forced himself to his feet. He was losing the light. He knew where he was headed next but couldn’t be sure of finding it in the dusk.

  He turned his back on the path leading to the Hadlers’ farm and instead headed in the other direction. Twenty years ago there’d been a small river trail there. Now Falk had to rely on his memory, picking his way over exposed roots and dry undergrowth.

  He kept his head down, focused on not losing his way. Without the great river flowing alongside as a beacon, he caught himself nearly wandering off track several times. The surroundings looked different now, and markers that had once been familiar failed to appear. As he was beginning to worry he’d gone too far, he found it. He felt a sharp rush of relief. It was a short distance from the bank
, almost overrun by scrub. As he trampled his way through the thicket, a spark of happiness raced through him, and for the first time since he had arrived in Kiewarra he felt the stirrings of homecoming. He put his hand out. It was still there. It was still the same.

  The rock tree.

  “Shit, where did they go?”

  Ellie Deacon frowned and delicately kicked aside a small pile of leaves with the toe of one beautiful boot.

  “They’re down there somewhere. I heard them hit the ground.” Aaron scrambled around the rock tree. He crouched, scouring the ground and sifting through dried leaves for Ellie’s house keys. She watched through hooded eyes and halfheartedly turned over a small stone with her foot.

  Falk ran his hand over the rock tree and smiled properly for what felt like the first time in days. As a child, it had seemed like a miracle of nature. A huge eucalyptus had grown tightly against a solid boulder, its trunk curving around to trap the two in a gnarled embrace.

  When he was younger, Falk had been at a complete loss to explain others’ lack of fascination with the tree. Hikers walked past every week with barely a glance, and even to other kids it was little more than a quirky landmark. But every time Falk saw it he wondered how many years it had taken for the rock tree to form. Millimeter by millimeter. It gave him the free-falling sensation that he himself was a tiny dot in time. He liked it. More than twenty years later, he looked at the rock tree and could feel it anew.

  Aaron was alone with Ellie that day, which at sixteen was a scenario he both craved and feared. He chattered incessantly, annoying even himself. But the bottom kept dropping out of the conversation, like an unexpected pothole in the road. It had never used to happen, but recently it seemed to creep into all their interactions like a fault line.