by S. R. White
Rainer scribbled notes but then raised his pen. ‘Thanks. I was wondering – does it have to be a one-off event we’re looking for? I know Whittler went off at a bad time of the year and that’s why we’re thinking there’s a precipitating event. But I’m wondering if it was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. Whittler’s boss thought there was a problem building up for some time. I mean, it could have been long-term and one more tiny incident made him think it would never stop.’
Dana considered. Given Nathan’s pliability under duress, she still felt there had been one overriding event: something Nathan couldn’t stomach, something he knew would lead to disaster. Otherwise, he’d surely have continued to silently acquiesce or suffer. But Rainer had a point – perhaps it could have been cumulative.
‘Yes, you may well be right. I was thinking bullying from the parents, perhaps. They had that stern, ultra-religious lifestyle. Maybe the Bible-bashing was choking Whittler. Or his brother. Speaking of whom?’
She turned to Lucy.
‘Jeb texted he was coming straight here. Depends on the traffic.’
Lucy clicked on a company webpage. It was Dana’s first look at Jeb. She was surprised he looked nothing like Nathan. ‘I looked him up,’ continued Lucy. ‘Import/export. Mainly steel assembly kits: instant warehouses, hangars, that sort of thing. Apparently, he’s rolling in it. Spooky guy in the photos, though: not someone to bump into on a dark night.’
Dana stared at the screen. Again, her inner radar pinged without signalling why. Further evidence that she was off her game and sliding downhill.
‘Okay, Mikey and Luce. I want to wrap up Megan and Lynch if I can. After our little chat about the knife, I’m more certain it isn’t them. Plus, we haven’t broken that alibi and their motive looks insubstantial. But let’s ensure due diligence on the paperwork.’ Dana looked at the ceiling while she worked out what was needed. ‘Please complete the audit trails on the telephones and banking. Check the exact ownership of Jensen’s Store and its contents. Anything else you can think of that might suggest a motive. If we tie all that with a bow, we can at least park it until I’ve exhausted the chatter with Whittler. I want to be able to focus on him and not have any other options in my mind today. Mikey: if Jeb arrives while I’m prepping, or in interview with Whittler, can you take first crack at him? Thank you.’
Mike nodded, and Dana took that not only as an acceptance of her instructions but also affirmation that she’d asked for the correct action. She had no doubt he’d have suggested something else if he felt it was required. She relied on it.
‘One current line of inquiry,’ said Mike. ‘You’ll recall Cassavette is an old school friend of Miguel Alvarez, the king of money laundering for the Alvarez drug empire. Turns out Lou has an accountant who’s prominent in Miguel’s A-team of people who can make money disappear. I’ve got someone checking if there’s any actual connection.’
Dana frowned. Now she was thinking it was an unnecessary distraction from focusing on Nathan. She had to rein herself in: this was a viable alternative theory and she should welcome the chance to bottom it out. It would almost certainly be raised by a competent defence counsel. More evidence her thinking was crumbling under the pressure of the Day.
‘You’re thinking his store might be a front? Or this Miguel might have wanted it to be, and Lou turned him down?’ She couldn’t picture it, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. She’d spent half her life learning – the hard way – that she knew almost nothing about anyone, really.
‘Maybe.’ Mike paused, noting the stress on Dana’s features. ‘Actually, I’m thinking Whittler did it. But I’m covering the money-laundering base. More to follow.’
Dana nodded. Anxiety and exhaustion were starting to bubble.
‘Okay. Next interview, I’m going to tackle Whittler about that precipitating event: what made him leave home? I think we have all we need from him about his cave and the burglaries. We can tie up the rest with forensics from the cave. Stuart’s emailed me. He’s closing it down at the cave for the day; running out of daylight, and he was part of the search team at dawn in Jensen’s. I want Stu fresh for tomorrow, to start with the heavy search grid and the indexing. Mikey – can you liaise with Stu from now on? Just keep me up to date with anything unusual emerging from that. Thanks.’
Lucy coughed. ‘Don’t forget, Whittler doesn’t know his parents are gone. If it was me, I’d end up blurting it out without intending to . . .’ Dana knew Lucy was too smart to do such a thing; it was a diplomatic reminder. She tilted her head to acknowledge it.
‘He doesn’t, does he? Good catch, Luce. Okay, I’ll have a quick chat with Bill, then back in the ring.’
Bill Meeks’ office had a camera and audio feed from each interview room direct to his desktop, so he’d witnessed the previous interview with Whittler. He still thought it hilarious to call the access his ‘window of opportunity’. Dana smiled each time he said it: not because it was funny, but because his puppyish amusement about it was funny.
‘Two hundred-plus burglaries?’ Bill mimed touching something hot. ‘We needed those detections – this month has been a bust. Plus, charging him with those gets us another twenty-four hours without having to charge or release on the homicide. Speaking of which . . .’ Bill leaned forward. ‘You pushed Whittler about getting a lawyer before he spilled his guts on the burglaries.’
‘Yes, yes . . . about that.’ Dana shifted uncomfortably in her chair, unsure whether Bill wanted to reprimand her, or thank her. It was a sign, she felt, of her increasing weariness that she couldn’t tell.
‘So, several reasons. First: whatever we think he’s done, and however strange he may seem, he’s a vulnerable person. I think we always need to bear that in mind. The court certainly will; we need to regularly show good faith, in my opinion. Second, I knew he was about to confess to two hundred crimes: we had the journal and he was only confirming what we knew. I didn’t want a subsequent defence to claim he was manipulated because he didn’t have support. I told him to get a lawyer and he expressly refused: I wanted us to have that transparent indemnity. Third, I need him to trust me. Especially after telling him about finding his cave, I had some bridges to build. I think that helped to build them. That’s why I only pushed for enough details to confirm the journal. He was pleased not to have to dwell too much on something that was humiliating. So I won back some trust. Was my thinking. Boss.’
He broke into a smile. ‘And mine.’ He sat back again and she breathed out. ‘You’re right. He thinks you have his welfare at heart. He thinks you’re his only buddy in a world that’s let him down.’
It seemed to Dana that everyone was patting her on the back for pretending to like Nathan and care about him just to open him up. Which would make her what? A liar? An actor? A hypocrite? Whichever; she wouldn’t want to look in the mirror. And it made her wonder about how Machiavellian her colleagues thought she was; how inauthentic and calculating she appeared to them.
‘Well,’ she replied, ‘I’m about to burst what bubble he has. We’re going to talk about why he left home, and why then. Which means it’ll probably come out about his parents. Maybe we should prep for that.’
She wasn’t surprised that Bill was way ahead of her. ‘I’ve asked the doc to be ready. We should re-check anyway on Whittler’s fitness for interview: it’s coming up on ten hours in custody. And Whittler’s going straight back to the Lecter Theatre after this interview. I still want uniform watching him, with a ten-minute signature log. Agreed?’
‘Totally.’
‘What about this possible Alvarez connection?’ asked Bill. ‘Think that has legs?’
No, she thought, I don’t. I’m all in on Nathan Whittler now, even though I probably shouldn’t be.
‘Possible. Lou certainly knew Miguel Alvarez, by all accounts, and corner stores and restaurants are the preferred washing machines for bad cash. Mikey has someone at Central digging deeper.’
Bill tilted his head. ‘
How’re you doing with all this, Dana?’
She could feel herself blush: pastoral questions made her self-conscious. ‘Uh, fine. Bit tired, but we’re gradually clearing impediments. Mikey’s emailing you updates about Megan Cassavette and the lawyer, Spencer Lynch.’
‘Piece of work, Lynch, isn’t he?’
Surprisingly, no, she thought. Mike had a fairly benign view of him, and even Lucy had softened slightly. It was one of the reasons they’d downgraded Lynch’s chances of being the killer.
‘Kind of, but not really. Mikey will explain. I also think we have a handle on why that particular knife was used, and why it means Whittler used it.’
‘Oh?’
Again, Bill’s face was hard to read. Or rather, hard for her to read. Holding back the Day was taking an increasing toll: the exhaustion was seeping through. She had maybe ninety minutes of her professional self left today, before she’d have to stop and go home.
‘So, the knife from the packet was an ad-hoc, panic measure: in the dark, in an emergency. So we infer it was done quickly, desperately; totally on instinct.’ She looked to Bill for a confirmatory nod but got nothing. ‘In which case, instinct has to guide the choice of the third-largest knife, rather than the biggest. There’s no rationale in that situation to select a smaller knife, is there?’
‘No, there isn’t. In for a penny . . .’
‘Exactly. So, selecting the middle knife was entirely because of the chooser’s underlying, unstoppable instincts. It was the middle knife because that preserved the symmetry. It kept two knives either side of the empty space. Only Whittler would do that. Only Whittler’s OCD tendencies would make him do that.’
Now she said it out loud to Bill, it seemed flimsy, plucked from the air. The reasoning felt tinny and insubstantial. Yet she was sure they were right.
‘Okay.’ Bill thought for a second. Then nodded. ‘A little weird for my tastes, but I can see where you’re coming from. At the very least, it makes Whittler more likely. When will you tackle him on that?’
‘I’m still thinking it’s the last call I’ll ever make with him. If we go okay with this session, I want to bottom out everything else I can before I take him on about Jensen’s. I can’t afford to try it twice: either he tells, or he clams up for ever. I still think that second option’s how it could pan out.’
Bill closed the paperwork. ‘Yeah, that might be a confession too far, for today. We’ll review after this session, see if we need to put off that final scenario until tomorrow. Judges hate the idea of us leaning on someone because he doesn’t have a lawyer.’
Dana had thought the same thing. In truth, she calculated that the five interviews so far added up to only ninety minutes in the past nine hours. The number had surprised her; the level of concentration Nathan required, plus her own gradual debilitation, made it seem like days of effort. But she didn’t want the appeal court to have a reason to even read the file. Everything had to be done right.
Chapter 26
Mike looked through the glass door at the figure sitting in reception. A huge splayed insect of a man: limbs stretching out towards the main desk, pate gleaming under the fluorescent light, slight gut visible below his waistcoat. A clean-shaven head ended in a near-monobrow that made him appear permanently frustrated. His face looked angled forward even when he leaned back against the poster behind him; like an Easter Island statue with the body added.
Jeb Whittler was hard to read from a distance; something about him said aggressive and intimidating, but perhaps that was simply his size. He was dressed in the kind of suit Mike would need a mortgage for – probably by putting up one of his children as extra collateral. Although Mike had stated outright to Dana that if, or when, he was in the business of sacrificing offspring, it would be for a new car. At the very least, a demonstrator.
‘Jeb Whittler? Hello, I’m Detective Mike Francis. We can talk in here.’
The handshake was grabby and fierce, the eye contact a little too assertive. But again, Mike reprimanded himself for equating physical size with aggression. He indicated a little anteroom off the reception area and slid the tag to ‘occupied’.
‘Thanks. Got here as fast as I could. The call said you’ve found Nate. That true? I mean, is it definitely him?’ Jeb’s voice was the kind of bass rumble that Mike expected, but with a strangely whiny tinge to it, like a sports car with a fading gearbox.
They sat facing each other across a Formica table which had three blistered burn marks of the kind that seem to find only Formica tables. The room echoed with each of Jeb’s booming sentences – he was the kind of person who didn’t adjust his volume for the location.
‘Oh, it’s definitely him. We found ID; everything matches. DNA confirmed against hospital samples. There’s no doubt.’
Jeb shook his head. There was a slight sheen of sweat around his temples, but Mike suspected that was caused by rushing down the freeway; thinking the whole journey that his long-lost brother was alive and well after all.
‘Okay. Is he all right? Can I see him? I really need to see him.’
Mike held up a placating hand, intrigued by the choice of words. Not Nathan Whittler’s needs – Jeb’s needs.
‘He’s been checked out by our doctor several times. He’s basically fit and well but . . . look, he’s fragile.’
Jeb puffed his cheeks and reached reflexively for a pack of cigarettes. He’d almost retrieved them from his inside pocket before he realised and dropped his hands.
‘I don’t believe it, really. I mean, fifteen years. We’d all given up. And your guys said something about . . . charging? Nate?’
Mike was sure Lucy wouldn’t have given that detail; yet Jeb clearly thought it. He must, therefore, have at least one contact inside the station; a contact who presumed Nathan had been charged. It made Jeb a connected kind of person; Mike disliked them.
‘He was at a crime scene when we got there. We haven’t charged anyone yet. Your brother is helping us with the investigation. It all takes time, Jeb, lots of time. We’re still piecing things together at the moment, so I’d appreciate talking to you about your family life; the time before your brother went away.’
Jeb shook his head, as if the news couldn’t settle.
‘Are you sure I can’t see him?’
Mike placed a notepad on the table and clicked his pen. ‘Not at the moment. He’s being well taken care of but he’s easily overwhelmed; we have to be cautious. Plus, we specifically asked him, and he said he didn’t want anyone notified on his behalf at that point.’
Jeb looked . . . what was it? Disappointed? Calculating? Mike was finding it hard to read a face so massive – he was drawn back again to the sheer volume of Jeb’s skull. He rushed to continue, feeling Jeb’s need to control the pace and direction.
‘Jeb, we’ve contacted you ourselves, off our own bat. We’re talking to you because it aids the investigation but we have to follow Nathan’s wishes. He’s, uh, not able to deal with too much at once. I’m sure you understand.’
‘Okay.’
Mike concluded that was the best he’d get. He was trying to distinguish between Jeb’s shock at the news and how sudden it was, and anything else he might be thinking.
‘So you’re . . . how many years older than Nathan?’
‘Uh, eight years, give or take. He was, um, not totally planned.’
‘Tell me a bit about your parents, and the farm.’
Jeb sat back a little. It would be reasonable, Mike thought, to assume he was collecting his thoughts, trying to frame a coherent timeline for a stranger. Eminently reasonable: yet Mike found himself seeking another motive, for reasons he couldn’t yet fathom.
‘Well, I think we lived a couple of places just after I was born, but the farm was all I could ever remember. I say farm: twelve hectares, more of a backyard by Aussie standards. Previous owners had sheep back then – Merinos, actually – but a few dry years ended that. Bank foreclosed, we got it cheap. There was still a couple of barns awa
y from the house, and some old machinery in them. But we never ran it as a farm. I think our parents liked the extra land.’
‘Because?’
‘Because . . . they didn’t like people very much.’ Jeb shrugged. ‘Not sociable. They liked the isolation.’
That word again. Mike had rarely come across so many people who’d viewed it so positively.
‘Was there something in particular they didn’t like about people?’
Jeb gave a slight grin, as though Mike had asked a naïve question.
‘No, no. Everything. They thought the world was a sinful place, Detective. They were very religious, very Christian. Took the Bible at its word.’
‘Regular churchgoers, then?’
Jeb’s smile broadened. It lacked mirth, warmth.
‘Ah, not as much as you’d think, no. How can I explain it? They went to church each Sunday because they were Christians and they thought all Christians should do that. But they didn’t think much of the church in this town; weren’t very impressed.’ Jeb paused. ‘Preacher was too happy-clappy and tolerant for them. It was over-modern: too free and easy. They liked their Christianity to be . . . in no uncertain terms.’
‘Quite fundamentalist about it?’
‘In many ways, yeah. Don’t get me wrong – decent people. But strict parents, and pious. No flashy modern clothes, no jewellery, no TV. We had a radio, but only the spoken word, no pop music. Just Radio National, or Christian stations. A lot of modern life left them cold.’
For Mike, Nathan’s world view – and his reactions to life – were starting to add up. Raised in a preachy atmosphere that was suspicious of modern life: his running to a cave and hiding no longer seemed quite as much of a stretch. It would explain why he ran – to get away from the strictures, the unyielding doctrine and its enforcement. But Mike’s misgivings continued, as though he were missing something obvious and important.