Hermit

by S. R. White

  ‘Assuming it’s there at all. Jeb doesn’t live at the farm any more. Luce said it has new owners – some equestrian place. Jeb’s apartment is over on Queen Street, I believe.’

  ‘Yeah, we got an officer inside his building a couple of minutes ago and there’s no sign of life. Warrant will take longer, but at least we’ve secured the place. Lucy says Jeb’s back here again, demanding to see his brother. More belligerent this time, which, as we now know, is his default setting.’

  ‘He can’t see Nathan. We need to keep them well apart for now.’

  ‘You think Jeb’s given up freezing people?’

  ‘Maybe. More likely his pathology has moved on.’ Dana thought it would spiral. ‘Getting his kicks maliciously toying with people some other way.’

  ‘Banking? Internet provider?’

  She gave a tired smile. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I could give Jeb to Mikey again when he gets here. Mikey has a rapport from earlier and he unravelled Spencer Lynch today; might be worth a go.’

  Dana tapped her pen against her teeth. ‘Yes, maybe. Hmm. No. Actually, no. I think Jeb’s the type who isn’t going to like being faced by a woman. He’ll overestimate himself against me. If Mikey went in a second time, Jeb would watch his step.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll have Mikey through the mirror, in case we need to turn it into a two-hander. And a uniform, in case Jeb doesn’t play nice.’

  ‘Deal. At least we know why Whittler ran, and why then.’

  ‘Yeah, one episode of being frozen alive and at the whim of a psychopath would probably be enough.’

  ‘I’d had some crazy hope he would have left because of Lou Cassavette. You know – some kind of connection or incident we’re not aware of?’ She knew Cassavette had lived in the city until recently and had no discernible reason for being anywhere near Carlton. All the same, she’d hoped for some bizarre linkage, something they could never have spotted on their own.

  ‘I still can’t fit the two of them together,’ she continued. ‘They appear to have never met, or been within cooee of each other, until 5 a.m. today. All the forensics say it was an opportunist crime, but robbery isn’t the motive and Whittler’s never been violent before. Quite the opposite – a passive and compliant victim. It still doesn’t make sense.’

  Bill was about to reply when there was a knock and Lucy glanced around the door.

  ‘Hey, Dana. Boss. Mr Jeb Whittler is still in reception, wanting to see his brother. In an ever-more charmless kind of way, too.’

  Bill scratched his chin. ‘Put him in Interview Three, with a uniform outside. Full – and I mean full, Luce – security check before entry. Especially for needles. Tell Whittler a detective will be with him shortly.’

  ‘Boss.’

  Bill turned back to Dana at the click of the door. ‘So . . . where are we? I think we have a perspective on Whittler’s life before the cave and we understand his life in the cave. We know what the motivation was for entering Jensen’s Store this morning. We have a pretty good handle on how damaged Whittler’s been his entire life and how that happened. Not bad for’ – he checked his watch – ‘under twelve hours.’

  Dana nodded dutifully but her mind was reaching. ‘Only a few hours left before he’s gifted a lawyer. We still have no motive. We have nothing to connect Nathan Whittler to Lou Cassavette.’

  ‘Maybe there is no motive, Dana.’ He leaned forward. ‘Maybe you want there to be, but it doesn’t exist.’

  She pondered that, gave it due weight. Bill didn’t say such things in a vacuum.

  ‘You think I’m wishing some gallant reason for Whittler’s actions? Something that doesn’t make it petulant or spiteful or vicious, or simply desperation to get past Cassavette and out the door?’

  ‘Yup. You’re looking for the mythical orphan in danger, the nun that needs saving – some altruistic heroism you want Whittler to have shown. At the very least, a morally comprehensible reason for killing.’

  Bill put both palms on the table.

  ‘He’s an unhappy, isolated person who’s had fifteen years to brood. He’s damaged. He’s seen brutality rewarded and being successful for much of his life. He’s an inveterate thief, who has no actual moral problem with stealing each month for decades, no matter what he claims. He wants out of a store he chose to burgle and the owner’s in the way. Maybe his OCD made him take the middle knife, maybe not. But he did use the knife, he did find the heart with the first and only stab, and he did kill Cassavette.’

  Bill paused and dropped half an octave. ‘And I would really, really, like a confession.’

  There was no smile at the end of it. Bill simply stood up and left, a consoling tap on her shoulder as he passed.

  She sat for some minutes, considering. Bill was right. She’d hoped for something better for Nathan Whittler . . . from Nathan Whittler. She’d wanted one single reason that made the killing less callous and more understandable.

  Bill had pulled her up short, and rightly so. That, she thought, is why he’s the boss. And why she never could be, never should be. The ability to cut through like that – to see the straight line, deliver bad news in such a temperate way: she didn’t have those skills.

  He was right, she concluded. Motive didn’t really matter, when all was said and done. Whittler’s defence could argue the fine detail – it was really dark; maybe it was more of a scuffle than the forensics suggested; perhaps Cassavette kinda fell on to the blade. The jury would convict anyway. There was no construct she could see that would be any kind of mitigation or benign explanation. In her mind, Nathan Whittler was guilty and all she had to do was calculate how to eke out a confession.

  Before she set foot in a room with Jeb Whittler, Dana wanted to bring Mike up to speed. He’d taken a break after writing up his discussion with Jeb and now sat slurping coffee. Dana’s office felt claustrophobic. She looked at her watch and set herself an hour to leave this place, come what may. Her knee was starting to really grind – it needed a warm bath. She grabbed at the nebuliser in her pocket, in case a panic attack was imminent. Placing a timescale on the working day’s end seemed to have calmed her jagging nerves a little. Father Timms had been right. Everyone around her seemed to be wiser than her today.

  ‘Is that even possible?’ Mike was shaking his head after hearing Nathan’s story. ‘I’m not . . . don’t get me wrong, I believe him. It’s just . . . well, I would have thought it would be impossible to be that accurate with the correct dosage.’

  ‘I’d have thought so, too. Maybe Luce could look into that.’ Mike scribbled a note. ‘We have to take it seriously, unless or until we can prove otherwise. My vague understanding is that the impact of the same dosage each time varies – according to time of day, what they’d eaten, their weight, and so on, as well as blood sugar level.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why he did it after lunch on a Saturday – he felt more confident about those details, able to control them better. He could dictate what they ate beforehand, for example. Still, you’d think he’d get it wrong sometimes, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Absolutely. He probably did. I’m betting he kept some kind of antidote close at hand. There’s something doctors use for blood sugar emergencies, I think. If Jeb was stealing insulin, he could probably steal the antidote, too. He must’ve had a few close shaves he never mentioned to his brother. It’s Russian Roulette, basically.’

  ‘Certainly is. But with other people’s lives, not his own.’

  ‘Did he strike you that way when you saw him?’

  Mike considered carefully, unsure that his own reading of Jeb was good enough in light of this revelation. Perhaps he’d held too benign a view.

  ‘Well, unless someone’s behaving outlandishly, they wouldn’t strike you that way. Because that particular behaviour is off the charts. But if you’re asking do I think he’s capable? Maybe. He has some streaks in him of total authoritarianism: as he said himself, “My way or the highway.” I thought when he spoke about discipline and pu
nishment he was only talking about his parents inflicting it on him and his brother. Now I’m convinced he was talking about himself. He used the words “me” and “I” a lot: I thought he was reliving being on the receiving end. But maybe he was talking about dishing it out. My bad, not picking it up at the time.’

  ‘I don’t know what kind of mental damage it would do to Whittler, seeing that.’ Dana pictured the regularity of it, the drip-feed of horror and control. ‘The insulin went on for nearly twelve months before Whittler left home. Plus, the years of bullying and domination that preceded it. That kind of abusive behaviour and imagery usually leads to some numbing, some habituation.’

  In moments like these she was convinced her guilt and her pain were carved across her features. She was always amazed that they apparently weren’t. Parents and pain, parents and humiliation, parents and guilt, years of drenching misery, feeling constantly off balance and waiting for the air to chill: she and Nathan had a disturbing amount in common.

  The pain in her knee spiked.

  ‘Yeah, maybe it’s less about the trauma at the time . . .’ Mike held his hands open, as if his statement explained itself, but Dana frowned. Mike had to expand the point, when usually he wouldn’t need to: it confirmed his view that she was tiring badly.

  ‘I meant,’ he continued, ‘as you say, he’d try to compartmentalise it. He wouldn’t deal with it fully, he’d run and hide from it. His modus operandi, right? But out there, in the cave year after year, he’d surely have to come back to it again and again. That’s when he’d process it: when he’s isolated, with no professional help, turning it over in his mind. You can come to some pretty hideous conclusions that way.’

  Mike had made a good observation, she thought: the impact of the freezings would be in the long term. There was no point trying to work out how Nathan felt about those things while he was at home; the key was how it had made him feel recently. She was guessing the chief emotion was humiliation. An ongoing humiliation that he’d counteracted by removing himself and hiding – Nathan had an acute sense of shame and this would weigh heavily. He would feel that he’d been feeble, that he’d failed, that he’d let down his parents; above all, he’d been weak and supine. And now he knew he could never gain their forgiveness. It was a dark, potentially fatal mix.

  She asked Mike to wait while she checked with Custody that they had a uniform watching through the glass of the Lecter Theatre. She was told they had; Doc Butler would begin a psych evaluation in six minutes’ time.

  Mollified – or at least believing that Nathan couldn’t take his own life right now – she turned back to Mike.

  ‘So, how do you expect big brother to behave this time?’

  Mike shifted in his seat. ‘Jeb was fine with me earlier. But he was fishing then; looking for a way in and coming off as Mr Reasonable. I just saw him waiting in reception and he’s busting – all bets are off. He must be worried we’ve talked to Whittler enough to get the insulin story out of him; or he thinks he needs to see Whittler and threaten him into silence about it. Not wishing to white-knight or anything, but we could do a two-hander on him?’

  ‘Yes, Bill suggested that. I’m not against it, but I’d rather keep it in reserve, or for a third run. If what we’ve just heard is correct, Jeb’s the worst kind of bully. He’ll be complacent against someone he regards as too delicate to undo him. That might be a way in.’

  Mike wasn’t convinced. Maybe Jeb would become loose-lipped and give something away, or he might feel manipulated or angry that he’d let something slip. If he became aggressive, Dana would be in the firing line.

  ‘Look: amateur risk assessment. According to his brother – and he’s seen it first hand – Jeb is a psychotic wingnut who can and does explode whenever things don’t go his way. He relishes pain and control. Could turn ugly if he feels he’s losing. He’s built like a . . . well, built pretty big. You hit that panic button fast if you’re unsure. Don’t take any risks.’

  ‘With this knee? Everywhere with stairs is a risk. I’m like a Dalek.’ She dropped her smile. ‘I hear you. I’ll be a good girl, promise.’

  Mike could see her reasoning: Jeb might well talk more freely if he was trying to push Dana around. But it was sticking her hand in a lion’s mouth, hoping for a reward.

  Rainer knocked on the door and stood rigidly at the threshold.

  ‘Rainer, you can come in. I’m only talking to Mikey.’

  Mike pouted. ‘Yet I cherish every moment of our speaking, m’lady. I’m slighted. I’m getting a chocolate bar as comfort food for my battered soul and I’m not offering to buy you one. So there.’

  She grinned and shook her head as Rainer sat.

  ‘Ah, creative types and their theatrical egos. Sorry, Rainer. No adult should have to witness such things. What have you found out about big brother?’

  Rainer opened a pristine clipboard, like a student on the first day of the academic year.

  ‘You asked me to focus on financial and legal. Well, it seems all the bank accounts and property deeds for the family transferred to Jeb in 1990. Jeb was plenty old enough by then – nineteen. The lawyer I spoke to said it was dressed up as an early transfer to minimise tax issues. He was uneasy about it, but said it was all perfectly legal and watertight.’

  ‘Uneasy because?’

  ‘Well, he knew the family a little and found it odd that Nathan had been cut out entirely. I mean, this effectively ended any claim Nathan had over the family assets, so it was a bit of a coup for Jeb.’ Rainer flicked to the second page. ‘Also, he found the family atmosphere creepy, he said. Couldn’t put a finger on it: only that something was wrong.’

  ‘Well, he was spot on with that, though maybe not how he thought. It put all the money into one pair of hands: another reason for the brothers’ friction. Anything else?’

  Rainer checked his notes again, although she had no doubt he knew exactly what was written there. ‘In 2005 Jeb used the farm as collateral for a business loan. He was renting scaffolding to small building firms, then expanded into steel-frame buildings, which is his main business now.’

  ‘Hmm . . . he started that business soon after Whittler left.’

  Rainer shrugged. ‘By local reputation, Jeb’s a fairly straight shooter who’s been remarkably successful in facing down local unions. Seems he doesn’t get the usual kind of intimidation they hand out at other building sites.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And no evidence of any financial or legal transactions with Lou Cassavette?’

  ‘No. I double-checked: but no, not as such. However . . .’

  ‘Go on, spill it before you burst.’

  ‘Lucy sent me to the old farm, where the Whittlers used to live? It’s an equestrian centre now and the new owners never met the Whittler parents – they bought direct from Jeb. But the owner said he saw Jeb Whittler a few weeks ago, at Jensen’s Store. Chatting with Lou Cassavette. “Two peas in a pod,” he said. Didn’t hear what they were talking about, but he said they probably knew each other from the business club.’

  Dana sat back.

  ‘So Jeb knows the victim, and he’s recently been to the crime scene. Wow.’

  It presented a quandary. When, or even if, should she bring out that knowledge when she interviewed Jeb? Was it a trump card she should hold back? Maybe it would be better to play it while Jeb was off guard.

  ‘That’s a real coup, Rainer, well done. Could you follow up with the business club?’

  ‘Already tried. They’re closed today – repainting. The secretary’s hiking somewhere in the national park. I’m on duty tomorrow so I can chase any further details then: there’s a meeting Saturday evening.’

  Dana glanced at the photo montage of Jeb that Lucy had emailed. Jeb at a charity function, Jeb meeting a politician, Jeb at a conference. You could dress the man in a tailored evening suit, or jeans and sweater: whichever, he was huge and overbearing. She started to reconsider Mikey’s idea of a two-hander.

  ‘Good, thanks, Rainer. What time
does your shift end?’

  ‘Oh, not till eight.’

  ‘Okay, please help Luce with her follow-up, especially this insulin angle. If there’s a medical reason that claim isn’t possible, or ridiculously impractical to do, I need to know as quickly as possible. And you might have to tidy up some details when Luce leaves. She’s pretty punctual.’

  ‘Boss.’

  When Rainer closed the door behind him Dana took a deep breath and checked her watch. Fifty-two minutes. In fifty-two minutes’ time, she was walking out the door and home, no matter what. Dana had already broken the bargain she had with herself about this Day. She was supposed to be giving all options full airtime, really considering what her mind wanted for her. Instead, she was cheating: staying somewhere that made that kind of soul-baring impossible. It had cost her several panic attacks, and she had a constant feeling of slipping below the waterline, fighting for air. She couldn’t afford to break this second deal as well: she wouldn’t be able to take it.

  She signalled to Mike as she went towards his office and he walked down the corridor ahead of her. She could hear him talking in low tones with the uniform. It was already established Jeb was a potential risk: she didn’t need to hear it again in Mike’s briefing to the officer.

  At the door to Interview Three she nodded to Mike and stepped into the room.

  Chapter 31

  Jeb Whittler controlled a corner of Interview Three: he cast a hefty gloom. His frame was deep and imposing, predatory. Jeb had a head where the skull shape was easily distinguishable.

  ‘Mr Whittler? Please, have a seat.’ She indicated the chair with an open palm.

  He took two giant steps towards her. Everything about him seemed to suck up the space.

  ‘Where’s Nate? I demand to see my brother.’ The voice rumbled off every surface like a freight train.

  Dana took two breaths while they glared at each other. His eyes were a deep brown, practically black.

  ‘Mr Whittler? Please, have a seat.’ The same intonation, the same hand motion.