Hermit

by S. R. White

  ‘Why did he have to be there, Detective? Why did he have to be there?’

  The room felt heavy; the air refused to budge. Dana tried to control her breathing, tried to think. What she asked now would be crucial at trial; she couldn’t afford to blow any holes in the case. She needed to ask questions that clarified, gave Nathan no way to back down from this confession.

  And yet her internal radar was firing to wake the dead. Something in the back of her mind was screaming. She thought it might be her own imminent nervous collapse, chiming through at exactly the wrong moment. But no, it was worse than that. So much worse.

  She thought back to what Nathan had said earlier in the interview: about his confession needing context. She’d taken it at face value – that she needed to know what sort of person he was, the privations that had shaped him, the way he’d built a life in solitude, his fear of return. All of that. All of that would shape her feelings about why he’d killed.

  But perhaps she’d been wrong.

  Something tiny, a seed of an idea, took root in the recesses of Dana’s mind. It began to move, slipping forward and then finding momentum. Faster, closer, gaining credence, accelerating: it gathered and pushed and then exploded into her consciousness. She frowned. It wasn’t, couldn’t be.

  Yes.

  Yes, it was.

  Monstrous and grotesque but, quite suddenly, she was certain she was right. Never more certain in her life.

  She’d been stupid. Colossally, unforgivably stupid. It was entirely her own fault. She’d stopped seeing Lou Cassavette. She’d committed the cardinal sin of ceasing to really see him. He was a victim and a human being, with all the complexities that implied. But instead of truly observing that, she’d turned him into data. He’d become instead the focal point on a whiteboard diagram; a name; a set of bank accounts and telephone records; a husband to a faithless wife; a failing businessman; someone who’d married up.

  Lou Cassavette had saved her life this morning, by dying. This is how she’d repaid him.

  In all that information, she’d forgotten – or never bothered – to take a really good look at Lou Cassavette. Her glance at the scene, lifting the sheet while the ‘twins’ held the stretcher, had been cursory. Unprofessional. Dumb.

  In the darkness, in silhouette, in desperation, in the shadow of fifteen years of solitary brooding: Lou Cassavette would look exactly like Jeb Whittler.

  Nathan believed he’d killed his brother. He still believed it now.

  She hesitated, unsure how to approach it. The confession was fine – it was detailed, it was coherent; it tallied with all the forensics she’d seen and all the things they already knew. It would stand up. There was no doubting that Nathan had done it. Except, he didn’t quite know what he’d done. He thought it was fratricide.

  ‘What happened when the officers discovered you, Mr Whittler? Can you tell me in exact detail, please.’

  Nathan looked perplexed. Presumably he was expecting follow-up about the killing, not its aftermath. Perhaps, she thought, he was wondering why she was being so pedantic about the actions of the officers.

  ‘Uh, their torchlight was in my face. Totally blinding, Detective, after all that darkness. All I could see was white, and green blotches. I fell back a little, away from his body. Their torches bobbed and I realised they were coming towards me. They grabbed my arms and dragged me on my backside around the corner to the next aisle. Then I was on my stomach and handcuffed behind my back.

  ‘I was having trouble breathing. The after-effects, I suppose, but I was wheezing. One of the officers leaned in and asked if I was okay. I nodded, and I think his torch was near enough that he understood. The other officer had stepped away somewhere and was talking into his radio. They’d need “everyone”, I think he said. And he started talking about forensics, and searches, and detectives. But I was tuning it out, to be honest. I think I was in shock, and all I could hear was a rushing sound, like being under a waterfall. Everything looked and felt artificial, untouchable; happening to someone else. I was bewildered, and hurt, and appalled.’

  Nathan stopped, as though unsure Dana would still believe him, or still respect him, if he went ahead with his next statement.

  ‘And relieved, Detective. Relieved he was gone. At last. I’d forgotten to be worried about him, out in the cave. Took a while, but I’d learned to tune him out entirely. That was where the real peace came from, Detective, the real serenity. Knowing that if I remained careful, Jeb would never find me. Knowing I’d got away, and I’d never have to face him. I thought, if he was finally gone, then maybe my parents would be pleased, too. Maybe they’d forgive my weakness for all those years. But at least I’d never have to worry about Jeb again. When I’d spied him at Jensen’s a few weeks ago, walking to his car, I’d been rattled, I admit. The memories came flooding back and I’d considered never going there again. Just for the peace of mind that would bring. But then, later, that struck me as stupid. He was just shopping, surely, just in the neighbourhood. It never occurred to me he’d bought the store, let alone that he’d be there in the night. Sheer chance, but I’d found him. And ended it. At least I’d ended it. And for that, I was relieved.’

  Dana put down her pen. Deep breaths wouldn’t come. Her pulse was too skittish, and this mattered too much.

  ‘Mr Whittler, I need you to look straight at me, please. I need you to understand this.’

  He struggled. He tried once and couldn’t do it. He swallowed and collected himself, and at the second time of asking he could look her in the eye.

  ‘Mr Whittler, Jeb was not at that store. I met him fifteen minutes ago. The man you killed was not Jeb. It was Lou Cassavette, the store owner.’

  Nathan was shaking his head.

  ‘No, no. It was definitely Jeb. I’d know, Detective. I’d know him anywhere. My own brother. It was him. You’ve . . . there’s a mistake. You must have made a mistake.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Your brother is alive and well, and was at this station until a few minutes ago. Mr Lou Cassavette is in the morgue.’

  Dana would never forget that scream. She’d hear it in the night for years; echoes of it ripping through her mind. It sounded like her own pain. It tore itself from Nathan’s body, primeval and bereft. She couldn’t bear to look and turned away, reluctant to face the mirror as Nathan howled into his hands. She lifted a hand to the observers to warn them all to keep out. Nathan needed his terror, his shame, to remain between them.

  She waited him out. She sat silently through his tears, through his scratching at his own face until it bled, through his shaking. She waited it all out. Because while he didn’t need a witness, he still needed a human being there for . . . validation. She could do that, and did.

  After perhaps twenty minutes Nathan was empty to the core. She reached forward and, for the first time that day, touched his skin. Her fingers rested lightly on his forearm as he wept into his sleeve. He looked up and blinked.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Whittler. I understand; I get why you mistook one for the other. In darkness, I’d have done the same. I understand: the jury will, too.’

  She flushed at how unprofessional that was; but how necessary. She’d ride it out with Bill if she needed to. Nathan had to have something to hold on to. It might save his life.

  She stood wearily. She must get out now. Not only from this room but from the station. From people. The Day was closing her throat.

  As she opened the door Nathan called out to her.

  ‘Detective?’

  She turned. He was wiping his eyes with a fist.

  ‘Thank you for, for helping me through this. For your compassion. Thank you, Dana.’

  Her own name had never pierced her like that. She could barely push out an answer ahead of a sob.

  ‘You’re welcome, Nathan.’

  Chapter 35

  No one entered the women’s bathroom after her. Lucy, she assumed, had gone home before the confession. Neither Mike nor Bill came in to check on her.
Dana took two hits from the nebuliser then wiped her face with a tissue. Even by her standards, she felt she looked awful. The Day, and the events, had dragged life from her and left a shattered, sallow figure in its place.

  Now the adrenaline surge from the confession was ebbing from her, fear and anxiety took over. In some ways, it felt the same: a rising heartbeat, restless movements from her eyes, a frantic need to rush and finish anything and everything at once. But the adrenal boost was a positive thing – it was a wish to achieve, a desire to complete. Whereas what was infecting her thoughts right now was relentlessly, almost comfortingly, negative – a need to avoid, a wish to hide, a craving to run.

  She could hear their low mutter of conversation outside the door. She took a deep breath: better to get this done as fast as possible and get the hell out. Checking her watch, Dana noted there were twenty minutes before Father Timms expected her text. She wanted to keep that appointment. The corridor felt brighter, less claustrophobic.

  ‘Hey. Is that everything you need today, boss?’ She tried to sound perky and upbeat but the sentence lacked conviction.

  ‘More than enough, more than enough. And twelve hours to spare before the lawyers get to him. Whittler’s back in the Lecter Theatre; doc’s going to give him a fairly hefty sedative. He seemed remarkably calm when we walked him back’ – Bill looked to Mike, who nodded in agreement – ‘so hopefully he’ll be better tomorrow.’

  Dana leaned against the wall. ‘Okay. Maybe confession was good for the soul, after all.’ She paused. It was, surely, the opposite of what she’d always believed. ‘Sorry about that last bit, Bill. The jury’ll hear that.’

  The lead detective’s assertion that mistaking one person for another was ‘entirely understandable’ was rash, to say the least. It was fodder for a downgrade of the charges and ammunition for clemency requests. A defence lawyer would suggest it was further evidence the death was partly accidental, akin to a bar fight where someone gets concussed in a fall. They’d spin it as the police having known that all along, and trying to push Nathan. She’d said it from basic decency. She wouldn’t blame Bill if he was livid.

  Bill raised a hand. ‘Not a problem. In the context of the whole set of interviews, it’s another piece of rapport. Works in our favour in some ways – someone as obviously concerned for his welfare is less likely to be seen as applying undue pressure. It’s fine.’

  She was unconvinced. There would be fallout, she didn’t doubt that, but she also knew Bill would stand foursquare behind her.

  Dana understood how Nathan could mistake Lou for Jeb in the dark, amid his rising panic. He would have been jolted badly by having seen Jeb a few weeks before – the first sighting in fifteen years, and a brutal recoil back to the darkest days and the insulin. But she hadn’t had time to process why Nathan hadn’t become aware of who was dead. Surely there had been some point where someone had mentioned Lou?

  ‘He didn’t know it was Lou,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t mean at the time; I mean all day. How is that possible?’

  Bill shrugged. ‘Well, Whittler never saw the body in daylight, or any light. He was dragged away in absolute darkness and held in the next aisle. He would have been put in the patrol car by uniform long before daylight, and they only turned on the store lights after they were sure Lou was dead – they needed to switch on the electric supply first. By then, the scene was filling up with people and Whittler was hunkered down in a car with tinted windows, and no direct view inside the store. Those guys never talk when they’re bringing suspects in, except to tell them to shut up. So no, he wouldn’t have known who he stabbed.’

  Mike chimed in. ‘Yeah, and since he was never charged until now, except for the burglaries, we probably never spoke the name Lou Cassavette in front of him. We weren’t going to quiz him about the stabbing until we had enough ammunition. Don’t forget, we were building up to that final discussion all day. Whittler was so sure – and ashamed – that he’d killed Jeb that he never questioned us about who he killed. So no, he’d have no way of knowing. But it never actually occurred to me that he didn’t know.’

  It made a crude kind of sense. Nathan had been focused on directing the discussion his way, giving Dana the background to understand why he’d killed. That kind of approach also precluded talking about the stabbing until the latest possible point. In fact, both Dana and Nathan had been working on the same strategy – for different reasons – without the other realising it. Both schemes precluded mentioning Lou Cassavette until the final moments.

  Dana could feel the last of her energy slipping away.

  Mike opened his arms and they hugged. She was crap at hugging; her arms hung around in the littoral next to Mike’s shape, never quite getting there. Bill shook his head, as though he never expected her to get better at it.

  Bill tilted his head. ‘Now go home, sleep long, and we’ll sort out the details in the morning.’

  She nodded wearily and sloped off.

  Passing reception, she wished Miriam goodnight. The lights were dimmed for the evening; Miriam’s glasses reflected the fidgeting blue screensaver as she read her paperback and waved absent-mindedly. Dana had hoped there would be a message from Lucy, but there was nothing.

  As the reception doors swooshed open she felt a blast of cold air. It was a relief to her skin, if not her psyche.

  Her shoes clacked on the pavement as she ducked down a long path known as Deadman’s Alley. It was the quickest route between work and home: the alley where, decades ago, they used to store bodies before cremation. The remains of the original Carlton ice house and morgue were now a mound of temporary seating overlooking the sports oval. In summer, cicadas screeched all evening along here; now, it was silent.

  The cold made her fingers tingle. She started to feel less stooped and less drained with every step away from people and towards the sanctuary of home. Poor Nathan, she thought: his sanctuary is no more, and he lost it all without even ridding himself of Jeb. And poor Lou Cassavette: simply trying to protect his failing investment.

  It shook her that she still thought about Nathan far more than she did about Lou. It remained the Whittler case to her, not the Cassavette case. Thinking more about the killer than the victim was surely the act of a callous, selfish person. She had no doubt about that at all.

  Home was a narrow terrace of clapboard, in sharp relief under the streetlight she’d paid the council to have right outside. A gunshot house, they used to call them; the corridor and stairs ran the length of one side of the home, each room off it to the right. Once inside, she snapped all the door locks and did a sweep of the ground floor by torchlight. Reminded by Nathan’s explanation of the window-lock routine, she tested every one on the ground floor.

  Only then did she put her gun away in the lockable metal cupboard, take off her coat and turn on a light. She switched on the kettle and texted Father Timms.

  Home. Got a confession from the suspect. Thank you.

  The answer came in seconds; she’d seen Timms’ ham-fisted, chubby-fingered efforts at texting and was surprised by his speed.

  Call if you feel you need to. Or should. Stay safe.

  The clock said there were six and a half hours of the Day left. She wondered if this feeling of exhaustion would help her through it: perhaps she’d quickly fall asleep and drift through to morning. Or maybe her mind would push through the tiredness: drag her to a new place where she was too fatigued to think straight. She’d never done the Day this way: it worried her that she had no knowledge to draw upon.

  Home was the counterpoint; the place where she didn’t have to work, in any sense. Here, she could simply be; without constantly having to intuit what people were thinking, what they meant behind what they said, what effect she was having on them. People were continually, relentlessly exhausting. Home was where none of that had to matter.

  It hadn’t always been this way; in fact, until she was an adult the reverse had applied. School, the library, outdoors – anywhere was safer, easier
and less chilling than home. The library was the place where the books were, and her mother wasn’t: that was the point and the appeal of it. It was when her childhood self stepped through the front door of the house that her fears began to solidify, when the pit of her stomach twisted and her legs buckled. It had taken her until the age of twenty-five to begin inverting her life – until then, the mere sight of home could make her choke on thin air.

  She’d set the tea by the side of her chair when the telephone rang. She frowned. About six people knew her mobile number; maybe three knew her landline. She half hoped it was some hapless telesales person she could rip into without conscience.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Luce. Hope you don’t mind. This a bad time?’

  Lucy had a honeyed tone down a landline. Like a long-loved radio voice, it sounded different to how the speaker looked. She sounded velvet and gold.

  ‘Uh, no. No, that’s fine.’ Dana was flustered. Lucy wasn’t quite inside her home, but was – sort of. It was a strange sensation that she’d never expected to face. ‘Did you hear we got Nathan for it?’

  ‘Yeah, Mikey sent me an email.’ There was a clatter, as if Lucy was moving around in a kitchen. ‘Mistook him for Jeb?’

  Dana sank into her armchair but sat rigidly forward, a polite guest in her own house. ‘Apparently so. Nathan had seen Jeb briefly a couple of weeks before, so he was in the front of Nathan’s mind. Lou and Jeb had an identical silhouette: baldness, the bulk, the shoulders, the shape of the head. I remember now – Rainer said someone had called them “two peas in a pod”.’

  ‘Plus, he’d been fixating on Jeb for fifteen years in that cave. Anyone who looked quite like Jeb was going to be Jeb, in his eyes.’

  That was a good point, Dana thought. Nathan hadn’t seen Jeb for a decade and a half; then a brief glimpse from a distance a few weeks ago. He’d still have been guessing a little at how Jeb had aged. Anyone with a pretty good similarity and a shiny bald head might be moulded by Nathan’s mind into an older Jeb. Plus, the feeling of being trapped – of having your future controlled by someone else – would have come flooding back in the store. It was the feeling Jeb had engendered for years at home: then a sinister muscle-memory in the dark for Nathan, shaping his other senses accordingly.