‘And what are you doing way up here?’
‘Searching for work.’
‘As?’
‘As a labourer, a farmhand, anything. I thought I’d try some places out here.’
‘Any in particular?’
‘No. But I heard there were a few.’
Gabriel wasn’t wrong. There were plenty of cattle stations and homesteads nestled in the vast plains, gigantic in size, akin to small countries. He had the lean, wiry physique required to work them, one used to living on a diet of meat and little else, used to doing anything from checking boreholes for water to mustering and branding cattle.
‘And how did you meet this . . . Heath?’
At the mention of his name, their visitor shuddered, taking a moment to compose himself.
‘I was in Port Hedland. I’d come up from Exmouth the previous day with a trucker.’
‘Got a name?’
Gabriel shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. ‘Lee something. Chinese guy in his fifties. Fat. Smoked pre-rolled roll-ups that were wedged in the visor. Nothing much more to him.’
‘And he dropped you off in Port Hedland?’ asked Chandler.
‘Yeah, he was heading on to Darwin.’
‘What did you do in Port Hedland?’
‘I slept.’
‘Where?’
‘In the park.’
‘Name?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘Dunno. I wasn’t sightseeing. There was grass . . . trees . . . a bench. You know, park stuff.’
Chandler made a note to probe further. ‘Carry on.’
The man’s strained voice had calmed somewhat, but still jittered at the edges like the bark of a nervous dog. ‘Next day I decided to head inland. Looking for work.’
‘Why not stay near the coast?’
‘A guy in Exmouth told me that inland was the best place to go. Said that most people stick to the coast for easy movement but competition for places means that the bosses pay fuck all. Also it seemed like an adventure.’
At this point Gabriel paused, as if he’d lost his train of thought. Chandler decided to let him vacillate, let the words and thoughts come naturally.
Gabriel blinked hard, returning. ‘I was . . . on the road out . . . the main one.’ He stopped and looked at Chandler. ‘I don’t have a name.’
Chandler did. Highway 1, the black vein that eventually turned off on to 95, which led to Wilbrook. A track he’d been up and down many times, especially when he was first seeing Teri, back when she was the bouncy party girl from the coast. He didn’t know then that the coast would always have a hold on her.
‘I was hiking along, the sun blinding me from what was coming. I heard an engine drone from behind and stuck my thumb out. Two had already passed that morning so I was expecting it to roll on . . . but it pulled up.’
‘Can you describe it?’ asked Chandler. He looked at the two-way mirror and hoped Tanya was getting all this. It had been nearly a year since the last recorded interview in here. A domestic violence case. June Tiendali taking offence to her husband spending evenings with his pigeons rather than her and snapping his arm with a hockey stick.
‘A boxy car. Don’t remember the make. The badge had fallen off I think. Dark brown . . . but that could have been the dust, which even covered the windows. One of the brake lights was out, I remember that much. I half-jogged towards it thinking that they might drive off at any moment.’ Gabriel looked at Chandler ruefully. ‘I wish he had.’
‘Licence number?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘Covered in dust too. Maybe on purpose.’
‘Okay, go on.’
‘So I got in. Maybe I should’ve looked first but I needed to get work quick. Get housed, get fed.’
‘So what did he . . . this Heath . . . look like?’ Chandler readied his pen for a description. He hoped that it was more descriptive than that for the car: unknown make, unknown licence number, a dusty, boxy vehicle. Similar to most of the shit on the roads around here.
Gabriel closed his eyes and took a breath. Chandler let the silence play out. He glanced to the two-way mirror and his reflection. A weary cop stared back at him, the sharpness of his cool blue eyes highlighting the shadowy tiredness ringing them.
‘Short . . . a few inches shorter than me. Brown hair. Tanned, like he worked outdoors. Stocky too. Said he was thirty like me, but seemed kinda . . . I dunno . . . nervous.’ Gabriel paused. ‘I probably should have spotted it then that there was something dark about him.’
‘What do you mean “dark”?’
‘Something . . . off,’ said Gabriel. ‘His beard disguised his features. As if he was slowly becoming a shadow.’
Gabriel stared at Chandler as if seeking confirmation that the words made some sense outside of his skull.
‘And you don’t have to remind me how stupid it is to hitch around here,’ he added, suddenly on the defensive. ‘He seemed okay, or my brain persuaded me that he looked okay. I knew . . . or thought I knew . . . if he tried anything I could defend myself. He said his name was Heath and he was travelling back from town with supplies. Even that made me feel better. I mean, no killer introduces themselves . . . do they?’
Again he looked up for some form of confirmation. Chandler nodded, though he wasn’t sure he agreed. If Heath’s intention was to kill then why not spill details. But it did tell him one thing. The fact that Heath was confident enough to converse freely with his intended victim warned Chandler that he had done it before, that he was relaxed enough to take charge and assured enough to be open with his victim: number fifty-five. A feeling of excitement and dread swirled around his stomach, butterflies the size of eagles. This could be big. He needed to weasel out more details before his victim clammed up.
‘Did he tell you anything about who he was?’
‘Only that he lived around here.’
‘In Wilbrook?’ Chandler couldn’t recall any Heaths in the area, though he supposed it could have been an alias. His attention turned to who around here could kill that many people. Wilbrook wasn’t short on crazy people but none with enough gumption to pull it off. Probably.
‘No . . . I dunno . . . just around here, he said. His accent was from across east I’d say. Anyway, he seemed friendly enough. I was looking for a lift, not a soulmate.’
Chandler nodded for him to go on.
‘I told him I was from Perth. When he said I was a long way from home, I told him that I had to go where the money was, that everything up here was barren but had a certain beauty.’ Gabriel shrugged his shoulders and grimaced. ‘That’s a lie but I’ve found it’s always best to flatter the ride in some way. Like a hooker would, I suppose.’
Chandler studied him. The grimace suggested that this wasn’t a joke, but a philosophy he obeyed.
‘An hour in we passed a couple of turnoffs for farms. I told him that this was good enough for me but he said that everyone dived into them. He said it was like stopping off at the first watering hole you come across, the big one, the one where the animals have already muddied the water. He said that they paid shit and that those further in were better. I asked him if he had worked them before, in case I could get a name or a slide-in, but he didn’t answer. I thought that maybe he had but something had happened that he didn’t want to talk about.’
Chandler made a note to check with some of the farms for a Heath; see if anyone remembered him working for them.
Gabriel continued, ‘We went on for another half hour, the scenery turning to dust. I was starting to wonder how anything could survive out there never mind a herd of cattle. It got me feeling thirsty. Even with the windows cranked down the air was boiling. He must have read my expression. He told me there was water in the back if I wanted it. That’s how he got me.’
‘The water?’
Gabriel nodded. ‘It tasted a little chalky, but by then I didn’t much care. It was water and I was desperate.’ He looked at Chandler wanly, as if disgusted with himself. ‘I began to feel drowsy almost r
ight away. At first I thought it was exhaustion or the heat, but it got worse and worse. I tried to lift my arms and couldn’t. They didn’t feel attached to my body. I remember turning to look at Heath. He was staring at me, as if there was nothing wrong. Just a process he’d watched many times before. He didn’t even look at the road, or where we were going, just at me, for what seemed like hours. A shadow passed over his face until I could only see the outline of his skull. Then I passed out, I think. He must have poisoned the water with something.’
Gabriel’s eyes danced around again. Chandler recognized the look. The confused victim attempting to fill in the blanks and failing.
‘I woke up in a wooden shed. Dunno how long I was out but there was still light poking through the slats so I guessed I’d only been out a couple of hours.’ Suddenly worry drew over his face. ‘Unless this is Friday—’
‘No, Thursday,’ Chandler assured him.
That seemed to bring Gabriel some relief. The fact that he hadn’t lost a day of his life. The fact that he still had his life at all.
‘He’d shackled my wrists to the roof beam.’
‘Shackled?’ asked Chandler.
‘Yeah . . . with these thick iron things. Two D-shaped loops linked by chain that was attached to the wall. The same just above my ankle. Those weren’t attached but they were impossible to move in. Not that I was going to get away. He’d made sure of that.’
‘Were you on a farm? In the forest? An outhouse?’
‘Up there,’ said Gabriel. ‘That hill you said. I could see the trees through the slats. Shackled in a woodshed with saws and hatchets and stuff. Nothing that shouldn’t have been there but ’cause I was chained up they all looked lethal.’
‘Can you tell me anything more about it? Sounds? Smells?’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘Dirt floor. Stock of wood in the corner for burning. I could hear movement next door so I guessed I was chained up next to a cabin. I called out for help. That’s when Heath appeared. I asked him where I was – he said home. I pleaded with him to let me go and I wouldn’t tell anyone about what he’d done. He told me to calm down. He sounded angry, as if I’d disturbed him from something important.’
Gabriel’s legs began to chitter up and down under the table. His eyes searched the room as if trying to escape.
‘Sorry, I . . . I’m just feeling a bit claustrophobic.’
‘Do you want the door open?’
‘Please.’
Rising from the chair, Chandler opened the door to reveal the office beyond and the series of small windows set high above a row of grey cabinets on the far side of the room. Gabriel stared at them.
‘I got afraid he was going to do something there and then. He walked right up to my face. That’s when he mentioned the number fifty-five. It was all he said before he backed off towards the door. I was afraid to ask him what he meant. But I guessed . . .’
Gabriel stopped.
‘Guessed what?’ asked Chandler, eager to hear his own assumptions voiced.
‘That I was going to be his fifty-fifth victim.’
Even on a day hot enough to melt plastic Chandler felt the chill sear down his back. As he related the story Gabriel seemed to be reliving it, his wiry muscles dancing underneath the bloodied T-shirt, the sinews in his forearm permanently tensed. Sheer terror.
‘He said not to worry about whether I was going to be killed,’ continued Gabriel. ‘Because of course I would be killed. It had been written.’
‘What do you mean, “it had been written”?’ asked Chandler.
Gabriel shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, Officer.’
‘Okay, go on,’ said Chandler, making a note of the phrase.
‘I knew I had to get free, so when he left I tried to get out of the cuffs.’ Gabriel presented his blistered palms and wrists, red raw circles around them, the skin scuffed, the fine hair torn from the root. ‘I pulled on them, tried to rip them off the wall. Kept yelling out for help. Not once did he come in and tell me to shut up. He wasn’t worried about anyone hearing me. That’s when I knew I was in the middle of nowhere. I kept pulling and eventually managed to break one of the locks but one hand was still attached to the wall. I reached for the bench with my free hand to try and get one of the tools. I nearly put my shoulder out of joint, but managed to get my hands on the hatchet. I tried to chop at the remaining cuff without chopping through my own wrist. I was terrified that he’d come in and catch me. I just wanted a chance to get free. A chance to live. I went quiet, but worried that the fact that I had shut up would attract his attention, so I yelled out to cover the sound of the hatchet hitting the metal and ringing out like a fucking church bell.’
He looked up.
Chandler nodded for him to go on, intrigued by the man’s vivid recollection, how the words flowed from his mouth like water from a burst dam.
‘Somehow I managed to bend the metal, like a superhuman kind-of-thing and got my other hand free. The key for the leg irons was hanging from a nail so in a few seconds I was out. I felt more scared than I had when I was chained up. I remember trying the shed doors but they were padlocked. The only other exit led next door. The one he’d come from. So I opened it. There was a single room filled with supplies.’
Gabriel exhaled deeply. As if he had been holding his breath.
‘And Heath?’ asked Chandler.
‘Sat at a desk covered in paper and maps. A big cross on the wall. I tiptoed to the front door but as I opened it, the hinges squeaked. He turned. We stared at each other as if frozen. Then the chase started. I made it outside but it was like I was in the middle of a hollow. Just trees and earth all around. I had no idea what direction to head in so I went right.’
‘Why right?’
‘I dunno . . . I’m right-handed I guess . . . I can’t tell you why. Each way looked the same. My legs were stiff from being locked in the manacles but I knew I had to move fast, not knowing if he had a gun or not.’
Chandler could almost see Gabriel’s heart pound under the T-shirt. The memories were flooding back, intense and uncontrolled. After a long breath that seemed to suck the last of the oxygen from the stifling room, he continued.
‘I aimed for the ridge. I glanced back and he was about ten metres behind me. I kept running and running until I stumbled on some loose soil and fell into a small clearing. The ground was all dug up.’ Gabriel stared at him. ‘They were graves.’
The air in the room seemed to grow even more oppressive.
‘Graves?’ Chandler frowned. ‘How do you know that?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘I don’t . . . not for sure. I only remember thinking at the time they looked like graves. Five, six, seven, maybe . . . rectangular patches.’ He paused and stared at Chandler as if only just realizing just how close he had come to death.
‘I got up, kept running and came to a hill. I thought I’d be able to see from the top but there was nothing but a drop on the other side. I shouldn’t have stopped.’
Another breath. Composing himself. The tendons in his jaw twitched.
‘He jumped on me. I tried to throw some punches . . . but none landed. None that stopped him anyway. We rolled over and over . . . then I was falling. Like I was weightless. You ever experienced that?’ Gabriel looked at Chandler.
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘It was oddly exhilarating. Until the landing. As if I’d been hit by a train. As if I’d left my body entirely. I thought that was it and I’d entered heaven.’ He looked to Chandler seeking understanding.
Though his parents had instilled the virtues of religion in him and his two kids, Chandler was never what he would call an active participant. Religion to him was like home-grown tomatoes. Easier to consume than nurture. It was also a reminder that Sarah, his oldest, had her First Confession tomorrow. Something he was supposed to help her with tonight, practise what to say, when to kneel, when to stand . . .
‘I woke up sometime later and for the second time that day I had to figure out
where I was. I saw the ridge above me and realized I’d fallen off. The pain of the landing returned, then I remembered Heath. He was lying beside me. Flat on the ground, the dirt around us splashed with blood.’
‘Was he dead?’ A dead suspect would make Chandler’s life easier.
‘I dunno.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘I dunno if he was alive or not. I didn’t go near him in case he was only playing dead. I’ve seen movies, Officer. I had to get away. So I did.’
‘And left him there?’
Gabriel nodded. It meant no confirmation of death. Chandler would have to assume Heath had survived. The lack of clarity was frustrating. He would need to organize a hunt for an injured man; a hunt through that forest. But if Gabriel had made it to town in a few hours it meant that Heath couldn’t be that far in. There was a possibility of finding him, saving him, arresting him.
‘How did you make it to town?’ asked Chandler.
‘Luck. I stumbled along for a couple of hours before I came across a dirt road. I followed it looking for some help, but nobody passed. That’s when I came across the old bicycle. It was rusted to shit but better than nothing. I made it to the end of the dirt road, saw the town in the distance and aimed for it, cringing in fear at every car that passed, expecting Heath to jump out of one, or to be side-swiped into the ditch and finished off.’
‘What road?’ asked Chandler. It would narrow the search down.
Gabriel shook his head. ‘I dunno. It’s all a blur, Officer. I don’t think there was a name. Just a dirt road. He was after me. That bastard . . . was after me. But I made it.’
With that Gabriel slumped in the seat, exhausted from relaying his story, the weight temporarily lifted from his shoulders. Chandler studied him. The eyes remained closed, the body language one of cautious relief curdled by ongoing trepidation.
‘You’re safe now.’
The eyes opened. The mouth followed, the smile weary and crooked, a set of perfectly aligned teeth flashed: good genes or excellent orthodontic work.
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