by Kylie Kaden
Those fucking Nikes were what steered the CIB’s enquiries towards the victim’s ID. A pre-triathlon photo of Trevor Adler in the shoe that wound up on the shore was a fairly obvious lead. A few people had heard the gossip that Trev moved away to manage a caravan park (as Blake had hoped), which explained why he wasn’t seen in town jogging along the boardwalks, picking up his organic coffee and gluten-free bread, and volunteering at the Cash for Cans.
Because Adler was a cleanskin, CIB needed saliva samples from his mother to confirm the DNA found in the bone marrow was indeed, that of her son. Connie Adler had been recovering in a stroke rehab centre for weeks, which explained why no one had reported Trevor missing. She may have, if she’d been home. If she’d been more lucid.
Luck. It was a fickle bitch.
* * *
A sweaty crowd of locals had gathered down near the picnic area and emotions were running high. The primary school marquee was flapping under a fig tree, and the smell of burnt onion and the sight of Hannah’s pretty face drew Blake over. Her skin was flushed crimson under her elegant fawn hat. She had on a white cotton dress that draped low with the weight of the bumbag of coins strapped to her waist, and Blake’s smile brightened. ‘Hello, young lady.’
Hannah stood from behind the table of sauces and napkins, and kissed him on the lips. ‘I was sure you’d forget I’d be here.’
Blake had forgotten. He had no memory of that conversation, but there was no benefit in telling her that. ‘Had to come visit my favourite person.’ He’d been so distracted working through this new development (and how this changed their little predicament) that he hadn’t paid Hannah any attention since the cops landed on their door the other night. Blake threw Hannah a fiver and grabbed the greaseproof-paper-cocooned bacon-and-egg burger from the tray. ‘School still fundraising for aircon?’ He munched through it. ‘If prisoners get cool air, why can’t our kids?’
‘Well, yes, but today’s takings are for the memorial.’
Blake scoffed a piece of bacon slipping out the side of the roll. ‘Who for?’
Hannah cocked one eyebrow. ‘Trev, perhaps?’
Blake choked on his roll. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry.
‘Trev’ was all Hannah had spoken of since it was made public. Suddenly everyone knew the bastard intimately. It was pathetic. And calling Principal Adler, Trev … Even the name sickened him. He threw the half-eaten burger in the bin.
Despite Trevor’s popularity with locals, Blake had never liked the bloke. Never trusted him. Somehow the snuffing out of this bastard’s life wasn’t even in the vicinity of warranting charity. The last time the community had rallied together in aid of something was when Hannah’s mum was hit. When a family was shattered. Blake would never forget it, not only because he’d known Angela personally, but also because it was his first case, the week he’d started as a constable.
Hannah’s tone was sharp. ‘Do you know how much those plaques cost? And there’s his mother. And besides, people want to acknowledge Trev’s service – he was a teacher here for seventeen years, he was the pioneer of the middle-school program, the—’
‘Yeah, righto.’ Blake was tired of it. It was all people spoke of since the news. Hannah was a serial offender – he couldn’t get to work this morning without her questioning him, asking, Do they have a person of interest? It was always worse when she tried to use their lingo. Like she was in on it. He was trying everything to make sure she wasn’t.
Molly arrived with two huge bags of bread rolls. ‘Hey. I bought fifty. That enough?’
‘Thanks, Mol!’
Molly sat next to her sister. ‘Don’t the P&C do this stuff? How come you got stuck with it?’
‘My idea. I thought Trev deserved a fundraiser, after all he did for the school, the youth group.’
Molly’s eyes widened. ‘This is for him?’
‘Why not?’ Hannah brushed her sister’s arm. ‘Think of all the tireless hours of service he’s given the community.’ Molly told her sister she had to get back to the bakery, and waved goodbye.
A helmet-haired lady pushed to the front of the line. ‘Speaking of that bloke – must have been chopped up, huh? Come to think of it, when I was cleaning the backpackers’ a few weeks ago, one of them fruit-pickers had heaps of big knives under his bunk. Strange. I mean, who keeps knives under their bed?’
Hannah raised her eyebrows. ‘Fisherman might, for filleting?’
‘Or chopping up victims!’
Blake was sick of the whole thing. The whole goddamned thing. ‘C’mon now, ladies. There is no truth in that. The ankle joint had naturally separated from the leg – no knives involved.’
The woman puckered her thin lips. ‘Nothing natural about feet falling off, if you ask me.’
Nothing natural about your obsession with ghastly garden gnomes, either.
‘What you reckon, Constable?’
It’s Sergeant, Blake thought, but didn’t say. The town still saw him as a newbie. A nice, loyal newbie, not capable of managing anything more serious than teenagers mucking around with nangs. Blake felt a burning in his chest and wondered if it was his heart, finally caving in. ‘CIB’s handling this one so, I think it’s best if we leave it to the people with the facts. I mean, accidental death hasn’t even been ruled out.’
Mrs Baxter, with a beard thicker than her husband’s (who drank the supermarket out of Metho every pension day), chimed in. ‘I reckon Malcolm got a hitman out on him. They had a falling out, remember? Over the development? Used to be best mates!’
Her husband (with twelve unpaid parking tickets) disagreed, because that’s what their marriage was about: opposition. ‘Malcolm – the dentist? Hardly. I reckon Catfish coulda done it – no love lost between those Adler brothers. Maybe the voices told him to do it!’
Blake frowned. ‘Catfish? He’s harmless. Why would he want his brother dead?’
Mr Baxter continued. ‘Well, their mother’s been telling anyone who’ll listen she’s over this world, and that waterfront house of hers is worth a mint – its own boat ramp right down to the lake, dual living, views of the spit. The less of the Adler brothers left, the more he gets, don’t he?’
Blake winced. ‘Catfish isn’t exactly materialistic. The guy doesn’t own shoes. All he wants in life is a good crab sandwich and his mutt.’
Another local from the retirement village, with shorts so baggy Blake could have him for indecent exposure, meandered over. ‘I heard the old bugger got caught pocketing the school grant money – telling the P&C their applications weren’t successful and when the cash came in, took the loot for himself!” His breath smelt of salami and Blake had to step back from the stench.
Blake actually liked that one. It sounded plausible. Maybe he should run with it, nothing like a red herring to throw an investigation. After all, he’d already crapped all over procedure. Why not throw in another time-wasting lead? He was in desperate territory now.
The pensioners chatted further about their theories – ‘His conscience finally caught up with him, stealing from the very students he was trying to help, threw himself in the drink! No wonder he retired early!’
Hannah rolled her eyes as she continued serving people for the fundraiser.
The obsession over Trevor Adler’s unsolved murder was like an epidemic, spreading through the residents of Lago Point one cluster at a time. The infection was airborne, carried like spawn on the breath of gossipers, each case more critical than the next, until the town was infested with ugly theories.
None of them was as crazy as the truth.
Chapter 15
THE DAY OF THE FESTIVAL
Forty minutes. It had been forty minutes since his daughter went missing from the Moon Festival, and Will was trying hard to stay focused, stay positive. In his job, he knew things didn’t always turn out the way you hoped, but he couldn’t let that fear cloud his thinking.
His wife was still searching the festival grounds and had called for an update but Will had no g
ood news. Her voice was shredded with fear. ‘God, Will. I’m scared senseless. I thought she was with you! I’d never let her out of my sight, you know that!’
Will pressed his mobile to his ear as he continued to scan their backyard for his daughter. Eadie should have found her way home to him by now. ‘I know. It was a misunderstanding – my fault as much as yours.’
‘She’s probably still walking home, right? We always say to walk home. She’s just got distracted at the swings. Should I look there?’ Her voice had an unnatural melody to it, like she was trying hard to keep it together.
‘I came home that way, but she could be there now.’ He sat on the garden edge, gave a heavy sigh. ‘Remember when she used to hide, and we’d be searching everywhere and get angry and then she’d get too scared to show herself? So, don’t be angry if you call her, okay? She’s probably scared she’s in trouble now. I’ll wait here and look around ring me the second you find her.’
Will hung up, the muffled cheers from the distant crowds an unwelcome distraction. He raked his fingers through his hair, started pacing the backyard, the lanterns floating overhead like pendant jewels, illuminating the garden, the side fence. He saw there were a couple of wooden palings missing. He’d been meaning to replace them. But as he stepped closer, he noticed the support beam had been kicked out at the base, dislodged from the rotting post, forming a triangular gap. Will saw it as another thing to fix.
But to a five-year-old, it was a secret passageway. A tunnel. A portal to another world.
There was a kid-sized gap in the fence – he was sure the palings weren’t kicked out before. Instinct pulled him closer. He refused to entertain the logic of the situation – that the missing girl was five years old, that she hated the dark, that she’d be terrified alone. He didn’t allow himself to face the fact that the adjoining steep yard was overgrown with twisted shrubs. One wrong step and …
She had to be okay. He didn’t want to live in a world where she wasn’t.
Eadie was a dreamer – she’d probably invented a magical world in which she escaped a fire-breathing dragon by crawling through a secret passage to a palace filled with unicorns. Or, perhaps she had followed the lanterns’ path, found the neighbours, eyes to the sky, and was now keeping them company.
Will paced towards the pushed-out fence, scurried over to the Adlers’ place.
The back roller-door to their garage was open. She’ll be inside, having milk and cookies with the old bat, or playing Scrabble with Principal Adler. Safe.
It took him a moment to adjust his vision, because what he thought he saw just wasn’t possible. He squinted, like a sharpened focus would change the picture before him. The unthinkable scene.
The moon cast panels of light and shade across the sawdust–covered floor. A small work lamp in the corner. A medley of clutter; scattered tools, offcuts of timber. And his daughter.
‘What the hell?’ Will growled, staring at the corner of the garage like he was watching a sick, twisted film. He felt his limbs charge, curls of spent timber squash under his shoes as he bounded towards her. Eadie. His sweet, innocent Eadie. That filthy man’s arm between her thighs, his fingers inside, his eyes closed, his mouth wide like a clown at the fair, a grotesque look of pleasure flushing his face.
One airborne leap later, Will had him by the throat. Towering over his prey, Will picked the filthy creature up by his shirt, and hurled him against a pegboard of hanging tools.
He looked back to Eadie, saw the horror in her face and tried to calm his voice. ‘Go home, hon! Mummy will be there in a sec.’ He watched her, paused momentarily, glancing back to catch sight of his daughter’s retreat. Then every part of him focused on the matter at hand. All he could see was red. All he could feel was heat. ‘What the fuck were you doing?’ he roared.
‘It’s not what you—’ the coward uttered, shielding his face, spit dribbling from the crack in the corner of his mouth as Will pressed him harder against the wall. ‘I was just helping her down off the trestle—’
‘Bullshit!’ Will screamed, banging Trevor against the wall. Trevor moaned, the pegs from the tool board stabbing into his neck. Will’s primal instinct to protect his child raged as he right-hooked him, firm in the jaw.
The slight man shook the punch off, touched his mouth.
A moment of clarity dawned on Will. He stood back, took a breath, caught up with himself.
‘Shame, really,’ Trevor muttered with a wry smile, his tongue reaching for the fresh cut on his lip, ‘that children have to grow up. Turn into adults, like you and me.’
With that, like a slingshot being tensioned, as if by some unknown force, Will felt his arm being wrenched back and his fist hit him again.
In slow motion, he saw the man fall, a string of saliva drooling, suspended in time. Trevor slowly slumped to the hard, concrete floor. Ears ringing, hand throbbing, Will stumbled back, a shudder in his breath he couldn’t still. ‘Will?’ His wife’s voice was tender, but full of fear. He hadn’t heard her footsteps, nor her gasp at the sight of their neighbour sprawled like a morbid snow angel on the concrete.
* * *
Will turned to her, saw Eadie’s tiny frame clinging to her. ‘Is he okay?’ Eadie asked, her eyebrows pulled together with concern.
Trevor moaned and tried to sit up. Will wanted to kick him again to keep him down, but resisted as he collapsed again, unconscious.
‘Get her out of here!’ he roared, and again he felt the separation from his body. Another force was in control, of his hand, his voice. Not him.
Abbi retreated, scurrying as best she could with a lanky child in her arms, out the garage door and down the side to the street.
Will surveyed the scene: the bastard was still out cold, but not for long. He kicked Adler’s torso, merely to rouse him, he told himself, but harder than necessary.
Trevor lifted his head, and groaned. ‘Stop! Okay! I’m sorry,’ he cried. ‘You don’t know how I’ve tried.’ Trevor pulled himself up, leaned against the wall, closed his eyes in shame. ‘Tried to dampen the urge.’
‘Evidently not fucking hard enough!’ Will exhaled. ‘But don’t worry, they’ll help you with that in jail, you prick.’ He battled the impulse to punch him again, smash his ribs, break his bones.
‘You don’t know what it’s like. You’re free to love who you love without it making you loathe yourself.’ A trickle of blood travelled down Trevor’s temple as he mumbled something like, ‘No one wants to be a monster.’
Will had no sympathy, and no time to care. ‘Don’t you ever so much as look at her again, you hear me? Better still, clear the fuck out. You’re not welcome here.’
He paced down the side and into the street. Abbi had sunk to the ground across the road behind a frangipani tree, Eadie in her arms. She wore a harried look, wild eyes darting about as she took in his expression. ‘What’s going on?’
‘He was …’ The words ballooned on his tongue. An overwhelming sense of failure crippled him. He crouched on the overgrown grass beside his girls. He watched as Eadie stared blankly back at the garage, the light a thin line beneath the front Tilt-A-Dor. He watched as the face of the woman he loved morphed from curiously alarmed to waxy with horror.
‘Oh, God no!’ Her hand pressed against her lips as she rocked Eadie gently in her arms. Realisation struck like a bullet. ‘No, no.’ He could see the panic rise through her, which didn’t help his own. ‘What did you see? Tell me.’
He whispered what he saw. She cradled her daughter’s head in her hands, landing butterfly kisses on her forehead, her cheeks. ‘My baby, are you okay?’ Abbi breathed, inspecting each hand, each finger like she did the day Eadie was born, looking for a sign, a scar, anything to signpost what their little girl had endured. She had sawdust on her shoes, food stains on her dress, but that was all.
‘Has this happened before?’ Abbi pleaded. Eadie looked more confused than traumatised.
‘Slow down, hon. She’ll pick up on your fear,’ he whispered to
his wife.
Abbi turned on him, raised her voice. ‘Would you rather pretend it didn’t happen? Let her assume this is okay?’
‘She needs to feel safe,’ he whispered. ‘Panic won’t do that.’
Will tried to gather his thoughts and breathe. He cuddled his daughter, reassured her, and took a moment to really see her. He stared into the sweet innocence of those eyes he knew so well. There were no tears, no tangible sign of what had transpired. But in the same way a ghost might sweep into a dusty barn, an invisible, eerie presence, so unfamiliar, swam in her eyes. The difference was so slight, so subtle that Will couldn’t have said what had changed.
But as he looked over his shoulder at the Adler house, he knew that everything had.
* * *
Once Eadie was settled in bed, the reality of it all hit Abbi hard. She was unravelling. ‘To think I was off helping Blake when she was in that shed with that man. God, I feel sick.’ She bent over the kitchen sink.
‘This is not your fault. It was an unfortunate set of circumstances we never could’ve foreseen.’
‘I’ve been too trusting of people.’ She went and checked the front door was locked, looked over to him, head hung, as he perched on the kitchen stool. ‘He’s lived in our street for years. Did you ever suspect? We had him in our home for all those Christmas drinks things, remember?’
Will shook his head. ‘They don’t come with warning labels.’
Abbi walked through to the lounge and across to the side window. ‘I can’t just sit here when he’s next door. He needs to be in handcuffs. I can’t wait for Blake to take him away. Arrest him.’ She looked up the street, scanning, watching. She could barely make out Trevor’s house behind the trees separating their properties, the nature strip all that buffered them from pure evil.
Will followed, and exhaled as he lowered himself onto the couch. His chin dipped to his chest. ‘You’re forgetting something.’ He rubbed his hands across his thighs. ‘I assaulted him. I had him by the throat. If you hadn’t walked in, I might have …’ He shook his head, shame masking his face.