AHMM, November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Provisionary, anyway. Hope to be made permanent."

  "Become a mainstream officer, eh? A proper constable."

  "That's the hope."

  "Right. Well, about time, I say. Care for a cuppa?"

  "Always.” Leonard sat on the old wooden chair in front of the desk while the warden busied himself with the teapot and lit a gas burner. Behind him, a wall map was spotted with crisply penciled notations. Beside the window, a framed photograph of half a dozen bare-legged young Aboriginals in military shirts stood stiffly in a row. A yellowed label in coppery ink read, “NorForce Nackaroos, 1944.” In a corner between the map and the photo leaned a tall spear, its thick leaf-shaped blade of glass wicked and its thin shaft polished by much handling. “Wondered what you could tell me about the victim, his mob. Anything I might follow up on.” He added, “I understand he was one of your mob. A cousin?"

  "Yeah. Through his father's mother's sister's daughter who married my father's brother. I identified him—Roland Mitchell—but don't know that much about him. Sugar and Sunshine?” He held up a box of powdered milk.

  Leonard was somewhat surprised to hear the warden use the dead man's name. Some believed such usage would call up the evil the man had done while alive. Others said it would bring back a ghost angry at being killed. Either Bates did not care about those dangers or was showing that he was more modern than traditional.

  "Sugar, please. Any guesses who would kill him or why?"

  The warden frowned and shook his head. “Haven't heard of any recent dustups—not with him involved, anyway. Usual larrikin stuff when he was a kid. Drunk, vandalism, whatever. Spent some time in juvie, I remember. But that was years ago."

  From what Leonard knew, juvenile detention was seen by many outback youths more as a vacation than a punishment: three meals a day, flush toilets, a basketball court, telly in the evening. “Did he ever live in Sydney? Melbourne?"

  Bates sipped at his steaming mug. “Might've. Got money from somewhere. A year or so past, he set his mother up with a little fishing shop. Might want to talk with her—over in Five Rivers."

  Leonard made a note of the woman's name and address. “What about his father—your uncle—where's he?"

  "Dead. Drank himself to death."

  That could be carved on a lot of tombstones, including those of Leonard's white father and Aboriginal mother. “Mitchell had spear marks on his leg, recent ones. Know anything about that?"

  "No. Was wearing trousers when I found him.” Bates gazed a long moment out the window, weariness settling under his eyes. “Lived here all my life. Son to father, going back to bloody Dreamtime. That's my granda’ there.” He nodded toward the photograph on the wall. “But I'm a copper and the grandson of a copper, so I'm not told everything that happens on the reserve."

  Leonard understood. “Any guess why he'd be speared?"

  "Most likely tribal law. His mob comes from Lizard Hollow, near where he was found. His mother's sister's at Neildu. You'll want to talk to them—if they'll talk to you."

  Five Rivers was near Wyndham, Leonard knew. But he'd never heard of Neildu or Lizard Hollow. “Can you tell me how to get there?"

  "They're beyond the black stump, that's certain.” The warden's chair scraped on the scarred floor as he turned to the wall map. “Goolime Road to Gibb River Road—eighty k's. Then up to Home Valley.” His finger traced the route. “Access track here—in the Dry, anyway—to Nulla Nulla and Neildu. Maybe a hundred kilometers.” His fingernail moved to a string of neatly penciled numbers. “Lizard Hollow GPS—best write it down: 15Þ 18’ 6” S, 127Þ 38’ 59” E.” The finger moved an inch or so again. “Mitchell was found here.” Another GPS had been penciled in and Leonard copied that as well.

  * * * *

  Though Sergeant Hall had dismissed the crime scene, it was the end of a thread of life and the place to begin tracing that thread back through time. Leonard rattled down an overgrown track that wound toward the coordinates of Mitchell's body. Occasionally, he stopped between outcroppings of pale rock and prickly clumps of spinifex to locate himself with his GPS. When the track disappeared completely, he looked ahead through shimmering heat waves to where it was likely to go and worked his way around tangles of wattle trees and termite mounds to find stretches of sand-drifted wheel ruts. The Rover's noise and smell frightened the animals and birds, so the hot land, leached of color by the afternoon sun, seemed empty of life as well. But occasional squiggles of lizard tails in the sand, stitches of dimples from tiny feet, scrapes from larger claws told that life persisted. Finally, the vehicle groaned down a notch in the sandy wall of a gully and creaked to a halt. Here, boots and bare feet had churned the earth. Leonard turned off the engine and listened to it tick as it cooled, listened to the buzz of flies, the distant high-pitched shrieks of cockatoos.

  A stretch of pebbly sand in the gully's center writhed with a scatter of ants running in quick, weaving patterns. That must have been where the body lay, and the insects still sniffed the fading odor. He waved absently at flies hanging under the wide brim of his hat and gazed around the dry creek bed and the flat, bushy country beyond. Carved by some long past flood, its chest-high banks showed roots poking out here and there. A wisp of falling sand from the lip revealed a lizard's quick movement. Except for the wind-drifted footprints, nothing made this spot different from any other bend of the gully through this empty country. So what had drawn Mitchell to it? Did he meet his killer here? Was he killed elsewhere? If so, why carry a heavy body here? Sergeant Hall hadn't said the body was moved. But if kites and dingoes had tugged at it, then the lividity would have been disturbed. Secondary lividity—that's what it was called: Blood settled in different low spots as evidence that a body had been moved after death.

  He dredged up phrases from his basic course on crime scenes, which, when it came to homicide, had been a list of forensic terms and of what not to disturb rather than an explanation of investigative techniques. Detectives, it was made clear, would analyze the scene of a major crime. The constable's job was first to secure the scene from disturbance; his second was not to disturb it any further. But the book didn't always fit the field, and if the crime scene was already written off, Leonard was free to wander through it.

  He went slowly down the streambed toward the distant noise of the cockatoos, searching the grit and pebbles as he walked. Cockatoos, especially the Red Tail Black, seldom strayed far from water. Why wouldn't Mitchell meet whoever near the pleasing smell and sight of water? Because in this flat, dry land, water was a public place. Every living thing, human and otherwise, was drawn to water. If you were up to something you didn't want anyone to know about, you wouldn't do it near water.

  After a few hundred meters, only vague indentations hinted at footprints, and even they disappeared. The sand constantly moved in the wind, sometimes one grain at a time, sometimes a level sheet of blurry drift. Someone may have walked this way. What was more certain was that no tires had dug grooves since the last Wet.

  Another bend revealed treetops breaking the flat horizon beyond the gully walls. A ten-minute walk led Leonard, heralded by the cockatoos’ alarm, into a small grove of mulga trees. Ringed by shrub and ferns, a pool nestled against a bank of pitted gray limestone. Leonard studied the spring's rim. There were no marks of freshwater crocodiles baked into the sand, but small animals and birds had left their prints. So had a single walker: one line of boot prints going up the sand, a slightly clearer line coming back. Leonard circled the pool and studied the tracks from different angles. The boots were cleated, sand ridges still sharp in some indentations. The soles—Vibram, probably—were unworn by use. The stride was a man's. He was heavier coming back than going in. Had not bothered to hide his tracks—unskilled in the bush, perhaps. Or just careless. The tracks passed the pool and paralleled the small stream below it. At most a meter wide and ankle deep, the clear water rippled maybe a hundred meters before sinking out of sight into the sand. During the Wet, the trickle would become a small riv
er and, after five or six kilometers, churn north into Yoygin Creek or south into Forrest Creek. But in the Dry, it disappeared into its bed to feed the mulga.

  Another hundred meters beyond the sink he found tire tracks beginning to fill with sand. They came straight in, showing no sign of a turn. Backed in or out. One man. Knew where Mitchell waited. Drove a vehicle. Wore good, new boots. Careless about leaving a trail. Carried something heavy back. Could afford an expensive weapon.

  Waving at the flies, he walked beside the tire tracks. A chip of rose-colored stone about half the size of his palm lay to the right of the ruts and caught his eye. Turning it over, he ran his thumb across its scalloped edge. It had been flaked off an outcropping—the scallops were made by a tool—but it was an outcropping somewhere away from this place. Here was only faded orange sand and pebbly gravel drifted by centuries of wind and punctuated by brief floods of churning water. Someone had brought this chip here. Leonard smelled it, touched his tongue to it, felt the hot, dry stone suck his tongue's moisture. Then he buttoned the flake into his shirt pocket and slowly followed the tracks until a spur showed where the vehicle had turned. They led out of sight across sandy hills to the south, ninety, a hundred kilometers, toward the Gibb Road. Leonard thought about the weapon of a city criminal, about someone who could find his way through all that bush to this empty spot. And about the GPS Leonard used to find this same spot.

  * * * *

  The sign for the Barramundi Paradise Tackle and Bait Shop was wider than the one-room frame building that held it. Both faced the paved road where tourists drove from the Zoological Park and Crocodile Farm to the Five Rivers Lookout. Leonard's shadow, long in the afternoon sun, rippled up the two steps of the front veranda. Inside, an unsmiling woman watched two fishermen poke through lures, hooks, and spools of line. Leonard read posted fishing maps and adverts for guides as he, too, waited for the tourists to finish.

  "Bloke said six hundred pound test,” said the one with a mustache. “Oi, missus, you really got barramundi up here weigh a hundred and sixty kilos?"

  The woman's eyes, bulged from some kind of thyroid problem, were unblinking. “We got ‘em."

  "Costliest bloody line in the shop,” muttered the one in a new Akubra Pilbara hat.

  "Yeah. That's why the guides don't provide the gear. Probably get a bloody kickback from the old girl too. Let's do it and get on."

  "Right. Finny tribe's a-waiting."

  "All right, missus, tote up. Bloody well hope your barramundi are worth the cost!"

  Silently she totaled the bill. The fishermen gathered up their stubby rods, heavy reels, and sacks of line and hooks. They glanced guardedly at the copper on their way out; Leonard smiled and nodded.

  A voice floated back through the closing screen door. “They got Abo everything here, coppers and all."

  "Coppers probably sell for a sight less than this stuff."

  Leonard introduced himself. “I'm sorry about your son, Mrs. Mitchell. But I wonder if I could ask you a few questions. It might help us find his killer."

  She took a deep, shuddering breath as if fighting a spasm of pain. Her eyes went bloodshot, but no tears were allowed.

  "Do you have any idea why anybody might have done this?"

  "No.” The quick answer came with an emphatic shake of her head.

  "Can you tell me where he worked?"

  "Sometime over at Kununurra—one of the big farms over there."

  "He was working there when he died?"

  "Off and on."

  "Did he ever visit Darwin or Sydney or the other cities?"

  The eyes blinked. “Once in a while maybe."

  Leonard tried another direction. “Do you know why he was speared in the leg?"

  A quick shake of her head.

  "He never told you about being speared? You never saw him limp?"

  "No."

  He smiled as if he believed the woman. “I understand he bought this shop for you."

  "He was a good man—a good son."

  "Yes. He did a good thing. Where did he get the money?"

  Her nostrils flared a bit as if she smelled danger. “He worked for it. He was a good son!"

  He nodded again. “How long have you had this shop?"

  "A year—a little longer.” The door opened and a cluster of tourists crowded in. The woman looked at them with relief. “It's the busy time, Constable. Anything else?"

  Leonard thanked her and sat for a while in the Rover to watch the lowering sun and to think about the cost of fishing line.

  * * * *

  The rough drive to Neildu lasted from post-dawn cool to mid-morning heat. Mitchell's aunt was camped among the tanna bushes far enough from the settlement to be undisturbed by its life. Leonard parked at a respectful distance and trudged toward the scrubby trees. Of the half dozen shades, only one covered more than empty sand. Sometimes a camp is for men only, sometimes women only—ancient dreaming sites where they could make spiritual journeys undisturbed. But this one seemed to be where clan elders went for privacy, like old kangaroos or camels that preferred isolation. He cleared his throat loudly. A gray-haired woman in a frayed cotton dress sat cross-legged on a spread of ragged cloth and steadily ground at a rubbing stone. She watched him approach.

  "G'day, Aunty.” Stopping far enough away that his boots would not kick sand on her cloth, he squatted so he would not look down at her. “Maybe we can talk?"

  "You're that constable—the one come to see about that death.” She took another scoop of mulga beans from the pile beside her knee and dropped them on the stone.

  He nodded, not surprised that in the bush even the wind carried information. “Got tucker here. Like to share?” From his shoulder bag, he took out a sleeve of crackers and a tin of sardines. The woman's rheumy eyes followed the tin; her wide nostrils twitched when he pulled open its lid. “You got water?"

  A hand waved toward a scarred thermos jug set in the cool. “Cup's there."

  She set aside the grinding stone and they shared the food almost in silence. Leonard expected the woman to ask about his skin relations, bone relations, language, tribe, and Dreaming. But she did not. Instead, she praised the tucker, accepted his thanks for the water, exchanged names with him, and waited.

  When the last crumb was nibbled, he began the ritual of asking questions without asking questions. “Aunty Phyllis, this man was your nephew."

  She nodded. “My sister's son."

  "You saw him before he died."

  "Three weeks ago.” Her shrug held resignation and good-bye.

  Near the time he received the stab wounds in his leg. “Tell me about it."

  The woman licked her finger and tasted the mulga paste. “He came to the village. Peter Williams called him to the village."

  "Peter Williams?"

  "Law Giver."

  "They had a sit-down."

  One shoulder lifted in another shrug. “Men's business. I asked him to tell his mother hello from me."

  "That was after the sit-down."

  "Before. Didn't see him after."

  "Maybe you know something about that sit-down."

  She looked surprised at Leonard's ignorance of the gulf between the worlds of men and women. “Just told you—men's business."

  "Maybe your nephew said something about it."

  "Said hello. Said he would tell my sister hello. That's it."

  Leonard accepted her offer of a dab of mulga paste on a cracker. The nutty, slightly sour flavor was a fleeting memory of early childhood before being sent to the state school. “Your sister has a new fishing shop over at Five Rivers. I hear her son paid for it."

  Her eyes shifted to some distant point. “He wanted to take care of her. His dad's dead."

  "He must've had a good job somewhere."

  A shrug. “Kununurra, maybe. Wyndham. All over, maybe."

  Everywhere and nowhere. Leonard waited, but she added nothing. “He was stabbed in the leg. Maybe you know why."

  "No."
/>
  Was that a look of embarrassment? “I need help, Aunty Phyllis. This is police business now."

  "Yeah—white police. Nobody here's going to help white police."

  "I'm half-white police. Maybe somebody can give me half-help, eh?"

  "Ha!” Teeth flashed in the woman's face, then disappeared like, Leonard thought, a crack of lightning during the Build Up to the Wet.

  "Aunty, I can't just let a killer go. Nobody should. This thing will live in the people like a sickness.” Leonard made a clawlike clutch at his stomach. “Like cancer, you know? Better not wait until maybe the white police come or payback starts."

  The only sound was the hot wind ruffling the leaves. Finally, he fished the chip of red stone from his shirt pocket and placed it on the gingham cloth. “Maybe you can tell me where this came from."

  She stared at it for a long time. Slowly, her thin shoulders sagged beneath the faded cotton of her flowered dress. An ant, searching its way across the soiled red and white checks, paused at the chip. She sighed. “You better talk to Theodore Kame.” Her eyes stared intently, telling Leonard something without saying anything. “Theodore Kame maybe will help you."

  "Where can I find him?"

  Her long black fingers wagged toward the bush. “Past Neildu where Forrest Creek and Ernest River come together. Makes pituri there. You talk to him."

  Leonard thanked her and stood. She asked for the empty cracker sleeve. As he left, she began dropping the mulga seeds into their new home.

  * * * *

  A twisting track jounced above the banks of the Forrest River. Once, Leonard stopped to fill the fuel tank from the vehicle's jerry cans and hoped that, given the cost of petrol, he would find out enough to justify the expense to Sergeant Hall. Near noon, he reached an empty shade. The ash of its fire was still warm. He cooeed and, slowly fanning his hat at the heat and flies, waited. In a while, a skinny figure with an unkempt gray beard and wearing only short pants and laceless boots stepped noiselessly from the brush.

  "G'day.” A long, gleaming scar puckered the dark flesh of his shoulder.