You like showing off, Jack thought. “I still don’t—”
“I just didn’t want her to tell anybody. That was all. I didn’t think he’d kill her, though maybe I knew he would. I don’t know. Sometimes I think I did know what I was doing. Sometimes I’m able to convince myself I didn’t.” Jack felt the truth of those words thud him in the chest. “But I knew where she’d been for eight months. He had her. And I thought that if I did nothing, that would solve my problem. I didn’t do anything wrong.” His voice was now dripping in self-justification. “I just didn’t do anything at all. He grabbed her, dragged her. I lost them when they went behind the restaurant, into the driveway. And then she shows up again, two days later. Except this time—well, you know what happened from there.”
“That’s why you believed Lauren immediately, even though she wasn’t sure? You thought she was a credible witness?”
“She was a credible witness.”
“You hoodwinked a minor into an unsupervised confession, Andrew. She’s not even close.”
“Oh. Okay. She’s told you that, has she?” Andrew said. “Look, Lauren was sixteen. The youngest blokes in this town are Dawson’s boys, and they would have been just shy of twenty back then. I’m not saying anything, but we searched the house. Someone had been in her room. A boy. I’m not implying it was anything nonconsensual or anything more than two young people sneaking it in. But if she had to testify, there would have been collateral. If it was Brett’s boys—if—it would have been statutory.”
“That’s a flaky theory, mate. Still sounds like arse-covering to me,” Jack rebutted confidently, but wondered if he’d been too distracted to look into Dawson’s two sons properly as suspects.
Andrew held up his hands. “Maybe you are right. I’m just saying I always thought that was why she changed her mind. I’m not saying that makes her a bad person. I’m just saying that everyone’s telling you what they need to. But now I swear I’m telling the truth. I saw Curtis grab Eliza. Eight months after she disappeared. Two days before she died.”
Jack was reeling. After all this time looking for new evidence, Jack now had an actual witness. His breathing was shallow, his lips dry. The wind buffeted him. Alexis though. Andrew had said he was responsible for her death as well. How? There was still more to know. Curtis hadn’t stolen the ax, kicked Jack in the face. Curtis wasn’t Hush. They knew that. Was it possible that Andrew had copied the first murder he’d witnessed?
“And Alexis?” Jack said.
“Well, yeah, if you put it like that. I didn’t tell anyone what I saw. But it was okay because we did our job. Myself and Ian. I don’t care what you say about him—our police are good, and they’re thorough. We didn’t need all this extra shit to send him to jail, but you came along and made it out as some miscarriage of justice.”
Andrew had been able to lead the investigation with what he’d witnessed in mind. That was why the evidence was biased. That was why the police hadn’t bothered with intricacies, why some things sounded right but were clumsily proven.
“But then you got Curtis out. And he killed someone else. So I suppose, now you bring it up, that I wear her around my shoulders too.”
Andrew seemed to relax now. Jack had dissected Andrew’s faux-wine gift as the calling card of a psychopath, a sign of bravura. But perhaps it was a call for help. It had to be planted by someone who knew that Jack was coming back out there and where to find the evidence. It had to be someone who didn’t want Curtis out of prison. Andrew had made his confession, just not with words.
The strangest thing was that Jack understood him. While Andrew shouldered the guilt of Eliza’s death, Jack shouldered Alexis’s. By both doing nothing, they’d both done a lot.
Jack looked down at the Wade property. In the town, to the right, red and blue lights blinked down the main street. Jack still had so many questions. Everything swirled. The evidence still didn’t match up in his brain. He could tell from up here that Curtis’s final row of vines on the roadside were drooping. Not growing as well. Death in the soil.
His gaze drifted to the fence line. Eliza had tried to run, and Curtis had come out and caught her.
She’d seen Andrew’s light. Those deeper footprints.
Eliza hadn’t been having a cigarette, stamping her feet from the cold. She’d been jumping up and down. Calling for help.
The lies you can live with.
Andrew Freeman had seen all of this and turned his back.
Chapter 35
Finally solving Eliza’s murder totally sucked.
By the time Jack reached the bottom of the ladder—Andrew had given him the keys, then produced a second bottle from the basket—Jack knew he couldn’t tell anyone.
Because as soon as it was out that Curtis was Eliza’s real killer, the copycat killer theory for Alexis would be obliterated. Double jeopardy would implode. Ted and his team could try the new murder with precedent. A repeated MO: the ax, the phone. It would be inescapable. So Curtis would go to jail, where he no doubt belonged, but for, in part, the wrong crime. The only thing keeping him safe was that no one could tie the murders together, but as soon as he was guilty of the first, he’d be guilty of the second. He’d be a guilty man framed. Curtis’s guilt was so clear it obfuscated all else. Which was exactly what the copycat killer wanted. And Jack and Lauren were the only ones that knew the copycat was still out there.
Alexis’s killer couldn’t be Curtis; Jack had the bruises on his face to prove it. There was someone else running around out there, trading on the case. Jack had done what they wanted. By catching one killer, he would set another free.
He reached the grill and bent down to unlock it. Lauren was waiting for him. He’d have to tell her everything. Soon. Standing next to her was Sarah Freeman, her arms folded. He heard a siren in the distance, coming up the hill.
He had until Andrew confessed to the cops. He figured that wasn’t much time. Maybe he had until Winter got out here from Sydney, depending on who the officer coming up the hill was. And then Jack would have to make his own confession, hand over the ASICS sneaker, and the real killer would slink away in the ensuing chaos. And it would be chaos, an absolute frenzy.
Jack hopped off the ladder.
“You shoot him?” Sarah said. Emotionless.
She must have been waiting for this, Jack figured. She probably didn’t know about Eliza. But she did know about the wine. Sarah looked to the ladder as if considering climbing up to see her husband. But she just stood there, stuck. It must have felt familiar for her.
Jack shook his head.
There was a crunch of gravel under tires from the driveway. A door slammed.
Lauren hadn’t said anything yet. She held out a hand, and he passed her the rifle. She looked up and down the barrel, as if to check it was unfired, walked two steps toward the restaurant, placed it on the grass, and came back again.
“You should have told me you didn’t know how to use it.” She patted Jack on the shoulder, then put her hands in the air. “Instead of you climbing like a maniac, I could have shot the lock.”
Jack allowed himself a smile. He raised his hands as well. Sarah caught on.
Ian McCarthy, gun up, rounded the building at a sprint. He saw them and slowed. His eyes darted across the scene, taking it in. Three people, elbows square, hands up. The rifle on the ground in front of them, no danger. Ian lowered his own gun slightly. He stepped forward, picked up the rifle, and, not quite sure what to do with it, slung it on his shoulder.
“Where’s Andrew?”
All three of them looked skyward.
“Get him down.” Ian jerked his head Sarah’s way. She nodded and turned to the silo.
“Right. You two,” he said to Lauren and Jack, “in the car.”
Ian was driving a country police car—a four-wheel drive with bright-yellow stripes—rather than his usual Toyota.
Both Lauren and Jack split off around the hood without really thinking about it, opening the doors to the back seat on each side of the vehicle like practiced criminals. The doors opened from the outside but locked on the inside, so once they were in, Jack realized, they couldn’t get out. Unless McCarthy let them.
“So,” Lauren said after a few moments of silence in the car, “what did he say?”
“He admitted his wine’s fake.”
“And they knew? And he took care of them? He admitted it?” Her voice was incredulous. Excited.
“No. Listen, it’s complicated.”
“When is it not?”
“If he tells the cops what he told me, it’ll bury Curtis. Andrew’s telling the truth. I can prove it.”
“Right,” she huffed.
Great place to fight, Jack thought. In the back of a locked cop car.
“If Curtis takes it for both murders, the copycat gets away.”
“Forget the damn copycat! Look, I said when we met that if you proved Curtis guilty, I’d accept it. I’ve been struggling with keeping that promise.”
“Me too,” Jack said.
“I guess I always thought that it was the same person. I really thought that was the key. That we could tie it to the same killer. Fuck. It sounds awful, but I sometimes thought, for a flicker of a second, subconsciously… It wasn’t something I wanted to think. Alexis…I thought she might be—” She almost kept going, smiled to herself, and took a breath.
Jack could see her mentally restructuring her next sentence. So as not to seem emotional. So as not to seem stupid or tricked. So as not to seem taken in by the story she was supposed to see. Jack sympathized. That was the problem with the whole damn thing. The case was a flimsy construct of hearsay and theorizing, but everyone’s stories had their own predisposed endings. The copycat killer was banking on that too.
“Nah. It’s a terrible thing to think about a dead woman.” She wiped her eye with the back of her hand. Sniffed.
“What is?” Jack said.
“Useful,” she sighed. “When I heard she was dead, I thought it might be useful.” She broke the word into two syllables. A hiss and then a thuck like a pistol silenced. Use-ful.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
“No. I guess it isn’t. But it is real. And that’s okay.”
And then Jack had his arm around her, and she was leaning into his shoulder. His neck wet. There was silence except the wind skating across the roof. They just sat, knitted together. Jack’s body moving with her breath. Up and down. Up and down. Tidal sway. The swell, it’s irresistible. She pulled away. “I feel like that…and I wonder if there’s a sliver of him in me.”
Jack didn’t have anything to say to that. Lauren thought there was a seam of darkness in her. She thought that made her less. There was a sliver in everyone. Unlike hers, which was nondescript—a shadow, a vein—Jack’s had a volume, a quantifiable shape and a size. You could measure his sliver: it was a size 9.
But he didn’t have the words to explain that. So he waited for her to speak again.
“If my brother did this, he should rot,” she said. “I’m ready to accept that now.”
“And for Eliza, he will. But we both know Alexis’s killer is still out there. We saw them. We might be the only ones who can get to them before the evidence we have against Hush gets into police hands. As soon as it does, Curtis is going to look guilty. We need to catch them first. Otherwise, I may as well go to Winter with everything we have and hope he believes at least some of what I’m telling him.”
“Don’t do that,” Lauren said, and took his hand. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I might not have a choice.”
“I’ll help you find Hush,” she said softly.
Jack nodded. There was silence. Lauren looked out the window. Jack chewed the nails on his free hand.
“When you say you can prove it…” She let the sentence trail off. And Jack really thought he was about to tell her this time.
But then Ian McCarthy wrenched open the driver’s door and settled himself into the car with a gruff sigh.
It was a short, wordless drive, punctuated only by the squeak of the brakes at the bottom of the Wades’ driveway. Then the click in opening, thud in closing, of Ian’s door, the crunch of gravel as he walked around the hood to Lauren’s. Click. No words. Thrust Lauren’s rifle at her. Get out. Thud. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Click. Thud. Engine.
They coasted through town. Jack focused on the rearview mirror, willing Ian to glance back at him. Ian stared straight ahead. He turned onto Mary-Anne’s street and stopped. They sat in the car, neither moving. Eventually Jack pulled on the door handle. The door didn’t open. Locked from the inside.
“Jesus, Jack,” Ian finally said, still staring forward. “You can’t go around waving guns at people. Especially not Andrew Freeman.”
“I wasn’t—”
“I don’t care. That’s it. You’re done.”
“Done?”
“Done. Pack up. Get out.”
“I’ve paid until—”
“Jack.”
“I have a right to be here.”
At this, Ian swiveled in his seat. His forehead was splotched with red and he was sweating. Jack noticed his hands were balled into fists. Ian had a shotgun on the front passenger seat. Jack wished the car wasn’t locked. His nervous fingers pried the handle regardless, levering it in false escape. No result. Ian had him trapped here.
“You have a right? You have a right?” Ian was getting louder. “These people have a right to be left alone.”
“I’m not—”
“Andrew Freeman will get an order against you. Then you won’t have the right. I’m telling you now. The judge will rush it through. He can get it tomorrow morning.”
“Listen—”
Then Ian was smacking the wheel, rocking in his seat. The car heaved and shook on its springs. Jack had never seen him mad before. Locked in the car with him, it was terrifying.
“No, you listen! I am ordering you to go! I’m a fucking policeman, Jack, so for fuck’s sake, just fucking treat me like one for once.”
The car quieted. Steamed.
And Jack knew. And, God, he wished the door was unlocked now.
“You watched it,” Jack breathed.
“I watched it,” Ian said.
Jack’s carefully crafted episodes, pieced together to make Ian McCarthy look like a donut-eating, ball-scratching, gun-fumbling country cop, blithely trying to figure out who done these here murders.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not. But tell yourself what you need to.”
“Ian, I am,” Jack protested. “I am sorry. For the whole series. Everything. It was supposed to just be TV. Just characters in some stupid story. I didn’t realize. Why do you think I’m out here? Curtis is free. Alexis is dead. I’m so sorry. But I’m close now. I can’t fix everything, but I can set some things right. And it’s real this time. And I’m so close.”
“Leave tonight.” The words scraped out of Ian’s throat.
“Ian. Come on. Are these Winter’s words? Hold off for a few more days. Last favor.”
“Last favor?”
“Last favor.”
“You took the forensics.” It wasn’t a question.
“Ian—”
“At the funeral. You took the forensics.”
Jack nodded.
Click. Thud. Ian was out of the car. He was in his R.M. Williams boots, faded blue jeans, as usual. He was pacing back and forth. His pistol on his hip. Kicking at rocks. Arms in jagged movements. He looked like he was talking to himself. Back and forth he walked, stooping at intervals, fingers wish-boned on his temples.
Click. The back door opened, Ian against the sun. Above Jack, in shadow, he w
as as large and hulking as Curtis. An eclipse. Jack could smell him. His sweat. His hurt. Another man laid waste by Jack Quick. Chewed up. Spat out.
“Nope.” Ian shook his head, as if talking to himself. “Nope. You’re gone tonight.”
“Winter doesn’t have to know.”
“It’s not Winter, Jack. I volunteered to come out here on this call. I knew it would be you. Because you can’t help yourself, can you? Your last favor was the forensics. I got them for you in the first place. Because you asked me to. Because we were friends. Not this time.” Ian stepped aside, the sky yawned wide, and sunlight burst into the car. “I am not your friend. And I refuse to be your fool. Go.”
“Ian—”
“These aren’t Winter’s words, Jack, they’re mine: if you’re still here tomorrow morning, I’ll take great pleasure in arresting you myself.”
Chapter 36
Jack packed. He had nothing else to do. He wiled away an hour sitting on his bed, turning things over. His betrayal of McCarthy was thick in his throat and gut. Ian had been helping him the whole time. He’d been trying to give Jack the forensic files to guide Jack to the ax wounds, but Jack had gone and screwed him over anyway. Even so, leaving them on the seat with an open window… McCarthy was a bumbling cop, sure, but that was like he almost wanted Jack to take them. Jack’s bag was zipped by the door, reminding him that he had, finally, run out of time.
Curtis Wade was a murderer. Andrew had known and tried to guide Jack by planting the shoe. But so much was still unanswered. Why had Curtis killed Eliza? Who was Hush? Who killed Alexis? Who had stolen the Wades’ ax and kicked him in the jaw? He’d only solved half of the case. Hang on, he corrected himself—he hadn’t even solved half. He’d just unsolved the bit he’d fucked up. He shook his head. Making it about him again. He’d fucked it up. He’d gotten Alexis killed. And he’d helped the new killer get away.
Ian was right; he was doing more harm than good here. He’d have to figure it out from Sydney. He started loading his paper files back into their evidence boxes. He didn’t care for organization, just shoved them in randomly. He filled two boxes and then neatened the bed, scrubbed the toilet bowl. He looked at the door, unscrewed and propped against the window. He thought about reattaching it, but instead put two fifty-dollar notes on the side table and scribbled a note to Mary-Anne. If Brett charges you more than this for the door, give me a call. He left his number below. He grabbed his bag, took it downstairs, and put it in the trunk of his car. He did a return trip with the two boxes. He was filling the last one when he saw the blueprint of the Wade winery. He remembered Lauren handing it to him, what felt like years ago, in his house. Something flapped in his mind, a door left open, banging in the wind. Lauren. He had to tell her.
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