Devastation Road

by Joanna Baker

  ‘But the first real clue from Wando was at the picnic. He yelled at a little group of people, accusing someone of being the murderer. Most people thought he was yelling at Craig. Then you decided he’d meant Andrew. But there was something crucial Wando had said. He’d said, ‘I’m the only one left. Are you going to kill me too?’ But he wasn’t the only one left. Tara was supposed to be a witness to Jeanette’s death. The comment didn’t make sense — unless Tara wasn’t a witness, but the murderer.

  ‘The second thing was when we visited Wando. Just as we were leaving, we heard Tara coming and Wando said, “Watch out for her.” Not watch over her, or look after her. “Watch out for her.” He knew she was dangerous. He was trying to warn us.

  ‘The third thing was Tara’s own behaviour. She was afraid, but it wasn’t scattered, confused fear like Wando’s. She knew what was going on. She concentrated. She was watchful. Wando had tried to tell us about this too. “She hides things. She pretends she doesn’t care.” You saw it for exactly what it was, too. She was holding something in. She was afraid. You just didn’t take it far enough. She was holding in a very bad secret indeed. She was afraid of getting caught.’

  So it was true. It was Tara. I’d seen it at the gate, when she’d said Chess would never prove anything. That look in her eyes …

  But I had to protest. ‘But how, Chess? She was just standing there.’

  Chess smiled mysteriously. ‘What is murder? You’re right in a way. She didn’t do anything, really, to kill Jeanette. She didn’t drive the car or push her. She didn’t touch her at all. She killed her by what she knew.’

  Chess was starting to get tired now. Her skin had pulled tighter around her face, and her forehead was perspiring. The burns were hurting her. I’d promised myself I’d call a nurse. I didn’t.

  Chess said, ‘When we went to look around Devastation Road, the first thing that struck me was how soft the grass was. We bashed all up and down the hill and didn’t get a scratch. But Debbie had been covered in scratches. The police had assumed it was from running away in panic, but that couldn’t have been right. Running wouldn’t have scratched her.

  ‘Then we got to the corner where Jeanette had been hit. You stayed under the high bank, and I went across the road to where Tara had been standing. A car went past. You were safe, well off the road. You didn’t hear it coming. But I did. Then I went up the bank to where Jeanette was. Another car came. I didn’t hear a thing.

  ‘I came down the bank, scrabbling and slipping, trying to stop myself with my feet. I slid right out into the middle of the road. And then I saw it. In going up and coming down I had scratched my shoes. And I remembered.

  ‘Tara and Debbie had been playing earlier that day. Tara had wrecked her party shoes. Debbie had gone home scratched and bruised. Because they had been sliding down a gravel bank.’

  She gave me another pained look and this time it was darkened with sadness. I felt it too.

  ‘She knew, you see. She knew what would happen when Jeanette came down the bank. Maybe a car had come past when she was there with Debbie and had nearly hit them. That might have given her the idea. But that’s only a guess.

  ‘But one thing we do know, because we were there. From where Tara was standing she knew there was a car coming. She heard it and she didn’t warn Jeanette. Worse than that — I think she went deliberately to that dangerous spot and came out at that point to tempt Jeanette down. She might have smiled, or made a face to make her angry. She might not have done anything. But she knew about the car and about the bank, and that’s how she did it. It’s what this whole mystery has been about from the beginning.’

  Chess repeated herself, this time almost in a whisper. ‘She killed her by what she knew.’

  Killed her. Killed her. Deliberately …

  Without warning the muscles in my shoulders and neck disappeared and I found I had dropped my head down to the bed, pressing my forehead into the bumpy cotton blanket.

  Big laughing Jeanette, my Jeanette, everyone’s Jeanette. Taken. Lured down, to slide, to fall, to be hit, to roll along a gravel road. Her parents with the centre wrenched out of their lives. The town in shock. Devastation Road. Because someone had chosen to do it. Deliberately. It was unbearable.

  And this was wrong. Murder wasn’t for two people to discuss in an empty room. It was too big. A life had been taken away. It involved the whole of humankind. I should run out — shout about it — demand help. But what could I say? I lifted my head, propping myself up with hands on my knees, staring at the floor. Somewhere there was the squeak of a wheel in a corridor, voices in another room, and then nothing. In the eerie silence I could feel the whole world listening, waiting for my answer.

  ‘But it’s …’ I tried to put my thoughts into words. ‘It’s not enough, Chess. We’ll never … It’s all about what was going on inside Tara’s head. No one can ever say for sure. It’d be very hard to prove she did it on purpose. In a way it wasn’t really even murder.’

  Chess felt it too. The immensity of it. The immense sadness. But she had more to tell me.

  ‘Except that Debbie saw it. She was watching from somewhere and she knew before it happened that Jeanette was going to slide right down the bank into that car. And she knew that Tara knew it. She knew that Tara had set it up that way.’

  Chess was looking really bad now, pushing her lips together in a thin downward curve. I’d read somewhere that burns were the most painful thing someone could experience. People who had been burnt couldn’t tell you what it was like because they had nothing to compare it to.

  ‘But Debbie’s dead,’ I whispered. ‘She killed Debbie too.’ Debbie laughing through a rippling window. ‘And then she went for you.’

  Chess turned her eyes away to stare at her water jug. Whatever expression I had, she didn’t want to see it.

  I struggled on. ‘Can we ever prove any of it?’

  Chess sighed. ‘Well it’s time to try.’ This was the way Chess always operated. Never get tired. And never admit that it hurt. Because the world would cave in if anyone helped you. ‘I’ll tell everything. I don’t care what can and can’t be proved. The police can worry about that. It’s time to stand up and say what I know.’

  She was impressive, but she was also an idiot. I couldn’t help a smile. ‘As soon as you can stand up.’

  She gave a laugh that was really a sigh, but she did look at me again. There were tears in her eyes, from pain, exhaustion, for our terrible story, and relief that it was all over.

  Then she said, ‘And we’ve also got Wando.’

  ‘Wando?’

  From under her blankets she produced more paper, several sheets in a textured off-white, scattered through with petals. Chess lifted it only part of the way towards me.

  ‘He left these with the nurses for me. He’s going to talk.’

  ‘What, because of your house? Because you were in that fire?’

  Chess gave a grim smile. ‘At least that’s something I’ve achieved. He’s written it all down.’

  I looked at the pages, Wando’s super-neat lettering, across pages and pages of his mother’s notepaper.

  ‘He sat up half the night. A bit like me. It’s good. It’s the whole story.’

  I took it gently. ‘Can I read it at home?’

  Chess had closed her eyes.

  ‘I’ll get the nurse.’

  She didn’t even tell me not to.

  Chapter 32

  Wando’s pages didn’t have a title. He just launched straight in. I read them that night in my room.

  We hated her. Tara hated her. I was just scared. Jeanette was so big and she didn’t like us.

  Tara and Deb had burned down the Rolands garage. They had left the heater on and an oily rag had fallen on it. It was an accident but Tara wasn’t supposed to ever go in there and she was in trouble over scratching the new shoes so she was packing it about being found out about the garage.

  Jeanette was weird. She had that necklace and she said she
could find out who did things. She used to try to scare us into being good. When Derek and Julie had gone to the wedding, Jeanette started asking Tara questions about the garage and waving the yellow rock around. We thought she knew. I was scared but Tara was getting mad. She whispered to me she could make Jeanette shut up.

  Jeanette took us up to the top of the hill and started chanting to the sun and that was creepy. She always did things like that. She drew things too. We thought she was weird. We were only little kids.

  Then up on the hill she whirled around as if she’d seen something and that really did scare us and then we were just running.

  Down on the road at the corner we stopped. We could hear Jeanette coming along the other side up on the high bank and we could hear a car coming. It was a long way off. Tara gave me this look kind of smiling. Then she went out to the edge of the road where Jeanette could see her and for a minute they just stood there on opposite sides of the road, looking at each other while the car got closer.

  I didn’t realise what was happening. Tara turned around slowly and she was smiling in a mean way and she walked back towards me and Jeanette started following.

  I didn’t yell. I don’t know why.

  It doesn’t seem real. It seems like a dream. The time is all wrong and the colours are too bright and I can only see bits of it. Other bits I can hear. And sometimes I think I saw her face as she started to slide or I might be imagining that. But I know what happened. The car hit Jeanette. I watched. Then I looked at Tara and I remember her face clearly. She didn’t look worried. She looked pleased. As if she had won some kind of battle.

  That is one thing I am certain of. I am certain about how she looked.

  Then Debbie came running out of nowhere screaming at her, saying she’d done it on purpose, calling her a murderer. I was staring at Jeanette. Nothing seemed real.

  Tara was calm. She looked right at Jeanette lying there and said, ‘You didn’t see that coming, did you, with your wonderful eye.’

  I am certain about those words, too.

  And then she went over and knelt down beside the body. She undid the necklace and threw it into the bush. Debs and I couldn’t believe it. We just stood there crying.

  She didn’t care. That was the bad thing. She really didn’t feel a thing. Later she told me she had this huge reaction, screaming and crying. Her parents would’ve seen it but they wouldn’t have known the full reason. And then she was over it and she went back to not feeling.

  After she’d thrown the necklace away Tara told Deb not to say anything about it. She said she was going to say the car was dark blue and if Debs tried to tell anyone Tara was going to say the driver was Craig.

  Deb ran off and we sat down by the road to wait for help.

  Debbie must have gone back later to get the pendant and she must have hidden it among her things.

  Deb and I should have said something at the beginning. We just didn’t know what to say. I never talked to her about it. Neither of us ever talked. Everyone was saying it was a terrible accident and Tara kept telling me she hadn’t meant it to happen and a lot of years went by. I started to think I’d imagined it all.

  Then a few weeks ago the Rolands café burnt down and Tara said her father had lost a lot of money in the fire and he couldn’t tell anyone about it. She was really mad about it. She said she knew who did it. I don’t know how she knew. Maybe Debbie or Craig let something slip. They weren’t as cunning as Tara.

  Tara kept telling me what was going on, even when I didn’t want to know.

  Tara told Craig she knew it was him who burned down the café and he said Debbie knew a bad secret about Tara. He didn’t know what Debbie’s secret was but he said Tara better not dob him in for the café or Debbie would tell Tara’s bad secret. Craig went home and told Debbie about it and that was why she started wearing the necklace that day in the bakery, to remind Tara that she knew her bad secret. Deb was trying to scare her so she wouldn’t talk about the café fire.

  Deb wore that necklace all day in the bakery. She gave Tara a note. ‘I know you killed her.’ I saw Tara that afternoon and she showed the note to me. She threw it in the bin but I got it out and kept it. Tara said she would never let Debbie talk. But I didn’t know what she meant. Then I had to go in to get some bread. It was terrible to see the necklace again. It brought it all back. I felt as if I’d been hollowed out from inside. And Tara was so angry. That’s what Debbie didn’t understand. You can’t scare Tara. I was the one who was scared, for Deb’s sake. I tried to tell Debs to take the necklace off but she didn’t realise how dangerous it really was. And I didn’t realise. I didn’t know now bad it was going to be.

  Straight after that Tara and I went into my room to do an assignment and Tara went out the window. She was gone a long time. When she got back to my room she gave me the necklace and got me to hide it in my cupboard. She said Deb had given it to her.

  And the next day Debs was dead.

  Tara told me her version. She said she never meant to do anything to Debs. She just wanted to talk to her.

  That day she’d been in Albury with some Year Twelves and she’d got this champagne, just for a thrill, you know. She took the champagne and went to see Debbie to talk about the secret. She got to the bakery while Debs was cleaning up.

  It started off OK. As soon as she saw Debs, Tara promised not to talk about Craig and Andrew doing the café and then Deb agreed not to say anything about Jeanette. Deb drank nearly all the wine without realising Tara wasn’t having much. Tara knows how to do this. She did it to me once — tricked me into drinking heaps, pretending she was drinking the same.

  So Debbie and Tara got really pally. Debs raved on about her engagement. She gave Tara the necklace to prove they were friends.

  But maybe Tara didn’t trust her. Maybe Debs said one final thing about what she’d done to Jeanette. I don’t know.

  Deb was getting late to meet Andrew so Tara took the keys and told Deb she’d finish cleaning up for her. She walked her down to the bridge. She got her to walk to the second bridge. She says she just wanted to talk, but why would she do that? Why couldn’t they just talk on the first bridge? She didn’t want to be seen.

  She says it just sort of happened. She says Debs tripped. She says she didn’t think she’d drown. But she left her in there, she didn’t try to help. And she went back to the bakery and wiped her fingerprints off everything. Why would she do that if she hadn’t pushed her? Then she went down again and threw the keys in after Debs.

  It’s hard to believe anyone can do things like that. Tara kept saying they were both accidents and she’s hard to argue with. I didn’t know, not for sure.

  I had kept the note and the necklace. That day we went to Wilsons I pretended to find the note and gave it to Tara in front of everyone. It was a pretty senseless thing to do. I think I was just trying to shock her and make her confess or something. It did shock her but she pulls herself together so fast.

  I took the necklace to the picnic and said she’d have to kill me too. I was trying to show her how sick it all was.

  But she knew I wasn’t going to talk. There’s something about it when you’ve grown up with someone. You feel this kind of loyalty.

  I don’t feel it now. Not after what she did next.

  When I got to Melbourne I rang Tara and told her Chess knew everything. It was a stupid thing to do. I thought it might make her give up and go and tell someone about it all. But she didn’t give up. She said she’d fix Chess. It was my fault. I made Mum drive me back. We were nearly too late.

  Tara wasn’t tied properly onto the tap. She’d told me she was going to fix Chess. Now she’s saying the fire started by accident. But I know and Chess knows.

  I’m going to tell people about Jeanette but it’s my word against Tara’s and it’s so long ago. And Debs isn’t here any more. And we were just little kids.

  But I can say she wasn’t in my room at the time Debbie died. And I can tell about the note. And I can say
she came back with the necklace.

  The one we’ll be able to prove is Chess. I reckon there’ll be evidence about how the fire started. And I can say Tara wasn’t tied onto the tap properly. And Chess will tell what happened. That will be two of us. At least Chess isn’t dead.

  I don’t know if we’ll ever get Tara in jail or anything and I don’t know if that’s what I want. At least the story will be out. People can at least talk to her. Perhaps we can make her think about it and start feeling things again.

  ***

  I put Wando’s letter down and stared at my bedspread. Could they? Could they ever start Tara feeling things again?

  I saw her at the gate after the fire — pale blue eyes, soft hair. She had looked straight at me. There wasn’t a sign of feeling. No horror. No regret. Blankness. The knowledge was all there — clear and strong. And cold. The memory of it made my head spin. I hoped Chess and Wando would be able to make some sort of case against her, but it wasn’t going to be easy. The only real evidence was there in her eyes.

  And that was what Jeanette had seen, the last thing she ever saw. A little girl, standing by a road, long curls, big violet eyes, looking coldly up at her, hiding what she knew, willing her to die, watching her start to come down, and then, slowly and deliberately, turning away.

  Chapter 33

  It was nearly Christmas. In our house, no one was much in the mood, but everyone had Chess to worry about, and that gave Mum and Dad something to focus on. They both started cooking, which was what you did if you wanted to cheer Chess up. In a few days she’d be out of hospital. Alec still hadn’t turned up.

  The police had started interviewing everyone, but they had no idea what they were going to be told, and no one, not even Chess or Wando or I, knew how far they were going to be able to take it.

  Chess had done an amazing piece of work. I was the only one who’d ever know just how amazing. And with the police and everything, she still had a lot of work to go.