Greenlight

by Benjamin Stevenson

  ‘I’m surprised you came back.’

  ‘I’m not hiding.’

  ‘No. It might be easier to get away, though.’

  ‘Now I’m getting framed for murders in Sydney too.’ Curtis shrugged, blew on his tea as if discussing sport or weather. ‘So it doesn’t seem to matter where I go really.’

  ‘You still think you’re getting framed?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t fucking do it. So, yeah.’

  ‘Statistically, being framed for one murder is low enough odds,’ Jack said, ‘but being framed for two?’

  ‘It’s the same guy. Just means they really hate my brother.’ A voice came from the hallway. Lauren Wade had appeared, one leg crossed behind the other, leaning against the doorjamb. She had long black hair, it fell across her flannel shirt. She wore jeans and no shoes. Despite the age gap, the family resemblance was there – the Wade charisma – but she was slight, long-limbed. Her arms were folded. Watching the interview footage from the original investigation, Jack had felt sorry for her: a sixteen-year-old shouldn’t have to see such things. But she was different here, on the other side of womanhood, relaxed against the doorway, her voice firm and confident. She didn’t invite pity. ‘What’s more likely – that two people in this town are running around murdering people, or that it’s just the one killer and they’ve found themselves a good scapegoat?’

  ‘You don’t think it can be two killers?’ Jack asked.

  Curtis was leaning forward, listening to his sister.

  ‘I think a copycat is pretty unlikely. Remember, too, they never caught the first guy.’

  They might’ve, thought Jack. He just poured me a cup of tea.

  ‘Statistically ridiculous.’ Curtis echoed Lauren, mimicking her larger words. The word ‘statistically’, with its hard consonants, rattled through his teeth like a playing card in a bicycle wheel.

  ‘Like I said,’ continued Lauren, ‘strikes me that it’s the same killer both times. So you just need to catch him.’

  ‘You’ve met?’ said Curtis, apologetic as if introducing friends at a party. Lauren and Jack both nodded. ‘You should thank her, you know. She said you’d come here, said I should talk to you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jack said to the doorway. Lauren just flicked her wrist. She’d said her piece. ‘Why wouldn’t you want to talk to me?’ Jack turned back to Curtis. ‘I got you out.’

  ‘And you seem really happy about that. Fuck man, I feel like we’ve slept together.’ He made to move quickly, an arm extended. Jack flinched from the incoming hit, but when he looked up Curtis had barely moved at all. He was metres away. ‘Could you be more uncomfortable?’

  ‘This is hard for me.’

  ‘I’ll bet. You knew Alexis, so it’s different now that you care about the case and not the money.’

  ‘It was never about the money. You’re right though, it does feel . . . different.’

  ‘Did you fuck her?’

  ‘Curtis,’ Lauren admonished from the doorway.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Jack said. ‘No. We were more colleagues than friends, actually.’

  ‘I ain’t a psychologist,’ said Curtis, ‘but you’ve come all the way out here to try and solve the murder of a woman you barely knew. The only person who’d do that is one that feels responsible for getting her killed. Or one who’s fucked her, depending on the pussy.’

  Jack didn’t respond. He gripped his mug tightly, letting it warm his hands. He felt light-headed, hungry, not up to a verbal sparring match. Sometimes his hunger made him sharp, and sometimes, like now, it just made him tired. He regretted not eating that expensive banana. Curtis reclined in his chair. Barely perceptibly, Lauren shook her head. If Curtis was telling the truth, and she’d insisted he let Jack in, she was disappointed in the direction the conversation was going. What did she have to gain from Curtis talking to Jack? That was a better way of looking at the room. What did everyone have to gain here? Curtis was, as always, petitioning his innocence. But Lauren? She didn’t buy the copycat theory. If she thought it was a serial killer . . . was she here because she was afraid?

  ‘You’re right, Curtis.’ Perhaps some slack in Curtis’s direction might loosen his tongue. ‘That’s why I’m here. I think that by making my show I might have got her killed.’

  ‘Damn fucking right you did!’ Curtis clapped his hands, then saw Jack’s expression. ‘Not like that, you idiot. I already told you I didn’t kill her. Copycat or serial killer, right? Well, how do you think they chose their newest victim? Your TV show. Credits play like a menu.’

  Jack hadn’t thought of that. That the show might have been the catalyst. There had been rabid fans. There were even t-shirts: Team Curtis which was black with white letters, or Team Eliza which was the inverse. (‘People just like to rally,’ Peter said once, perusing the paper which had a photo of the shirts clustered outside the court. ‘Doesn’t matter what the sides are.’) What if it was a fan so avidly on Team Eliza that they’d taken it on themselves to right some wrongs. And who better a target than the head of the defence? Apart from Curtis himself, he supposed. He thought about the pentagram sprayed on Ted Piper’s office doors, Alexis’s office closing, and reminded himself to check with both their offices for threats too. Curtis had a point; Jack had brought a whole raft of people into the public eye for scrutiny. Jack’s thoughts immediately went to Eliza’s parents, but – as sensationalist as it would be to have two seventy-year-olds hop on a plane to Sydney to commit a murder – he knew they were still in England. People like to rally, Peter had said. But Jack disagreed: people love to hate. The pleasure of choosing a side is only so you can hate the other one.

  ‘You think?’ was all Jack could say to Curtis.

  ‘Fuckin’ buffet.’

  Jack knew to take Curtis’s theory with a grain of salt. As in prison, where Curtis had pointed the finger at Andrew Freeman over and over, his ideas had a familiar theme: anyone-but-me. It was the same as his default it-must-be-planted response when confronted with any physical evidence. A response that, Jack had read, was on the rise thanks to documentaries like his. Every criminal was now a victim of a huge conspiracy. You see, someone planted the knife in her, your honour.

  Jack had to change tack. ‘Tell me about Andrew Freeman.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He set you up the first time.’

  ‘This town set me up the first time.’ Curtis’s voice pitched slightly and Jack knew he’d hit the one thing that always got him talking: Andrew Freeman.

  ‘Help me understand why.’

  ‘We never fit in here.’ Curtis stood up, walked to the window, pulled the curtain back. Across the vineyard, light ice glittered on the vines. Behind it was the steep hillside, and on top the Freemans’ two imposing cylindrical silos. ‘Lauren and I. Our father. Apparently, you’ve got to be born into wine – you know that?’ Jack didn’t, but he nodded. ‘We never came from money, let alone grapes. But when our old place sold up, we thought we’d make the change. We had enough to buy outright, so we moved here and built the restaurant.’

  Jack had heard this before, but he was content to let Curtis talk. Enough to buy outright. Curtis was understating it. A conglomerate had bought out his family’s Byron Bay land to build a resort. The true sale price was undisclosed, though Jack had propagated in his show that it had been astronomical. That was close to the truth. The Wades had lived on a secluded property and were battlers, they got by on odds and ends – gardening, housework – when they needed a bit of cash. But their land, passed down through the generations, meant they didn’t need to set their sights further. And then, literally overnight, because of luck and location, they were millionaires. It was all part of Jack’s narrative – creating the rift between Birravale and the Wades, the rich cashed-up blow-ins who didn’t deserve respect. Once you force people to pick sides, you have hate. Once you have hate, you have motive. Jack created that. And it worked, despite being mostly bullshit. The problem was, Curtis clearly still believed it
.

  Visually, it worked in the show’s favour too. The crime scene photos from inside this house of millionaires – with their cheap furniture and discoloured carpets – seemed abnormal. Why spend so much money on the outside of your house and none inside? Something is wrong here, it seemed to say.

  ‘I was looking forward to it, moving here. We thought it would be fun, or interesting at the very least,’ said Lauren. ‘Fifty per cent success rate on that, I’d say. Hasn’t been much fun, but it’s sure been interesting.’

  ‘Elitist pricks,’ muttered Curtis, closing the curtain.

  ‘Honestly, like a bunch of teenage girls,’ Lauren added. ‘That animosity was there before Curtis chopped open the silos.’

  ‘They deserved it. Broke my windows.’

  Tacky. What the B & B matriarch had said rang in Jack’s head. The town hated the new restaurant because it was glossy, expensive and, worst of all, new. Everything Birravale wasn’t. Someone had smashed Curtis’s restaurant windows, and so he’d gone and flooded their town with their own wine. Petty acts of escalating revenge. But how does that end in two dead women?

  ‘Okay, so I see the friction there, I do. But, honestly. Two women are dead. This isn’t some schoolyard rivalry. I’m just trying to understand why, if they hate you so much, they’d go to such lengths to frame you for not one, but two, murders? Innocent women.’

  Curtis flinched. There was something. Even dead, he hadn’t forgiven what he saw as Alexis’s incompetent defence. He hated her. Maybe he was glad she was dead, even if he didn’t kill her.

  A tsk from the doorway.

  ‘What?’ snapped Curtis. He turned back to Jack: ‘Four years.’ As if that was an explanation.

  ‘My point is,’ Jack said, ‘why didn’t Andrew just lead them here with pitchforks and torches. If murder is on the cards, why not just —’

  ‘Because they’re cowards,’ said Curtis, and Jack was slightly surprised by how much he seemed to believe it. Jack blinked away his confusion. At the moment, both of them knew Jack was accusing Curtis of murder, yet here they were talking around it, presumably for Lauren’s benefit. She was still there, casually leaning against the door. Not quite casual, Jack realised. Coiled. It was her eyes that gave her away – scrutinising the room. Not casual at all, protecting her brother.

  Blocking the doorway, too. Jack tried to ignore that. ‘Curtis, maybe Lauren should leave us in private?’ said Jack.

  ‘She’ll stay. You think I killed them. She knows that, don’t ya, sis?’ Lauren nodded. ‘We can keep talking. It’s okay.’

  It was then that Jack remembered he’d actually told Curtis he had an extra piece of evidence. Curtis didn’t know what it was, or whether it was even incriminating but was it why he’d let Jack into his home? Jack was now very aware of Lauren blocking the doorway.

  ‘Why are you really here, Jack? The cops have already been through.’ Curtis held out his wrists. ‘No cuffs. I’m a free man, and there’s no reason to charge me. I am’ – he sounded the word out into syllables – ‘co-op-er-at-ing.’

  ‘I just —’ he started, but Curtis held up a finger.

  ‘You’re here because you want me to have killed her. Because then it makes it all about you. First thing you did when you got here, said you think you’re responsible. But if I didn’t do it, and I didn’t, then it’s not about you anymore, is it?’

  ‘You should go,’ said Lauren.

  ‘You invited him. He stays.’ Curtis turned back to Jack. ‘I want you to face up to me, Jack. I think you’re still on my side, a little bit. The cops saw I’m innocent straightaway. Yeah, I got motive. Help me out here. Why did I, hypothetically, kill Alexis?’

  Jack stared at his hands. Answered quietly.

  ‘Can’t hear you?’

  ‘Jail,’ Jack muttered.

  ‘Huh?’ Curtis had heard it that time, Jack was sure, but he wanted dominance. Prison tactics. Be the big dog.

  ‘Jail. You blame her for sending you there.’

  ‘You’re goddamn right I do. Oh . . .’ He tapped a finger to his lips, his voice lilting with a high mocking tone. ‘Hang on! I’m so angry about getting sent to jail for four years that I publicly murder my lawyer and arrange her body as a calling card – pointing straight back to me! Leading inevitably to – come on, Jack, you know this one.’

  ‘More jail time,’ Jack conceded. The motive was circuitous. It didn’t stack up. Then again, since when was Curtis strictly logical? The right kind of outburst . . .

  ‘Even the cops knew that, and that’s why I’m not in a cell. Stupidest fucking murderer out. You think you’re all wrapped up in guilt she died, but you’re all wrapped up in this.’ He reached over and flicked Jack on the forehead. His finger was sweaty, left a bead on Jack’s brow. Jack didn’t rub it away. Prison tactics. Don’t give in. ‘Bashed her head in too – they tell you that?’

  Jack shook his head. He hadn’t known the cause of death, he thought she’d been strangled.

  ‘Someone’s put a lot of effort into making it look like I’m a serial killer. But they beat her first. She died quickly, a single blow, I’m told. They were trying to fish details out of me, is how I know,’ he said, anticipating Jack’s question. ‘The strangling came after. She was already dead. Ergo, staged. Ergo, copycat. Ergo, there’s the door.’

  ‘It’s not a copycat,’ Lauren repeated. ‘It’s the same killer.’

  ‘And Eliza?’ Jack found himself saying, louder than he’d intended. He saw Curtis’s face darken, the muscles shift in his neck. By the doorway, Lauren unfurled. ‘If they’re copying a murder, who are they copying?’

  ‘Did you just ask me what I think you did?’ Curtis grabbed the armrest, cocked his elbows, preparing to rise.

  ‘Careful.’ Lauren took a half-step into the room and Jack realised she hadn’t been supervising the room in order to protect Curtis. She was there to protect Jack.

  Jack stood up to leave.

  ‘Sit the fuck down.’

  Lauren flinched. Jack sat down.

  ‘When we first met, you told me a few things,’ Curtis said. ‘You remember those?’

  ‘I told you my words would make you famous.’

  ‘And there was one question you promised you would never ask me.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Are you asking that question?’

  Everything around Jack seemed to slow. The steam lingered on the rim of his mug. He gently placed it on the tray so he wouldn’t spill it. Was it hot enough to be a weapon? Probably not. He could hear Curtis breathing, a fat man’s whistle. Jack shouldn’t have come.

  ‘I am,’ he said.

  ‘Okay. Ask it properly.’ Curtis ran his tongue over his teeth, bulging his lips, clawed the armrest. Jack swallowed, straightened his back.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ said Lauren.

  ‘Ask. It. Properly.’

  Jack was properly scared now. Curtis’s hands had shaken when he poured the tea. That rage had simmered underneath the whole time. This meeting was a trap. Jack saw, on the top of the bookcase behind Curtis, the stock of a rifle. The same rifle Curtis had shot at the drone with? If Curtis got up and made a move for the gun, could Jack get out of the room fast enough? He figured he probably could, but he was too far in to back out now. He took a breath and said the words he’d promised not to.

  ‘Did you kill Eliza Dacey?’

  Curtis ground his jaw. For a second Jack thought he might go for the gun, and kill him right there. Instead, he stood and went to the door, brushing past his sister. The question, now voiced, had torn through whatever bond the two men had formed during the documentary. Maybe Curtis really had thought Jack still was on his side. Jack was starting to see just how black and white Curtis saw the world. Andrew Freeman a villain; himself a hero; Jack his sidekick. In prison those fictions must have been comforting.

  Curtis paused in the doorway. He had sounded heartbroken on their last prison phone call, but now he wasn’t disappointed, he was furious. His
shoulders shuddered with each breath. In turn, that incensed Jack – what right did Curtis have to be pissed off?

  Lauren was stoic, still coiled, but aware that the knife-edge had tilted back to safer ground as Curtis made to leave the room. Curtis turned back.

  ‘You think so little of me.’ Curtis’s voice was thick, holding back hot, livid tears. ‘And you’re the smallest man I know.’

  Then he was gone. Deep in the guts of the house, a door slammed.

  Lauren walked with Jack to the driveway in silence. It was different outside, her face relaxed, hazel eyes not analysing everything. She accompanied him down the driveway without asking, still no shoes, blackened toes kicking at the largest stones.

  The sun was high, the sky completely clear, though the trees that lined the drive filtered the light, dappling the ground with long streaks of shadow. Shade to sun in rapid blinks, it was like walking through an old cartoon optical illusion. A zoetrope, Jack knew they were called. He’d made one when he first studied film: you spin the cylinder and watch the bear dance through the slits. Lauren blinked in and out of Jack’s vision. The world reduced to a frame-rate.

  ‘He’ll calm down,’ she said at last. ‘Sorry. I thought that would go better.’

  ‘Your career as a fortune teller would be short-lived.’

  ‘I foresee’ – she touched a finger to her head and waved her other hand in front of her – ‘unemployment.’

  Jack surprised himself by laughing. Throughout their interviews, they’d never traded pleasantries, even during breaks. Lauren and her father were rigid and focused, the two of them set up on that broken couch, Jack’s voice off-screen. The spotlight on, heating the room, dust rising from the carpet with the temperature. It was clear that Lauren had been coached to respond only to the simplest of questions and with the simplest of answers. At the time, Jack thought he was getting the Yes or No answers of a moody teenager (even at twenty, he still thought of her as the sullen sixteen-year-old in the courtroom), but now he realised how unfair he’d been: to ask about such horrors, about murder and violence and her own brother, of a girl who barely knew the world. He’d seen her as a character to play in his narrative, but here she was, real and young and laughing alongside him. Jack supposed that was it – they were always talking about her brother. Outside, alone, it wasn’t about Curtis. And she seemed alive to him, for the first time.