‘Alexis was her family’s lawyer. I imagine they knew each other.’
‘That’s not what I’m asking. Why did you bring her here?’
‘I have to g—’
‘I know you’re hanging around out there.’ Ted lowered his voice. ‘You think that will make it better? Look around.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ Jack hissed, trying to keep the hurt in his voice to a whisper. A few people turned, aware that a table might get flipped soon. ‘You think I don’t know that all these people are here because of me? That one person isn’t?’
Jack didn’t want to argue. He took a step for the door. On the other side of the room, Winter was shouldering his way through the crowd towards them. Jack was conscious of the envelope in his pocket. McCarthy, likewise, was looking curiously over now.
‘I don’t know whose side you’re on.’ Ted kept pace, walking a parallel track, as if both of them were stuck on rails. ‘I’ve been digging too. Yeah, that’s right, on my own. No chain of evidence, no discovery. Just what I can find and where I can stick it. I’m taking pages from your playbook now. And I’ll have enough soon. You’re not the only one who can build a story. Lauren wouldn’t testify at the trial. You should know that.’
‘There are no sides anymore, Ted. I’m leaving. And I know she didn’t testify.’ He knew all the witnesses inside out. Neither the prosecution nor the defence had needed Lauren. She hadn’t seen anything. He put his hands in the air and stepped backwards, in what he hoped was a sign of clear surrender. Everyone around them let out a breath. Mostly relief. Some disappointment.
‘That’s what I’m telling you. Not didn’t,’ Ted called after him, ‘wouldn’t.’
That gave Jack pause. He was in the door now, sun warming his face. Lauren was standing in the courtyard, waiting, unaware of what was happening inside. Ted’s parting shot came from behind.
‘She’s lying to you, Jack. Ask her about the night of the murder.’
‘Wait here, I have to get something.’
Jack stopped in his Kensington driveway and opened his door. Lauren opened her door too. Jack shot her a look. He wasn’t sure he wanted her in his house. She’s lying to you. Ted might be manipulating him, but, still. Jack was waiting for the drive home to ask her about her testimony, where he’d have her cornered for two hours. In the meantime, he had a yellow envelope in his pocket that he didn’t want her to see, and he needed a few of his own files from Eliza’s case.
‘You’re coming in?’ he asked.
‘You want me to wait in the car?’
‘I’ll be quick.’
‘Fuck that.’ Lauren missed his tone and followed him. At the door, she dragged a finger under one of his wilted pot plant’s ferns. She held the frond up, then slid her finger away and let it flop. She made a humming sound. Disapproval. The door swung open, and Jack led her into his home.
‘It’s freezing in here,’ she said.
‘I’ll just be a minute,’ Jack said, and headed up the stairs. He lived in a two-storey terrace house, like Alexis’s but cheaper, though he’d paid it off now. (‘Who says crime doesn’t pay?’ his father had said, when Jack told him.) He headed into the bedroom and opened his closet. Inside were half-a-dozen filing boxes bursting with notes, black permanent marker scribbled on each. INTERVIEWS. COURT DOCUMENTS. Jack had kept everything, just in case. In these boxes was the truth of the case, before he cut it together. The box he was looking for was stacked under the FINANCE box. The Wade family assets tabulated, their wealth significant. The expenditure on the restaurant was no holds barred. And then the older accounts, the $35,000 handwritten invoice from Brett Dawson’s The Concrete Company to the former owner, Whittaker, flitted past him. Jack mused at Brett’s company name, country towns really suck at naming companies. He imagined the office, adorned like the bakery with blue ribbons from the local fair – Highly Commended, Concrete Pour, Footpath Division 2004. He sifted through more files, handwritten notes, and audiotapes: the rainbow glint of CDs, silver side up. So much written down and recorded yet he’d turned it into so little truth. Further back, behind his files, was the small shoebox. Jack reached in and opened it. The sneaker was surprisingly intact for four years in the bush. It must have been planted. But by who? The real killer.
‘I figured out why it’s freezing.’ Lauren’s voice from the doorway made him jump. He closed the shoebox and shoved it back, grabbed the box labelled FORENSICS and pulled it out instead. Lauren rapped his doorframe with her knuckles and said, as if he might not have noticed, ‘You’ve got no fucking doors.’
‘I’m redecorating.’
‘What if I need to take a shit?’
‘Sing,’ Jack said.
‘What?’
‘If you’re singing, I’ll know you’re in there.’
Lauren assessed him. ‘You don’t have much company, do you?’
‘I don’t often invite people around to take a shit, no.’ Jack picked the box up and placed it on the bed.
‘You okay?’ Lauren took a step towards him.
‘Can you just —’ Jack sighed. ‘Can you go?’
She walked over, sat on the bed, put her hand on the FORENSICS box. Jack held the lid down.
‘What about sharing?’ she said.
‘Ted Piper told me something at the funeral.’
‘Oh. Okay.’ Her eyes flickered downwards. She’s lying to you.
‘So, you tell me. What about sharing?’
Lauren stood up, the bedsprings creaked. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything that happened the night Eliza died.’
Lauren ran a hand through her fringe and sat back down again. ‘You want to know about Eliza. Okay. I’m Andrew Freeman’s witness.’
She took a breath, calmed. ‘We were all waiting in the lounge room for the police. The sergeant was first, he took me aside and asked me a bunch of questions. I don’t remember them all, but I — He asked me if I’d seen or heard anything. I said I’d heard Curtis get up. I wasn’t sure what time, around midnight?’
Jack nodded, piecing it together. ‘But you took it back,’ he guessed, ‘so your statement never made it to trial?’
She nodded. ‘Dad was so mad. He said our family was supposed to be a team. And when I really thought about it, I couldn’t actually be sure. It was, like, two in the morning when he was questioning us. I couldn’t tell if what I heard was the house settling, or people moving, or anything really, if maybe I’d dreamed it. And Andrew was asking me so many questions. I was tired and I was stressed and I screwed up, okay?’
Jack put an arm on her shoulder: fatherly, protective. He could imagine Andrew Freeman beating her with questions until he pulled the answers he wanted out of her.
‘It barely mattered,’ Lauren said, ‘that I didn’t have to testify at the initial trial. It was finished before it started. The prosecution didn’t even have to try. Until your documentary began and the conspiracy theories came into play. Then suddenly the frame-up was the centre of the defence’s strategy, and I guess I became important again. I begged Alexis not to make me take the stand and, to her credit, she didn’t. Andrew wasn’t allowed to use what I’d said as evidence. I think the prosecution knew I’d just get up there and say I wasn’t sure. Besides, I was a minor and I didn’t have an adult present at the time of the interview. But I feel like the moment I said that I’d heard him get up,’ she sighed, ‘I made him guilty.’
‘Jesus.’
‘A family is about teamwork, my father always said. He used to punish us together. Curtis got drunk once when he was seventeen and spewed – we both had to clean the bathroom. Curtis stayed out at a friend’s one night – both of us got curfews for the next month. Dad let Curtis get away with anything. Anything.’ She looked at the ground. ‘When Curtis was first arrested, it was like I’d really betrayed him. My father wouldn’t talk to me. It got better, over time. But it still always felt like it was my fault. And then he got out, and the same thing starts happening again. I felt
like a victim for a long time. I am not a victim anymore.’ She paused, considered her next thought. ‘We’re both guilty, you know, you and I. We carry that guilt in different ways. You’re doing this because you think you got him out; I’m here because I think I put him there.’
‘This looks bad for Curtis.’
‘I know.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because you already think he killed her. I thought you wouldn’t understand. You’d take it out of context and run with it. As soon as you put something on TV it’s automatically believed.’ The truth of this stung, but Jack didn’t interrupt her. ‘It wasn’t admissible evidence and it didn’t prove anything.’
‘Everything’s important.’
‘Have you told me everything then?’ Lauren looked at him over his box full of files. He was still leaning on it, keeping the lid closed. He held her gaze, conscious of not letting his eyes flicker to the cupboard.
‘I know you won’t want me to ask you this,’ said Jack, ‘but did you hear him get up?’
‘I don’t know.’ Lauren sighed. Tears had started to form. ‘Maybe footsteps. Maybe. I told you, I was never sure. I shouldn’t have told anyone.’
‘I do understand, you know,’ Jack said. His protectiveness had really kicked in now, and he just wanted Lauren to feel better. She struck him more than ever as two different people: a woman who’d lived and a girl who never had.
‘You don’t.’ She sniffed.
‘I told you I had a brother. His name is Liam. We lived in the Blue Mountains when we were teenagers. We used to love mucking around on the fire trails. We’d take our backpacks and BMXs and spend the day out in the bush. At one look-out there’s this large rock formation we used to call the Fist. It was cool; we used to love it there. But my dad, he was very clear, we weren’t allowed to climb the Fist.’ He paused, deciding how much to tell her, but he’d already come this far. ‘One day my brother decided to climb it. I told him not to. I, um, I wouldn’t go up with him.’ Now he’d got past it, the rest came quickly. ‘My brother went up, while I stayed at the bottom. He came down. Quickly.’
Whump.
Jack could see it still. The plume of dirt as if coughed. Orange dust caked on Liam’s cheek, congealed in blood and snot and fuck knows, cracked like a dried creek bed. Blood from his nose, his ears. And his chest, jumbled and broken, like a dropped bag of ice under Jack’s hands. The fucking helicopter too, a hovering silhouette in front of the reddening sun, just a breath above the canopy, jumpsuit-clad men abseiling down the lines, boots thumping into the dust, the steady crump of the rotor blades above it all. All Jack could think was, fuck, how cool Liam would have found the whole damn thing. A real action hero. He’d been flown away on that stretcher, rigid in his brace, hanging above the tops of the trees. And Jack couldn’t wait to tell him how badass it all was once he was recovering in hospital.
Lauren had a hand over her mouth.
‘Fuck. He died?’
‘He’s in a permanent vegetative state. Dad looks after him because there’s still something left of him in there. We couldn’t let him go. You talk about failing to protect your brother, and I understand.’
‘You regret not going up with him?’
‘I go over all our choices that day. If we’d have gone swimming instead of climbing, if I’d been able to convince him to stay on the ground. Yeah, I regret whether I went up or not. So many forks in these roads though.’ He offered her a grim smile. ‘I get lost in the labyrinth.’
‘I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.’
And, finally, it felt as if they agreed on something. Lauren thought she put her brother in a cell. So did Jack: Liam’s whole body was a prison. They sat in silence. A breeze chilled them, wafting through the silent door-less house. Jack surprised himself by taking Lauren’s hand. Her skin was soft. The last woman’s hand Jack had held had been Alexis’s. Lauren’s was warm.
‘If Curtis killed anyone, that’s not a betrayal,’ Jack said quietly.
Lauren nodded.
‘So,’ Jack said.
‘So.’
‘In the interest of sharing, help me look through these files.’ Jack took the lid off the box.
‘What are they?’
‘My research from the case.’
‘The restaurant?’ Lauren recognised a blueprint on a piece of paper. ‘Have a look at these.’ She offered them to him for a closer look.
‘Not those,’ Jack said, and passed her the stolen forensics.
‘Looks official.’ She leafed through them. ‘Where’d you get them?’
‘Friend of mine.’ Jack glanced away.
‘Wow,’ she said, seeing through him. ‘Glad we’re not friends.’
McCarthy’s files were a goldmine. The autopsy report identified the fatal wound as a severe blow to the base of the skull with a blunt object. The strangulation marks on the neck were made post-mortem, pulled just tight enough and long enough to bruise and scar a still-warm body. Imagine strangling a dead person. Jack shivered. Lauren was having trouble looking at the photographs, so Jack took them off her. There was Alexis, splayed on the cobblestones, on her back. Fingers in her mouth, pointing to the sky. Her limbs were twisted unevenly, as if she’d jumped from a balcony. The violence of her death bled out of the photos. There was no peace there.
There were also more clinical photographs, close-ups of the finger wounds. It was a cleaner cut than Eliza’s, Jack noticed immediately. The forensics expert had drawn small green circles where they thought there were unique markings. On Alexis’s wounds, these markings formed a small tilted diamond. Jack rifled through his box and found photos of Eliza’s wounds. Eliza’s knuckles were chewed and ragged, they looked like raw hamburger mince. Jack compared them to Alexis’s; they seemed more neatly severed. A different kind of weapon.
He wondered if Winter had checked Alexis’s kitchen thoroughly, if they’d found a knife missing. No, you had to saw with knives. There were no saw marks on the bone. Something like a . . . meat cleaver? He took out the photos of his independent silicon hand tests. They’d been comprehensive with those, more so than the police, at great expense. They’d used thick molten silicon ladled into moulds for the flesh. They’d made dozens of the hands, and then systematically destroyed them all: slamming them in every door of the Wade household, severing them with every sharp object they could find. He found the meat cleaver report, the exact one from the Wade restaurant. On one side of the paper was a photo of the weapon, laid out on an evidence table next to a yellow ruler. On the other side, close up images of the severed silicon fingers. An even cut, a fast chop. The cleaver was the perfect weapon for the job, but it wasn’t the right one. No match for the tilted diamond. Jack flicked through the rest of the reports on various weapons. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Lauren wandered across the hall. Jack could hear her singing from the bathroom: She’s having a piss, she’s having a piss, don’t come in, because she’s having a piss. When she ran out of lyrics to her own song, she sang to the tune of a pop song: This piss. This piss. Unstoppable.
Jack smiled. Lauren’s ability to bounce back astounded him. She didn’t take things lightly, but she seemed able to not let them pin her down.
Are you born with that resilience, he wondered, or do you have to go through some trauma to build up to it? He supposed all country women had thick skin. Ducks might have the market cornered on water bouncing off their backs, but Jack reckoned if Brett Dawson spat at Lauren she’d use it to polish her boots. He was thinking about Lauren when he stopped on one photocopied page of the silicon hand. There was a constellation of markings. He grabbed Alexis’s report, turned his lamp on its side so the paper turned translucent, and held the two images over one another. The markings lined up.
A match.
The typed report on the weapons test said it was a single blow with great force. A fast chop. Jack’s heart danced in his chest, his cold, thin fingers shaking as he turned the paper over. Saw i
t. The scanned picture of the weapon. Lauren was in the doorway now. Jack held up the two matching sheets of paper. Her face turned white.
The photo of the weapon on the silicon hand report was in black and white, but they both immediately recognised the change in shading halfway up the wooden handle. Half stained red. Unmistakeable, this axe.
Jack didn’t have to say anything, he could see Lauren already understood. Whoever they’d chased through the vineyard hadn’t been stealing the axe at all. They’d been trying to put it back.
‘We have to get back to Birravale,’ he said. ‘Now.’
Lauren was out of the door and sprinting for the shed before the car had stopped. Jack had cut a half-hour off the drive, only slowing for one set of well-known speed cameras on the highway, where Lauren had snapped at him: For fuck’s sake, Jack, you can afford it. They’d blown through Birravale’s lonely traffic light.
How had he missed it? An axe head had two sides. The killer had flipped the axe, hit Alexis with the blunt end of the head. That would be like getting plugged by a hammer. Then the killer had turned her over, spread her fingers. Jack had seen the white scores in the cobblestone himself. Chip marks. Not made with pliers or knives. The axe was the only solution.
‘No police,’ Lauren said on the drive back, and when Jack was silent, added more softly: ‘Give him a chance.’
‘Don’t call him.’
‘You can’t still think —’
‘Whatever else they planted, they want him to find it. If he touches anything, he’s fucked.’
Had she known he wouldn’t call the police anyway? Surely she could see the television producer inside him wanting to see it for himself. First.
In Birravale, Jack opened his door before he flicked the car off, everything still in motion. The car, with both doors splayed into a wingspan, shuddered to a stop. The car stalled as he got out, threatened to roll back but didn’t. Jack left his door open and hurried after Lauren, sprays of gravel flicking up at his calves. He could hear clanging, swearing, from the shed, then the sound of the homestead flyscreen rattling open behind him, but he kept running.
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