by Candice Fox
‘I don’t know what to believe anymore,’ Clark said.
‘The petrol station owner told Amanda there is a tape with audio.’
‘Yeah, well, if there ever was a tape, there isn’t one now,’ Clark said. ‘We didn’t find one, and the witnesses were too stirred up to know what had happened.’
‘Uh-huh.’ I chewed my lip, the anger rising. ‘Typical. The responding officers would have heard Fischer’s claims and gone right into the office and pocketed the tape. How else can you explain its absence? I wouldn’t be surprised if they heavied the witnesses.’
‘Conkaffey,’ Clark’s tone was dark, heavy, ‘I’m not having this discussion with you right now. Okay? We’re not talking. You and your mental-case friend are going to stay out of my face for the foreseeable future, or I won’t be held responsible for my actions.’
‘We are talking,’ I said. ‘Something’s not right about Hogan. Yes, he said he killed the kid, but where’s the body? How did he get it out of the hotel? How did he get into the hotel undetected between the end of his shift and midnight? He said it was an accident. Why didn’t the dogs pick up a crime scene either at the hotel or at the caravan park? I think we should be looking more closely at other people. Other scenarios. I want to reinterview Sara. I want to know if –’
I looked at the phone. Clark had hung up on me. I tapped my legs with my fingers and watched Lillian, telling myself I was off the Richie Farrow case, that his body would be found without me, in the swamps near Hogan’s caravan park or in a car we didn’t know he owned. I told myself that Hogan had admitted to the boy’s death, and that I didn’t need to think about it any longer, didn’t need to follow the pressing urge to go and get my laptop and go through all the video files again, the CCTV and interviews, video of the hotel room.
Lillian was dripping water off her fingers onto the back of one of the geese when I found what I was looking for in the video files. I stood and took a towel from the rack beside the door.
‘Want to go for a ride?’ I asked my child, shrugging off the guilt that hung like a barbell across my shoulders.
Luca Errett was in the window when I pulled into the car park of the Sea Breeze Motel, ten minutes’ drive north of the White Caps on the edge of a small park. Richie’s little friend was leaning his elbows on the sill, hidden from the room behind him by thick block-out curtains, staring idly at the empty lot, the street and the ocean beyond. I opened a game on my phone and gave it to Lillian to play with. When I exited the car, I knew what had driven Luca to the very edge of the room, fixated on the world outside, separated from where he wanted to be by a thin pane of sea-salt-encrusted glass.
John Errett’s voice was clear through the door, a deep pulsing snarl from somewhere inside the room.
‘They think a few nights in a dodgy hotel are going to make up for a week’s lost wages,’ he barked. ‘Well, I’ll bill the fuckers. I’ll figure out what I’ve lost this week in commissions and I’ll fucking bill them.’
As I approached the door and knocked, Luca Errett followed me with his eyes, his head still resting on his hands. I waved through the glass but he didn’t wave back. John Errett tore open the door wearing a pair of cotton boxer shorts, and I tried to decipher the tattoos on his narrow chest through the thick matt of black hair. I watched the emotions flick through his eyes as he tried to decide who I was. Anger first, assuming I was with the police. Then curiosity, as he recognised my face. Inevitable contempt when he identified me.
‘It’s eight o’clock at night.’ He tapped the heavy silver watch on his wrist. ‘Eight o’clock. If you pricks want to hassle me, it’ll be business hours only.’
‘Apologies for the intrusion,’ I said. I glanced into the room, where Caroline Errett was sitting on the edge of a battered armchair, drinking a beer and staring at the floor, obviously carrying on their argument in her mind. ‘It’s only you I’d like to speak to. We can leave your family be.’
‘What do you want?’ Errett squinted, looking at my car, where Lillian was visible through the windscreen, kicking her legs in her car seat. ‘The police have everything they need from us. All we want to do is go home. I’ve got contracts that I have to –’
‘Mr Errett.’ I tried to warn him with my eyes. ‘I won’t be long. I really think you ought to speak to me.’
He held open the door but I stepped back. Those calculating eyes appreciated me.
‘Let’s go to my car,’ I said.
He shut the door behind himself and followed me to the vehicle. I took my laptop out of the front seat and walked around the back, set the computer on the boot and opened the screen. John Errett stood in double-plugger thongs and his boxers, sweating despite the disappearance of the sun behind the pale blue strip of ocean beyond the car park.
‘The police won’t tell us when we can go home,’ he complained, looking in the back window at Lillian. ‘They call us at all hours. One of them turned up at five this morning asking questions. Five! I’m losing money. You got the guy today, didn’t you? You and the other private dick. I don’t understand why we’re needed here. I’m finding out more about what’s going on from the news on my phone than from the cops.’
‘I can’t comment on how long you’ll be here,’ I said, clicking through videos. ‘I’m off the case.’
‘What?’ Errett looked at me. ‘Then why the fuck are you here? Why am I talking to you?’
‘Watch this,’ I said. I played a video of the Erretts, Sampsons and Chos at dinner with Sara Farrow on the night of Richie’s disappearance, the seven adults sitting at the long table in the Clattering Clam. The night was still young. There were bottles of wine on the table. We watched Sara Farrow glance at the watch on her wrist before sliding her chair back from the table and leaving.
‘She’s going to check on the boys.’ Errett shrugged, his arms folded.
‘What’s that?’ I pointed at the screen, at a small black rectangle on the table by Sara’s water glass. Errett leaned in, cocked his head.
‘Her phone,’ he said.
‘Interesting.’ I nodded. I clicked the video closed and brought up another. Sara Farrow walking across the empty hotel foyer, waiting for the elevator. Errett and I watched silently as she pulled a phone out of her back pocket and began to type on it with her thumb.
‘Anything you’d like to say?’ I asked. Errett baulked at me like I’d called him a dirty name.
‘What?’ he scoffed, showing blackened teeth at the back of his jaw. ‘No. She’s got two phones. Okay. So what?’
I indicated the time at the bottom of the screen. The numbers read 8.56 pm. I brought up the first video, pointed again to the numbers at the bottom of the screen.
‘Watch this,’ I said again. Errett watched himself on the screen. The lean, pointy-faced man in the video reached for his back pocket, alerted, it seemed, by a vibration through the fabric. We both observed the figure on the screen reading the text.
‘I don’t know what you’re telling me, man,’ Errett said.
‘Yes, you do,’ I said.
‘I don’t have time for this.’ Errett held his hands up. ‘What the fuck do you want?’
‘I want you to explain why Sara Farrow was covertly texting you on a phone she failed to tell police she owned.’ I gestured to the screen. ‘Look at yourself. Look at how you lean away from your wife so she can’t glance over and read what’s on your screen. Look at the time.’
‘Covertly … fucking … what?’ Errett’s indignation was a thin veil, his face almost comical in its squinting, twisted expression. He struggled to find the words, the words that would convince me, drive me back out into the night so that he could think, plan his next move. Denial was his first strategy. He’d soon turn to aggression. ‘Man, what the fuck is this?’
‘You and Sara,’ I said. ‘You’re having an affair.’
‘What?’ Errett’s face dropped, the sharp squint falling and blank, dangerous rage beginning to boil.
‘You can deny it a
ll you want,’ I said. ‘But it’s on the video, plain as day. The police will seize Sara’s second phone, if she hasn’t dumped it already. Even if she does dump it, and you go ahead and dump yours, records of your messages will exist somewhere.’
Errett stared at me. His son in the window had sensed the hostility between the two of us and was perked up, watching carefully.
‘I got the first hint of your affair from a journalist,’ I said. ‘That journalist has probably got contacts in the phone companies. Are they going to print your private conversations with Sara in the Telegraph tomorrow?’
‘They won’t print nothing,’ Errett said quietly. ‘Because what happened between Sara and me has got nothing to do with her kid going missing. If I was you, I’d keep this to yourself. How’s it going to look, you going and telling everyone a grieving mother is a homewrecker for no good reason at all? Breaking up families. They caught the guy who took Richie.’
‘Did they?’ I asked. ‘Or do you know more about the situation than you’re letting on? You’ve already covered for yourself and Sara by keeping rather important details from police. You hindered an official investigation to protect your arse.’
‘You piece of shit.’ He spat on the ground at my feet.
‘Your son told the police you have secrets,’ I said. ‘Is this what he meant? Or is there more?’
‘Don’t things look bad enough for you already, huh?’ He stepped closer to me, trying to back me into the car. ‘Mr Kidlover creeping around town with a little girl in tow, trying to destroy people’s lives? Whose child is that in there? Should I be calling the police on you?’
‘That’s my daughter,’ I snapped, the rage sudden, never far from the surface. ‘Don’t try to turn this around on me.’
‘Dad!’
John Errett and I turned. Luca was standing on the couch, both hands on the window, his face a mixture of excitement and fear. I shut the laptop and went around to the driver’s side door of my car, getting in and locking the doors as John Errett remained, still as a stone, right outside Lillian’s window.
On the way home, I watched Lillian in the rear-view mirror. It was late for her. She was dozing off, the highway lamps making her perfect skin glow gold, her slowly closing eyelashes set aflame. Outside the car, the world was blue and wet. It had been 93 hours since Richie Farrow had last been seen among the living. He was out there somewhere, lying in the stillness, waiting to be found before he became a part of the lush landscape, before he was grown over, as everything that lay down for long enough in this place was.
‘Hey, Boo?’ I said, jolting Lillian from her sleep. She wriggled in her seat.
‘I love you,’ I told her. She looked out the window at the cobalt mountains, pointed at nothing.
‘Hey, Daddy?’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘Hey, Daddy.’
‘Yes.’
‘Daaaaaadddyyyyyy …’
‘Yes, little mouse?’ I laughed.
‘I love you,’ she said.
I was afraid of taking my daughter out in public. I faced the truth of it after eight or nine hours lying on my bed staring at the cracks of moonlight showing around the edges of my boarded-up bedroom windows, then half a day wandering the house aimlessly, refusing to shower or dress or commit to any plans.
The truth was I’d had plenty of opportunities to take Lillian out. I’d told myself I was too tired the nights I had returned after searching for Richie, and too battered and bruised emotionally and physically the night Dylan Hogan was shot. I told myself I preferred sitting in the kitchen with her in the morning, watching her drip milk all over the surface of the table while she clumsily spooned single pieces of cereal into her mouth, rather than taking her out for pancakes or treating her to McDonald’s. She was a strong girl. I could tell that by the way she carried on, ready for the next adventure, when somewhere in her heart she must have been in pain from longing; for her mother, her home, something familiar. I recognised that longing in her eyes because I had felt it myself for many years.
The clock ticked away the day as I failed to strike up the courage to leave the house. I knew that new horrors lay ahead if I dared to be seen alone with Lillian in public. They would come, inevitably, as so many adjustments to my life after the accusation had, forcing me to adapt to different ways of being in the world. People were going to look at her and me and make comments loudly, so that I could hear, or conspiratorially, their eyes filled with hatred. They were going to take pictures of my child and me. Some hysterical old ladies would probably call the police. I could see myself sitting on an empty bench at a public playground and watching the other parents telling their kids to stay away from Lillian, assigning someone to keep an eye on me while they escorted their little ones to the toilet blocks. I could see Lillian’s confusion, sudden terror, as angry men came and blasted me while we waited outside a cinema to see a kid’s movie, wanting to know how Kelly could bear to leave our daughter with me.
I was a coward. I had contaminated Lillian’s life with my curse, and I was in denial about it.
I tried to retreat into fantasies about Laney Bass as the sun heated the house, making the cicadas in the trees roar and the roof tick as the corrugated iron expanded. She’d had a busy day the day before, she’d said. But she had sent me a cute goodnight message telling me how much she looked forward to our upcoming date, probably suggesting she was getting anxious that I hadn’t actually arranged it yet. I opened the message as I wallowed in inactivity on the back porch and read it over again. Laney had heard about the Dylan Hogan shooting on the news, and wanted to assure me that I didn’t have to talk about it if I didn’t want to.
I’m looking forward to learning more about you, she signed off.
I sat miserably and watched Lillian making mud pies by the sprinkler. There’s only so much entertainment a kid can gain from a pool of dirt and water at the centre of an otherwise featureless backyard, and soon Lillian came stomping up the yard towards me, throwing herself into a hug and dribbling mud down my clothes.
‘Oh! Hello, Boo,’ I said as she nuzzled into my neck. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What you doing?’ she parroted. It was a good question. I glanced at my watch again, crushed with guilt.
I know what I should be doing, I thought. I should be calling Sara Farrow. Confronting her about the affair. Watching more videos. Looking at the records for her secret phone.
‘Shall we play with the duckies?’ I asked Lillian instead. ‘Take the dog for a walk? You want to order pizza and watch a movie?’
I heard the sound of gravel on the driveway. I went to the end of the porch and leaned out, spotted Laney Bass’s van in the driveway, the woman opening her driver’s side door like she’d materialised out of my thoughts. I brushed the mud off my shirt and jeans, my heart already hammering with anticipation.
‘Laney Bass is here, Boo,’ I told her with a dramatic gasp. ‘Should we hang out with her?’
‘Mamey Bass is here!’ Lillian cried.
I went through the house to the door and opened it, but it was clear from Laney’s stride towards me that something was wrong. I shut the door, almost catching Lillian’s fingers, trapping her inside. She looked up at me in confusion. I walked out and down the porch steps, my breath suddenly halting, some deep-seated instinct already playing through what was about to happen just seconds before it did.
Laney’s eyes were wet. She shoved a newspaper at my chest. It was awkwardly folded, crumpled. I almost didn’t need to look at the front page. I let it fall on the ground. I was all over the cover. The shot Stan Parrett had captured of me in the White Caps car park was centre stage, my hand up and mouth downturned. Then there was a smaller picture of Amanda and I standing at the petrol station, watching as ambulance crews rushed in to deal with Hogan.
Alleged sex offender and convicted child killer team up to botch Farrow case.
I let Laney speak, but she was so distressed she couldn’t get more than the word �
��What’ out for a moment. Over and over she said it. She was shaking, her face peach-coloured and glossy. There was a strange beauty to her red-nosed, vulnerable expression. Lillian was bashing on the screen door with both fists.
‘Mamey Bass! Mamey Bass!’
‘What … what …’ Laney growled, finally breaking through the mindless anger. ‘What the actual fuck was your plan, Ted?’
‘I didn’t …’ I shrugged, swallowing back sickness. ‘I didn’t have one.’
‘You just weren’t going to tell me? You just weren’t going to mention it?’
I searched for words, but there were none.
‘I had to find out from my work experience girl,’ Laney spat. ‘She’s fifteen. Here I am gossiping about this interesting man I’ve met and I mentioned you lived alone down by the lake. She said, “I know that guy. That’s the guy my mum told me to stay away from. He was in the paper just this morning.”’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, maybe for the ten thousandth time in my life. ‘I’m innocent.’ Maybe the millionth. ‘I’m no longer a person of interest. The police have said –’
‘I’m so embarrassed,’ Laney said, rubbing her nose on the back of her hand. She was hiccupping with tears. She glanced towards the doorway, where Lillian had fallen silent, aware somehow that there were very bad things going on between the adults and hoping, perhaps, to decipher what they were. I thought of Luca Errett at the window of the crummy hotel room the police had arranged for his family, his hands spread on the glass.
‘Can you imagine what would have happened if we’d gone out?’ Laney asked. ‘I’d be the laughing stock of the whole town.’
I put my hands in my pockets and bowed my head, resigned to let her get it all out, to say all the things she needed to say, so she would regret nothing when she walked away from me forever in only a few seconds time. But it seemed that a kind of disgust had overtaken her, maybe at my refusal to defend or explain myself, maybe at my lying to her when she’d told me her life had just been ruined by lies, maybe at what the newspapers were suggesting I was: a paedophile who had escaped justice.
