The Dry

by Harper,Jane

  “Something going on there I should know about?”

  “Barb asked me to have a look,” Falk said. “As a favor.”

  “Right.” Despite being several centimeters shorter, Raco almost managed to look Falk straight in the eye. “Look, if Gerry and Barb say you’re good, I’m not going to stuff you around for the sake of it. But they’re pretty vulnerable right now, so you come across anything I need to hear, you make sure I hear it. Yeah?”

  “No worries. Just here to help them out.”

  Falk couldn’t help glancing over Raco’s shoulder. The cavernous barn was swelteringly hot, and plastic skylights gave everything a sickly yellow tinge. A tractor stood idle in the middle of the concrete floor, and various bits of machinery Falk couldn’t identify lined the walls. A hose attachment snaked out of the nearest one near his feet. He thought it might be for milking but wasn’t sure. He would have known once. Now it all looked vaguely like instruments of torture to his city eye. Falk nodded toward the boxes in the corner.

  “What are you looking for in there?”

  “Nice try, mate, but you said it yourself—you’re here in a personal capacity,” Raco said. “Bank statements’ll be in the house. Come on. I’ll show you the study.”

  “It’s all right.” Falk took a step back. “I know where it is. Thanks.”

  As he turned to leave, he saw Raco’s eyebrows lift. If the guy had been expecting a fight over territory, Falk thought, he wasn’t going to find one here. Still, he had to admire the man’s dedication. It was early, but it looked like Raco had been up to his elbows for hours.

  Falk started toward the house. Stopped. Thought for a moment. Barb Hadler may have her doubts, but Raco seemed like a cop who took things seriously. Falk turned back.

  “Listen,” he said. “I don’t know how much Gerry told you, but I know when I’m in charge, it’s a hell of a lot easier when I know what’s going on. Less margin for a stuff-up.”

  Raco listened in silence as Falk told him Barb’s theory of money troubles and debts being called in.

  “You think there’s anything in it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure there’ll be money problems. You can tell that by looking around. Whether that means someone other than Luke pulled the trigger is another question.”

  Raco nodded slowly.

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “No worries. I’ll be in the study.”

  Falk was barely halfway across the scorched yard when Raco called out.

  “Hey. Wait a sec.” The sergeant wiped his face with his forearm and squinted against the sun. “You were good friends with Luke, yeah?”

  “Long time ago.”

  “Say Luke wanted to hide something. Smallish. Any idea where he’d stash it?”

  Falk thought for a moment—realized he didn’t really need to think about it.

  “Maybe. What sort of thing?”

  “We find it, I’ll show you.”

  The last time Falk had lain on that particular patch of ground, the grass had been fresh and green. Now he could feel the yellow scrub scratching his stomach through his shirt.

  He’d led Raco around to the far side of the house, testing the weatherboards with his foot. When he found the one he was looking for, he lay down and slid a stick under the bottom of the panel. It creaked a little under the strain, then gave way easily, coming loose in his hand.

  Falk looked up at Raco standing over him.

  “In there?” Raco asked, pulling on his heavy-duty gloves. “What did he used to hide?”

  “Anything really. Toys and junk food when we were kids. Booze a bit later. Nothing too exciting. The usual stuff kids don’t want parents to see.”

  Raco knelt down. He thrust his arm into the gap up to the elbow and scrabbled around, feeling blindly. He withdrew it, clutching a handful of dried leaves and an old packet of cigarettes. He dumped them on the ground by his knees and went back in. This time he pulled out the remains of a soft porn magazine. It was curled and yellowed at the edges, and something had eaten holes through the important bits. He tossed it aside in irritation and tried again, pushing his arm in as far as it would go. Reluctantly, he came out empty-handed. Nothing.

  “Here.” Falk gestured for the gloves. “I’ll have a go.”

  He and Luke had never used to use gloves, Falk thought, as he thrust his hand into the dead space. Anything lurking under a house was no match for the immortality of kids and teenagers. He fumbled around, feeling nothing but flat earth.

  “Give me a clue what I’m looking for,” he grunted.

  “A box probably. Or some sort of packaging.”

  Falk groped about, pushing his arm in as far as it would go. The hiding spot was empty. He pulled his hand out.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

  Raco’s knees clicked as he stood from his crouched position. He opened the battered cigarette packet. Took one out, looked at it longingly, then slowly slid it back in. Neither of them spoke for a long moment.

  “It’s the shots,” Raco said finally. “From the shotgun that killed the Hadlers. They don’t match.”

  “Don’t match what?”

  “The brand Luke Hadler used. Used for years as far as I can tell. The three shots fired that killed him and his family were Remington. The only ammunition I can find on this entire property is Winchester.”

  “Winchester.”

  “Yep. I noticed when the inventory came through from Clyde, and it’s been picking at me ever since,” Raco said. “So that’s it. A box of Remington shots, and I’d be a happier man.”

  Falk pulled off the gloves. His hands were clammy.

  “Clyde couldn’t send over a couple of bodies to help you do a property search?”

  Raco looked away, fiddled with the cigarette packet in his hands. “Yeah. I don’t know. Probably could.”

  “Right.” Falk suppressed a smile. Raco may be sporting the uniform and talking the talk, but Falk had been around long enough to know off-the-books probing when he saw it.

  “Maybe Luke picked up a few odd spares somewhere,” Falk suggested.

  “Yeah, definitely could have,” Raco said.

  “Or the shots were the last in the box and he threw away the package.”

  “Yep. Although there was no sign of that in the household rubbish or his truck. And believe me”—Raco gave a short laugh—“I’ve checked.”

  “Where haven’t you searched yet?”

  Raco nodded at the missing weatherboard.

  “On this property? I think this officially makes everywhere.”

  Falk frowned. “It’s a bit weird.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought too.”

  Falk said nothing, just stared at him. Raco was sweating hard. His face, arms, and clothes were covered in grime and dust from scrabbling around in the baking heat of the sheds.

  “What else?” Falk said.

  There was a silence.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All this effort. Down on your hands and knees all morning in a dead man’s barn, in this heat,” Falk said. “There’s something more. Or at least you think there’s more.”

  There was a long pause. Then Raco breathed out.

  “Yeah,” he said. “There’s more.”

  5

  They’d sat for a while by the side of the house, backs up against the wall beside the loose panel and grass prickling the backs of their legs. Making the most of the thin slice of shade while Raco ran through the facts. He started with the slightly detached air of someone who’d said it all before.

  “It was two weeks ago today,” he said, fanning himself loosely with the crinkled porn mag. “A courier with a delivery found Karen and made the emergency call. That came in at about 5:40 P.M.”

  “To you?”

  “And Clyde and the local GP. The dispatcher notifies us all. GP was closest, so he was first on the scene. Dr. Patrick Leigh. You know him?”

  Falk shook his head. />
  “Anyway, he was first, then I turn up a couple of minutes later. I pull up and the door’s open, and the doc’s crouched over Karen in the hall, checking her vitals or whatever.” Raco paused for a long moment, staring out at the tree line with an unfocused gaze. “I’d never met her, didn’t even know who she was then, but he knew her. Had her blood all over his hands. And he’s yelling, kind of screaming at me, you know: ‘She’s got kids! There might be kids!’ So—”

  Raco sighed and flipped opened Luke’s aged pack of cigarettes. He put one between his lips and offered the pack to Falk, who surprised himself by taking one. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smoked. It might easily have been in that very same spot with his late best friend next to him. For whatever reason, taking one now felt right. He leaned in as Raco lit the ends. Falk took a drag and immediately remembered why he’d kicked the habit easily. But as he breathed deep and the smell of the tobacco mingled with the tang of the eucalyptus trees, the heady sensation of being sixteen again hit him like the rush of nicotine.

  “So anyway,” Raco picked up. His voice was quieter now. “The doc’s yelling, and I bolt off through the house. No idea who’s in there, what I’m going to find. If there’s someone about to step round a door with a shotgun. I want to call out to the kids, but I realize I don’t even know their names. So I’m yelling, ‘Police! It’s OK! Come out, you’re safe!’ or something, but I don’t even know if it’s true.” He took a long drag, remembering.

  “And then I hear this crying—this sort of wailing—so I follow it, not knowing what’s waiting for me. And I go into the nursery, and I see that little girl in her cot, screaming blue murder, and honestly, I’ve never been so glad to see a kid bawling her eyes out in all my life.”

  Raco blew a plume of smoke into the air.

  “’Cause she was fine,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. She was scared, obviously, but not hurt that I could see. And I remember thinking at that moment that it might all still be OK. Yes, it was sad about the mum, tragic. But thank God, at least the kids were OK. But then I look across the hall, and a door’s ajar.”

  He carefully ground his cigarette butt into the dirt, not looking at Falk. Falk felt a cold dread seep through him, knowing what was to come.

  “And I can see it’s another kid’s room. All blue paint and car posters, you know? Boy’s room. And there’s no sound coming from that one. So I go across the hall and push open the door, and then it definitely wasn’t OK at all.” He paused. “That room was like a scene from hell. That room was the worst thing I have ever seen.”

  They sat in silence until Raco cleared his throat.

  “Come on,” he said, pulling himself to his feet, shaking his arms as if shedding the memory. Falk stood and followed him toward the front of the house.

  “The response teams arrived from Clyde shortly after that,” Raco went on as they walked. “Police, paramedics. It was nearly half past six by the time they got there. We’d searched the rest of the house, and there’s no one else there, thank Christ, so everyone was desperately trying to phone Luke Hadler. At first people are worried—you know, how are we supposed to break this to him? But then there’s still no answer and his car’s not there and he hasn’t come home, and all of a sudden you could feel the mood start to shift.”

  “What was Luke supposed to have been doing, then?”

  “A couple of the search-and-rescue volunteers, mates of his, knew he’d been helping a friend cull rabbits on his property that afternoon. A guy called Jamie Sullivan. Someone rang, and Sullivan confirmed it but said Luke had left his farm a couple of hours earlier by that point.”

  They’d reached the front door, and Raco pulled out a set of keys.

  “When there was still no sign of Luke and no answer on his phone, we called some more of the search-and-rescue team in. Paired them up with officers, sent them out looking. It was a terrible couple of hours. We had unarmed searchers tramping through fields and bushland, not sure what they would find. Luke dead? Alive? No idea what kind of state he’d be in. We were all panicking we’d find him holed up somewhere with a gun and a death wish. In the end one of the search guys stumbled across his truck more by luck than anything. Parked up in some crappy clearing about three kilometers away. There was no need to worry after all. Luke was dead in the back, missing most of his face. His own gun, licensed, registered, completely legit, still in his hand.”

  Raco unlocked the farmhouse door and pushed it open.

  “So it seemed like that was that. Pretty much done and dusted. This”—he stepped aside so Falk could see right down the long hallway—“is where it starts to get strange.”

  The entrance hall was muggy and stank of bleach. A side table piled with household clutter of bills and pens sat askew against a far wall, shoved from its original position. The tiled floor was ominously clean. The entire hallway had been scrubbed down to the original grout.

  “The industrial cleaners’ve been through, so there aren’t any nasty surprises,” Raco said. “They couldn’t save the carpet in the kid’s bedroom. Not that you’d want to.”

  Family photos covered the walls. The frozen poses looked somehow familiar, and Falk realized he’d seen most of them at the funeral. The whole scene felt like a grotesque parody of the warm family home he’d known.

  “Karen’s body was found right here in the hallway,” Raco said. “The door was open, so the courier saw her straight away.”

  “Was she running for the door?” Falk tried to imagine Luke chasing his own wife through their own house.

  “No, that’s just it. She was answering it. Shot by whoever was standing on the doorstep. You can tell from the position of the body. But tell me this, when you come home at night, does your wife answer the door to you?”

  “I’m not married,” Falk said.

  “Well, I am. And call me liberated, but I’ve got a key to my own house.”

  Falk considered. “Catch her by surprise, maybe?” he said, playing out the scenario in his mind.

  “Why bother? Dad comes home waving a loaded shotgun, I reckon they’d still be pretty bloody surprised. He’s got them both inside the house. Knows the layout. Too easy.”

  Falk positioned himself inside the hall and opened and closed the door a few times. Open, the doorway was a rectangle of blinding light compared with the dimness of the hall. He imagined Karen answering the knock, a little distracted maybe, perhaps annoyed by the interruption. Blinking away the brightness for the crucial second it took her killer to raise a gun.

  “Just strikes me as odd,” Raco said. “Shooting her in the doorway. All it did was give that poor kid a chance to piss his pants and bolt, not necessarily in that order.”

  Raco looked past Falk. “Which brings me to my next point,” he said. “When you’re ready.”

  Falk nodded and followed him down the bowels of the hall.

  As Raco snapped on the light in the small blue bedroom, Falk’s first dizzy impression was that someone was renovating. A child’s bed had been shoved against the far wall at an angle, stripped back to the mattress. Toys were piled in boxes and stacked haphazardly beneath posters of football players and Disney characters. The carpet had been ripped out, exposing untreated floorboards.

  Falk’s boots left patterns in a layer of sawdust. The boards in one corner had been heavily sanded. A stain still remained. Raco lingered by the doorway.

  “Still difficult for me to be in here,” he said with a shrug.

  This had once been a nice bedroom, Falk knew. Twenty years ago it had been Luke’s own. Falk had slept there himself many times. Whispering after lights out. Holding his breath and stifling giggles when Barb Hadler called through to them to shut up and go to sleep. Wrapped warm in a sleeping bag, not far from those floorboards with their awful stain. This room had been a good space. Now, like the hall, it stank of bleach.

  “Can we open the window?”

  “Better not,” Raco said. “Got to keep the blinds down. Caught a cou
ple of kids trying to take photos soon after it happened.”

  Raco pulled out his tablet computer and tapped it a few times. He handed it to Falk. On the screen was a photo gallery.

  “The little boy’s body’s been removed,” Raco said. “But you can see how the room was found.”

  In the photos, the blinds were wide open, spilling light onto a horrendous scene below. The wardrobe doors were flung wide open, and the clothes had been roughly pushed aside. A large wicker toy box was overturned. On the bed, a spaceship duvet was rucked up on one side as though tossed back to check what was under it. The carpet was mostly beige, except for the one corner where a rich red-black pool seeped out from behind a large upended laundry basket.

  For a moment Falk tried to imagine Billy Hadler’s last moments. Huddled behind the laundry basket, hot urine dribbling down his leg as he tried to silence ragged breaths.

  “You got kids?” Raco asked.

  Falk shook his head. “You?”

  “One on the way. A little girl.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “We’ve got an army of nieces and nephews, though. Not here; back home in South Australia. A few around Billy’s age. Couple a bit younger,” Raco said, taking back the tablet and scrolling through the photos. “And the thing is, my brothers know every one of their kids’ hiding places. You send them blindfolded into their kids’ bedrooms, and they could find them in two seconds.”

  He tapped the screen.

  “Every possible way I look at these photos, it looks like a search,” Raco said. “Someone who didn’t know Billy’s hiding spots methodically working his way through. Is he in the cupboard? No. Under the bed? No. It’s like the kid was hunted down.”

  Falk stared hard at the dark smudge that had once been Billy Hadler.

  “Show me where you found Charlotte.”

  The nursery across the hall was decorated in yellow. A musical mobile dangled from the ceiling above an empty space.

  “Gerry and Barb took the cot,” Raco explained.

  Falk looked around the room. It felt so different from the others. Furniture and carpet still intact. No acrid bleach stink in there. It had the feel of a sanctuary, untouched by the horror that had unfolded outside the door.