The Dry

by Harper,Jane

  “And you’re obsessed with Deacon and Dow. You’re obsessed with pointing the finger at them. It’s as if you need to get them for the Hadlers to make up for whatever happened to Ellie—”

  “It’s not about that! Dow’s name was in Karen’s handwriting!”

  “I know, but there’s no other evidence! They’ve got an alibi. Both of them now.” Raco sighed down the phone. “Deacon’s phone call at the time of the Hadler shootings looks like it’s legit. Barnes is getting the phone records now, but the girl from the pharmacy has backed him up. She remembers it happening.”

  “Shit.” Falk ran a hand over his head. “Why didn’t she mention it before?”

  “She was never asked.”

  There was a pause.

  “Deacon didn’t do it,” Raco said. “He didn’t kill the Hadlers. You need to open your eyes, and fast. You’re staring so hard at the past that it’s blinding you.”

  32

  Falk felt the tension in his shoulders finally start to lift around the time Gretchen poured the third glass of red. A weight that had pressed on his chest for so long that he’d almost stopped noticing at last began to ease. He could feel muscles in his neck loosen. He took a mouthful of wine and enjoyed the sensation as his cluttered head gave way to a more pleasant type of fog.

  The kitchen was now dark, the remains of dinner cleared from the table. A lamb stew. Her own, she’d said. Animal, not recipe. They’d washed the dishes together, her hands deep in suds, his wrapped around a tea towel. Working together in tandem, and reveling self-consciously in the domesticity.

  Eventually, they’d moved through to the living room where he’d sunk, satiated, into a deep old couch, glass in hand. He’d watched her move around the room slowly, turning on low lights on side tables, creating a deep golden glow. She hit an invisible switch, and discreet jazz filled the room. Something mellow and indistinct. The maroon curtains were open, flapping in the night breeze. Outside the windows the land was still.

  Earlier, Gretchen had picked him up from the pub in her car.

  “What happened to yours?” she’d asked.

  He’d told her about the damage. She’d insisted on seeing it, and they’d walked to the parking lot where she’d gingerly lifted the tarpaulin. The car had been hosed down, but the inside was still destroyed. She’d been sympathetic, laughed gently as she rubbed his shoulder. She made it seem not as bad.

  As they’d driven along the back roads, Gretchen told him Lachie was sleeping at the babysitter’s overnight. No further explanation. In the moonlight her blond hair gleamed.

  Now she joined him on the couch. Same couch, at the other end. A distance he would have to breach. He always found that bit difficult. Reading the signs. Judging it just right. Too early and it caused offense; too late, the same. She smiled. Maybe he wouldn’t find it too difficult tonight, he thought.

  “You’re still managing to resist the call of Melbourne, then,” she said. She took a sip. The wine was the same color as her lips.

  “Some days it’s easier than others,” Falk said. He smiled back. He could feel a warmth bloom in his chest, his belly. Lower.

  “Any sign of wrapping things up?”

  “Honestly, it’s hard to say,” he said, vague. He didn’t want to talk about the case. She nodded, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. The blue notes of the jazz were swallowed up by the heat.

  “Hey,” she said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  She twisted around, reaching up to the bookshelves behind the couch. The movement brought her close, exposing a flash of smooth torso. Gretchen flopped back, holding two photo albums. Big books with thick covers. She opened the first page of one, then discarded it, putting it off to the side. She opened the other. Scooted closer to Falk.

  The distance breached. Already. He hadn’t even finished his glass.

  “I found this the other day,” she said.

  He glanced at it. He could feel her bare arm on his. It reminded him of the day he’d seen her again for the first time. Outside the funeral. No. He didn’t want to think about that now. Not about the Hadlers. Not about Luke.

  Falk looked down as she opened the album. It had three or four photos to a sticky page, covered with a plastic sheet. The first few pictures showed Gretchen as a small child, the images bright with the hallmark red and yellow tones of a chemist’s developing room. She flipped through.

  “Where is—ah. Here. See,” she said, tilting the page toward him and pointing. Falk leaned in. It was him. And her. A picture he’d never seen before. Thirty years ago, him bare-legged in gray shorts, her wearing a too-large school dress. They were side by side amid a small group of uniformed kids. The others were all smiling, but both he and Gretchen were squinting suspiciously at the camera. Childhood blonds—hers golden, his white. Posed under duress at the instruction of the person behind the camera, Falk guessed, judging by his mutinous expression.

  “First day of school, I think.” Gretchen looked sideways and raised an eyebrow. “So. It would appear that, in fact, you and I were friends before anyone else.”

  He laughed and leaned in a little as she ran a finger over the image from the past. She looked up at him, in the present, red lips parting in a smile over white teeth, and then they were kissing. His arm around her back pulled her in closer, and her mouth was hot on his, his nose against her cheek, his other hand in her hair. Her chest was soft on his, and he was keenly conscious of her denim skirt pressed against his thighs.

  They broke away, an awkward laugh, a deep breath. Her eyes were almost navy in the low light. He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, then she was moving in again, closer, kissing him, the scent of her shampoo and the taste of red wine in every breath.

  He didn’t hear the cell phone ring. Only when she stopped moving did he register anything outside of the two of them. He tried to ignore it, but she held a finger to his lips. He kissed it.

  “Shh.” She giggled. “Is that yours or—? No, it’s mine. Sorry.”

  “Leave it,” he said, but she was already moving, pushing herself up out of the couch, away from him.

  “I can’t, I’m sorry. It might be the babysitter.” She smiled, a little witchy smile that made his skin tingle where she’d been. He could still feel her. She looked at the screen. “It is. I’ll be back. Make yourself comfortable.”

  She actually winked. A playful, ironic nod to what was to come. He grinned as she left the room. “Hi, Andrea. Everything OK?” he heard her say.

  He blew out his cheeks, rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. Shook his head, took a slug of wine, sat up straighter on the couch. Waking up a little, but not too much, trying not to break the spell, anticipating her return.

  Gretchen’s voice was a low murmur in the other room. He leaned his head back on the couch, listening to the indistinct sounds. He could hear the cadence, up and down, soothing. Yes, the thought popped into his head unbidden. Maybe he could almost get used to this. Not in Kiewarra, but somewhere else. Somewhere grassy and open, where it rained. He knew how to handle the wide open spaces. Melbourne and his real life seemed five hours and a million miles away. The city might have got under his skin, but for the first time he wondered what was hidden in his core.

  He shifted on the couch, and his hand brushed against the cool covers of the photo albums. In the other room, Gretchen’s voice was a dull murmur. No urgency in her tone, she was patient, explaining something. Falk pulled the album into his lap, opening it halfheartedly, blinking away the heaviness from the wine.

  He was looking for the photo of the two of them but realized immediately he’d picked up the wrong album. Instead of the early childhood snaps on the first page, Gretchen was older in this one, nineteen or twenty maybe. Falk started to close the cover, then stopped. He looked at the pictures with interest. He’d never really seen her at that age. He’d seen younger and now older. Nothing in between. Gretchen was still looking a little suspiciously at the camera, but the reluctance to pose wa
s gone. The skirt was shorter and the expression less coy.

  He turned the page and felt a jolt as he came face-to-face with Gretchen and Luke, frozen in time in a glossy color print. Both in their early twenties, intimate and laughing, heads close, smiles matching. What had she said?

  We dated for a year or two. Nothing serious. It fell apart, of course.

  A string of similar pictures spanned two double pages. Days out, holidays by the beach, a Christmas party. Then all of a sudden, they stopped. As Luke’s face was changing from a twentysomething bloke to a man nearing thirty. About the age Luke had met Karen, he disappeared from Gretchen’s album. That was OK, Falk told himself. That was fine. That made sense.

  He flicked through the remaining pages as Gretchen’s muffled voice floated through from the other room. He was about to close the book when his hand stilled.

  On the very last page, under the yellowing plastic protector, was a photo of Luke Hadler. He was looking down, away from the camera, with a serene smile on his face. The picture was cropped close, but he appeared to be in a hospital room, perched on the edge of a bed. In his arms, he held a newborn baby.

  The tiny pink face, dark hair, and chubby wrist peeked out from the folds of a blue blanket in his arms. Luke held the child comfortably, closely. Paternally.

  Billy, Falk thought automatically. He’d seen a thousand similar photos at the Hadlers’ place. The name hit a dud note the moment it landed. Falk leaned in, over Gretchen’s photo album, rubbing his eyes, wide awake now. The picture was not a good one, taken in a dim room with a heavy flash. But the focus was sharp. Falk shoved the album under the tableside lamp, the mood lighting revealing the image more clearly. Nestled in the blue blanket, circling the baby’s fat wrist was a white plastic bracelet. The child’s name was written on it in neat capital letters.

  Lachlan Schoner.

  33

  In the black windows, Falk could see his reflection warp and shift. Gretchen’s voice drifted down the hall. It sounded suddenly different to his ears. He grabbed the other album and flicked through. Photos showed Gretchen alone, Gretchen with her mother, on a night out in Sydney with her older sister.

  No Luke. Until—he nearly missed it. He turned back a page. It was another bad photo, hardly worth including in an album. Taken at some community event. Gretchen was in the background of the action. Standing next to her was Karen Hadler. And standing next to Karen was Luke.

  Over his wife’s head, Luke Hadler was looking straight at Gretchen. She was looking back with the same little witchy smile that she’d just flashed at Falk. He turned to the photo of Luke with Gretchen’s baby son. The son who, with his dark hair and brown eyes and sharp nose, had grown up to look nothing like his mother. Falk jumped as Gretchen spoke behind him.

  “It was nothing,” she said. Falk spun around. She smiled, put down her cell phone, and picked up her wineglass. “Lachie just needed to hear my voice—”

  Her smile faded as she saw the look on his face and the photo album open in his hand. She looked back at him, her expression a mask.

  “Do Gerry and Barb Hadler know?” Falk heard the edge in his own voice and didn’t like it. “Did Karen?”

  “There’s nothing to know.” She bristled, instantly defensive.

  “Gretchen—”

  “I told you. Lachie’s dad’s not around. Luke was an old friend. So he visited. Spent a couple of hours with Lachie now and again. So what? What’s wrong with that? It was a male role model thing. It was nothing.” Gretchen was babbling. She stopped. She took a deep breath. Looked at Falk. “Luke’s not his father.”

  Falk said nothing.

  “He’s not,” she snapped.

  “What does it say on Lachie’s birth certificate?”

  “It’s blank. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Have you got a single photo of Lachie’s dad? One picture you can show me?”

  She met the question with silence.

  “Have you?” he said.

  “I don’t have to show you anything.”

  “It can’t have been easy for you. When Luke met Karen.” Falk didn’t recognize his own tone. It sounded distant and cold.

  “For God’s sake, Aaron, he’s not Lachie’s father.” Gretchen’s face and neck were flushed. She took a slug of wine. A pleading note had crept into her voice. “We hadn’t slept together for—Jesus, it had been years.”

  “What happened? Luke didn’t want to settle down with you, has one eye on the road. Then he meets Karen and—”

  “Yeah, and what?” she interrupted. The wine sloshed against the side of her glass. She blinked back tears, and any earlier tenderness was gone. “OK, yes, it pissed me off when he chose her. It hurt me. Luke hurt me. But that’s life, isn’t it? That’s love.”

  She stopped. Bit the tip of her tongue between her front teeth.

  “I wondered why you didn’t like Karen,” Falk said. “But that would well and truly do it, wouldn’t it?”

  “So? I don’t have to be her best friend—”

  “She had all the things you wanted. Luke, the security, the money, at least what there was of it. You were here on you own. Your child’s father had moved on. Left town allegedly. Or was he actually down the road playing dad and husband to other people?”

  Gretchen rounded on him, tears spilling over now. “How can you ask me this? If I had an affair with Luke while he was married? If he’s the father of my son?”

  Falk stared at her. She had always been the beautiful one. Almost ethereal. Then he remembered the stain in Billy Hadler’s room. He remembered Gretchen raising her gun and shooting those rabbits down.

  “I’m asking because I have to ask.”

  “Jesus, what is wrong with you?” Her face had hardened. Her teeth were stained from the wine. “Are you jealous? That for a while I chose Luke and he chose me? That’s probably half the reason you’re here now, isn’t it? Thought you might finally manage to get one up on Luke now he’s gone.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said.

  “I’m stupid? God, look at you,” she said, louder now. “Always following him around when we were younger like a lapdog. And now, even now, you’re hanging round in a town you hate because of him. It’s pathetic. What kind of hold has he got over you? It’s like you’re obsessed.”

  Falk could almost feel the eyes of his dead friend watching them from that album.

  “Jesus, Gretchen, I’m here because three people were killed. All right? So I hope for your son’s sake that lying about your relationship with Luke is the worst thing you’ve done to that family.”

  She pushed past him, knocking his wineglass off the table as she went. The stain seeped like blood into the carpet. She flung open the front door, and a gust of hot wind blew in a flurry of leaves.

  “Get out.” Her eyes were like shadows. Her face was flushed an ugly red. On the doorstep she took a half breath as though she was about to say something more, then stopped. Her mouth twitched up in a cold little smile.

  “Aaron. Wait. Before you do anything rash—I’ve got something to tell you.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “I know.”

  “Know what?”

  She leaned in so her lips were almost at his ear. He could smell the wine on her breath.

  “I know your alibi for the day Ellie Deacon died was bullshit. Because I know where Luke was. And it wasn’t with you.”

  “Wait, Gretchen—”

  She gave him a shove.

  “Looks like we’ve all got our secrets, Aaron.”

  The door slammed.

  34

  It was a long walk back to town. Falk felt every step ricochet from the soles of his feet up to his pounding head. His thoughts swarmed like flies. He relived conversations he’d had with Gretchen, holding them up under this new stark light, examining them, seeking out the flaws. He phoned Raco. No answer. Perhaps he was still angry. Falk left a message, asked him to call.

  It was near closing time when he finally reach
ed the Fleece. Scott Whitlam was on the pub steps, fastening his bike helmet. His injured nose looked better than it had the other night. Whitlam took one look at Falk’s face and stopped.

  “You all right, mate?”

  “Rough night.”

  “Looks like it.” Whitlam took his helmet off. “Come on, I’ll buy you a quick one.”

  Falk wanted nothing more than to crawl up the staircase to bed, but didn’t have the energy to argue. He followed Whitlam inside. The bar was nearly empty, and McMurdo was wiping the counter. He paused when they walked in and reached for two beer glasses without asking. Whitlam put his helmet on the counter.

  “I’ll get these. Put them on the tab, mate?” he said to McMurdo.

  The barman frowned. “No tab.”

  “Come on. For a regular?”

  “Don’t make me say it again, my friend.”

  “OK. Fine.” Whitlam pulled out his wallet and thumbed through it. “I might be a bit—I might have to put it on the card—”

  “I’ll get it.” Falk cut across him and put a twenty on the counter, waving away Whitlam’s protestations. “It’s fine. Forget it. Cheers.”

  Falk took a deep swallow. The sooner it was drunk, the sooner he could call it a night.

  “What’s happened, then?” Whitlam asked.

  “Nothing. I’m just sick to death of this place.”

  It hurt me. Luke hurt me.

  “Any progress?”

  Falk thought for a wild moment about telling him. McMurdo had stopped cleaning and was listening from behind the bar. In the end, he shrugged.

  “I’ll just be glad to get out of here.” Whatever happened, he was due back in Melbourne on Monday. Sooner, if Raco got his way.

  Whitlam nodded. “Half your luck. Although—” He held up a hand and crossed his fingers. “I might be following your lead sooner than I thought.”

  “You’re leaving Kiewarra?”

  “Hopefully. I’ve got to do something soon for Sandra. She’s had it up to here. I’ve been looking at a new place, a school up north maybe. Bit of a change.”