by Candice Fox
“Oh.” Sweeney sniffed. “She said they’re more common than you think. Coerced false confessions happen a lot—you know. The cops keep someone in too long, muscle them a bit maybe, suggest that they might have forgotten what they did. But non-coerced ones do also appear every now and then. The lack of sleep, the grief, the isolation.”
“Right.” Amanda nodded.
“Stephanie is riddled with guilt. Initially her idea was that maybe if she’d said something about the affair, confronted Andrew about it, he could have come back to her. Avoided shifts with Keema. Not been there that night,” Sweeney said. “The guilt and the anger grew and grew and then she started worrying, Maybe there’s another reason I feel so guilty. A story started to form in her mind.”
“The human brain is so weird and awesome.” Amanda smiled.
“Is that, uh…” Sweeney glanced at the eavesdropping bartender. “Is that kind of how it was with you?”
“You mean when I gave my false confession?” Amanda raised a conspiratorial brow. “When I told them I’d killed Lauren on purpose?”
“Yeah.” Sweeney leaned in. “I mean, how come you didn’t … you never said…”
“Sweeney,” Amanda whispered in the other woman’s ear, “stop being so nosy.”
They both laughed. Sweeney had felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise as Amanda’s breath tickled the rim of her ear. The bartender was frowning. Sweeney gestured to the back and Amanda followed, skirting the kitchen area and heading out the back door. A chef on a cigarette break spotted them as they arrived in the dim light, ducked back into the kitchen, guilty. Sweeney smelled dope on the wind.
The creek bank was alive with the call of night creatures, the barking and coughing of reptilian life punctuating the high-pitched strumming of insect wings. As they stood listening, looking at the lights of old Mrs. Songly’s house across the creek, a movement caught Amanda’s eye.
“Oh!” She grabbed Sweeney’s forearm. “Poss-poss!”
A brush-tailed possum the size of a large housecat had reached the base of a nearby eucalypt. The two women stood frozen as it began ambling toward them with the wide, awkward tread of a creature unaccustomed to making its way along the ground. It came to within a couple of meters of them and stood sniffing the air with its pink nose, its pointed ears twitching.
“I don’t have any food, buddy,” Sweeney said. Amanda was searching her pockets. She produced a single cashew nut and held it up in the light.
“It’s your lucky day, mate,” Amanda said.
“What are you doing walking around with nuts in your pocket?”
“Nut, in the singular,” Amanda said. She offered no further explanation, simply crouched and held the nut for the possum to take. It reached out with a tiny, furred hand and took the nut, turned and sprinted off into the dark. Sweeney realized she was grinning. They were both grinning. When Amanda turned toward her, Sweeney felt a heavy thump in the very center of her being, almost like the push of an invisible hand from behind.
She drew herself up. Waited for the strength to do it.
But she resisted. Her feet remained planted. She felt the smile on her face wither away, and in time Amanda’s had too as the other woman’s mind drifted off, her eyes wandering over the forest surrounding them.
I sat on the edge of the stiff bed in the hotel room and took a deep breath, let it slide softly out of my lungs, the television remote on my knee. Before me, an unnecessarily large blank screen. Two more slow breaths, and then my mind swirled back into the turmoil of the last hour as I finished up dinner with Kelly and walked back through the rain to the room, causing my breath to quicken, to catch.
We can fix it.
Come home.
I need you.
Anger swelled, reached breaking point, cracked and fell away, leaving confusion in its wake. I’d spent so long fantasizing about Kelly saying those words to me that when she had, I’d almost mistaken it for a daydream. In the months since my accusation, I’d learned to coax myself to sleep at night by running a story through my head. Me standing on the doorstep of my home. Kelly opening the door, welcoming me in, noticing my confusion and panic. Me trying to explain to her everything that had happened, Claire Bingley and my arrest, my time in prison, the hateful, vengeful public. Kelly telling me none of it had been true. No time had passed. It was still that fateful Sunday morning. We hadn’t fought. I hadn’t ever left to go fishing. I could still stop it all from happening.
There hadn’t been anything to say to Kelly’s offer at the restaurant. Was it even an offer, or was it a plea? I’d mumbled something about not knowing what she meant, about not really understanding how she could want that. But, of course, we both knew what she meant. How she could want it. Our marriage had been great. Yes, there had been arguments, the occasional walkout. But we’d made a great team. We made each other laugh every day. We’d been right in the middle of that blessed, exhausting, exhilarating time of a new baby—struggling to adjust but knowing that we would, celebrating every triumph, every struggle, every milestone. We’d been on the edge of wonderful new territory for the two of us. Parenting. And then it had all fallen to pieces.
She wanted me to come back so that we could resume that dreamlike state. Of course it wouldn’t be the same. But it would be good. We both knew it would be good. She’d have to teach me things about baby girls. My baby girl. I’d have to relearn Kelly’s language, adjust to her routine. We’d presumably get to see each other’s new bodies for the first time. I’d investigate her new edges, curves. She’d see scars I’d obtained in my new life as an accused criminal.
I gripped my head and tried to breathe. There was no time to think about that now. Dale Bingley was pushing into my mind, a coiled black snake encircling my entire life back in Cairns, threatening to squeeze. He’d be sitting down to watch what was about to happen on national television. Everyone would. Kelly was probably racing home to be with Jett right now. Lillian in bed, two glasses of wine on the coffee table. Sean would be watching it in his chic apartment in Potts Point with his partner Richard trying to talk the angry lawyer down from ranting at the screen. My colleagues. My old friends and neighbors. With gritted teeth, I forced myself to lift the remote and push the red button at the top of the device.
A lengthy introduction. Plenty of words that made me wince. Vicious. Shocking. Predator. Punches to the heart between rounds of barely comforting concessions. Accused. Alleged. Unproven. Suddenly I was on the screen looking surprisingly handsome. I felt ill, couldn’t tear my eyes off the screen to go and be sick. Minutes passed while I waited for that terrible moment, for Lara to sigh meaningfully, tilt her head in that severely skeptical way and turn my attention to the laptop with Melanie’s message on it. Ad breaks came and went. I was drenched in sweat and plucking at the front of my shirt as the minutes ticked down, my phone conspicuously silent.
And then Lara was on the screen standing alone, telling me Stories and Lives would be following the case closely and that more information on me could be found on their website. I sat rigid as more ads came, and then the thumping rock-music theme of some dance show.
I didn’t even look at the screen when my phone rang. I forgot to say hello.
“Are you there?” Sean said.
“Yeah, I’m watching,” I said. Happy youths were throwing one another about and posing as their names flashed on the screen. “The Melanie part must be up next.”
“It’s over. The show’s over. They didn’t air it.”
“But they said—”
“They didn’t air it, Ted.”
I watched a lean, toned female host introducing a panel of strangely dressed judges.
“But what does that mean?”
“I don’t know!” Sean laughed, disbelieving.
“Is there a late edition of the program? Maybe it’s on there.”
“There is no late edition. There’s nothing on the website, either. I’m on the home page. Nothing. It’s not there. The accusatio
n is not there.”
We held on in silence, Sean clicking on his computer, typing things. Me watching some guy in a silver top hat talking to some very nervous kids in leotards.
“Is it a mistake?” I asked.
“Let’s hope not,” Sean answered.
* * *
Dale Bingley sat in the kitchen of his daughter’s accused rapist, a small television he had found in the front room now plugged into the wall beside the man’s battered toaster. The Ted on the screen was a far cry from the man he’d watched carefully over the past days. He knew a hollow-cheeked, tired-looking man with eyes constantly drawn to the horizon across the water as though he could see an unreachable paradise there, an over-the-rainbow place where his troubles meant nothing. He was charismatic on the screen. Handsome. But that was everyone’s favorite thing to hate about him, wasn’t it? That he was undeniably likeable. Not the monster of fairy tales.
Half listening to Ted’s measured protests on the set, Dale turned to the papers before him, the laptop with pages open, one showing utes, one open on Ted’s email account.
There were Ford Falcons registered to owners who lived in the area of Claire’s abduction, some of them within the model range of 1988 to 1992. But none of them were blue. Dale looked at the cars on the screen and felt the familiar sting of fatherly shame he’d never shaken since Claire’s attack. He knew it was ridiculous. Sexist. But a part of him felt that, however irrational, if he had been a better man, a stronger, more masculine man, a tougher man, he’d have been able to prevent what had happened to his daughter. It was probably some ancient caveman thing, a stupid instinct from history. A real man’s duty was to protect his child, and that meant knowing somehow when she was not safe. It meant knowing about cars and weapons and investigative police work. It meant being able to match Claire’s attacker physically when the time came, to beat him, to conquer him.
Ted’s sheer strength the night before had brought all those feelings back. The man had picked him up off the floor like a child and thrown him through a door. Dale had watched idly as Ted reattached the door after their fight, drunkenly trying to fit the screws into place, fumbling with the screwdriver, the geese still muttering angrily in their house on the lawn. Was Ted a better man than Dale? Would he have been able to protect her? There were suggestions in the evidence before him that Claire’s attacker, if it wasn’t Ted, was twenty-five years old or close to it. Was he strong? Did he know about models of cars? Did he have a child?
He exhaled. There were too many variables. Dale didn’t know if the color of a vehicle, when it was changed, had to be updated on the registration form. Was that something the motor registry insisted on? Or was it just encouraged? Could any of the Ford Falcon XF utes on the papers before him actually be blue?
Dale rapped on the edge of the laptop, then glanced at Ted’s email inbox.
He opened the email from Khalid Farah, curious. Dale had seen the short, arrogant gangster in the news from time to time—expensive-looking suits, immaculate, slicked hair.
Coffee, you gotta answer my texts, bro. I know you’re gonna find this guy. You better think about what it’ll be like for you if you hand him in and he gets eight years. We can help you do better, yo. We can help you do right.
Dale read the message from start to finish a few times over. The television program ended, no sign of the new accusations. The keys to Ted’s car were sitting on the countertop in a little wooden bowl.
Dale clicked “Reply.” When he’d finished writing, he stood and took the keys in his hand.
Heavy. A crushing heaviness infecting everything, liquid lead coating my throat and chest, rolling in waves down my legs. I woke on top of the bed, my arms sprawled out, still naked from the shower I’d finally managed to drag myself into after the Stories and Lives program. I had inexplicably slept the deep and dreamless slumber of the dead, but I was awakened by a splinter of light from the edge of the curtains covering the hotel window and found myself too weighed down to move. It was midday. I turned my head as my phone started buzzing. I was faintly aware that it had been buzzing for some time.
Kelly, of course. And before her, two calls from Sean and one from Khalid Farah. There was a small collection of unidentified numbers, probably journalists and swearing, threatening crazies who had dug up my phone number somehow, I guessed from experience. I didn’t return the calls of anyone who had called me. Instead I flipped through the numbers until I found Sweeney and held the phone to my ear with an aching arm.
“Ted?”
“Hello,” I said.
“Are you okay? You sound terrible.”
“I need—” I drew a difficult breath. “I need something to do. Something mundane. I’m not feeling the best.”
“Okay.” I heard Sweeney pushing some papers around, adjusting the phone against her ear. She was at the station. I recognized the low grumble of cop voices in the background, a security door buzzing open and a phone ringing. “I’ve got stuff you could do. We’re widening the search. I suppose you read my message about Stephanie’s confession not stacking up? Michael Bell’s clean. I’m going through a list here. All the past and present staff of the Barking Frog, some people who have admitted to being at the pleasure-den parties.”
“The what?”
“Just—never mind. I’ve got a collection of names. I’m going through bank accounts, social media profiles, criminal records.”
“Perfect,” I said.
“Family and friends of—”
“Give me them, too.”
“How about I just send you a big ole list of names?”
“Thank you.” I rolled away from the light. My laptop was on the bedside table. Without shifting upright I dragged it toward me and pushed it open. Sweeney had fallen silent, clicking on her own computer, emailing me.
“Shouldn’t you be feeling a bit better?” she asked hesitantly. “The new accusation. It wasn’t on the program last night. I’m sorry. I … I watched.”
“Everybody did.”
“So that’s good, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“My wife—” I began. But how to explain? I curled up and listened to the police station in the background of Sweeney’s call. Her gentle breathing. “I don’t know about that, either.”
More clicking. Someone, a man, laughing.
“Maybe you should call Amanda,” Sweeney said suddenly.
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Sweeney said. “She just, uh … She just makes me feel…”
I waited. Sweeney sounded like she regretted starting her sentence and now didn’t know how to end it.
“She just makes me feel better,” she admitted, after a time. “That’s all.”
I took her advice. Amanda answered on the second ring.
“Listen to this,” she said. I listened, heard nothing.
“What was it?” I asked.
“Nature,” she said proudly. “I’m in the forest. Trekking around looking for clues. Are you wallowing in your own sorrow? You sound like you are. I’ve warned you about wallowing, Ted.”
“What happened with Stephanie?” I asked. “You’re sure she didn’t do it?”
“No, she just went whacko with grief, that’s all.”
I thought I understood the feeling.
“Where did the Mona Wallgreen lead go?” I asked.
“Not far,” Amanda said. “We found a pair of tradesman’s boots in her house which we couldn’t rule out as being worn by the killer. We couldn’t find a single nine millimeter pistol, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t dump it somewhere in the rainforest and the search teams just haven’t found it yet. She’s not talking to police, or to me, so we’re at a bit of an impasse for now. She’s got a relative down in Sydney who’s going to fly up and convince her to surrender some DNA samples, maybe tell us what she knows.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“Yes, indeed, hmm.”
“
And what’s all this about a pleasure den?”
“Oh my GOD,” Amanda crowed. “That’s right, you never heard about that.” She proceeded to tell me all about her and Sweeney’s adventure below the Barking Frog. As Sweeney had predicted, I felt a little smile growing on my face as Amanda jabbered on.
I stared at the phone screen when she hung up. A picture of Lillian on the wallpaper, peering out from behind an app. Devious, gummy smile.
Beyond the phone, on the table beside the bed, was my wedding ring. I put down the phone, pushed aside the laptop, and reached for it.
* * *
Amanda sat down on the creek bank and pulled off her pink Converse shoes, slipped her toes into the water. Tangled in the reeds was the detritus of the night before, chip packets pulled out of the bins behind the bar and scattered by possums and other opportunistic night creatures. Despite the trash, the water was good. She wiggled her toes in the creek, the water rushing against her ankles, swirling and making eddies.
A day had passed since she had stood nearby with Sweeney behind the Barking Frog, looking up and seeing the stars between the tree canopies peeking through at the creek. Sweeney had emailed her part of a list the day before and Amanda had started working through it, but the monotony of the clicking and dragging at her computer in her office had driven her almost insane. Computers were difficult for Amanda. They hummed and glowed and zinged, bubbling with life suddenly without warning, messages appearing from nowhere, sent by no one. Though they were inevitably about her passwords or updates or her connections, Amanda never shook the feeling that, one day, one of these messages might be something sinister. Bad things had a way of popping unexpectedly into her life, a bubble rising invisibly, exploding, consuming everything. Very rarely had anything bad ever come from a distance, announcing its intentions like the smell of a storm on the wind. The noises and bleeps of computers bothered her. She’d abandoned the list before long.
Instead she’d spent the previous day wandering, thinking, head down, watching the asphalt pass beneath her feet. She’d walked through the list instead of researching it on the zinging, singing machine. She’d walked to Michael Bell’s house and watched him through the windows. He must have sent all his helpers away, as she found him sitting on the couch alone, staring at the blank television set, a piece of some cloth she didn’t recognize in his fingers. Maybe a T-shirt of Andrew’s. Amanda knew that grieving people liked to fondle the clothes of their lost loved ones. She didn’t know why. She’d wandered to Stephanie Neash’s house and tried to look through the windows there at the young woman, but she was gone. The rooms in the house were dark.
