Crimson Lake

by Candice Fox

  ‘Amanda, I know. I know what happened. At Kissing Point.’

  There was silence. I was holding a stack of papers, just needing to have something to hold onto while I blasted my partner’s world apart. I didn’t even know what they were. Printouts of screenshots from Ormund’s website. Emails from Cary. Copies of the fan letters we found in Jake’s car. But their weight in my fingers was reassuring. I repeated what I’d said, but Amanda didn’t react. The stirring had taken on a momentum of its own, soundless. Three cats were sitting rigidly on the kitchen floor looking up at their motion-trapped master and wondering how to break the spell.

  I’d had enough of this. My resolve snapped. I had too many questions for her, and those questions pulsed at the back of my throat, painful and heavy, things I could no longer ignore. I planned to go to her. Shake her. But it was as I set the papers on the table with a breezy whump that I realised our mistake. I looked at the stack of printed pages. Heard the sound of them hitting the table rattling, echoing through my brain. The sound made my whole body jolt.

  ‘Oh my god,’ I said

  Amanda finally came alive, her head turning to me, giving a twitch.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We gotta go,’ I said, stumbling back into the bookcase behind the desk. I grabbed my keys from the tabletop. ‘Get the bike. We’ve got to go to the Scully place right now!’

  Stella Scully’s car was parked in the driveway of the huge house nestled into the rainforest. I parked behind it and looked up the street towards where I knew Amanda would emerge between the walls of cane, watching lightning crack over the yellow plains. The horizon was streaked with black. Whatever was coming was going to flatten the marshlands and bring the muddy waters bubbling up around the houses on the banks. I felt a wave of gratitude to Valerie Gratteur, knowing that my geese were safe inside her sturdy Queenslander closer to Cairns. The waters at the end of my property were going to swell, and I didn’t know what I’d find creeping around my house with the vigilantes whenever I returned.

  I couldn’t wait for Amanda, not with what I knew, what I’d realised as I set those heavy papers on the desk in her office. What that sound triggered in me.

  The thick, dull whump of the pages onto the desk. The weight of them. I’d thought about writers and their words, about the words on the pages being stroked and held by readers, about how precious those words become. How they’d tortured Ormund Smitt. How they’d stirred and stirred inside him until they created a monster.

  I jogged to the front door and banged hard on it, pumped the doorbell, looked inside the glass panel at the cold and dark foyer. I saw no one. I walked back up the drive and looked at Harrison’s balcony, at the upstairs windows reflecting the coming storm. Without calling again I took a rock from the front garden and pitched it hard at the glass beside the door. The panel shattered inward, spraying glass over the tiles. An alarm system started squealing. I unlocked the door and pushed my way through, mashed the control panel with my palm as I passed, trying in vain to shut off the noise.

  ‘Stella?’ I called, running into the dining room. I did a circuit of the kitchen, the big laundry room, came around the sitting room towards the office where she’d put her hands on my chest, tried to draw my body into hers. My face was aflame. Half painful humiliation, half desire to find her now, to make things right by ensuring she was safe. ‘Stella!’

  I found her on the rug on the floor, curled on her side, more little plates of biscuits and snacks laid out all around her like she’d never left that moment, the two of us together. There was an empty bottle of champagne lying on its side in the curve of her body. I dropped onto my knees and pushed the golden curls that had fallen in her face away from her cheeks. She was very warm, but stiff as a board. I tried to pull her arm, twist her onto her back, but she seemed to be resisting me.

  ‘Is she all right?’

  Amanda came in behind me, her hair speckled with rain and her neck red with exertion. She knelt and pushed her fingers into Stella’s neck.

  ‘She’s hardly breathing,’ I said. I shoved the bottle and plates out of the way. ‘Sit her up. Stella? Can you hear me?’

  I heard a sound and grabbed my gun out of my jeans, whirled around and found Harrison standing in the doorway. His face was passive, his eyes wandering from his mother to me, to Amanda as she ignored him and pulled the unconscious woman onto her side, lifted her chin, and started to dial for an ambulance on her phone. Zoe appeared behind him, more curious, a wary dog caught doing something it shouldn’t have, uncertain if punishment was to come. I flicked the gun at the two teenagers, trying to usher them into the room, but they merely jolted, almost indignant at my aim.

  ‘Get in here,’ I said. ‘Both of you.’

  Harrison sidestepped into the room, pulling at the edges of his beanie so that the hem rested over his eyebrows. The girl remained in the doorway. I could see their minds working, silent zings of information, questions, passing between them on invisible lines. Neither seemed to be able to decide whether to stay or run. Their legs were set slightly too wide apart.

  ‘What has she had?’ I asked. ‘Harrison, what have you given her?’

  ‘Rohypnol,’ the girl answered for him.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  Harrison stared at the ground, at his black and white shoes, the pen lines around the sole, doodled grinning faces with fangs.

  I stood, kept the gun on the boy. Amanda was watching me from where she knelt beside Stella, her fingers still on the woman’s neck, feeling that heart pump slowly, slowly beneath the caramel skin. She murmured to the operator, her voice low, fast, her eyes flicking between Stella and the standoff in the room.

  ‘This is Zoe Miller,’ I told Amanda. ‘Six months ago, her mother Teresa Miller died in a car accident. Only it wasn’t an accident. Was it? When I found you two down the side of my house, beside my car, in the night, you said you were trying to slash my tyres.’

  I could hardly breathe. My chest was tight as a drum.

  ‘I thought that was weird,’ I said. ‘Harrison. How you just blurted it out. “We were going to slash your tyres.” Why would you say that? Because you didn’t want me to know what you were really up to. You didn’t want me to know you were actually going after my brake cable, just like you did to Zoe’s mother. That’s why you brought the wire cutters. That’s why you didn’t have a knife.’

  Zoe smirked bitterly. Harrison watched me.

  I moved a couple of steps around the desk. I didn’t want to frighten the girl out of the doorway, but I didn’t want to lose the boy, either. He was standing by the golf clubs, his head down, eyes finding his partner now and then, communicating.

  ‘That’s why you didn’t want me to know your girlfriend’s name, Harrison,’ I continued, watching the boy. ‘Because if I knew her mother was dead, I’d wonder what the chances were of two innocent kids losing a parent each in the space of six months. I’ve been looking at her mother’s name written all over this town. Teresa Miller, dearly missed. Teresa Miller, lost too soon. You knew we’d drill down and look at everything, and you sure didn’t want us looking at that.’

  ‘This guy.’ Harrison gave an indignant laugh, shaking his head. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘It’s not a bad plan,’ Amanda commented, her voice quiet. ‘Zoe’s mother gets killed in a freak car accident. Harrison’s dad gets knocked off by a crazy fan. Two parents down. Two to go.’

  ‘Six months,’ I said. ‘Just enough time for people to miss the connection. You wait a couple of years and then … what? Whose turn was it next?’

  ‘It was going to be my dad next.’ Zoe’s bottom lip was restless. She looked like she wanted to scream. Or cry. She pointed to Stella. ‘But she … She hired you fucking losers.’

  The girl sobbed hard, five or six times, holding the sleeves of her long black T-shirt against her mouth. Harrison was staring at me, his head dipped. The stud in his bottom lip was twisting back and forth as he worried it with his tee
th.

  ‘Those letters.’ Amanda snorted a small, angry laugh. ‘They weren’t from Ormund Smitt. They were from you. You dummied up a bunch of crazy shit and emailed it to your dad. Got him all paranoid. Made threats against … against yourself.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Harrison snapped. The panic was eating at him. I could see it creeping up his skin, making his neck flush red, his jaw burning. ‘All you’ve got so far are fucking theories. Who’s going to believe some fucking kiddie-fiddler and his murderer girlfriend when you bring them this bullshit?’

  ‘It’s in the letters,’ I said. ‘It’s all in the letters. They were beautifully written. Very clever. You got the batshit crazy superfan voice down just right. And by letting Ormund know where your dad’s car was, you tied him into the whole mess. Of course, you knew he was going to visit the car. Put his prints and fibres all over it. How could he not? Your dad was Ormund’s whole life. His purpose. His secret mission. You had any number of obsessives to choose from. But you chose a local. Someone who might have lured Jake into the waterways.’

  I suddenly felt exhausted. All the planning that had gone into this. The cold, long hours of planning.

  ‘But you went too far. The last letters were too much. You wrote as Ormund wandering around the house like a ghost. I watch you shower. I watch you fuck your wife. I’ve sat in your chair behind your big bad desk and pretended to be you.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Ormund Smitt never sat behind this desk,’ I said.

  I reached out and picked up the manuscript on the desk, the first page layered with a thin sheet of dust. I waved the paper stack so that the pages flopped over my hand. I’d only remembered the manuscript as I sat at Amanda’s office just minutes before, as I felt the weight of the papers there flip from my fingers and flop on the table. If I’d not remembered … I trembled. If I’d not remembered the manuscript …

  ‘New book,’ I said. ‘Jake must have been about halfway through. Your plan – you had it just about right. It’s plausible an obsessive, dangerous freak like Ormund Smitt might have written those weird letters to your dad. But there’s no way the same obsessive, dangerous freak would have left this here. If he was really getting into the house, watching him, watching you, he’d have taken this manuscript. He’d have at least had a look, and mentioned it in the letters. No sick, obsessed, murderous fan is going to leave a writer’s brand-new unfinished manuscript untouched on the desk like it means nothing.’

  ‘Fuck you.’ Harrison scoffed again. ‘What the fuck do you know about it? About any of it?’

  ‘That’s why there was no phone call. No message calling Jake out into night. The last letters told Jake the superfan was coming for his son. Jake must have been worried about what Ormund would do to you, Harrison. And then you wake him up in the middle of the night and you say you’ve got a message, telling you to come out and meet him. Dad, some guy online wants to meet me by the river. He says he’s got to talk to me about you. I’m scared. Jake goes instead, thinking he’s going to finally confront the guy. Get him away from his son.’

  ‘This is so fucked up.’ Zoe was crying hard now. But when she took her hands down from her face, I could see there were no tears. ‘Harry? Harry, we’re so fucked. They know everything. We’re so fucked!’

  ‘We’re fine.’ Harrison’s voice trembled. ‘It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.’

  ‘You’re not fine,’ I said. ‘Amanda’s going to wait for the ambulance, and you two are coming with me.’

  Harrison yanked the golf club he’d been holding behind his back out of the bag, the whole bag clattering to the floor, spilling golf balls. He swung the shining club once, twice, and then hurled the whole thing at me. It turned end over end and smashed into the framed book poster behind the desk.

  I was never going to shoot him. I’d never really held the aim right on him. Even as he revealed himself, before me, even as I saw the denial fall and the stupid, reckless, hateful kid who’d murdered his own father emerged from behind the mask, I had no intention of shooting Harrison. All I wanted to do was contain them, because in Harrison’s face I could see the sick grey pallor of a young mind slowly burning, and I knew he was losing all hope. He was losing all control. He was far more dangerous to himself now than I could ever be. But by the time I’d ducked out of the way of the golf club and straightened up, the two teenagers were gone.

  I ran out of the house and turned left up the street, past the sign warning of cassowaries crossing the wide, warm road. The rain was falling in soft diagonal sheets, hitting the asphalt and rising again in curling plumes of steam. Up ahead, at the corner, I saw the two running side by side. I set off in a sprint and heard Zoe squeal as she turned and spotted me.

  They disappeared into the lush undergrowth, two black rabbits sliding in the wet mulch. It seemed an age before I reached the place where they had entered. There was no sign of them but for their footprints in the earth. I slid and stumbled down into the rainforest, grabbing at furry vines, grateful for the animal path as it eventually evened out onto a flat. My mouth was hanging open, thick air pumping through my lungs. There was no rain here. The frogs were deafening, a deep, consistent roar.

  I ran for ten minutes on nothing but the thought that they must have turned left, where the forest was thinner and lighter, and not right, back towards the house. My jeans were soaked from ferns hanging across the narrow path, slashing at my thighs. I looked back a couple of times but saw no sign of Amanda. When I called out for the two teenagers, nothing answered but the rush of sound from the living things around me.

  By the time the storm was above us I was sure I’d lost them. But I turned a corner sharply and Zoe stood there by a tree, those long sleeves still in her mouth, one canine tooth worrying at a loose thread. The rain had smeared her mascara down her cheeks in two thin streams. I slid to a stop and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  ‘We’re so fucked!’ she was howling.

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked.

  ‘We killed my mum.’ She swallowed hard and searched my eyes, her breath hitching over shuddering sobs. ‘We killed my fucking mum! Oh my god, we killed my mum!’

  ‘Where is Harrison going?’ I shook her. ‘Tell me before he hurts someone else!’

  I wanted to slap her. Nothing was coming out of her but moans. It was a shivering and howling girl who pushed her way into my arms. I held her despite everything – what she had done, my desire to catch her partner, the shameful feeling of a girl’s body against mine with all that I had been accused of, with all the horrific images my mind had been filled with since the trial. I thought it was safest to hold her, to smooth down her scraggily pink hair, to tell her she was all right, just in case she really was as helpless as she seemed and those were not crocodile tears on her cheeks.

  I knew I was wrong when I felt the knife in my back.

  Her first shot was badly played. She drove the kitchen knife up into my shoulder blade, the tip penetrating my back no more than a few centimetres before it hit bone. She must have taken it from the Scully house. I could feel the sharpness of the blade. I tightened my arms around her, and she tried again, stabbing frantically at my back, hitting that bone again and again. I threw her onto the ground, shocked, hurting, and she rose up again like a snake and embedded the whole blade in my right thigh.

  Thunder crashed overhead. I yelled in pain, pulled the knife out of my leg, balled a fist, and punched the girl in the face. She sagged onto the ground at my feet, her head on my shoe.

  ‘Shit!’ I yelled, grabbing at the wound in my leg. The impact had felt like an insect sting, but as my head cleared the pain shook through my upper leg and hip, dull and heavy and red. The blood was coming fast. I slipped the knife into my pocket and limped on, growling, the leg suddenly seeming to weigh as much as my whole body.

  I left Zoe there in the dark and headed along the path, calling for the boy. The path led downward, and soon I spied the muddy river between the trees, and the beginnings of thick, twisted
mangroves. I slowed, keeping an eye out for movement. There was no sign of Amanda behind me. I stopped, drawing my gun, when I saw the boy between the trees.

  He stood on the end of a long, high pier, a thing designed for high tide, resting on thin legs a couple of metres above the water. Though I called his name as I emerged from the forest into the light rain, he didn’t turn. The beanie was dripping thin streams of water onto his narrow shoulders, his black T-shirt hanging crookedly. In his hand, he held a long stick, which he tapped rapidly against the edge of the pier. I kept the gun on him and looked up towards the trees, hearing a rustling but unable to tell if it was my partner or his.

  ‘Harrison,’ I said, taking my first steps onto the pier. ‘I want you to turn around and put your hands on your head.’

  The pier might have been fifteen metres long. I could smell fish guts reinvigorated by the rain. While I edged closer, the boy kept tapping, rapping the stick all along the edges of the boards. I didn’t know what he was doing until he gave a couple of short, hard grunts, like he was trying to clear a blockage from his throat. I knew that noise. He was calling them. He was making the bark of a crocodile.

  Every muscle in my body was taut. I searched the muddy, black water, but nothing moved beneath the low ripples of the rain.

  ‘Harrison,’ I said. He looked at me. Defiant. The world was crashing down, and Harrison Scully was doing all he could to resist bowing out, letting the fantasy take him over. Giving in to the Harrison that was not Harrison deep down inside.

  ‘Why did you do this?’ I asked. I inched closer. ‘Whose idea was it?’

  He tapped the stick on the edge of the pier. At first I thought he wouldn’t answer. But in time the words came.

  ‘It was only going to be Teresa, at first,’ he said. He shook his head. ‘Zoe’s mum, she … she was all over us. She did not want us to be together, right from the start. Man, it was … It was scary, how much she hated us. The idea of us. Like we were the worst thing she could ever imagine. Zoe wanted to run away. But she’s just a kid. I knew that wouldn’t cut it. We needed to stay. We needed to change the situation.’