‘Sir.’
‘My father drinks Tooheys New.’
‘Mate, I know Evan’s work on this case has been a bit, sort of … inefficient,’ Dodge said. ‘And him admitting to covering for Chris … Hearing that your brother did that in a police investigation would shake anybody up. But you’re making some mighty leaps here.’
‘Someone knocks on your door in the middle of the night,’ I said. ‘You’re a woman. You’re home alone. They say they’re a cop. Or—better yet—you know them to bea cop. You’d let them in, right?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘A cop attended Linda Special’s house a week before she died. Aweek!’
‘But that would have been a cop from Wisemans. Not from Maroota.’
‘I just don’t feel good about this.’ I put my hands on my knees, bent forward, blew out air. My head was spinning. Thoughts crashing. ‘I’ve got a real fuckingbadfeeling, Dodge. About all of this. The birds.’
‘What birds?’
‘The cockatoos. They were screaming at me at John Special’s house. You were there. You heard them. They were doing it that night, too. The night she was killed. It’s like they knew who I was, or … or who I’m related to. Maybe they think I’m him.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’ Dodge took my arm and pulled me upright. ‘You can’t go letting the local wildlife tell you who’s a serial killer and who’s not.’
‘They can live to be eighty. Cockatoos. Bridie told me that once. I look just like my father. Maybe they saw me walking up to the house and—’
‘Let’s go and just speak to Evan.’ Dodge helped me walk back to the car. ‘If you want to run down this crazy idea about your father, the quickest way to do it would be to get our stuff to the lab. Get it tested. Run it against your DNA. The guy said he’s sending you the results of the Chloe stuff. We can see what that’s about, too. I’m sure Evan wasn’t lying about there being no match. I’m sure of it, Russell.’
‘Yeah.’ I walked on. ‘We’ll do that. We’ll get moving. Get some answers. Let’s go. Get in. We’ve got to catch up to Bridie.’
‘It won’t be him,’ Dodge said, hobbling along beside me. ‘You can’t have been raised by a serial killer. You’d know. A person would have to know, deep down in their guts.’
I slid into the driver’s seat, not answering. Wondering what I did and didn’t know.
EVAN
It was easier than I had expected. To let go. I had found the spot I wanted, turned the car around, and backed it painstakingly up the incline as far as it would go, knocking down struggling baby gums and grevilleas, crackling my way over the dry leaves and sticks until I was hidden in the undergrowth by the side of the road. I was pointed downward at a good, steep angle, and could see through the trees to a spot in the road maybe a hundred metres north. I sat there, a coiled spring, watching the road. Sweating, the engine running but the air conditioner shot to shit by someone in the twenty years the car had been rolling around the earth. It was an old Falcon I had chosen, in the end. Wide. Heavy. Ready to jump when I put my foot down, and an easy pick from the bucket of car keys Arthur had kept by the front door. I had found the car by clicking the fob and listening. Saw there was air in the tyres. Good to go.
I wiped my face, whispered reassurances and encouragements to myself, relenting sometimes to a string of verbal hatred for Dad and for myself that threatened to tip me over the edge into delirium. Now and then, a car appeared. A Fiat. A Toyota. A moving van. Once, a black Mazda, with me so ready for Russell’s black Mustang to appear that I took my foot off the brake and shunted forward half a metre before slamming it on again. I caught one curious glance from the occupants of a car passing down on theroad, heading south. Other than that, no one took notice of me. I watched, and I waited, and I sweated.
Beyond the line of trees on the other side of the road, the river slid past like an ancient brown snake. Silent, lethal.
The plan was just to knock Russell’s car into the guardrail. To hit the back quarter, smash it hard, the force of the impact shunting the car sideways, maybe causing it to spin and hit the incline where I now waited with relatively little carnage. I could see it happening. See Russell’s body whumping into the driver’s-side window of the ’Stang, bouncing off the steering wheel, coming to a bloody and glass-showered halt in the middle of the sun-scorched asphalt. He wouldn’t die.Couldn’tdie. Yes, there was always the risk of serious, life-changing injury. But wasn’t that fair? Wasn’t that justice? If I was going to survive this, I’d have to do it with mental scars that would eat up the rest of my life, slowly and steadily, like a cancer. My family would never be the same again. Delle. Chrissy. Russell would have a shattered leg, a broken shoulder, a fractured skull, maybe, to even things out. Too bad. And Dodge—okay. That part was unfair. But I could feel bad about that later. There wasn’t time now. I saw myself exiting my car before the men could recover from the crash, clambering out from behind the airbag, if indeed that was still operating. I saw myself, hood up, cap down, getting to Russell’s Mustang while Russell and Dodge came to their senses. I saw myself snatching up the evidence bags from the back seat and stealing away.
When the Mustang finally came, I figured the hardest part would be lifting my foot off the brake. But I was so ready. Sowilling. I hit the accelerator, watching the car through the trees, as our two vehicles came together. I rumbled down the hill. The Mustang sailed along the road. It was a split-second before impact that I saw that it was Bridie behind the wheel. I’d had my eyes on the figure sitting there from a hundred metres out. But she had Russell’s height. His big hands on the wheel. His dark hair. Seeing it was her, and hearing my own scream of regret, might have been what caused me to slam my boot down on the brake at that last fraction of asecond, so that my car clipped the back edge of the Mustang and didn’t smash into the last quarter, as I’d intended. The impact was just at the right angle to send the Mustang into a full spin that Bridie tried to correct with wild steering. My bumper walloped into the guard rail, glass raining everywhere, all the bones in my chest and shoulders and arms and face crunching as the airbag ballooned into me.
I recovered in time to see the Mustang come out of its spin, fishtail off the road completely and go sailing down the embankment just beyond the guardrail.
I watched in horror as the car, with my niece in it, hit the river at a hellish angle, spraying whitewash. The whole front half had disappeared before I could even pop my door.
RUSSELL
Isaw the Mustang go into the river.
It happened out of the corner of my eye, the embankment visible around the corner from where I was on a long stretch of road lined by houses up on stilts. It was the movement of the trees that caught my gaze. A hole in the tree line busted through, the car appearing, then disappearing, then the spray. Dodge must have seen the impact at the same time as me. He shot upwards in his seat, grabbing the dashboard. ‘Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa!’
‘Bridie!’ I howled.
‘Go.’ Dodge gripped my arm. ‘Go!’
I slammed my foot on the accelerator, my eyes on the curve of the river. Dodge had his window down. Was unbuckling his seatbelt. ‘Fuck! Fuck!’
