Georgia watched my face, a mixture of hardness and understanding behind her eyes in equal measures. The eyes of a sex crimes cop. Of a betrayed wife. I turned to leave and she grabbed my arm. ‘Russell.’
I yanked my arm away and walked off.
The stale white-and-blue fluorescent light of the hospital car park. Then, the vibrant green and red and yellow of the streets around the Hawkesbury District Hospital, traffic lights on the roads wet with misty rain. Black of the bush-lined streets, gold windows of houses and farms. Dodge called me maybe ten minutes after I hit the dark road heading back north. I turned the phone on silent and tossed it into the back seat. I wanted to let my mind drift. Let the anger build, until it was no longer hot but cold and calm and rigid, a vibration in my very bones and a mission in my heart. The moon was hard and white above the tree line. I approached the turn-off to the farm at Maroota doing the speed limit, glided in, and let the two women manning the checkpoint there look at my ID with my face passive and my eyes on the windscreen. They reported who I was to the ground team, and I was let through.
Squad cars were parked on either side of the road, four of them, right outside the gates. A command vehicle further on. A grey cat was sitting by the wheel of one of the cars, its eyes flashing red as I passed and drove up the driveway. My approach had been announced. A stocky guy with a round face was leading the scene, came over, made sure he had a constable with a body cam in tow. I showed my ID silently, afraid that if I tried to speak I’d fire-breathe someone’s head off their shoulders the second I opened my mouth. I wasn’t there to give answers, or be arrested, or make a fuss. I just had to see with my own eyes.
The scene leader, who introduced himself as Tailor, looked me over as I watched the activity up at the house.
‘I’m new to the case,’ Tailor said, putting his hands up. ‘I’m still catching up. But I’ve been told your brother, Evan Powder, is wanted for leaving the scene of a serious accident earlier today. Anofficer came here looking for him, as they have been unable to make contact with him at his home address.’
I said nothing.
‘When that officer arrived here, they found that your father, Arthur Powder, was not at the residence. But the place was unlocked, and his phone and wallet were inside. There’s a vehicle registered to Evan Powder in the carport.’
‘Have you actually got a question for me?’ I asked.
‘Do you know the whereabouts of Evan Powder, or Arthur Powder, Detective Inspector Powder?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘We have grave concerns for the both of them,’ Tailor said. ‘Evan especially.’
‘Can I go up to the house and look?’ I asked. ‘Maybe I can see something that’ll help.’
‘Go ahead.’ Tailor nodded, after thinking about it.
I went up. Heard another detective address Tailor behind me. ‘You don’t want to lock him down?’
‘He’s not the one I’m after,’ Tailor replied.
I walked up to the house and turned off the cracked, weed-riddled path. Noticed a fresh bullet hole in the carport awning, which some officers were examining with torches. I went to Evan’s car and looked in the window. The officers hadn’t unlocked it yet, were pointing their torches at a phone and laptop that were sitting on the front passenger seat. I went to the house. The living room and kitchen were as I remembered them. Filthy, old, damp and sad. I saw the bucket of car keys sitting by the back door. I crouched down, shifted some of the keys around. There must have been fifty sets in the bucket. I walked out the laundry door, into the darkened field, and made my way between the cars, looking for fresh tyre tracks in the grass. I found them, and realised Evan’s plan.
Making sure I wasn’t followed, I drove towards the river, joining Singleton Road, following the curves and straights between the lonely fields. I knew where Evan was. Psychics and moon-and-starsweirdos would call it symbiosis or brotherly mind-meld or whatever, but to me it just made plain sense. Evan would have taken a car from Dad’s lot, an unregistered, heavy and untraceable thing, with the hopes of using it to smash into my Mustang and relieve me of the evidence I’d been ferrying to forensic holding at Pemulwuy. With the borrowed car totalled, Evan would have planned to bush-bash back to his own car at the farm. He would have known he’d be exhausted, and possibly injured from the impact of his car into mine, so he’d be looking for the flattest, most hidden and safe route back. Evan would have to bet going back for his car at the farm wasn’t safe now. But there was another possibility on the same route home—the neighbour at the back, Rodger, who had yard cars the same as Dad.
I knew where Evan would be now. He’d be down along the old route we took as kids, where we rode our bikes, creek-hopped, stayed out as long as we could away from home. I had to get to Evan before the cops did. I sped up and followed the river through the night.
EVAN
The laughter came in little bursts. A giggle here. A chuckle there. I was never ready for it, that same thought that kept popping up. But whenever I hit a stretch of smooth land alongside the river, and my path was lit by moonlight and the sand was flat and stable, I thought about it again. About how my father had murdered women. Hit and raped and stabbed and strangled women, stolen their fucking lives from them, and hereIwas: hereIwas, wounded and hobbling and running from the law.Myname would be on the radio channels by morning.Myface would be on the squad-car laptops right now; my description, my badge number, my car registration. I was going to have to take one of the neighbour’s yard cars, then swap cars again once I’d got out of town. Steal something from someone’s driveway like a fucking criminal. It was hilarious, really. I had spent my entire life trying to do the right thing. Be a loving father. A loyal husband. I’d left work to sit in stifling school halls to listen to parent information evenings. I’d researched hotel restaurant menus for Delle’s fucking birthday getaway. Now I was stopping dead in my tracks and watching the ridge line, trying to pick out the shape of men up there, Russell, maybe, coming to kill me.
This was just amazing.
All of it, incomprehensible.
My whole hand was numb. Wrist, forearm, everything. Numb but throbbing, tingling, not working properly, the fingers swollentwice their usual size. My mouth was dry. My brain screaming at me to take my shirt off and compression wrap the injury. To drink from the river. To give up.
A boat went by, following the river. The noise that had stopped me seemed to come again. Up on the ridge. A roo? I walked on, clambering over rocks, the stink of dead fish on the wind.
I’d reached an impasse on the beach and was heading back into the bush when a set of hands big enough to crush my skull seized on my shirt, and Russell was there, dragging me forward and slamming me into the trunk of a gumtree.
‘Youfucking bastard!’
‘Oh, shit!’
Russell wasted no time. The hands let go of my shirt and came around my throat. I allowed myself be forced to the ground. My brother didn’t seem to know whether to strangle me or punch my head in, tried a bit of both. I felt my cheek split over the bone. This was achingly familiar: Russell straddling my chest, raining blows. It was the same mistake that had cost me the dog. Letting Russell get on top of me. My bigger brother had always been my bigger brother, fuller in the chest, longer in the arms. My brain was filled with horror. Dad straddling those women. Strangling them. Raining blows ontheirfaces. I decided I deserved to die like this, beaten into the ground. I hoped Russell would drag me into the river. I could be beside Dad, where I belonged.
‘I’m going to fuckingmurder you, Evan!’
