‘I’m not trying to come back into your life and start making rules in the first five minutes,’ I said. ‘Have you been speaking to him? You know … since.’
‘No.’
I nodded. The girl was struggling to reconnect with me, her own father, after what I’d done. I was sad but unsurprised to know that contact with my side of the family had fallen away as well. I sat and tortured myself for a minute or two with memories of Bridie and her aunty Delle, the girl sitting on Delle’s lap when she was little, eating fairy bread, drawing, laughing. Chrissy and Bridie squealing and splashing in the pool.
‘I see Chris on TikTok and I see Aunty Delle on Instagram, but we don’t really talk.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Mum, uh …’ Bridie struggled. ‘She told me. About what Uncle Evan did at work. Sort of. She heard about it through her colleagues.’
‘That’s not why I don’t talk to him.’
‘Oh, I know. I’m just saying that I know about that, also.’
‘It was incredibly stupid,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but, like, cops do stupid things sometimes.’ Bridie glanced at my grazed knuckles.
‘We sure do.’
‘Mum said Pop swooped in and saved him from getting fired.’
‘Arthur has got a lot of pull around here,’ I said. ‘But that was stupid move number two. If Evan had taken some time and thought hard enough about it, he might have been able to get himself out of the mess he was in. But he panicked and called his daddy. And now he’s up shit creek. That’s what Evan does. It’s what he’s always done. He gets backed into a corner and acts before he thinks. He doesn’t wait. Doesn’t strategise. He gets in a spot and snaps and does something dumb.’
Bridie was gazing at the river now. She smiled sadly. ‘Funny.’
‘What?’
‘That’s how you catch an injured bird.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah. You back it into a corner,’ she said. ‘Don’t give it time to think. Then you just lash out and grab it. I’ve done it a thousand times. You move too slowly, the bird looks around and finds an escape route. Runs between your legs or flies up and over your head. You’ve got to move as fast as you can, so they don’t have time to strategise. Ambush predator tactics.’
I nodded, trying not to think about Chloe Lutz pinned up against a wall by her killer.
‘I’d better go back in,’ I told her, and stood. I didn’t know whether to put my hand on her shoulder, or hug her, or tell her that I loved her, so I did none of those things and just walked away.
I found Dodge at the entrance to the pub, standing under a wrought-iron sign bolted into the sandstone that saidPlease Tie Horses at Rail. He slipped his phone into his pocket when he saw me and came over. ‘I’ve got one on traffic.’ He pointed to an officer across the street, standing with a clipboard and watching the empty road. ‘Three door-knocking.’
‘Tell me what you know about the entry,’ I said. ‘How did this guy get to Chloe? What was she doing here? Everything.’
Dodge adjusted his stance, cocked a leg out, probably relishing being able to tell me something I didn’t already know.
‘So, Chloe checked into her room at about four p.m. Rob Winter, the pub owner and manager, processed the check-in at the counter in the bar area. She parked in the spot he directed her to, last on the row, and then went straight up to her room with her bags. She wasn’t seen again until seven p.m., when she came down for dinner.’
‘Where did she go in between those times?’ I asked. ‘Was she in the room or did she drive somewhere?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘What does the CCTV say?’
‘Not much,’ Dodge said. ‘There’s a camera over the bar and a camera over the parking area, and that’s it for the whole establishment.’
‘No cameras on the stairwell? None in the hallway outside the guest rooms?’
‘Nope.’
