‘Dad,’ I said. He stared at me, his ankle resting on his knee, a jumble of old sticks tossed into the filthy armchair.
‘What?’
‘When we talked earlier, you said that …’ My mouth ran dry. I had to gulp my coffee to carry on. The hand that lifted the cup was trembling. ‘You said that, um … that Chloe Lutz was out here and she … she …’
‘Would you spit out what you’re trying to fucking say, Evan?’ Dad snapped, taking up his drink.
‘You said she should have left the past in the past.’
Dad swallowed, twitched, squinted. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘Evan—’
‘You did, Dad, you said that. You said, “She should have stayed in Sydney and left the past in the past.”’
‘Okay? So?’ He waggled his head, eyes bulging. ‘What the hell are you trying to ask me? You sound like you’re the one who’s been drinking.’
‘I want to know how you knew that’s what she was doing out here,’ I said. ‘Even if you’d heard from local gossip that Chloe was a writer, she could have been out here writing about anything. About the town, or the pub, or … or someone local. But you said she was out here digging up the past. How did you know that’s what she was doing?’
My father stared at me with his cold, black, hollow eyes. A silent moment passed, in which the air seemed to ring. He looked beyond me, into the wall behind me. Into whatever dark imaginings he had locked up in his evil brain. Then my father sat his drink down on the table again, put both his feet on the floor and gave a little smile.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I guess it’s time.’
RUSSELL
My phone pinging beside me on the bed woke me at 6 a.m. The annoyance at myself, that I’d slept right through the timer I’d set, was quickly consumed by the wave of exhilaration I felt at the sight of the email that was waiting on the screen. I got up and went into the kitchen, sat down carefully at the nook under those deadly cabinets, and pushed open my laptop. I picked up the email, followed the link it contained, and typed in a password. In seconds I was looking down a list of phone calls made by Chloe Lutz in the days before she was murdered.
‘Here we go,’ I murmured, energy sizzling in my aching fingertips as I scrolled past the numbers themselves to the various accounts they belonged to. The providers were all familiar. Telstra. Vodafone. Optus. Dodo. I shifted the page over and came upon a list of names. Lutz, Jillian. Lutz, Lawrence. Pillner, Cameron. Smith, Warren. Brackett, Saskia.
I opened a new window to begin searching the people listed, who they were, their connection to Chloe. Before I could, I spotted a name that made me freeze in my seat.
Special, John.
The world seemed to hold its breath, a moment of stillness pregnant with possibility. I could almost feel the game board shifting underneath me. New pathways opening up. Understandings that I couldn’t grasp yet, waiting on the horizon. I hovered my mouse over the name, highlighted it. Special.
Weird name, like mine. Name that I had noticed before. I went to Google, dropped down my history list and picked up a website I’d accessed less than twenty-four hours earlier.
Lone women to lock doors: killer house-caller still at large.
I scrolled down the article. Found the name.
… have frightened locals of Redbelly Crossing and surrounds. Police are yet to confirm whether they suspect Marian’s murder might have been committed by the same perpetrator who killed Wrights Creek Road mother Linda Special in July last year. Ms Special’s husband John was away on …
I tapped and clicked. Fished around. Glanced quickly at articles, at accounts, at Chloe Lutz’s phone records and her emails. Another of the names in the sent folder made me do a double take. But not for long. I got just enough to confirm what I was seeing, get a picture of it all, and nothing more. I was too excited to go deep yet. A rope of exhilaration was trying to pull me out of my seat.
‘Bridie?’ I called. I stood up too fast, finally banged my head on those fucking cabinets. I went up the stairs onto the back deck, wincing and rubbing my skull and looking for my kid. I found her on the little wooden platform at the bottom of the steps to the stern, a pontoon in the grassy sea. When I called her again she shushed me hard, waving me down with an impatient hand.
I crept to where the girl was crouched, barefoot, her hands gripping the knees of her pyjamas. She put a finger to her lips as I squatted beside her, then pointed to a sizeable gap in the old, battered wooden planks beneath her feet. I steadied myself with a palm against the wood and looked down into the dark. Below, on the bare and dusty earth, a thick, midnight-black body was slowly slithering. I recognised the red-bellied black snake’s glossy scales immediately, the almost neon purple sheen that came off them as the morning sun slipped through the cracks in the wood and hit the reptile’s gently gliding form. The snake was working its way towards the river.Bridie and I watched it go, until it eased itself peacefully into the long grass at the edge of the platform and disappeared.
‘Whoa,’ I said.
‘Yeah, whoa,’ she agreed.
‘Birds,’ I said. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Mmm?’
