‘Chloe Lutz was out here looking for a serial killer,’ I said. My daughter, still crouched as I was, stared at me. ‘Four days ago she called one of the husbands of the murdered women. John Special. She’d already emailed him maybe two weeks before that to inquire about the cold case. They were due to meet for an interview yesterday. The morning after Chloe was killed.’
‘Whoooaaa,’ Bridie said.
‘Yeah.’ I nodded. ‘You were right. I shouldn’t have doubted you.’
We didn’t say anything for a while, either of us. We just watched the river throwing hard white reflections at us. All that morning sparkle, and the long grass, and the fall of the land hid the deadly creature we’d just seen heading that way. The snake was down there now, I knew, at the water’s edge, silently winding between the reeds, hunting its first meal of the day.
‘Do you think he’s still here?’ Bridie asked me. ‘The killer? Do you think Chloe found him?’
‘I think he found her,’ I said.
EVAN
‘I’m just going to come right out and say it all,’ Dad said. He swept his hand over the room, the filthy furnishings and carpet. ‘Because the time had to come eventually. I figured if someone hadn’t seen me, then there was going to be DNA. And if there wasn’t DNA, well, there was going to be the email. The one she sent to me. If it had to happen sometime, it’s better now rather than later, so you can do what you have to do.’
‘Dad, what are you talking about?’
‘I killed the girl. Chloe Lutz.’
All the breath left me at once. The box of photographs on my knees slid onto the floor. I was left holding the picture of my father from 1976, the Ford Capri in the background, a slightly blurry but unmistakable shape. I had to suck air through a closed throat and blow it out as hard as I could to make a sound at all.
‘What?’
‘Now, don’t do that,’ Arthur said, exhausted with my bullshit already, his eyes languid as they lifted to me. He held up a finger and shook his head. ‘Don’t sit there sayingwhat-what-what?the whole time. I just want to get it out as painlessly as I can. So, you’re going to have to shut up and pay attention and get all the details squared away into that meat-filled head of yours, and not get me off track by being all melodramatic about it.’
‘You … You …’ I managed.
‘She was out here looking into some indiscretions of my past,’ Dad said. ‘Chloe. She was initially just interested in the two cold cases. Linda Special and Marian Richley. But then she decides to get clever, and in doing that, the silly nosy parker went and joined a couple of dots that no one in the whole Hawkesbury region had ever been smart enough to join before.’
I stared at my father.
‘The first I heard about it was through Herman,’ he said, taking his cigarettes out of the chest pocket of his flannelette shirt. He lit one up. ‘Herman Grey. Old colleague of mine. For the past—oh, god—fifty years, I’ve kept my finger on the pulse of Herman and all the other Wisemans Ferry cops, the ones who worked on the cases back in the day. I go down there, to the RSL, about every six months, and I let it come up naturally. The old cases. The unsolved ones. Because someone’s always still bothered by that sort of thing, you know. Mistakes they made during cases. I know I am. I always wait until someone asks the question, or I ask it myself: whether anybody’s heard anything. Three months ago, Herman says to me,Shit, you know what, Artie? There has actually been something. This young girl from Sydney, she emailed me. Wants to know about Special and Richley.He showed me the email on his phone. Sure enough, there it is. This girl Chloe Lutz wants to come out and interview him. She’s got this big grand theory that the same perpetrator of Linda and Marian’s killings might have been the rapist who attacked that girl out at Womerah. While there are basically no clues about the Special and Richley killings, thereisa good clue about the rape. Herman was all set to speak to Chloe. He was a show pony, Herman. Chucked a heart attack before he got the chance. That was maybe two months ago.’
‘Wait …’ I said. Every muscle in my body was rock hard and trembling. ‘Who … Who were they? Special and Richley?’
My father smoked his cigarette. Took his time.
‘Women from out here.’ He shrugged eventually.
‘And you,’ I swallowed. ‘You … Chloe was looking at mistakes that you had made during those cases? That’s what you said. You made mistakes.’
‘I sure did.’ Dad snorted.
‘What did you do?’
My father looked at me.
‘I committed them, Evan.’
My mouth was already hanging open. Now a shuddering groan came out of it. Dad just watched me with a disgusted sort of expression on his face, the way he used to watch me when I’d cry as a child.
‘You killed those two women? You … you …’ I shook my head. ‘No you didn’t. That’s not what you’re saying.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘But—’
‘I came upon her for the first time riding along with Herman, actually.’
