‘I want to get these planks off the floor,’ I said. ‘And get down to the joist underneath.’
‘Why?’ Dodge asked.
‘Because the officers working this case back in 1977 took away the planks of wood that ran through here,’ I said, fitting the claw hammer under a third plank. ‘The ones Linda bled onto. I’m hoping she might have bled right through those planks and onto the joist underneath. Maybe her blood followed down and pooled in the old nail holes in the wood. And maybe there’s something of her killer’s DNA in there, with that blood. Maybe his blood, or sweat,or whatever. I don’t know. It’s a shot in the dark, but that’s what this case is going to take, I think.’
‘Why do you need anything further from the floor, if the police have already got three planks worth?’ John asked. I put the hammer down, ripped the plank up by hand and slid it into the space beside me, pushing it further down the hall. Sweat was running into the blackberry scratches in my hairline, making them sting. I wiped my hands on my shirt and heaved a sigh, wanting to bark my way out of the corner I was in but knowing that wasn’t an option anymore.
‘Mr Special’—I looked at him—‘my brother is working on this case with us. He’s just come from forensic evidence holding down in Sydney. The boxes of evidence relating to your wife’s case have been … Well, we don’t know what’s happened. But the evidence is not there.’
John leant forward in his chair, put a withered hand on the green Formica table beside him. ‘What did you say?’
‘The physical evidence is missing,’ Dodge said. I was grateful for the help. ‘It’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘We don’t know that it’sgonegone,’ I said, my voice filled with an optimism that wasn’t part of my character at all. ‘It’s just looking like the boxes it was stored in do not … contain it, at the present time.’
‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.’ John rose to his feet. The dog, sensing his anguish, rose as well and started snarling at Dodge like this was all his fault. ‘ “The boxes it was stored in do not contain it at this present time”? Are you guys having me on?’
‘I’m sorry.’ I got to my feet. ‘I’m sorry. That was … that was cop speak. I shouldn’t have said it like that.’
‘You’re telling me that my wife’s evidence is …’
Dodge came towards the old man, his hands up, placating. The little dog lunged at his bad leg. Louis Dodge, seemingly in possession of more restraint than anyone I’d ever witnessed in my career, bit down on the pain and bent over carefully, taking the dog gently by the collar and pulling it away from his damaged limb until the old man could get a hold of it.
‘Just let’s take a minute to get some air,’ Dodge was saying, gesturing to the doorway to the back patio, his face purple with swallowed screams. ‘John, let’s sit out here and just talk it through, huh?’
I kept ripping up the floor, trying to understand why I’d lost the ability to speak like a normal person. I didn’t seem to know what to say, or how to say it, in this shiny new life where I didn’t just snap at people to get what I wanted. I was falling into cop speak, a language I despised. With five planks out of the floor, I took my phone out, turned the torch on, and looked at the joist running across the hallway from left to right. The wood was extremely dark. Ancient, treated hardwood, ironbark or gum by the smell. I couldn’t tell if it was stained with blood or not. I shone the light over the old, original nail holes, which sat just millimetres to the left of the new set that had been made when the floorboards were replaced.
Dodge stepped back into the doorway as I picked up the handsaw from beside the skirting board at my elbow. I dropped down into the hole I’d made and set the saw against the joist.
‘How is he?’ I asked.
‘Pissed.’
‘That makes two of us.’
‘Three,’ Dodge sighed. ‘The truly sad thing is how often I’ve heard it. That a box is missing or messed with. This must be about my fourth time.’
‘Hmm.’
‘If we had those original planks, we could have just re-run them. The tech is better now. We might have got DNA they missed the first time.’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
‘You’re not gonna cut through that whole joist.’ Dodge smirked as I started sawing. ‘The whole house’ll cave in.’
‘I’m going to go down a couple of inches and pop a slab off the top. As deep as a flooring nail. That’s all I need.’
‘That’ll be treated hardwood.’
‘Yep.’
‘You’ll have to cut it into sections and knock them through with a hammer. That space is too small for a circ-saw or a chainsaw.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘It’ll take you all day.’
