Chapter 34
EVAN
‘Is he the guy?’ she asked.
‘He’s got to be,’ I said, smiling. She smiled back.
My wife probably thought the light in my face was relief that a murder investigation had been wrapped up so quickly and neatly, and that the whole ordeal was going to do for my career exactly what we both had hoped it would do.
Get us out of Mangrove Mountain, where she couldn’t put petrol in the car or stand in the grocery aisle without feeling eyes on her.
Really, it was relief that Chris was out of the lion’s den now.
No, I didn’t know how his DNA had ended up on Chloe Lutz’s body.
But it seemed safe to assume it was an innocent case of DNA transfer, where he’d brushed up against her or touched something that she’d then touched.
I’d seen that happen. Two people grip the same doorknob.
Two people brush shoulders in a tight hallway.
There’d been a case I’d run into in my early years on the beat.
I’d been in court for the day, killing time waiting to give evidence on a traffic case, so I’d sat in.
A husband had departed from his mistress, kissing her on the lips, unknowingly then carrying that saliva-based DNA home to his wife, who he then slept with and immediately murdered.
Making a case about how the mistress’s DNA ended up on the wife’s lips and breasts at the crime scene had the mistress’s defence lawyer pouring sweat so bad he had to dab his face every few minutes with a towel.
There was a way out. Reasonable doubt. That was enough.
And yes, okay: from what I’d seen in Stephen Branch’s house, and what I knew of his criminal history, Branch didn’t exactly fit the behaviour profile of Chloe’s killer.
But he was a hell of a lot better as a suspect than my Chris.
It all seemed so safe. I’d meant what I said to Delle, in those exact terms: Stephen Branch had to be Chloe’s killer. He had to be.
I basked in the relief, the quiet, thinking about how I’d probably never have to explain to authorities why Chris had been in Redbelly that night, or why he’d lied about it, or why his DNA was on the dead woman.
It would be a footnote in the coroner’s court inquiry, which would happen five years from now, and would be so focused on Stephen Branch’s weird house, his past behaviours, the shooting, all of that stuff, that Chris would get lost in the wash.
He probably wouldn’t even be called to appear.
I pushed my wife against the shower wall and slicked her hair over her shoulder and entered her slowly, the way I knew she liked.
Thought about something other than murder for a few minutes.
The water pooled in the shapes we made, my chest against hers, our bellies together, our lips.
When we were finished, I went to bed with her and lay against the pillows and listened to her fall asleep beside me while I stared at the ceiling.
An hour later, I was still staring at the ceiling.
And an hour after that.
I got up and went to the kitchen, sat at the cold marble benchtop and took out my phone. I tapped through the pages in Chloe Lutz’s notebook. After the Ford Capri section, there came a new page entitled COLD CASE FILES, SERIES FIVE: WANDERER.
A list ran down the page.
Ep 1: Runaway Bay, setting, Diana’s life etc. Crime stats. Leading to morning of.
Ep 2: ‘Morning of’ timeline. Husband reaction. Neighbour reaction. Initial clues.
Ep 3: Major police theories. Interview lead detective, career profile. Newspaper coverage, including editorials.
Ep 4: Diana-centric episode: major suspects, her behaviour, her diary.
Ep 5: Red herring guy. Intro, then unpicking.
I squinted at the page. Closed the photo app and opened Google. I typed in ‘Runaway Bay Cold Case Files Diana’.
The first hit was the website of a podcast called Cold Case Files.
I opened it up. On the home screen, a black-and-white photograph of a slender woman standing at the edge of what looked like a cropped school photograph.
Children at her side, arranged in rows, their faces blurred. I read the text beneath the picture.
The Guardian’s award-winning podcast series COLD CASE FILES continues in its fifth season, WANDERER: a deep examination of the unsolved murder of Gold Coast school teacher Diana Summerton. Subscribe now!
I clicked through the show’s credits. Chloe wasn’t the writer, or any other kind of contributor.
I went back to Chloe Lutz’s notebook. I scrolled forward through the pages.
There was a more detailed breakdown of each of the episodes in the COLD CASE FILES: WANDERER series, including topics, the times they were discussed in the episode, and key lines in quotation marks.
I scrolled forward through the diary, flipping fast, supposing the detailed deconstruction of an existing podcast must have been a project for university that Chloe was working on.
A new podcast series deconstruction began.
I googled the show. MURDER BEHIND THE MIC: SERIES THREE dealt with the unsolved death of a teenage girl in Picton in Sydney’s west. In her notes for episode two Chloe had scribbled in the margin Real audio from scene/atmosphere—will need good mic.
Okay. So, she was going to start a podcast, I realised.
The understanding clicked into place like gears engaging in my tired brain, a heavy clunk.
I flipped back to the first pages of the notebook.
The Ford Capri—that car, and the possibility that it was ‘mistaken’ for another car—must have been a clue Chloe had picked up.
I went back to Google and punched in ‘Ford Capri clue unsolved Redbelly’.
A link came up to a historical news site.
A tiny article arose, highlighted in a faded, scanned image of an old-style newspaper.
I zoomed out and found that the paper was the now defunct Hawkesbury Journal, and the issue was from September 1976.
POLICE SEEK WITNESSES IN ATTACK ON MINOR
A fifteen-year-old girl was sexually assaulted in her home in the town of Womerah, north-west of Redbelly Crossing, on Thursday evening, 16 September.
Police would like to speak to the owner of a mustard yellow Ford Capri seen parked near the location on the evening of Wednesday 15 September.
Members of the public with any information …
Womerah. I knew it, but only from travelling through, seeing the sign, wondering to myself how the cluster of tiny houses could be called a town at all.
I guessed in 1976 it would have been smaller still.
I rubbed my eyes, causing the text on the screen before me to double.
A sound at the front of the house made me jump.
I looked up the hall. Waited. Listened. Nothing moved.
I needed to go to bed. The jumpiness was becoming exhausting.
And I was only tormenting myself now. It didn’t matter what Chloe Lutz had been working on.
She was dead, and her deadness had nothing to do with me or my family.
I stood, and my phone rang, sending yet another whump of fear through my chest. I grabbed the phone and answered just to silence it, glancing at the microwave.
‘Do you own a clock?’ I asked my father.
‘Guess what I’m doing,’ he said. I heard a pop in the background of the call. The sloshing of liquid.
‘I can’t decide if it’s appallingly early or appallingly late to be drinking,’ I said. ‘But I’m guessing you didn’t just start, if you’re calling to tell me about it.’
‘I started an hour ago, when I heard you bagged the Redbelly stabber.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Now I can walk around town with my head held high again.’ His words were slightly slurred. ‘When will you start packing to leave the region? I’d like to help.’
‘You’re a few steps ahead of yourself, aren’t you?
’ I said. ‘This case might get me out of the red. But it won’t put me in the green.
And that’s if we don’t all get smacked on the wrist for entering a hostile scene without backup and killing a man.
I think I’ll need to behave myself for a couple more years before I’m ready to pack my bags. ’
‘I’ll make some calls tomorrow morning and see what I can arrange.’
‘This makes me feel so loved,’ I sighed. ‘Did you know the guy? Branch?’
‘No. I don’t hang out up there. The further north you go from Maroota, the fewer teeth people have. And I’ve only got half a set myself.’
‘Hmm. Anyway, I’d better—’
‘And that pub’s a shithole. Twenty-five bucks for a burger, my arse. I haven’t stayed in the hotel rooms, but I hear they’re the pits. Tragic place to get poked to death. The girl should have stayed in Sydney and left the past in the past.’
‘Yes, well. As much as I’m enjoying this conversation, I’m gonna go now, Dad. It’s three in the fucking morning.’
‘You answered.’
I hung up, went to the bedroom, put the phone on charger and slipped between the sheets. There was blue light coming from the shutters on the front windows. It fell on Delle’s bare shoulder in stripes.
I sat up sharply after only a minute.