Chapter 37
RUSSELL
‘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?’
‘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.