Chapter 56
EVAN
The laughter came in little bursts. A giggle here.
A chuckle there. I was never ready for it, that same thought that kept popping up.
But whenever I hit a stretch of smooth land alongside the river, and my path was lit by moonlight and the sand was flat and stable, I thought about it again.
About how my father had murdered women. Hit and raped and stabbed and strangled women, stolen their fucking lives from them, and here I was: here I was, wounded and hobbling and running from the law.
My name would be on the radio channels by morning.
My face would be on the squad-car laptops right now; my description, my badge number, my car registration.
I was going to have to take one of the neighbour’s yard cars, then swap cars again once I’d got out of town.
Steal something from someone’s driveway like a fucking criminal.
It was hilarious, really. I had spent my entire life trying to do the right thing.
Be a loving father. A loyal husband. I’d left work to sit in stifling school halls to listen to parent information evenings.
I’d researched hotel restaurant menus for Delle’s fucking birthday getaway.
Now I was stopping dead in my tracks and watching the ridge line, trying to pick out the shape of men up there, Russell, maybe, coming to kill me.
This was just amazing.
All of it, incomprehensible.
My whole hand was numb. Wrist, forearm, everything. Numb but throbbing, tingling, not working properly, the fingers swollen twice their usual size. My mouth was dry. My brain screaming at me to take my shirt off and compression wrap the injury. To drink from the river. To give up.
A boat went by, following the river. The noise that had stopped me seemed to come again. Up on the ridge. A roo? I walked on, clambering over rocks, the stink of dead fish on the wind.
I’d reached an impasse on the beach and was heading back into the bush when a set of hands big enough to crush my skull seized on my shirt, and Russell was there, dragging me forward and slamming me into the trunk of a gumtree.
‘You fucking bastard!’
‘Oh, shit!’
Russell wasted no time. The hands let go of my shirt and came around my throat.
I allowed myself be forced to the ground.
My brother didn’t seem to know whether to strangle me or punch my head in, tried a bit of both.
I felt my cheek split over the bone. This was achingly familiar: Russell straddling my chest, raining blows.
It was the same mistake that had cost me the dog.
Letting Russell get on top of me. My bigger brother had always been my bigger brother, fuller in the chest, longer in the arms. My brain was filled with horror.
Dad straddling those women. Strangling them.
Raining blows on their faces. I decided I deserved to die like this, beaten into the ground.
I hoped Russell would drag me into the river.
I could be beside Dad, where I belonged.
‘I’m going to fucking murder you, Evan!’
‘Do it,’ I begged. My mouth was full of blood.
Russell got off me, and I coughed it onto the ground.
I waited for a devastating punch to the back of the skull.
Pleaded for it to come. It didn’t. I was lying on my snake-bit arm, and it was prickling and pulsing now, right to the shoulder. ‘Russell, please.’
‘How could you?’ Russell dropped down beside me. I heard tears in the man’s voice. ‘I don’t understand it. You … you asked me if Bridie was coming with me!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You could have killed her!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t say you’re fucking sorry!’ Russell had a handful of my hair, was grinding my face into the dirt, spittle on the rim of my ear as he roared down at me. ‘Don’t say that! You were covering for him, Evan! I know you were covering for him!’
‘He was going to come after Chris.’ I swallowed. ‘He said he’d take Chris down with him. That’s why he was there. That night.’
‘Did Chris do it?’
‘No.’ I tried to get up.
‘Did he help at all? Did he see it?’
‘No.’
‘Where is he? The old man. Did he run?’
‘He …’
Russell waited. I drew a few long breaths, let them out slowly. ‘He was going to take Chris from me. He told me so. I couldn’t …’
‘Evan,’ Russell said. ‘Evan … what did you do?’
I couldn’t speak.
‘Evan, did you kill Dad?’
I lay in the dirt and cried. Another boat went by. In the white, stuttering light from its search beams, rolling over the other side of the river, I saw Russell hiding his face in his hands, gripping his skull.
‘He told me what he did, and he threatened my son,’ I said. ‘And I … I … I just lost it.’
‘How many were there?’ Russell asked. ‘The girls. How many. Did he tell you?’
‘I never gave him the chance.’
‘Oh my god.’
‘I know.’
Russell watched the water, restless, his eyes searching the black surface. We fell into silence, trying to catch our breath.
‘You’re not going to get out from underneath this,’ Russell said.
The fire was slowly leaving him. ‘You can tell the cops whatever you want, Evan. Tell them you were afraid of Dad. That he threatened you, or Delle, or Chris. It won’t matter.
You’ll do jail time. You’ll just … you’ll have to.
They’ll make an example out of you for trying to cover it up.
Those families have been waiting for fifty fucking years.
Fifty years. Linda Special had just had a fucking baby.
Marian was right on the verge of really starting her life.
And Chloe … You saw her, Evan. She was a kid, and so is Bridie, and I’m so … I’m so angry at you right now!’
‘I know.’
‘You deserve to go to jail, Evan. And to have everyone see you go.’
‘I know.’
‘Where’s the body?’
‘Dad’s?’
‘Yes, Dad’s.’
‘In the river,’ I said. Russell had released me.
I pushed myself upright, so the two of us were sitting now, side by side, facing the water.
How many hours had we spent just like this as kids?
Watching the water. Quiet and numb, broken and trying to mend ourselves in the aftermath of something Dad had done.
Russell raked his hands through his hair.
Dragged his fingernails down his stubble.
I could hear it. It was so quiet, now. It was like the bush was listening.
‘Why didn’t you come to me?’ Russell said.
‘Because I didn’t want to poison you with it, too.’
‘Oh, what bullshit,’ Russell moaned into his palms. ‘It has always been us against him! The two of us, together! Why would it have been any different this time?’
I said nothing. My throat was dry as bone. An engine hummed. Somewhere up there, beyond the ridge line. I turned and saw the flashing of blue and red lights against the silhouettes of gums. The lights moved on, but not completely. They were close. ‘Are you hurt?’ Russell asked.
I thought about it. About everything he’d just said. The women. Linda, Marian, Chloe, and all the others. I made a decision. I folded my arm carefully against my body. Slowly. So as not to be obvious. ‘No.’
We sat for a while longer. Russell trying to take it all in, I supposed.
Trying to come to terms with the fact that his brother and his father were going to make national news the following day as cold-blooded killers.
No news outlet in the country was going to leave out the fact that Russell had killed a man himself on duty that weekend.
They were going to show his face while they showed footage of my father’s car being dragged from the river with his body in the front passenger seat.
Nothing was going to be the same for Russell ever again.
He’d hated the attention he got for coming out of the closet five years earlier.
This was going to be a nuclear bomb dropped on his world.
He had the jittery look now of a shell-shock victim as he turned his distant eyes on me.
‘Hey, listen,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘You and I are probably not going to get to talk for a while.’
‘At least not without a recording device being present,’ Russell grunted.
‘I want to say …’ I gripped my throbbing arm. The hotness and sickness was in my neck and throat now. ‘I want to …’
‘Jesus. Really, Evan? Now?’
‘I saw you …’ I managed. I cleared my throat, which seemed to help. ‘After the big fight. After you came out, and you clocked Dad. We hadn’t spoken for … I don’t know. Two years?’
I told him about the encounter. About how I’d been in the Sydney CBD with Delle, catching dinner and a show to celebrate her birthday.
We’d been in an Uber on Macquarie Street, and I’d turned and looked out and spotted my brother sitting on a bench at the top of Martin Place, a concrete and sandstone wonderland behind him, the gold lights of fancy restaurants and cafes, legal people leaving their offices and running for the train.
I almost hadn’t recognised him. He looked smart.
Stylish. He looked like a man killing time before a date.
All dressed up, somewhere to go. What had fallen most uneasily into place in my mind hadn’t been the nice outfit but the smile on his face.
He’d been talking on the phone, an almost conspiratorial smile crossing his features, his eyes bright and full of mischief as he listened to the response and then cracked into a laugh.
‘You looked happy,’ I said now. ‘It was weird to see that.’
Russell was quiet.
‘I felt happy, seeing you,’ I said. ‘And surprised. And what a sad thing that was. Because it shouldn’t have been weird or surprising to see you like that.’
‘You should have stopped and got out and said hello.’
‘Next time,’ I said.
The sound of voices up on the hill seemed closer now.
‘Okay,’ my brother said. He took a deep breath.
‘I’m going to go up there and talk to the cops.
If they lay eyes on you, they’ll probably shoot you.
They’ll all be onto it by now, Evan. Dodge would have told them.
It’ll be spreading like wildfire. They’ll know you did this because Dad was the one.
Because you were covering for him. Now he’s missing, and they will be thinking that you’re armed.
They’re going to be champing at the bit to be the person to bring you in.
But I’ll tell them you’re going to cooperate. ’
I nodded. With my good hand, I took my gun from the back of my jeans and handed it to my brother.
‘You didn’t call me in to help you before,’ Russell said. He groaned as he got up. ‘But I’m here now, Evan. Okay? It’s all going to be all right.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. I felt Russell’s hand on the top of my head. Reached up and touched it. Tried to stay upright, though that gentle pressure of the palm on the top of my skull threatened to collapse me completely. The waves of dizziness had started. The blood was slowing in my system. ‘Thanks, Rus.’
Russell moved off. I listened to him climbing up the embankment. When he was far enough away, I lay down and asked the venom to take me away.
After a few shallow, dry breaths, it did.