The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)(29)
It was around that time he realized his father was watching him. From across the room, through a window, over his newspaper. Aaron would get the feathery sense across the back of his neck and would look up. Sometimes Erik’s gaze would flick away. Sometimes it wouldn’t. Contemplative and silent. Aaron waited for the question, but it didn’t come.
A dead calf was left on their doorstep, its throat cut so deep that the head was almost severed. The next morning, father and son bundled what they could into their truck. Aaron said a hasty good-bye to Gretchen and a longer good-bye to Luke. None of them mentioned why he was leaving. As they drove out of Kiewarra, Mal Deacon’s white truck followed them for a hundred kilometers past the town limits.
They’d never gone back.
“Karen made Billy come home that afternoon,” Falk said. He’d been thinking it over since leaving the school. “He was supposed to be out playing with his friend, and she kept him home on the day he was killed. How do you feel about chalking that up to coincidence?”
“Not good.” Raco shook his head.
“Me neither.”
“But if she’d had any idea what was going to happen, surely she’d have got both kids as far away as possible.”
“Maybe she suspected something was up but didn’t know what,” Falk said.
“Or how bad it was going to be.”
Falk picked up Karen’s coffee mug and put it down again. He checked the box, felt around the edges. It was empty.
“I was hoping for something more,” Raco said.
“Me too.”
They stared at the items for a long time, then one by one, put them back.
13
The cockatoos were shrieking in the trees when Falk left the station. They called each other home to roost in a deafening chorus as the early evening shadows grew. The air felt clammy, and a line of sweat ran down Falk’s back.
He wandered along the main street, in no rush to reach the pub waiting at the other end. It wasn’t late, but few people were about. Falk peered into the windows of the abandoned shops, pressing his forehead against the glass. He could still remember what most of them used to be. The bakery. A bookshop. Many had been completely stripped out. It was impossible to tell how long they’d stood bare.
He paused as he came to a hardware store displaying a line of cotton work shirts in the window. A gray-haired man, wearing one of the very same shirts under an apron with a name badge, had his hand on the Open sign hanging on the door. He paused mid-flip as he noticed Falk assessing the merchandise.
Falk plucked at his own shirt. It was the same one he’d worn to the funeral, and it was stiff from being rinsed out in the bathroom sink. It stuck under his arms. He went inside.
Under the harsh shop lights, the man’s warm smile froze mid-grin as recognition kicked in a moment later. His eyes darted around the deserted shop, which Falk suspected had been as empty for most of the day. A moment’s hesitation, then the smile continued. Easier to have principles when you’ve got dollars in the register, Falk thought. The shopkeeper guided him through the store’s limited apparel selection with the thoroughness of a gentleman’s tailor. Falk bought three shirts, because the man seemed so grateful that he was prepared to buy one.
Back on the street, Falk tucked the purchases under his arm and continued on. It wasn’t much of a walk. He passed a takeout that seemed to offer cuisine from any corner of the world as long as it was fried or could be displayed in a pie warmer. A doctors’ office, a pharmacy, a tiny library. A one-stop store that appeared to sell everything from animal feed to gift cards, several boarded-up shopfronts, and he was back at the Fleece. That was it. Kiewarra’s main hub. He looked back, toying with the idea of giving it another pass, but couldn’t work up the enthusiasm.
Through the window of the pub he could see a handful of men staring indifferently at the TV. His bare room was all that was waiting for him upstairs. He put his hand in his pocket and felt his car keys. He was halfway to Luke Hadler’s place before he knew it.
The sun was lower in the sky when Falk parked his car out the front of the Hadlers’ farmhouse in the same spot as before. The yellow police tape still hung from the door.
This time, he ignored the house and walked straight over to the biggest of the barns. He peered up at the tiny security camera installed above the door. It looked cheap and functional. Fashioned from dull gray plastic with a single red light glowing, it would be easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there.
Falk imagined Luke up on a ladder, fixing it to the wall, angling it just right. It had been positioned to capture as much as possible of the entrances to the barns and the shed, where the valuable farm equipment was stored. The house was merely an afterthought, the small slice of driveway captured by accident. The farm wouldn’t go under if thieves stole the five-year-old TV. Losing the water filter from the barn would be another story.
If someone else had come along that day, had they been aware of the camera? Falk wondered. Could they have been there before and known what would be captured? Or had they just been lucky?
Luke would have known his truck’s number plate would be recorded, if he had been the one behind the wheel, Falk thought. But by that point, maybe he simply didn’t care. Falk walked across the yard and did a complete circuit of the outside of the house. Raco had been as good as his word at keeping out prying eyes. Every blind was drawn and every door locked tight. There was nothing to see.