The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)(49)

“That’s enough, Mandy,” Falk said sharply. “For God’s sake, shut up and leave us in peace.”

Mandy pointed at Falk.

“No. You leave.” She turned on her heel and stalked away. “I’m phoning my husband.” The words floated across the playground in her wake.

Gretchen’s cheeks were flushed. As she took a sip of water, Falk saw that her hands were shaking. He reached out to touch her shoulder, then stopped, aware of people watching, not wanting to make it worse.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have met you here.”

“It’s not you,” she said. “Tensions are high. The heat makes everything worse.” She took a deep breath and gave Falk a wobbly smile. “Plus Mandy’s always been a bitch.”

He nodded. “That’s fair.”

“And for the record, I didn’t not like Karen. We just weren’t close. There are loads of mums at school. You can’t be friends with all of them. Obviously.” She nodded at Mandy’s back.

Falk opened his mouth to respond when his phone buzzed. He ignored it. Gretchen smiled.

“It’s OK. Get it.”

With an apologetic grimace he opened the text. He was on his feet almost before he’d finished reading it.

Five words from Raco: Jamie Sullivan lied. Come now.





20


“He’s in there.”

Falk peered through a thick glass panel in the door into the station’s sole interview room. Jamie Sullivan sat at the table staring miserably into a paper cup. The farmer seemed somehow smaller than when they’d been sitting in his living room.

Falk had felt guilty leaving Gretchen in the park. He’d wavered as she’d looked him in the eye and said it was fine. He hadn’t believed her, so she’d given him a smile and a push toward his car.

“Go. It’s OK. Give me a call.”

He’d gone.

“What’ve you found?” Falk asked Raco. The sergeant told him, and Falk nodded, impressed.

“It was there in plain view the whole time,” Raco said. “It just slipped through the cracks with everything else happening that day.”

“Yeah, well, it was a busy day. Especially for Jamie Sullivan, it seems.”

Sullivan’s head shot up as they entered. His fingers were clenched around his cup.

“Right, Jamie. I want to make it clear to you that you’re not under arrest,” Raco said briskly. “But we need to clear up a couple of things we talked about the other day. You remember Federal Agent Falk. We’d like him to sit in on this chat, if you’re willing for that to happen?”

Sullivan swallowed. He looked back and forth, not sure what the right answer was.

“I suppose. He’s working for Gerry and Barb, right?”

“Unofficially,” Raco said.

“Do I need my lawyer?”

“If you like.”

There was a silence. Sullivan’s lawyer, if he even had one, probably spent fifty weeks of his year dealing with property disputes and livestock contracts, Falk thought. This could well be fresh territory for him. Not to mention the cost per hour. Sullivan seemed to come to the same conclusion.

“I’m not under arrest?”

“No.”

“All right,” Sullivan said. “Just bloody ask. I’ve got to get back.”

“Good. We visited you two days ago, Jamie,” Raco began. “To talk to you about the day Luke, Karen, and Billy Hadler died.”

“Yes.” There was a fine sheen of sweat on Sullivan’s upper lip.

“And during our visit, you told us that after Luke Hadler left your property at about 4:30 P.M., you stayed behind. You said”—he checked his notes—“I stayed on the farm. I did some work. I had dinner with Gran.”

Sullivan said nothing.

“Is there anything you want to say to us about that at this point?”

Sullivan swiveled his eyes between Falk and Raco. He shook his head.

“OK,” Raco said, and he slid a piece of paper across the desk. “Do you know what this is?”

Sullivan’s tongue darted out and ran over his dry lips. Twice. “It’s a CFA report,” he said.

“Yep. You’ll see here on the date stamp it’s from the same day the Hadlers died. Every time the firefighters are called out, they log one of these. In this case, they were responding to an emergency alert. You can see that here.” Raco pointed to typed lines on the paper. “And below, the address they were called to. Do you recognize the address?”

“Of course.” A long pause. “It’s my farm.”

“According to the summary”—Raco picked up the report—“the fire crew was called to your farm at 5:47 P.M. They were alerted automatically when your gran activated her panic button. They arrived to find your gran alone in the house with the stove alight. It says here they put it out, calmed her down. Tried to call you, got no answer, but then you arrived back at the house. That was at 6:05 P.M., according to this.”

“I was in the fields.”

“You weren’t. I called the guy who wrote the report. He remembers you approaching from the main road.”

They all stared at each other. Sullivan broke away first, looking down at the table as though an answer might appear. A lone fly circled over their heads with a tinny drone.