The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)(76)

“Yeah,” Deacon said. “I told you.” But his voice had changed. He sounded less sure.

“No, you didn’t,” Raco said. “You said you went inside, and that’s where you heard the second shot.”

“Yeah, I went inside because the phone was ringing,” Deacon said, but he hesitated. His voice was slower now, and he stumbled a little over the final word. “It was the bird from the pharmacy calling to tell me my prescription was ready.”

“You were on the phone to a woman from the pharmacy when you heard the second shot?” Raco asked, his disbelief evident.

“Yeah,” Deacon said, sounding not at all certain. “I was. I think I was. ’Cause she asked what that bang was, and I said it was nothing. Farm stuff.”

“Were you on your cell phone?”

“No. Landline. I get a crap signal up there.”

There was another silence.

“Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?” Raco asked.

There was a long silence. When Deacon spoke again he sounded like a little boy.

“I don’t know why.”

Falk knew. Dementia. In the storeroom, he leaned his forehead against the cool wall. On the inside he was shouting with frustration. Through the vent he heard a tiny cough. When the lawyer spoke she sounded pleased.

“I think we’re finished here.”





31


Raco kept Deacon in the interview room for another twenty minutes, quizzing him about the damage to Falk’s car, but it was a lost cause. He eventually let the old man leave with a warning ringing in his ears.

Falk took the keys to the police car and waited behind the station house until Deacon drove away. He gave it five minutes, then slowly drove the route to Deacon’s farm. Along the way, the fire warning sign advised him the danger was still extreme.

He turned at a faded sign pointing to the ambitiously named Deacon Estates and rumbled along a gravel driveway. A few ragged sheep raised their heads hopefully as he drove past.

The property was high on a hill and offered a breathtaking view of the surrounding countryside. On Falk’s right he could clearly see the Hadlers’ home some distance below in the shallow valley. The rotary washing line was a cobweb on a stick and a couple of garden benches looked like dolls’ furniture. Twenty years ago he had loved that view, on the occasions he’d visited Ellie here. Now he couldn’t stand to look at it.

Falk pulled up outside a dilapidated barn as Deacon was attempting to lock his car. The man’s hands were shaking, and he dropped the keys in the dust. Falk folded his arms and watched Deacon bend slowly to retrieve them. Deacon’s dog trotted over to his master’s feet and growled in Falk’s direction. The old man glanced up. The aggression in his face had for once been replaced with something else. He just looked exhausted and confused.

“I just left the police station,” Deacon said, but he didn’t sound sure.

“Yeah. You did.”

“So what do you want, then?” Deacon stood straight, as best he could. “You going to take a pop at an old man while no one’s around? You’re a coward.”

“I’m not going to waste a career-ending punch on you,” Falk said.

“What, then?”

It was a good question. Falk looked at Deacon. For two decades, the man had loomed larger than life. He’d been the bogeyman, the specter at the feast, the monster under the bed. Standing in front of him now, Falk could still taste his own anger in the back of his throat, but it was diluted with something else. Not pity, definitely not pity.

Instead, Falk realized he felt cheated. He’d left it too long to slay the beast, and over time it had shriveled and wasted until it was no longer a fair fight. Falk took a step forward, and for a second Deacon’s eyes registered fear. A stripe of shame flashed through him. Falk stopped in his tracks. What was he doing here?

He looked Deacon in the eye. “I had nothing to do with your daughter’s death.”

“Bullshit. Your name was on that note. Your alibi was a fairy tale—” The words again had the hollow ring of learned repetition. Falk cut him off.

“How do you know, Deacon? Tell me. Why have you always been so sure Luke and I weren’t together the day she died? Because I tell you, from here it seems like you know a lot more about that day than you’ve let on.”

There was no smell of dinner in the air when Mal Deacon let himself into the farmhouse, and he felt a hot flash of irritation. In the living room his nephew was lying on the old brown couch with his eyes closed and a beer can balanced on his gut. The cricket was blaring from the radio. The Aussies were chasing the South African side.

Deacon kicked Grant’s boots off the couch, and his nephew prized open one eye.

“No bloody tea on yet?” Deacon said.

“Ellie’s not back from school.”

“You couldn’t have started something, you lazy bastard? I’ve been out there up to my eyes with those ewes all day.”

Grant shrugged. “Ellie’s job.”

Deacon grunted, but he was right. It was. He snapped a beer from the six-pack by Grant’s side and went through to the rear of the house.

His daughter’s bedroom was clinically neat. It stood silent and almost aloof from the chaos of the rest of the house. Deacon stood in the doorway and took a swig from the can. His eyes roamed over the room like beetles, but he was hesitant to step inside. Poised at the threshold of the pristine room, he felt the uneasy sensation of misalignment. A loose thread. A crack in the pavement. It looked perfect, but it wasn’t right.