The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)(86)
The end of the school day came and went, but brought with it no real answer. Whitlam waited as long as he could, then did what he always did in times of stress. He took all the cash he had, and some he didn’t, and went to the pub’s slots room. It was there, cocooned in the glow of the lights and the optimistic jangling sounds, that the first stirrings of a solution came to him. As they so often did.
Alone and tucked out of sight among the slot machines, Whitlam heard Luke Hadler’s voice from a table round the corner. He froze, hardly daring to breathe as he waited for Hadler to tell Jamie Sullivan about the school money. He felt sure it was coming, but the secret remained unsaid. Instead, they bitched about rabbits, planned a shoot on Sullivan’s land for the following day. Times were arranged. Luke would bring his own shotgun. Interesting, Whitlam thought. Perhaps the game was not quite over. Not yet.
Another hundred dollars in gold coins pushed through the machine and he had the skeleton of a plan. He ran it over and over in his head until there was some flesh on the bones. It was OK. Not perfect. Not a sure thing. But maybe fifty-fifty. And Whitlam would take those odds any day of the week.
Down in the playground, Whitlam watched as a group of tiny children hurtled past him, his own daughter in the mix. For a second he thought he saw Billy Hadler in the crowd, not for the first time. Whitlam’s head jerked involuntarily, a sort of spasm from the neck. He still felt sick when he thought about the boy. For what it was worth.
Billy was never supposed to be there. Whitlam’s scraped fist clenched around the coffee cup as he made his way back to his office. The boy was supposed to be out of the house. It was all arranged. He’d made sure. He’d deliberately dug out that badminton set. After that it had needed only a subtle suggestion from him for Sandra to get on the phone and organize that last-minute playdate with Billy. If the boy’s stupid mother hadn’t canceled, stuffed up the plan, then Billy wouldn’t have been caught up in it. She only had herself to blame.
Whitlam himself had tried to save that kid. No one could say any different. He took a swig of coffee and winced as the liquid burned his mouth. He felt it trickle down his gullet, turning his insides sour.
Guts writhing, Whitlam had left the pub and passed a sleepless night picking holes in his plan. The next day, he sat in his office in a blank-eyed stupor, waiting for the inevitable knock on the door. Karen would have spoken up. Surely. Someone would come, he just didn’t know who it would be. The police? The school board chairman? Karen herself again, perhaps? He both feared and longed for that knock. A knock meant Karen had told. It meant it was too late. And he wouldn’t have to do what he was planning.
He didn’t need to ask himself if he could go through with it. He knew he could. He’d proved it with the guy in the Footscray alley. That was a guy who should have known better. He was supposed to be a professional.
Whitlam had come across him once before. Then, the man had cornered him in a parking lot, relieved him of his wallet and delivered his message via a sharp blow to the kidneys. It was supposed to play out the same in Footscray, Whitlam guessed. But then the man had grown angry, started waving the knife around and demanding more than they’d agreed. Things got messy fast.
The guy had been sloppy and almost certainly under the influence of something. He’d heard the word principal and underestimated Whitlam’s athleticism. A poorly timed lunge was countered with a lucky rugby tackle, and they hit the concrete with a crack.
The blade had flashed orange in the streetlight, and Whitlam felt the point slice across his belly, leaving a warm red line. Adrenaline and fear rushed through him as he grabbed the man’s knife hand. He held and twisted it, using his own weight to force it back toward his attacker’s torso. The man wouldn’t drop the knife. He was still holding it as it slipped into his own body. He grunted wetly into Whitlam’s face as the principal pinned him down, feeling the slowing rhythm of the blood pumping out onto the road. Whitlam had waited until the man had stopped breathing, then waited a full minute more.
Whitlam had had tears in his eyes. His body was trembling, and he was terrified he might pass out. But somewhere, buried many layers down, was a pinpoint of calm. He’d been driven into a corner, and he’d acted. He’d done what was needed. Whitlam, so familiar with the sick free-falling sensation every time he reached for his wallet, had, for once, been in control.
With shaking fingers, he’d examined his own torso. The cut was superficial. It looked far worse than it was. He bent over his attacker and dutifully performed two rounds of CPR, making sure his fingerprints smeared in blood reflected his civic actions. He found a house in a neighboring street with its lights on, and let forth the emotion he’d been holding back as he asked them to report a mugging. The attackers had fled but quick, please, someone was badly injured.
Whenever Whitlam now thought about the incident, which was more often than he expected, he knew it had been an act of self-defense. This new threat may involve an office rather than an alleyway, paper instead of a knife, but at its heart he felt it was not so different. The guy in the lane. Karen on the other side of the desk. Forcing his hand. Compelling him to act. It came down to them or him. And Whitlam chose himself.
The end of the school day came and went. The classrooms and playground cleared. No one came knocking on the office door. She hadn’t reported it yet. He could still salvage this. It was now, or it was never. He looked at the clock.