“It’s all right, mate. You can untwist your knickers. Your money’s as good as the next man’s, and that’s good enough for me.”
He gave Falk his change and picked up the newspaper. He appeared to be doing the cryptic crossword. “Take it as a friendly warning, though. They can be a funny lot around here. You find yourself in hot water, there’s not always a lot of help at hand.” He eyeballed Falk. “Although from what I hear, you don’t need telling about that.”
Falk took both glasses back to the table. Raco was staring moodily at a soggy beer mat.
“You can lose the look,” Falk said. “You’d better fill me in on the rest.”
Raco sat up straighter and slid the folder across the table.
“I’ve pulled this together from all the stuff I’ve got access to,” he said.
Falk glanced around the pub. It was still half-empty. No one nearby. He flipped it open. The first page had a photo of Luke’s truck taken from a distance. A pool of blood had collected by the back wheels. He closed the file.
“Just give me the highlights for now. What do we know about the courier who found them?”
“He’s looking as clean as you’d want to be. Works for an established delivery firm. Has been for two years. He was delivering recipe books Karen had ordered online—that checks out. He was running late, last delivery of the day. First time he’d made a delivery to Kiewarra. Says he rocked up, saw Karen lying in the doorway, chucked up his lunch into the flower bed, and jumped back in his van. Made the emergency call from the main road.”
“He left Charlotte in the house?”
“Reckons he didn’t hear her.” Raco shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t. She’d been alone for a while. Might have cried herself out by then.”
Falk turned to the first page of the file. Kept it open this time. He’d always assumed Luke had been found in the truck’s driver’s seat, but the images showed his body flat on its back in the cargo tray. The tailgate was open, and Luke’s legs dangled over as though he’d been sitting on the edge. A shotgun by his side pointed toward the mess where his head would have been. His face was completely missing.
“You right?” Raco was watching him closely.
“Yeah.” Falk took a long drink from his beer. The blood had spread across the bottom of the cargo tray, settling in the metal ridges.
“Forensics find anything useful in the tray?” Falk asked.
Raco checked his notes.
“Other than lots of blood—all Luke’s—nothing particular noted,” he said. “I’m not sure how well they looked, though. They had the weapon. It was a working vehicle. He had all sorts of stuff in the back.”
Falk looked again at the photo, concentrating on the area around the body. Barely visible along the left interior side of the tray were four faint horizontal streaks. They looked fresh. Light brown against the dusty white paintwork, the longest was maybe thirty centimeters, the shortest about half that. They were in pairs of two, each pair about a meter apart horizontally. The placement wasn’t particularly uniform. The right-hand streaks were dead straight; those on the left had a slight angle.
“What are these?” Falk pointed, and Raco leaned in.
“I’m not sure. Like I said, truck would’ve carried all sorts.”
“The truck still here?”
Raco shook his head. “Sent to Melbourne. It’ll be cleaned up by now for sale or scrap, I reckon.”
Falk looked through the photos, hoping for a better view, but was disappointed. He read over the rest of the notes. Everything appeared fairly standard. Other than the hole in the front of his head, Luke Hadler was a healthy male. A couple of kilos over his ideal weight, slightly high cholesterol. No drugs or alcohol in his system.
Falk said, “What about the shotgun?”
“Definitely Luke’s gun used on all three of them. Registered, licensed. His fingerprints were the only ones on it.”
“Where did he keep it normally?”
“Secured lockbox in the barn out the back,” Raco said. “The ammo—at least the Winchester stuff I’ve found—was locked away separately. He was pretty big on safety by the look of things.”
Falk nodded, only half listening. He was looking at the fingerprint report from the shotgun. Six crisp ovals embroidered with tight whorls and lines. Two less clear, slight slippage, but still confirmed as belonging to the left thumb and right little finger of Luke Hadler.
“The fingerprints are good,” Falk said.
Raco caught his tone. Looked up from his notes.
“Yeah, really solid. People didn’t take too much convincing after seeing them.”
“Very solid,” Falk said, sliding the report over the table to Raco. “Maybe too solid? The guy’s supposed to have just killed his family. He would’ve been sweating and shaking like an addict. I’ve seen worse than these taken under evidence conditions.”
“Shit.” Raco frowned at the prints. “Yeah, maybe.”
Falk turned the page.
“What did forensics find in the house?”
“They found everything. Seems like half the community had traipsed through there at one time or another. About twenty different fingerprints, not including partials, fibers everywhere. I’m not saying Karen didn’t keep the place clean, but it was a farm with kids.”
“Witnesses?”
“The last person to see Luke alive was this mate of his, Jamie Sullivan. Has a farm to the east of town. Luke had been helping him shoot rabbits. Arrived in the afternoon about three, left about four thirty, Sullivan reckons. Other than that, around the Hadlers’ house there’s really only one neighbor who could have seen something. He was on his own property at the time.”
Raco reached for the report. Falk felt a heavy weight in his stomach.
“Neighbor’s a strange bloke, though.” Raco went on. “Aggressive old bastard. No love lost for Luke, whatever that’s worth. Not at all keen to assist the police with their inquiries.”
“Mal Deacon,” Falk said. He made a point of keeping his voice even.
Raco looked up in surprise. “That’s right. You know him?”
“Yeah.”
Raco waited, but Falk said nothing more. The silence stretched on.
“Well, anyway,” Raco said. “He lives up there with his nephew—bloke called Grant Dow—who wasn’t home at the time. Deacon reckons he didn’t see anything. Might have heard the shots, but didn’t think anything of it. Thought it was farm stuff.”
Falk just raised his eyebrows.
“Thing is, what he did or didn’t see might not matter, anyway,” Raco said, taking out his tablet and tapping the screen. A low-res color image appeared. Everything was so still that it took Falk a minute to realize it was a video rather than a photograph.
Raco handed him the tablet.
“Security footage from the Hadlers’ farm.”
“You’re kidding.” Falk gaped at the screen.