Falk studied her movements. The way she bent over to talk to Billy, one hand on the little boy’s shoulder. He couldn’t make out her face, but he imagined her smiling at her son. He watched the way she cradled Charlotte as she transferred her baby daughter from car seat to stroller. Karen Hadler had been a nice woman before she was shot in the stomach. Good both with children and finances. Falk felt certain Barb was right. He would have liked her.
He obsessively rewound the footage from the Thursday, the day Karen and her son had been murdered. He played and replayed the tape constantly, analyzing every frame. Was that a slight hesitation in her step as she approached the car? Had something in the bushland caught her eye? Was she squeezing her child’s hand tighter than usual? Falk suspected he was jumping at shadows, but he continued to watch over and over. He stared at the image of his dead friend’s blond wife and silently willed her to pick up her cell phone and call the number she had scribbled on the receipt. He willed his past self to answer. Neither event happened. The script remained unchanged.
Falk was debating whether to call it a day when Barnes dropped the pen he’d been twirling and sat up in his chair.
“Hey, check this out.” Barnes clicked his mouse, winding back the grainy film. He had been combing through the material from the pharmacy camera, which was trained on nothing more exciting than a quiet back alley and the door leading to their supply room.
“What is it? Dow?” Falk said. He and Raco crowded around the screen.
“Not exactly,” Barnes said as he set the footage running. The time stamp showed 4:41 P.M. on Thursday. Just over an hour before Karen and Billy Hadler were found dead.
For a few seconds the video looked like a still image, showing nothing but the empty alley. Suddenly a four-wheel drive flashed past. It was there and gone in less than a second.
Barnes rewound the footage and slowed it down. He froze the image as the car reappeared. It was blurry and at an awkward angle, but it didn’t matter. The driver’s face was clear. Through the windshield, Jamie Sullivan stared back at them.
The light was fading by the time Falk and Raco got to the alley, but there wasn’t much to see. They’d let Barnes call it a day after a job well done. Falk stood under the pharmacy’s CCTV camera and looked around. The small road was narrow and ran parallel to Kiewarra’s main street. On one side it backed on to the real estate agent, a hairdresser’s, the doctors’ office, and the pharmacy. On the other, parcels of scrubland had been turned into makeshift parking lots. It was completely deserted.
Falk and Raco walked the full length of the lane. It didn’t take long. It was accessible by car at both ends and connected with the roads leading east and west out of town. In rush hour it would offer a perfect rat-run to cut through town without hitting the main drag. But this was Kiewarra, Falk thought, and it didn’t have a rush hour.
“So why did our friend Jamie Sullivan want to avoid being seen in town twenty minutes before the Hadlers were killed?” Falk’s voice echoed off the brickwork.
“A few reasons come to mind. None of them good,” Raco answered.
Falk peered up at the camera’s lens.
“At least we have some idea where he was now,” Falk said. “He could have gotten from here to the Hadlers’ place in the time frame, couldn’t he?”
“Yeah, no problem at all.”
Falk leaned against the wall and tilted his head back. The bricks had soaked in the heat of the day. He felt exhausted. His eyes were gritty when he closed them.
“So we’ve got Jamie Sullivan, who claims to be Luke’s great mate, lying about where he was and caught sneaking around on camera an hour before his friend was shot dead,” Raco said. “Then we’ve got Grant Dow, who admits he couldn’t stand Luke, alibied to the back teeth while at the same time his name is in a dead woman’s handwriting.”
Falk opened an eye and looked at Raco.
“Don’t forget the driver of the mysterious white truck who may or may not have seen Luke Hadler cycling away from the river at the crossroads twenty years ago,” he said.
“And that.”
They stood in silence for a long while, staring up the alleyway as though the answer might be graffitied there.
“Stuff it,” Falk said, pushing himself away from the wall and standing straight. It was an effort. “Let’s work through methodically. First we drag Sullivan in again and ask him what the hell he was doing on camera in a back alleyway. I’ve had it up to here with that bloke messing us around.”
“Now?” Raco’s eyes were red-rimmed. He looked as tired as Falk felt.
“Tomorrow.”
As they cut through a narrow passageway back to the main road, Raco’s phone rang. He paused on the pavement and dug it out.
“It’s my wife. Sorry, I’d better take it.” He put it to his ear. “Hello, my beauty.” They’d stopped outside the convenience store. Falk jerked his head toward the shop and mimed a drinking gesture. Raco nodded gratefully.
Inside, the shop was cool and quiet. It was technically the same store Ellie had worked in, spending her evenings punching the price of milk and cigarettes into the register. They’d put up posters of her face in the window after her body was found, collecting for a funeral wreath.
The layout had changed so much since then it was almost unrecognizable. But Falk still remembered coming to chat with her behind the counter, as often as he could find an excuse to. Spending his money on things he didn’t want or need.
The shop’s ancient fridges had been replaced at some point by open chillers, and Falk now lingered beside them, feeling some of the fieriness evaporate from his skin. His core remained uncomfortably high, like the hint of a lingering fever. Eventually, he picked up two bottles of water and selected a slightly curled ham-and-cheese sandwich and a plastic-sealed muffin for dinner.
Falk turned to take his purchases to the counter and groaned silently when he realized he once again recognized the face behind the register. He hadn’t seen the shopkeeper since they were both stuck behind desks in the same sweltering classrooms.
The guy had less hair now, but his heavy features were still familiar. He’d been one of those kids who was slow on the uptake and quick to anger, Falk remembered as he cast about desperately for his name. He suspected, with a flash of guilt, he’d been the punchline of Luke’s jokes from time to time, and Falk had never troubled himself to intervene. He forced a smile onto his face now as he walked up and put his goods on the counter.
“How are you going these days, Ian?” he said, managing at the last moment to pluck the guy’s name from the ether as he pulled out his wallet. Ian something. Willis.
Willis stared at the items as though he’d forgotten what to do.
“Just these, thanks, mate,” Falk said.
The other man said nothing but instead lifted his head and looked past Falk’s shoulder.
“Next,” he called in a clear voice.
Falk looked around. There was no one else in the shop. He turned back. Willis was still staring determinedly into the middle distance. Falk felt a hot flash of irritation. And something else. Shame, almost.