Hermit Page 11

  ‘What consequence?’

  She’d slipped. He’d challenged an assumption she’d made, but she couldn’t quite grasp what that assumption had been. It was obviously counter-productive to suggest that he’d gone mad after fifteen years of complete silence.

  ‘Well, most people in, for example, solitary confinement, find their lives extremely difficult. The lack of communication, and validation, plays on their mind.’

  ‘Do I seem crazy to you, Detective Russo?’

  He was looking straight at her. Not at the mirror; not at his foot or the corner of the table. He was staring at her. She could feel herself flush – all her thoughts of being a kindred spirit seemed to fold at once.

  Her assumed ‘connection’ was so flimsy that two seconds of eye contact could unravel it. He’d neutered it in a heartbeat. For this moment he was not supplicant and she wasn’t in charge. Unprepared for his sudden change of body language, his near-instant display of belief, she’d yielded control and made herself the recipient. She didn’t like it.

  ‘Well? Do I?’

  ‘No, Mr Whittler, you don’t. You seem remarkably – totally – lucid and sane. I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t.’ He had sea-green eyes and long eyelashes that seemed to make his blink slow and drowsy. Dana felt skewered by his gaze. She could see herself in it: desperate, keeping the worst fears at bay with stoic suffering. It hurt when Nathan demonstrated how similar they were.

  ‘So what was this “consequence” you said I risked?’

  Dana thought for a moment – she felt Nathan would grant her that. He was running this conversation. Had he reeled her in? Or had she been complacent? She swallowed and tried to refocus.

  ‘I think many introverts struggle with the dichotomy presented by their preferences, Mr Whittler. So they wish for some communication, but according to their choices and on their terms. Too much human involvement leaves them exhausted and unhappy. If the balance goes too far the other way and they get little or no communication, it can affect their general sense of perspective; their view of themselves and their lives. It can cause depression, heartache; a sense that they can’t break free from those problems.’

  Dana could feel the internal heat of confession and shame and the rancid memories that combination created. She tried to keep her voice from shuddering, became conscious of where the breaths should go. Nathan was watching her intently, focused on her words. Now she was the one talking to the corner of the table.

  ‘So,’ she struggled on, ‘in your situation you already had a circumstance that leads to considerable solitude. You chose to compound that by avoiding all contact. As opposed to, say, living where you lived but working locally and mixing with colleagues. In those terms, you expose yourself to all the potential consequences faced by introverts, but to a far greater degree. There is no counterbalance in your life, Mr Whittler, nothing to break the sequence. People will wonder why you didn’t crack under those conditions, as they would. That’s what I meant by “consequence”.’

  Nathan looked down at his hands, turning his fingers and rubbing once again along his fate line. ‘I see. Yes. Hmm. Put like that, I understand where you’re coming from. But I think you have to see the bigger picture, as they say. My life – my choice – wasn’t something I feared. I preferred it: sought it. Silence is not nothing. It’s not an absence. It’s a full experience in itself. People who are scared of silence are scared of the nothingness of it – they think it’s a void, a vacuum, a danger. But it isn’t.

  ‘My solitude is total. If I keep the modern-day mind-set, then yes: the seclusion will probably kill me. At the very least, it will grind me down and leave me exposed to the kinds of problems you so eloquently laid out, Detective Russo. But consider another view: instead of fighting the solitude, you relax into it. You slow all the rhythms of your day, of your life. You throw away the telephone and the computer and the clock. You allow the isolation to be yours, not you to be a prisoner of it.

  ‘Lo and behold, Detective, a different life comes into view. You don’t rush, you don’t care how long something takes. So it takes two hours, or four – what do you care? It takes what it takes, and you have no other appointment you must make, anyway. Once you go with it, then it becomes like sea legs – you don’t feel the motion because you’re moving with it, part of it. Then you come to relish the peace, love the silence. The opposite emerges: instead of fearing solitude, you embrace it, and fear losing it.’

  That one phrase – fearing solitude – made Dana end the discussion. Her energy had disappeared with his words. Breathing was hard and her flight instinct took over.

  ‘I see. That’s an interesting proposal, Mr Whittler. I’ll have to think about that. I must also meet with my colleagues, if you’ll excuse me.’

  She snapped off the tape hastily and was halfway to the door before she turned. ‘Thank you, Mr Whittler. We’ll talk again, soon.’

  He looked straight at her again. As though he could see through her to the doorway. As though he knew what he’d just done.

  ‘I’m sorry someone did that to your kneecap, Detective.’

  Chapter 12

  In the women’s bathroom harsh light slapped around on shiny surfaces; a mirror occupying one wall, blank white tiles on the floor. Grotesque reflections curled across the metal hand dryer. The legacy of bleach and perfumed sanitiser saturated the air. Two stalls were empty and one was occupied. Lucy tapped on the closed door.

  ‘You okay, Dana?’

  There was a pause and a muffled voice. ‘Could be anyone in here.’

  Lucy smiled and leaned back against the countertop. ‘Nine women in this station. I’m one. Three are in admin and I’ve just walked past there. Sue and Nikki are on an interstate warrant all day. Miriam’s on reception – her voice would go through sheet metal – and Ali is off with flu. Process of elimination. The application of logic, Dr Watson.’

  Dana emerged, looking sheepish and tired. It felt ridiculously hot in the bathroom. ‘Yes, hmm, maybe that wasn’t too difficult.’

  Lucy turned to face her. ‘He got to you, didn’t he?’

  Dana nodded to her reflection, unable to face Lucy directly. She didn’t want to have this conversation – not here, not on this Day, and certainly not with Lucy. All three dimensions made it raw; amplified her vulnerability. She could feel her skin sing.

  ‘Yes. Not crying, though. Didn’t sniffle. It’s a little close to home, some of it. Which is ironic’ – she patted at her face with a tissue – ‘considering I’m the best person to be going at him.’

  ‘Double bind, huh?’

  ‘Exactly, Luce. I have to understand him enough to get inside his head. If he doesn’t give up more than he has so far, a murder conviction’s going to be a reach. He can claim all manner of accidental in that store: we have almost nothing to contradict him. But to understand him, I have to empathise, and that’s a little . . . exposed.’

  She washed her hands while Lucy waited. Despite being the older and senior woman, Dana felt the more fragile: gauche, awkward, in need of consolation. In need of babbling on, too.

  She batted at the soap dispenser which was, not for the first time, too gunged up to live up to its job description.

  ‘So, talking to Whittler, it’s problematic,’ she continued. ‘Not least, everything I say in that room is courtroom-admissible. So, effectively, it’s public. He wants me to open out, but I still don’t think he fully gets the legal implications.’

  She rinsed under the tap. ‘At some point, he’ll lawyer up: he has to get wise to that eventually. Even if he doesn’t, the court will make him take a lawyer at 0600 tomorrow. So I have that in my locker.’

  ‘What do you mean? Won’t he be harder to talk to, with a lawyer there?’

  Dana dried with paper towels. Part of her wanted to rush back into the cubicle and slam it shut. A piece of her always wanted to run, to hide, to cover her face and hope ‘it’ mysteriously went away. The kind of magical thinking she should have l
eft behind long ago. What had she been told by more educated minds than hers? A life script you no longer need, Dana.

  ‘It’s . . . it’s not that simple.’

  Lucy hefted up on to the counter, swinging her feet like a child on a playground swing. ‘Got as much time as you need.’

  Still Dana couldn’t meet her eye; she tousled some items in her handbag and talked to that.

  ‘Sometimes, no matter where I am, who’s there, what I’m doing, I feel like a total outsider. I don’t understand the people in front of me, what they think, how they think. I don’t get it, and it drains me trying to work it out.’

  She paused, subconsciously giving Lucy the chance to judge. Lucy didn’t move.

  ‘So when I’m interviewing suspects I like it when the lawyer’s there.’ Dana chucked the paper towel at the bin, lipped it and missed. ‘It’s a structure, a framework. I’m supposed to be the outsider.

  ‘They’re the suspect and the suspect’s lawyer: I’m the only cop in the room. Often the only woman in the room, the only one with access to certain information, the only one with the state lined up behind me.’ She paused, grabbed a breath in an airless room. ‘So when it seems like they’re aliens to me, there’s a certain logic to that. I feel less of a freak for thinking it. If that . . . you know, makes the slightest sense.’

  Lucy narrowed her eyes, stared at the far wall. ‘So . . . you and Whittler – you don’t have as much to lean on?’ She turned back to Dana. ‘It’s purely you and him and you have to understand him?’

  Dana nodded silently. A conversation from the corridor outside rose and subsided. The room still felt blindingly hot. Her blouse was sticking to her: it made her feel ugly and wretched.

  Lucy continued. ‘But you do get him. I can see it. Hell, he can see it, and he’s supposed to be . . . socially maladjusted, or whatever. So it must be shining through: your empathy, your comprehension. It must be so clear even he can see it.’

  ‘Forgot I asked you to watch body language.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you he’s shifting. Pretty slow, but he’s changing. Stopped staring at the floor for a good twenty seconds, there.’

  ‘Ah yes, but I panicked when he did it. It felt unnerving. Came out of the blue. I should have been ready for it.’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘Ready for it? We all thought he’d thaw out by degrees. That was a major shift, looking straight at you.’

  Dana didn’t know what to say. In truth, she’d been embarrassed by the way Nathan had sideswiped her, without seeming to try. It added to her sense that these interviews could veer off course in a second: she was never truly in control. If only Nathan had a plan, he’d be dangerous.

  Lucy gave her a way out. ‘Oh, and he’s now fascinated by your knee. We all are.’ Lucy grinned and forced Dana into a watery smile.

  ‘Hmm, not much to tell. I’ve had it, uh, nearly five years now. Sort of used to it. It’s mainly plastic: a slightly soft plastic that bends a little. It doesn’t like cold, damp weather or sitting in one spot for too long.’

  ‘I know you have this day off each year.’ Lucy seemed to be circling, not wishing to land in case the runway was a quagmire. ‘I, uh, I think this is a tough day for you. I just want to help.’

  Dana blew her nose, mainly to hide her face. She felt the heat of shame, of desperation, of hopeless gratitude and fear. They all mixed to flush through her like fire.

  ‘Thank you. It’s not the ideal day, and I usually make sure I’m not here. Don’t think I’ve told you why, before.’

  Lucy shrugged, her voice softer now. ‘Well . . . you said a while back that it’s some kind of anniversary. And whatever it is, you’re not over it.’

  There was an impact to someone else saying it. Harsher but more honest than when Dana said the same thing in her head; as if her own opinion didn’t count and needed verifying. Talking about it now would undo her, she sensed. She would be remarkable, and then remarked upon. She clenched her fists as though she could retain the truth within.

  ‘Yes . . . the double problem. Two different events. But connected. One begat the other.’

  She paused. The old-fashioned word felt like a sliver of her mother, creeping through her body and out of her mouth. Words like begat, Jezebel, smite: Dana remained soaked in her mother’s Biblical rage. A malign influence still nestled somewhere deep: capable, planning.

  ‘Urgh, how to explain it? Jeez, I’ve explained it so many times I’ve forgotten the explanation. Okay, okay, think of it this way. If you’re an alcoholic, you’re always an alcoholic. Always. Every day. Each morning when you wake up, you have to make a conscious decision to fight it that day. There’s no escape, no let up. The disease is always with you, waiting for an opportunity, forever seeking your weakest moment, your laziest thinking. And then it’s in, and hooking its talons so it can stay. You have to damage yourself, to work it loose. So you fear it – you rightly fear it.’

  Dana leaned on the sink, terrified to look up at her reflection.

  ‘That’s what it’s like with this . . . whatever this is. Depression, post-traumatic things, anxiety. Whatever. It all melts into one. But the dynamic is that every day it hurts, and claws, and wants. So every day I push back, and hang on. But on this date each year I try to change the fight, try to get ahead of it somehow. Except today I can’t, because I’m here instead, and the thing is punishing me for that.

  ‘This Day, it’s . . . it’s complicated. I suppose it’s an anniversary. I normally don’t . . . usually I’m not here for this day. So I’m probably on edge a little more than I would be; not quite myself, in some respects. Anyway. Need to be better. Can’t let a murderer get away because I can’t have some downtime. Uh, so, yes, it’s a long-term thing. I’m trying. Really, I’m trying. Working isn’t really helping, even though I thought it might.’

  Lucy was looking at her but not at her. She was clearly paying attention but somehow managing not to stare. Dana couldn’t work out how Lucy was doing that. Or how she knew to do that.

  Dana took a deep breath.

  ‘But, whatever, tell me about caves, Luce.’

  Lucy waited a beat then pushed herself off the counter and grabbed at a blue folder. She moved her hands like a fortune teller with a crystal ball. ‘Maps. I have maps from the interweb. Maaany maps, most excellent price. Very reliable, very good, you have fun times. I guarantee big happiness.’

  ‘So tell me, oh mystical one, where’s the only cave I need to search to find Casa Whittler?’

  ‘If only it were that simple. So, your caveman – see what I did there? – was right. Limestone in various locations: they’re all shaded blue here. But once you add in the possibility of sand near water – you spooked Whittler with that, so I’m guessing it’s correct – then you come down to A, B, and . . . C.’ She tapped at three locations on the acetate covering the map.

  ‘Okay.’ Dana pored over it, primarily looking for roads and contours.

  She didn’t think Nathan had some benign benefactor leaving goodies at prearranged drops every month. Dana wasn’t picturing him trapping rabbits and gutting fish – she believed he stole absolutely everything he ate or used. This, as much as the killing, was why Nathan Whittler was sorry: in his moral code, she was convinced, they were somehow practically on a par. It made her move away a little from the idea that Nathan was a consummate, experienced killer who’d remained hidden for that reason. The ‘terrible things’ he’d confessed to Dana early on, she believed, referred to multiple acts of low-scale burglary and theft. The location of his cave would be related to this. While Nathan would have wanted to be in the wilderness, he’d have needed to be someplace that didn’t require going up and over three mountains to get anywhere.

  ‘Now this one’ – she tapped at an area in the high mountains, a col between two peaks – ‘is the least likely. Coronet Heights is too far away, too steep, too wild. To get to anywhere he might burgle is a monumental hike. He’d be limited in what he could steal and carry. Too isola
ted, I reckon.’

  ‘No, you’re right, I think,’ said Lucy. ‘So which of the other two should we start with?’

  ‘This one’s a little too close: Miller’s Point is . . . a kilometre from this beach, and I know that gets plugged with tourists. Discussed this earlier with Billy, and I’m not inclined towards it. There’s a boat-hire place there in the summer – someone would have seen Whittler, and anyway, it would all have driven him crazy. Reggae music, jet skis, drunks in canoes – he’d freak.’

  ‘Which leaves this Goldilocks area here – the Dakota Line.’ Lucy’s finger swept a chain of four large ponds and stopped at a kilometre of shoreline along a finger of water. Piermont Lake was at the northern end of Baker National Park – perhaps not majestic enough for casual tourists needing selfies, nor hardcore enough for serious hikers and adventurers.

  ‘Is that all Baker to the north as well?’ asked Dana.

  ‘Uh, nope. After the river there, it’s Silver Ridge State Forest.’

  ‘Not that I have a clue what the difference is,’ said Dana. ‘I mean, it’s all wilderness, basically.’

  Lucy leaned in. ‘Lookie here – no cliff faces, judging by the contours, so no climbers. The opposite shore is swampy – maybe birdwatchers, but not much to see. No road access to Piermont Lake at all. The nearest road is maybe . . . five clicks from the shore.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Dana. ‘From that western side, eight kilometres’ tramp to Jensen’s, but that might be the closest store. And there’s surely bound to be some kind of trail from the shore to the road, even though nothing’s marked.’

  ‘How does he usually get to civilisation? Walk?’

  ‘Maybe hiking. Perhaps he boats it to the southern end, then hikes. Get Mikey to pull together the search team, please, and we’ll think how to tackle it. Sunny today – might use the drone.’