Hermit Page 6

  Dana defaulted to a fingertip-to-thumb tapping. Nathan’s talk about families prompted that particular reflex – a habit she couldn’t shake, from a time when that was the only thing she could do.

  ‘Okay, we’ll need to tread carefully about his parents. Some dark history there, I sense. So where the hell has Whittler been for fifteen years?’

  ‘All the usual channels are blocked. Lucy found no tax or credit trail, no phone records of any kind. His bank account has the same amount it had back then – never been touched. We can’t find any employment records, or social security. It’s like he’s been living off thin air, in thin air.’

  Reaching for a drawer, Dana checked for her inhaler. There were seven, lined up like sentries. There should be six, because she should have one on her. It bothered her that she’d forgotten and simply gone into the interview room unarmed. She pocketed one, tapped each of the rest with her index finger and closed the drawer.

  ‘I got close, with those guesses about where he’s been living. Not quite, but close.’

  Bill finally snapped the thread and rolled it into a ball. ‘My guess, if I hadn’t met him, would have been living wild. Not for fifteen years, obviously; just off and on. But hell, if you do that for even a few weeks, it’s blindingly obvious, you know? He’d smell; he’d be slightly dirty; his hair would be a wreck. And he’d have that leathery tan you see with winos and down-and-outs. He has none of that.’

  Dana sat and clicked her emails. The most recent said Lucy would be arriving soon. ‘I know, I know. Especially in this weather, too, he’d want to be indoors. And yet, that’s the only kind of thing that fits, isn’t it?’

  Bill nodded.

  Dana stood to ease her knee and resumed her fingertip tapping. ‘Unless he’s been living a long way away, or under a different name, he has to have been basically off grid. Maybe he got paid in cash and lived in someone’s caravan, or above a garage; perhaps he was living rough for a while but he’s been crashing with someone and got himself cleaned up. There are a couple of trailer parks towards the refinery, for example.’

  ‘That’s possible,’ Bill admitted, then fell silent.

  ‘But?’

  ‘Look, it’s always possible that he’s a statistical outlier – a loner who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, or whatever. We know murder’s sometimes like that. But I want to put it out there early, Dana: he could be something else entirely. He looks to have done all this deliberately. Assuming it’s the case, then, the isolation? It takes a whole raft of intent to keep hidden in the modern world. You have to stay away from mobile phones, from cars, from CCTV cameras, from people. You have to organise your life to be either very transitory or purposely kept from view. Cash in hand, never putting down roots, keeping on the move: however he organised it, he did it. And he did it consciously. There has to be a mighty powerful reason to make that decision and follow it up for that length of time.’

  Dana’s gut reaction so far was that Nathan Whittler was too far off society’s radar to be a threat to that society. But then, the Unabomber had lived off grid. And gone undetected for decades.

  ‘Yes, I see that, Bill. Although, there might be many reasons behind it – not necessarily criminal ones. He could be hiding from someone, for example. We have witness protection for precisely that kind of reason – they’re often good people in a bad situation.’

  ‘Granted. But let’s keep the darker options in mind for now. I mean, he said himself – “terrible things . . . I kept going . . . had no right” . . . Let’s allow Whittler – or the evidence we uncover – to prove that it’s benign. If it is. I mean, if someone is ghosting around the region, they can do anything. We have six undetected homicides in this region over the past five years alone. Throw in the whole state, let alone across the borders, and the numbers multiply. He could be anything at this point in the game. It’s possible he killed Lou Cassavette for a trivial reason, or because capture by Lou might expose what he’s done in the past. As far as we can tell right now, no person in the state has fewer alibis than Nathan Whittler. No life is empty, Dana: he filled it up with something. Maybe something he doesn’t want anyone to know about.’

  Bill didn’t say such things for effect. He was right, she thought, about what should underpin the investigation at this stage. She needed to avoid being drawn in too tight, too quickly.

  Dana stared when Lucy came in; Dana thought it wasn’t obvious. She noticed that Lucy had her hair pulled back today: usually it swept down to her collarbone.

  ‘Hey, Dana,’ she smiled. ‘Stop your silly habit.’

  Dana glanced down at her hand. Thumb and index finger were touching. A small thing to the others but for Dana a stepping stone from the past. That was why she’d asked Lucy to nag her about stopping it.

  ‘Uurrgghh, I was doing so well. Three weeks, I managed?’ It was also shameful, Dana felt: childish, like thumb-sucking. Thank God no one knew its true significance and saw only a nervous tic.

  Lucy stepped back a shade. ‘I make it maybe four days, but who’s counting? I called in on Forensics.’

  She thumped a set of papers down on the desk. So much for the shared drive, Dana thought. Bill leaned forward to see but everything was upside down and in an absurdly small font. Although all three knew that everything seemed to be in an absurdly small font to Bill these days: vanity prevented glasses, and squeamishness about eyeballs prevented contacts.

  ‘The headlines,’ began Lucy. ‘No sign of the weapon yet, but they’re starting the fingertip search now they’ve done the big stuff. Your guy in custody? Well, he was wearing plastic bags on his shoes and he had gloves. So don’t expect much from footprints, fingerprints, or anything in the DNA.’

  Dana flitted between the paper and Lucy’s eyes. ‘He had blood on his hands, though?’

  ‘Through the gloves. We haven’t found any bloody fingerprints on shelves yet. The store wasn’t heated, so I suppose he never got too warm and prickly. But there will be fingerprints generally – dozens of people. Might take a while to sift through and find the relevant ones.’

  ‘Great.’ Dana eye-rolled. Any store would have heaps of people prodding, testing, picking up, discarding: it was a forensic free-for-all that would hinder the investigation. ‘We can pretty much assume that he was the one who climbed in the window, though. It’s not like we need that.’

  ‘Assume, not necessarily prove. But yeah, he can’t deny being there, and he can’t deny he has no permission to be there. However’ – Lucy reached down and turned the page, tapping with a purple talon at the second paragraph – ‘the blood on him matches the victim’s type. DNA, as you know, takes longer. There’s no spread on the victim because there’s only one wound, so no arterial spray or anything.’

  Dana sighed. ‘Okay, but he sort of knows that already. Must know that. He doesn’t seem particularly bothered.’

  Lucy frowned. ‘Not bothered?’

  ‘Not at all,’ replied Dana, sliding herself into the chair. ‘I mean, most people in that situation – even those dumb enough not to have a lawyer by now – most of them would be calculating the odds. They’d weigh up what they think we have: motive, forensics, any witnesses, and so on. Then’ – she looked at Bill – ‘they’d try to get ahead of the game. Explain being in the store; why it wasn’t them; how the blood came to be on them, and so on. They’d get their retaliation in first.’

  ‘But he’s not?’ Lucy directed the question at Bill.

  ‘No, Luce, he isn’t,’ replied Bill. ‘As Dana says, he seems unaware of the repercussions. Maybe he knows that, by this time tomorrow, we’ll be struggling to get anything out of him. I mean, he could pretend to play ball today and misdirect us. Then his lawyer tells him to shut it. He looks like he co-operated, and we came up with nothing. Could be a strategy with a jury in mind.’

  ‘Or,’ interjected Dana, ‘he has other things on his mind that he thinks are more important. Might be more important.’

  They all chewed on tha
t for a moment. The notion that something could be more pressing to Nathan than being a murder suspect felt strange. He appeared to have other priorities, and his interrogation seemed a distraction. He behaved as if, at any moment, someone would see that suspecting him was laughable and would simply let him leave. It struck Dana that, if Nathan had committed other or greater crimes, that might be his reaction to arrest for this one.

  Dana broke the silence. ‘Luce, a hypothetical.’

  Lucy stood from her slumped lean against a wall. ‘Shoot.’

  ‘You’re early twenties, you want to drop off the radar. Completely. Totally. No communication with the family or anyone you know. Just drop out entirely. How do you do it and where and how do you live?’

  Lucy smiled to herself and sat. Dana glanced at Bill, who raised a querying eyebrow that Dana didn’t quite follow.

  ‘So, it would depend on circumstance.’ Lucy bit her lip in a way Dana couldn’t stop noticing. ‘I mean, do I have access to a new identity? Do I know the kind of people who could do that? Getting a false driver’s licence, Medicare card, passport, and so on?’

  Dana leaned forward and tried to focus on the paperwork in front of her. ‘I don’t think so, no. We’ve still to find any employment record, but he doesn’t really strike me that way, no. And I don’t think it was necessarily planned either. He might have simply upped and left.’ She looked to Bill for a confirmatory nod. ‘So let’s say you don’t.’

  ‘Then it’s not as if I can start again, as such. I have to stay me, with my identity. Which means either I have to move right away – so people don’t know me and I can start afresh. Or I stay where I am, but no one can see me.’

  ‘Moving away’s more plausible to me,’ offered Bill. ‘We simply haven’t widened the net enough. We’re near the meeting point of three states here.’

  ‘Confluence,’ said Dana. ‘ “Confluence” would be the word.’ Lucy smiled to herself.

  ‘Pee-dant,’ grinned Bill.

  ‘It’s pronounced “ped-ant”,’ chorused Dana and Lucy, laughing.

  ‘Anyway,’ Bill continued with an exasperated hand-wave, ‘he’ll have slipped across a border or two, into another jurisdiction. Like I said: cash-in-hand employment, drifting. But maybe, in the last few weeks, staying somewhere he can get clean and neat. That would partly explain his appearance.’

  Lucy raised a finger. ‘But if he’s clean and neat, and staying somewhere decent, why burgle the store? I mean,’ she went on, ‘he’s only in that store for one of two reasons.’ She counted them off on her fingers. ‘One, to burgle it. Or two, to kill the victim. If we’re assuming that he might not be a murderer’ – she looked pointedly at Dana – ‘and I think that’s how some of us are leaning, then he was going there to steal. Why do that if you’re already some place that’s comfy and you’re well looked after?’

  ‘There you go again, Luce,’ said Dana, ‘coming at us with your “facts” and your “logic”.’ Her smile faded quickly. ‘You’ve got a point. There’s another thing: the way he is with people. He doesn’t seem like he knows how to relate at all, or even fake it. It’s not all shock, or being arrested. I’m sure that’s part of it, but I think he’s this way anyway. I’m struggling to see how he could get a job, or hold one down, with those kinds of people skills. Something that involves zero interface, maybe? Hmm. In fact, the more I think about that, the less likely it seems.’

  Lucy and Bill had no reply. It struck Dana that no one but her had spoken with Nathan since he had arrived at the station. Everyone else, including Bill, had spoken to Nathan. The doctor’s checks amounted to little more than a concussion test – Nathan had given single-word answers to direct questions. The custody officer, Simpson, had asked Nathan a couple of questions, but the replies had been nods or headshakes. Bill had run through the prisoner’s rights and got the legal waiver signed. But Dana had been the only one to get a word out of Nathan about anything other than his most basic details.

  ‘Okay,’ said Bill, ‘we need to move forward. I want Dana back in the room quickly, Luce. The court’s clock is already going, and there’s no telling when Whittler will change his mind and lawyer up, so we have to exploit the gap while it’s there. Wherever he’s been living, we have to find it. There might be crucial evidence there, but at the very least it’ll be a measure of the man – something we’re severely lacking at the moment. Check databases interstate to see if he shows up there. Run his prints across the state, and across the border – I want to know if he’s even been suspected of anything else. And I think Dana needs as much information as possible on the family, especially Jeb. Something under the waterline set Whittler off – would help to know what it is.’

  Lucy gave a mock-salute. ‘All over it, boss.’ Dana watched her walk away.

  After she left Bill turned to Dana. ‘When your head’s back, Dana?’

  She looked absent-mindedly at him. ‘Uh? Oh. Yes, we need to get Whittler to open up on where he’s been living. That might give us a whole new ball game.’

  Bill nodded slowly. ‘It would be good to know. But go gently. He has to have faith in you, Dana. That’s key.’

  Dana smiled. ‘No pressure, then?’

  Chapter 7

  Before facing Nathan a second time Dana crossed the corridor to check with Mike. Her office had been Mike’s: he might have been the first public servant to voluntarily give one up. In truth, he’d found it isolating being on his own: he much preferred sharing with Lucy, and any hapless uniform seconded for a particular case.

  She could smell the polish he’d applied to his desk that morning. Even the papers in the recycle bin were folded, not scrunched. Bill had assured her that Mike was fine with Dana catching this one, because Mike had worked four nightshifts in a row. His bad luck this had turned into something bigger.

  ‘Got over your hissy fit about the water cup yet, Mikey?’

  He gave one final click on the mouse and stretched back in his chair. ‘Convincing enough?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’ She perched on the edge of another desk. ‘Whittler certainly bought it. You should have your own star on that street in Hollywood.’

  ‘Undoubtedly. But cops are always actors, aren’t we?’ He shrugged, as though he couldn’t hold back the world. ‘Always pretending we aren’t surprised, appalled, scared, turned on, sickened – whatever.’ He shook his head, answering a question she hadn’t asked. ‘Keep the mask up so we come off as reassuring, not just as frightened as they are.’

  Sometimes Mike needed yanking out of his own head. ‘Yer preachin’ to the choir, sister.’ She smiled.

  ‘Touché. Oh, I have a photo of the victim’s wife . . .’

  ‘Megan.’

  ‘Megan, yeah. From the insurance company’s website. She’s a quiet looker, and the victim’s . . . not.’

  She shook her head. ‘A quiet looker? As opposed to . . . ?’

  ‘Sorry, my dad’s expression.’ His placatory hand gesture didn’t stop Dana’s frown. ‘Two types of beautiful women, he always said. Loud lookers knock you out: drive-into-a-tree gorgeous. Quiet lookers can be just as good-looking, but you need a second glance; they don’t flaunt it. Might be in the eyes, or the smile, but they won’t be dressed to the nines or anything.’

  She raised her eyebrows a touch and whispered, ‘That Human Resources tape’s running, Mikey. Better cover yourself.’

  He coughed and took a deep breath. His voice turned loud, flat and robotic. ‘It is a reprehensible and sexist attitude which I don’t support myself and which does not reflect my thoughts or actions within this unit. I throw it in as an interesting historical aside. Esteemed colleague.’

  She grinned and gave a thumbs-up. ‘So she’s an eight and he’s a five. Or . . . she really likes tall, wide, non-handsome bald guys. Which means what?’

  ‘Possibly nothing. Maybe she was tired of him, wanted him out of the way. Or maybe he thought she’d leave sooner or later, so he starts playing around – like a pre-emptive strike.
People sometimes do that: create the situation they fear.’ He didn’t seem to be directing that at Dana, but she took it to heart just the same.

  Mike was scrolling down the screen, looking at three months’ data from the store’s alarm system. ‘I see an unlikely amount of “sleeping at the store to catch a burglar” going on.’

  Dana nodded. ‘Yes, I wondered if all that was above board. Help Nick with the CCTV, if you get a chance. There might be something to suggest whether this vigil was an ingrained habit or cover for a quickie.’

  Mike looked doleful and disapproving. ‘Not very romantic, joining your paramour on the floor of a stockroom in a deserted store.’

  ‘Mikey, you’re a prince among men.’ She mimed a fluttering heart.

  He raised a finger. ‘However, the floor of a stockroom in a deserted store, with a candle and a rose – now that would be seduction.’

  ‘Strange idea of “going the extra mile” you have. Check with the Cassavettes’ lawyer if they’ve been talking separation or moving back to the city. I sensed she didn’t really want to come out here in the first place.’

  Mike made another note. ‘Shall do. There’s nothing on CCTV close to the timescale for the stabbing, by the way. We’ve gone through the thirty minutes prior to the alarm and thirty minutes after. One camera on the cash register – that has a slight shadow in one corner for a couple of seconds, around the time of the stabbing. Probably Cassavette moving into position. Then nothing, until the uniforms come through the door. The other one, by the stockroom, shows Cassavette stretching his legs occasionally, harrumphing and eating chocolate, until’ – Mike checked his notes – ‘0527 precisely. At which point he moves out of his sleeping bag and heads for the main part of the store. No sign of Whittler, or anyone else, for that matter.’

  ‘Crap.’

  ‘As you so eloquently say, crap. Sorry ’bout that.’

  Dana pursed her lips. ‘Any evidence Whittler knew Cassavette? Some kind of prior relationship?’