S. R. White
HERMIT
This book is dedicated to my mother,
Patricia, a woman of letters and
language her whole life
Chapter 1
In the purple pre-dawn: the ink-black pools and white spray of Pulpit Falls. Dana Russo was here on this morning each year, and it always seemed the same. Never rained, never snowed. Bruised and sullen, every time.
She could easily climb over this flimsy fence. Two strands of wire threaded between rudimentary wooden posts. It was nothing, would only take a second. She wouldn’t have to jump, really. She could just fall.
Maybe that would be better. Dana knew about trajectories: it was part of her job. If she landed on the middle rock – the one splitting two churning arcs of swift water – they’d understand it was deliberate. She’d have died in a manner that would demand close scrutiny. It would oblige them to sift through her life, looking for the explanation. Her emails and private documents, the contents of her safe, her diary. Everything would be exposed and picked over. She’d be dead, and then sliced open. Dana knew how far investigations could burrow; the kind of stones they turned over.
Whereas if her head struck the nearside bank, cleaving open her skull in a single strike, it might be considered an accident. There had been a lot of rain recently, and then this icy spell, so the edge was brittle. They might think her stupid or foolhardy, but they couldn’t prove she’d meant it. Perhaps then, they’d have less reason to pilfer the remains of her life and hold them up to the light.
A cold breeze slapped her face. Below her, a hawk skimmed the surface of the calmer water downstream. She watched its careless, immaculate wheeling and heard a keening cry through the misty air. Eucalypts on the far shore hissed; the blustery chill made her eyes water.
This was her Day. The day Dana granted herself full permission to think about all this; to examine it and ask if she found herself wanting. Each day through the year she kept it as locked down and hidden away as she could. Often, she failed. She failed because while the threat and the shame kept its strength, she waxed and waned: she was the variable. It was her reaction that stumbled frequently – she drifted with good days and bad, triumphs and disappointments, strong and weak. She tried to contain it adequately by allowing it one day of total freedom. For this Day alone, she deliberately and overtly questioned from every angle if she wished to live another year. If she was still asking at midnight, the contract was made: she would try to carry on until the next Day.
Last year she’d sat with the engine ticking over, safety belt unbuckled, staring at a large tree near her house. She’d fretted that the road wasn’t straight enough to gather a killer speed: she could ram into it, but she might still be alive afterwards.
Now she was shivering in an empty car park. She stepped back from the edge and squatted, hidden from any dog-walkers or joggers, her back uncomfortable against the car’s radiator grille.
This place – already a wound in her mind. Her memory reeled and spun, back to an identical day that changed her life. Being found at the foot of the falls would invite comparisons, make people reach for connections.
So she couldn’t jump. But she knew how to shoot.
Dana closed her eyes and counted to five. She held her revolver in both hands; it juddered as she struggled for breath. The barrel felt sharp on the roof of her mouth. It grazed and nuzzled, begging for the chance to release her. The trigger pressure on this weapon was hefty, but her thumbs squeezed consistently. Saliva oozed silently down to the grip.
Up: she must point up. She knew this. Shifting herself a little against the car, adjusting her posture, the memories skidded past her. Even though she fought to rein them in, they started to pulse faster, became subliminal. She closed her eyes again, squeezed a little more, feeling the trigger mould a groove in her thumbs. A silent tear caressed her cheek.
All Dana had to do was move her thumb a centimetre. Then it would be over. She’d never have to think about it again. There would be no more recriminations; no more hours glaring at her reflection, daring herself to own what she’d done. She’d never have to wake up again with a feeling of dread already drenching her. There must be something better, beyond this. If only she could do it. If only she had the courage. If only—
She could feel the phone vibrate despite her thick jacket. She hesitated, blinked hard and swallowed. The ringtone wouldn’t go away.
Dana hid when she could from loud noises, from bright lights, from squealing children and yapping dogs; from sentiment and kindness, from impatience and arrogance. She needed the flat line of quiet consistency. Usually she struggled through much of it beyond the gaze of others. Especially on this Day, she had nothing to give, and every moment since midnight she’d been a beat away from snapping. The pressure it created was volcanic, irresistible.
The ringtone still wouldn’t go away.
The gun bumped against her lip, numbing it on contact. Dana glanced at it, put the safety on and holstered. On her forehead was a cooling sheen of sweat; she felt clammy and nauseous under her coat. She stood uneasily and leaned against the car. In the windscreen’s reflection she loomed across the convex glass, pallid and desperate. Swearing, she fished out the phone and swiped.
‘Yes?’
‘Dana?’
Neither of them could hear above the roar of the waterfall. ‘Hold on,’ she shouted, and climbed into the car. Closing the door silenced the siren call of her pain. All she could make out now was her own stuttering breath. ‘Yes?’
‘Dana, glad I got you.’ Bill Meeks, her boss. ‘We have a dead body. Sending you the route. It’s kinda hard to find if you’ve never been there… Dana?’
She wasn’t ready. Wasn’t up to doing that. Her hand was shaking; she dropped her keys. ‘Isn’t Mikey on call?’
There was a pause. Did she come across as irritable, unprofessional? Why should she care either way? She wasn’t first on call today.
‘Yeah, he’s had to go to Earlville Mercy. His kid: stomach pains. You’re next cab off the rank. See you in twenty.’
He was gone before she could grunt any kind of reply. She looked back at the fence, and the void.
Someone just kept her alive, by dying.
Something didn’t want her gone. Not yet.
Chapter 2
Jensen’s Store was down a rutted track about two hundred metres off the Old Derby Road, between Carlton and Earlville. Surrounded by tall pines, its solitude and serenity meant it made little sense as a commercial venture – there was no road frontage; the sign for it was half obscured by undergrowth and unlit. If Dana hadn’t been following instructions on the phone, she’d have overshot. Behind the building, forest stretched away gauzily.
The building itself was a lazily designed flatroof; wilfully utilitarian, it had a short overhang on a frontage that was mainly glass, speckled with fluoro-coloured posters of special offers. The parking area to the side was simply gravel and mud, mixed by spinning wheels and crunching boots. It was rutted and slippery in the despondent winter.
The emergency vehicles were parked herringbone along the approach lane: the area around the store was being tracked by a single-file line of uniforms, treading slowly as they scoured the frozen soil. The sun was above the horizon, but obscured below lingering mist which billowed lazily through the trees and gave everything a grey, ethereal wash. The occasional ghost gum stood out, a sharp vertical sliver like pristine flesh. Ferns glinted silently with crystalline frost.
To one side, two paramedics gazed at the gloom and drew testily on cigarettes. Their green smocked uniform had short sleeves; one seemed oblivious to the damp chill, the other yanked on the zip of a red puffa jacket. The hardier of them gave a raised-head acknowledgement as Dana passed; she couldn’t place him but nodded back in any case. Aside from the search team, she and Bill were the only cops available for now.