She gave a tired smile. ‘Something like that.’
‘I could give Jeb to Mikey again when he gets here. Mikey has a rapport from earlier and he unravelled Spencer Lynch today; might be worth a go.’
Dana tapped her pen against her teeth. ‘Yes, maybe. Hmm. No. Actually, no. I think Jeb’s the type who isn’t going to like being faced by a woman. He’ll overestimate himself against me. If Mikey went in a second time, Jeb would watch his step.’
‘Okay. I’ll have Mikey through the mirror, in case we need to turn it into a two-hander. And a uniform, in case Jeb doesn’t play nice.’
‘Deal. At least we know why Whittler ran, and why then.’
‘Yeah, one episode of being frozen alive and at the whim of a psychopath would probably be enough.’
‘I’d had some crazy hope he would have left because of Lou Cassavette. You know – some kind of connection or incident we’re not aware of?’ She knew Cassavette had lived in the city until recently and had no discernible reason for being anywhere near Carlton. All the same, she’d hoped for some bizarre linkage, something they could never have spotted on their own.
‘I still can’t fit the two of them together,’ she continued. ‘They appear to have never met, or been within cooee of each other, until 5 a.m. today. All the forensics say it was an opportunist crime, but robbery isn’t the motive and Whittler’s never been violent before. Quite the opposite – a passive and compliant victim. It still doesn’t make sense.’
Bill was about to reply when there was a knock and Lucy glanced around the door.
‘Hey, Dana. Boss. Mr Jeb Whittler is still in reception, wanting to see his brother. In an ever-more charmless kind of way, too.’
Bill scratched his chin. ‘Put him in Interview Three, with a uniform outside. Full – and I mean full, Luce – security check before entry. Especially for needles. Tell Whittler a detective will be with him shortly.’
‘Boss.’
Bill turned back to Dana at the click of the door. ‘So… where are we? I think we have a perspective on Whittler’s life before the cave and we understand his life in the cave. We know what the motivation was for entering Jensen’s Store this morning. We have a pretty good handle on how damaged Whittler’s been his entire life and how that happened. Not bad for’ – he checked his watch – ‘under twelve hours.’
Dana nodded dutifully but her mind was reaching. ‘Only a few hours left before he’s gifted a lawyer. We still have no motive. We have nothing to connect Nathan Whittler to Lou Cassavette.’
‘Maybe there is no motive, Dana.’ He leaned forward. ‘Maybe you want there to be, but it doesn’t exist.’
She pondered that, gave it due weight. Bill didn’t say such things in a vacuum.
‘You think I’m wishing some gallant reason for Whittler’s actions? Something that doesn’t make it petulant or spiteful or vicious, or simply desperation to get past Cassavette and out the door?’
‘Yup. You’re looking for the mythical orphan in danger, the nun that needs saving – some altruistic heroism you want Whittler to have shown. At the very least, a morally comprehensible reason for killing.’
Bill put both palms on the table.
‘He’s an unhappy, isolated person who’s had fifteen years to brood. He’s damaged. He’s seen brutality rewarded and being successful for much of his life. He’s an inveterate thief, who has no actual moral problem with stealing each month for decades, no matter what he claims. He wants out of a store he chose to burgle and the owner’s in the way. Maybe his OCD made him take the middle knife, maybe not. But he did use the knife, he did find the heart with the first and only stab, and he did kill Cassavette.’
Bill paused and dropped half an octave. ‘And I would really, really, like a confession.’
There was no smile at the end of it. Bill simply stood up and left, a consoling tap on her shoulder as he passed.
She sat for some minutes, considering. Bill was right. She’d hoped for something better for Nathan Whittler… from Nathan Whittler. She’d wanted one single reason that made the killing less callous and more understandable.
Bill had pulled her up short, and rightly so. That, she thought, is why he’s the boss. And why she never could be, never should be. The ability to cut through like that – to see the straight line, deliver bad news in such a temperate way: she didn’t have those skills.
He was right, she concluded. Motive didn’t really matter, when all was said and done. Whittler’s defence could argue the fine detail – it was really dark; maybe it was more of a scuffle than the forensics suggested; perhaps Cassavette kinda fell on to the blade. The jury would convict anyway. There was no construct she could see that would be any kind of mitigation or benign explanation. In her mind, Nathan Whittler was guilty and all she had to do was calculate how to eke out a confession.
Before she set foot in a room with Jeb Whittler, Dana wanted to bring Mike up to speed. He’d taken a break after writing up his discussion with Jeb and now sat slurping coffee. Dana’s office felt claustrophobic. She looked at her watch and set herself an hour to leave this place, come what may. Her knee was starting to really grind – it needed a warm bath. She grabbed at the nebuliser in her pocket, in case a panic attack was imminent. Placing a timescale on the working day’s end seemed to have calmed her jagging nerves a little. Father Timms had been right. Everyone around her seemed to be wiser than her today.
‘Is that even possible?’ Mike was shaking his head after hearing Nathan’s story. ‘I’m not… don’t get me wrong, I believe him. It’s just… well, I would have thought it would be impossible to be that accurate with the correct dosage.’
‘I’d have thought so, too. Maybe Luce could look into that.’ Mike scribbled a note. ‘We have to take it seriously, unless or until we can prove otherwise. My vague understanding is that the impact of the same dosage each time varies – according to time of day, what they’d eaten, their weight, and so on, as well as blood sugar level.’
‘Maybe that’s why he did it after lunch on a Saturday – he felt more confident about those details, able to control them better. He could dictate what they ate beforehand, for example. Still, you’d think he’d get it wrong sometimes, wouldn’t you?’
‘Absolutely. He probably did. I’m betting he kept some kind of antidote close at hand. There’s something doctors use for blood sugar emergencies, I think. If Jeb was stealing insulin, he could probably steal the antidote, too. He must’ve had a few close shaves he never mentioned to his brother. It’s Russian Roulette, basically.’
‘Certainly is. But with other people’s lives, not his own.’
‘Did he strike you that way when you saw him?’
Mike considered carefully, unsure that his own reading of Jeb was good enough in light of this revelation. Perhaps he’d held too benign a view.
‘Well, unless someone’s behaving outlandishly, they wouldn’t strike you that way. Because that particular behaviour is off the charts. But if you’re asking do I think he’s capable? Maybe. He has some streaks in him of total authoritarianism: as he said himself, “My way or the highway.” I thought when he spoke about discipline and punishment he was only talking about his parents inflicting it on him and his brother. Now I’m convinced he was talking about himself. He used the words “me” and “I” a lot: I thought he was reliving being on the receiving end. But maybe he was talking about dishing it out. My bad, not picking it up at the time.’
‘I don’t know what kind of mental damage it would do to Whittler, seeing that.’ Dana pictured the regularity of it, the drip-feed of horror and control. ‘The insulin went on for nearly twelve months before Whittler left home. Plus, the years of bullying and domination that preceded it. That kind of abusive behaviour and imagery usually leads to some numbing, some habituation.’