Rainer passed her the water bottle and she took a deep swig. Her hand still shook.
‘I’m sorry, Natalie, I don’t mean this to be difficult, but we need to bottom out some things. Were you there when Nathan left?’
She shook her head. ‘I assumed he was still there when I ran. I moved interstate, all in one night when I thought Jeb was away. A friend of my sister had an apartment across the border. She was going travelling, wanted a house-sitter for six months. I dropped a letter at the farm gate and scrammed. Hoped to God that Jeb didn’t follow me, track me down. He could have, easily: I wasn’t hidden that well. I got lucky. Turns out that was the night after Nate ran, too. So I guess everyone was bailing on Jeb at the same time.’
Rainer frowned. ‘How do you know it was the night after Nathan left?’
‘I had some friends I’d asked to keep an eye on Jeb after I went: you know, see if he was sniffing around the old apartment, asking after me, and so on. I gave myself way too much credit. I was only a scaredy-cat to play with when Jeb couldn’t buy company. He couldn’t have cared less that I was gone. But anyway, one of those friends said later that Jeb had been riding around that day looking for his brother, putting out the word.’
‘So Jeb wasn’t worried about you telling tales out of school?’
‘Apparently not. He knew I was terrified of him. I imagine his ego thought that would always stick; that I’d never tell, and he was always safe. I imagine that’s how his mind still works.’
Rainer thought about it. Everything tallied with Nathan’s interview – everything. There was no way Natalie and Nathan could have co-ordinated; the pictures fitted because they were the same pictures.
‘So you’d escaped. Why go back months later, a few days after Jeb had sold the farm?’
Natalie scratched at the table’s surface.
‘That friend who was keeping an eye out for me? Worked in real estate. Told me Jeb was selling. I was sure Jeb still had some of the last insulin I stole. He wasn’t using as much in those last months before I went, so he probably still had some on the farm. Or maybe, old packaging lying around. I couldn’t risk it, Rainer. That stuff comes in packets with reference numbers on the side – it’s traceable. I could still have lost my job, my career. I heard Jeb had shot through and moved out in a hurry. Thought he might have left behind something incriminating – well, deadly for me, anyway. My friend said there were a few days before the new owners arrived. I went back when I knew Jeb wasn’t there, had a check around.’
‘Find anything?’
‘Two packets, and some used syringes in the rubbish. I threw some of the other rubbish around, made it look like animals got into the bags. Burned everything incriminating. You said you didn’t need to know…’
‘We don’t, no.’ Rainer glanced at his notes, trying to think what Dana would ask. He turned to face Natalie again.
‘Final question, Natalie. Are you okay? Is there something we can do to make you feel safer?’
The question buckled her: part surprise, part overwhelmed by the humanity of it.
‘Oh. Oh, Jesus. Um, no. Thanks. No. Well, you could shoot Jeb, that would be real handy. But no, not really. I’ve been back two years and I’ve never even seen him across the street. I’m uh, older and wiser now. Haven’t been drawn into that sort of garbage in a very long time.’ She collected herself. ‘But thank you, anyway. I mean it – thank you.’
Chapter 33
Mike was waiting outside the door; the uniform was standing sentry, ready to escort Jeb Whittler back to reception. Dana raised an eyebrow at Mike and they started walking towards her office. Her pulse was vivid; she felt a rush of heat and relief.
‘There you go; isn’t he quite something?’ asked Mike. ‘Now that’s a man who could stab someone in the darkness. And he’s been to the store. And we know that he knew Lou.’
‘Yes, all that, Mikey. Plus, after talking to him I’m finding it easy to accept what was said about him: the bullying, the control, the insulin. All of it. He gave off that… danger. In waves.’
People like Jeb Whittler generally didn’t faze Dana. They were a known quantity: a threat whose main pathways were easy to spot. Costlier were the insidious, the undermining, the covertly political; the ones who presented two very different faces when it suited them. In the confines of an interview room she could pick them out. In the real world, she found it tough.
‘He didn’t mention knowing Lou was dead,’ said Mike. ‘He must know, right?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Dana. ‘Unless he’s avoided the news. The radio reports said it was Jensen’s Store; one man dead. Jeb has to make that calculation. He would avoid talking about it if he was involved, of course.’
A corridor light was flickering; it felt like a stab behind her eyes.
‘To be fair,’ said Mike, ‘there’s a number of reasons he might avoid mentioning that. You think he was there? You think his brother is covering for him? Or is Jeb doing the covering?’
‘Don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘But Jeb’s curious enough to stick around. I have nothing to hold him on right now, but he won’t go far. He’ll be lurking around trying to find out more, which buys us a little time. Although you said you thought he has a source here?’
‘Yup. Peripheral, though. Not well placed. A good source would know we haven’t charged Nathan Whittler with anything.’
They passed Lucy on the way to the office. Dana could see she had been viewing a silent feed from Interview Three. It was common practice within the unit: a standard safety measure, no matter who was involved, or how harmless they were assumed to be. Lucy looked troubled.
In the office, Dana sat and massaged her kneecap. ‘For all that, I don’t know that we’re any further on. Jeb flinched at the allegations, and he didn’t have a ready or persuasive response. But all we’ve got is hearsay. So we’ve proved nothing.’
Mike leaned against the wall. ‘Indeedy. But your gut instinct?’
‘My instinct won’t stand up to prosecutors, Mikey, let alone a trial. Jeb genuinely didn’t know what happened to his little brother when he ran.’
She thought for a moment about the process. A sibling goes missing – what would be the first steps?
‘Jeb knew he’d gone off somewhere, but the effort to track him down was a cover. If he’d really wanted to find his brother, he would have called us on day one. Hiring a PI is a fig-leaf; it’s a sop in case anyone asks. Like offering a reward: it looks like something major but it really isn’t helping. If I didn’t know Whittler was alive and kicking, I’d be asking Jeb and thinking murder.’
‘He really had no idea that his brother didn’t know about the parents. You shook him when you said that.’
Dana’s finger and thumb twitched. She wondered how many minutes were left in her Day.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know if he’s rattled that Whittler didn’t know, or angry that his little brother has stayed alive and out of his reach. He’d have expected Whittler to come crawling back, unable to cope with the real world.’
Mike couldn’t work out which part of Dana’s characteristic finger-twitching was the backdraught of Jeb, and which part was the underlying tension she’d shown all day.