He drew five police officers naming himself, Schultz and Jim Conyers, and four other figures. Evan's legal team. His solicitor and his assistant, the barrister and his clerk. The clerk was the only female.
I asked him to do four pictures starting when they first arrived on the steps in front of the court. Then one after a few minutes, then at the time of the shooting and finally after the shooter had gone.
`If you can remember, can you make an arrow pointing which way people were looking?'
`I dunno. It was a long time ago but I'll try.'
What emerged was that just before Evan was shot the female clerk, the solicitor's assistant and three of the police officers were all looking in the same direction.
He and Shultz weren't looking that way.
Ron wasn't sure where anyone was looking at the time of the shooting. `It hit the fan after that. I mean this geezer was falling down and there was blood everywhere. All over me and Brian. Have you ever seen an exit wound from a .45 pistol? A real mess.'
But he'd drawn a dark figure behind him. The shooter. When I pressed him he said the girl clerk called out something right before the shot was fired.
`Brian and I turned towards her. Don't know what the others did but I reckon they saw the shooter.'
One of whom was executed and two were promoted. Telling.
I pulled up some newspaper pictures from the time. I hadn't noticed the clerk until then. She was standing apart from the central group but she was looking the same way as the cops who were later promoted. So did she see what they saw? Significant or not it was another cog. The clerk was one more to track down.
A lot of Ron Graham's information pre-dated Evan's death and documented a pattern of payoffs, protection and bribes that included businesspeople, real estate developers, shop keepers, restauranteurs, landlords. Anyone and everyone who might need the police to look the other way.
`But a lot of this is white collar stuff, Ron. How did you guys get pulled in?'
`We were sent to collect…ah…payments. And I know some of the guys were doing more than that. Brian was. After hours. A lot of it.'
`Like intimidation and maybe a bit of…er…heavy pressure?'
`I guess.'
`Have you put down the names of the people ordering that stuff, that you know about?'
`Yeah.'
`Any of them still there?'
`I don't know, do I? I'm not. And I don't want to know. They're bad buggers and they'll get you too, if you go after them.'
Something for the good Senior Sergeant and Larry Dormann to chase up.
Next I opened the shoebox. As I expected it was memorabilia. Photos of the girls and the twins, of Maggie and Ken. Birthday and mother's day cards, souvenirs from family outings, pictures from the aeroplane, the detritus of a life. A thirteen-year life. There were no pictures of Evan, or Eve or me. Nothing at all of the life we'd led until 2006.
By the time I put the lid back on I was furious.
`Fuck you bastards,' I raged. `How dare you destroy my life? I'll get you if it’s the last thing I do.'
I jumped up and nearly knocked Zoe over. She was standing right behind me and I hadn't heard her. She was grinning.
`I heard you've found out some stuff so when are you going to tell us? We've finished the drenching so we'll shower and start the tea. We eat early so if you want to make some notes you've got about an hour.'
She left the room.
I tallied everything I'd found out and set it out as a mini lecture. Questions after. When I'd done that I looked into Kayla's press cuttings to see if she had photos of the scene outside the court. She did. Only one was taken before the shooting. It was fuzzy so it was hard to see who was looking where. Not much help.
A video of the scene would be far better. I checked online. Old news film isn't always easy to find but I knew where to look. Film I'd seen of the scene cut to aftermath of the shooting which meant they were probably filming when it happened. Getting that footage might be harder but the public domain stuff was relatively easy.
I found it on YouTube. Slow motion wasn't an option so I played it as close to frame by frame as I could. It started when the entire group came down the steps and continued until what must have been the last minute before Evan was shot. I wanted the part where they stood together at the bottom of the steps.
As Ron had drawn, the barrister's clerk walked a few steps away from the group. She looked back once then looked away. The others were all doing as Ron had drawn except they weren't static. The two cops who would go on to grand heights looked towards the clerk and back again several times. Just before the shot was fired both stepped away from Evan and looked at the ground.
Did they know the hit man was there? Were they waiting for him? Who had arranged which cops stood where? Who was that clerk? I dived into the court records. I was flailing around when Kayla came in and peered over my shoulder.
`What are you looking for?'
`Evan's barrister, but I can't—'
She pushed her notebook onto my keyboard and pointed. I looked up so she opened it and leafed through a few pages. `Webb, Burton Webb.'
`Ah, you've got all that then. Do you have his clerk?'
`Rebecca Swanson. Why?'
`Don't know yet.'
I looked up Ms Swanson without a lot of hope. Women are the devil to trace because they ditch their own names when they marry. But no such problem with Rebecca Swanson. She'd gone on to far better things. She even had a Wikipedia page of her own.
It documented her lowly beginnings as a barrister's clerk back in 2006 to TV stardom with her own talk show by 2010. Her rise to fame began when she was interviewed by every news channel after being a witness to a vicious slaying outside the Supreme Court of Victoria when she was a junior clerk in Burton Webb S.C.'s office.
She wasn't even supposed to be there that day. A more senior clerk had been in a car accident just the night before and was in the hospital. Convenient. Ms Swanson had made the most of her media coverage. It had led to a job with a major TV network and ultimately to her own high profile, very lucrative program.
Another rags to meteoric rise and riches for someone next to Evan that fateful day. TV has shadowy figures behind it too so I wondered was the mob involved here too? I would ask Rocco but not yet. I checked out Burton Webb S.C. too. He was dead. Of cancer five years ago. I would see if I could speak to his widow when I got back home.
I finally looked up to see Kayla staring at me. `Do you think she—?'
`Don't know. It’s just that some of the people around Evan that day have done far better than you'd expect.'
Other's haven't though.' She nodded towards the Grahams who had emerged from their cocoon and headed for the sofa where they sat side by side staring out at Rocco’s' fields.
`When are they going?' she whispered.
`When I think I can keep them alive,' I whispered back.
`Oh.'
I started to clear the table but Zoe said we were all eating fried egg sandwiches off our laps tonight. After we'd finished eating Maggie and the girls took the little boys up for their bath. Once again I was alone with the Grahams.
I decided to play the You Tube footage for them. `Ron, I want you to look at this as if you were on the investigating team. From a completely objective point of view. You know none of the people or anything about the court case. You've just come in cold. Is there anyone you'd want to talk to?'
He just looked at me as if I'd told him to bugger the archbishop.
After an eon he spoke. `I wasn't a detective.'
`Would you have liked to be one?'
I waited for Joy to say he was too stupid but Ron's earlier revelations must have put a dint into her usual assessment.
`I guess—'
`Of course he did,' said Joy. `On about it all the time he was. But…well…'
`Think about it, Ron. Here's a chance for you to see what you could have done. I think you could. These drawings you made were spot on. It's observation and a memory for detail that makes a good detective.' And a few other things but I wasn't going there.
We sat at the table. `Ready?' I played the section up to the shooting three times, then sat back. `Take your time. Make notes if you like.'
I went out to the kitchen to make some coffee before taking Joy's arm and leading her to the window again. A small mob of kangaroos came up to the house and started reaching into a willow tree. I laughed.
`They won't get much off that. They've already had a good go at it.'
She looked at me in astonishment. `How can you tell?'
`It's flat across the bottom. The cows get to willows first and eat them straight, then the roos who can reach higher get the rest.'
`Oh,' she said, `I never thought of that. I thought someone must have cut it.'
I looked across the large dam up a slope to where the national forest met the pasture. Rocco's place didn't have the grandeur of the mountains behind it as Anna's did but it was still a charming property.
Not so for Joy Graham. `It's very brown, isn't it? And the water down there is brown and muddy too.'
`It's late summer, Joy. Most of Australia is brown now. It will green up later on. Come, let's see what Ron's got.'
Her lip curled but only briefly as we walked back to the table. Ron sat back in his chair peering at his handiwork. A page of the round writing sat in front of him.
`I don't know if this is what you want.' He pushed the page to me.
He'd written that he'd like to interview the barrister's clerk first. Then everyone who was looking to their left.
`Why, Ron?'
`Because I reckon they must have seen the shooter.'
`But couldn't he have come from behind all of you?'
`I don't think so. There were a lot of people behind me and Brian, two steps back like. But the step right behind us was clear. I remember checking that when we stopped at the bottom. And there was no one much to the right. The bloke came up behind me and leaned across and shot the geezer in the back of the head. I reckon he had to have walked along that step behind us. So everyone who was looking that way must have seen something. But nobody said they saw anything.' He sucked his lip and nodded to himself.
`Why does the clerk interest you the most?'
`She was nervous. She was looking every which way to start with. Then she wasn't just looking around, she was staring to the left before the cops even turned that way. They checked with her before they looked that way too. She was expecting something I reckon. And she was backing away before the shooting. Nah. I think she was in on it and I think they were too.'