| |
Horse struggled in the back of the police car as he saw Vaughan waiting by the gate. Tane’s father stepped from the passenger door and Leilah saw the strain in his face. “He didn’t do it!” she shouted, desperate to be heard over the radio chatter and the drone of the car’s engine. “He’s innocent. I told you we were all together. You saw him!”
“Shut up, Deleilah!” Tane’s father shot a glance at the dark suited cop in the driver’s seat. The man’s attention moved to him and then back to her.
“What’s going on?” He wound the car window down further and stuck his head through the gap. “What’s this?” His sharp eyes studied the gathered crowd and then he snapped an order to the sergeant. “Let’s get going. Hamilton is waiting to process him.”
Vaughan’s body shuddered next to Leilah and his elbow banged into her ribs. He gave a sickening groan and lurched sideways. His stomach purged itself and vomit spattered the nearest cop’s shoes and trousers. The little he ate for lunch reappeared in gruesome, undigested chunks of nasty. Liquid rushed into Leilah’s throat and she turned aside as the cops hopped around with heated curses. She took a large inhale of fresh air and readied herself to help Vaughan. Movement in her peripheral vision revealed Hector standing on the other side of the boundary fence.
He watched her with narrowed eyes, his hat brim pulled low to protect his forehead from the blazing sun. A line of sweat ran down the side of his neck and into the collar of his shirt. Legs planted and arms folded, he represented the foundation of her world. But the fence between them spoke volumes. He’d nailed his colours to a different mast and opened a chasm between them.
“Let me go to him!” Horse bellowed. “He’s sick!” A commotion ensued as he dipped forward and tried to fight the unseen handcuffs binding his wrists behind his back. Tane’s father opened the car door and tried to speak to him.
“What’s wrong?” Leilah demanded, leaning over Vaughan as he squirmed in the dirt.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Nothing. Just leave me.”
“This isn’t fair,” Leilah wailed. “It’s not right.” She stroked his back, feeling the hard knots of his spine through the flimsy school shirt.
“Get up, mate,” the nearest cop said. He lowered his voice. “Let him see you standing and he’ll go quietly. If he doesn’t behave, they’ll add to the charges.”
“What charges?” Leilah demanded. “What did he do?” She heard the panic in her voice and took a few heady breaths to still her heart rate.
“Never you mind.” The cop tugged on Vaughan’s shirt and Leilah saw the thready stitches stretch at the seam. Her brow furrowed. Everyone said Horse had pots of cash stashed in the bush behind his house. Vaughan’s school uniform and the reappearance of last year’s broken sandals told a different story. She wondered how she hadn’t noticed before and doubt crept into her mind. People did bad things when desperation took hold.
“Go home, Deleilah.” Vaughan dismissed her, pushing himself upright and shucking the cop’s assistance. His eyes looked hard as he gave her a shove. “Stay out of it.”
“But you can’t live here alone.” Her gaze roved towards Tane’s father. “They won’t let you.”
Vaughan snorted and ran a shaking hand through his hair. “Watch them stop me!” he growled.
Horse leaned across the man in the rear seat next to him, raising his voice to shout to his nephew. “I didn’t do it, boy!” he called, his eyes as dark as coals in his tanned face. “Whatever they say, I didn’t do it.”
Vaughan gave a nod and Leilah watched him raise his right hand in a feckless wave. It seemed to satisfy Horse and he settled in his seat. Tane’s father hopped into the car and the detective released the handbrake. Vaughan turned his body in time with the movement of the vehicle, his gaze following it out onto the road until it disappeared around the bend. He watched the empty road for a long moment, as though imagining the car making its way through the main street of the town and out onto the Hamilton road.
They got their arrest but the cops didn’t leave. Instead, they accompanied Vaughan up to the house and Leilah trailed behind. She sensed Hector’s gaze boring into the side of her face, but refused to catch his eye. She heard him snort like an angry stallion and the heavy sound of his footsteps as he trudged back to their gate. A glance saw him carrying both school bags, as though his hands kept an unspoken link to her without his brain engaging. She shrugged and figured Vaughan wouldn’t need his bag or chemistry homework any time soon.
Men crawled all over the house, poking in drawers and shifting furniture aside. Leilah knitted her brow at the dust free mark where the television once sat, a line of filth delineating its former occupancy. She made a sound of irritation with her lips and the cop leading Vaughan by the arm indicated she should sit on the sofa. “Don’t move!” he warned her.
“You didn’t have to take his television!” she snapped.
The man’s brow furrowed. “We didn’t.” He followed Leilah’s gaze and tugged on Vaughan’s arm. “Where’d it go?”
Vaughan inhaled and the line of his clenched jaw showed through the skin. Dark stubble budded on his chin as the day waned and Leilah wondered when he started shaving for school. “Horse sold it the week before last,” he said with a sigh. “Said we didn’t need it.”
Leilah gaped, opening her mouth and then closing it again. Horse watched the huge screen all the time. If he wasn’t working on the land, he either sat and watched the moving pictures or stood with a sandwich in his hand and a gormless look on his face. The sudden change of heart didn’t fit with what she knew of him and Leilah swallowed. Her gaze strayed back to the gap in the dust and she imagined Horse slamming Malcolm in the head with the television. She dismissed it as a possible murder weapon. It took three delivery men to lift the massive thing into the house five years earlier, the huge box containing the tube weighing them down. Besides, she didn’t know how Malcolm died and the television would have crushed him to dust.
“What happened to Malcolm?” she demanded, avoiding Vaughan’s look of alarm as he turned towards her. The cop released him and pushed him into an armchair.
“Mind your own business,” he retorted.
“It is our business when you’re in Vaughan’s house, Paul Todd!” Leilah bit. Her voice rose and the cop glanced towards the bedroom end of the house as the sound of drawers grinding in the sockets echoed along the narrow hallway. Like many of the other locals, he’d eaten in Mari’s cafe his whole life and Leilah had served him many times as she waited tables to help out. She narrowed her eyes. “I’m telling Mari,” she declared. “She’ll give you shitty portions.”
“Don’t swear!” He dropped into the rebuke with ease, knowing what Hector would say about his daughter’s language. The whole town raised its kids and Deleilah Dereham wasn’t too big for a cuff around the ear. She read the thought in his face and formed her expression into a snarl.
“Don’t even think about it. I’ll tell Mari that too.”
Vaughan stared at a hole in the rug bordering the hearth and Leilah saw the faintest smirk kiss his lips. Emboldened, she continued worrying at the unlucky officer. He caved as she recounted how Ted was still recovering from a bacon shortage in his diet after upsetting Mari two weeks earlier. Glancing at the door and lowering his voice, the officer glared at Leilah. “He suffered a broken wrist and fractured skull. But the cause of death was drowning.” His neck muscles became rigid at a sound from the hallway and he snapped to attention.
“Nothing here.” A man wearing gloves appeared in the doorway and glanced in surprise at Vaughan and Leilah. She didn’t recognise his face. “Who are they?”
“Boy lives here.” The local cop swallowed and jabbed a finger at Leilah. “She’s from next door.”
“Nice.” The other man jerked his head towards outside and Paul Todd accompanied him through the ranch slider. They spoke on the deck in low voices with their heads almost touching.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Leilah whispered and Vaughan nodded. “Why have they arrested Horse?”
“Dunno.” Fear budded in Vaughan’s eyes and Leilah leaned forward.
“You think he did it?”
“Na. Sounds too dirty for him. Last time him and your dad went at it in town, Horse fought fair.” His nose wrinkled. “Why would Malcolm be at our place in the middle of the night, anyway?”
Leilah swallowed and licked her lips. “Paul said he drowned. What if we could have saved him?”
Vaughan shrugged, changing the movement half way through to a head shake. “You can’t think like that. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. We didn’t know he was there, did we? We don’t even know where he died.” He cocked his head to emphasise his point and Leilah looked away. She’d known and Malcolm’s blank expression swirled into her dreams most nights, his lips curled back in accusation. The nameless, floating body had become Malcolm in her mind, as though she’d known it was him and chose not to help.
“Leilah?” Vaughan jerked his head towards her and she roused, seeing her fear reflected in his eyes. His hands clasped the arms of the chair, the knuckles showing white through his olive skin. She jumped and looked through the glass of the ranch slider and saw the men with their heads still bowed together. A third man joined them at ground level, his plastic gloves incongruous with the farming dirt around him.
“What are they talking about?” she whispered and he lifted a finger and pointed at the clear plastic bag in the third man’s hand. Green foliage poked from the top, the stalks rigid, but the leaves already wilting.