Page 43

Claire

Now

“I did what she asked. That next day, when we were looking for her, I led us to the spot we’d been the night before, but it was no use. There were heavy winds earlier that morning. They must have covered her blood with dirt and blown the lock of hair away.”

I’ve sat here and explained all of it to Declan.

I keep waiting for him to turn away in disgust, to run and never look back, to leave me in the mess I’ve created for myself.

But he’s stayed, listening intently to the entire story, even taking my hand when I described how Phoebe had grabbed my arm, dragged the knife blade against her skin.

“I remember how quiet you were that day,” he says now. “I could tell there was something wrong, but I figured it was the shock of Phoebe going missing.”

There was so much wrong, where would I have even begun?

“I waited for her to contact me after that,” I continue. “When I didn’t hear from her after a few days, I knew something wasn’t right. Phoebe did a lot of screwed up things, but she would have made right on her promise. She would have found a way to contact me.”

I think back to those days, the unknown sitting heavy around me, wrapping around my neck like fingers.

And there was no one I could talk to. No one who would understand what I had done. How I’d just let her go, shedding her identity. I’d been an accomplice in the murder of Phoebe Barton. In name at least.

“It was my fault,” I say now. “If I had stopped her, if I had tried to talk sense into her, I could have made her turn around that night. We could have gone back to the Inn. She would still be alive. But I was so…stupid. She was basically a child. And I just let her go all alone into the middle of the Outback. I knew it wasn’t safe and I let her go anyway. I—I killed her.”

“You didn’t,” Declan says, shifting closer to me on the bed.

“You don’t understand, Dec. She was pregnant. That’s what Villanueva said.”

Declan jerks back like he’s been punched, and something unidentifiable flashes across his face before he manages to compose himself.

“Who was the father?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know, but I can’t stop thinking that’s it connected to her murder somehow. And how did I not know? I was rooming with her for God’s sakes. Was I that completely oblivious?”

“You’re not to blame,” he says, taking my hand in his. “You were a child yourself. You did what you thought was best. And Phoebe was strong-willed. When she made up her mind, there wasn’t any stopping her. Her murder had nothing to do with you. Nothing.”

Declan’s so sure, but it doesn’t assuage the guilt that has built up over the years, like a parasite eating me from the inside out.

“I also feel like I need to say this. So you don’t have to ask. What happened between Phoebe and me was a one-time thing. It hadn’t happened before. I wasn’t the father of her child.”

“I know,” I say gently.

“So what happened with the knife?” he asks after a moment.

“I did what Phoebe suggested. I wiped the handle off on my T-shirt and dug a small hole on the way back to the Inn. I thought I was safe. Randy never reported it missing, and it wasn’t like the Jagged Rock police ever searched for it.

“My mind was a mess back then though. I must not have done a great job of making sure the handle was completely clean of my fingerprints. And after all the years of wind and erosion, the knife must not have been too difficult for the AFP to find after Phoebe’s remains were reported.”

I take a deep breath, which rattles in my lungs, and tell him what they found.

“You can tell them the truth,” Declan urges, ever the optimist. “You can explain.”

“No, Dec,” I say, my patience thinning. How does he not understand? “I had motive, a weapon, opportunity. Isn’t that the trifecta for proving any murder case?”

“Wait.” I can see the cogs whirring behind his eyes. “You had a weapon, but not the murder weapon. The police said themselves that Phoebe wasn’t stabbed, that someone fractured her skull.”

I nod, thinking of Villanueva’s blunt delivery back in the AFP offices in Sydney.

“That weapon was never found,” Declan continues.

“Maybe they think I used the handle of the knife?” I muse.

“And what, held on to the blade when you beat her?” I flinch at the image, but Declan continues. “Then it would certainly have cut your palm. And they didn’t find any of your blood on it. No, it had to be something else.”

“I mean it could have been anything. A rock or a bottle. Something heavy enough to break bone…”

“But there aren’t really rocks out there.”

Declan’s right. There’s dirt for as far as the eye can see behind the Inn, but it isn’t very rocky.

Sure, there are larger rocks out towards the mine, where the land has been dug up, but otherwise it’s mostly just compact dirt and pebbles.

Someone would have to really search for a rock big enough to kill someone.

So whoever killed Phoebe likely brought the weapon outside with them.

“Whatever weapon they used had to be strong enough to endure repeated hits. Something like a bottle would have broken; we would have seen shards of glass out there when we searched.” I cringe at Declan’s analytical approach, but then I realize, this must be how he approaches his stories as a journalist.

We sit in silence for a few moments, thinking. Declan shifts on the bed.

“Ow.”

I look at him curiously.

“Something just poked me in the leg,” he says, reaching for something in his pocket. He pulls out his room key from the Inn. “Shite, I forgot to return it to Randy before we left.”

I look at it. The wood carved roughly into the shape of a raven. It’s almost obscenely heavy for a room key. I take the key from him, holding it in my hand.

“You don’t think…” Declan says, his eyes glued on the object.

I wrap my fingers around it and imagine raising it over my head and plummeting it back down.

“I mean, this would definitely be heavy enough to crack bone,” Declan says, taking it back. “It’s a possibility.”

My mind jumps back to yesterday afternoon.

“When we checked in, I noticed there was a key missing from the cubbies behind the front desk. And we were the only people staying there. It’s a reach, but maybe…”

“Did you see what room the key was missing from?”

“Room eleven,” I answer quickly, the image of that empty cubby and the number beneath it burning bright in my memory.

“Right. Is there any way for us to figure out who was staying in that room back then?”

“I can’t think of…” But then I stop, remembering.

I rush to my tote bag, flinging out items until I find what I’m looking for: the notebook I stole from the Inn’s front desk when I was searching for the computer connected to the hidden camera. I forgot about it amid everything that happened.

I throw it open on the bed. Declan hovers behind me, peering over my shoulders as I flip through the pages.

The first few are filled with lines of numbers, which I surmise must be finance related.

But as I continue to thumb through it, those fade away, leaving only blank pages or those decorated with scribbles and doodles of half-naked women.

“There’s nothing here,” I mutter, disappointment sinking low in my heart.

I wait for him to comfort me, to reassure me that things will be alright, even though there’s no way they can be. But he’s silent, and when I turn to face him, he’s staring down at the notebook, having flipped back to a page I’d previously ignored, discarding it as nothing more than doodles.

“This is a list,” he says finally.

My eyes follow where he’s pointing, and I realize that in between the inexpertly crafted cartoons are numbers and names. And then I notice a set of numbers on the upper-right corner of the page: 17-11-2012 . A date, in the flipped day-month-year format that Australians use.

Declan is already flipping the pages, and it doesn’t take long until he reaches the date we’re looking for: 22-12-2015 . December 22, the day we checked in.

It’s all there, a list of 1 through 20, which I assume must be the Inn’s rooms, and a hyphen and name or two to go along with each number, depending on whether the room was a single or a double.

A quick scan reveals all our names—the students plus Hari and Nick.

I start with the most familiar number— 13 —and look at its accompanying names: Phoebe Barton and Claire Whitlock .

I hold my breath as my eyes move up two lines to room 11, the one with the missing key.

I drag my eyes along the line, to the name of the person who was staying in that room.

Ellery Johnson.

We both stare at Randy’s spindly handwriting, the silence growing stagnant between us. Morphing into something darker, more real.

Ellery stayed in that room. She had access to the missing key.

“That doesn’t mean anything, though,” I say, my voice shaky. “We still have nothing to suggest the key was the murder weapon. Ellery or anyone else who stayed in room 11 after her could have lost it.”

Declan nods. “You’re right. But there’s something else too.”

I feel the blood crash in my ears. “What?” I ask urgently.

“If Ellery did do it, if she killed Phoebe, then I think I know why.”