The Dry by Jane Harper Read Free Book Online

their names. So I’m yelling, ‘Police! It’s OK! Come out, you’re safe!’ or something, but I don’t even know if it’s true.” He took a long drag, remembering.
    â€œAnd then I hear this crying—this sort of wailing— so I follow it, not knowing what’s waiting for me. And I go into the nursery, and I see that little girl in her cot, screaming blue murder, and honestly, I’ve never been so glad to see a kid bawling her eyes out in all my life.”
    Raco blew a plume of smoke into the air.
    â€œâ€™Cause she was fine, ” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. She was scared, obviously, but not hurt that I could see. And I remember thinking at that moment that it might all still be OK. Yes, it was sad about the mum, tragic. But thank God, at least the kids were OK. But then I look across the hall, and a door’s ajar.”
    He carefully ground his cigarette butt into the dirt, not looking at Falk. Falk felt a cold dread seep through him, knowing what was to come.
    â€œAnd I can see it’s another kid’s room. All blue paint and car posters, you know? Boy’s room. And there’s no sound coming from that one. So I go across the hall and push open the door, and then it definitely wasn’t OK at all.” He paused. “That room was like a scene from hell. That room was the worst thing I have ever seen.”
    They sat in silence until Raco cleared his throat.
    â€œCome on,” he said, pulling himself to his feet, shaking his arms as if shedding the memory. Falk stood and followed him toward the front of the house.
    â€œThe response teams arrived from Clyde shortly after that,” Raco went on as they walked. “Police, paramedics. It was nearly half past six by the time they got there. We’d searched the rest of the house, and there’s no one else there, thank Christ, so everyone was desperately trying to phone Luke Hadler. At first people are worried—you know, how are we supposed to break this to him? But then there’s still no answer and his car’s not there and he hasn’t come home, and all of a sudden you could feel the mood start to shift.”
    â€œWhat was Luke supposed to have been doing, then?”
    â€œA couple of the search-and-rescue volunteers, mates of his, knew he’d been helping a friend cull rabbits on his property that afternoon. A guy called Jamie Sullivan. Someone rang, and Sullivan confirmed it but said Luke had left his farm a couple of hours earlier by that point.”
    They’d reached the front door, and Raco pulled out a set of keys.
    â€œWhen there was still no sign of Luke and no answer on his phone, we called some more of the search-and-rescue team in. Paired them up with officers, sent them out looking. It was a terrible couple of hours. We had unarmed searchers tramping through fields and bushland, not sure what they would find. Luke dead? Alive? No idea what kind of state he’d be in. We were all panicking we’d find him holed up somewhere with a gun and a death wish. In the end one of the search guys stumbled across his truck more by luck than anything. Parked up in some crappy clearing about three kilometers away. There was no need to worry after all. Luke was dead in the back, missing most of his face. His own gun, licensed, registered, completely legit, still in his hand.”
    Raco unlocked the farmhouse door and pushed it open.
    â€œSo it seemed like that was that. Pretty much done and dusted. This”—he stepped aside so Falk could see right down the long hallway—“is where it starts to get strange.”
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    The entrance hall was muggy and stank of bleach. A side table piled with household clutter of bills and pens sat askew against a far wall, shoved from its original position. The tiled floor was ominously clean. The entire hallway had been scrubbed down to the original grout.
    â€œThe industrial