What the hell was going on with these people? Every single one of them looked as suspicious as hell.
The details of that call snapped into focus. “Now I remember where I’ve heard your name,” I said, clicking my fingers.
“You do?” Charlie slipped around the others and sat beside Mitch. The way they looked at each other confirmed they were together.
All happy couples.
I flipped back through my notebook. “You’re the paleontologist.” I left it there and waited to see who’d fill the silence.
Nobody did, so I lifted my gaze from my notepad, choosing Declan to look at. “It seems people go missing out here rather a lot.”
“What?” He blinked.
“What are you implying?” Mitch said, and the way his arm shifted beneath the table, I pictured him putting his hand on Charlie’s knee.
“Professor Doug Walker.” I looked at Charlie. “Your supervisor. Am I correct?”
She cleared her throat. “Yes. Well, he was. But he had an accident.”
“Hmm, that’s right. He fell into floodwaters.” As I tapped my pen against my notepad, I remembered the call that had come into the station weeks ago from a detective at Rosebud Police Station on the North Queensland coast. Detective Jaxson Callahan had wanted to bring his K-9 out to Koolaroo to assist in searching for Doug Walker, Charlie Macintyre’s supervisor.
Bob had laughed when he’d told me about it after he’d ended the call. Big city cops think we’ve got nothing better to do than go fossicking around on Koolaroo Ranch for some professor who’s probably dingo meat by now.
Callahan had called back two days later and got me instead. He was thorough and detail-oriented, asking questions about Doug Walker and our apparent investigation that I had no idea was even happening. Then Bob appeared at my desk and dropped a note in front of me. Give me the call. He’d taken it in his office with the door shut and told me afterward that he’d handled it.
I hated that I hadn’t pushed back harder on that.
“Was his body ever recovered?” I asked.
“What was left of him, yeah,” Mitch said.
I gasped, pretending to be shocked. “What did you find?”
Mitch glanced at Charlie. “One of Doug’s boots and a shirt. The animals took the rest of him.”
“Hmm. Poor man.” I shook my head.
Mitch’s lip twitched. “Yeah. Poor man.”
“Charlie, when did you report Doug’s disappearance?”
Charlie blinked and swallowed hard. “The same day we found his things.” She glanced at Mitch. “The university contacted police immediately. I was told local police would be in touch, and that it was all being handled.”
Being handled. That’s the same term Bob had used. I kept my pen moving. “And where is the boot and clothing now?”
“Where we found them.” Mitch’s jaw tightened. “Bob told us not to touch anything. Said he’d send someone out to collect them.”
He had? “When was that?”
Mitch and Charlie exchanged a look, and I couldn’t help but think they were holding back some critical information. “Weeks ago,” Mitch said finally.
I wrote that down and kept my face perfectly neutral. Weeks ago? Bob had known about physical evidence left exposed to the elements for weeks and had done absolutely nothing about it.
What the hell?
I looked around the table. Measured Mitch. Nervous Declan. Sharp Cassidy. Wide-eyed Charlie. And Xavier, who I was still trying to figure out.
A dining table full of people who all knew more than they were giving me and had made a collective decision about how much that was going to be.
