The Dry

Falk, a 36-year-old federal agent with the financial intelligence unit, has reluctantly driven from Melbourne to sweltering Kiewarra to attend a funeral. His childhood friend, Luke, is presumed to have killed himself, his wife Karen, and his six-year-old son, Billy, but spared 13-month-old Charlotte. Falk finds a spot in the overcrowded church, hoping the other mourners will not recognize him. Even though Falk had not seen Luke for five years, Luke's father, Gerry Hadler, had sent Falk a letter two days prior saying: “Luke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral” (7).

During the funeral slideshow, one photo is of Falk and Luke as teenagers, with two young girls. The crowd and Falk are “shaken” by the photo, because two months after that photo was taken, “the dark-eyed girl” standing next to Falk died (8). Falk thinks about “a lie forged and agreed on twenty years ago” (9) and sees two elderly women become upset when they recognize him. Falk feels uneasy and is eager to leave Kiewarra.

Falk is getting ready to leave after the funeral when Gretchen Schoner, the other girl from the old photo, approaches him with a hug. She is visibly not handling the deaths well and convinces Falk to go with her to the wake at the nearby community center. It has been 20 years since they last saw each other, and in that time, she bought her own farm and had a son named Lachie. She drifted apart from Luke not long after their friend Ellie died. Gretchen describes how some people appear jealous of Luke, that he no longer must deal with the hardships of farming during a drought. Since the deaths, she says, everyone is “walking around like zombies […] Trying to work out who will be next to snap” (13).

Gerry Hadler approaches Falk privately, reassuring him he does not want to blackmail Falk. He starts to explain that he wanted Falk at the funeral because he needs to know “if Luke had killed before” (17). He is interrupted before he can clarify and tells Falk he will be in touch. While Barb Hadler thanks everyone for coming, reminding them that Luke loved his family, from the back of the crowd, Grant exclaims that Luke “butchered” them.

Back in his room above the local pub, the Fleece, Falk receives a call from Gerry, telling him to come over. When he arrives, Barb is genuinely happy to see him. Unaware that her husband is doubting their son's innocence, she discloses that they want his help investigating the deaths. Barb is certain Luke did not kill himself or his family and thinks money had something to do with it.

Gerry privately tells Falk that Barb is “clutching at straws” (27), and that Luke was not struggling financially more than anyone else. Gerry admits that he has always known that Luke and Falk lied about their alibis when Ellie died because he saw Luke riding his bike that afternoon. Gerry believes that Falk did not kill Ellie but has always wondered if Luke lied to protect himself (29). He urges Falk to consider helping them, suggesting that if Luke did kill Ellie and then killed his family, both he and Falk are guilty for hiding the truth about Luke 20 years ago (29).

On his drive back to the pub, Falk hits a rabbit. This triggers a flashback to Luke and Falk as children when they found a baby rabbit in the fields. Falk went inside to get supplies, and when he returned the rabbit had died. Luke insisted he did not know how the rabbit died. This flashback prompts Falk to think about his teenage friends and how Ellie drowned.

Falk lets Gerry know that he can stay through the weekend looking through Luke's financial documents. The next day Falk drives to Luke's house, where he had spent a lot of his childhood, noticing that the only other house in sight from the Hadlers' farm is the Deacon's. He introduces himself to the new Sargent, Raco, in one of the barns, reassuring him that he is just looking through the bookkeeping as a family friend. When Raco asks Falk if he knows where Luke might hide an object, Falk intuitively knows to look in Luke's childhood hiding spot, under a weatherboard on the side of the house. Though they do not find anything useful there, Raco discloses that he is looking for ammunition cartridges because the Remington bullets used to kill the Hadlers do not match the Winchesters Luke owned. Falk notices with how much effort Raco has searched the property and figures the case may not be as straightforward as it seemed.

Raco and Falk review the facts of the case. Two weeks ago, today, a delivery person found Karen’s body and made the emergency call. Kiewarra's doctor made it first, then Raco, who searched the rest of the house and found Charlotte crying. Across the hall, Billy’s room “was like a scene from hell” (40). Search and rescue teams were sent out to find Luke, and they found his truck and dead body in a clearing three kilometers from the farm. Raco leads Falk inside the house, which has been industrially cleaned. Based on blood patterns, Karen was answering the door when she was shot. Standing in Billy's room, Luke's old bedroom, Falk reflects on his time spent there as a child. Many believe that Luke's conscience prevented him from killing Charlotte, and even though Falk knew Luke to be moody, he starts to doubt for the first time Luke's guilt. He thinks it is possible that whoever killed the Hadlers left Charlotte alive simply because “thirteen-month-olds don’t make good witnesses” (45).

Falk and Raco are at the Fleece, where Raco shares the case file with Falk. Falk suggests Raco go to the Clyde police with his concerns, but Raco thinks they have too little evidence. Looking at the photos of Luke's truck and body, Falk notices “four faint horizontal streaks” in pairs of two along the inside of the truck bed. According to Jamie, the last person to see Luke, Luke arrived at his farm around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, they shot some rabbits, and Luke left at 4:30 p.m. The emergency call was placed about an hour later. Raco shows Falk security footage of the farm, from a camera Luke installed above a barn. Karen and the children get home at 4:04 p.m., indicated in the video by the arrival of Karen's car. At 5:01 p.m., Luke’s truck is momentarily visible in the frame, and a truck door slams. Both gunshots are heard, and nearly four minutes after Luke's truck appears, it leaves. The driver/shooter is never seen on camera, and Raco cannot understand why Luke would kill his family. 

Before Falk can tell Raco about the Ellie case, Ellie's cousin Grant arrives and berates Falk for appearing in Kiewarra. Deacon, Ellie's father, angrily mistaking Falk for his father, Erik, tells him that “there's nothing here for [him] except a lot of people who remember what [his] son did to [Ellie]” (58). Falk insists that he was Ellie's friend but has never been able to explain the significance of the note found in Ellie's bedroom when she died. On a piece of paper, she had written the name “Falk,” and the date she went missing. To avoid a fight, the bartender kicks Grant and Deacon out.

In a fragmented flashback throughout the chapter, it is revealed that three hikers found Ellie's body washed up on the river trail with her pockets and boots packed with stones. She had been missing for three days. The doctor examining her determined she was most likely in the river since Friday, noticing some wounds consistent with river debris and self-harm. That evening, Luke showed up at Falk's window, asking where he had been. Falk assures him he was fishing, miles from where Ellie was found. Luke told him to lie and say that they were shooting rabbits together.

Falk remembers a day when at the age of 11, he, Luke and Ellie watched Deacon brutally shear his sheep. Grant moved in not long after that to help Deacon with the farm, and Ellie's mother left town two days later.

At the Fleece, Falk admits to Raco that he lied about his alibi for Ellie's murder. He never found out where Luke truthfully was that day, because Luke always insisted they stick to their story. He does not know if Luke killed her and hopes that Ellie's murder is not connected to the Hadlers'. Raco and Falk agree to meet in the morning to interview Jamie. Up in his room at the pub, Falk considers driving back to Melbourne that night but cannot bring himself to disappoint Barb. His own mother had died in childbirth, and “the Hadlers' farm had always been a haven,” with Barb filling the maternal role in his life (67). After contemplating his return to Melbourne, Falk leaves a message to his secretary that he is taking a week of personal leave.