by Rex Burns

“So, why’d you light on this man you killed?” Leonard avoided saying Billy Withers’s name. In Aboriginal law that could call to the victim’s spirit. It was equally important not to say McGrath’s name, since that would identify him to Withers’s ghost.

McGrath gazed through the room’s window into the small compound of the Fitzroy Crossing police station. There wasn’t much to see: the corner of a waist-high cyclone fence, the gray square wall of the neighboring prefab, behind that a spray of wattle trees against the clear sky. Finally he said, “We had some trouble.”

The murder took place near a camp used by Traditional People during the Dry Season. McGrath drove there from the cattle station where he worked and, according to the incident report, clubbed Withers in the back of the head and stabbed him in the chest. Instead of hiding or running, the killer went into the camp. Accompanied by a tribal elder, he then drove to Fitzroy Crossing to turn himself in.

Unable to get anything from McGrath that made sense, Senior Sergeant Cappiello called for an Indigenous constable to interview the man before he was transferred to the Broome Regional Prison. “Bloody Superintendant’s in a world of his own over in Broome. Never tells me a thing. I’ve got enough to handle with drunken miners and property theft! You find out everything McGrath knows. If this is going to stir up trouble among those people, I’d bloody well like to know before the Wet closes down the country.”

“What’s he told you so far?”

“Damned little. Says Billy Withers hired a bone pointer to cast a spell on him. Then he just sits there. You’re an Indigenous Liaison Specialist, Smith. Liaise something out of the bugger.”

* * * *

“Better tell me what kind of trouble.”

The man’s eyes, bloodshot in the sweaty black of his face, moved from the window to some vision on the wall. He drew himself further into his mind.

“What kind of trouble was it?”

Silence.

“Did you go to a spirit doctor to ask about the spell?”

Silence.

“Barney McGrath, tell me about this thing and maybe I can help. If not, you might stare at walls for the rest of your life. Do you hear me, Barney McGrath?”

The sound of his name drew the man’s wide eyes to Leonard. “Stop that! You, Constable Leonard Smith, you stop that, Constable Leonard Smith!”

Leonard stifled a smile at McGrath’s ploy: Withers’s ghost, hearing two names, might not know which man to harm. “Then talk to me. Tell me about the dead man or I’ll talk to his ghost. What kind of trouble did you have with him?”

He took a deep breath as if slowly waking. “Money,” he said softly. “He owed me some money.”

“How much and why?”

Smith had to repeat the question before McGrath replied. “For a job. He paid me half what he promised, but he wouldn’t pay the rest.”

“What kind of job?”

The man glanced at Leonard and then stared intently out the window. “Just a job. Helping him with some work.”

“So for that you killed him? Because he owed you money?”

McGrath shrugged wearily. “No. For because he told me I better stop bothering him. Else he’d get a Law Man to bone me.” A “Law Man” practiced Aboriginal law, and the bone would be from a kangaroo or bush turkey and capable of great harm.

“Is that what the dead man did?”

Another shrug. “Bloke owed me. Fair dinkum. So I asked him again. That’s when the tickle started. He got some bone doctor to point at me.”

Law Man, bone doctor, spirit doctor: the terms slid back and forth. Leonard was ignorant of the nuances of meaning between them, but they all made people afraid. “Do you know who the bone doctor was?”

He muttered. “Lots of them around.”

That was true. Anyone who wanted to do spells could learn some rituals—or pretend to—and call himself a bone doctor; the people had heard enough stories, old and new, to make them believe in spells. Smith himself, despite his ignorance of his mother’s lore, grew uneasy at stories of people sung to illness and finally death.

“Anything else you want to tell me?”

“No.”

* * * *

Senior Sergeant Cappiello looked up as Smith closed the door to the small interview room. “Well?”

“Claims he dunned Withers for some money he was owed and Withers had a spell cast on him to make him stop.”

Cappiello’s heavy sigh rustled the papers on the desk. “So he can claim temporary insanity or some such.”

Leonard nodded. “His lawyer will probably do that. Or self-defense.”

“Self-defense!”

“Feared for his life. Had to save himself by killing the one who hired a bone doctor to cast the spell.” He added, “It’s a recognized defense in Aboriginal law.”

“He’s not being charged under Aboriginal law—he’s under civilized law!”

“Civilized” law had more odd corners than Aboriginal law, and “civilized” people were good at cutting them, but Smith tried not to let that thought show. Instead, he murmured, “I’d like to find out more about this business.”

“Why?”

He started to tell Cappiello about a sense of something amiss ... of McGrath’s mind, seemingly dull and removed, but working swiftly ... swiftly enough to fool a hovering ghost, swiftly enough to fool a copper.... But the sergeant preferred facts to feelings. Solid flesh could be hauled into court and thrown into prison. Spirit lore wasn’t even listed under the seven hundred or so sections of the Criminal Code in the Western Australia Consolidated Acts. “Knowing more about the bone pointing might tell us if Withers’s death will stir up revenge killings.”

The senior sergeant’s “Christ!” was less curse than surrender. “All right. I’ll budget for your petrol. But I want that information before the bloody Wet!”

* * * *

Billy Withers’s camp was used from April to November. When the land flooded in the summer’s Wet, the inhabitants moved into the more permanent communities of clan members. If the camp had a name, only those who lived there knew it; to Leonard, it was Bore No. 7, a well dug by white settlers during cattle-drive days. In a straight line on the map it wasn’t too far from Fitzroy Crossing. But on the ground there was no straight line, so it was mid-afternoon before Smith eased his dusty ute past a hand painted “No Grog” sign to a weary, creaking halt.

Old beer cans and broken bottles were scattered at the foot of the sign; humpies of limbs and grass served for sleeping, open fires for cooking. The thin shade of water-starved pindan trees formed the village commons.

Three or four shirtless boys ran to peer through the ute’s windows, then trotted behind Smith as he walked toward the pindans. Picking out the grizzled beards of three seated figures watching him, he guessed that was the men’s area and the graybeards were elders. Showing no haste, he nodded “G’day,” shook hands, and traded names. Then he squatted beside them. After a polite silence, he said, “Need to ask about some bad business that happened lately: Barney McGrath and that bloke he killed.”

The men shifted slightly. If they had been birds, their feathers would have lifted in unease. “Why d’you need to know? McGrath did it, right?”

The one who spoke, Jack, had an old scar that ran across his nose and one cheek and disappeared into the white of his beard. Under the thick ridge of his brow, his rheumy gaze avoided Leonard and the alien white law he represented—or perhaps the alien white blood evident in Smith’s skin.

“Need to know why McGrath did it. Need to know if there’s going to be any getting even for what he did.”

A hot breeze rattled the leaves. Finally Jack answered less to Smith than to the horizon. “We don’t know much about that killed one. We’re Yulparija people.”

“But he lived here—wasn’t he Yulparija?”

One of the other men, Walter Carter, answered. “Jiwarli. Came here four, five winters ago.” Carter stared directly at Smith. Gray hair and beard framed a lean face, and his calm, dark eyes seemed to reach into Leonard’s mind. “Married a Yulparija woman.” His self-assurance and the glistening pattern of tribal scars across the black skin beneath the open shirt told Smith he was facing a Law Man. The curly hair at the back of Leonard’s skull lifted and he forced his eyes from Carter’s to concentrate on a tree trunk and let the feeling pass. A line of ants ran busily from the red sand up the twisted wood somewhere into the leaves.

Carter said, “Like us, the Jiwarli man called this land ‘father.’ But we know more about those ants than about him.”

The ant tree was behind Carter, and Smith wondered if the man had, indeed, reached into his mind. If so, the Law Man should also see his puzzlement. “Why do you think McGrath killed him?”

This time Carter’s eyes shifted away, and Smith felt his shoulders loosen with relief.

Danny Wallaby, the skin of his face dusted gray with age, said harshly, “We don’t know why.”

We, not I. Leonard wondered why these three were making a pocket in which everything known about Billy Withers could be hidden. “Is his wife here? It’s best if she talks to me now so we don’t have to go to the gaol and talk there.”

Carter finally said, “The women’s area.” He turned to one of the boys hovering at a respectful distance and said something in Yulparija. The boy ran toward another patch of trees. A few minutes later he came back and murmured to Carter, who nodded and pointed toward an open-sided sun shelter of woven branches. “She meet you over there.”

Mrs. Withers, thin as a skeleton, walked slowly to the shelter. Leonard, awkward in his ignorance of the rituals and special languages to be used at a time of mourning, tried not to sound stiffly official: “G’day, Mrs. Withers. I’m Constable Smith and I need to ask a few questions.” He guessed he wasn’t entirely successful: The woman drew her cotton dress tighter across bony shoulders and stared at the ground.

Smith tried a gentler tone, “Thank you for sitting down with me. I’m sorry this thing happened to you. My name’s Leonard. What’s your name?”

She drew a deep breath and said softly, “Jane.”

“Jane. How long were you married to your husband, Jane?”

“How long?” She looked around. Across the sand, squatting shadows stared their way. “Five years, maybe.”

“I hope he left good memories.” She did not respond. The scar on her lip and a missing tooth or two could indicate why. “How did you meet him?”

“Up in Hall’s Creek.” Her voice grew even softer, “He told good stories.”

Smith nodded. “He was Jiwarli?”

A nod.

“Does his mob live around here?”

Glancing toward the figures under the trees, she shrugged. “No. His people were chased off when he was little.”

“I thought this was Yulparija land—your land.”

“It is Yulparija land. But Jiwarli claim it too. Long time ago, used to be fights between us mob and them about it.”

“He had no people at all?”

“His family died off a long time ago. A gadia said he was maybe the last Jiwarli.”

Gadia: white man. “When was this?”

“March—maybe April. End of the Wet.”

“A gadia came out here to tell him that?”

“No—Hall’s Creek.”

“The gadia came to Hall’s Creek to talk with your husband?”

“Looked for him there, yes.”

Leonard considered that. “Was your husband upset that the Yulparija are on the land?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes grog upset him. He’d get sad or angry. But this camp wasn’t in his people’s Dreaming. No water back then. Drovers dug the bore for cattle drives.”

“Where was the Jiwarli Dreaming?”

Her slender fingers gestured toward the western horizon. “He said lots of places. Over that way.”

Leonard looked at the map in his mind. “Toward Red Bluff Homestead?”

She nodded. “That station, yeah. But whites took the land. Chased people away.”

“Are Yulparija Dreaming places over there too?”

Another nod.

The history and the loss were familiar stories. “Did he owe McGrath money?”

“Don’t know—men’s business.”

“Who might know?”

She shrugged. “McGrath. Don’t know why my husband would borrow money. We got plenty tucker here. Kangaroo, bush turkey, goanna, witchetty grubs, snakes—plenty. We don’t need much money here!”

“Your husband didn’t borrow money. He was paying McGrath for a job.”

The dark eyes blinked but she said nothing.

“Do you know what the job was?”

“A job?”

Smith waited.

“Don’t know what job.” Her puzzlement seemed genuine.

“Did your husband get CDEP money?” Working on a Community Development Employment Project was a way for men to earn a little cash.

“No. No projects here.”

“What about cash welfare?

“No cash no more. Just these debt cards now.”

The debit cards were the government’s latest attempt to ensure that welfare monies went to food and children’s education instead of to grog. More women than men favored the idea. “After killing your husband, who did McGrath talk with?”

Her voice became emphatic. “Don’t know! That’s men’s business—you ask them!”

In traditional communities, women, even children, could be beaten for knowing too much about men’s business. Leonard nodded. “Is Mrs. McGrath a Yulparija?”

“No. Yawuru.”

Another community member through marriage, and—depending upon her clan—possibly related to Leonard through his Yawuru mother. “Is she here?”

“No. Lives at Red Bluff Homestead. Only comes here now and then.”

“Does her mob live in Rubibi?” He used the Aboriginal name for the town of Broome.

“Maybe—that’s Yawuru place. Maybe Derby.” Dismissal entered her voice. “She don’t like the bush. Likes flash things. Television, toilets, that kind of thing. Wants to send her son to school. Learn him to be white fella.”

“This gadia who said your husband might be the last Jiwarli, do you know his name?”

She thought. “No. Maybe some anthro-bloke. Maybe a journo.”

Anthropologist. Journalist. Both disliked for stealing Dreamtime stories and writing them down to sell for lots of money. “Did he ask for Jiwarli stories?”

Another long pause. “Don’t know ... They talked about old days. Maybe some Dreamtime stories. Don’t know.”

“Anything more you can tell me about why McGrath did what he did, Jane?”

“No.”

Leonard thanked the woman and watched her almost run toward the shelter of the women’s area. Then he trudged back to the trio of elders. Danny Wallaby glared up at the copper. “Get what you came for?”

“Some of it. Who went with McGrath to Fitzroy Crossing?”

Walter Carter looked up. “Me.”

And, according to the incident report, returned with the police to show them the body. “He just walked into camp and told you what he did?”

Carter nodded.

“What time of day was this?”

“One, maybe two hours before sunset.”

Five, six in the afternoon. If they drove immediately to the police station they would have arrived at Fitzroy Crossing about midnight. But McGrath was locked up just after noon—meaning he stayed overnight in this camp, plenty of time to talk about what happened. “Did McGrath tell you why he killed the man?”

“The dead man pointed a bone at him.”

Leonard nodded. “Did McGrath say why the dead man owed him money?”

“Some work.”

“Or where the dead man got his money?”

Carter’s gaze sharpened as he probed into Leonard’s eyes. Smith expected that and gazed back unblinking.

“He did not tell me.”

Leonard let silence work for him. Then, “I need to see where McGrath killed the man. And you and me, Walter, we need to talk. Take me—we’ll talk there.”

Carter’s breathing paused. The other two were intensely aware of the Law Man without looking directly at him. Leonard watched Carter weigh losing status if he showed fear of a policeman or of visiting a death site. “It’s a bad place now.”

“My law takes me to bad places. If your law is strong, it protects you there.”

The man grunted, then stood. “This way.”

There was nothing special about the site: an isolated savannah of kangaroo grass brittle with drought and dotted here and there by prickle bush, cotton trees, and tall termite mounds. It had been almost a week, but Leonard could see where vehicle tires mashed down the orange grass and wandering feet bent paths that converged on an empty flat spot. Walter Carter leaned on his stick and averted his eyes from the patch of broken stems.

A circle of turned-over earth was at one corner of the spot. Leonard guessed it was the site of a purification ceremony. Such rites often made use of a fire pit and smoke from konkerberry leaves, though he had never heard of smoking a murder site. But his civilized education had left him ignorant of much lore; in the words of his mother’s people, he had lost his Dreaming in the white man’s world. “You smoked this place?”

Carter glanced at the disturbed sand and nodded once.

“And now the dead man’s ghost is at rest.”

The Law Man said nothing; the results of his magic were secret.

“Some things bother me,” said Leonard. “First, McGrath claims to be worried about the dead man’s ghost. But if the ghost was smoked maybe he doesn’t have to worry anymore.” He waited but the only reply was the calm gaze. “Second is money—the dead man paid McGrath for a job and promised more. But the dead man didn’t earn any CDEP money. So where did he get money to pay McGrath? Or to pay a bone doctor to point at McGrath?”

The Law Man blinked and turned silently to stride back to the men’s camp.

Leonard watched him disappear through the grass. Then he returned to his ute, spread out his swag, cooked his supper, and thought.

* * * *

The next morning, after six hours of slow driving, Leonard’s ute ground up a dry stream bed between two shelves of rock. The Red Bluff Homestead, where McGrath and his wife worked, lay where the Great Sandy Desert met the St. George Range. During the Wet, the stream ran for months and cut off the homestead with flood and mud. This time of year, it was an arid and sun-scalded land that provided poor grazing for cattle. What little water remained was hard to find, and deep under the soil.

Old tracks led up the embankment to weave through widely spaced shrubs, patches of green spinifex, and past tall rocklike termite mounds. Finally Leonard saw a cluster of buildings sheltered by gum trees. Behind the buildings, a bluff gave the homestead its name. Residence, sheep pens, outbuildings, two sun-worn caravans on cinder blocks, a stock tank and a windmill to fill it. By the time he halted, the two dogs had stopped barking and sidled head-down toward the ute with their tails wagging tentatively. A boy around eight or nine stood on the veranda and stared.

Giving the dogs a few seconds to sniff his legs, Leonard nodded. “G’day. Is your dad about?”

Without a word, the boy turned back into the house. A moment later, Leonard heard his voice, “Mum—”

He went up the three plank steps and waited with his hat off, grateful for the aroma of eucalyptus and the breeze that dried the sweat in his hair. The heat and humidity, growing heavier each day as the weather built to the coming monsoon, explained Sergeant Cappiello’s sense of urgency.

Heels thumped. A woman in her late thirties and worn thin with labor and harsh climate stood behind the plastic fly strips guarding the door. “Something you need?”

“G’day, Mrs. Howitt. I’m Constable Smith. Don’t like to bother you, but I have to ask Mrs. McGrath a few questions. Is she about?”

The woman’s eyes were pale blue in her sun-browned face. “Elaine’s gone.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“Back to her people.”

“Would that be near Broome?”

She shook her head quickly. “I don’t know. Wherever her people are.”

Leonard looked around the yard. “Can I ask you some questions? You and your husband?”

“He’s out in the paddock.” Either respecting his uniform or the fact he was half-white, she remembered outback hospitality and nodded toward a scatter of large wooden chairs. “Sit down.” Over her shoulder, “Richard, go fetch your dad.” To Leonard: “You could use something cool to drink.”

“I could, Mrs. Howitt. Thank you.”

In the heat, insects creaked in the brush. Beneath the veranda a dog scratched, leg thumping the cool dirt. Flies hung languid and numerous in the humidity. Mrs. Howitt elbowed through the plastic strips in the doorway with two tins of beer cooled by damp stubbies. “Very nice,” said Leonard. “And much appreciated.”

The woman sipped and gazed at the heat-shimmering horizon. Her mind was on something else. “We don’t have the death sentence anymore.”

Leonard took another drink. Capital punishment ceased thirty or forty years ago. “McGrath’ll get prison. Sometimes that’s worse than death.”

She glanced at one of the anchored caravans. “That’s where they lived—six years, now. Barney was a good worker, him and Elaine both.” She added, “They have a son, Tommy—bright little fellow.” Then, “This is going to hurt him so much.”

“Did you know Billy Withers? Or about any business he and McGrath had?”

“No. None of us did. They keep a lot to themselves, they do—live in two worlds.” She added, “I told Elaine that she and Tommy could stay, but she didn’t want to.”

A crunch of boots scrambled the dogs from under the porch as Howitt came around the corner. His broad hat was stained with sweat and a dark V wet his shirtfront. “G’day. Me son says you’re asking after Barney. How’s he doing?” Mrs. Howitt went inside and came out with two more beers. Her husband threw one down his throat, then sipped another more slowly as he settled into a chair. “He holding up okay?”

“As well as can be expected. Do you have any idea why McGrath did it?”

“No. A bloody surprise—leaves me shorthanded at the worst time.”

“You didn’t know he left the station?”

“No. He came and went as he wanted, as long’s the work was done.” He explained, “He had his own ute—his wife has it now.”

“She drives?”

“Yeah—town Abo. Has some schooling, anyway.”

The tiny pee-wee call of a distant magpie lark drifted on the wind.

“How’d you hear about the killing?”

“Radiophone—Sergeant Cappiello.”

“Are there any bone pointers around that McGrath might have talked with?”

Howitt’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “Nearest permanent black-fella community’s forty or fifty kilometers from here. But during the Dry, sit-down camps are scattered wherever there’s a water hole. Is that what all this is about? Bloody witchcraft?”

“Some of it. Are there any sacred sites around here?”

“To them every damn thing’s sacred around here.” His head jerked toward the bluff behind the house. “Used to be they’d go up there every year for a ceremony. Had to keep the cattle safe from ‘em!”

“They stopped using the site?”

“My father finally chased them off. Thirty years ago now, and good riddance.” Then, more philosophically, “Well, forty thousand years of walkabout and storytelling can put meaning in every rock. This station’s sacred to me after only three generations of sweat, I tell you that.”

“Did McGrath ever talk of doing a job for Billy Withers?”

“Never talked about Withers at all. Not to me, anyway.”

“How about to any of the other blokes?”

“Aren’t any.” His thumb jabbed toward the empty caravans. “Can’t hire a white man to work out here. And since the bloody government makes us pay white-fella wages to the Abos, I can’t afford any more blacks, either. And now Barney’s gone.”

“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary? Was McGrath worried or upset?”

“Don’t think so. He had his work, I had mine, so we only saw each other a couple times a day. Now I do both, and I have a lot more to do while it’s still light.”

Leonard ignored the hint. “He didn’t complain about feeling sick?”

“Said something about not sleeping too well. I told him to work a little harder, see if that helped.”

“Did McGrath like working here?”

“I’d say so. We treated them decent—they came back every year. This was their sixth season.”

“They didn’t live here during the Wet?”

“Not enough work then.”

Many stations cut to skeleton crews from November to March. “Do you know where they went?”

“No.”

“And he never mentioned Billy Withers?”

“I told you. No.”

* * * *

Leonard drove down the streambed and pulled out near a clump of trees to camp. Rolling out his swag, he heated his billycan over the small butane stove as he fished his evening meal out of the Esky. Though his hands did the work, his mind went back to the murder site, its isolation, its fire pit, the ritual—probably a lengthy one—that protected the living from the angry spirit of the dead. By the time he finished washing up, he could not have said what he’d just eaten. But he did have the germ of an idea.

The Bone Pointer, Walter Carter, had rituals and songs, but Leonard had a little magic of his own: the new satellite phone that had been issued for use in remote areas. The first call was to his cousin Thelma in Broome, the daughter of his mother’s sister. The second was a message for Sergeant Cappiello, “Please check with the Kimberley Land Council for any claims involving Jiwarli land in the last two years.”

In the cool of morning as he fried his brekkie, he vaguely remembered falling asleep to the distant howls of dingoes. But his memory of talking with his cousin was sharp. The story of Billy Withers’s death and McGrath’s arrest had made the Broome newspaper and radio station. Elaine McGrath was at her mother’s house in neighboring Goolarabooloo, and Thelma heard from a cousin living there that Elaine told a friend she expected her husband to serve only short time in jail. And that she was going to send their son to boarding school. It was hearsay, rumor, gossip, and worthless in court. But it added a piece to the picture Leonard was beginning to see.

Later, as he drove toward Bore No. 7, Sergeant Cappiello rang his satphone and plugged in another piece.

Leonard found Walter Carter seated in the men’s area carefully picking pituri leaves from a pile of wiry stems. Leonard nodded “G’day” and sat on the sand across from the man. “You remember I had questions about the dead man and money?” When Carter did not reply, he said, “You’re going to testify that the dead man asked you to bone Barney McGrath, aren’t you?”

The Law Man gently tugged a few more leaves. Then, “Yes.”

“There’s no white man’s law against ritual. But the court will listen to Indigenous beliefs and consider them during sentencing.”

More leaves went on the pile. Pituri, high in nicotine, was a potent bush medicine as well as ceremonial drug. Traditionally, the leaves were chewed for energy on long walks, as a preparation for fighting, as part of the circumcision rites. Leonard wasn’t sure how this Spirit Doctor intended to use them, other than as an excuse for not answering.

“But a lot more things puzzle me, Walter. Why did a gadia visit the dead man? What kind of job was it that the dead man could not do himself? Where did the dead man get money to pay McGrath? What happened between the time of the killing and when you and McGrath reached Fitzroy Crossing the next day?” He waited for a reply, but the Spirit Doctor picked at the branch in silence. “Maybe there was no bone pointing. Maybe the dead man had no job—or money—for McGrath. Maybe McGrath killed the man for some other reason.”

Carter looked up at Leonard and seemed to grow taller even as he sat. Leonard imagined heat radiating from the glistening black of the Spirit Doctor’s face and neck. He stroked the satphone in his shirt pocket like an amulet and went on.

“Maybe the reason has to do with the dead man filing a claim for part of the Red Bluff Homestead four months ago. He claimed that a Jiwarli ceremonial site was on that station and he wanted to excise that block of land. Use it to bring the remaining Jiwarli together again.”

Carter’s voice was a murmur, “It’s not only Jiwarli place. It’s Yulparija too—been Yulparija from Dreamtime. Our Rai lives there, in the ground.”

“Rai?”

Carter’s shoulders lifted in a sigh, perhaps at Leonard’s ignorance of his mother’s lore. “Birth Spirit—Conception Spirit. The fertility of our people.” After a moment, he added, “Without it, our people will disappear. Like Jiwarli. Like so many others.”

“Do the Jiwarli believe their Rai is there too?”

“No. It was ceremony place for them too. But I don’t know their Dreaming, so I don’t know what ceremony it was. Long time ago Yulparija Law Men and Jiwarli Law Men stopped fighting over that place. They said it could be shared because it held different Dreamings. But the dead man broke that law.”

“How’s that?”

“Like you said, he put a claim on that place. But not for Jiwarli—no Jiwarli left. It was for him: grog money.”

“But if he claimed it, couldn’t you still share it?”

“White man wants to mine that place. Put holes in the ground where our Rai lives.”

“Howitt?”

“No. Howitt’s grandfather promised Yulparija that the place would always be sacred if they did not fight him or kill his cattle. And Howitt promised me it would not be mined.”

Leonard scanned the possibilities. “The gadia who talked with the dead man wants to mine it? But it’s a ceremonial site for the Yulparija, too! Couldn’t you put a claim on it?”

“You know the West Australia mineral law? What it means for Aboriginal land titles?”

“Is that the law that says mine operators need permission from white land owners before they dig, but not from Aboriginal land owners?”

Carter nodded. “Mining company can dig their holes on Aboriginal land. It means roads be cut across Howitt’s station. His water used up for mining.”

Leonard considered that. “Howitt promised you he would not allow mining?”

The Law Man said nothing.

“Then you and McGrath invented the bone pointing story ... and Howitt paid McGrath to kill...”

“No. He be giving Elaine McGrath money while her husband is in prison. Like McGrath is working for him, just working in prison.”

“Hell of a bloody job, that! So afterwards you purified McGrath and the dead man’s ghost, and came up with this bone pointing story?”

Again Carter said nothing. The silence left Constable Smith without a statement he could attest to and no confession other than McGrath’s to be brought into court. “It’s a gamble, Walter—and a big one—whether a white judge will take McGrath’s self-defense plea. He could serve life instead of a few years.” He waited for Carter to reply, but the man just stared back. Finally, Leonard asked, “Did Barney McGrath do it himself, or did he have help?”

Smith wasn’t certain if the man smiled slightly or just clamped his lips. From Walter Carter’s point of view, Billy Withers had been willing to drive off the Yulparija’s Rai and had been killed in defense of the Yulparija people. It was a twisted argument, but this land had spirits whose demands White law could not satisfy. And there were things that police science could not teach.

* * * *

On the long drive back to Fitzroy Crossing, the air began to feel like wool and itched with electricity. Above the northern horizon a massive heave of cloud slowly boiled up to gleam against the hot sky. Below it, smaller clouds—flat and gray—scudded before. Inside the rising mountain, the roiling force was purple-dark with pink and blue flashes of lightning. The god of storms was once more bringing rain to the parched land, mixing the awesome terrors of cyclone, lightning, and flood with the blessings of fertility.

The buildup was over, the monsoon was arriving—a mix of threat and life. The thought fit Constable Smith’s thoughts about the murder of Billy Withers. If McGrath was happy with free room and board for ten or so years, then everybody except the mining company and perhaps Jane Withers was happy: white man’s law was satisfied, McGrath’s wife could move back to Broome, his son would have an education, Howitt would keep his station and its water, the Rai would keep its sacred home, and Walter Carter’s Yulparija clan would survive. And Sergeant Cappiello would be happy to have no revenge killings.

Author’s Note: Thanks to Terry Thornett for his key contributions.