The Dog

"I should have known better." John shook his head.

"What's that, sorry?" The detective sat down across from John and opened his notebook, crossing a line under the notes he'd taken earlier in the day.

"The last guy said I'd be out of here soon, and the guy before him said he'd just needed to check on one thing and I could go."

"Yeah, they had some issues putting together the timeline of events. Why don't you tell me again. This time from the start"

"I don't know how many times you are going to have me tell you the same thing over and over again. I've explained it five times since you brought me to the station" John rubbed his temples. "I've been in the bush for nearly two weeks. I'm so tired. I want to go home."

The detective pushed a cup of coffee across the table and smiled, "I know. It's my boss, you know how it is. I know you're tired and hurting right now, but this was high profile. You were lost for almost two weeks, and the media were all over it. The higher-ups want to confirm that there's no fault on the part of the property owner where they found you or with the council where you started." The detective rolled the pen in his hands and then smiled, "You know it wouldn't be such an issue if you were gone a day. But two weeks is crazy. You have to understand that, right?"

John nodded, then sighed, "Yeah, OK, I get that. But honestly, this has to be the last time I tell the story. I'm so tired, I want to get home to my family."

The detective took a deep breath and then nodded with a polite smile, "Why don't you start from the beginning, John? I'll tape this one, that way we have a record of it, and you don't have to say it again to another detective. Agreed?" John nodded, and the detective pressed a button on a tape recorder in the centre of the table.

"Detective Jim Kent present with John Wilkes, interview six pm October the second."

"Is it really October?"

"It is, John, yes." The detective nodded. "So let's go back to two weeks ago. Why were you at the lake?"

John took a deep breath and said, "We were camping."

"And 'we' is?"

"My wife, myself and my dog"

"The dog's name?"

John paused, "Max."

"Max?"

"Yeah."

"That short for anything?"

"No... Just Max. Is that important?"

"No, just curious. Continue."

"Right. So we went camping, and I decided I was going to take Max for a walk. He's at that point where he just runs around like crazy, so I went to let him burn off some steam" John took a sip of coffee and continued, "We went down by the river to look at a waterfall. It's the one you see on all those souvenir postcards at the post office in town."

"I know the one."

"Yeah, so I took him to go see it"

"The dog?"

"Yeah, he loves water." John paused. He turned his head and saw his reflection staring back at him from the mirror on the wall. "Many people behind that?"

"No, just us. Why feel like someone's watching"

John nodded. "Felt like it since I sat down."

"Maybe one or two people have looked in, but I wouldn't worry about it. What happened next?"

"He got loose," John said at once, then he went quiet and said softly, "He ran into the bush, and I chased after him. When I caught up to him, we were deep into the tree line."

"How far do you think you were from the waterfall?"

"Pretty far at this point, I couldn't hear it any more."

"So you got lost?"

John nodded, "Yeah. I knew we wouldn't be too far from the waterfall we didn't run that far. The campsite wasn't too far from the waterfall, so we were close. But I wasn't one hundred per cent sure what direction I'd even come from... So I just started walking"

"Which direction?"

John shrugged, "I don't know. I can't really recall what direction the sun even sets, the east, right?"

The detective shook his head, "No, the sun sets in the west."

"See, I was at a disadvantage from the beginning."

The detective wrote a note down on his notepad, "How long do you think you walked before you knew you were lost?"

"Not that long. An hour, maybe less. The bush got thicker, and when Max ran off, we weren't that far from where we set up camp, so I knew almost right away."

"Did you scream out?"

"No, not at first?"

"Why?"

"I didn't want to scare Max"

The detective nodded. "Was he leashed?"

"Sorry?"

"The dog, was he leashed?"

"Oh..." John thought for a long time. "I don't know. I don't think so, not at that point"

"Did he have a leash?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you say he got loose. So he was wearing a leash?"

John rested his elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand, "He must have. I don't think I would have taken him out that far without one. I don't... I don't recall having one but..."

The detective nodded. "That's OK. Why don't you walk me through that first night? What happened? You had food with you?"

"I did, yeah" John nodded slowly. "I grabbed the bag with the food we packed, so there were a few jars of it in the bag"

"Enough for a week?"

"Roughly, yeah. My wife is an over-packer, so we always have a lot more than we need when we do things like this"

"Not enough for two?"

"No," John said quickly and much louder than he had wanted to say it. "I didn't think we would need to ration it for two weeks, so the first few nights we were out there I fed Max as normal."

"Did you eat any of the food?"

John shook his head. "Not at first. It didn't look appetising."

"But you did eat it eventually?"

John nodded again. "On the third night, even the ants were looking tasty."

The detective wrote something down, then looked back up into John's eyes. "John, at what point did you think you were never going to get out of the bush?"

After a long time in silence, John leant back in his chair, crossed his arms and looked down at his feet "I was confident we'd be found every day. I woke up every day knowing that was the day we'd be found. The last day that happened was day ten"

"Was that the day the food ran out?"

John nodded slowly.

The detective flipped through his notes and turned to another page in his book. "You said in the last interview with my Sergeant that that's when the dog started to annoy you. Max. What did he start doing?"

"What didn't he do? That little bastard, he was just awful..." John took a deep breath. "Sorry. It's been a long day. He would run around; he yapped all day. At least when we had food, there were periods of quiet. I guess when he had something to eat, then he would settle for a bit. But then he'd get his energy back and go right back to being..."

"Awful?"

John nodded, "Yeah"

The detective pointed to John's leg, "They had to stitch you up before they brought you in here. Looks kind of fresh. When did that happen?"

John looked down at his leg, "Day twelve."

"How did it happen?"

"He was running around my legs, begging for food. He just wouldn't stop his yapping." John put his head in his hands. "I screamed at him to shut the fuck up, and he just wouldn't. He just kept yapping. I wasn't paying attention, and I tripped down a fairly sizeable ledge and landed on a branch, and it went right through the meat in my leg." John motioned to his leg, "What's that part called, not the calf, the calf is lower down."

"Hamstring... Thigh maybe."

"Thigh. Yeah, let's go with that. It hurt like hell." John looked down at the floor. "I couldn't move much after that. If we were moving five kilometres a day before that, then after that we only moved one or two."

"Max was still with you at this point at day thirteen?"

John nodded.

"But not after?"

John shook his head and started to cry, "He was so young."

Neither of them spoke. The tape kept turning between them.

The detective calmly asked, "John. What happened to Max?"

"I had to. I wasn't going to live if I didn't do it."

The detective nodded, then turned off the tape recorder and reached out and grabbed John's hand. "We can stop now, John. I have everything I need. I'll talk to my boss now, and we'll see about getting you out of this room."

John nodded and wiped the tears from his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm just... It's just. I want to see my family. Where are they?"

"John." The detective paused. "Why don't you finish that cup of coffee and I'll see where they are. Do you need anything else?"

John shook his head.

The detective stood, closed his notepad, and walked out without looking back at John. Behind the door, he stopped and put his back flat against the door until the shakes in his hand settled. When they did, he turned and walked through to the observation room.

Behind the glass, his Sergeant was waiting.

"Good work, Detective."

"Thank you, Sergeant."

"You look like you believe the bastard"

"I do, actually"

"Hmm. He'll probably get off on insanity then."

"I don't think he's insane. He's been out in the bush for nearly two weeks. He's dehydrated, starving, sleep-deprived. I think he just can't come to grips with what he's actually done."

"Hmm" The Sergeant nodded, "Did you call the wife?"

"I did"

"Does she know?"

The detective shook his head. "Didn't seem appropriate to tell her this over the phone." He took a flask out of his pocket and drank. He looked through the glass at John, still turning the coffee cup in his hands like it was the only thing left he knew how to do. "I wish I had. Because I don't know how I'm going to look that woman in the eye and tell her that her husband ate their son."