The Dry

Falk returns to his room above the pub. He thinks of how city people like Whitlam’s family aren’t used to the quiet of the country like Kiewarra. Falk thinks about a day five years ago when he saw Luke in Melbourne.

On that day in Melbourne, Luke is just getting out of a supplier’s convention when he goes to meet Falk at a pub. Luke asks Falk about how he’s dealing with his father’s death, which happened a year ago. Falk is surprised but grateful that Luke cared enough to ask.

Still five years ago, Falk happens to mention to Luke that he was recently investigating a financial case about a woman who drowned. This brings up Ellie, and Falk asks if Luke would ever tell him the truth about where he was on the day of the murders. Luke maintains he was shooting rabbits, then he says if this topic was coming up again, he wants to know if Falk’s own story about fishing that day was true. Falk says it was.

Back in the present, Falk reads a paperback crime novel before bed, which is one of Karen’s overdue library books that he hasn’t had a chance to return yet. He finds a receipt in the book, showing that Karen checked the book out February 19, four days before she died. When Falk flips the receipt over, he sees that Karen wrote “Grant??” (presumably Grant Dow) and underlined it three times. Then she wrote a 10-digit phone number below it. The phone number is Falk’s own.