Page 11 of The Bait

August and Jake had a quick poke around the shed; the shovels, chainsaw, and tools all arranged neatly, nothing out of place. Michael’s doing, August would bet. Everything was meticulous.

At the back of the house, where the land sloped downward to the forest, there were two large water storage tanks amidst the piers under the large veranda overhead. They were half-buried, which wasn’t unusual, but August stared at them, not sure why they bothered him.

“What’s that face for?” Jake asked.

“They’re what? Ninety thousand litres each?”

Jake shrugged. “Yeah. Metal for fire safety. Ya gotta have them now. What about them?”

“Then what are those?” he pointed to the two other tanks beside the house. “Another ninety thousand litres each. That’s three hundred and sixty thousand litres of water storage.”

“House usage, gardens, fire regulation,” Jake said, shrugging again.

August wasn’t convinced. “Hm. Maybe.” He walked down to the other tanks. He remembered at Christmas time when they’d been out here last, the expensive excavator, the grounds work. To dig for the septic tank and drainage line, and they’d just put in a bore for groundwater, Michael had said.

He remembered Michael working in the blistering sun in December, trying to fix a water valve. That had struck August as odd back then, like something didn’t make sense until now.

August walked around the tanks until he found the water valve in question. It would switch the flow over between tanks; most tanks had them.

“Bring the ladder,” he called out.

Jake did as he was asked, but he clearly thought August was reading too much into it. He put the ladder to the side of the first tank and began to climb up. “What am I looking for?”

“There’ll be an inlet hole at the top, maybe with a strainer grate to stop leaves,” August said.

“Yes, like there is on all tanks.”

August resisted grumbling. “Shine your torch in. Tell me what you see.”

A few seconds later came his reply. “Water. I see water.”

“And this tank?”

Jake climbed across and inspected the second tank. “Uh, water.”

Dammit.

Jake climbed down. “Sometimes a water tank is just a water tank.” He took his torch and tapped the tank. “See? Full of water.” Then he tapped the second tank.

Only the sound it made was different.

Hollow.

What the hell?

Jake tapped it again and his eyes met August’s. “What the hell?”

“My thought exactly.” August walked around the tank again, looking for any abnormalities, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There was a seam in the metal joined with rivets. Like he’d seen a hundred times before.

The only other thing on that tank was the water valve. It was a lever handle, so August turned it.

Water came out the release outlet, so he shut it off again. Thinking, thinking...

“Remember when we came here in December, Michael was working on this. He had a huge wrench, said some bullshit about not being able to open the valve.”

Jake nodded. “Yeah. In summer, when connections swell?—”

“Why does this have two valves?”

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