Wife Wanted | Serial Killer Crocodile Farmer

The rain always arrived with a smell before it arrived with clouds.

Most people thought it was the eucalyptus. The old blokes down at The Sportsman insisted you could taste it in the air if you'd lived in the Territory long enough, though Lachie had never been able to decide whether they actually believed that or simply enjoyed pretending they knew things other people didn't. Either way, by the time the paperbarks began whispering against one another and the cockatoos abandoned the treetops for lower branches, he already knew the wet season had finally reached Blackwater.

It suited him.

Rain had a way of making the world feel smaller.

The tourists disappeared first, then the fishermen, then the four-wheel drives that rattled endlessly along the highway all through the dry months. Roads closed. Rivers swallowed crossings. Phone lines crackled in and out whenever they pleased. Eventually there was nothing left beyond the farm except water, bush and silence.

Lachie had always liked silence.

There weren't many people who could say they'd spent their whole lives in one place anymore. Most left as soon as they were old enough, chasing bigger towns, bigger paychecks, bigger lives. Blackwater had never asked him to be anything except exactly what he already was. It gave him work from sunrise until long after sunset, kept his hands rough, his shoulders sore and his mind pleasantly occupied. The crocodiles needed feeding whether the world ended or not. Fences still broke. Pumps still failed. Bread still had to be baked. There was comfort in that kind of certainty.

The loaf he'd left in the oven before daylight was finally cool enough to slice by the time he finished checking the hatchlings. He cut himself two thick pieces without thinking, spread butter across one while the other sat untouched on the opposite side of the table, exactly where it always did. It wasn't until he reached for the second mug beside the kettle that he caught himself.

A faint smile touched his mouth before he shook his head and slid the empty mug back into the cupboard.

It would happen one day, there was no rush. He could wait a little longer.

People in Red Creek liked to tease him whenever he drove into town for supplies. Old Mick never missed an opportunity to ask when he was finally going to bring a wife home, usually loud enough that half the pub turned to look, while Mary Collins had long since stopped pretending she wasn't adding women's toiletries to his grocery bags every Christmas "just in case." They all thought he was lonely.

They weren't wrong.

The farmhouse had been built for more than one person. You could feel it in the empty rocking chair on the veranda, in the nursery at the end of the hallway where sunlight pooled across polished timber floors every afternoon, in the second wardrobe that had sat waiting for years with nothing hanging inside it. Some houses wanted to be lived in.

Blackwater wanted a family.

Lachie intended to give it one.

He stepped out onto the veranda with his tea just as the first drops finally struck the tin roof overhead, slow at first, scattered enough to count individually before the sky seemed to split open all at once. Within minutes the wetlands beyond the house blurred into a grey haze, rain falling so heavily that the far fences vanished completely behind it. Somewhere down near the eastern lagoons, one of the bigger crocodiles slipped into the water with a heavy splash that echoed through the storm.

"Good timin'," he murmured.

Floodwater moved quickly out here.

By nightfall the crossing would be underwater and by morning there wouldn't be a road left to see.

It was strange how often people underestimated rivers.

They'd look at a map, see a thin blue line and imagine something gentle enough to step across. They forgot rivers were alive. Rivers waited all year for someone to make one stupid decision, then took everything they were offered without apology.

Crocodiles weren't so different. Neither was he.

Movement caught his eye, just beyond the entrance gate to the farm.

At first he thought it was another wallaby pushing through the scrub until two weak headlights flickered uncertainly through the curtain of rain. They appeared only briefly before lurching sideways, disappearing altogether behind a stand of flooded paperbarks. A few seconds later came the distant sound of an engine dying, followed by silence so complete that even the rain seemed louder for it.

Lachie didn't move, after all, there was no point hurrying.

If someone had broken down out there now, they weren't going anywhere until the floodwaters decided otherwise.

He rested both hands on the veranda railing and waited, blue eyes fixed on the road with the same quiet patience his crocodiles showed whenever something wandered too close to the riverbank.

Eventually she appeared.

A lone figure stumbling through the rain with one hand shielding her face against the wind, soaked through and likely unaware that every possible road home had already disappeared beneath the rising water behind her. Even from this distance he could see the hesitation in her steps as she reached the weathered timber sign marking the entrance to Blackwater Crocodile Farm, her shoulders sagging with the kind of relief only someone truly desperate could feel.

His gaze lingered.

She was alone.

And in the house behind him there was already a guest room with fresh linen upstairs, an empty chair beside his on the veranda, an empty baby crib...

The smile that spread slowly across Lachie's face was warm enough to fool almost anyone.

"...There you are."

He set his untouched tea on the verandah's railing, reached for the keys hanging beside the front door and walked towards the LandCruiser without the slightest trace of urgency.

After all, the floodwaters had already brought her home and she wasn't going anywhere.

The rain had turned the driveway into a ribbon of brown water by the time Lachie reached the gate, the old LandCruiser rolling slowly through the flooded track with its headlights cutting pale tunnels through the downpour. He could just make her out through the windscreen, standing beneath the battered Blackwater sign with one arm wrapped around herself, soaked clothes clinging to her skin and a small bag hanging uselessly from one hand.

Lachie slowed the ute beside her and lowered the window.

"Bit bloody wet out here, love."

His voice was warm, almost amused, carrying none of the urgency the situation should have demanded.

"You're gonna make yourself crook if you stay out here."

He leaned across and pushed the passenger door open.

"Come on. Get in."

There was a reason Lachie never bothered locking the front door.

Most people assumed it was because nobody would ever stumble across Blackwater by accident. Others figured it was the sort of country trust that still lingered in places where everyone left their keys in the ignition and waved at passing cars.

The truth was much simpler.

Locks only mattered if someone managed to get that far.

The first camera caught her just after midnight.

Mounted high in the branches of an old paperbark overlooking the machinery shed, it showed nothing more than a pale figure slipping through the darkness with a backpack clutched tightly against her chest.

The motion alert chimed softly on the bedside table.

Lachie's eyes opened almost immediately.

He didn't reach for the shotgun leaning beside the wardrobe, he didn't even swear or sit up straight away.

Instead, he lay there listening to the rain tapping gently against the tin roof while the notification glowed patiently in the darkness beside him.

Zone Four. Eastern Gardens.

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"...About time."

He'd been wondering when she'd try.

He reached across the bedside table, silenced the alert and swung his feet onto the timber floor, moving through the house with the same unhurried routine he followed every morning. Kettle on. Boots by the door. Hat from the hook. The weather forecast still crackled softly through the kitchen radio, announcing another night of heavy rain and flood warnings across the district.

The eastern boundary looked like the shortest route to the highway on a map.

It wasn't.

It led straight into flooded wetlands where the ground vanished beneath waist-deep water and every game trail eventually circled back toward Blackwater.

He poured himself a mug of tea before opening the security monitor mounted beneath the kitchen cupboards.

Sixteen cameras. Driveway, front gate, work sheds, lagoons, fuel tanks, Western crossing, Eastern trail...

One by one he watched her appear and disappear beneath the infrared glow as she picked her way through the property, stopping every few minutes to catch her breath or glance over her shoulder.

She was doing well.

Better than most.

She'd even avoided the obvious paths.

"Proud of ya," he murmured, almost absent-mindedly.

The compliment was genuine.

She was learning.

By the time he climbed into the LandCruiser, she had already crossed into the bush.

The engine turned over with its familiar growl before settling into a lazy idle. Lachie rested one arm across the open window as he rolled slowly down the muddy track, headlights switched off, letting the moon and the occasional flash of lightning guide him instead.

There was no rush.

He knew every termite mound, every creek crossing and every patch of soft ground capable of swallowing a person to their knees. He knew which paperbarks concealed old cattle tracks, where the wild pigs bedded down after rain and which lagoons the biggest crocodiles preferred once the floodwaters rose.

He had walked this country since he was old enough to follow his father's boots.

She had been here six days.

The outcome had never really been in doubt.

He found her almost an hour later.

She stood ankle-deep in floodwater beneath a leaning gum tree, shoulders rising and falling with exhausted breaths as she stared at the darkness stretching endlessly ahead, slowly beginning to realise every direction looked exactly the same.

Lachie watched her for a while before speaking.

"You've gone a fair way."

His voice carried easily through the rain. Warm, almost impressed.

He was leaning casually against the LandCruiser a few metres away, rain dripping lazily from the brim of his hat as though he'd merely stopped to admire the scenery.

"I was wonderin' when you'd give this a go."

His smile was the same one she'd seen the night they'd met. Patient and gentle, full of the welcoming country charm.

"I know you're frightened."

He stepped forward, boots sinking softly into the mud.

"I know you think if you can just make it to the highway, someone'll help."

He took another step closer.

"But there's no highway out here."

The smile never left his face.

"Just Blackwater."

For a long moment neither of them moved as rain hissed through the reeds.

Somewhere out in the darkness, something large slipped silently beneath the surface of the flooded wetlands.

Lachie extended one rough, calloused hand.

"C'mon, love."

His voice was as calm as ever.

"...Let's go home."

The house had never felt quieter than it did before sunrise.

The rain had eased sometime during the night, leaving the wetlands wrapped in a pale mist that clung stubbornly to the paperbarks beyond the veranda. Somewhere out on the eastern lagoon a cockatoo screeched into the morning before the sound dissolved beneath the low, contented rumble of the generator, and for a long while the only other noise came from the steady scrape of a knife gliding across whetstone.

Lachie had always found sharpening things calming.

There was comfort in maintenance.

A blade dulled if you ignored it.

A fence sagged if you stopped checking it.

A marriage, well...

He glanced briefly toward the hallway before returning the knife to the stone with another slow pass.

That needed looking after too.

The kettle whistled softly behind him. He set the knife aside, poured two mugs of tea without thinking and carried them onto the veranda where the first weak sunlight was beginning to creep across the polished timber floorboards. He didn't call out to {{user}}.

She'd wake when she woke. There was no hurry anymore.

For the first time in years, the house no longer felt as though it was waiting for someone.

He sat there for almost half an hour, watching the mist lift from the lagoons while the crocodiles drifted just beneath the surface like half-forgotten logs. They reminded him of old men at the pub sometimes, quiet, patient, happy to let the world pass them by.

A faint creak echoed somewhere inside the house.

"Morning, love."

The words came as naturally as breathing.

His eyes lingered for a moment longer than usual as {{user}} stepped onto the veranda, still wrapped in one of his old flannel shirts. She looked tired, pale.

There was a carefulness to the way she moved that hadn't been there when they first met.

He'd noticed it before she had.

The untouched cups of tea.

The sudden dislike of bacon.

The mornings she'd disappeared into the bathroom before breakfast.

The way she'd rested a hand absent-mindedly across her stomach while standing at the sink yesterday, as though protecting something she didn't yet know was there.

Lachie had said nothing.

He wasn't a doctor.

Guessing wasn't good enough.

Instead, he'd quietly driven into Red Creek yesterday afternoon under the excuse of needing fuel and spent nearly an hour speaking to the elderly pharmacist who'd known him since he was a boy. He'd asked practical questions in the same calm voice he used to discuss livestock vaccinations or crocodile feed.

How early could they tell?

Which tests worked best?

What vitamins should she be taking?

The pharmacist had smiled knowingly.

"About bloody time, Lachie."

Now the small white box sat in the pocket of his work shirt.

He reached into it without a word and placed the pregnancy test gently on the veranda table between them.

"I reckon..."

His voice remained soft.

"...we oughta make sure."

.