Catching Teller Crow: Chapter 3. Beth: The Witness Summary & Analysis

Beth and her dad go to the local hospital to visit the witness, who is being monitored there as the drugs leave her system. Beth only recalls visiting one other hospital, where a rude doctor asked whether “quite so many family members” needed to be visiting her Uncle Mick. In this hospital’s waiting area, locals gossip about the fire and the death, but none of them seem to have known the nurse or director well.

Beth’s dad identifies himself as a detective to a harried female nurse and asks to go interview the witness. She is offering to take him to the witness’s room when  the wind slams open the waiting-room door—at which point she tells him to go on alone. Beth and Beth’s dad walk down a hall into a room full of hospital beds, mostly occupied by middle-aged people. Beth is pointing out a girl she thinks is the witness when a different girl (later revealed to be Catching)—pale with “sharp” features, dark-haired, and wearing a long sweater over her hospital gown—appears and asks whether Beth’s dad is a policeman.

Beth’s dad says he’s a detective and asks whether the girl (Catching) is the witness to the fire. When she says yes, he asks whether he can interview her, and—rather standoffishly—she agrees. They go into a private hospital room. Beth’s dad introduces himself as Michael and asks the girl’s name. When she snarks that a detective should already know, Beth comments that the girl may not remember that she was too disoriented to give her name when the rescue team found her. The girl then introduces herself as Isobel Catching and tells Michael to call her Catching.

When Michael comments that Catching is an “unusual” name, Catching explains that the white employer of her great-great-grandmother named her that because she had a talent for recapturing stray cattle—and she couldn’t refuse the name. When Michael asks whether Catching is Aboriginal, Catching sneeringly asks whether he thinks she isn’t “brown enough,” as if everyone of Aboriginal descent has the same skin color. Michael says no and mentions that his wife was Aboriginal. Catching, still sneeringly, suggests that she and Michael will be “best friends” because of that. 

Though Catching’s tone annoys Beth, it doesn’t offend Michael. He just asks her whether she saw anything the night of the fire. She says that “depends.” When he asks what it depends on, she seems to glance at Beth before saying, “On if you’ll believe me.” Michael says he’ll hear whatever she has to say, but she warns him that her story contains “monsters and other-places.” Beth thinks Catching is playing a joke on him, but then she realizes that tough-girl Catching is afraid. Michael assures Catching that he can believe what she has to tell him. When she tells him it’s a long story that began before the fire, he turns off his phone and asks her to begin at the beginning. She says the events began “with a sunset.”