“Is there anything else you can think of, Matilda? Even things that you feel uncomfortable talking about? I need to know.”
Matilda sighed. “You’re wondering about Steve, but he really couldn’t have hurt my girl—he was in the house when I got home just after six and he never left.” A worn face staring at the chipped and scratched wall across from them. “I know he looks at her in a way he shouldn’t, but Miriama’s strong. She can defend herself if he loses his mind and tries anything.”
Will found it truly difficult to understand Matilda. That she loved Miriama with every bone in her body was true. Also true was that she seemed incapable of removing the residential threat to her beloved niece.
In this case, however, Steve did appear to have an unassailable alibi. Strange blind spot or not, Matilda wouldn’t lie for Steve when Miriama was missing. “Any secrets in the past?” he asked, his brain wanting to fill out the ephemeral outline of that mysterious former lover. “Anything that could’ve come back to haunt Miriama?”
Matilda didn’t ask him why he was digging so deep for what was a missing person case that most probably involved an accident; she was the one who’d brought up the missing hikers. Some part of her knew things weren’t looking good for the girl she’d raised as her own.
“She has been a little distracted lately,” she said, “but you’d be, too, if you were moving to Wellington after growing up here. I think she’s just getting her head in order. My girl is going to make something of herself. She’s going to come home and then she’s going to fly.”
20
The last thing Will saw as he walked out of the fire station and into the cold chill of a day that was now utterly devoid of sunlight was Matilda crying quietly behind hands she’d raised up to her face. He nearly went back, but something about the way she sat, her body turned so that she was no longer facing the front, told him she wouldn’t appreciate the company.
Her grief was private, her worry a lonely vigil.
And for all that Matilda was glad he was looking for her niece, Will remained an outsider. Quite unlike the dark-eyed woman who jumped out of the small black truck that had just come to a stop in front of the fire station.
Anahera wore the same knit cap he’d seen on her yesterday, a dark gray one that looked to be handmade. Below that was an olive green anorak. “Any news?” she asked as her search partner, a lanky youth who worked as a supermarket clerk alongside Matilda, came around the vehicle to join them.
Will shook his head. “You’d better mark off your search route.” Waiting until the clerk had gone to do exactly that, he lowered his tone. “I think Matilda needs a shoulder to lean on.” Steve hadn’t made an appearance so far and Will wasn’t expecting that to change. “Do you know her well enough?”
Anahera’s eyes grew darker, a storm front crossing the horizon. “She used to be friends with my mother. I’ll try, see if she’ll let me comfort her. If not, I can call Josie and track down a friend she trusts.”
Nodding, Will was about to head off to find out if Te Ariki was in town or out at sea, when Anahera stopped him with a hand on his forearm. “Why aren’t you searching?” It wasn’t an accusation but a question.
“Someone has to work the other angles,” he said quietly and watched harsh comprehension dawn on her face.
Hand dropping off his forearm, she shifted both into the pockets of her anorak. “A few of the hunters brought in their dogs earlier, and Matilda was able to find some clothes Miriama had put into the laundry basket so the dogs had a fresh scent, but they all lose her partway along the coastal track.”
Will’s blood pounded in time with his pulse. “Did you search the beach and clifftop again?”
“Yes.” Anahera’s jaw worked. “Nothing, there’s nothing. It’s like she vanished into thin air.” She tore the knit cap off her head, crushed it in her hand as her hair tumbled out to fall partway down her back. “Tell me if there’s anything else I can do, anything that might help Miriama.”
Will went to say this was police business and realized very quickly that he’d be throwing away a possible resource. “You’re a local,” he said. “And because you’ve been gone for years, no one will find it suspicious if you ask certain questions. I don’t know what those questions are yet, but when I do, will you ask them for me?”
Anahera’s eyes were unreadable. “Yes. Do you really think one of us hurt Miriama?”
“Everyone has hidden corners of their life, even the people we think we know inside out.”
Breaking the eye contact, Anahera tugged her cap back on. “I’ll keep my ears open. The other search teams are going to come in soon as the rain starts—we’ve already searched every possible area we can, most of them twice. It’s getting to the point there’s nowhere left to look. Everyone will want to theorize, talk, but it’ll probably be more open if you’re not there.”
Will gave a curt nod. “I’ll come by your cabin after dark to get an update. I won’t be able to get away before then.” Not only did he have to run down what flimsy leads he had about Miriama, he’d have to begin patrols the instant the rain hit. Every so often, the teenagers got stupid; he’d once caught a bunch of them heading down to a relatively safe patch of surf—safe, that is, on a calm clear day with adults watching and ready to help.
Things usually settled down after nightfall, when the addition of pitch darkness to cold and rain made it far less attractive to sneak about and get up to mischief. “Here’s my number in case you need to touch base before then.”
Anahera took his card, slid it into a pocket. “If anyone sees you and asks me about your visit, I’ll tell them you’re hounding me because I still haven’t got myself on the right phone plan.”
“It’s not a joke.” She’d be totally isolated out there should anything happen.
Anahera raised an eyebrow. “Which is why I am with the new provider now. But it’ll make a good excuse.” With that, she turned in the direction of the fire station.
Anahera took a deep breath on the doorstep of the fire station, struck harder than she’d thought she would be by the sight of Matilda sitting with her face buried in her hands, the comforting bulk of her body shaking with rough sobs.
Anahera remembered running up to hug that body as a child, her face squashed into the softness of Matilda’s belly. Maybe she’d found such happiness in Matilda’s arms because her own mother had been shaped the same, with wide hips and soft curves. And maybe it was for that same reason that she’d been unable to hug Matilda ever again after the day she walked into the cabin and found Haeata’s broken body.
“Auntie,” she said, using the same respectful tone she’d always used when it came to her mother’s best friend. “It’s Ana.”
Moving a chair to face Matilda’s, she reached out to place her hand on the sobbing woman’s knee. “The whole town’s doing everything it can.” The Lees—Julia’s parents and owners of the supermarket—would soon be bringing in sandwiches for the searchers, while two grandmothers had just walked in with towels for those who might get caught in the rain. “Will is, too. I ran into Tom during the search and he said Miriama’s face is all over the news websites.”
She’d been surprised by the cop’s clear dedication—she’d expected him to be marking time, paying his dues for whatever infraction it was that had caused his superiors to bury him in the career black hole of Golden Cove. But he wasn’t only doing his job, he was picking up and looking under every possible rock.
Matilda lifted her tear-ravaged face. “Ana,” she whispered, as if becoming aware of her for the first time. “Taku kōtiro, Ana. Not so little anymore.” Her smile was more a reflex action than anything like the huge beam of warmth Anahera remembered. “You’ve been gone a long time, girlie.”
“I was in London.” Of course Matilda knew that, but staying silent didn’t seem like the right choice. “Miriama was all skinny legs and scraped knees when I left.”
The smile gained a touch
more depth. “You should’ve seen her at thirteen. How that girl used to moan about how she was so skinny. Couldn’t put on weight even if she stuffed her face with doughnuts and chips.”
“It obviously worked in the end.”
A laugh that lit up Matilda’s face. “Wasn’t the junk food, eh. She gave up all that and started running—said if she looked like a runner anyway, she might as well be one.” Rubbing away her tears, she sat up, and when she next spoke, it was in Māori. “I don’t know if it was the power that came from the exercise, or if her body just kept on growing as it was always going to, but… You saw. My beautiful Miriama.”
“She has a glow about her.” A dazzling thing the cop clearly believed had attracted the wrong kind of attention, but it was equally obvious that Matilda didn’t want to think about that—she wanted and needed to talk about her girl, about all the wonderful things Miriama had done and would do in the future.
Anahera listened with a patience that would’ve startled her mother. The young Ana hadn’t been able to stay still; she’d wanted to achieve a million things at once, wanted to snatch at so many dreams. That innocently hopeful part of Anahera had somehow survived her father and the hellish battleground of their family home, but it hadn’t survived a cold cabin and the woman she most loved in the world lying dead on the floor.
Anahera had married Edward partly because he’d caused a tiny spark to alight inside her, as if her hope was shrugging off the frost to come out of hibernation. Then he’d snuffed out that struggling light with a betrayal she’d never seen coming.
“The only thing I ever worry about with Miriama,” Matilda said, “is that she wants so much. Not things like jewelry or cars. No, my girl wants life. Wants to see the world, wants to go to all the places she admires in the magazines.”
“She won’t forget you,” Anahera reassured the older woman. “She’ll come back to visit.” Anahera sat there in silent testimony of her words, for Golden Cove didn’t easily let go of its own.
“Ah, Ana, you don’t understand.” Matilda shook her head. “I was always scared that a man would charm her with big promises of making her dreams come true and she’d believe him and be left broken.”
“She’s too smart for that,” Anahera said.
“Yes. And now she’s with Dr. de Souza, so I can stop worrying.” The older woman leaned forward to brush her fingers over Anahera’s cheek. “I’m sorry about your husband. I hoped for so much for you, my little Ana who flew so very far from home.”
And fell, Anahera thought. Fell and shattered while another woman wailed for the man who’d been Anahera’s husband, a man who’d promised to love her and cherish her forever, a man who’d told her they’d have a small family of their own.
So many dreams. So many promises. So many lies.
Miriama had been smarter than Anahera.
21
Will was able to cross Te Ariki’s name off his list within half an hour of leaving the fire station. The young man’s uncle confirmed Te Ariki had been out on a fishing trawler since four days earlier.
He decided to talk to Miriama’s rival for the scholarship next, wanting to clear that possibility before he moved on, but he had some trouble tracking down Kyle Baker, as Vincent’s younger brother was out with a search team. When Will did finally find him, it was on the beach. Kyle was just standing there staring out at the crashing waves.
Will had long ago stopped wearing regulation police wear to work this remote town, favoring work boots and jeans paired with a shirt, over which he currently wore a waterproof jacket. He had no trouble clambering down one of the paths from the cliff.
Kyle didn’t hear him until Will was nearly by his side. Jerking, he looked at Will with pale brown eyes identical to his brother’s, but unlike Vincent’s shining gold, Kyle’s hair was a light brown threaded with blond. “I think the ocean’s taken her,” he said in a calm voice. “It does that. Just takes people. She’ll never be found.”
“You seem very sure.”
Kyle smiled, as if Will had made a joke. “I didn’t do anything to her,” he said. “I didn’t need to. I knew she’d fuck up her own life sooner or later.”
So, Dominic de Souza had been right. Kyle Baker, it seemed, had more in common with Daniel May than his own brother—and he’d decided that it wasn’t worth turning on the charm for Will. No doubt because Will hadn’t let the graffiti incident just slide.
“You don’t have a positive opinion of Miriama’s intelligence?” he asked in the same even tone he’d used to date.
Kyle shrugged, his slightly overlong bangs sweeping across his forehead in a way that had the town’s teenage girls swooning. “Look, no offense to Matilda, but she likes to date losers. I guess they’re the only ones who’ll go for a used-up old chick like her, but whatever.” Another smile. “With that as an example, you really think Miriama was going to finish the placement and become a world-famous travel photographer like she wanted?”
Was. Wanted.
“You don’t believe people can rise above their circumstances?”
“You kidding? Look at Anahera Rawiri. Everyone thought she’d made it, was living it up in London, but she’s back with her tail between her legs, sleeping in the same crappy shed where her mother kicked the bucket.”
Anger licked Will’s spine. He suffocated it as fast as it had flared, depriving it of the oxygen it needed to grow. He’d almost beaten a man to death the last time he’d given in to the red haze of anger.
Will still didn’t know if he’d done the right thing in allowing that monstrous bastard to live, but he couldn’t go around killing every asshole he met—the world, unfortunately, was full of them. “How exactly did you think Miriama would mess up her life?”
“Hook up with some loser who beat her, get pregnant, and live in this town until she died.” Kyle’s smile never faded. “Looks like she proved me wrong by drowning while still a success.”
“Let’s talk about that success.” The wind whipped at Will’s hair. “You both applied for the internship, but she won it.”
No flicker in the smile, but Kyle’s voice turned ice-cold. “The board that decided it fell for her tits and ass.”
“Must’ve pissed you off.” Money was one thing, but being invited into an industry fraternity quite another—Kyle couldn’t buy his way into the environment that had warmly embraced Miriama. “Seeing someone like Miriama be welcomed by people you view as your peers.”
“I knew I’d get there,” Kyle said. “I have the drive and the staying power.” Another smile, this one lighting up his eyes. “I also know how to make people want to be around me.” It was like watching a switch being turned on. Kyle was suddenly the town’s golden boy again, all politeness and down-to-earth personality. “Even you’d like me if I wanted you to like me.”
It was too bad you couldn’t arrest people for being psychopaths. Because many psychopaths ended up never committing a single crime, instead becoming successes in fields that rewarded a lack of empathy. Maybe Kyle would head in that direction.
And maybe he’d already killed.
“Did Miriama like you?” He deliberately used the past tense to feed into Kyle’s mentality.
Kyle sneered, switching off the charisma as easily as he’d switched it on. “I didn’t need to lower myself to a piece of trash. I’ve got much better meat gagging for it.”
He was pushing it now, Will thought, using deliberately crude language in an effort to provoke Will. Why? What would that get him? Was it possible the nineteen-year-old wanted a reason to complain to Will’s superiors?
Given Will’s history, such a complaint could lead to his suspension or removal.
And without Will here to keep it active, Miriama’s case would slowly slip off official radar, just another woman who’d taken off for a more adventurous life. It wouldn’t be malicious and it wasn’t that his fellow cops were bad at their jobs, but they didn’t know Miriama, hadn’t seen the l
ight in her expression when she spoke of her upcoming internship.
The last time Will talked to her had been when she’d brought him a piece of carrot cake, which felt like a lifetime ago. He’d told her she’d make him fat. She’d laughingly said it wasn’t a possibility, not with all the “long, angry walks” he took on the beach. “We have to make sure you don’t waste away, even if you are a cop.”
He hadn’t known until then that anyone had spotted him striding down the beach during the early morning hours before true dawn. She’d probably seen him from along the clifftop running route, a long-legged young woman who dreamed big and who was well on the way to achieving those dreams despite a bleak start in life.
“Anything else you want to tell me?” he asked the young psychopath in front of him.
“Just to stop wasting your time. It’s not like you have the budget.”
“Thank you for the advice,” Will said with deliberate mildness.
Kyle’s face tightened a fraction before he turned to stare back out at the water.
“By the way, Kyle.” He waited until Vincent’s brother turned toward him before he finished what he had to say. “Perhaps you should talk to Anahera about her failures.”
Walking away before Kyle could ask him any questions on the topic, Will allowed himself a faint smile. It faded in the next wave of wind, the sand gritty in his teeth… and the ghost of a three-year-old boy whispering in his ear.
22
The rain began to pound down around four that afternoon. It still took an hour for everyone to return to the fire station, the toughest of the tough staying out till the last possible moment. Despite having been gone for eight years, Anahera recognized pretty much everyone from before she left.
The only exceptions were three outsiders who’d moved in during her time away. Strangely enough for a self-absorbed and pretentious ass, Shane Hennessey had joined in the search, pairing up with a local who knew the area like the back of his hand. The soulful, moody-eyed novelist straight out of a gothic drama was drenched to the skin when he came in.
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