A Madness of Sunshine

by Singh, Nalini

  And Anahera was making up answers out of thin air. For all she knew, Jemima could keep up the appearance of enjoying ­small-­town life for a short period, but had no particular desire to become part of the fabric of Golden Cove.

  Every couple had their secrets and their polite lies.

  24

  After leaving Kyle, Will had gone back to talk to Steve. He’d wanted to squeeze Matilda’s live-­in boyfriend while Matilda wasn’t around. Men like Steve had a way of posturing and lying in front of the female sex, as if the behavior would prove their status as an alpha male.

  But Steve stuck to his ­story—­and he wasn’t smart enough to lie that well. Those of Steve’s type, when they killed, weren’t clever about it. They were violent and brutal and caught up in the heat of the moment. Had the searchers found Miriama’s body beaten and strangled somewhere nearby, Will would’ve come down hard on Steve as a primary suspect, but with Miriama missing and Steve simply not having had the time to get to her, he had to accept that the other man was telling the truth.

  “She wasn’t ever going to let me touch her,” Steve muttered sourly, just as Will’s phone vibrated with a message.

  “Who? Matilda?” Will had remained standing while Steve sat in the dark brown couch that swallowed him up. The other man was wearing a greasy and ­sweat-­stained white tank, gray chest hairs sticking out from over the top of it, while he’d pomaded back his scraggly ­once-­blond hair as if he was reliving the seventies.

  “Matilda, too,” was the answer. “I wasn’t gonna force her precious Miriama or nothing,” Steve added piously, “but I’m a man. I had to try my chances in case she had an itch she felt like scratching.”

  Will fought the urge to kick Steve in the balls. The image of the asshole crumpled whimpering on the floor was a particularly compelling one. But he checked his phone instead, giving Steve more time to stew.

  The message was short and to the point and it made his blood pound:

  Shane Hennessey says Miriama used to wear an expensive platinum and diamond watch. Most people thought it was a fake. Matilda’s agreed to look for it for us.—­Ana

  “Miriama said no when you tried it on with her?” Will nudged after sliding away his phone, using his ­well-­worn technique of keeping his voice mild and emotionless. As if he was only slightly interested in the answer. The reason it was a ­well-­worn technique was that it worked. Suspects and bystanders alike read what they wanted to hear in his voice.

  Today, Steve nodded his head like a bobblehead doll. “I know you’re doing the whole search thing so the morons in this hick town will like you, but don’t waste your time. Miriama’s a sharp operator who can look after herself. Like that watch she has. I used to work with jewelry before, recognize quality.”

  Will interpreted that to mean Steve had stolen or fenced jewelry at some point in time. “What’s so interesting about her watch?”

  “It’s seriously fancy, that’s what.” Steve’s piggy little eyes glinted. “Worth at least twenty grand.”

  Will pinned the other man to the spot with his gaze. “That’s a whole lot of motive, wouldn’t you say?” In a town like Golden Cove, twenty thousand dollars might as well be twenty million dollars.

  Two hot red flags flaring on his cheeks, Steve lifted his hands and waved. “Hey, hey, don’t you go trying to pin anything on me. Watch’s still in her ­room—­come, I’ll show you.”

  Following the other man down the short and narrow hallway, Will put a hand on Steve’s shoulder and held him back from entering the room when they arrived. “You stay here.” There was no reason to think Miriama’s room was a crime scene, but he still didn’t want Steve inside. “Where does she keep the watch?”

  “That little drawer to the left. It’s under a pile of panties.”

  When Will just stared at him, Steve licked his lips and Will could almost hear him thinking of an excuse for pawing through Miriama’s underwear drawer.

  “She asked me to get her a pair once, when she forgot to take it into the shower,” was what he came up with.

  Deciding the obvious lie didn’t deserve a response, Will retrieved the watch after tugging on a pair of disposable gloves from his jacket pocket. Instinct and experience told him Steve was ­right—­this was no ­well-­made fake. He put the glittering object that was more jewelry than timepiece in an evidence bag he’d pulled from another pocket, then wrote out a receipt and placed it on the dresser, beneath a glass trinket box. He’d make sure Matilda knew he’d picked up the watch, just in case Steve decided to be a vindictive shit and not mention it.

  As he was in the room already, he took a quick look around. He didn’t want to invade Miriama’s privacy, but at this stage, it was looking more and more likely that she wasn’t okay; Will needed to know anything and everything that might help him find her.

  The room held a bed, a built-­in closet, a small desk, and an old computer. Prints of Miriama’s photographs were pinned to the walls, but he saw no camera equipment. The latter didn’t surprise him; Miriama had once mentioned that Josie let her use part of the back room of the café as an office. Not only could she work in peace there after the café closed, she probably didn’t have to worry about Steve selling off equipment she’d worked hard to buy.

  He turned to spear the man to the spot with his eyes again. “Fingerprints don’t rub off as easily as people think,” he said. “Am I going to find yours all over this room?”

  Flushing hot red under the pasty white of his skin, Steve folded his arms and bristled. “What’re you trying to say?” When Will just held the eye contact, the other man dropped his arms and looked left, then right, then down at his feet, then back up again. “I just wanted to look at her things, okay.” His hands fisted by his sides. “I’m at home a lot. I get bored.”

  “Does she have another hiding place?” Instinct told him the watch had been shoved in the underwear drawer quickly, maybe because Miriama had been looking at it, only to be interrupted. It couldn’t be the permanent spot. Not with Steve in the house.

  The other man didn’t try any bullshit this time. “Behind the bed,” he said, pointing his finger at the single bed with its metal frame. It was neatly made up with a soft pink flannel sheet and matching pillowcase; a dark blue blanket lay folded at the bottom. “There’s a board on the floor that comes up. She hides her diary and stuff in there. The watch’s usually in there, too.”

  “How many times have you read that diary?”

  Steve’s lip curled. “I don’t need to read her diary. Probably the same crap women always ­write—­feelings and shit.” A snort accompanied by a scratch of his protruding belly. “Only thing I’m interested in is between ­her—­” Cutting himself off when he finally looked at Will’s face, Steve began to back away. “Look,” he said, “I don’t read too good. I just wanted to look at her stuff. I didn’t touch that diary.”

  Waiting until the other man had backed himself all the way into the living room, Will shut the bedroom door before retrieving the single item beneath the floorboard: an old tin box heavy enough to hold a diary. As a hiding space, it was a good one. If Steve hadn’t been unemployed and at home so ­much—­and likely a former ­thief—­he probably wouldn’t have put together the sounds of the bed being moved with a hiding spot.

  Will’s eyes moved to the computer; he wondered if Miriama had hidden her secrets a second way.

  Deciding to talk to Matilda then and there, he made a call to the fire station.

  “Take whatever you need,” she told him when he explained where he was and what he was doing. “But you take good care of it.”

  “I will,” Will promised, and booted up the computer. “Do you know where Miriama keeps her old diaries?”

  “She cuts out all the pages, then goes deep into the bush to bury those pages. Says it’s about saying ­good-­bye to the past and living for the future.”

  Will thought of the pages rotting away in the silent dark, an act of hope for the future turned int
o a somber omen. “I’ve got another ­question—­what was the name of the man who molested Miriama as a teenager?” He was far more dangerous to the young woman than Steve.

  “Fidel Cox.” Matilda’s voice quivered with rage. “That pokokōhua did a runner, cops never found him. You think he came back to hurt my Miri?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to check it out.”

  “Just find my girl, Will. Just find Miriama.”

  Will didn’t make any promises; he’d learned his lesson about making promises and he’d learned hard. Never again would he tell a victim that everything would be all right. Because, too many times, the monsters won.

  25

  Will had one more thing to do before he left Matilda’s home. “I want you to remember something, Steve,” he said to the man in the sagging armchair. “Matilda might let you push her around, but I won’t look the other way. I see her with a single bruise, I’m coming after you.”

  Steve postured, all raised shoulders and lifted chin. “A man’s got a right to do what he wants with his own woman in his own home.”

  “You just remember what I said anytime you get the urge to hurt Matilda.” Will knew his eyes had gone flat in that way one of his partners had once said made him look like a psychopath. Will wasn’t always so certain he wasn’t a ­psychopath—­psychopaths didn’t have feelings and his had burned down to ashes thirteen months ago.

  Steve glared at him, but Will was satisfied Matilda would be safe from abuse, at least until Steve forgot his fear. Will wouldn’t have dealt with the situation the same way had it been a different ­man—­some mean bastards would’ve hurt Matilda out of pure spite at being ordered not to, but Steve was both a coward and just smart enough to know that Will was too big a predator to challenge.

  Walking out into the rain, the tin box and watch protected under the ­high-­visibility ­police-­issue jacket he’d changed into after the weather turned, Will put both items on the passenger seat of his vehicle, then ran around to get into the driver’s seat.

  He made a call on his way back into town, asking Tom Taufa to meet him at the café. The other man was waiting when he got there. “I was at the fire station,” he said as he let Will into the café’s back room. “That’s Miri’s corner there.”

  A much newer computer sat on a spacious desk, along with several cameras.

  Metal jangled as Tom took a key off his key ring. “I have to get back to ­Josie—­she’s not doing so good. Stay as long as you like, keep the key in case you want to look at stuff again.” He dug in his pocket. “I asked Josie about the computer after you called and she said there’s a password.” Handing over the piece of paper on which he’d scribbled the mix of numbers and letters, he said, “Josie knows it because technically the computer is the café’s, for accounts and things, but she mostly got it for Miri to use.”

  “Thanks, Tom.” Will was already turning back to the computer as Tom left, but he didn’t expect to find anything private, not when Miriama knew Josie also used this computer. Still, he had a quick look. The only emails on it related to the café.

  Miriama must have an email ­account—­if nothing else, she’d have needed one to apply for the ­internship—­but chances were high it was a web account she nearly always used from her phone. He’d found no emails on her home computer either, and her browser history and bookmarks hadn’t included any webmail sites. The same proved true here.

  Given Miriama’s age, her reliance on her phone for communication was unsurprising.

  Photo editing software made up the bulk of what was on this computer. Will checked Miriama’s current projects, then slotted in the memory cards from her cameras, but nothing jumped out. Shot after shot taken in pursuit of her signature portraits, plus several finalized ­images—­including one of a ­bare-­chested Dominic in bed, his smile intimate, and a stunning one of Pastor Mark sitting ­stoop-­shouldered on a church bench, but none of it told him how to find her.

  He took the memory cards regardless, and made a mental note to dig deeper later. Right now, he had another priority: he needed to follow up on Fidel Cox. Locking up the café, he returned to the police station.

  The system spat out the correct case file after a single inquiry.

  According to the notes of the officer who’d driven in to record Matilda’s complaint on behalf of Miriama, the police had sent Fidel’s photo out across the country and received exactly zero tips in response. Fidel was an experienced hunter, so everyone figured he’d “gone bush” until the heat died down.

  It had probably not helped the search that Fidel Cox was one of the most nondescript individuals Will had ever seen. His mug shot, taken in the aftermath of a drunken brawl a year before his molestation of Miriama, showed a man with pale brown skin, black hair, and brown eyes. He was neither big nor small, neither tall nor short. He had no distinguishing marks, no tattoos, no scars. No feature on his face that stood out.

  Fidel Cox was a man who could blend in anywhere. If he hadn’t wanted to slink off into the wild, all he would’ve had to do was change his name and grow a beard or shave his head. Either would’ve dramatically altered his looks.

  Was it possible he’d come through Golden Cove and been missed?

  Will had already made a short call to the tourism center on the way back from Matilda’s, been told that aside from the Japanese couple Nikau had taken to see the ­gold-­mining shacks, Golden Cove hadn’t had any visitors in the previous five days. As far as the center was aware, there were no hikers on the local trails, either. ­Still…

  He picked up the phone and called the tourism center again. It was Glenda Anderson who answered this time, not her ­part-­time student assistant. The ­fifty-­something woman with bright pink hair and a penchant for stilettos was a legend in the town after her years dancing in the cabaret show of a cruise liner.

  “Have they found that poor child?” she asked, clearly recognizing Will’s number. “My heart’s just sick about it. She is such a sweetie. Always saves me a piece of that cheesecake I love.”

  Will’s eyes went to the trash bin where he’d thrown the takeout container in which Miriama had brought him his carrot cake. “No,” he said. “But I’m hoping you can help me with something.”

  “Anything for you, you handsome young man.” The flirtatious statement lacked its usual spark, more rote than anything. “Shall I get on to the computer?”

  “Yes.” First, Will repeated the same questions he’d asked the assistant, in case the youth had missed something. When that all failed to pan out, he moved on. “Do you have any records of a male tourist going onto the trails over the past six months?” A very long window, but per Matilda’s words to the responding officer, Fidel Cox had been intimately familiar with this area and with living wild.

  “Well now,” Glenda said to the accompaniment of the ­click-­clack of her keyboard, “that’ll be a long list since it covers four months of the tourist season. Shall I email it to you?”

  “Yes.” Will stared at Fidel’s mug shot again, thought about how the man was a chameleon. “Can you also email through their identification?” The tourism center made it a point to request some form of photo ID that could be copied and kept on file just in case things went wrong and searchers had to be provided with an image.

  Will didn’t think Fidel Cox would’ve given them any real identification or that he’d have even checked in with Glenda and her ­people—­odds were, if Fidel had come back into Golden Cove, he’d slipped into the bush miles from the town itself. But Will would be careless in his duties if he didn’t clear this particular avenue of investigation. And not all criminals were smart. Any number had been caught because of stupid errors.

  Two hours later, he’d gone through every single one of the names and ID photos and come up with nothing. If Fidel Cox had returned to the area, he’d done so in a way that wouldn’t be noticed. None of the other hikers appeared suspicious: every single one had provided either a passport or driver’s lice
nse as ID and a quick search on various data ­banks—­or via social media ­profiles—­told him none had lied.

  Not ready to give up yet, Will called a colleague of his who worked in the crimes against children area. “Hamish,” he said when the phone was picked up on the other end. “I need a favor.”

  “You never call, you never write, and now you want a favor,” the lawyer said in his usual dry tone. “This keeps going on and I might get suspicious that you’re just using me.”

  “We have a ­use-­use relationship.”

  “True.” The sound of creaking, as if Hamish was tilting back his chair as he so often did while he sat in his office. “But you used to buy me a beer now and then before you went full ­hermit-­mode.”

  “Put it on my tab.” Will wondered when he’d ­be… equalized enough to go back into the world he’d once not only inhabited but owned with a casual expectation that he could control it. He had the feeling the answer was never.

  “Maybe I’ll come visit you in that West Coast town of yours,” Hamish threatened. “I looked it ­up—­the wife thinks it might make for a nice romantic getaway when the weather’s a bit less pissy. On the flip side, my ­middle-­aged body isn’t keen on going hiking or participating in the various dangerous activities on offer. Can you fish there?”

  “There’s a spot on the rocks that’s probably safe enough if you wear a life jacket and hook yourself onto the cliffs with anchor ropes.”

  Snorting, Hamish said, “What can I do for you, my good friend who I never see?”

  “I’m trying to trace a man named Fidel Cox. He was never prosecuted, but he was implicated in a crime against a child.” Hamish was a walking encyclopedia when it came to men and women who might target innocence. “I’m going to email you his photo. It’s five years old, so keep that in mind.”

  A short pause, while Hamish waited for the photo to download on his end. “Got it,” he said. “I’ll run it through my private database. I’ve also got this fancy software that’ll age Mr. Cox. Said software is from sources who shall not be named because they might be providers of illegal ­knockoffs—­but tell anyone and I’ll deny it. It’ll take a while. I’ll call you back, whatever the result.”