A Madness of Sunshine

by Singh, Nalini

  Anahera’s mind returned to Siobhan Genovese’s elegant living room and to the conversation she hadn’t fully understood. “Tell me about the inquiry,” she found herself saying, the hushed darkness of the night enveloping them in a cocoon where questions could be asked and secrets revealed.

  Will’s hands tightened on the steering wheel to the point that his bones pushed white against his skin. “I was in charge of keeping a woman and a ­three-­year-­old child safe in the buildup to the woman giving testimony against a man.” His words were clipped, a cop giving a report. Nothing but the facts.

  “He was her husband and the father of her child, but he also happened to be a serial rapist who got ­careless—­his wife began to notice the washing machine running in the middle of the night, after her husband got home ‘from work,’ saw rope, gloves, and duct tape in his car, and lined up his absences with the violent rapes in the area.”

  He passed another tanker, this one festooned with lights that turned it into a traveling star. “When she questioned him about it, he punched her five times, knocking out three front teeth, then kicked her in the stomach and left the house. She took her son and came to the station with blood on her shirt. I was the detective on the case. I told them they’d be safe. I was wrong. Daniella and Alfie are buried in a private family cemetery on a vineyard in Marlborough.”

  So many things not said, so many truths buried in the details. “Their killer’s the one you were accused of beating?”

  “I did beat him.”

  “Did your superiors cover it up?” She wouldn’t blame them if they ­had—­because sometimes, the law didn’t work; sometimes, lines had to be crossed.

  “No. He refused to testify.” Will’s smile was grim. “Apparently, he found God two months into his time on remand, right as the inquiry began. He called me, said he deserved what I’d done to him and he not only wouldn’t be cooperating with the inquiry, he was recanting his statement about police brutality and blaming his injuries on a bar fight earlier that night. I told him I didn’t need the fucking favor.”

  Will’s jaw worked. “I was ready to walk into the inquiry and say I did it. Only reason I hadn’t already done that was because the prosecution team on the rapes was worried it’d bring my credibility into question, give the defense a way to attack my work on the case.”

  He released a harsh exhale. “In the end, I never had to talk to the inquiry board. My superior officer got the entire thing dismissed for lack of evidence. The official letter came this week, closed the book on the whole thing.

  “No one much argued with the ­decision—­turns out rapists who carve up their elderly victims, then murder ­three-­year-­old boys aren’t popular with anyone. Even the media barely reported on it. Nobody asked me what it felt like to know I owed my continued career to a murdering rapist.”

  She got it, saw why he was in Golden Cove. “Alcohol? Drugs?”

  “I almost beat up another asshole, then another. My partners had to hold me back. You can work out the rest.”

  Anahera had the niggling feeling she was forgetting to ask something important, but the shape of it stayed frustratingly out of her reach. And since she understood about nightmares and about not wanting to look back, she took Will’s lead and dropped the subject. “I think Siobhan would’ve made a good murderer.”

  Will’s fingers eased on the black of the steering wheel. “Most people wouldn’t think so.”

  “That’s exactly why she’d be a good one. She’s cold, ruthless, but she looks the part of the rich old lady. No one would ever suspect her.” Pausing, she looked out at the blackness beyond; they were well out of civilization and in the heart of an unforgiving landscape that offered no second chances. “Have you looked into her dating or marital history?” She returned her attention to the cop who told no lies but didn’t tell her everything all the same. “Any suspicious disappearances or deaths?”

  Will’s grin was a sudden thing; it changed his whole face. “Never married, ­self-­made woman. Tough as granite.”

  “And with a strange sense of morality,” Anahera said. “She balked at murder, but a suspicious disappearance didn’t even register on her radar.”

  A smoky ballad poured out of the radio as the night grew darker around them, the singer’s voice husky and soulful.

  Anahera’s skin rippled with a sudden cold. “This was the song we danced to at our wedding.” Will didn’t care about her and Edward and maybe that was why she could tell him. “I wore a long white dress that I used all my savings to buy and he wore a tuxedo. We got married in a small hotel ballroom decorated like a winter wonderland, with thirty of Edward’s family and friends who’d flown over, and my closest friends, in attendance.” She’d had no family by then, no one she acknowledged anyway. “And we danced to this song.”

  It had been a fairy tale come to life, one against which Anahera’s battered and scarred spirit had no defense. “Have you ever been married?”

  “Came close once, but then Alfie and Daniella were murdered, and I wasn’t quite right in the head for a while. She couldn’t handle it. I don’t blame her for that. She didn’t sign up for a messed-­up cop who was placed on administrative leave while the inquiry ran its course.”

  “What happened to in sickness and in health?”

  “We hadn’t taken any vows yet. And we all have our breaking points.”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s yours?”

  But Anahera shook her head. “Enough confessions in the dark, cop. You keep my secrets and I’ll keep ­yours—­but let’s not pretend that we’re anything but two broken people who happened to run into each other.” There was nothing else, no strong foundation on which to build.

  “No,” Will said, his eyes on the dark beyond the windshield. “But I’m still going to ask if you want me to come in tonight.”

  Anahera hadn’t yet decided on an answer by the time he brought the SUV to a stop in front of her cabin. Then the high beams of his headlights picked up the figure slumped on the porch, and the question was moot.

  Getting out, they ran over to find a chilled Nikau drunk off his ass and slurring his words. “Saw her today,” he mumbled as Will hauled him into the cabin and Anahera got to work starting the fire. “Wearing emeralds. Guess pounamu wasn’t enough for her.”

  He kept on rambling about his ex-­wife while Anahera got the fire going and Will wrestled the mostly empty bottle of whiskey from his hand. Giving the bottle to Anahera, Will told her to get rid of what alcohol remained. Anahera had no compunction in pouring it down the sink. If Nikau had wanted to save his expensive whiskey, he shouldn’t have come drinking on her porch.

  “Just leave him in front of the fire,” she said to Will. “It won’t be the first time he’s slept on a floor, but I do have a spare pillow for his head.” She went into her bedroom and found ­it—­another little gift courtesy of Josie.

  Taking it to the fire, she placed it under Nik’s head, then covered him using a throw she’d had on one of the chairs. When he mumbled again, she sat down beside him and began to brush her hand over his hair.

  Sitting down in a chair across from her, Will just watched. A patient wolf, she found herself thinking. Not a dog, because he’d never come to anyone on command. But a man who was a hunter, and who could be dangerous if he slipped the tight leash he kept on himself.

  The next time she looked over, she found him staring into the flames. It gave her a chance to examine him without being watched in turn. He was all craggy lines carved into his skin, experience woven into his bones, and pain stamped onto his features. Life had been hard on him, but he was still moving, and he was still working, and he was still fighting for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.

  Suddenly, Anahera didn’t care that Nikau was here. She wanted to steal some of the cop’s fire, that smoldering heat that kept him going, that dark anger deep inside him that called to her own fury. But leaving Nik wasn’t an ­option—­he might throw up in his sleep,
end up choking to death.

  Frustrated, she got up and went to the cop. His eyes turned to take her in. He didn’t stop her when she shoved her hands into his hair and tugged back his head as she bent down and took a kiss as harsh as it was needy. He accepted her demand, his hands coming to settle at her hips and his body heat sinking through her clothing to scald her flesh.

  Beside them, the fire ­crackled… and Nikau moaned.

  Wrenching back from Will, Anahera looked over her shoulder to see that her friend was asleep but restless. “Consider this an IOU,” she said to the cop with the fogbound eyes. “Come for dinner tomorrow night.”

  40

  Will knew he shouldn’t be getting in deeper with Anahera, but he also knew he’d return to her cabin tomorrow. Tonight, as he sat in his kitchen again while a new band of heavy cloud blotted out the stars outside, it was time to read more of Miriama’s journal.

  Finding out the identity of her lover was no longer the reason why. He had Vincent’s name, would talk to the other man tomorrow. Even as that thought passed through his head, Will ­second-­guessed his choice.

  What if Miriama was alive?

  What if, by delaying until morning, he cost her that life?

  Decision made as soon as those questions formed in his head, he got up and, popping the journal into a plastic bag, slid it into the inner pocket of his outdoor jacket, then went out to the SUV.

  He didn’t call Vincent until he was nearly at the other man’s home. Then, he just said, “I need you to come down the drive. We have to talk about Miriama.”

  The smallest pause before Vincent’s reply. “I’ll be there.”

  The lights of his vehicle cut through the ­pitch-­blackness about three minutes later. Will flashed his own lights from where he’d parked a little off the drive.

  “Thank you for not coming up to the house,” Vincent said, after they’d both gotten out to stand between the ­cars—­under a sky so dark that a few more feet of distance and they wouldn’t have been able to make out each other’s faces. “I told Jemima I was heading out to have a quick drink with you, said you sounded down about the lack of progress on the disappearance.”

  Will didn’t care what lies Vincent had told his wife; he was already well aware the man was a better liar than any of them had ever expected. “I know you had an affair with Miriama.”

  Smart enough to read the situation, Vincent didn’t feign shock. “She was the most honest thing in my entire life,” he murmured. “If I’d known who she’d grow up to be to me, I would’ve never married Jemima.” He dropped his gaze to the ground. “Back then, I thought it was time to get the right kind of wife, create the right kind of family, begin building the profile that would help me advance in politics.”

  When he looked up, his eyes shimmered with wetness. “That’s what I’ve always ­done—­the right thing, or the right thing as mandated by whoever it is that decides the rules. In my case, that happened to be my parents.”

  A mocking smile. “They wanted the perfect son and I was happy to give them one. It was easy when I had no other passion in my ­life—­not like Anahera with her music or Nikau with his academics, or even Daniel with his lust for money. Following my parents’ script gave me direction.”

  “How did it start with Miriama?” Will took nothing Vincent said at face value. The other man’s tears could be window dressing, his anguish perfectly pitched to arouse Will’s sympathies. It was also equally possible that Vincent had been deeply in love with Miriama and unable to stand her rejection.

  Vincent blew out a shuddering breath. “It began the first time I saw her after she went from being a girl to a woman.” Gritty words. “It took me two months to build up the courage to speak to her about anything but how I liked my coffee, even longer before I dared kiss her. I was terrified the entire time that she’d slap my face and tell me I was reaching above myself, but my beautiful Miriama never did that. She loved me as much as I loved her.”

  “What about Dominic de Souza?” Will had deliberately thrown in the question cold, with no buildup; he wanted to see Vincent’s unvarnished reaction.

  He wasn’t disappointed.

  Hands fisting, Vincent spun on his heel to stalk down the narrow space between the two cars and all the way to the tree line. He stood staring out into the pitch dark for at least two long minutes after Will joined him before he spoke. “He’s not good enough for her. He’s promised her a life of travel and adventure. But what his small mind conceives as travel and adventure will bore her within the space of a year.”

  “Did you offer better?”

  Vincent turned, his face haggard. “I should have. But, heaven help me, I didn’t.” Legs crumpling, he fell to his knees. “I should’ve said to hell with political aspirations and the perfect ‘family man’ image and just divorced Jemima. Only ­then… I would’ve had Miriama, but I would’ve lost the chance to watch my children grow up. My wife would’ve fought tooth and nail for sole custody and it wouldn’t have taken much for her to prove that she’s always been the main parent.”

  Dropping his head into his hands, Vincent choked back a sob. “But dear God,” he said afterward, his voice rough, “much as I love my children, not breaking up my marriage so I was free to be with Miriama is the biggest regret of my life. If anything’s happened to her, if I’ve wasted my one chance at true happiness, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  It was a believable performance, but conversely, Will had once believed that Vincent was a happily married man with a wife he appreciated, even if they didn’t appear to share a passionate love. Today, however, he’d heard a disturbing offhandedness in Vincent’s voice when he spoke of Jemima, as if she was no more than an unwanted piece of furniture.

  Which opened up a whole other can of worms. “Does Jemima know?”

  Vincent wiped away his tears and struggled to his feet. “No, of course not.”

  He had the confidence of philandering men everywhere, and just like them, he was probably wrong. Though, when you factored in how well Vincent had insulated his family from the locals, it was possible that Jemima had no idea. But if she had worked out the ­truth…

  “I’ll need to speak to Jemima at some point,” Will said.

  Vincent’s face turned to flint. “You’ll have to get through my lawyers first.”

  “That’s how much you love Miriama?” Will asked softly. “Enough to block me from talking to someone who might know what’s happened to her?”

  “Miriama left me. She chose Dominic de Souza.” The words were like ice. “She’ll still choose him when she comes back. I’m not going to lose my wife, too.”

  There it was, the rage. Deep and black and violent. The kind of rage that came from passionate love. “Do you know where Miriama is, Vincent?”

  “Go to hell, you bastard.”

  Will didn’t stop the other man when he got into his car and sped off down the drive, away from the house. Right now, he had nothing with which to further push Vincent.

  That didn’t mean he was about to give up.

  Starting his own vehicle after a short delay but not turning on his headlights, he followed Vincent. As it was, the covert surveillance ended up a bust: Vincent parked in front of the pub.

  Going around to the back of the local drinking hole, Will managed to get hold of the manager, a great bearded man who was a ­well-­known hunter and who’d spent hours searching for Miriama. When Will asked him to keep an eye on Vincent and to let him know if the other man said or did anything out of the ordinary, the manager stared at him with hard eyes.

  But his response wasn’t the stonewalling Will had expected, wasn’t the town protecting one of their own against an outsider. “I saw the way he looked at her,” the other man said, twisting a tea towel in his nicked and scarred hands. “Also saw the way she looked back. Miri’s too good for the likes of him and I’m glad the girl was smart enough to see that. Using her, that’s what he was doing.”

  “Did you know,” Will
said, “or did you suspect only?”

  “Didn’t know for sure. Was hoping I was wrong.” He slapped the tea towel over his shoulder, his black T-­shirt branded with the fading emblem of a metal band. “Her thing with the doctor? That’s got a real ­future—­he’s a townie but he respects little Miri enough to want her to be his wife.”

  “So his plan to propose is open knowledge?”

  A faint smile. “Mattie isn’t too good at keeping happy secrets. She whispered it around when the doctor asked her to sneak away one of Miri’s rings so that he could have the engagement ring made the right size.” Smile fading, he folded his arms over muscle gone to hard fat. “I’ll keep an eye on the rich boy, don’t worry.”

  “Don’t do anything,” Will warned. “He’s not the only one I’m looking at.”

  “When you know for certain, you sure as hell better drive whoever it is out of here before I get my hands on them. But Vincent’s safe for now.”

  The journal sat heavy against Will’s heart as he drove off after that exchange.

  He knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight.

  Before he returned home, however, he’d do a sweep of the town, make sure no trouble lurked in the shadows.

  Though the air was clear of the scent of rain, the ­cloud-­heavy sky held no stars, no moon, and it felt to Will as if the entire town was suffocating under a blanket of darkness. Miriama’s disappearance had stained Golden Cove’s heart. Nothing would scrub away that stain until they found her or discovered what had happened to her.

  Spotting a huddle on one particular corner, he came to a stop by the curb and rolled down his window.

  41

  “You should all be at home,” he said to the teenagers loitering outside the closed fire station.

  Kyle Baker flicked off some ash from his cigarette. “We were just discussing Miriama. Thinking about what else we could do, where we could search.” Insolence in his eyes but pious worry in his tone. Kyle was putting on a show for his fans, and, interestingly, many of those fans were younger than him.