A Madness of Sunshine

by Singh, Nalini

  “I don’t know.” Jemima’s fingers clenched tight around the railing. “I thought about hiring a private investigator to follow Vincent, but then I’d actually know and have to do something about it.” Releasing a shuddering breath, she said, “Right now, I can pretend that it’s all in my imagination. And we can keep on living this perfect life.”

  Anahera turned her gaze from the view to the elegant lines of Jemima’s face. “You love him.” It was written in every tormented inch of her. Whatever Vincent’s reasons for marrying her, Jemima had done it out of love.

  “From the moment I first met him,” Jemima whispered. “I always knew he didn’t feel the same way about me, but I thought it would grow. And we were doing okay, were building a strong friendship around our shared determination to get Vincent to the top of the political ladder, and ­then…”

  Jemima looked back through the sliding door, making sure her children remained involved in their game and out of earshot. “Then he found a woman who made him feel alive in a way I’ve never managed.”

  “That doesn’t give him the right to hurt you.”

  “The thing is”—­Jemima dropped her ­head—­“even if he came to me today and confessed each and every detail, I’d tell him I’d be willing to look the other way as long as he came back to me. That’s how pathetic I am, that’s how much I love him.”

  Anahera closed a hand over the other woman’s, squeezed, but part of her couldn’t help but think that a wife who was willing to put up with that much from her husband might not take it well if she believed her husband’s affair had a chance of becoming ­real—­of coming out of the shadows to disrupt her perfect life. Maybe Vincent had slipped up, or maybe Jemima had hired that private investigator.

  Was it possible Vincent had tried to win Miriama back by offering marriage?

  “Are you worried that Vincent’s considering divorce?” Anahera pushed off the railing, angling her body to face Jemima. “And again, you can tell me to shove it if that’s going too far.”

  “I think you might be the first real friend I’ve made since I walked down the aisle.” A tendril of golden hair whispered against her cheek. “I don’t want to lie to you. The truth is, I used to worry about divorce, but he’s never once mentioned it as a possibility. I keep hoping it’s just a madness that’ll pass and then I’ll have my husband back.” Words raw with hope.

  Jemima truly seemed to believe the affair was ongoing.

  So either Vincent had already found someone ­else… or he remained obsessed with Miriama despite their breakup.

  44

  Will fought the urge to slam his fist down on the steering wheel. He’d spoken to everybody he could, run down every possible lead, even quietly checked the whereabouts of a number of different men at the time of Miriama’s ­disappearance—­men who’d looked at her as Nikau had looked at ­her—­and still he had nothing.

  Nikau himself, it turned out, had been hanging in the garage with Peter Jacobs. Peter Jacobs, who had no record, but who’d been a “person of interest” in an American rape investigation. Will had discovered that piece of ­well-­buried background earlier today, his blood running cold, but Jacobs’s alibi was solid.

  Evelyn Triskell, of all people, had confirmed that she’d walked in on Peter and Nikau “stinking up” the garage with “awful cheap cigars.” She’d been certain of the date and time because she’d come in to have an oil check before she and Wayne left to see a movie in a neighboring town. She’d even had the ticket stubs to confirm the timing.

  Another dead end.

  The same as the information that had finally come in from Miriama’s cell phone carrier: her phone had last pinged off towers that placed her in Golden ­Cove—­near the time of her disappearance.

  Will’s superiors had more than once pointed out that his strongest trait was also his worst weakness: Sometimes, Will, they’d said, you have to give up. Sometimes you can’t save people.

  He knew that, had lived the cruel truth as he fought to get inside the blazing funeral pyre of a “safe house” that held a ­bright-­eyed little boy and his mother. But still he couldn’t stop himself, still he couldn’t give up.

  Miriama deserved better than that. Golden Cove deserved better than that.

  Because he’d also been chasing down the rumors about the three missing hikers from fifteen years ago. Everyone had a theory about what may have happened to the young women. Will had even received an anonymous tip in the form of a note shoved under the station door while he was out. A note full of vague innuendo and speculation. No one had facts.

  He’d sent off a query to check the allegations in the note, but right now he wanted to talk to Matthew Teka. The man had been around a long time. If anyone knew the secrets of this town, it’d be Matthew. Which was why Will was driving to the man’s cabin out in the bush.

  The hunter called out a hearty “Tēnā koe!” and invited him in for a cup of “gumboot tea.” While it brewed, he regaled Will with a story about the tahr bull he’d been tracking recently. “Sly bugger. I could almost see him laughing as he scrambled up a mountainside like he had crampons on his feet.” He checked the tea he had going on the stove in a heavy teakettle even older than Anahera’s. “You ever tasted their meat? Bloody good kai.”

  “Can’t say I have.” Though, having grown up in the south, he was familiar with the ­goat-­like animals. Endangered elsewhere in the world, the introduced species was considered a pest in New Zealand.

  “I’ll get you a steak after I bag this bull.” Matthew picked up the kettle and began to pour.

  “You supply one of the ­wild-­game restaurants?”

  “Yeah, but don’t worry about paying city prices. Your feed’s on ­me—­I always keep aside a bit of meat.”

  “Kia ora, Matthew.”

  Putting a dented tin cup in front of Will after waving off his thanks, Matthew took a seat at the wooden ­table—­not across from Will, but to the right, next to the window. “So, you want to talk about the lost hikers.”

  Will drank down a third of the hot, strong tea heavy with sugar and dark with caffeine. “Anything you can tell me?”

  “Those girls didn’t just disappear,” Matthew said bluntly while rolling up tobacco into a thin cigarette. “I tramped through that part of the bush day in and day out, and didn’t see no sign of the girls until I found that water bottle.”

  He finished sealing his roll-­up, but didn’t light it. “Piri found the pack that belonged to the second wahine ­later—­in the same spot where I stopped for a breather the day before. I got eyes in my upoko. I would’ve noticed a pack. Got put there after.”

  “Did you tell this to the original investigators?”

  “Sure.” A shrug. “But most of the city cops, they think we’re pōraki, nē.” He circled a finger by his temple. “Living out here in the bush.”

  Unfortunately, Will couldn’t disagree with Matthew’s take. Hell, if he hadn’t been assigned to Golden Cove, if he hadn’t gotten to know these people, he might’ve been the same. The brain shied away from the sanity of making a home out here in this primeval wildness. “Did the locals have any suspicions at the time about who it might’ve been?”

  “People did look at each other funny after they found the bracelet of the third girl, but it was just fear, eh. We didn’t have anyone acting like a perv or anything.”

  In a town this small, someone inevitably ended up a scapegoat. That Golden Cove hadn’t fixated on a single individual told him exactly how difficult the case must’ve been for the cops who’d investigated it. A water bottle, a pack, an identity bracelet. No remains. Not even a single bone fragment.

  “What about you?” he asked. “You ever wonder about someone?”

  Finally lighting his roll-­up, Matthew politely puffed toward the open window rather than Will’s face. “Interesting question, that.”

  Instincts prickling, Will just waited.

  “You’re a good listener.” Matthew gave an approving
nod from behind a plume of smoke. “Would’ve made a great enemy interrogator.”

  Will wasn’t the least surprised to learn the other man was a veteran. He got that haunted look in his eyes sometimes that Will had seen in the eyes of others who’d come back from war. “It used to drive my mother nuts,” he said. “For the first few years of my life she worried I was mute.”

  Laughing uproariously at that, the older man slapped at his knee. “Ka mau te wehi!” When he finally calmed down, he said, “You’ll think I’ve lost my mind alone out here.”

  Will held his gaze. “I’ve learned things during this investigation that make me question everyone in the Cove, so whoever you name, I’m not going to be surprised.”

  The name Matthew spoke made the hairs rise on the back of Will’s neck. “Why? I need to know why you suspected him.”

  Matthew took a while to think about that, smoking his roll-­up halfway down before he said, “­Just… too perfect, eh.” Another thoughtful puff. “A ­man—­he was a boy back ­then—­who never makes mistakes has got to have a madness trapped inside. And, there was the punua kurī.”

  “A puppy?”

  Matthew nodded, then went silent.

  “I didn’t grow up here, Matthew,” Will prodded. “What about the puppy?”

  After taking a last puff, Matthew crushed his roll-­up in the ashtray balanced on the window ledge. “Kid’s father gave him one for his ninth birthday, I think it was. Maybe it was eight, or maybe it was ten, eh? Tama­riki all look the same to me.”

  The hunter coughed, his chest sounding clogged up. “Then one day, I see him running out of the bush near their place, saying his puppy had run away. He was crying, all ­red-­faced and scared.” Another hacking cough. “I knew that pup wouldn’t survive out there all alone and I had Ripper with ­me—­good hunting dog, never used to get distracted. I figured he could track down the punua kurī quick enough.”

  Will had the feeling he was about to hear something that wouldn’t ever leave his memory. “Did Ripper live up to his reputation?”

  “Yeah, he found the puppy, what was left of it. Someone had bashed its brains in using a rock.”

  Matthew looked at Will with sharp, dark eyes. “I couldn’t believe a boy that young could’ve done that, eh, so I just buried the puppy and told myself to forget it. But, I kept seeing that pup with its brains bashed out every time I closed my eyes. So next time I saw Trevor Baker down at the pub, I told him maybe he shouldn’t give his boy another puppy.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing, but that boy never again got a kurī.”

  As Matthew got up to pour himself a cup of tea, Will worked out the logistics in his head. “Vincent would’ve only been fourteen at the time the hikers went missing.”

  “He got his growth early, that boy.” Matthew topped up Will’s tea. “Was as big as a man by that age. As big as he is now.”

  Which wasn’t huge by any estimation, Will thought, but it was plenty big enough to overpower a woman of average size. He’d looked up the files on the missing hikers, knew they’d been small boned and ranged from ­five-­one to ­five-­four in height, their weights on the lower end of the scale. A strong ­fourteen-­year-­old boy could have taken each one.

  Especially if he came at them with a rock from behind.

  One blow to disorient, the other to incapacitate. And more to smash in their skulls just like the lost puppy’s.

  “’Course, Vincent wasn’t the only strong boy in the Cove that summer,” Matthew added without warning. “Back when he was younger, after I told him I couldn’t find the pup, he started crying harder and said another boy in town must’ve stolen the punua kurī, that he was jealous of Vincent’s gift.”

  “He ever name the other boy?”

  “I never asked.” Matthew drank some of his tea, then put down the mug and began to roll another cigarette. “Needed a beer after what I’d seen, just wanted to get down to the pub.”

  “You think it’s possible another child was involved?”

  The hunter took his time answering. “Rich, ­good-­looking boy with all the nice toys living in a flash house? Āe, another boy might see that and get a hot head.” Sealing the roll-­up closed, he said, “No way to hide a stolen pup in Golden Cove.”

  This time, every single tiny hair on Will’s body rose up. What kind of a child would bash in a helpless puppy’s brains rather than allow another boy to possess it?

  45

  Will drove back into Golden Cove as night was falling, not sure what he was going to do with the information, or even if he believed all of ­it—­because Matthew didn’t only smoke tobacco. Will had smelled weed on him more than once, but since there was no indication the hunter was cultivating or ­selling… and because of those haunted eyes, he’d let sleeping dogs lie.

  If a man wanted to ­self-­medicate to escape the nightmares, who the fuck was Will to stop him?

  He might not have made the same call as a shiny young cop, but now he knew that a man could be broken. Sometimes, oblivion was a gift.

  But if Matthew’s information was right, Will had to follow it up all the way to the horrific end. A teenage boy who’d murdered three women and gotten away with it wouldn’t have stopped. No, he’d just have gotten smarter, slyer. And maybe stopped hunting on home ground.

  Jesus Christ, how many bodies were buried in the bush?

  He pulled into the supermarket lot on the heels of that thought, ran in to grab a ­six-­pack of beer from the chiller, though he was unlikely to have more than a single one. The town was too unsettled for him to be incapaci­tated. Whether he even had one would depend on whether or not Anahera was in the mood to let him stay the night.

  “Any news?” Shan Lee asked him at the checkout, the man’s face smooth and without wrinkles but his eyes worn.

  “No. Nothing.” He paid, picked up the beer. “Your daughter’s a smart woman, Shan, and she knows to be careful.”

  “Never thought I’d have to worry about those things here.”

  No, neither had Will.

  The front door to Anahera’s cabin was open when he went up to the porch, and he could hear rock music within. “Anahera,” he called out.

  When she didn’t answer, he stepped in, looked around, his shoulders tight and his abdomen clenched. A pot sat bubbling on the makeshift stove, while ­half-­chopped vegetables lay on the cutting board. Listening harder, he heard the sound of water running nearby.

  Anahera appeared from around the corner seconds later. “Had to go wash off some dirt. A sparrow slammed into the window and when I went to see if it was okay, I managed to stumble into muck.” She made a face. “Didn’t want to wash in the sink, not when I’m cooking.”

  Will wasn’t ­listening—­he was too focused on the fact that she was wearing only a towel, hitched around her breasts. Yellow and short, it made her skin glow. “You left the door open.” The words shoved out.

  “You did message to say you were on the road out of town,” she pointed out. “Can you watch the stove?” Turning on her heel, she walked off toward her bedroom. “I was in the middle of changing.”

  Will wasn’t sure he took a breath until he heard the click of her bedroom door closing. “Fuck.”

  The woman packed a punch.

  Closing the front door, he kicked off his boots before heading in and putting the beer in her small ­fridge—­it appeared secondhand, was probably a loaner from Josie and Tom. When he looked at the pot, he thought she might be making stew. Whatever it was, it smelled damn good. After making sure it wasn’t going to bubble over, he turned to the cutting board. A wash of his hands, then he finished chopping up the vegetables on the board.

  He’d just put down the knife when she walked back into the room, having changed into a slinky black dress with long sleeves that hit her midthigh and exposed her shoulders. Her only accessory was a greenstone pendant worn on a braided black cord. Her feet were bare, her hair down.

  Not saying a w
ord, Will went to the fire and stoked it up to a blaze.

  Anahera laughed, the sound big and husky. “Does that mean you like the dress?”

  Shrugging off the shirt he wore on top of a white T-­shirt, Will hung it on the back of a chair. “That’s not a dress that inspires a simple like.” It was too punch-­in-­the-­gut sexy for that.

  Anahera didn’t answer until she’d scraped the vegetables into the stew pot. “It will taste good,” she said. “I know not everyone’s a fan of stew, but you’ll have to trust me on this.”

  “Oh,” Will said, “I didn’t realize you were talking about the food.”

  Another laugh. “I didn’t know you could flirt, cop.”

  Neither had Will. It had been an age since he’d done it, since he’d wanted to do it. “Should I have a beer?” he asked.

  She took one of the beers from the fridge and, pulling back the tab to open the can, placed it on the counter. “You could pour me a glass of wine.”

  Spotting the bottle of red she’d opened the other night, Will did as asked. Then he leaned back against the wall and watched her move around the kitchen. It was a small space and she filled it to overflowing, her energy intense.

  He took a swallow of his beer, ran his eyes over the elegant curves of her body. She caught him at it. “Somehow, cop, I don’t think your mind is on food.”

  “I am thinking of eating something.”

  Anahera turned off the stove. “Food’s done.” She prowled over to him until her breasts touched his chest, her bare feet against his. When she tilted up her head, it was with unhidden challenge in her eyes.

  Will slid his free hand behind her neck, under the dark heaviness of her hair, and massaged. “You like the taste of beer?”

  “I don’t mind it.”

  Keeping his hand where it was, he leaned down to kiss her. She rose up into the kiss, no passive receiver but an active participant. If his mouth tasted like beer, hers was rich red wine and something deeper, more potent, intrinsically Anahera.