A Madness of Sunshine

by Singh, Nalini

  “I already bought the ring,” he said in a voice so soft it was nearly snatched away by the quiet wind. “I just wanted her to wait until my kids were a little more grown, but she couldn’t. And now she’s dead.”

  Anahera’s heart began to thump, her skin burning from the inside out. Maybe it was grief causing the flat patches in Vincent’s ­delivery—­or maybe it was a cold kind of calculation. All the smiles, all the sadness, what was real and what wasn’t? What kind of a man could talk so unemotionally about murdering his own wife?

  “Jemima told me you came to see her,” he said without warning. “She’s very happy to have made a friend in town.”

  Oh, Jemima. Controlling men like Vincent didn’t like for their wives to have friends. “I understand what it feels like coming into a ­tight-­knit community,” she said, trying to make light of the situation. “It was the same for me when I moved to London. All the people I met were friends with Edward. It was hard to make friendships of my own.”

  Vincent’s intense expression gentled. “You two don’t actually have that much in common.”

  “I know.” She said what he wanted her to say, what he needed her to ­say—­alone on a windswept cliff was not the time to antagonize a man who spoke with easy casualness about ending his wife’s life. “I don’t expect us to become best friends. But I’m still enough of the Golden Cove girl to not want a visitor to feel unwelcome.”

  He chuckled. “Jemima would’ve had an easier time of it in South Africa, but she didn’t have the head to go into the family business. Being my wife, looking after my children with the nanny’s help, looking good for photos, that’s more her strength. She’d last about two minutes in the real world.”

  Anahera stared at his profile as he turned to look at the ocean; he wasn’t even attempting to be subtle. Or was he so used to putting Jemima down that this was his normal, and Anahera had just never spoken to him long enough on this subject to see it?

  There was another, more dangerous option: Vincent didn’t care about showing her his true face because he didn’t expect her to have a chance to tell anyone about it.

  “Will you be happy together now, do you think?” She kept her tone friendly with furious effort of will. “Can you get past your feelings for Miriama?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Vincent’s tone changed, became almost confessional. “Miriama made me happy inside from the instant I saw her as a woman, but I’ve always had something else that never fails to give me joy. I’ve decided to go back to that old hobby.”

  Anahera took a step backward, her body poised to ­run… But she was too late. The Taser was in Vincent’s hand well before she was out of range. “It’s so hard to get an unregistered gun in this country,” he said. “Especially when you have a profile and people want to hold things over you. Even getting this was a bit of a ­mission—­but it’s worked out the better choice for my needs.”

  Anahera held up her hands. “What are you doing?” She thought of the phone she had tucked in her back pocket, knew there was no way she could make the call before being hit and disabled.

  “Haven’t you figured it out, sweet little Ana?” The same angelic smile he’d given her so many times across the years. “Slim, dark haired, dark eyed, vibrant with ­life—­my father kept her in Auckland, introduced me to her on my thirteenth birthday, when it was time for me to become a man.”

  His face twisted. “Be a man, Vincent! Fuck her like you mean it! Slap and choke the bitch until she does what you want! Baker men aren’t pussies!” The ugliness faded, the angelic smile back in place. “I got a taste for a certain kind of woman.”

  Anahera’s gorge rose. “That’s unforgivable. You were a child.”

  “You’re a good person, Ana.” The hand holding the weapon never wavered. “It is a little sad to be so predictable in my tastes, but oh well, it makes me happy.” He chuckled, as if he’d made a joke. “And the bastard’s bones are worm food, so it’s not like he can crow over it.”

  Anahera’s breath came in shallow pants. “The murders,” she said. “The hikers.”

  “Clap, clap.” His voice was smooth, warm. “I didn’t feel the urge to indulge while I was with my Miriama. But with her gone, I need to find happiness in life again.”

  “What about all those years after the three hikers?” Anahera scrambled to keep him talking. “You and Miriama only got together after she turned eighteen.”

  “Yes, I differ from my father ­there—­I don’t like children.” A shrug. “I travel a lot. New Zealand is an inconveniently small country for a man with my needs.” He sighed. “People here miss women.”

  A knot formed in the pit of Anahera’s stomach. If he was openly telling her of his murderous history, there was no way she’d be able to talk her way out of this. But the longer she kept him talking, the longer she gave herself to think.

  Her one advantage was that he seemed to want to talk, want to boast about his exploits. “You killed Miriama because she walked away from you?”

  Patches of red on his face, his eyes blazing. “I would’ve won her back! That pissant doctor has nothing on what I could’ve given her.” Cold words that trembled. “I didn’t put a finger on my Miriama. All I did was love her.”

  Anahera ran rapidly through her options. She could go right, toward the bush, or she could go left, toward the cliffs. She had no idea of a Taser’s range, but she knew Vincent was a fast runner. He’d been a sprinter in high school. He was also dressed in running shoes while she wore her normal everyday boots.

  Out in the open, he’d catch her in a heartbeat. Her only chance was to go into the bush and lose herself amid the dense dark green.

  Sweat trickled down her back. “Since it’s just the two of us,” she said, slowly putting down her hands while making sure to keep them in open view, “can I ask you some questions before you kill me?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you hoping your washed-­up cop will come rescue you?”

  “I don’t expect any man to rescue me.”

  Expression nearly tender, Vincent said, “Your father’s a cowardly shit. If you want me to get rid of him, I’ll do it as a special favor.”

  “No, I want him to stew in regret.” She flexed her muscles as much as she could to prepare for her break toward the trees. “As for the questions, call it curiosity. It’s not every day I find out my friend is a serial killer.”

  His laugh was golden sunshine. “I always loved the ­smart-­aleck things you’d say.” Such affection in his voice and yet he planned to brutalize then murder her. “It’s all for the greater good, Ana. You should be proud to be one of my women.”

  “Strange, but pride’s not my topmost emotion right now.”

  More laughter, utter delight in every inch of him. “All right, ask your questions,” he said after wiping the tears from his eyes. “We’ve got plenty of time and I’ll hear anyone coming down the drive. If the cop does get suspicious, the pathetic creature I married will say exactly what I tell her to say.”

  Anahera knew Vincent was feeding off her fear, but she couldn’t stop her heart from beating faster, her blood from pumping harder and harder. “When did you find out you liked murder?”

  “It was by accident,” he said in a conversational tone. “I was walking in the bush one day, pissed off at my spineless excuse for a mother, when I ran into a ­dark-­eyed Italian hiker who reminded me of my father’s whore and how much fun I’d had slapping her around.”

  His smile reached his eyes. “All that repressed anger, you know? God, it was fun to have an outlet. Best gift the bastard ever gave me.” Affection in his voice, so real she might’ve believed it if she hadn’t already realized that Vincent put on emotions like other people put on clothes. “The hiker was really cute and she was all smiley and she said hello with that accent, and I had a rock in my hand and I just smashed her head in with it.”

  59

  Anahera flinched.

  But Vincent wasn’t finished. “She didn’t die,
not straightaway. She kept on trying to talk even though I’d smashed one of her eyes almost out, and only half her mouth was moving. I sat beside her for a long time, stroking her hair, and telling her it would be all right. My mother used to stroke my hair and tell me it would be all right.” A dreamy look to him. “After.”

  “After what?”

  A sly smile. “After my father tucked me in at bedtime like a good dad. A ­picture-­perfect dad.”

  Nauseated, Anahera said, “Did ­he—­”

  “Talking about them is boring.” Plastic smile, unwavering aim. “My hobby’s the interesting thing. After the hiker started gurgling blood, I picked up my rock and smashed her and smashed her and smashed her until her face was pulp.” He shrugged. “I know, not very sophisticated, but in my defense, I was only fourteen.”

  “Why were you so angry at your mother that day?” Anahera whispered, realizing that though he chose victims who reminded him of his horrific first sexual experience with a woman, his rage came from a far different source. “What did she do?” Or not do.

  “I don’t remember. And I told you”—­he looked straight down his arm at her with eyes that held ­nothing—­“talking about the bastard and his bitch is boring.”

  Anahera changed tack. “What happened to the hiker’s body?”

  “I finally realized I’d been an idiot.” Vincent made a face. “I hadn’t taken any precautions or made any plans. Dumb teenage lack of impulse control.” He smiled, asking her to smile with him. “Eventually, I dragged her off the path and covered her up with leaves. I figured she’d be found, but my pretty, smiley girl hadn’t logged her hike with anyone, was still there the next day when I came back with a shovel and an axe and a tarp. Do you know how hard it is to chop up a body? Blood and viscera everywhere.”

  “You didn’t.” It came out a rough whisper.

  “Scout’s honor.” Vincent grinned. “I took off all my clothes before I started, put them in a plastic bag; and I brought water to wash in. It took me hours to carry the pieces out in my daypack.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Buried in the bush behind the house. Cadaver dogs never came that far when they finally did a search.”

  “Is that why you decided to target more hikers? Because they were less likely to be missed at once?”

  He nodded. “I met the second one on the trail and she came with me when I said I could show her a secret local waterfall. I managed to get her close enough to my burial ground to keep all of ­her—­and I didn’t use a rock that time. No broken bones.”

  And Anahera knew. “The skeleton Shane found.”

  “I dug her up after my dear departed parents weren’t around to spy on me, then spent weeks cleaning up her bones. I kept her in my basement workroom that Jemima knows never to go into.” Another one of those lopsided grins. “But that first summer, I was still a kid, took the third one too soon in the same area. After I saw how the cops swarmed, I decided I’d have to be clever, not hunt so close to my home ground.”

  Anahera frowned. “Did you put the bracelet in our cave on purpose?”

  “Yes. Showing off to my friends.” His smile faded. “I was sorry later, when none of you wanted to go back there to hang out.” Voice quiet, poignant with sadness. “I was happy in that cave.”

  “I don’t understand one thing,” Anahera said, wondering if she’d imagined the flash of movement in the trees behind Vincent’s shoulder.

  “What?”

  “You must’ve had other victims between that summer and your first trip abroad on your own.” After killing three times in a single summer, Vincent couldn’t have gone dormant until he began traveling internationally. “And you pointed it out ­yourself—­we live in a small country. Why did no one make the connection between all the victims?”

  “I’ve never been stupid, Ana, you know that.” It was a chiding statement. “I sat down and thought about what made me happy and realized I didn’t have a racial preference. Māori, Tongan, Italian, Indian, I found pictures of women with the right look and ­imagined… playing with them. The joy, the release of tension I felt was the same.”

  Anahera curled her fingers into her palms, flexed her feet.

  “I favor nicer girls and spend the most time with them”—­Vincent’s eyes skimmed her body with a chilling kind of ­warmth—­“but the right whore will do to plug the gap, especially if she’s young and relatively unspoiled.” Roughness in his voice there, before it smoothed out to calm control again. “Age can vary from nineteen to a ­young-­looking ­thirty-­five or so. I did kill younger teenagers, but that was when I was a kid myself. You’d be surprised how many nice girls will meet a ­good-­looking rich boy for a secret date.”

  He shrugged. “Once I understood all that, it was easy to vary things up so I was satisfied, but no one would see a pattern. Take a good churchgoing girl, follow it up with a cheating soccer mom in another town, throw in a ­hell-­raising ­runaway—­no pattern, nothing to see.”

  “Except you,” Anahera pointed out. “Someone should’ve noticed a boy whose name kept turning up again and again.”

  “I told you I got clever,” he replied. “I did my research before each kill, had a place to dispose of the body.” Pride now, iridescent beneath the golden smile. “The churchgoing girl went into a ­fenced-­off geothermal pool so hot she’s probably sludge by now. I drove the soccer mom’s SUV into a ­lake—­it wasn’t found for years. Runaway’s buried in the woods on a friend’s farm. We met in town and I convinced her we’d smoke dope together if she snuck into the barn after ­lights-­out.”

  Vincent had been smart, scarily so. No signature, no attempts to play with the police. For him, the hunt wasn’t an act of blinding rage. Neither was the body dump. No, the rage came in between, after he had the women under his control.

  A man like that could hide his crimes for decades.

  But his intelligent choices had left him with no way to tell the world what he’d achieved. Anahera, however, was a captive audience he planned to silence.

  Fuck him.

  She’d use his arrogance to save herself. The arm with which he held the stun gun had to be getting tired. All she needed was a second’s inattention as he readjusted position and she’d take her chances. It had to be harder to hit a moving target than a stationary one, especially if that moving target was weaving and dodging in an unpredictable way.

  “How many?” she asked, not looking in the direction where she’d seen movement. If someone was out there, she wasn’t going to give them away to Vincent.

  “You know,” he said after a long pause, “I’ve never counted, but I think it must be something like ­twenty-­seven.”

  He was lying.

  Whether it was the low number for a man who’d killed three times in a single blistering summer, or that he hadn’t counted, there was a lie in there somewhere. But then again, Vincent was a psychopath who’d successfully fooled people his entire lifetime. Lying was part of his oeuvre.

  “Stop pulling my leg, Vincent.” His arm had to start quivering soon. “You were the best of us at keeping track of things. That’s why we always asked you to be the judge in any challenge.”

  He gave her that beatific smile with no hint of evil to it, and moved the Taser from one hand to the other so fast that she had no time to react.

  Keep him talking, she told herself instead of panicking. Give yourself time to think. It wasn’t hard to follow the ­instruction—­because even though she was standing face-­to-­face with him while he threatened her, she still found it difficult to believe that the boy she’d once raced across the sands had turned into a monster.

  Her questions were infinite.

  “Busted,” he said with a huge laugh. “But the number is my special secret. No one will ever know what I’ve done. Not the whole of it.”

  “Were you always like this?” The question came from deep inside her. “When we played as children, did you go home and torture animals?”

&nb
sp; He tilted his head partially to the side. “Could be I was born this way,” he said and his eyes were laughing again, his amusement inexplicable and slippery. “Or could be it was the third bedtime tuck-­in or the thirtieth that did it.” Another shrug. “Personally, I’m going for nurture over ­nature—­my baby brother is definitely having a hard time hiding his crazy these days. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with him. I dealt with the problem, didn’t I?”

  Cold fingers on Anahera’s neck. “Where’s Kyle, Vincent?”

  60

  “He burned down your cabin, Ana. I’m sorry.” Streaks of red on his cheekbones, his tone abashed. “Such a petty, vindictive little ­shit—­and he wasn’t smart enough to change out of his ­kerosene-­splattered jeans before he came home. I didn’t make clever choices all these years to be brought down by a spoiled brat who thought he was the big bad in the family.”

  “Did you look him in the face when you killed him?”

  “No.” Several golden strands of Vincent’s hair lifted in the slight breeze before settling back down. “Do you think I’m a monster? He was my baby brother. And if he’d kept on being a good little psychopath and hiding who he was from everyone, I’d have been a proud sibling. But no, he had to go and start playing asinine ego games.”

  No doubt Vincent would brush off Kyle’s disappearance by saying his brother had gone traveling abroad. Nothing strange in that. Nothing strange in Kyle settling down in another country, either.

  No, Vincent wasn’t stupid.

  Anahera had seen no more movement, accepted that she’d fooled herself in her desperation. “So,” she said, “what do you plan to do to me?”

  “My tastes have become far more sophisticated than with my ­first… lover.” A softness to his gaze, memories of murder and pleasure. “There’s no fun in just bashing in a woman’s face. It’s the difference between sculling a mug of cheap beer and savoring a fine wine. These days, I like to take my time.”