Mrs. Andie backed away from the door, then turned to walk into another room. Ngaire stepped inside, out of habit checking the doorways and hallway for signs of danger. Nothing except the tin kettle whistle that emerged from the room Mrs. Andie had walked into.
Deb closed the door, and they walked together through into the next room. Large windows allowed a flood of yellow-tinged sunshine to spill inside. Mrs. Andie sat on the sofa, her arms curled around her legs and her forehead resting on her knees. Despite being aged at least seventy, her tightly curled hair didn’t show a single strand of gray.
“You found Sam,” she stated. Her voice was muffled because of her position, but otherwise sharp and clear. After fifty years in the country, her voice had an accent lifted straight out of a cowboy movie set deep in the heart of Texas. The only concession to her chosen country of occupation, a shortening of the vowels.
“We won’t be sure until we can run a DNA comparison,” Ngaire answered. “But we think so. Sam is the only missing person on file that fits with the time period and the initial description.”
The tea kettle whistle again. Mrs. Andie’s cry of despair wavered and then rose until it disappeared above Ngaire’s ability to hear.
“Is there somebody we can call for you?” Deb asked, walking over to Mrs. Andie. She held a hand out to offer an encouraging pat but never connected. Instead, she shrugged at Ngaire and pulled her arms back to her sides. “Is your husband nearby?”
“He’s gone,” Mrs. Andie said. She began to rock back and forth. “Can I ask my neighbor over? She’s better than me at these things.”
Wondering how on earth somebody could be good at “these things,” Ngaire said, “I’ll go and fetch her. This way?” She pointed to the right-hand side, and Mrs. Andie nodded.
Outside, the sunlight seemed dimmer than in the room. The clouds of smoke still billowing from the Port Hills weighted it down with a coating of ash. Its acrid taste hung in the air, choking and dead.
Ngaire banged her knuckles on the front door and stepped back to wait. It only took a second, then the lace curtain was pulled back, and a pair of watery blue eyes stared out, widening when they saw the ID Ngaire pulled from her pocket. The curtain snapped back into place, and the door opened, still on the chain.
“Your neighbor, Mrs. Andie, asked if you could come over and help her,” Ngaire said. “I’m afraid that she’s received some bad news.”
The woman stepped to the side, screwing her face up close to the gap to look over at Mrs. Andie’s property, as though confirmation would be displayed on the front lawn. She blinked, so hard that her entire face screwed up, then closed the door to pull off the chain.
“What bad news did you tell Cheryl?” the woman asked, leading the way. “Is it about her son?”
“Yes, we think that we’ve located Sam’s body.”
The woman stopped short, forcing Ngaire to do the same or bump into her. She sniffed and turned back to glare. “Took you long enough. Cheryl’s been eaten up with worry all these years.”
Ngaire nodded, accepting the accusation. “It is a dreadful thing.”
The woman turned back and hurried up to Mrs. Andie’s front door. Even though she’d plainly been invited, she still stopped to knock before letting herself in. Old manners and old prejudices, Ngaire thought as she followed her inside.
“Oh, Diana, did they tell you?” Mrs. Andie cried out from the couch. The neighbor nodded and held her arms wide open, closing them in a tight hug as Mrs. Andie ran into them. “I can’t believe it after all these years. I kept hoping—”
“I know you did, love. I know.”
“It makes me wish I’d tried harder to find him. To think he’s sat up the side of the hill, all alone for so long.”
Diana let her out of the hug and guided her back to the sofa, sitting beside her. “Where’d they find him? On the hills?”
Deb stepped forward to answer, but Mrs. Andie got there first. “He was in a shallow grave up there. Well behind the houses. No one would ever have known to look.”
From the glare that Diana threw at Ngaire and then Deb, it seemed she thought otherwise.
“Who did it?” she asked. Her voice was laden with a life of cigarette smoke and late nights. “Who killed him?”
“We don’t know that anybody—” Ngaire began, but was cut off with a raised hand.
“Don’t give me that shite. There isn’t any way that Sam deposited himself dead on the side of a mountain,” Diana said. “That boy wouldn’t even visit a park, he was that scared of nature.”
“Oh, do you remember how he refused to go camping at Hanmer?” Mrs. Andie asked, her face brightening with the memory. “He insisted that visiting a place where you had to go into a separate building to visit the toilet was barbaric, especially when there wasn’t even a light switch to turn on.”
“At this stage, we’re waiting on results from forensics to give us more information,” Deb said.
“Of course,” Mrs. Andie exclaimed. “You have all that DNA stuff nowadays. You’ll be able to find out who killed my boy using that.”
Ngaire nodded, trying to ignore the voice of Dr. Gangarry pinging at her conscience. The body is so degraded that any assailant DNA will be long gone. “We’ll certainly do everything we can to find out what happened to your boy.”
“Take a seat,” Mrs. Andie said, noticing that both Deb and Ngaire still hovered above her. She waved them into chairs opposite with her right arm, her left arm remained around the waist of her friend. “What else do you need to ask?”
“If you’re able to, we’d like to know more about the last time that you saw Sam,” Ngaire said, pulling out her notebook. “Anything that can give us more clarity on what he was doing and where he was going would be good.”
Mrs. Andie rubbed her forehead with her free hand. “Don’t you have all of that on file? Me and Alan went into the police station so often to answer questions those first few days.” She laughed—a hard-edged bark that made Ngaire feel uncomfortable. “Nothing but questions for three days and then we didn’t hear another word.”
“Some of the old records appear to be missing,” Ngaire said. The truth was easier to manage than an excuse. This way, she didn’t need to remember what they’d said. “We have the original missing persons’ report but nothing further.”
Diana snorted and nodded her head. “That would be about right. All those white policemen, all falling over themselves while the spotlight was on Christchurch and the test match. As soon as the Springbok moved on, so did everyone’s interest in the case.
“It could easily have been misfiled,” Ngaire said, jumping to the defensive so quickly that she cursed herself. She paused and looked at the floor, gathering her thoughts. “I mean, I have nothing to show one way or the other but the paper records are hard to keep track of. Especially after the original archive was moved after the earthquake.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Andie said when Diana opened her mouth to retort. She put a hand on top of her friend’s and then turned back to Ngaire. “Sam went off to the game. Alan was absolutely ecstatic to begin with.” She gave a small laugh and shook her head. “He really seemed to believe that Sam had finally found an interest in the sport, after years of not even so much as playing catch in the yard. When he found out what side of the protests Sam was on, that came crashing to a halt.”
“Had Sam been involved in protests before the test match?” Deb asked.
“Just the organizing that led up to it. Sam got even more involved once the Hamilton cancellation happened, kept saying that they were making a real change.”
Deb nodded. “And your husband was against the protesters?”
Mrs. Andie sighed. “He just wanted to be able to watch his rugby in peace. I think he would’ve liked to attend the match here, but he didn’t feel right going along when his son would be on the opposite side. Neither of them said anything, but it all got a bit tense for a while there.”
She stared at th
e floor for a long moment, watching an internal home video that no one else could see.
“I think the whole thing would have blown over after the tour left,” Mrs. Andie said. “If it hadn’t been for Sam going missing, I mean. Alan loved our boy just as much as I did. There wasn’t genuine animosity between them, just posturing. You know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah,” Ngaire said. “We understand.”
Deb shifted from foot to foot. “Had you experienced any incidents that might suggest what happened was racially motivated?”
Mrs. Andie looked up at her, shrugging. “How do you mean?”
“Name calling, racial slurs, minor scuffles. Anything that might indicate that Sam was coming under scrutiny because of his race.”
For a moment, Mrs. Andie looked aghast, her eyes widening, then she burst out laughing, Diana immediately joining in.
“What is it? What have I said?” Deb stared from one to the other in confusion.
“You might want to ask your colleague,” Diana said, tipping her head toward Ngaire, who returned her a small, tight smile. “If you’re serious, then I’ve had some of that already this morning. If I total up for the past month, then according to your logic, I’d surely be dead.”
Mrs. Andie straightened her face and tried to answer seriously. “Sam always came under scrutiny. I don’t know what you see when you look out the window, Detective, but to me, it’s mainly white. We’ve all been called names from the day we touched down in this country. If you mean, we thought something was happening that would indicate a situation to be scared of, then no. Just the usual low-level abuse.”
While Deb sat back, a worried frown in place, Ngaire caught Mrs. Andie’s eye. “Do you remember anything out of the ordinary happening on that day?”
Mrs. Andie shrugged. “Sam went off early. He had an overnight bag, said he might stop in at his girlfriend’s. I didn’t discourage it, though, usually, I wouldn’t have approved.”
“Sorry, but who was Sam’s girlfriend?” Ngaire leaned forward in her chair, pen out. “Do you have a name?”
“Shannon Rickards was her name at the time. I don’t know if she’s gotten married or anything, we fell out of touch when she went away.” Mrs. Andie leaned forward, fixing her gaze on Ngaire. “I don’t believe in sex before marriage, don’t you be thinking that. It wasn’t the way I was brought up.” She sat back in her chair and sighed. “It just seemed easier that day to let it go. If Alan and Sam stayed out of each other’s hair for a while, it made my life quieter.”
“So, you weren’t expecting to see him home that night?’ Ngaire clarified. When Mrs. Andie shook her head, she asked, “Why did you report him missing the next day, then?”
“His girlfriend’s mom called up, in tears,” Mrs. Andie said. “Her girl got arrested at the match and didn’t get the opportunity to call until the next morning. When we heard that, we called the police, and nobody had Sam down as being arrested. We phoned the hospitals next, and they didn’t have him neither, so we dropped by the station to report him missing.”
She sat forward, taking her arm away from Diana to point the finger into her other palm. “It wasn’t like Sam to stay away overnight. Even if he were having troubles with us, we’d always made it clear he owed us the courtesy of letting us know everything was okay. He could fight with his dad or me as much as he liked, but he still didn’t leave the house without telling us where he was going to be.”
“Sam was a good boy,” Diana said in support. “He was always obedient, always happy to oblige.”
“He’d never been in trouble with anybody,” Mrs. Andie added. “When the police tried to say that he’d probably run away, we both knew that couldn’t be true.”
She nodded her head slowly, looking down at the matted carpet. “Sam wasn’t that kind of kid. Not a runaway.”
“If he couldn’t handle sleeping in a log cabin,” Diana added. “You can see why neither of us believed he’d spend even one night sleeping rough.”
“We knew right from the start that something bad had happened,” Mrs. Andie said. Her face collapsed into tears, and she put her hands up to cover the display. “I always knew that if Sam were still alive, he would have let me know where he was and that he was okay. I knew it. You try to hope that there’s a possibility just so you can get up out of bed every day but I knew.
“Alan wanted to go back home to Colorado, staying here was a daily torture. I couldn’t leave, though. I couldn’t leave my boy alone.” She rubbed her face vigorously and wiped her hand dry by stroking back her hair. “I knew all along that one day, some random police officers would come calling to give me the news.”
They talked for a short while longer, both Ngaire and Deb prompting for memories that had been either lost to time or overwritten by an internal narrator. Bare facts that could be backed up with photographic evidence was all right, everything else was hazy. An impression of a son formed over the years, rather than the recall from one single day.
“Is what she said true?” Deb asked when they were done and pulling out of the driveway. “Do you get hassled every day?”
Ngaire shifted in her seat, feeling uncomfortable and put on the spot. “Yeah, it happens. For me, it won’t be as bad as it would be for the Andies. At least I’m the wrong color that everyone is familiar with. They have the added burden of appearing strange.”
“I’ve never even noticed,” Deb said, somewhere on the spectrum between disbelieving and embarrassed.
“It’s a lot better now than it was when I grew up,” Ngaire said. The part she hid was that by the time she left school, the damage had been done. Nobody needed to call her a dirty Maori under their breath once it was something she already believed.
No wonder her father had scurried away to his hovel in the North Island. By the time he left, he’d been out of work for the majority of twenty years. Somehow, the same level of education that Ngaire’s mother had sat differently on her father. Where her mother could get office work at the drop of her delicate lace hanky, her dad had been offered short-term manual labor at best.
With resentful thoughts swirling in Ngaire’s head, it was a relief to receive the text from the station. “All the remains have been recovered, and Dr. Gangarry has scheduled the post-mortem for first thing, tomorrow morning.”
Chapter Four
When Ngaire arrived home—tired, sticky, and smelling of smoke—she wanted nothing more than to flop on the couch or even head straight to bed. The day tasted like the hours old coffee she’d sculled before leaving the station, bitter and rancid.
Instead of collapsing into an early coma—a course of action that would only lead to her waking early in the morning, mind full of past misdeeds—Ngaire stripped off her clothes and jumped into the shower.
The water fell out of the overhead nozzle without any enthusiasm. The force behind the showerhead angled it out slightly, but gravity played a bigger role. It was the fault of the high-pressure showers at work. Stepping into one of those was like a thousand needles tattooing her skin with invisible ink. During the winter, when she didn’t need to make as much use of them, her bathroom seemed perfectly adequate. Today, it was just frustrating.
Even after washing herself down with shampoo and body scrub, the smell of smoke adhered to Ngaire’s skin. The house smelled of it, no matter that the doors and windows remained shut. The redolent air crept in through a thousand nooks and crannies. The same draft that kept the house nicely cool in the heat waves of a Nor’wester brought the smoke inside—laying it down in a thin film over the tables, drapes, and chairs.
With a headache pounding at her temples, Ngaire changed into baggy sweats and looked in the pantry for something to eat. A packet of chips sat behind the vegetable rack, quickly drawing her attention with the silvery gleam of its foil packet. Four seconds after insisting to herself that she would make something sensible and nutritious, Ngaire sat down on the couch and opened the chips up.
If she had felt adventurous, there w
as a packet of Maggi onion soup and Nestle reduced cream in the cupboard to whip up a dip in a few minutes, but it seemed like too much effort. So too, did leaning over and picking up the remote to turn on the TV. Ngaire settled for the stucco ceiling as entertainment instead.
Back when Findlay still visited with sometimes irritating frequency, managing to keep a whole packet of crisps hidden would have been a miracle. Now, he stayed away for such extended periods of time that Ngaire worried they didn’t even qualify as friends any longer. A situation she kept meaning to remedy but then stalled out on actually doing anything about.
The crisp taste of salt mingled with the salty tang of vinegar. It created a roughness on Ngaire’s hard palate that drew her tongue, even though its searching tip just added to the friction.
She didn’t even like salt and vinegar chips that much. The flavoring overwhelmed her salivary glands to the point that tiny spikes of pain pulsed at the side of her jaw. Nevertheless, her fingers kept delivering a steady supply until the packet was gone.
Honestly, if she were a good friend, she would call Findlay and find out why he was miffed with her. It might lead to an open conversation where they could work out their relationship to the satisfaction of both parties. Ngaire even went so far as to pull out her mobile and open the contacts to his page before she stopped.
An open conversation wasn’t something she could embark on until she knew what she wanted. Unfortunately, when it came to personal relationships, Ngaire didn’t have the slightest clue.
Life had been so straightforward when she and Findlay were at school together. Too young for serious relationships, old enough to be past the point where the opposite gender was the enemy.
Groaning, Ngaire leaned forward to snag the remote control with her fingertips. If she couldn’t make up her mind, then filling it with useless background noise would be a welcome distraction.
“The Port Hills fire has claimed its first victim,” the TV reporter said, standing safely at the base of the hills while the camera panned upward. “Police have erected a tent on one side of the valley, while they investigate.”
The Only Secret Left to Keep Page 3