by Nalini Singh
“No. It’s not her.”
“Dominic—”
“No!” The other man came at Will, punching and shoving while Will tried to keep him contained without doing harm.
“It’s not her! It’s not my Miriama!” His glasses flew off in the struggle, to land on the beige carpet without a sound. “It’s not!”
Eventually his words began to tremble, began to turn into questions that pleaded for Will to give the right answer. “It’s not her? It’s not Miriama?”
“I’m sorry, Dominic.”
The young doctor collapsed into his arms. “She was so beautiful. So lovely. I thought she’d be mine forever.”
* * *
—
Nikau responded quickly to Will’s call asking him to stay with Dominic.
“Thanks, Nik. I appreciate this.”
The other man shook his head. “No need. This is fucked up. You mind if I get the doc drunk?”
Looking at where Dominic sat blank-faced in his clinic chair, mindlessly straightening the bent arm of his glasses, Will said, “He could probably use a drink or five.” Then maybe he’d sleep, forget for a minute.
Tomorrow was soon enough to face the truth.
Dominic wasn’t the only one who slowed him down. The team dealing with the skeletal remains needed to talk to him about any missing person cases in the region. Will could’ve brushed them off, but he knew Miriama’s autopsy would take time. There was no point in him riding Ankita’s tail.
He met Robert and the others at the dump. The forensic and police teams were only partially into their painstaking search of the area. Will would bet his badge that there was nothing to find, that the skeleton had been left in this location because it was a way to further dehumanize the victim and cause exactly the kind of pain he’d seen in Matilda when she’d thought someone had thrown Miriama’s body in the dump.
“Thanks for this, Will.” Robert took out his notebook, his lanky partner beside him. “Look, to be blunt, we need your help. We don’t understand the area or the politics of this town—and I don’t want to waste time running down information you probably have in your head.”
Will could tell the other man was uneasy about asking, when Will had been pulled off the case, but Will had no desire to play games. “Here’s what I know.”
The older cop tapped his pen against his notebook when Will finished telling him about the missing hikers. “Residents really believe they might’ve had a serial killer running around?”
“It’s not too big of a stretch,” Will said. “Not when you take into account the physical similarities between the three women.” He’d brought his laptop and now opened it up, pulling up the file on the three women who’d gone missing over the course of a single hot summer.
Their ethnicities were different, but all of them had skin of light brown, their hair dark, their bones fine, and their height on the shorter side of average. But it was their smiles that tied them together—there was a primal vitality about the women.
All three were vividly alive.
Robert’s younger partner whistled. “Jesus, I see what you mean. Why wasn’t this picked up on before?”
“I don’t know that it wasn’t—it’s just not in the official files,” Will said. “I tried to get in touch with the detective in charge, but he died of a heart attack a few years ago, and the team that worked with him could—or would—only give me what’s already on record.” Wherever Matilda’s junior detective had picked up his intel, no one was willing to discuss it now.
“How extensive was the search?” Robert frowned. “I’m remembering the cases now, but I’m fuzzy on the details.”
“It went for weeks—and began after the second missing hiker.”
“Not the first?”
“She didn’t file her route anywhere.” Never knowing how easy it was to walk into the bush and never return. “No one knew she was heading to Golden Cove.” A number of the editorials that had come out in the aftermath of that summer had been flat-out cruel, blaming the women for a lack of preparation.
“And the third?”
“Reported as missing by her family, but again, with no filed route, there was no reason to connect her to the Cove.” It was a small place in a country full of wilderness. “Then the media began a series on women who’d gone missing and never been found.”
“Right.” Robert snapped his oddly slender fingers, fingers more suited to a pianist than a cop. “I remember my commander at the time being pleased at the exposure. She was hoping it’d bring closure to some cold cases.”
“It did—an elderly couple came forward to say they’d given the third woman a lift to Golden Cove, while a bus driver remembered the first one getting off at a trailhead just outside the Cove.” It wasn’t an official stop, but most of the drivers didn’t mind a quick stop so hikers could jump off.
He brought up the paltry list of recovered belongings: the pack, the water bottle unique enough to be identified as belonging to the first missing woman, and finally, the identity bracelet found at the “cave” on the beach. “The bracelet was discovered two days after the end of the first official search, which focused on the bush trails.” Will had his own thoughts about the timing, but no proof.
“With the terrain and the lack of any evidence of foul play,” he said, “the disappearances were eventually ruled accidental. Most people thought the women got lost or stumbled into a crevasse or down into the sea. The detective in charge kept making notes in the files after the official accidental death finding, so it’s safe to say he had his suspicions, but he was never able to link another missing woman to the town.”
Robert’s next question was predictable; he’d been staring at the map of Golden Cove on which Will had marked the recovered items. “How far to where the water bottle was found?”
“Only about a twenty-minute walk from here.” Will looked over at where Shane had made his chilling discovery. “The relevant track loops around to eventually join the one on which the remains were located.” The murderer amusing himself with a little game of memory. “It’s overgrown but was walked by volunteers during the search for Miriama Tutaia, so it should be passable.” Nikau hadn’t said anything overt, but he’d made sure the search covered all areas related to the lost hikers. “You want to see it now?”
Robert nodded. “I’ll pull a couple of the SOCOs off the dump—that’s going to take forever. They might as well walk ahead of us and collect any evidence our boy left behind.”
Will was too experienced a cop not to sense the older man’s skepticism beneath his outwardly cooperative response. Robert was wondering if Will wasn’t stretching the truth to make himself more relevant to the case. But skeptical or not, he was doing Will the courtesy of listening, because once upon a time, Will had been a hotshot cop with an instinct for running down predators.
The hotshot was gone, but it turned out his instincts had survived the fire.
Soon as everyone was ready, Will took them to the start of the track and had the forensic people walk ahead about a foot, one on either side of the trail. Tree ferns, their bodies lush and dark and their leaves a silvery light green, grew thick around them, along with taller, more ancient trees that blotted out the cloudy light.
Moss hung from branches and he saw a perfect spiderweb strung between two ferns.
In the shady and cool dark, the freshly trampled undergrowth cushioned their footsteps, creating an eerie silence that Will broke. “The water bottle wasn’t found on the track itself, but about ten feet to the left, just lying on the ground.”
“Like it fell from her pack and she didn’t notice?”
Will nodded at the younger detective’s question. “Or like she dropped it while disoriented after being injured.”
This particular track, with its hidden rocks and slight but steady incline, was hard going despite the inroads m
ade by the searchers. He could hear Robert huffing behind him, but the other man kept on going. It was his partner who whispered, “Are we seriously planning to follow the crazy cop deeper and deeper into the bush?”
Will didn’t allow the question to distract him; he kept an eye on everything around them, just in case the killer had made a mistake this time. “That’s where the water bottle was found.” He pointed out a jutting rock barely visible through the tangled army of tree ferns. “Her family requested and was granted permission to place a memorial plaque against the rock just above where the bottle was found.”
Stepping off the path, he led the other two detectives to the spot. Such a lonely, quiet place, he thought, looking down at the moss-brushed engraving to a “beloved daughter and cherished child.” He wasn’t a man for prayer, but he hoped she’d been hit from behind, that she’d died without fear and with the sound of songbirds in her ears.
“Imagine having only this to remember your kid.” Robert’s hand rose reflexively to his jacket pocket, where Will knew he kept snapshots of his wife and son. “Maybe we can give them something to bury at last.”
Will took his colleagues back to the path in silence, and they carried on walking.
But there was nothing to find. He could feel Robert and his partner glancing at one another, caught the edges of a furiously whispered conversation. The two scene-of-crime officers, however, kept on moving ahead, their white coveralls making them appear ghosts against the dark green of this quiet and whispering place.
Robert coughed. “We should head back.”
“It’ll be easier to go this way.” Will had never walked this track, but before leaving Nikau with Dominic, he’d asked Nik to confirm his understanding of how this track connected to the one Shane Hennessey had taken that morning.
“Are you sure?” the younger detective asked in an overloud tone. “No offense, but I don’t plan to end up worm food in the fucking bush.”
“Just follow the track back.” Will had his mind on the mental map. “I’m going to check out something.”
Neither man turned around; they were probably afraid he’d lost it and would wander off into the wild unless contained.
The SOCOs stayed silent, but fell back so that they were walking pretty much alongside Will.
Five minutes later, he stopped. “There’s your crime scene.”
The two detectives moved past the rest of them, the younger one saying, “Well, fuck!”
“Shit, Will”—Robert took a stick of gum from his pocket—“there’s a goddamn plaque commemorating the spot where the water bottle was found.” He crumpled up the gum wrapper.
“Yes, anyone could’ve chosen the location to lead you on a wild-goose chase,” Will said, but he didn’t believe it.
The killer had returned to the location of his past glory.
52
Will made a quick stop to call Anahera after he was out of sight of the police presence at the dump site. “Be very careful,” he told her. “You’re a couple of inches too tall, but otherwise, you fit the same profile as the missing hikers.” It had been her laugh last night—he’d seen it then, the vital wildness of spirit evident in those other women.
Even with that, it had taken him until the conversation with Robert to realize the dangerous similarity. He didn’t think of Anahera as petite—she had too big a presence. But in a purely physical sense, she was only five-six and weighed less than she should. She also had the right skin tone and hair color. “I know you’re tough,” he added, “but this guy is a psychopath.”
“Don’t worry, cop,” she said. “I’m staying with Matilda, helping her with whatever she needs—right now, that’s making sure the iwi liaison officer knows what’s important to her. She kicked Steve out a couple of days ago, so he’s not an issue.”
Exhaling silently, Will leaned his head back against the headrest. “As far as I know, no one else in town matches the profile.” Most fell outside the height or weight range. The ones that didn’t either had significant tattoos, smoked, or had short hair, traits not shared by any of the three hikers.
“If you think of someone,” he told Anahera, “pass on the warning.” Will didn’t much care if he got disciplined for sharing unauthorized information with civilians; if it kept a woman alive, he’d wear the punishment.
“Matilda knows everybody. I’ll get her talking, find out who we need to warn—she’ll feel better if she thinks she’s doing something to help.”
“I’m driving to Christchurch.” To the forensic mortuary where Miriama had been taken. “I need to find out what Miriama has to tell us.”
Her response was . . . unexpected. “You be careful, too. It looks like the rain is finally going to come down.”
“I will,” he said before hanging up.
It had been a long time since anyone cared what happened to him. He wasn’t sure quite what to do with it, but it didn’t feel like a burden or a cage. Anahera, he knew, would never seek to hold on. She might invite him in, but the choice to enter or not would be his.
He pulled out just as the rain began to hit his windscreen, had gone only a few meters when Tom Taufa’s plumbing van appeared heading in the opposite direction, into Golden Cove. The bearded man raised a hand to him in greeting as they drove by one another.
Will considered what he’d learned of Tom’s past and made a quick call to Kim. “Keep a quiet eye on Tom Taufa, the plumber. He should be stopping at the café within the next five minutes.” Tom always did when passing through the Cove’s main street.
“You want me to head on over there and strike up a conversation?”
“Yes.” Kim had the ability to talk to anyone and, underneath her stolid exterior, was good at picking up nonvocal cues. “Bring up the find at the dump, gauge his reaction.”
“Person of interest?”
“I don’t know.” It was the timeline that bothered him—one long-ago summer, Tom had experienced shame and humiliation because of a young woman. The next summer, three young women disappeared. “Call me if he sets off any alarm bells for you.”
“I’m on it.”
Hanging up, Will began the nearly four-hour drive toward the hopeless scent of a beautiful young woman’s death.
53
Anahera sat watching the rain from the covered back stoop of Matilda’s house, occasional droplets bouncing off the walls to collide against her skin. She’d finally gotten a worn-out Matilda to rest by telling her it was no use her rushing to go to Miriama if she collapsed when she got there. Which left Anahera free to think about the past, and a horror that had marked Golden Cove without anyone ever admitting to the darkness beneath the sunshine.
She remembered that summer, remembered the clear sunlight and the heat that had built in fine sky-blue layers.
Their group, they’d all been down on the beach as often as not. Josie, Anahera, Vincent, Daniel, Nikau, and Keira. Tom and Christine and Peter had floated in and out, but the six of them had been the core.
“You lot are as thick as thieves,” Anahera’s mother used to say with a laugh. They’d been close enough to venture into the water even when it wasn’t quite safe, when it was an adventure on the edge between safety and danger. Close enough to build bonfires on the beach after dark.
Close enough to make out under the stars.
Her lips curved. She’d almost forgotten playing truth or dare and being dared to kiss a blushing Vincent. She’d taken the dare, and he’d gone red to the very tips of his ears. Daniel had teased him endlessly about it, but back then, there’d been no malice to the teasing, all of the laughing words and shared memories weaving the threads of their friendship ever tighter.
There’d been no malice in any of them. They’d just been teenagers growing into adulthood, coltish and full of dreams. It felt awful to think it now, but even the discovery of the water bottle and the possibility of a lost hik
er—then two—hadn’t really changed things.
Yes, they’d talked about it and those with experience in the bush had helped with the search, but it had seemed like a distant thing. Not only were the two women strangers, they were adults. In their mid to late twenties, from what Anahera remembered. She and the others hadn’t identified with either one, never worried about themselves, not seeing anything of their youth in those two adult faces.
Then Tom and Josie, sneaking into the cave to make out, had found the bracelet.
Their group had disbanded naturally and inevitably in the aftermath—Daniel and Vincent off to their private schools; Josie attached at the hip to Tom, her official boyfriend by summer’s end; Anahera so desperate to get out of Golden Cove that she’d begun to study as hard as Nikau always had, while spending every spare moment on the piano; Keira flying back to Auckland because the school terms were her mother’s, the summers her father’s; and Nikau, writing letters to Keira alongside intricate essays for school that won him awards and scholarships and pride.
Peter . . . Anahera frowned. She couldn’t remember what Peter had been doing. Probably because she’d kept her distance from him even then, but she had a vague memory of Christine’s fists bunching and her face going hot and hard when Peter’s name was mentioned, so it was possible the two of them had hooked up over the summer and it had come to a bad end.
Looking back, that had been the last summer they’d all been together and all been friends. After that, it had splintered piece by piece, so slowly that Anahera hadn’t truly noticed at the time.
Her phone rang in her hand.
Seeing that it was Josie, she answered it. Her friend had heard about the find out by the dump. It wasn’t surprising that she didn’t know about Miriama. People had been focused on the dump by the time the second forensic crew came in, would’ve assumed it was all connected.
No one in the Cove expected so much death in the space of a single day.