by Dan Rabarts
Swallowing bile, Matiu slowly rises, lowering the shotgun. Hanson won’t be walking away from this. A movement catches his eye and he glances up, at the doorway which stands open. The sun is shining bright from the clear blue sky on the dilapidated porch, throwing the interior into bleak shadow, but Matiu can see someone there. A black shape, legs and torso and arms, shoulders bent, face hidden beneath the overhang, but he knows who it is. How, he doesn’t know, except that something has happened here. Something that Fletcher is a part of, something that can’t be undone now it’s started. The veil between the worlds, sometimes thinner than others, has been torn. Things can slip through, step between this place and the next, if they know how. If they can connect.
That can’t be a good thing.
Matiu scampers back along the rooftop, drops to the ground and hops back on the dirt bike. Stowing the shotgun in the utility bag behind him with the shovel and the axe, he twists the throttle and speeds away in a cloud of dust. He can’t leave this place behind fast enough, but even as he rides, with the roar of the engine in his ears and the thunder of his heart in his throat, he knows what has happened here will follow him.
All the way down.
CHAPTER 15
- Pandora -
A hand on the dash and the other clutching the edge of her seat, Penny tries to stop her shaking while the Holden takes the corner, Matiu barely slowing as he speeds them away from the horrors of the farm, back towards town.
The wait in the car had been an eternity. It was like getting a call from the doctor’s office, one of those ominous messages asking you to please come in and discuss your latest test results, and the agonising wait to find out whether or not you’ve contracted something terminal. Her fist buried in Cerberus’ fur and biting her cheek, Penny had watched the horizon, wondering who would appear: Hanson or her brother. But when the bike had finally come into view, she’d recognised Matiu’s black jacket as he careered up the valley, gunning the engine—he slid in just metres from the gate, throwing up a cloud of grit and dust. Placing one hand on the post, he vaulted the barrier, his face as grim as a pallbearer’s. Quickly, Penny had scrambled across the centre console to the passenger side, shooing Cerberus into the back, while Matiu stowed the gun out of sight along the door sill.
Since then, he’s said nothing, his silence scarier than the dead man, scarier than an enraged dog…
When they’ve passed by the government farms—the ubiquitous cameras turning to trace the Holden’s route and the nervous security men glaring at them through narrowed eyes—Matiu pulls left at a derelict sheep run and follows the farm track away from the road. It’s weedy and pitted from disuse so Matiu creeps along it, his speed positively funereal. With a jolt, Penny realises he doesn’t want anyone to see the dust. They’re hiding. Why? Is Hanson still after them? Penny spins in her seat, almost choking on the seatbelt as she strains to look.
But they dip below the hill-line and soon after the track peters out, its original purpose long since obscured by scrub and weed. Right now, it’s a bolt-hole. Matiu reverses the car into a thicket so they’re facing the track before cutting the engine. Then, the gun resting across his knees (and alarmingly pointing her way), he puts his head back and closes his eyes.
“You’re kidding me. You’re going to go to sleep now?” Penny is aghast. After what just happened back there? “Where’s Hanson, then? What happened to him? He looked injured. Did you shoot him? Oh my God, Matiu, did you shoot him? But the dogs, the dogs are on the loose. We have to let people know what’s going on out there. There was a body in that shed, Matiu. A dead body, just dumped there, and he’d been dead a few days, with Fletcher’s wallet down his pants! I told you I didn’t like this. We need to call Clark, get him to get his people out here…”
“And you need to shut the hell up and calm down,” Matiu snaps, his mood as black as his jacket. The door slams. Matiu, his head down, storms up the track, still clasping the gun. He doesn’t go far before he pulls up.
Just far enough to get away from her.
Penny winces. She’s behaving like a shrew. She looks at her feet and inhales deeply, trying to get a grip on her fear.
“Stay there,” she says to Cerberus as she unfastens her seatbelt. With Fletcher’s beanie tucked under his chin, the dog seems perfectly content to lie on the back seat. Penny gets out of the vehicle and approaches her brother. He has his back to her.
“Matiu. Sorry, I shouldn’t have gone off my head like that.” When he doesn’t move, Penny does the moving, coming around to face him, forcing him to meet her eye. “Matiu, come on. I said I was sorry.”
His nod is so tiny it’s almost nonexistent. He rests the gun on the ground, its muzzle buried in the weeds, and runs his free hand through his hair. He seems tired, grey, as if he’s the one with a terminal disease. After a time, he says: “So your victim in the shed, how did he die?”
“He was a meth user.”
“He died from an overdose?”
“No, I didn’t see…he’d been dead for a day or so.”
“What was the cause of death?” Penny falls quiet. “You did examine the body?” He keeps his voice even, but Penny can tell he’s livid because that muscle below his eye is twitching again, setting the dark swirls of the kiri tuhi trembling.
“I didn’t have my satchel, did I? And besides, Cerberus charged in and started grubbing around with the remains.”
“Can you at least tell me if the death was suspect?”
“That whole place was suspect, Matiu. All those poor dogs, some of them injured, it was inhuman.”
Matiu sighs. “You don’t have a clue, do you?”
“No,” Penny whispers, hanging her head. Yanking the gun out of the weed, Matiu stalks back to the Holden.
“I was flustered, OK?” Penny hurries after him. “I fell through the roof onto a dead guy.”
“It’s your job, Penny. Scientific consultant to the police, if I recall. I guess Tanner should’ve screened you better: made sure you didn’t fall apart at the first glimpse of a corpse.” He stops, faces her.
“He was crawling with maggots, and I didn’t have my gloves!”
“Well, heaven help us if you get your precious fingers dirty.”
Penny puts her hands on her hips. “That’s just not fair, Matiu. I don’t know why you’re making such a song and dance about the cause of death anyway. I’ll find out later. Clark and Tanner will secure the scene, track down the dogs and get Hanson into custody, and then they’ll call me in to take samples. Maybe even send in the coroner. Determining the cause of death is his job.”
Matiu pulls open the driver’s door. “You’re so sure they’ll call you back?” he growls over the roof of the vehicle.
“They have to, because the cases are connected. As soon as they discover the wallet, they’ll realise that.”
“And you’ll explain how you’ve already contaminated all the evidence. Not exactly pristine procedure.”
“I’ll tell them the dogs were loose, so I climbed on the shed to avoid being mauled, fell in and found the body. It’s plausible. The wallet’s clean. I was careful about that…”
“A web of lies, Pandora…”
“Well, I wouldn’t have to, if you hadn’t waltzed up to Hanson’s front door like a Girl Guide selling cookies. I don’t know why you’re getting all high and mighty, anyway. You’re the one who removed a gun from the scene, if I recall rightly.”
“No choice. Hanson threatened me.”
“So, you confiscated his gun,” she retorts accusingly, “and turned it on him.”
“I doubt he’d have it registered…”
“Hang on, did you shoot him?”
“No.” Matiu’s eyes waver. He seems to have found something highly interesting to observe in the thicket behind her. Penny covers her mouth with he
r hand. “I didn’t shoot Hanson,” Matiu insists.
“Matiu, you better be damned sure, because if that man was shot, even just clipped, the police are going to be looking for that gun.”
“It’s OK, sis, they won’t find anything.” He climbs into his seat and starts the Holden, closing the subject. Penny rushes to get in.
“So, here’s what we’ll do,” Matiu says, as he pulls out of the thicket and onto the track. “You call Tanner and his boys, get them out to the farm…”
“I could tell them you took the gun in self-defence…”
“No!”
“Because of the dogs…”
“Penny, don’t mention the gun.”
“We have to.”
Matiu shrugs. “Fine, your call. Go ahead. But you’ll have to explain it to Mum and Dad.”
“What are you—”
“Send me a care package, will you?”
Suddenly cold, the air is squeezed out of her, like she’s a boob stuck between two plates of an old mammogram machine. They’ll have to hide the gun. She’s going to have to lie. Ex-cons on probation aren’t allowed within cooee of a firearm.
- Matiu -
Sunlight bleeds down the tenements and high-rises that march gaunt and unyielding across the Auckland skyline. Matiu stares through the windscreen as the canyons of glass and concrete, flaring on one side, dark on the other, swell upon the horizon like gravestones in the setting sun’s harsh rays. Imagines those towers, one by one, bursting into flame, the smoke blotting out the sky. He can almost see it, can almost hear the dull roar of a city burning, the high thin cries of people dying. A tide sweeping in.
“Shouldn’t we have ditched it by now? The gun.”
Matiu chews the inside of his cheek. Too many thoughts are battering at his skull, trying to find a way out. Damn, what the hell is happening? What’s Fletcher started, and why the fuck could he see, see Makere standing in that house? Fuck’s sake, he’d almost convinced himself that the voice in his head was just a broken part of his own psyche, voicing thoughts he didn’t want to admit to. But he’d been there in the back room behind Hanson, and later, standing in the doorway, watching the dogs tear the old man to shreds.
Makere had been there.
His imaginary friend, standing tall in a house haunted by a madman with tentacles growing from his spine. Matiu mightn’t have seen his face, but he knows his longtime companion by his presence. By the way he feels so much like himself, yet so different. A distorted reflection.
Part of him doesn’t want to stop driving, because soon as he does, Makere will be at his shoulder to taunt him. Or he won’t. And Matiu’s not sure which would be worse.
“Matiu? The gun?”
He takes a long breath, sliding his sunnies onto the top of his head as the Holden dips into the lengthening shadows. “I know a place. We can swing by.”
“I’d ask if you’re OK, but I know the answer. Try to relax, little brother. We’ve got all we need to let the police take over from here. We’ll be able to forget about all of this pretty soon.”
Matiu can’t help it; he lets slip a bark of laughter. He contemplates some witty, acerbic response, but knows there’s no point. Penny will only believe this shit when she sees it. Anyway, her phone is buzzing, and she answers it.
“Hey, Beaker…Yeah, we’re just coming…um…heading back now…Hey… Hey, slow down. Big breath. Right, start again.”
She listens, and Matiu tunes it out. All he can see are those legs, standing in the shadows. The light pouring like blood, like fire down the city walls.
“OK,” Penny’s saying, her words filtering through the haze of Matiu’s dark contemplations. “See you shortly.” She swipes the call away, bites her lip. “Clark’s been trying to reach us. Something about the crime scene. And Beaker has something he wants to show me, so we’d best head back to the lab first.”
“Before we ditch the gun?”
“Beak seems to think it’s pretty important.”
Matiu’s stomach twists. Last thing he needs is to turn up at the lab, GSR on his hands, shotgun in the back seat, and have the cops turn the car out on account of he and Penny having been suspiciously absent all day. “Five minutes. That’s all you get.”
Penny lets out a long, hard breath. “Fine.”
Matiu turns the wheel, the city’s crown blazing overhead as the sun falls drowning into the sea.
CHAPTER 16
- Pandora -
Beaker is as pleased to see Penny as she is to be back. Wearing a relieved expression and a freshly laundered lab coat, he hurries to meet them, holding the door open as the threesome pile in, looking dishevelled and no doubt smelling like an offal pit.
Poor Beaker. He’s done such a sterling job of decontaminating the lab—the sulphurous stench of this morning’s misadventure now overlaid with the clean fragrance of Cleanase—and here she is, traipsing in with Cerberus in tow, the both of them having just cavorted with a dead body in the initial stages of putrefaction. Not to mention the mud, cow pats, and guano-encrusted shed roofs. And there’s no telling what Matiu might have stepped in after setting the dogs free.
Erring on the safe side, Beaker has drenched the place in product. Phosphate-free and nontoxic, the radioactive decontaminant is powerful stuff, removing both DNA and DNAase and, since it’s residue-free, it won’t degrade any subsequent samples they decide to test either. Naturally, products like Cleanase don’t come cheap. Penny imagines the bill for today’s little mishap, wondering if she’ll ever be able to step into the lab without calculating how much it costs to run. She sighs.
“I’m really sorry, Penny. Honestly,” Beaker says, obviously misinterpreting her reaction. “I wouldn’t have bothered you if I didn’t think it were important. I tried calling earlier, but your device was switched off…”
“Yes, I know, sorry about that. Matiu and I were following up on a lead, and I…um…was having a bit of a breakthrough when you called me.” Over at the sink, Matiu is attempting to fill a large watch-glass with water for the dog. He glances at Penny from under his lashes and smirks.
Well, at least one of us is feeling brighter.
“That’s OK,” Beaker replies. He rubs his hand forward through the blades of pīngao sedge sprouting from his head. “I guessed it must have been something like that.”
“So, what’d Clark want?” Penny says, striding to a cupboard for a plastic container. She hands it to her brother. “Here, use this.”
The watch-glass was never going to work. Too shallow. Cerberus would have to be a fruit bat to get a drink out of that.
“He said Tanner’s given instructions to take the tape down at your warehouse scene this evening,” Beaker says, “so if you’re inclined to do any more sampling, you’ll need to get…um…yourself…back there pronto.” Beaker favours her with one of his spectacular blushes, allowing Penny to guess what might actually have been said.
“They’re shutting up shop after only a day?” Penny replies. “Geez, that’s quick. Those other seventeen cases the department is working on must really be chewing through police resources.”
“Nineteen,” Matiu mutters, the words barely audible over Cerberus’ slurping.
Beaker goes on. “He rang again later, wanted you to call him. And I wanted to show you—”
“Right. I’ll do that now, then,” Penny agrees, swiping at her tablet and bringing up the police officer. “Officer Clark? It’s Penny Yee.”
“Oh, yes, you should probably do that…”
Beaker’s response is drowned out by Clark’s voice: “Where have you been?”
“Sorry. I—”
“Never mind about that. All hell has broken loose where I am, so I’ve got to be quick. Firstly, those DNA results you wanted me to check? The ones for the dog?”
“I’ve checked them against the city’s Dog Control database, made some matches with the police logs, and discovered the dog’s owner reported the animal missing a week ago, on the twenty-fifth. Dog Control hadn’t picked it up, so I had an intern check up on a couple of canine dealers known to the police…”
He knows. Penny’s heart sinks. Her first solo case and already she’s botched it.
“Officer Clark…”
“Hang on, I’m getting there. Anyway, it was weird—but I was trying to get hold of one dealer: a character named Hanson—when we got a call from one of the government farms out by the coast backing on to Hanson’s property. The staff there were complaining about a pack of marauding dogs on their border, threatening the stock. Now, I’m not a man who believes in coincidences, Dr Yee.”
“No, of course not…” Penny’s stomach twists.
“What?” Matiu whispers, his eyes boring into hers. Penny shakes her head.
“So I got a car out to the site…” Penny wants to throw up. “And turns out I was right to be suspicious: there are three bodies out here.”
She spins.
“Three bodies,” she mouths, holding up three fingers as if to double-check the maths. Three? Was Hanson one of those? Who was the other?
Matiu turns to face the windows.
“We think there was some kind of internal gang dispute going on,” Clark explains, “and one of the players let the dogs out, a decision that backfired. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that there’s definitely a connection to your man Fletcher. We found the guy’s wallet out here with one of the bodies, along with a bag of microchips. Bloody horrible things, torn out of the dogs, most likely so they couldn’t be traced.”