A Madness of Sunshine

by Singh, Nalini

  Nikau had told her Will was a good guy after the cop left this morning. She’d also seen that for herself in his determined search for Miriama. Many outsiders would’ve shrugged and waited for morning to come, for Miriama to just turn up. Will had initiated a ­full-­scale search. And at this instant, he was crawling his way under a bunch of rocks that formed a shallow cave, even as the sea waves inched closer.

  She turned her flashlight beam on him, giving him as much light as possible.

  “Nothing.” Getting to his feet, he dusted off the sand from his jacket and swung his own beam out toward the ocean. “We have to go up.”

  Anahera wished she could argue with him, but he was right. Stay on the beach any longer and they risked being trapped. With the waves so violent, they probably wouldn’t survive to morning even if they managed to climb onto the highest rocks. “Follow me.” She led him to a path closer to their current position than the one by her cabin.

  Despite what he’d said about her being away for years, some things didn’t change; these rocks had been here for untold decades before she was born and would probably be here for untold decades after her death. The path was exactly where she’d remembered it being.

  Anahera took care as she began to ­climb—­going up was actually easier than coming down with this path, but all it would take was one slip and she’d be falling. There wasn’t much to grab onto here, maybe a few grasses or jagged edges of mostly buried rock. She’d never thought about that as a child, had just assumed she was safe because her mother and father were watching.

  At her weakest, she’d wished she could return to that carefree childhood when she hadn’t known the truth, when she hadn’t understood that her happy family was a mirage that would one day shimmer out of existence. Until she’d realized those years had been her mother’s prison and that going back would be to put Haeata behind bars again.

  Hearing a scrape behind her, she paused and glanced back. “You okay, cop?”

  When he ran his flashlight beam behind him, she realized he was standing on the path looking down at the beach. “I’m making sure no one else is still on the beach.”

  Anahera hadn’t thought to do ­that—­she just expected the locals to not be stupid. But she should’ve remembered that people were people and emotions were running high. Joining him, she looked out for any other sources of light, but all the ones she spotted were of searchers climbing back up from the beach. “I don’t see anything,” she said. “You?”

  He turned off his flashlight, then did a second careful scan. “No,” he said, switching his flashlight back on before he turned cliffward again. “Let’s keep going. I need to get a report from Matilda, see what areas have already been covered and what hasn’t. The beach searchers can be reassigned.”

  Anahera moved quickly up the path, aware of the cop keeping up with her, his breathing even and his stride steady. Not a total townie, she thought with a corner of her mind. He’d done some climbing at least.

  After reaching the top, the two of them made their way to his police vehicle and got in. They saw several others driving back into town when they turned onto the road, and by the time they arrived at the fire station, at least fifteen others had reported in.

  “No one’s had any news,” Matilda told them, her voice firm, her fear held back with a strong hand.

  Behind her was a whiteboard on which someone had written out a ­detailed description of Miriama’s clothing, shoes, phone, and iPod. No mention of a watch or earrings and Anahera couldn’t remember if the girl’s ears had been pierced. But the other items were distinctive. Anahera took note.

  “The ones doing the bush tracks are still out,” Matilda continued, “but we haven’t got anyone really searching the rest of the town. What if she got hit by a car or something like that?”

  Anahera knew that was unlikely. Someone would’ve spotted Miriama if she’d been on or near a road, especially with search volunteers having come in from every corner of Golden Cove.

  The cop didn’t crush Matilda’s hopes. “It won’t do any harm for a volunteer to drive through the streets Miriama might’ve cut through,” he said.

  Vincent, who’d just returned and come to join them, put up his hand. “I can do it.” His blond ­hair—­like gilt when in the ­sunlight—­was wind tousled and messier than it ever was in the publicity stills used for the family charity or his business interests. “My car’s got those special high beams and they cut pretty well through the dark.”

  “I’ll go with Vincent,” his search partner said, her face seamed with life but her gaze alert. “Better to have two sets of eyes than one.”

  Anahera smiled tightly at Vincent as he moved past her, thinking that this wasn’t how she’d wanted to run into her former schoolmate again, but Vincent didn’t even seem to see her. Likely, he was already planning his route for maximum coverage. That was Vincent for ­you—­he’d been the cleverest of them all. Always turned in the cleanest reports, had the most thoughtfully ­worked-­out equations.

  It was a wonder they’d all liked him as much as they had. But Vincent had a way about ­him—­he was so quietly easygoing that he could fit into almost any environment and, as a friend, he was reliable. Back when they were eleven, before he was sent to boarding school, he’d once lent Anahera a copy of his completed math homework, after a night when she simply hadn’t been able to concentrate because her parents were screaming at each other.

  She’d gone out to sit on the beach in an effort to find focus, but it turned out she’d brought the screaming with her, her head full of violence. In the end, she’d settled in a spot on the cliffs from where she could watch the waves come in and stayed there till dawn. Maybe Miriama’d had one of those days, too; maybe she was just sitting somewhere, waiting for dawn to come.

  “Let me have a look at that list of search areas,” the cop said to Matilda. After scanning it, he began to hand out more assignments, covering ­little-­used tracks and areas of the town that Nikau had marked as unassigned. “If I’ve given any of you an area you’re unfamiliar with, speak up now. It’s no good to Miriama if you’re stumbling around.”

  Two groups spoke up, ended up swapping tasks.

  “You’re the only person without a partner except for me,” he said to Anahera, then subtly angled his head in the direction of the doorway.

  She went with him after catching the quick flick of his gaze toward where Matilda was speaking to another searcher. The cop wanted them out of earshot of the older woman. “What?” she said quietly once they’d moved.

  “I have to make a call, then I’m going to check out that unofficial dumpsite outside of town. You happy to come along?”

  Anahera’s stomach clenched, but she nodded. “I’m surprised the dump’s still there,” she said after the two of them were back in his SUV. “I know when I left, the town busybodies were up in arms about it for the millionth time.” As an adult, she could see their point; that particular area was an ugly blight on an otherwise striking landscape.

  So, for that matter, was Nikau’s house, which they passed on the way out of town. What the hell was he up to?

  “It pisses off his ex’s new husband,” the cop said quietly, even though she hadn’t spoken aloud. “The new husband owns four plots around Nik’s place that he’s trying to sell.”

  Anahera went motionless; she’d have to be careful around this man. She’d left her past behind in London and didn’t intend for it to follow her here. That part of her life was done and would stay in the hole in which she’d buried it, the same hole that held Edward’s lifeless body.

  13

  “Nikau did always know how to hold a grudge.” Anahera had once accidentally kicked over his sandcastle when they were five or six. He hadn’t forgiven her for two months.

  “As for the dump,” the cop added, “the business council hired a waste removal company to clean it up a few years back, but people apparently took that as an invitation to dump even more rubbish. Now the council�
��s trying to get in touch with the owner of the land with the aim of buying it so the town can do something with it that’ll stop the dumping for good.”

  Anahera shook her head. “Affordability aside, the land’s too far out to be useful for any kind of a public building.” Some Golden Cove residents might live deep in the darkness of the trees, but all essential services were centralized. It was the only way such a small and remote settlement could work.

  “There’s talk of establishing a greenhouse.” The cop drove through the night with an unsmiling concentration that told her he missed nothing. “Area already has a few small organic growers who are starting to do well, and they’ve indicated an interest in possibly helping to finance the purchase.”

  The side of Anahera’s face burned, as if she’d taken a brutal backhand to the cheek. When had that happened? Organic produce from Golden Cove? But the reality was, she’d been away a long time. Time didn’t stand still even in the Cove. And Josie couldn’t tell her everything. “Are they locals?” she asked. “The organic growers?”

  “One of them ­is—­Susan Perdue.”

  Anahera vaguely remembered Susan; born in a different generation, the other woman had already been a mother of two by the time Anahera left town. “Her kids must be teenagers by now.”

  “Fourteen and sixteen.”

  Spotting an unexpected light through the trees by the side of the road, Anahera leaned forward. “Isn’t that the old Baxter place?”

  “Shane Hennessey’s father inherited it, but he wanted nothing to do with it. Shane’s got it now.”

  “Right, I remember. Josie mentioned it when he first moved in.”

  Instead of driving past, the cop turned into the driveway of what Anahera remembered as a ramshackle property surrounded by out-­of-­control grass.

  “Shane doesn’t always answer his phone. Doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s working.”

  Though the cop’s voice held no judgment, Anahera detected what she thought was a note of cynicism underneath. Curious about the new owner, she stepped out of the vehicle after Will brought it to a stop. The old place had definitely been spruced up and was unexpectedly charming now, complete with white paint and leadlight windows instead of the broken and gaping holes of her childhood.

  The house also featured a new porch stocked with a number of whitewashed rocking chairs. Nubile young women occupied two of those chairs.

  “Oh, hello,” one said in a cheerful way. “Shane’s writing, so he can’t see you right now. But we’d be happy to visit.”

  “Interrupt him,” the cop said in such a flat tone that the cheerful girl blanched. “This is important.”

  The girls looked at one another at this departure from the script.

  When neither made a move to enter the house, Will did so himself. Staying outside, Anahera took in the girls in their short shorts and flannel shirts. One was blonde and perky, the other dark eyed and sensuous with a stud in her eyebrow, but they both had the ­dewy-­eyed look of creatures who hadn’t yet had the shine rubbed off them. Nineteen, twenty at the most. “You’re Shane’s students?”

  The blonde nodded, while the ­dark-­eyed one gave Anahera an assessing ­look—­as if checking out the competition. That one was tough and far more likely to survive life than the blonde bunny. Unless, of course, the bunny was fortunate enough to find someone who wanted to preserve her ­wide-­eyed naïveté.

  “We’re so lucky.” The bunny actually pressed her hands together in delight. “Shane is one of the most ­well-­known novelists in the world and we get to have a residence with him.” Joy sparking off every word. “My book’s taking shape in ways I could’ve never imagined.”

  A ­thirty-­something man followed Will out onto the porch before Anahera could respond. All messed-­up black hair and stubble along his jaw, Shane Hennessey was the epitome of the suffering artist. He had soft full lips, flawless skin the color of cream, a height two or three inches under the cop’s, and a build that said there was muscle beneath his ragged jeans and black ­shirt—­a shirt he wore with the sleeves shoved carelessly up to his elbows. Only it wasn’t careless. He was a man who knew he was ­good-­looking and who took full advantage of it.

  Edward had been like that, though it had taken her far too long to see the truth.

  “I’m sorry, Will,” the suffering artist said in an Irish accent so beautiful it couldn’t be real, even as his eyes scanned Anahera then came back for a second look; obviously she’d fulfilled a list of basic prerequisites and deserved closer inspection. “I’ve been consumed by my characters since ­lunch—­the girls can tell you. I wouldn’t know if a flying pig went past, much less some local girl.”

  Anahera saw Will’s face tense, his shoulders bunch. “Let’s go,” she said to him before he punched the pretentious asshole. “We have to check the other places.”

  A curt nod, but he wasn’t done. “Did either of you see Miriama run past here today?” he asked the two groupies.

  The girls shook their heads. Then they looked as one toward Shane Hennessey, as if waiting for him to tell them what to do next.

  Anahera’s skin prickled.

  She was glad to get out of there. “Is it always like that?” she asked after they’d pulled out of the drive and were back on their way to the dump. “Him with a harem?”

  “I have it on good authority that the people who win Shane’s residencies are always young, female, and pretty. Such a strange coincidence.”

  Anahera snorted. “You have a gift for understatement, cop.”

  He didn’t reply, the lights of his SUV cutting through the inky blackness in front of them as he slowed down just before the ragged dirt track that led to the cleared but never developed patch of land that had become a dumping ground.

  The tourists never saw this part of Golden Cove, never glimpsed the slick black rubbish bags torn open by feral cats, never had any idea of the abandoned couches ­and—­“Is that a refrigerator?” Fury punched through her. “Even the worst asshole knows to take off the doors before dumping a fridge.”

  Face grim, the cop brought his vehicle to a halt on the edge of the dump. “That wasn’t here last time I did a ­patrol—­which was yesterday, just before I saw you on the road. I’ve got tools in the back.” Unsaid were the words that he’d take care of it before they left.

  But first, they had to search for Miriama. That was when Anahera had a horrible thought. Heart thumping, she walked through the scattered debris to that fridge that hadn’t been there yesterday and that had appeared right when a girl had gone missing.

  “Wait,” the cop said. “We need to preserve evidence ­if—­” Leaving the rest of the chilling words unspoken, he grabbed a pair of thin rubber gloves from the kit he had in the back of the SUV.

  Anahera’s pulse thundered as he closed the distance to the fridge, images of Miriama’s sunny smile playing across her mind. Please, God, if you have any mercy at all, don’t let her be there in the cold and the dark. Around her, the dump emanated a sickly sweet smell that would usually turn her stomach, but at that instant, all she could see was the scratched white of that dented fridge.

  “Keep the beam of your flashlight on the edge of the door.” Again, the cop didn’t say what they were both thinking: that if Miriama was in there, she was dead. She’d been gone too long and there wasn’t much air inside one of those things.

  14

  Not reaching for the ­handle—­saving any prints that might be ­there—­the cop put his gloved hands carefully on the bottom edge of the door and managed to break the seal. Anahera’s heart slammed like a bass drum as the door swung ­open…

  To reveal emptiness.

  Exhaling in a harsh rush, she bent down, her hands pressed against her knees. “Shit,” she said. “Shit.” It was sheer relief that made her muscles tremble, mixed in with a great big dose of adrenaline.

  Rising, the cop opened the freezer compartment, and she wondered what he was looking ­for—­it was hardly as
if you could fit a woman inside there. An instant later, she realized you could fit a head or an arm or a foot and fuck, why was she thinking like that? Probably because she was with a cop who thought like that. And it made her wonder what he’d seen that he knew that such horror was possible.

  “I’ll detach the doors before we leave,” he said when the freezer section proved thankfully empty except for an abandoned bag of peas. “We have to work the site in a grid. We’ll start from the car and walk straight through a foot apart from each other, then back until we’ve covered the entire area.”

  Anahera followed him to the starting point and they began their methodical search. When his flashlight beam swung across the bleached white of bones, they both froze, but it turned out to be the carcass of a ­long-­dead cat.

  Its bones glinted in the flashlight beam, tiny and perfect.

  They carried on. At least there hadn’t been any blood. Anahera tried not to think of another time when she’d found a body. There had been blood then, old and congealed and drying blood. And other things.

  Three days dead was a long time in summer.

  “What are you expecting to find?” she asked when they turned to retrace their path.

  “Nothing,” he said. “A cop who expects things is a cop who misses what’s right in front of him. But even if we don’t find Miriama, if we locate some trace of ­her—­a shoe, the iPod, a piece of fabric from her ­clothes—­it would give us a direction and a place to concentrate the search.”

  Anahera nodded and they carried on, piece by piece by piece by piece. Three long hours later, they were at the SUV and had found nothing. Not saying a word, the cop went to the back of the vehicle and grabbed his tools. She trained light on the fridge so he could see what he was doing. It didn’t take him long to dismantle the doors from the fridge so that no inquisitive kid or animal could get stuck inside.