A Madness of Sunshine

by Singh, Nalini

  Their bodies had also never been ­found—­once this landscape took you, it held you close. In fact, the only evidence the first had even been in Golden Cove was a distinctive water bottle plastered with stickers from around the world. It had been found because of a search for another hiker who’d gone missing and who had filed a plan for her hike.

  Only days later, a local hunter helping with the search had found a backpack ­half-­buried in a stream; it was proved to belong to the second missing woman, the one whose failure to return from the bush had initiated the search.

  At the time, the theory was the two must’ve become either injured or lost. A tragedy but these things happened in a country with such dense forests. The weather didn’t help. Like ­today—­it seemed so sunny, but according to the weather forecast, a storm was building over the ocean. It would turn dark and wet and cold in a few hours.

  Anahera remembered hearing the news about the two missing women, but lost hikers were pretty standard in the region and she’d been a teenager awash in summer.

  But the third missing ­hiker… that had ended the sunshine.

  The gold identity bracelet found in their teenage hangout, the swarm of police, the beach flapping with crime scene tape, it had brought down the hammer on all their childhoods.

  Shaking off the eerie memories she hadn’t thought of in over a decade, Anahera glanced at Vincent. “Tell me about Miriama. I knew her as a ­girl—­what’s she like as a woman?”

  “Hugely talented and with an even bigger heart,” Vincent said in that restrained but intense way of his. “I’ve never seen her not smiling. She lives life like it should be ­lived—­without limits, without trying to shove herself into a predefined box like so many other people. She’s real, honest, beautiful in the deepest sense of the word.”

  Anahera wondered if Vincent was talking about himself and his perfect life with two ­picture-­perfect children and a pedigreed woman who made the perfect partner on the charity circuit. It also seemed as if he was half in love with ­Miriama—­but was that surprising? Miriama had the kind of glow that drew people.

  Most of the men in town probably had crushes on her.

  “I think we should head right,” she said when they came to a fork in the path. According to the quick briefing Nik had given them, that track was rarely ­used—­it was a little bit too uneven to allow for a smooth ­run—­but according to Josie, Miriama had run competitively at high school. “The challenge might’ve appealed to her.”

  Vincent nodded and they went single file down the track. It was darker here, the canopy thicker, the bush more dense. It absorbed all sound yet made you feel as if the trees were whispering to one another, talking secrets that humans would never understand. Anahera’s calves began to ache after a while, a subtle sign that she wasn’t who she’d once been.

  Jogging through the streets of her London neighborhood had in no way prepared her for the West Coast. It’d take her body time to remember that this land was in her blood. Which meant the cop had been right to tell her not to assume she could do everything she’d once ­done—­and somehow, that pissed her off.

  Poor cop, she thought. He was taking the brunt of all her anger, all her cold fury.

  “She wouldn’t have gone this deep,” Vincent said from behind her, his voice certain. “It’s too far for her to have been able to get back before dark and she’s smart enough not to try to run these trails after sunset. The visibility just ­ends—­you can’t even see your hand in front of your face.”

  Bowing to his greater current knowledge, Anahera turned and they began to make their way back to the fork, from where they searched the ­left-­hand track before going over an area others had already searched.

  But lunchtime came and went, the helicopter landed, and still there was no sign of what had happened to a luminous, laughing girl named Miriama.

  17

  Will rubbed his face as he sat inside the hastily built police station; the place was just big enough for his desk and a filing cabinet. He’d told the searchers to stand down that afternoon, when it became obvious they’d covered every possible area that Miriama could’ve reached on foot. He’d gone over that suspicious part of the cliffs above the whirlpool, but like the searcher had said, while someone had walked there, there was no sign of anything untoward.

  No drag marks, no blood, no clumps torn out in a desperate attempt to grab hold of safety. Nothing but indications of recent ­passage—­the same in the trees behind it. He’d also walked the bush trail that opened up near that spot, but multiple teams of volunteers had already walked through it and there was nothing to see but ­tamped-­down leaf litter.

  Will also kept coming around to the fact that Miriama was too smart to have gone that close to the deadly edge above the whirlpool.

  He’d known the searchers wouldn’t follow his order to stand down, but he’d needed to give it so he’d have a better chance of talking his superiors into treating this as a serious incident.

  “Sir,” he said down the phone line. “We’re now looking at either a ­drowning—­which is unlikely, given how well she knew the ­area—­or an abduction.”

  “Will, I’ve run this girl,” his commander replied. “She has a history of running away from home.”

  Fuck.

  Will had been hoping Miriama’s past would slip under the radar. “That was when she was fifteen and her aunt had a boyfriend who took a little too much interest in her.” It was Mrs. Keith who’d told him that, after the older woman flagged him down for a visit one day a couple of months ago.

  Miriama had run by on the road while the two of them were chatting, and lifted a hand to wave, and Mrs. Keith had said, “Look at her. Like a flower just opening up. Good thing that no-­good bastard didn’t bruise her.”

  All Will’d had to do was look at her and she’d given him the full story. “Mattie, she’s a sweet woman. A good friend. But she has the worst taste in men.” A censorious shake of her head, her jowls trembling. “You’d think she’d have a little more sense after Miriama came to live with her as a wee ­thing—­her mother was Mattie’s sister, you know. Went up to the big smoke, made some wrong choices.”

  A look of true sadness, her eyes an incredibly beautiful blue in the fleshy roundness of her face. “Lovely girl, she was. Overdosed in a motel, poor little Miriama in there with her for more than two days before someone found them.” Coughing, she’d taken a drink from the wineglass she kept on the table beside her. “There was no question but that Mattie would take her niece. She’d been trying to get ­Kahurangi—­that was the ­sister—­to send Miriama down here forever.”

  Another small sip of wine. “You know Mattie’s first name is Atarangi,” Mrs. Keith had added. “Her ma had a good friend called Matilda, and that’s how she got that as a middle name. But you know how it goes with names. For whatever reason, everyone just started using Matilda. It’s a shame really. Atarangi’s such a pretty name.”

  Will had sat there on the porch and kept on listening, not because he was particularly interested in gossip or in Matilda’s first name, but because he’d already come to understand that Mrs. Keith was lonely. According to Nikau, who sometimes went over to fix up her fence or clean the guttering, she used to walk into town two or three times a week, but she’d gotten too big to move far these days. She’d hired one of the local women to keep her house neat as a pin, and to help with her hair and makeup every morning, but, for the most part, she was confined to the porch where she watched life go by.

  And perhaps to the bedroom where she might offer certain intimate services to truckers and forestry ­workers—­or so went the rumors in town. If she did, it was none of Will’s business. If it assuaged her loneliness and that of others, so be it. And if the whole thing was just a tale Mrs. Keith fostered to give her life a little excitement, it was a harmless one. Either way, she certainly didn’t seem to mind. In fact, from the occasional subtle comment she’d dropped into her conversations with Will, she r
eveled in her notoriety.

  “But,” she’d said that day, “Mattie, good soul that she is, is as blind as a bat when it comes to men.”

  A huff of breath. “Well, you can see how it went. Miriama grew breasts and legs and the useless man Mattie kept around back then started trying to touch her. The girl ended up in Christchurch a few times, trying to get away from him, until poor Mattie finally realized what was happening and kicked him out. She never once took the bastard’s side, that’s one thing, and it’s why Miriama never turned against her. She just can’t pick the good ones.”

  “Be that as it may,” Will’s commander said in response to his clarification of Miriama’s history, “it’s a pattern. Can you say definitively that she didn’t just hitch a ride out of town?”

  Will’s free hand curled on the pale wood of his desk. “She was in running gear. No money, no other clothes.”

  “You know as well as I do that those things can be easily circumvented if she has the right friends,” the other man said. “Regardless, there’s not much else we can do right now. You’ve already run a comprehensive ground and aerial search, and you said none of the locals have reported any suspicious activity or people?”

  “Yes.” He hated to admit it, but the other man was ­right—­there was literally nothing the larger police branches could do that he, with Golden Cove’s help, couldn’t do himself. “I’m going to work it as a missing person, send out an updated alert.” He’d already fired off a request to his fellow officers to be on the lookout for Miriama, and he’d tapped media contacts to get the story what attention he could.

  “Now that your search has come up empty,” his senior officer said, “I’ll have our press team issue a formal media release using the photograph you sent. She’s a beauty, so there’s a good chance one of the major outlets will pick it up.” No cynicism in the other man’s voice, just pragmatism. “You might even get nationwide coverage because of this photographic scholarship she’s meant to be taking up in a few weeks. If your girl’s left the town, someone will report it in.”

  Hanging up soon afterward, Will considered his next step. Even if Miriama had been the victim of foul play rather than an accident, it didn’t immediately follow that there was no hope of finding her alive. Her abductor could be holding her captive, might’ve incapacitated her so she couldn’t try to escape or cry out for help.

  Until Will had a body or other incontrovertible evidence of her death, he’d treat her as a missing person. And all missing person investigations began with those closest to the vanished.

  He’d already spoken to Matilda and Steve. It was time he sat down properly with Dr. Dominic de Souza.

  After sending Anahera and the others home in the early hours of the morning, Will had driven out to the main road and waited. Dominic de Souza’s vehicle had appeared approximately ­twenty-­five minutes later; by then, Will had spoken to the family who’d asked the young doctor to come out to their remote property and learned it was the mother who’d made the ­call—­and that she’d done it just after the six o’clock news began on TV.

  Approximately fifteen minutes after Tania Meikle saw Miriama run by.

  So the doctor did have a small window of time where he could’ve done something to his ­girlfriend—­except that Will had spoken on the phone to Mrs. Keith earlier in the night. She’d been adamant she’d seen Dominic’s car drive by around 6:10, 6:12 at the latest. Which meant he must’ve left immediately after the call.

  It further compressed his ­unaccounted-­for time. It took a lot longer than a few minutes to subdue or hurt a strong young woman, dump or hide her body, then change clothes to obscure any blood evidence. That’s after Dominic would’ve had to track her down. Usually, the boyfriend was the lead suspect, but Dominic’s alibi appeared solid; he’d also broken down totally when Will told him the news.

  Fear and shock could be faked, but Will was no ­first-­year cadet. Dominic’s response had been pure, naked emotion. The other man was devastated. He also had no marks or scratches on his arms or ­face—­and Miriama would’ve fought.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Dominic said when he opened the clinic door to Will, the brown of his irises startling against the bloodshot whites of his eyes and his jaw dark with stubble. “Nikau says I shouldn’t be stumbling around out there, that I should sit here and think of anything Miri might’ve said that could help find her.”

  Will nodded, aware Dominic wasn’t much of an outdoorsman, and with his head so screwed up right now, he’d be more liability than help. “Can we talk?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Looking lost, the doctor led him inside into the examination room. Will took a seat in the patient chair, let Dominic sink into the doctor’s chair, in the hope the familiar surroundings would keep him calm.

  The other man’s white shirt was wrinkled, his black pants the same. It might’ve been the same outfit he’d been wearing when Will stopped him on the road in the early morning darkness, but it was hard to ­tell—­Dominic wore the same thing every day to work, almost like a uniform. “When was the last time you saw Miriama?”

  “Lunch yesterday.” Dominic leaned forward to brace his forearms on his thighs, his skin holding a warm depth of color.

  Evelyn Triskell ­had—­unbidden—­shared that Dominic’s father was Indian, his mother Māori from one of the smaller North Island iwi. It was difficult to tell which culture held sway in Dominic; he was oddly colorless in his personality for a man who came from two such old and rich cultures.

  “I went to the café,” the doctor added, “and asked Josie if I could steal Miri for an hour. It wasn’t so ­busy—­it isn’t this time of ­year—­and Josie had just come in after having the morning off.”

  Will let Dominic ramble; at least the man was coherent this time around.

  “Anyway, Josie said yes, even said it didn’t matter if we were a little late back. She was kind of teasing us about not getting caught making out.” He managed a shaky smile. “I’d prepared us a picnic basket with sandwiches and those tiny quiche things from the supermarket deli that Miri likes”—­a sudden, harsh sob before he regained control of ­himself—­“and we went to the eastern beach outlook with the little seat.”

  “Sounds like a nice date.”

  Dominic pushed up his glasses. “I never want her to regret being with me. I always want her to feel like she’s the most wonderful thing in my life.”

  “How was her mood?”

  “Good. Happy. She liked the picnic and she ate three of the quiches.” Shoving his hands through the tangled black strands of his hair, he stared down at the ­hard-­wearing beige carpet. “She was so happy, so bright. I kissed her and she was smiling and I felt like she was making me bright like her.”

  Will took in the other man’s trembling frame and put a hand on his shoulder. “Dominic, you can’t panic,” he said, knowing he was asking the near impossible. “We don’t know anything yet.”

  “Right.” It was a wet sound. “Right. I have to keep telling myself that.” Raising his head, he said, “I don’t know what else I can tell you. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out something that might help.”

  Will released Dominic’s shoulder. “How about her upcoming move to Wellington to study? Have you two discussed it?”

  “Sure. We’ve worked it out so she’ll come home during the holidays, and I’ll fly up to see her some weekends. We know it’ll be hard, but we’re serious about making it work.” He swallowed. “I’m so proud of her for winning that internship.”

  “Were there any hard feelings about that? I know Kyle Baker was also on the short list.” A bit of a town golden boy, Vincent’s younger brother had been the favorite going in.

  Dominic’s face tightened. “That twat Kyle tried to make it seem like Miri got it because of her looks, but her talent outstrips his by a mile. And the judges were all ­outsiders—­they weren’t biased in favor of Kyle just because everyone thinks he’s the great promise of this town, the s
hining star who can do no wrong.”

  Will had seen that particular bias in action; he’d caught Kyle and another ­nineteen-­year-­old tagging a building, both with spray cans in hand. The townspeople had blamed the other boy for leading Kyle astray, asked Will to be lenient so Kyle wouldn’t end up with a record that might blight his future.

  Will had given both young males a warning that there would be no second chance. Kyle had been remorseful, had even shut up his mate when the other boy went to mouth off. He definitely hadn’t come across as entitled or a brat, but that could simply mean he knew how to work people in authority. Or it could be that Dominic disliked him for giving Miriama such stiff competition. “Anyone else ever make Miriama uncomfortable?”

  Dominic stared down at the carpet with unmoving focus. “You know how men look at her. I got used to ­that—­had to if I wanted to be with her, you know?—­but I think it bothers her sometimes. Nikau Martin stares at her all the fucking time.” A grimace. “He thinks he can get any woman he wants, but Miriama isn’t interested. She isn’t into anger or bitterness.”

  Will’s mind flashed back to the other night in the pub and Nikau’s ­unhidden—­some might say ­predatory—­interest. Dominic was also right about the effect Miriama had on most of the men in this town. It was possible she’d drawn the attention of the wrong man without realizing it. And small as Golden Cove was, she probably knew that man and wouldn’t have felt any sense of danger if approached.

  But there were other possibilities and he’d be a bad cop if he ignored them. No one had ever called him that, not even when his mistakes had led to two deaths. Will’s policework had been stellar; it was his understanding of human nature that had let him down. This time around, he’d dig down to the bone and tear apart shields until he knew every secret in this town.

  18

  “Have you two recently had a fight?”