No. If Shannon took Gerry to her special place, she might lose the sense of that emotion. With so few good feelings left, to lose even one might empty out her heart.
A face flashed through her mind—skin the warmest shade of glowing chestnut and lips painted deep crimson with a lipstick stolen from the chemist. So beautiful. She tried to hold it there, but the pain washed it away. A headache throbbed at Shannon’s temples.
Half an hour had gone by while she talked herself out of going to the shelter. Gerry would be awake by now, or on the cusp of somebody banging on the wall above her bed to make her so.
Too late now. Like all good opportunities, not making a decision was the same thing as choosing. Even if Shannon hurried, the opportunity for the day was lost.
Chapter Seven
“What else did they recover from the burial site?” Gascoigne asked.
The team was assembled in the main station meeting room for a debrief. Having given the rundown on the autopsy, Ngaire was glad to sit back and let someone else talk.
“As well as the badge recovered on day one, there was also a bag full of clothing and makeup,” Detective Gary Willis said. “No brand names showing, but there’s enough of the remnants to indicate it was a shoulder bag. The clothing was also shoved inside a second plastic bag, maybe a supermarket bag, although it’s too faded to tell.”
“What kind of makeup?” Deb asked.
“Lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, foundation, eyeshadow, plus a variety of brushes. Why?” Gary asked. “You looking for some?”
“I’m wondering why a young man planning on staying over at his girlfriend’s needed makeup,” Deb said, glowering at him across the table.
Ngaire didn’t mind Gary, but he’d rubbed Deb the wrong way since the moment he arrived. That he was partnered up with Doug Redding was a godsend. If he tried to ride along with Deb, one of them wouldn’t make it back.
“He could have been carrying it for the girlfriend,” Ngaire said. “If he was staying over, then they could have planned to go out that night. If they didn’t go home in between, there’s less chance of a parent stepping in to say no.”
“Advice from a misspent youth, is it?” Gary quipped.
“What items of clothing were there?” Gascoigne interrupted, cutting them both short. His bad temper from the previous day was still in existence. From the caffeine flush creeping up his neckline, sleep had been hard to come by overnight.
Gary read it off a list. “Jeans and a T-shirt. A pair of jockey underwear. Just a standard change of clothes. There was also a wallet. No cash but there was a bank card and a pair of bus tickets down to Timaru.”
“Make sense,” Gascoigne said. “That’s where the tour was headed next, except the game was canceled.”
“There’s a card with an appointment a month out from the date Sam went missing stapled to it, for a surgery unit down in Otago. We looked it up in the system, but it’s not a going concern any longer. We’ve got a call in with the district health board to tell us what the unit was for.”
“What’s the name?” Gascoigne asked, his frown deepening.
“Westmere Surgery,” Gary said. “It sounds like the name of a private clinic, and it must have closed down pre-Internet, or there’d be something online. The address now has a dentist operating out of it.”
“There wasn’t anything on the misper regarding medical needs,” Ngaire said. “If Sam was hiding something important from his parents, that might have given him a reason to run away.”
“I wouldn’t assume anything until you get something more tangible to go on,” Gascoigne said, his former irritation resurging at full force. “Who owned the bank card? Was it his?”
“Yeah. We’ve sent through the application to the bank, so it’s just a matter of waiting for them to check it and get the information back to us.”
“Make sure you keep an eye on it. Assign a floater if you have to.” Gascoigne put a hand up to his brow and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Don’t let them push it to the bottom of the pile.”
“No, sir,” Doug said. “With so little information from the original case, I checked online to see if there’d been any new leads or information sharing. Nothing in our archive and no hits anywhere else on the name. I’ve checked back through MOs at the time, and nothing leaps out as being similar. There’ve been other bodies found up on the hill but none with suspicious circumstances.”
“Were there any sexually motivated crimes around that time? Sam was just out of school, wasn’t he?”
“A few years out,” Deb replied to Gascoigne. “Twenty-one, so he would’ve been finishing up at college if he’d gone.”
“Did he have a job?”
Ngaire looked down at her notes and answered that one. “He worked in a supermarket a few hours a week, nothing out of the ordinary. The supervisor isn’t with them any longer, but the employment records show steady attendance until he went missing. He’d requested extra hours, but been knocked back.”
“Sex offenders?”
“Again, nothing out of the ordinary,” Doug replied to Gascoigne. “We’ll check further into the names that we do have.”
“Make sure you do.” He turned to Deb. “What did you find out from the mother?”
“Nothing that’s a lot of use. His father is dead, apparently. The girlfriend’s name is Shannon Rickards. We’ll run it through the system and see if she still lives locally. Her memory might be a lot more accurate than his mother’s.”
Gascoigne stood stock still, staring at her. “Shannon Rickards?”
Deb caught the tone of voice and looked up from her notes, puzzled. “Yes, why?”
The flush up Gascoigne’s neck deepened another three shades to dark crimson. “Shannon Rickards is the name of the woman who murdered two young teenage boys.” He shook his head as though to clear it and tapped his fingers on the table. “Jesus Christ. It would have been back around then and all.”
“It was a nasty business,” Gascoigne said. “This wasn’t a case of accident or the quick blast of anger, those boys had injuries consistent with being kicked over and over again.”
“They were kicked to death?” Ngaire asked, her mouth dropping open in horror. “Why didn’t anyone come to their aid?”
“It happened out of sight, inside an abandoned building that was being used as a squat. Usually, there’d have been a bunch of homeless in there, but the temperature had gotten so cold, they’d all buggered off to the city mission for the night.”
“Could a woman really do that?” Redding asked, bringing forth a small chorus of jeers. He held his hands up. “I’m not saying that to be an asshole, I’m just curious.”
“The judge certainly thought so, along with the police assigned to the case at the time. So far as I know, no one else was ever in the frame for it.” He paused and looked down at the table. “On the night, she was wearing Doc Martens. They were all the rage with punks at the time. Steel-tipped, so they could do serious damage.”
Ngaire felt her stomach turn over and her fingertips moved unbidden to stroke the scar on her chest.
“What was the reason for the assault?” she asked.
Gascoigne shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. She pleaded guilty, but the judge didn’t ask her to allocute her reasons, so no one ever knew why it happened. Shannon Rickards was open with what had happened, what she’d done, where and how, but the why of it never entered into the conversation.”
“Didn’t her lawyer put forward any mitigation?” Ngaire asked. She may not have practiced very much law in her time, but she had the education and a degree that said the whole thing smelled fishy. “Surely, he put forward some extenuating circumstances.”
“Nothing that was ever brought up in court,” Gascoigne said. “Not according to the transcripts. There was a blow by blow account of what she’d done to the two poor lads, and then the judge accepted her plea and sent her back to jail to wait for sentencing.”
“Did the parents’ spe
ak at the sentencing?” Ngaire asked, her frown growing deeper by the second.
“Nope,” Gascoigne said. “It wasn’t like it is nowadays. There was no victims’ rights legislation or any mandate to speak.”
He stopped paging through the computer file and looked up at the ceiling, remembering.
“A lot of the time, the only appearance the victim’s families would make in court was at the sentencing. It was discouraged by a lot of folks unless they were testifying, in which case they’d be stuck out the back until they were called.” Gascoigne shook his head. “No one tried to give them a place in the courtroom. If they turned up of their own accord, they were treated the same as any other visitor.” He pointed at the computer. “Not that this tells us any of that.”
“Yeah. I don’t think the new system is geared toward looking up old cases,” Ngaire said. “Still, it’s better than the paper archive. That place feels like a dungeon where paperwork goes to die.”
Gascoigne cocked his eyebrow, and Deb nudged Ngaire in the ribs. “Look out. We’re about to receive a, ‘You don’t know how lucky you are,’ speech.”
Their Sergeant threw up his hands in surrender instead. “Fine. Don’t listen to the memories of an old timer. Take everything for granted.”
“I still find it hard to believe that with a case this odd, nobody even tried to find out why she’d done it,” Redding said. “If this were a couple of teenage girls kicked to death, the press would’ve been all over it.”
“The members of the media were all over it,” Gascoigne said. “But there’s not a lot you can do when the only witness has her lip buttoned. Women’s prison isn’t so bad as men’s, but Shannon Rickards still turned up to some court appearances with a rainbow of color on her face. If she wasn’t giving up the story to escape a physical beating, then she wasn’t giving it up in the courtroom. She’d pled guilty. There’s not a lot more you can do.”
“Bring back hanging,” Willis muttered.
“Then she’d be dead now, and you wouldn’t be able to go to her home and interview her, would you?”
Willis slumped farther back in his chair. “No, sir.”
“What about the victims?” Ngaire asked. “Were they known to her?”
“Nobody could find a link,” Gascoigne said. “Not at the time, at any rate. Shannon Rickards had left school a couple of years before, and she didn’t attend the same academy as those two, in any case.” He nodded at the computer screen. “She worked in a dress shop, so it’s unlikely they met there.”
“The local pub?”
“I don’t know but unlikely—the whole lot of them were underage. As I say, nobody found any connection at the time. Besides, we’re not retrying this case.” Gascoigne pointed sternly at each of them in turn. “Remember that when you’re talking with Ms. Rickards. We’re trying to find out who killed her boyfriend at the time, not retry her for a crime she’s already pleaded to and served her sentence for.”
“They must be connected, though,” Deb called out. She looked up at Gascoigne. “If there weren’t any signs of sexual assault, to either the victims or Ms. Rickards, then surely that leaves it open to her thinking they killed Sam.”
“If you think those boys killed Sam, bring me the evidence, and I’ll look at it,” Gascoigne said.
“Who were they, even?” Deb asked.
“George Kenton and Jessie Collingwood.”
“No, not their names.” Deb raised her hand and waved it in the air. “I mean, who were they?”
“Two school kids. That’s all anybody knew at the time, and it’s all we know now,” Gascoigne stated. “They were both in the sixth form, whatever that is now.”
“Year twelve,” both Ngaire and Redding answered in sync.
“One boy was sixteen the other had just turned seventeen.”
“What were their school records like?” Redding asked. “Were they actually attending school, or just pissing about?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Gascoigne said. He looked around the table and clocked the team’s mounting frustrations. “Look, there wasn’t a trial, so we don’t have any of the usual stuff that would come out. Nobody suggested that they brought it upon themselves, so the crown didn’t have to prove they were good lads or bad boys. They were just dead kids.”
“What about the papers?” Ngaire asked. “If the press were as keen on the story as you suggest, then surely they dug a little deeper.”
“Name me one newspaper that’s going to start besmirching a couple of teenagers when they’ve been brutally murdered, and the killer admits everything?”
“Okay,” Ngaire said, her shoulders slumping. “Fair point.”
The entire case struck her as bizarre, but the confession was so out of line with what she was used to, that, of course, it wouldn’t make sense. In Ngaire’s world, people who were guilty swore their innocence, and even if they did cop to a plea, they still pointed out a hundred reasons why they were driven to it, and the dead party was actually the one at fault.
“How long did she get in sentencing?” Redding asked.
“Life. It’s a murder charge. Non-parole periods weren’t really in use at the time, and the case for her to get periodic detention didn’t gain any traction. She served fifteen years before being released on parole.”
Willis winced, Ngaire presumed at the shortness of the sentence rather than its length.
“How old was Shannon at the time? Twenty?”
“She was eighteen. She left school after failing her school certificate, so she’d been gone a few years.” Gascoigne shrugged. “It makes sense. She would only be valid for a job in retail without that base level of qualification, so not much use in staying.”
“Sam Andie did well in school, didn’t he?” Deb asked.
Ngaire nodded. “He had excellent scores and had qualified for an A bursary. It looked like his school put him on the track to university, even if that wasn’t where he headed in the end.”
“But his girlfriend was thick.”
Ngaire looked up and smiled. “Because no one ever heard of a boy dating a bimbo, before.” She looked to Gascoigne. “How much rope do we have to check this case out, anyway?”
“As little as possible,” he answered. “Paperwork and files only at this stage unless you bring me something convincing.” He held up his forefinger. “No talking to either George or Jessie’s parents—if they’re still alive—and I mean it. I don’t want this dragged up for them unless it’s the only road we have left.”
Chapter Eight
“I’ve heard from the other clients that you’re having more problems with the classes than most,” Matthew Jamieson said. He leaned forward and clasped his hands together, shaking them up and down for emphasis.
Andrew Wainwright shifted in his seat and opened his mouth as though to speak. After a second, he closed it again and stared down at the floor.
Matthew surveyed the man with quick glances, face, body posture, the sweat popping out on his brow. Although the room temperature was the mild seventy degrees that he liked, Andrew had sweated enough that his blond fringe darkened to brown.
“Now, I know this is tough,” Matthew continued. He tried to catch Andrew’s eye, but the man stared fixedly down. “You’re the staging ground for a fight between the devil and Jesus, and it can get rowdy in there sometimes. But I know you have the strength to come through this and live a better life.”
Matthew sat back in his chair, waving at himself as the perfect example. “I did, and I was a far weaker man than you’ll ever be.”
“That’s not true,” Andrew said. His lips were loose, thick with saliva that he wiped away with the back of his hand. “You’re strong. You’re a leader. I’m struggling to even think of why to get out of bed in the morning.”
“I think you know why.”
Matthew felt wariness eat into his stomach, warning him of the dangerous ground underfoot. His summary of Andrew was probably right on target, just as it had been so
many times before. After Des, though, it paid to be more careful. God had tested him, probably because of his overconfidence, maybe just to show him once and for all, who was boss. Des was now hopefully sitting safe at the Lord’s right hand, but that didn’t mean Matthew had the right to carelessly add to his flock.
Where once, Matthew would have charged ahead, proving his point and ramming it home, he now sat back and allowed Andrew the time to come to a conclusion by himself. He was fighting the knowledge now, shaking his head.
“I don’t. Apart from the money this retreat cost and the feeling that I’d be wasting it not to try.” Andrew’s shoulders slumped, and a sad look of defeat skittered across his eyes. “No matter how much I want to feel love for my wife, I can’t force the emotion if it isn’t there.”
“You’re right about that,” Matthew said, earning a look of surprise. He leaned forward and held his hand out, waiting until Andrew reciprocate with a tentative gesture before he continued. “You can’t force love if it isn’t in your heart. I think both you and I know that it is. Close your eyes.”
Andrew shut them with such immediacy that Matthew almost laughed. These men were in the palm of his hand. The implicit trust that they bestowed upon him was a gift, and with the Lord’s help, he wouldn’t waste it.
“Picture Justine. Do you remember what she looked like on your wedding day?”
Matthew certainly did. Photographs were a vital part of therapy, and he studied each one the men brought in to ensure it would help them on their path, rather than hold them back. Justine had worn a designer dress with a tangle of cream lace embroidered from her shoulders down to her fingers. The sleeve had ended with a small finger loop so that the delicate fabric had covered the back of her hand like a subtle tattoo.
He loved it when someone paid that much attention to their craft. The sign of a good artist wasn’t just the years of practice they put into their workmanship, it was the initial burst of creativity that allowed them to see what would be the perfect thing, and then make it into reality.
The Only Secret Left to Keep Page 5
