The Only Secret Left to Keep

by Katherine Hayton

  “What do you mean?” Deb asked. “Did they have a fight?”

  Shannon looked up, eyebrows raised, then her expression went blank, and she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Probably. My mother—” Shannon broke off and checked in with a quick glance at her father before continuing. “My mother didn’t much like my lifestyle, either. Sam’s mom didn’t approve of him, and he always fought with his dad. We bonded over things like that.”

  “If you’d gone missing, Ann would’ve been down at the police first thing, banging on the desk and making all sorts of fuss,” Mr. Rickards said. “No matter what she thought of your lifestyle.”

  Shannon nodded, but Ngaire could read the doubt in the woman’s eyes. No matter what her father thought, Shannon didn’t believe his emphatic statement.

  “What lifestyle are you talking about?” Ngaire asked, puzzled.

  Shannon shrugged again and ducked her head down. When she spoke, her voice was hesitant. “Just the usual stuff about being a teenager with a different set of expectations. Nothing big, just different. Sam liked a drink, and he liked his weed. That sort of thing.”

  “Is there a connection between the murders you committed and Sam’s disappearance?” Ngaire asked. She leaned forward and tapped a warning fingernail on the edge of the cup. “If it is Sam’s body that they’ve found up the hill, the missing persons’ reports aren’t the only thing the police will be raking over.”

  When Shannon looked up to meet Ngaire’s interrogating gaze, her eyebrows were drawn together, and fire flashed in her eyes.

  “You think I killed Sam?”

  “We believe that there’s a body on the hillside that didn’t get there by itself and a self-confessed murderer was the one last seen with the man.” Deb’s blunt attitude had her lay the cards out on the table and poke at them for added emphasis. “People are far more likely to be killed by their partners than by a random stranger. Yes, we think there’s a possibility that you killed Sam.”

  Shannon glared at Ngaire, nostrils flaring, then turned the heat of her gaze onto Deb. She opened her mouth, and then a cane was poking Deb in the chest. Mr. Rickards stood, his legs parted in a staunch posture, anger lighting his face so much that he looked like a decades-younger man.

  “You don’t get to come into my house and make accusations like that against my daughter unless you bring along a ton of proof with it.” He poked the cane at Deb again, the tip contacting her sternum and bouncing off the padding of her stab vest. “As far as you know, the body up there isn’t even young Sam. Yet here you lot are, coming around to spit out your usual bullshit.”

  “Dad!”

  “You get out of here, and you don’t come back unless you have an apology or a warrant. I’ve dealt with enough scummy coppers in my life to know my rights.”

  As Ngaire stumbled after Deb toward the door, she felt the familiar surge of adrenalin light up her body. This time it was only an old man and his walking stick. Next time—

  Don’t imagine horrors that aren’t there.

  She tripped on the edge of the doorstep, almost going tits over ass down onto the path. Deb’s strong arm was there to catch her, and Ngaire ran a shaking hand over her face, rubbing away the sudden fright.

  “Well, that got hostile quickly,” Deb observed, walking around to the driver’s side of the car.

  Ngaire barked a short laugh, still fighting to draw in breath enough through her constricted chest. “Yeah, it got hostile, and then the old man started a fight.”

  Chapter Ten

  “It was a confused time back then,” Brent Stanaway said, leading Duncan Gascoigne through to his living room. “Were you on the force at the time?”

  Gascoigne took a seat on the chair that Stanaway indicated. The hard back felt good supporting his spine. Being in the home of a superior officer, no matter that he’d since left the job, meant that Duncan wanted to be respectful and that meant a straight back and good posture. “Not me, sir. I was still in school during those years.”

  Stanaway waved away the honorific. “Just Brent is fine.” He paused as he took a seat on a chair bathed in sunlight. The rays picked up the white in his hair, illuminating it like an angel’s halo. After a moment, he leaned forward and peered into Duncan’s face until Gascoigne grew uncomfortable.

  “When the tour came through, we’d planned ahead for the protesters. The government had laid on extra funds through the coffers, and we could work all the overtime we wanted.” He rubbed his finger and thumb together. “Back then, we wanted plenty. Times were hard.”

  Gascoigne nodded as though times weren’t always hard and officers weren’t always seeking extra pay. “Were you at the test match?”

  “Yeah, I was.” Stanaway paused for a moment, plucking at the crease on the top of his trouser leg. “The scope of the protests had already caught half the hosting towns by surprise. In the days leading up to it, after the stoppage at Hamilton and the rumblings at other games, they laid on even more funding. We had cops coming in from up Nelson way and from down in Otago. Every man who didn’t kick up a fuss got transferred to where they were needed.”

  “The case we’re looking at would have been reported through the following day,” Duncan said as a reminder.

  “Yeah,” Stanaway said, staring into space while he sifted through his memories. “Even though we’d done all that planning, it wasn’t enough. We stopped the protesters, but it was so close it would have made your heart seize in your chest.” He met Duncan’s eyes again. “They were throwing cinder blocks, you know.”

  “The protesters?”

  “Nah. That lot was peaceful for the most part. Linked arms and chanting, that sort of thing.” He pulled his mouth down at the corners. “The paying crowd were the ones doing the violent shit. At the start, they were chucking food wrappers and empty cans. By the end, they were heaving bricks at the poor saps’ heads.

  “We saved those protesters from being ripped apart, that day. For all the talk of how violent the police were, no one seems to remember that we weren’t the ones who started it. Hundreds of people turned out to see that match and paid good money for it. A few dozen of those turned out because they wanted a riot.”

  “Did the police have to use force to drive the protesters out?” Duncan asked. He kept his voice pitched low, not accusing, just inquiring.

  “Some might have got their truncheons out,” Stanaway replied, a frown of thought on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, stopped, then shook his head. “One hundred honest, not a lot of that went on. For the most part, it was dead simple to keep them under control. Half of the protesters were university age, or only just out. They didn’t have the wherewithal to stop a trained policeman from doing their job.”

  Duncan pulled out the copy of the file, including the picture of Sam Andie. “Do you remember this kid at all?”

  “So, he’s the one reported missing, yeah?” Stanaway picked up the copies and stared intently at them, shuffling through the meager pages. “I vaguely recall a case with a colored lad.”

  Fighting not to openly wince, Duncan leaned forward. “His mom said that they were called down to the station to answer further questions in the days following. Then, all of a sudden, all progress stopped. Even when they pushed, she thought it didn’t seem like anyone was doing anything at all.”

  Stanaway nodded and dragged a coffee table closer so he could lay out the copied pages. He tapped his finger where someone had written the number three and drawn a circle around it. “See this here, that’s why.”

  Duncan raised his eyebrows and Stanaway shrugged. “Maybe that was only coded in my station, or maybe it fell into disuse. But back in the day, the boys used to label mispers with the most likely scenario. One was for actual missing people, high importance. A young kid wandering away or being snatched up outside a school. Something like that.”

  “So three was a runaway,” Duncan said, filling in the blanks.

  “That’s right. We had this lad’s parents a
nd his girlfriend write out a report, but someone”—Stanaway broke off and looked up at the ceiling, frowning, then snapped his fingers—“maybe Hathaway. He got word that the kid had been spotted down south. All the other leads had gone cold, and the boy was old enough to make his own decisions. With nothing else to go on, we figured that was that.”

  Gascoigne shook his head. “The mother said that he wouldn’t run away. Didn’t you think it was odd that a kid that age would leave his family without taking any money?”

  “Yeah, well, hindsight is a wonderful thing. At the time, we were stretched beyond capacity and had nothing to go on. You know how it goes—unless someone stumbles over something important in the first few days, you’re left with no clues at all. When the tip-off came that the missing lad was down south, that was all we needed to roll it up.”

  Duncan sat back in his chair, trying to look more casual. It was a hard thing, with his nerves wound up so tight already and his spine straining into regimental order because a superior officer was sitting across from him. “We can’t find anything on file but this.” He waved his hand over the meager report on the table. “Would there have been any other reports?”

  “Yeah,” Stanaway said, frowning down at the pages. “There would have been. We may not have been investigators of the year, but we talked to a lot of people. It wasn’t just us hauling the parents in for shits and giggles.”

  He leaned forward suddenly, spreading out the case file and scouring the notes for something. Something that he didn’t find.

  “There was a girlfriend,” he said. “She made a report and all. We had a whole raft of stuff on her because she ended up going down for murder a few weeks later.” He looked up at Duncan. “You’re not just missing a few pages here, mate. I’m talking about maybe a whole box of extra files that’s gone walkabout.”

  “You remember investigating Shannon Rickards?” Gascoigne asked in a mild voice. Inside, he felt a jump of excitement. “Is that who you’re talking about?”

  Stanaway snapped his fingers. “That’s the one. Rickards. She confessed to the murders, but that was still a horrible business. Forget about this lad, those poor parents were in the station every other day, weeping because they couldn’t understand why their sons were dead.”

  Duncan sat upright, trying not to lean forward but unable to keep up the charade of his relaxed pose. “Did you not think Shannon might have been involved in Sam Andie’s disappearance?”

  “Nah,” Stanaway said with utter certainty. “We did believe that they might be in it together and she’d been hiding him so that he could escape.” He laughed, low in his throat. “Sounds daft now, but they were two peas in a pod. Both weirdos. Both perverts.”

  He shoved the pages back across the coffee table at Duncan. “I remember now.” He pointed to the photograph of Sam Andie. “He may have looked like that when he was with his mom and dad, but most of the time he was dressed up like a fag. Shannon, too. She wore the pants in their relationship and Sam”—he nodded down at the photo—“he wore the dresses.”

  “You mean, Sam Andie was transgender?” Duncan gathered the pages together, taking his time to shuffle them into order so he could think through the new information.

  Stanaway carried on, regardless, “Nah, he was a transvestite. Enjoyed dressing up like a lady, just like on the Rocky Horror Picture Show or something.” Stanaway’s lip curled in distaste. “You want another reason why we didn’t keep calling in his parents? Respect. They seemed like good folk, and they didn’t need us telling them their son was a nancy. It may be legal and all now, but it was just shameful back then.” He sniffed. “Lucky for them that their boy did run away. A lot of families would break apart under that sort of strain.”

  “Except,” Duncan said, looking up and frowning, “as I told you earlier, the boy didn’t run away, he was murdered.”

  Stanaway shrugged and stifled a yawn against the back of his hand. “You know what I mean. Same difference.”

  “Are you sure we’re looking at indifference and not a cover up?” Doug Redding asked. Ngaire was glad he had the balls to. Given the expression on Gascoigne’s face, after he returned from his tête-à-tête with the old station head, his sour mood had turned positively acidic.

  “We can’t be sure of anything,” Gascoigne growled back, then his shoulders slumped, and he sat down at the head of the table. When he rubbed his hands over his face, dry flakes of skin wafted down. “I don’t think they were covering up an assault or murder. I do believe that they were a bunch of homophobic idiots.”

  “Now, they would be,” Gary Willis ventured hesitantly. When Deb gave him an eyebrow raise, he expanded. “If these reports came in now and the Andie’s got the same response, then fair enough. The coppers would be out of line. At the time, though”—he shrugged—“we were years away from decriminalization.”

  “It’s a missing youngster. Just turned twenty-one,” Redding said.

  “Yeah,” Willis agreed. “But they’d have to arrest the same kid if he were caught shagging in some public toilet. Nobody would’ve blinked twice at that, so to expect them to turn a blind eye to his proclivities when they’re searching for him…”

  He trailed off and stared down at the table, tracing a figure of eight with his fingertip.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m not trying to defend the officers. I’m just trying to put the whole thing into the perspective of the time.”

  “You mean,” Ngaire said, a small smile dancing around the edges of her lips, “they were a bunch of useless homophobic bastards, but so was everybody back then.”

  “Not just homophobic,” Willis continued. “You would have a rough ride reporting a crime back then, too.” He held up his hand at the ensuing groans. “Just saying.”

  “Beside the point, anyway,” Gascoigne said. “Sam Andie wasn’t a homosexual, as far as I can see. The bloke had a girlfriend, after all.”

  “You know what I mean,” Willis said, sitting back in his chair and pursing his lips. “Sorry I said anything.”

  “I’m sure we can make you sorrier by the end of the day,” Deb said with a sharp-toothed grin. “Just you wait and see.”

  “I’d like to get back to the point if you don’t mind,” Gascoigne said, showing off his huff again. “Whatever the reasons or their self-justifications, it appears that the police barely bothered to investigate. That they didn’t do it with a runaway is somewhat understandable. That they didn’t try harder to locate Sam Andie when his girlfriend copped to two counts of murder, is deplorable.”

  “A whole basket of deplorables,” Deb sniggered. She shut up when Gascoigne flashed her a glare.

  “We heard back from the District Health Board,” Willis said, pulling out a stack of printed papers. “The Westmere Clinic we were searching for was mainly used for what they called, ‘mental health surgeries.’ From what your old copper friend said”—he nodded at Gascoigne—“I guess that’s an old-style term for gender reassignments.”

  “And we heard back from the bank,” Redding added, sliding over a statement of accounts. “Sam Andie had managed to deposit several thousand into that account before his disappearance.”

  “Well, he certainly didn’t earn that from working a couple of hours a week at the local supermarket,” Ngaire said. She hooked over the statement to have a look. “Any direct deposits that might lead to another employer?”

  “Cash deposits,” Redding said. He shot a look at the others gathered around the briefing table. “I know this isn’t going to be popular, but I think at that time, in those circumstances, the most likely explanation is sex work.”

  “I believe we need to pay Shannon Rickards another visit,” Ngaire said. “Or even bring her into the station this time, pry her away from her loving dad. She deliberately withheld her knowledge about Sam’s sexual orientation during our first chat.”

  “Her dad knew as well and didn’t say anything,” Deb observed. “The two of them were being coy about the whole thing.” She
sat back in her chair and frowned across at Ngaire.

  “What?”

  “Well, you saw them. What did you think?”

  “I think the same as you. All the stuff about the lifestyles they’d chosen and how the parents wouldn’t care that Sam went missing.” Ngaire ran her hand through her hair, releasing the scent of smoke. “I also think that his mom must have known. Shannon certainly indicated exactly that in her statement, even if we didn’t understand what she was going on about at the time.”

  “Fine,” Gascoigne said with a short bark. “You two,” he pointed at Redding and Willis, “follow up with the clinic director if he’s still about and take the statements over to the forensic accountants to see what they can spot.”

  He knocked his knuckles on the table. “It also looks like we’re missing a boatload of files on this one, useless as they may have been. You two,” he pointed to Ngaire and Deb, “drop by the archives and check under all the connected names we’ve unearthed so far. They must be somewhere. I want our ducks lined up on this one so we can go back and do those interviews properly the second time around.”

  He walked back to his office and closed the door with enough force that the pneumatics wheezed in protest.

  “Soldiers, dismissed,” Deb said, in mockery of Gascoigne’s earlier army training. Ngaire gave her a quick salute, and they walked out to the car.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Jesus Christ, it sucks down here,” Deb exclaimed as they shuffled along the aisle of filing cabinets. “Even the sound is off.” She cocked her ear to one side and stamped her foot. The noise was dull, flat. Rather than being echoed off the brick walls, it was devoured by them, leaving no trace.