“I’ve got to finish up this paperwork,” Willis said. “Think you can handle it on your own?” He dropped his voice lower and glanced over his shoulder. “Gascoigne is already on our asses because no one’s taking up his hints. I really need to get this sorted ASAP.”
Over breakfast that morning, Ngaire had stared downcast as her television broadcast the District Commander’s sound bites from the Shannon Rickards’ case. Not that she should think of it that way any longer. Better to call it the Bob Rickards murder spree now and be done with it.
Ngaire felt a dull pulse of unfairness and ingratitude behind her eyelids. The common preliminary signal before a migraine headache splayed her vision with beautiful lights and progressed into an aching thump.
She moved over to get a glass of water from the cooler and swallowed down a couple of Tylenol. When Deb walked by, perhaps avoiding floater duty, Ngaire caught her arm and pulled her closer. “What did Gary mean, no one’s taking up Gascoigne’s hints? Hints about what?”
“Don’t worry,” Deb said. “I think he’s just talking about the exams that everyone has politely declined so far. What did you tell him when he asked you?”
Ngaire coughed to cover her hurt and confusion. Gascoigne hadn’t asked her. When it was just Deb, it was okay. Deb had more experience and was a more natural fit for a leader. Gary Willis, though? The thought that she rated lower than him on Gascoigne’s internal leadership board stung.
As she reached her desk, Redding’s phone started to ring, and Ngaire gratefully thrust her thoughts away to lean over and push the call forward button. The dolt couldn’t even remember to do that simple task when he left his desk, but Gascoigne probably thought he too was fit for promotion.
She pushed back to her own desk and picked up the call through the extension. “DC Ngaire Blakes speaking.”
“This is Dr. Sanderson,” the caller introduced himself. “I’ve been contacted by the District Health Board to say that there was a need to call you and discuss the Westmere Surgery Clinic that I used to run.”
“Sure,” Ngaire said. “The case has been handed over to another unit, so I’ll just transfer your call.”
“Doug Redding, it said to talk to,” the caller continued. “Is he there?”
“I’m afraid he’s out of the station at the moment,” Ngaire said, trying not to wince at the whining note in her voice. “As I said, I’ll transfer you—”
“He stated that he was calling about a patient named Sam Andie. I’ve checked, and I think I know the kid he’s talking about, but he wasn’t a patient of mine.”
Ngaire stopped looking through the inter-departmental directory and frowned down at the phone. “Could the client have booked in under another name?”
“No,” Dr. Sanderson said. “Or, rather, yes he could, but he didn’t.”
“How did you know him, if he wasn’t a patient? Are you sure that we’re talking about the same person?”
“Young kid?” the doctor said. “Maybe late teens or early twenties. African American I’d guess he was called nowadays, though back then we just called him Black.”
“That’s right,” Ngaire said, frowning. “But he wasn’t a patient of yours?”
“No. The lad was a transvestite.” Dr. Sanderson paused to clear his throat. “Do you know the differences between the varieties of sexual identities and genders?”
“I think so,” Ngaire answered. “Transvestite means he liked to dress as a woman but didn’t identify as one, is that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” The doctor coughed for a few moments, long enough to cover the phone so it came through muffled, though not muted so that Ngaire didn’t hear him at all. “We operated as a surgery, so we mainly dealt with clients who wanted specific cosmetic reassignments, to fit with their internal image of themselves.”
“Can I ask, if he wasn’t a patient, how did you meet Sam Andie?”
“Ah, well. I’m not sure I’m allowed to pass that information on.” The doctor covered the phone with his hand again to cough, then came back on the line. “Although we performed surgery, that wasn’t all we dealt with. We counseled people through early transitioning when they want to try things out. As well as the cross-gendered we also worked with intersex adults, especially those who had been gendered when they were children. Asexual adults, too, we counseled them with relationships.”
Ngaire’s heart beat faster in her chest. Her cheeks felt warm and topped with a satin sheen of sweat. “How do you mean? With the asexual adults?”
“We talked through common misconceptions. That asexual people can’t be sexually active or have long-term relationships that are entirely non-sexual.” He chuckled briefly. “There’s a lot of folks who don’t enjoy having sex with another person but who end up married and having children. When that was a conscious decision and something they wanted to pursue, we worked out ways they could navigate that.”
“But Sam Andie wasn’t involved in your counseling, either?”
“No.” The doctor went into another coughing fit. “Sorry about that. Sam Andie didn’t need our help. The boy might have been young, but he knew exactly what he was and exactly how he wanted to live his life. It’s unusual for many people, but an especial oddity in one so young.”
“If I understand you correctly, though,” Ngaire said, speaking slowly as she felt her way, not wanting the doctor to leave the conversation. “You’re saying that a friend or colleague of Sam Andie was a patient of yours in some way?”
“Yes,” Dr. Sanderson said, sounding more and more uncomfortable. “To answer those questions, though, I’d need a warrant and it would have to be for the person in question.”
“And if we didn’t know who that person was?”
“You’d be shit out of luck.”
The swearing from a man who spoke so eloquently sounded even more potent. After a short pause, the doctor spoke again. “You might be out of luck, anyway. When the clinic closed down, we were still trying everything to keep it going. The service was desperately needed, even the government recognized that.”
“Were you government funded?”
“Oh, goodness no. We were private through and through. That’s where your issue might lie, though,” Dr. Sanderson said. “We left work on a Tuesday night still thinking that we might be able to pull the clinic through a rough patch. The next morning, when we turned up, the front door was bolted, and a trespass notice was plastered over the front.”
“You were forcefully liquidated?” Ngaire guessed.
“Very forcefully. The same landlord who’d agreed to a new payment plan suddenly changed his mind. All of our stuff immediately went to the liquidator who started selling it off in parcels. Files were physical back then”—Ngaire knew that all too well—”and just stored on the premises in boxes. I don’t know where they ended up.”
“Wouldn’t the local DHB have taken them over?”
“This was before the District Health Board system, but yeah, usually that’s where it would go. An old patient of ours tried to pull some information a few years back, though, after the government passed some new law. He got nowhere, nobody could find them.”
Ngaire picked up a pen and started to doodle on her desk pad. “So, you can remember these patients or non-patients as the case may be, but any official records are lost?”
The doctor agreed. “That’s about the size of it. That’s what I was calling to tell you, not that Sam Andie’s file would have been in there, even if it could be found.”
“But Shannon Rickards’ might be if they were located?”
“Yeah,” the doctor said, before breaking off into another bout of coughing. “Sorry, I meant no, I wouldn’t be able to say. Not without a warrant.”
Ngaire smiled at the phone, though the good doctor wouldn’t be able to see. “Well, as I said, another team has taken over the investigation, but I’ll pass along your information.”
“Great, thanks,” the doctor said. “I’m not really up to long
phone conversations anymore.”
After thanking him again and jotting down his contact details, Ngaire typed up a quick report. She forwarded it over to the new team in charge and then finished her doodle off while she thought about what he’d said.
Sam Andie had money in his bank account that, as far as Ngaire knew, they hadn’t managed to trace back to the source. If the money wasn’t even for him, but for Shannon, then would killing him really have been a smart idea? It wasn’t as though she’d been in possession of his bank card. If Shannon had killed him for the money, she’d also left her sole means of sourcing it with the body on the hill.
“Not that it’s your case any longer,” Ngaire whispered. “Leave it alone.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Matthew leaned forward, shifting his weight from the base of his knees to further up his leg. He’d been kneeling in this position for long enough for his legs to go numb and then stayed longer until they started to throb with pain.
The pain was the trick that allowed him something to focus on to silence the raging thoughts churning through his mind. Once he had the pinpoint of aching knees to concentrate all his energies onto, the rest of the babble faded away into silence.
That was when God could enter and provide guidance.
Although he was aware on some level that he shouldn’t pester an almighty being for his small concerns, like an ant tugging on your trouser leg and wanting directions to the nearest sugar cube, Matthew still sought refuge in His knowledge from time to time. He’d come late to the Lord—his childhood had been one of state schools and secularism.
The people he congregated with now held that up as the perfect illustration of picking religion through choice. After living without God in his life until his late teenage years, Matthew had reached out into the darkness and clutched for the only lifeline that made sense.
For Matthew, though, the lack of early induction made him feel like he would always scramble to catch up. No matter how many times he read through the bible, sometimes cover to cover, sometimes opening it in sporadic sections to see what wisdom he could divine from chance, he didn’t know the passages like the children who’d been brought up reciting them.
If he wanted to use the words to illustrate his point, Matthew couldn’t just reel them off his tongue. He had to look them up, a painstakingly slow process that lost the argument before he could even begin to take a stab at winning. Even with his natural abilities at persuasion, Matthew grew infuriated at how much of his cajoling was initiated from within him, instead of calling on the written words of God.
Where others in his association called routinely on favors from on high, Matthew tried to limit his communion, except to give thanks. Even though he didn’t say grace out loud, Emilia’s indignation at his gratitude to someone other than her made him silent as a courtesy, he uttered the words inside his head. Each night, he ran through a list of all the things that had benefited his day and offered them up.
To ask for something when he had a burgeoning list every night, seemed selfish. To ask when each day he could turn on the television to see children starving and good men and women being blasted out of their homes by tyranny, made his skin crawl with white privilege.
Now, though, he needed help, and there was nowhere Matthew could turn to. A wife who didn’t know the first thing about the cravings that suffused his body? No thanks. Move on to another member of the congregation and pass them his most intimate secrets to have them sit in judgment? No use at all.
Ever since seeing Sam on the television, Matthew’s mind had been a tornado of memories. They thrust up, unbidden, through every waking moment. He’d reach for the salt on the table and see a younger hand, streaked with blood. When he tried to process paperwork, the figures would run and wriggle, jump from one line to another. By the time he finished up an hour of work, he’d have done the equivalent of ten minutes and have a throbbing head.
Just a few hours ago, when Emilia had passed him in the hallway, she’d reached out a hand to stroke the side of his face and Matthew had recoiled. To see his wife’s face crumple, distress leaching all the color from her rosy cheeks, made him feel like a monster. If he woke up strapped to a table with electrical currents animating his dead flesh, there would be no surprise, just dull acceptance.
The past had always been something to gloss over, to issue in a soundbite one or two seconds long so that Matthew could get to the real meat of the person he was today. A beige backdrop for the life he’d now carved in society. Only he could see the images kept hidden out of sight in the corners. The blood, the rage, the impotence all culminating in an album of photographs that he couldn’t force himself to look at.
But God already knew these things and understood them as intimately as Matthew did himself. To turn to him for guidance made the most sense in this situation.
As his mind emptied, attuned only to the physical discomfort of his body, it felt to Matthew as though he was floating. Pain was the one tether left, and if he overcame that, he might fly away for good.
The thought was gentle, caressing, an offer of escape that arrived unbidden but once it was there, in front of him, Matthew couldn’t turn away. To leave and start over for the second time would mean losing everything that he’d built in his current life. The house, the job, the comfort of ministering to men as lost in their desires as he’d once been.
All of the things that Matthew listed in his nightly ritual would be gone forever, unrecoverable if he left. Yes, he could physically walk back into this house, but it wouldn’t be the home that he and Emilia had built through long years in shared company. Yes, he could turn up at the center and talk with the men attending, but they would no longer trust in the words he spoke.
He would have nothing and be no one.
Like a gust of wind blowing away every tangible proof of his existence, Matthew felt the freedom in that thought. He nudged at its edges, finding its heart, and dove into the sensation head first.
All worries that were tied to his past would be gone in an instant. Every night he’d sat up late, concerned that this month the mortgage payment would be out of his reach, forgotten and washed away.
Then lancets stabbed his brain, drawing the horrific memories that he buried deep in its center up to the surface. Matthew groaned as he looked at the terrifying reality that he’d run from once. To run again and let the truth be buried, would be to cast a black stain on his soul.
God withdrew from his head, his heart, his body. Matthew felt the gaping hole of nothingness that had possessed him on his arrival in the Southland town open up like a wide mouth.
Once before, Matthew had run from all of his problems. It took a long time, but here they were—surprise!—ready to stain his new life with their black blood.
If he ran again, how long before they caught up to him again? One decade? One hour?
With a sinking feeling of regret and inevitability, Matthew understood. He had never truly run from these images or the terrible fingers of blame they pointed at him. All along, they’d traveled with him, a close companion. When he thought he was being lifted up to lofty heights, these were the anchors tied fast around his ankles. They’d held him back, all this time. Each memory made his new life incomplete.
“What do I do?” Matthew called out, his vocal cords straining with the force.
The noise broke his reverie, the pain in his knees now just an undercurrent to the real world. Matthew’s eyes snapped open, his heartbeat sped up, his eardrums thrummed with the blood pulsing through them.
If he wanted an answer now, he would have to supply his own.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Ngaire, could you come in here?” Gascoigne called across the office.
Her heart thumped extra hard, and Ngaire pushed aside her current task, assigning samples to a floor plan of a rape victim’s house. Not physical specimens, just the codes so that when the lab results came back, the team could quickly pinpoint where on the site they’d originated f
rom.
He’s about to ask you to take the Sergeant exams.
Don’t be stupid, he’s just going to assign you some more work.
Her two internal voices tried to yell each other down as Ngaire walked the few yards to Gascoigne’s office. After the slight of finding out he’d asked Gary Willis ahead of her to consider working for a promotion, Ngaire crossed her fingers and hoped that her first voice was correct.
“The new team under Detective Inspector Moimoi have asked me to provide some extra hands for the case,” Gascoigne said. When Ngaire began to sit down, he shook his head. It won’t take that long.
“I’ve put your name forward. It seemed the best fit.”
“Yes, sir,” Ngaire answered, swallowing past the lump in her throat. “Where do I need to report to?”
“They’re just upstairs,” Gascoigne said. “Second floor. I don’t know at this stage if they’ll require your physical presence for long. Keep me apprised of what’s happening, and I’m sure the DI or DSS Harmond will let me know as soon as you can be released.”
“Of course, sir,” Ngaire said, turning back to the main station room as slowly as she could in case he wanted to add anything more. Regret stained her tongue with sourness as she made it all the way back to her desk without Gascoigne calling to her again.
There was a message light flashing on her phone, and when Ngaire answered it, she could see that it was from DSS Harmond. “Welcome on board. Come upstairs as soon as you can. We’ll be holding a briefing for the team at eleven o’clock.” It was a quarter to now.
Ngaire picked up her notebook and looked over her desk for anything else she might need. “It’s just upstairs, silly,” she whispered, turning aside and walking out into the stairwell.
As soon as the door closed between her and the station room, she could feel disappointment rising in her. Was she really so bad at her job that she didn’t even deserve a chat about steps to take toward promotion?
“If you’re so worried about it, just go back and ask him,” Ngaire muttered. Caught between her ambition and her stupid pride, her stomach shrank away from the thought.
The Only Secret Left to Keep Page 13
