by Nalini Singh
49
Will had barely finished organizing for a forensic team to come out to Golden Cove for the skeletal remains when he got the call from Anahera.
“I found her,” she said in a toneless voice. “The sea brought her back in.”
Will shuddered, bracing his palm against a tree trunk, the bleached bones of the skeleton in his line of sight. He’d done nothing to disturb the scene, but he’d ventured back to the car to grab his camera, then taken as many high-resolution images as he could, well aware that when it came to the actual investigation, he’d be relegated to the bench.
As far as his superiors were concerned, he was a burned-out cop with his best years behind him. No one would trust him to be in charge of a case like this. Will wasn’t about to let that stop him. Not having access to the bones shouldn’t matter as long as he could access the report to do with the probable height, age, and ethnicity of the victim in life.
He didn’t think the forensic team would find any other physical clues.
Whoever had left the bones, whoever had arranged the bones, had done it with clinical care.
It was a taunt, that skeleton. And since Will was the only cop in town, the person raking up old horrors, it was difficult to believe the taunt wasn’t aimed at him. But that was no longer important. “Are you sure?” he asked Anahera.
“Yes.” Her voice almost swept away by the wind, she added, “I’m watching over her. When can you get here?”
Will stared at the skeleton. He couldn’t leave it, not until another officer got to Golden Cove. The chance of someone disturbing the site was too great. “I need you to keep on watching over her,” he said, his hand fisting by his side. “I’ve got someone else here who I can’t leave.”
“Just tell me this—is it someone I know?”
The news would be out soon enough and Anahera wasn’t a woman who spilled secrets. “Skeletal remains,” he told her. “I can’t risk anyone moving the bones.”
“Skeletal . . .” Another harsh wind, ripping away her words.
But Will had heard the last word she’d said: hiker. It was the same thing he’d thought the instant he’d seen the bones. It could well be one of the three women who’d disappeared fifteen years ago and never been found.
He called the district commander again.
It took an excruciating two hours for the first forensic team to arrive. Will had spoken with Anahera several times, both of them caught in their separate hells and unable to move. He’d considered sending someone else out there—there wouldn’t be a crime scene to contaminate, not if Miriama had come out of the sea—but Anahera had said no.
“Miri shouldn’t be seen like this,” she’d said. “She deserves for us to take care of her.”
As he’d expected, the forensic crew was accompanied by two detectives. “Will.” The older one of the two couldn’t quite meet his gaze, the wrinkles in his brown skin deeper than the last time Will had spoken to him but his body in excellent shape. “I’m afraid we’ve been assigned the case.”
“Robert.” Will shook his hand. “Keep me in the loop, won’t you? I’ve picked up more than a bit of knowledge about this town that might be helpful.” He wasn’t used to justifying his need for information, but he needed his fellow detective’s cooperation if he was to have access to the reports.
Openly relieved at Will’s lack of rancor, Robert immediately agreed to copy him in on any results. “I hear you’ve got a second scene?” he said with a raised eyebrow.
Will nodded. “I’m heading out to keep it under surveillance until the second forensic team arrives.” He’d argued hard for the first team to go to Miriama’s body, aware it was decomposing quickly with every second that passed, but those in charge had overruled him. In their view, while she’d died more recently, the body of a drowning victim wasn’t going to hold anywhere near the forensic evidence that might be discovered on a skeleton that had been laid out for someone to find.
In their minds, it was tragic accident versus pathological murder.
“This Shane Hennessey fella.” Robert shot a look over at where Shane still sat on the crate, his head cradled in his hands. “He a likely?”
“My gut says no—he threw up halfway into the wait.” Shane had been desperate to get out, go home, but Will hadn’t been able to let him leave.
“Yeah,” Robert murmured, “whoever laid out these bones had to have ice for blood. Jesus, the bones are lined up as if he used a ruler.”
“Shane’s a novelist, says he walks this trail in the early morning when he wants to think.” Will wanted to pass on the information, then leave, get to Anahera. “No indications of any violent tendencies and no record in either New Zealand or Ireland.” That information Will had discovered during his initial run on all possible suspects in the Cove. “Shane’s mentored a number of young female writers, but they’re all accounted for.” He’d spent the wait making calls, confirming that. “My take—he’s just the unlucky bastard who found the bones.”
The two detectives exchanged a look, but Will didn’t much care what they thought of his instincts. They’d come to the same conclusion after a couple of minutes with Shane—the man remained green around the gills. “Look, unless you need something else right now, I have to get to the second site.”
“Yeah, we’d better go examine the skeleton. I’ll let you know what the bone specialists say.”
As Will drove away from the site, he saw curious locals beginning to slow down their battered trucks and rusty sedans as they passed the dump—they’d probably come to abandon rubbish, been startled by the forensic van and multiple police vehicles. Just wait until the second team arrived. Golden Cove was about to become a circus.
He shut his mind to all of it as he drove, thinking about what Shane had found, what Anahera had found. Coincidence? Yes. No one could manipulate the sea. But he’d have to look at the body first to confirm. It’d all depend on how long Miriama had been in the water. Because if you knew the sea really well—as so many of the men and women in this area did—it might be possible to drop a body in at a particular point with a fairly good expectation of it being washed up on the beach.
Will should’ve gone straight to the beach, straight to relieve Anahera’s lonely vigil, but he knew how fast information could travel in the Cove. And he knew Matilda would’ve heard about the sudden appearance of police vehicles at the dump site.
So he went to her home. She was waiting for him wrapped up in a faded gray polar fleece robe, her face strangely motionless. “Did you find her?” she demanded. “Did you find my baby?”
“We found her.”
She keened and collapsed onto the floor before he could tell her anything else.
Going down beside her, Will did what he could, but it wasn’t enough. He was grateful to see one of her neighbors—Raewyn Clark—running over, her blonde hair a mass of frizzy curls; Raewyn’s flinty expression told him she’d guessed exactly what terrible news he’d brought. “I’ll take care of her.” The heavily tattooed former gang member went down beside Matilda, put her arms around the broken woman. “You know she’d want you out there, looking after our Miri. Don’t let the outsiders treat her as nothing.”
Will rose, got back into the SUV.
It felt as if it took him forever to get to the water, and all the while, the clouds grew blacker and heavier overhead. Scrambling down the pathway after reaching the edge of the cliff, he ran toward Anahera’s seated form. She didn’t get up, just waited for him to come, a silent sentinel with dark hair knotted by the wind and eyes struck by grief. “She shouldn’t be dead,” were her first words to him. “No one as alive as Miriama was should be dead.”
Crashing down onto his knees beside her, he took her into his arms. She resisted, stiff and unbending, but he didn’t let go, and at last, she allowed herself to wrap her own arms around him and hold on tight. There were no tears
, but he hadn’t expected any. Anahera was used to holding her pain within.
If and when she chose to share it, it would be on her terms.
When they separated, he did what he didn’t want to do: he went and looked at Miriama’s body. One glance and he knew that she’d been in the water a considerable time. Odds were, since the day she disappeared. The condition of the body eliminated the possibility she’d been thrown in recently with the hope she’d wash up close to when the skeleton was discovered. That didn’t mean the same person wasn’t responsible for both crimes.
One new. One old.
Taking out the slim but powerful digital camera he’d slipped into his pocket before Robert’s arrival, he began to snap. Anahera watched in unmoving quiet. It was only when they heard the sound of a police vehicle getting closer, the siren carrying on the air, that she got up. “I’ll show them the way down. Give me the camera’s memory card.”
He slipped it into her hand, replacing it with an empty one he had tucked into the case, then put the camera back in his jacket pocket. If anyone thought to ask if he’d taken photos, he’d hand over the camera.
But when his colleagues finally arrived, all of them ill-prepared for the sand and the waves and the wind, Anahera wasn’t with them. And he was faced with a surprise. It appeared he was still in charge of Miriama’s case.
“I’ve been sent to assist you.” Short and solid, with a cap of fair hair and wearing a standard dark blue body-armor vest over a light blue uniform shirt, Kim Turnbull was someone Will had worked with on a prior case. “Everybody wants in on the skeleton you found, what with it being all serial killer like, so the junior gets the drowning.” She seemed to realize what she’d implied a second after the words left her mouth.
Going bright red under the freckled paleness of her skin, she said, “Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean—”
Will waved off the apology, too damn glad to be insulted. Being officially in charge of Miriama’s case gave him a far better chance of getting her justice. He wouldn’t have to rely on others to access the necessary reports and he could openly interview people of interest.
As for the skeleton so cruelly laid out on the edge of a dump, it had kept for a long time, and the men in charge of that victim weren’t incompetent—though they’d be handicapped by their lack of knowledge about this town and its secrets. Oh, people would talk to Robert and the others, but whether they’d tell them anything useful was another question.
Once Will had put Miriama’s ghost to rest, he’d find a way to do the same for that lost woman’s ghost. Because he had not a single doubt that it was a woman’s skeleton Shane had found. The way it had been displayed, the way it had been discarded, that was a thing too many men had done to too many women across time.
Waving across the new forensic team, he was startled to see Dr. Ankita Roshan with them. “I expected Robert to keep you captive!” he yelled out to the forensic pathologist over the rising wind.
“Told him I can’t do much with bones!”
Today collided with yesterday. Because Ankita had called in a forensic anthropologist in the aftermath of the fire, too. The smallest person in the house, the smallest body, hadn’t survived with enough flesh on his bones for a viable autopsy.
In the now, the painfully thin forty-something pathologist shook his hand. “Let’s get to the remains before the skies open up.”
There wasn’t anything she could tell him that he hadn’t already guessed. “You’ll have to wait for the autopsy for more,” she said.
“Ankita.” Will crouched down beside her. “Can you prioritize Miriama?” He lowered his voice. “Everyone’s writing this off as a drowning, but I knew her. She was too smart and athletic to stumble off a cliff or go running along the beach too close to the waves.” He’d had to push to convince the coroner to order a full forensic postmortem, rather than a less invasive evaluation.
“You don’t have to justify the request to me, Will.” Having already bagged Miriama’s hands, Ankita began to zip up the body bag. “You’ve always had stellar instincts—I’ll start as soon as I get her back to Christchurch.”
“I owe you one.”
A thin-lipped smile. “If all the cops who owed me one actually paid up, I’d be a millionaire.” Sharp words, but her dark brown eyes were kind. “I’ll take care of your girl.”
He helped load Miriama’s body onto a stretcher. The remainder of the scene investigation went rapidly. The team took photographs, even packed up the seaweed, but though they sieved through the sand below the body, there was nothing else to find.
The wind had already wiped away the drag marks Anahera had created when she pulled the body to safety. It was as if Miriama hadn’t been there at all, as if this had been a black dream that was about to fade.
50
Will helped carry Miriama’s body up the narrow cliff pathway, the young woman with a dancer’s grace having become heavy in death. The cutting wind scraped sand across his skin, and he was grateful for the solid grip offered by his boots. Several of the others slipped, but no one fell and they got Miriama safely into the hearse that would take her to the forensic mortuary in Christchurch. A subdued gray with a sleek modern shape that didn’t shout its purpose, the hearse should hopefully slip out of Golden Cove without attracting attention.
Kim puffed up the track a couple of minutes after Ankita left with Miriama.
He told her to hold the fort at the station, handle any calls that came for him, and note the names of locals who popped in to see him. Most would be hoping to get information on what was happening, but one or two might have information to share. “Make sure you let them know that I’ll be back either later today or tomorrow morning, and that I’ll speak to them then. Anything urgent, call me.”
Kim nodded, assiduously writing down his instructions in a little notepad.
Leaving her to help the forensic team pack up their gear, he made his way to Anahera’s cabin—and found the front door locked. Good.
He knocked, had to wait a couple of minutes before she opened the door. And she didn’t do that until she’d confirmed who it was. She was wrapped in a towel, her hair dripping wet. Washing away the touch of death, Will thought, trying to wash away the grief.
Reaching into the pocket of the jacket hanging to her left, she handed over his memory card. “Someone needs to tell Matilda.”
“She knows we found Miriama.” Will would never forget the raw sound of her keening wail. “I’m on my way there to tell her what we have so far.” Little though it was. “Will you come with me? I left her with Raewyn Clark, but I know she has young kids she’ll have to get back to as soon as her boyfriend leaves for work.” She might’ve already been forced to do so.
“Give me one minute. I’ll follow you in my Jeep.”
Anahera was true to her word, returning to him dressed in jeans and a dark green sweater under her anorak, her heavily damp hair pulled back into a ponytail and her feet stuffed into sneakers.
In her eyes, he saw as much rage as grief.
* * *
—
They arrived at Matilda’s to find a furious Matilda sitting on her living room couch, her hands closed around a cold mug of tea and Raewyn seated beside her. The neighbor rose when she saw Will. “Mattie—”
“You go, sweetie.” Even in her rage, Matilda found the kindness to give the other woman a gentle pat on the hand. “I know Hem’s boss is a pokokōhua. He’d better get himself to work.”
“How dare they?” Matilda said the instant the door closed behind Raewyn. “How dare they throw my baby away in the dump?”
Will spoke before she could say anything else. “We didn’t find Miriama at the dump. We found her on the beach.”
She just stared at him. “On the beach? Then . . . the police cars by the dump . . .”
“Something else. Miriama was in the sea.”
&n
bsp; Matilda’s eyes flicked to Anahera. “Ana?”
“It’s true,” Anahera confirmed softly, going to kneel beside the older woman. “I found her. I made sure Miriama was safe until Will could get there.”
“I want to see her.”
Anahera shook her head. “No, Auntie. Remember her as she was. Remember her laughing.”
Matilda’s shoulders began to shake, her tea slopping out of the mug. Taking the mug, Anahera put it carefully aside, then enfolded the older woman in her arms. As Matilda sobbed, Anahera met Will’s gaze. Her own gaze was dry, but that made her rage and sorrow no less furious.
Waiting until the crashing wave of Matilda’s grief had passed and before a new wave could hit, Will said, “I know you’ll want to go to her so she isn’t alone.” To sit with their dead, ensure they had loved ones nearby, it was a deeply rooted part of Matilda’s culture. “The liaison officer will be here soon and he’ll organize everything for you.”
Will could’ve offered to take her, but not only was she exhausted by grief, it’d be better for her if she arrived after the autopsy was complete; she could sit in a room near Miriama without being confronted by the ugly reality of what had been done to the young woman she’d raised. More, she shouldn’t be making the heartbreaking journey without a support system. “You have friends, family who can come with you?”
Matilda nodded jerkily. “You make sure your people treat my baby well until I reach her.”
“They will.” Ankita was a woman who respected her patients, for all that they’d already taken their last breath. “And I’ll get justice for Miriama. I promise you that, Matilda. No one will forget your girl.” It was the first time he’d made a promise since the day of the fire that had ended Alfie Hart’s short life. And it tore the scars inside him wide open.
51
The next notification was even harder.
Dr. Dominic de Souza refused to believe Will.
