by Nalini Singh
“They’re saying Shane Hennessey found a skeleton,” Josie said. “Did Will tell you anything?”
So, it had already gotten around that Will’s SUV had gone out toward her cabin last night and not returned till morning.
That was the town Anahera remembered, the town that had suffocated her, the town where there were no secrets—and far too many hidden things. “Not about that,” she said. “There’s something else, though, Josie, but you can’t share it.” She knew her best friend loved gossip, loved the very things about Golden Cove that had threatened to stifle Anahera’s spirit. She also knew that Josie would never betray her.
“You know me, Ana,” her friend said. “I never tell your secrets.”
Veiled in between those words was a secret Anahera had shared with Josie fifteen years ago. That same hazy summer. A secret only the two of them now knew because Anahera’s mother was dead, and with her, the name of the man she’d loved while a married woman.
Haeata had let it slip one night while she was drunk—such a rare thing that Anahera couldn’t remember any other time she’d seen her mother with a drink in her hand—and she’d said enough that Anahera had hoped her father wasn’t her father. Such a false dream that had been; the mirror showed her too many echoes of the brute her mother had married.
“I know,” she said to her best friend. “You’ve never let me down.”
“I’ll never forget how you held my hand when we sneaked off on the bus to buy”—her voice dropped—“you-know-what.”
Anahera felt a fleeting smile cross her face at the memory of that secret trip out of town to get condoms when Josie decided to sleep with Tom. It had always been Josie who’d set the milestones in her relationship. Tom might be big and strong, but he was putty in Josie’s hands and always had been. “Here’s the thing,” Anahera began. “The remains might have something to do with the missing hikers back when we were kids.”
“Good lord. Imagine that, she’s been lying out there all this time.”
Anahera knew what Josie wasn’t yet ready to see. She’d thought back to the map pinned up inside the fire station, realized searchers had combed through that area while looking for Miriama. And the idea of no one passing through there in more than a decade simply didn’t hold water. It was too close to the dump, too near a favorite trail used by hunters.
The remains had been placed there for an unlucky walker to find.
And how strange that all of the summer kids were back in Golden Cove when it happened. Anahera, Nikau, Vincent, Josie and Tom, Daniel and Keira. Even Christine and Peter. They’d all, but for Josie and Tom, traveled the world, seen cities that had been ancient before the first rock was broken in Golden Cove, and yet here they were, back home as the ghosts of the past began to rise.
“Do you know anyone in the Cove who looks like me?” she asked Josie. “Same height, skin tone, hair, that kind of thing.” Matilda hadn’t been able to think of anyone Anahera hadn’t already considered and warned. All probably fell outside the killer’s preferred profile for one reason or another, but Anahera had thrown a wide net. Just in case.
This time, Josie sucked in a breath. “Oh, my God, I remember now. Those women, the way they looked . . . you grew up to look like them.”
“You see why I’m asking. I’ve already called around to a few women.” She listed the names.
“Okay,” Josie said through shallow breaths, “let me think.” A long pause before she said, “This isn’t connected to Miriama, then, is it?” So much hope in the words. “I mean, she doesn’t look anything like you.”
It seemed a huge coincidence to Anahera that a beautiful young woman would go missing in the same small town that might’ve been a serial killer’s hunting ground, and the two not to be connected, but none of it fit. All three hikers had vanished off the face of the earth. Miriama had been found. And no one could control the ocean.
“Hold on, I’ve got to serve a customer.” Josie was gone for two minutes and when she came back, her voice shook. “It was Evelyn. She said there were police down by the beach, too, and she saw them load something on a stretcher into a big van.”
Anahera knew this news wasn’t hers to tell. And Matilda wasn’t ready to handle an avalanche of sympathy. “He’s still a cop, Josie,” she said instead of answering the implied question. “He doesn’t share everything.”
“And here I thought you were going to be my new source of fresh gossip.” Josie’s voice continued to tremble.
“Take a breath,” Anahera said gently. “Another. One more.”
When Josie could finally speak again without breaking, she said, “The good news is, I can’t think of anyone else in town who really fits . . . what do they call it? The victim profile, that’s it. All those years of watching crime shows have finally come in handy.”
Anahera tracked a fantail as the small bird with its showy tail hopped from branch to branch. “That’s good.”
“No,” Josie cried, “it’s not good! It means that you’re the only possible target in Golden Cove.”
54
Will walked through the familiar corridors that led to the forensic mortuary. It was always cold here, as if all the death that passed through had permanently stained the building.
He met no one on his journey; hardly surprising when the world outside was fading to darkness. But he knew Ankita would be waiting. Pushing through another set of doors, he clenched his gut, and went to enter the room where his friend and colleague probably had Miriama on a cold metal slab.
The door opened from the other side.
“Will.” Ankita was still wearing her scrubs, though she’d removed her gloves and apron, and the smell that clung to her was of death gone to rot. “Perfect timing—I just finished the postmortem.” The harsh fluorescent lighting caused an appearance of pallor even in the dark brown of her skin. “Come on, we’ll talk in my office.”
Will had no desire to see Miriama cut open. Not that laughing girl who’d brought him cake and told him she’d be back in a couple of days with another piece to tempt him.
He followed Ankita down the hall.
Once inside her office, she went to the coffee carafe on a side table, touched her hand to it. “I need to give a certain forensic tech a raise.” She poured two mugs. “We can go outside if the smell’s bothering you.”
It coated the insides of Will’s nose by now, the rot and the loss. “No, let’s talk here.” Miriama deserved the respect and Will had smelled death before, survived it. At least it wasn’t the smell of burned flesh.
His stomach turned.
Placing one mug on his side of the desk, Ankita carried hers around and sank into the battered black leather of her chair. Will took off his jacket before he sat down in the visitor chair.
In front of him, Ankita’s desk was as meticulously organized as always. Her compulsively neat nature was partly what made her such a good pathologist. Ankita never accepted anything at face value. With her, Will could be certain every suspicious bruise would be examined with a critical eye, every indication of a toxic substance analyzed.
She would do Miriama justice.
“How was the drive?”
Will shrugged. “Rain,” he said. “You know what it does to otherwise sane drivers.”
“Yes, I caught a bit of that on the way in, too.” Putting down her coffee after taking a long drink, the pathologist leaned her forearms on the desk. “You know the problem with a body that’s been submerged in water. Added to that, there was a significant delay before I had her on my table.”
“Did you manage to find anything?”
“The water did so much damage to your girl that there wasn’t a lot for me to find. The bruises, cuts, abrasions, the chunks missing from her flesh, it can all be explained by the waves crashing the body against rocks, and by animal predation.”
Will would never forget M
iriama’s body lying on the beach, her beauty eradicated by the sea—and by the person who’d put her there. “Bones?”
“Badly shattered. Her face looks like a cracked eggshell.” Ankita pushed across an X-ray that, when Will held it up to the light, told a violent story. “Impossible to determine if it happened peri- or postmortem.” Putting down the pen she’d picked up, she leaned back in her chair. “But, I’m suspicious about a pattern of fractures and breaks along the left-hand side of her body.”
“As if she fell or was thrown against a hard surface on that side?”
Ankita nodded. “If someone threw her from the cliffs and onto the rocks below, and she landed this way”—the pathologist used the flat of her hand to demonstrate the angle—“it could conceivably have caused the pattern.”
She took a sip of her coffee. “I wish I could tell you more, but with the body being in the sea that long, it makes things difficult. I’m going to send the details through to one of my colleagues who has more experience with ocean damage, get a second opinion. The rest of what I’m about to tell you is pure conjecture based on over a decade of experience and my gut.”
Will put the X-ray back on her desk, a sudden cold invading his blood. “She drowned,” he said quietly, all the while hoping Ankita would tell him he was wrong.
But she nodded. “I’m going to do a diatom test, but even if it comes back positive, I won’t officially be able to call it a drowning. Still, all the broken bones aside, that’s how I think she died.”
“Tell me you have something else.” Because both a fall and a drowning could be explained away as accidental, but Miriama simply wouldn’t have made that kind of a mistake.
“Your victim was pregnant. Three months, give or take.”
Will sat motionless for a long minute before reaching forward to put his coffee on the desk between them. “You’re sure?”
“The decomposition hadn’t quite destroyed her uterus.” Ankita picked up the pen again, clicking and unclicking it. “I’m certain.”
“Do you have enough biological material to do a paternity test?”
“If you bring me a sample from the probable father or fathers, I can try to get the testing done for you. But, no guarantees.”
Leaning back, Will did the math. Three months. That put Miriama’s pregnancy right on the borderline. He’d check her journal, confirm the exact date she’d broken it off with Vincent, then line it up with when she and Dominic had first been intimate—not a conversation he was looking forward to having.
It was possible Miriama had had another lover in between the two men with whom she’d had a relationship, but Will had to start with the known potentials. As it stood, her pregnancy gave both men a powerful motive.
Vincent had vowed his love for Miriama, but when push came to shove, he’d chosen ambition. Miriama getting pregnant would’ve ruined the picture-perfect life he’d spent years creating, all of it aimed toward one goal. Especially if she’d refused to get rid of the baby.
If, on the other hand, it had been Dominic’s baby, the young doctor would’ve had no reason to be angry at Miriama. A little shocked, yes, but in the end, the child would’ve tied him and Miriama even closer together. And, according to her journal, he’d already shown a willingness to be a father.
But what if it hadn’t been Dominic’s baby?
Will had no easy answers—because Miriama had written nothing about the baby in her journal. Not even in relation to how the pregnancy might affect her internship. Either she hadn’t known . . . or that was the secret she’d obliquely mentioned at one point: I’ve become so good at keeping secrets. Until I can’t even write some things here, in a place no one else will ever look.
He got to his feet. “Thank you. I need to talk to some people, get those samples for you.” It was as he was putting his jacket back on that he felt the evidence bag inside. “I bagged her hairbrush for you.” It didn’t matter if everyone knew this was Miriama, they had to have official confirmation. Given the condition of the body, that meant DNA testing.
Ankita accepted the package, then walked him out to the car park.
As they stood in the dark lit by yellow lamps blurred by the now-misty rain, she looked up at him. “I can’t officially make the accident or homicide call, but I trust your instincts. I hope you find the bastard who did this to her—all that potential, all that life just snuffed out. No one has the right to do that.”
“I’ll call you if anything breaks,” he said, keeping a tight lid on his own anger. “Her aunt will be here soon.” He knew that without having to check. “Will you make sure Miriama isn’t alone until then?”
Ankita nodded. “I expected as much. She doesn’t need to see the body, Will.” Tired, empathic eyes. “I’ll speak with her, find a less traumatic way she can say good-bye.”
“Thanks, Ankita.” Getting into his car after a final handshake, he watched Ankita return inside, then picked up his phone to call Anahera. “How are things?”
He could hear noises in the background, the sounds of people talking. It was no surprise when she said, “Town’s gathered in the firehouse. Matilda wanted people to talk about Miriama, celebrate her life. She gave me permission to share the news and told me to ask that everyone get together.” She took a breath. “Liaison officer got us clearance to do a karakia on the beach where I pulled her out of the water. Matilda left soon after.”
Prayer, Will knew, was important to Matilda. Being able to offer one at the site would’ve given her a small outlet for her grief. “Who’s with her?”
“A group of her closest friends. I’m handling the gathering—after, I’m going over to Josie’s.”
Will started up his engine. “I’m on my way back. If things break up before I get there, make sure you have an escort back to Josie’s—Matthew, the Lees, the Duncans, none of their names have come up in the investigation.” He hesitated before saying, “Don’t get into Tom’s van.”
A sucked-in breath on the other end. “You can’t just drop that bomb on me and not say anything else.”
“I found out something in his past that worries me, but right now, he’s not any higher on the list than anyone else. Avoid Peter Jacobs, too.” The mechanic might have an alibi for Miriama’s death, but the skeletal remains were another matter—and Will hadn’t forgotten how Peter’s name had come up in an American rape investigation.
“Is Josie in danger?” Anahera demanded. “Her son?”
“No.” Anahera’s best friend fell outside the profile. “I’m being cautious, Ana. If I’m wrong, Josie never has to know anything.”
“Fine,” Anahera said at last, her tone clipped. “I wonder if I’ll trust anyone by the time this is over.”
Staring out at the bleak scene outside, Will thought of broken bones and missing flesh and a woman who’d never smile again. “Don’t go to the cabin.”
“No need for orders, cop. I’ve got no intention of ending up another victim.”
Though she didn’t ask him about Miriama, he could feel the questions on her lips. And he knew he’d probably break confidentiality and share what he’d learned. He could tell himself it was for a practical purpose—because while he remained an outsider to many, Anahera was a local. People who wouldn’t necessarily talk to him with total frankness would talk to her.
But the truth was that he talked to her because he wanted to talk to her, wanted to get her input. A dangerous thing to think for a man who’d so long preferred distance from life—especially about a woman so emotionally entwined with multiple suspects on his list. “We’ll talk when I get home.”
Her voice remained curt when she answered. “Drive safe.”
Hanging up, Will headed out. As he drove, he put aside Tom Taufa and Peter Jacobs, and considered two other men. Men who’d loved the same woman.
And he considered the puppy whose head had been bashed in with a roc
k.
55
Anahera had stayed by Matilda’s side until the karakia—at that point, she’d been shooed away by an older woman who’d traveled from some distance outside town. That woman, like the other friends who’d gone with Matilda, had seen Miriama grow up, had helped mother the child she’d been, and now they would mourn with Matilda.
Eyelids swollen and nose red, new lines etched permanently into her face, Matilda had said, “I see her every time I close my eyes.” A hoarse whisper, her throat ragged from crying. “My pretty, kind Miriama with so much aroha in her heart.”
Twenty minutes later, when Matilda’s friend and her husband began to lead Matilda out to their car, which would follow the liaison officer’s vehicle, Matilda had looked back at Anahera. “Will you be all right, Ana?”
Humbled by the generosity of this woman who had suffered the loss of a cherished child, Anahera had nodded and told Matilda her intention to overnight at Josie’s.
Now, as the last of the gathered began to leave, she saw that Tom had already gone home. Relief was a weight off her shoulders. At least she didn’t have to come up with some excuse to not go with him.
Her stomach ached with the ugliness of feeling any kind of suspicion toward Josie’s husband. But there was no reason to believe she’d be in any danger in the family home—and she could get a firsthand look at Josie and Tom together.
“Do you need a ride, Ana, dear?” asked a subdued Evelyn Triskell, her hands on the handles of her husband’s wheelchair.
“I’m okay, thank you,” she said. “Nikau brought his truck—I’ll catch a ride with him.” She didn’t have her Jeep because Raewyn had driven them to the beach, then to the fire station.
As the Triskells nodded and continued on to their car, Anahera decided she’d organize better security for the cabin tomorrow so that she could return home. She wasn’t planning to be stupid, but neither did she intend to let fear drive her decisions. “Nik?” she said, walking over to him. “Can you run me over to Josie’s?” Her best friend hadn’t attended the gathering, too far along in her pregnancy to be around this much stress and pain. Anahera would’ve sent her home if she had turned up.
