sense, she was only five-six and weighed less than she should. She also had the right skin tone and hair color. “I know you’re tough,” he added, “but this guy is a psychopath.”
“Don’t worry, cop,” she said. “I’m staying with Matilda, helping her with whatever she needs—right now, that’s making sure the iwi liaison officer knows what’s important to her. She kicked Steve out a couple of days ago, so he’s not an issue.”
Exhaling silently, Will leaned his head back against the headrest. “As far as I know, no one else in town matches the profile.” Most fell outside the height or weight range. The ones that didn’t either had significant tattoos, smoked, or had short hair, traits not shared by any of the three hikers.
“If you think of someone,” he told Anahera, “pass on the warning.” Will didn’t much care if he got disciplined for sharing unauthorized information with civilians; if it kept a woman alive, he’d wear the punishment.
“Matilda knows everybody. I’ll get her talking, find out who we need to warn—she’ll feel better if she thinks she’s doing something to help.”
“I’m driving to Christchurch.” To the forensic mortuary where Miriama had been taken. “I need to find out what Miriama has to tell us.”
Her response was… unexpected. “You be careful, too. It looks like the rain is finally going to come down.”
“I will,” he said before hanging up.
It had been a long time since anyone cared what happened to him. He wasn’t sure quite what to do with it, but it didn’t feel like a burden or a cage. Anahera, he knew, would never seek to hold on. She might invite him in, but the choice to enter or not would be his.
He pulled out just as the rain began to hit his windscreen, had gone only a few meters when Tom Taufa’s plumbing van appeared heading in the opposite direction, into Golden Cove. The bearded man raised a hand to him in greeting as they drove by one another.
Will considered what he’d learned of Tom’s past and made a quick call to Kim. “Keep a quiet eye on Tom Taufa, the plumber. He should be stopping at the café within the next five minutes.” Tom always did when passing through the Cove’s main street.
“You want me to head on over there and strike up a conversation?”
“Yes.” Kim had the ability to talk to anyone and, underneath her stolid exterior, was good at picking up nonvocal cues. “Bring up the find at the dump, gauge his reaction.”
“Person of interest?”
“I don’t know.” It was the timeline that bothered him—one long-ago summer, Tom had experienced shame and humiliation because of a young woman. The next summer, three young women disappeared. “Call me if he sets off any alarm bells for you.”
“I’m on it.”
Hanging up, Will began the nearly four-hour drive toward the hopeless scent of a beautiful young woman’s death.
53
Anahera sat watching the rain from the covered back stoop of Matilda’s house, occasional droplets bouncing off the walls to collide against her skin. She’d finally gotten a worn-out Matilda to rest by telling her it was no use her rushing to go to Miriama if she collapsed when she got there. Which left Anahera free to think about the past, and a horror that had marked Golden Cove without anyone ever admitting to the darkness beneath the sunshine.
She remembered that summer, remembered the clear sunlight and the heat that had built in fine sky-blue layers.
Their group, they’d all been down on the beach as often as not. Josie, Anahera, Vincent, Daniel, Nikau, and Keira. Tom and Christine and Peter had floated in and out, but the six of them had been the core.
“You lot are as thick as thieves,” Anahera’s mother used to say with a laugh. They’d been close enough to venture into the water even when it wasn’t quite safe, when it was an adventure on the edge between safety and danger. Close enough to build bonfires on the beach after dark.
Close enough to make out under the stars.
Her lips curved. She’d almost forgotten playing truth or dare and being dared to kiss a blushing Vincent. She’d taken the dare, and he’d gone red to the very tips of his ears. Daniel had teased him endlessly about it, but back then, there’d been no malice to the teasing, all of the laughing words and shared memories weaving the threads of their friendship ever tighter.
There’d been no malice in any of them. They’d just been teenagers growing into