A Madness of Sunshine

“Sir,” he said down the phone line. “We’re now looking at either a ­drowning—­which is unlikely, given how well she knew the ­area—­or an abduction.”

“Will, I’ve run this girl,” his commander replied. “She has a history of running away from home.”

Fuck.

Will had been hoping Miriama’s past would slip under the radar. “That was when she was fifteen and her aunt had a boyfriend who took a little too much interest in her.” It was Mrs. Keith who’d told him that, after the older woman flagged him down for a visit one day a couple of months ago.

Miriama had run by on the road while the two of them were chatting, and lifted a hand to wave, and Mrs. Keith had said, “Look at her. Like a flower just opening up. Good thing that no-­good bastard didn’t bruise her.”

All Will’d had to do was look at her and she’d given him the full story. “Mattie, she’s a sweet woman. A good friend. But she has the worst taste in men.” A censorious shake of her head, her jowls trembling. “You’d think she’d have a little more sense after Miriama came to live with her as a wee ­thing—­her mother was Mattie’s sister, you know. Went up to the big smoke, made some wrong choices.”

A look of true sadness, her eyes an incredibly beautiful blue in the fleshy roundness of her face. “Lovely girl, she was. Overdosed in a motel, poor little Miriama in there with her for more than two days before someone found them.” Coughing, she’d taken a drink from the wineglass she kept on the table beside her. “There was no question but that Mattie would take her niece. She’d been trying to get ­Kahurangi—­that was the ­sister—­to send Miriama down here forever.”

Another small sip of wine. “You know Mattie’s first name is Atarangi,” Mrs. Keith had added. “Her ma had a good friend called Matilda, and that’s how she got that as a middle name. But you know how it goes with names. For whatever reason, everyone just started using Matilda. It’s a shame really. Atarangi’s such a pretty name.”

Will had sat there on the porch and kept on listening, not because he was particularly interested in gossip or in Matilda’s first name, but because he’d already come to understand that Mrs. Keith was lonely. According to Nikau, who sometimes went over to fix up her fence or clean the guttering, she used to walk into town two or three times a week, but she’d gotten too big to move far these days. She’d hired one of the local women to keep her house neat as a pin, and to help with her hair and makeup every morning, but, for the most part, she was confined to the porch where she watched life go by.

And perhaps to the bedroom where she might offer certain intimate services to truckers and forestry ­workers—­or so went the rumors in town. If she did, it was none of Will’s business. If it assuaged her loneliness and that of others, so be it. And if the whole thing was just a tale Mrs. Keith fostered to give her life a little excitement, it was a harmless one. Either way, she certainly didn’t seem to mind. In fact, from the occasional subtle comment she’d dropped into her conversations with Will, she reveled in her notoriety.

“But,” she’d said that day, “Mattie, good soul that she is, is as blind as a bat when it comes to men.”

A huff of breath. “Well, you can see how it went. Miriama grew breasts and legs and the useless man Mattie kept around back then started trying to touch her. The girl ended up in Christchurch a few times, trying to get away from him, until poor Mattie finally realized what was happening and kicked him out. She never once took the bastard’s side, that’s one thing, and it’s why Miriama never turned against her. She just can’t pick the good ones.”

“Be that as it may,” Will’s commander said in response to his clarification of Miriama’s history, “it’s a pattern. Can you say definitively that she didn’t just hitch a ride out of town?”

Will’s free hand curled on the pale wood of his desk. “She was in running gear. No money, no other clothes.”

“You know as well as I do that those things can be easily circumvented if she has the right friends,” the other man said. “Regardless, there’s not much else we can do right now. You’ve already run a comprehensive ground and aerial search, and you said none of the locals have reported any suspicious activity or people?”

“Yes.” He hated to admit it, but the other man was ­right—­there was literally nothing the larger police branches could do that he, with Golden Cove’s help, couldn’t do himself. “I’m going to work it as a missing person, send out an updated alert.” He’d already fired off a request to his fellow officers to be on the lookout for Miriama, and he’d tapped media contacts to get the story what attention he could.

“Now that your search has come up empty,” his senior officer said, “I’ll have our press team issue a formal media release using the photograph you sent. She’s a beauty, so there’s a good chance one of the major outlets will pick it up.” No cynicism in the other man’s voice, just pragmatism. “You might even get nationwide coverage because of this photographic scholarship she’s meant to be taking up in a few weeks. If your girl’s left the town, someone will report it in.”

Hanging up soon afterward, Will considered his next step. Even if Miriama had been the victim of foul play rather than an accident, it didn’t immediately follow that there was no hope of finding her alive. Her abductor could be holding her captive, might’ve incapacitated her so she couldn’t try to escape or cry out for help.

Until Will had a body or other incontrovertible evidence of her death, he’d treat her as a missing person. And all missing person investigations began with those closest to the vanished.

He’d already spoken to Matilda and Steve. It was time he sat down properly with Dr. Dominic de Souza.

After sending Anahera and the others home in the early hours of the morning, Will had driven out to the main road and waited. Dominic de Souza’s vehicle had appeared approximately ­twenty-­five minutes later; by then, Will had spoken to the family who’d asked the young doctor to come out to their remote property and learned it was the mother who’d made the ­call—­and that she’d done it just after the six o’clock news began on TV.

Approximately fifteen minutes after Tania Meikle saw Miriama run by.

So the doctor did have a small window of time where he could’ve done something to his ­girlfriend—­except that Will had spoken on the phone to Mrs. Keith earlier in the night. She’d been adamant she’d seen Dominic’s car drive by around 6:10, 6:12 at the latest. Which meant he must’ve left immediately after the call.

It further compressed his ­unaccounted-­for time. It took a lot longer than a few minutes to subdue or hurt a strong young woman, dump or hide her body, then change clothes to obscure any blood evidence. That’s after Dominic would’ve had to track her down. Usually, the boyfriend was the lead suspect, but Dominic’s alibi appeared solid; he’d also broken down totally when Will told him the news.

Fear and shock could be faked, but Will was no ­first-­year cadet. Dominic’s response had been pure, naked emotion. The other man was devastated. He also had no marks or scratches on his arms or ­face—­and Miriama would’ve fought.