No smile on Anahera’s face. Her expression was difficult to read, but he could guess that she remained conflicted about working with Will behind her friends’ backs.
“So,” she said, “we’re ready to go?”
“You sure you want to be seen getting into my vehicle?”
“Twenty seconds before I walked in here, I ran into Evelyn, made sure to mention that I needed to get some supplies from Christchurch and was catching a lift with you because my car was playing up.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her anorak. “That’s one thing I don’t miss about living in a small town—having everyone’s nose in my business.”
Grabbing his navy jacket but not putting it on over the finely pinstriped gray of his shirt, Will stepped outside the station, Anahera preceding him out. He locked up before leading her to his SUV. It wasn’t until they were inside and he’d thrown his jacket on the backseat that he said, “But you did miss some things about it?” Pulling away from the curb, he made automatic note of the cars on the street, the people on the sidewalks.
“You’ve seen the best of us in this hunt for Miriama,” Anahera said softly. “Rich or poor, wild or civilized, asshole or saint, when bad things happen, we come together.”
Will thought about that. And then he thought about the dark side of such closeness. “In a town this small,” he said, “there’s a tendency to imagine that you know everything about your neighbors. But everyone has secrets.”
Anahera’s laugh was cynical. “Is that your way of telling me you dug deeper into my sordid family history? You won’t exactly find any surprises.”
“No. But I did run a background check on you the day after you came into town. I had to see if you’d brought trouble with you.”
“What did you find?”
Will concentrated on the road in front of them, the trees that shadowed it so thickly canopied that they nearly shut out the sun. “That you had a reason to leave,” he said as they passed the spot where Peter Jacobs and his brother were in the midst of towing Vincent’s crashed Mercedes.
Will didn’t stop; he’d already been out here just before he returned to the station.
“I was sorry to read about the circumstances of your mother’s death.” Just because they both knew he had the information didn’t mean the words didn’t need to be spoken.
“Everyone was sorry.” Flat tone, her eyes fixed on the windscreen. “Just like everyone was sorry when my father hit her every night. Just like everyone was sorry when they glimpsed her bruises. And everyone was so sorry when she was found dead in the cabin they couldn’t be bothered to visit. But no one did anything to the man who caused it all.”
Will had read the case files, knew what she was talking about—and it wasn’t just the abuse. “There’s no reason to think your mother’s death was anything but an accident. Her injuries were consistent with a fall from a ladder.” That ladder had been found next to her, as had a smashed photo frame.
An empty picture hook on the wall had stood silent witness.
“I’ve done my reading, too.” Harsher words now. “So I know that cops and forensics people can’t always distinguish between a fall and someone pushing you off so that you fall and break bones, crack your skull.”
Will couldn’t argue with her; he’d witnessed a number of high-profile cases where the question of whether a fall had been accidental or not had never been answered. “Why didn’t your mother ever press charges against your father?” The lack of any such report had meant the outside investigators had no reason to consider foul play.
Anahera’s head swung toward him. “Are you saying it was my mother’s fault?”
“No.” Will kept his tone even by sheer strength of will. “Abuse is the abuser’s fault.” It was what he’d always believed, what had led him to promise a little boy named Alfie that he’d be safe, that the monster wouldn’t get to him. “I just don’t understand her choice.” As he hadn’t understood the fatal choice made by Alfie Hart’s mother.
“From everything I read in the file, your mother was a strong woman.” Haeata Rawiri had run her own small dressmaking business throughout the marriage, was spoken of as a valued member of the community. Yet she’d stayed with her violent husband. And she hadn’t reported his violence. Not even when her husband hit their child.
Will’s hands squeezed the steering wheel.
Anahera didn’t reply.
Eventually, Will turned on the radio and the two of them moved through the lonely, beautiful landscape while listening to the cohosts bantering with one another about a rock star who had an addiction to rehab.
He’d long ago given up on getting an answer when she said, “He saved her once.” Her voice was cold, distant. “My mother was born into an abusive family and my father came along on his motorbike and whisked her away to a life of adventure and exploration. The first three years, she always told me, were wonderful. She was free and she wasn’t afraid and he was her Prince Charming.”
“What changed?”
“My father likes to blame everything on losing his job when the big factory out Greymouth way shut down.” Her tone made it clear what she thought of that excuse. “That’s what my mother used to say as well—that he lost his manhood when he couldn’t support his family and we had to rely on her income and on welfare.” She snorted. “All pure bullshit. What kind of manhood is it to pound on your wife and child?”
Will’s mind blazed with the image of a burning house, flames licking up to the roof and the heat so violent it scalded. “That’s not manhood,” he said as the scarred skin on his back seemed to tighten. “That’s weakness.”
Anahera went silent again, and the two of them drove on through empty roads surrounded by trees and tangled undergrowth, past a glacier-fed river that glittered arctic blue, and in the shadow of mountains that had stood for thousands of years, their peaks capped with snow.
They stopped for coffee midway, but neither one of them was hungry for lunch.
Traffic began to pick up during the second half of their journey, but it was free-flowing, no breakdowns or delays. They’d made excellent time—just over three hours, forty-five minutes—and all too soon were in the heart of civilization and it felt like a bright flashlight shining into the face after the smudged light of Golden Cove.
Too many cars, too many people, too many noises—from the construction site on the corner to the teenager banging out a rhythm on an outdoor drum set to the driver gesticulating angrily at another.
“Do you have anything else to do in the city?”
Anahera stirred. “I need to pick up a new laptop. I ordered it online and they’re holding it for me. I didn’t want to risk it coming via courier.”
“Let’s pick that up last. Otherwise, you’d have to carry it around or risk leaving it in the vehicle.” He was too pragmatic to imagine that this being a police vehicle would stop thieves from breaking in—some people lived to cross boundaries, the thrill of the act as important as what they might get.