“Happier times,” my father added, his head dropping for a moment. “Happier times.”
Taking the plastic bag, I touched the ring through it. “She lost a diamond two days before she disappeared.” I pointed out the empty spot, so tiny among all the glitter, all those carats. “She was angry because the ring was from an exclusive designer boutique that had guaranteed her the setting wouldn’t fail.”
She’d yelled at the jewelers on the phone, threatening to destroy them among her set if they didn’t fix this “right now.” She’d been pacing in our manicured backyard, phone to her ear, while I sat on the house’s back balcony trying to eat a sandwich. In the end, I’d rolled my eyes and taken my meal to my room.
I still remembered how she’d looked, the marigold yellow of her dress silhouetted against the native bush that rose dark green and ancient beyond the flimsy barrier of our fence. As if the forest was watching. Waiting.
Retrieving the ring, the cop said, “We can offer you a liaison officer. There’s likely to be intense media interest in this, given your standing in the city.”
Regan’s eyes were on my father, but Constable Neri’s gaze flicked my way. She knew who and what the media would latch on to, what would give them the best headlines, the most clickbait links.
Words came out of my mouth before I was aware of thinking them. “Was it an accident?”
“Of course it was, boy,” my father snapped, as if I were still sixteen and not twenty-six. “You know your mother liked to drink.” He looked at Regan again. “That’s what you’re saying, aren’t you? That Nina drove off the road into the forest?”
Into the chasm of green where a car could remain lost for decades. It had rained that night. So much rain, a torrential storm. Enough to hide the tracks of a car going off the road?
“We can’t say either way right now,” Regan responded with no change in his expression as he tucked the evidence bag back inside his jacket. “We’ll know more after we complete the forensic investigation.”
“I’d like a liaison,” I said before my father could wave away the offer. “I want to know when you find things, before it ends up in the papers.” That was why they were here after all, before the official DNA identification. Someone high up had made the call that Ishaan Rai, CEO of an empire that employed thousands, and best friend to the mayor, should be warned about the sudden reappearance of his first wife.
A wife he’d divorced in her absence.
Regan nodded. “Of course. Constable Neri will be happy to be the liaison.”
Neri spoke for the first time, her voice holding a low timbre that was likely put to good effect when soothing distraught relatives. “Here are my details.” A card taken from a pants pocket, held out. “Call me anytime.”
Taking the card, I slid it away. My father would eventually break out of his paralysis and ask for it, but I wouldn’t volunteer it.
“We’ll make sure to keep you updated,” Regan said. “Please do remember that the investigation is in its very early stages. We’re still working the scene.”
“I’m coming with you.” Hobbling over as fast as the orthopedic moon boot—aka a walking cast—strapped around my fractured bones would permit, I grabbed my outdoor jacket from the hallway closet while Regan was still objecting. “I won’t cross the police tape or make a scene. I just want to know where my mother died.” Where she’d effectively been buried for ten years.
Regan exchanged a look with Constable Neri before saying, “You can ride with us.”
“No, I’ll take my car.” A rental sedan with an automatic transmission that I could drive with one functional leg. Having my own vehicle would also leave me free to go to other places, begin to dig other graves.
Considering the status of my injury, I grabbed the crutches I’d propped to one side of the doorway when I went to get my jacket; the surgeon who’d worked on me had given me the go-ahead to start putting my full weight on my foot, but she hadn’t told me to go hiking.
“Cautious, Aarav,” Dr. Tawera had said after looking at the latest X-rays. “We don’t want to negate all your progress to date.”
No, we fucking didn’t.
My father spoke at last. “I’m coming, too.”
My chest tightened, my solar plexus crushing in on itself, the reaction one I’d thought I’d long ago conditioned out of myself. “We’ll follow you,” I said to the cops, then stepped out after them.
My father trailed silently at my back, not remembering his coat even after he stepped out into the chill winter air, the sky a dull gray that flattened the world. I didn’t remind him as I headed to the sedan. A lackluster dark blue with nothing distinctive about it, it wasn’t a car I’d have chosen at any other point in my life.
It was nothing like the gleaming black Porsche with a custom metallic paint job currently cooling its heels in the garage of my city apartment. Yeah, the Porsche was a piece of dick-waving assholery, but at least I knew it. I’d bought it when Blood Sacrifice turned into a blockbuster book that, in turn, became a blockbuster movie.
Murder and gore.
The world laps it up.
The discovery of my mother’s body, even if her death proved to have been accidental, it’d be terrific publicity. My publishers would dance a quiet jig. And all it had cost was the death of a woman of only forty-one.
3
My hands tightened on the steering wheel as my father got into the passenger seat.
We didn’t speak, my eyes on the unmarked police vehicle up ahead. Driven by Constable Neri, it led us out of the leafy gilded surrounds of the Cul-de-Sac and onto a long and winding road bordered by the dense forests of the Waitākere Ranges Regional Park, with only small hamlets of habitation along the way—and glimpses of breathtaking vistas where the foliage opened up.
Scenic Drive lived up to its name. But only if you weren’t expecting pretty and safe.
All that rich green turned parts of the road claustrophobic. It was never searing hot here, not in the cool darkness of the shadows cast by the forest giants. This was a quiet place, a place that whispered that humanity was an intrusion that would be swiftly forgotten once we were gone.
An unexpected flash of white, a large sign at the entrance to a trail, warning that the area was under a rāhui because of kauri dieback disease. No one was permitted to go on those trails, because the disease spread through the forest on the soles of human shoes, bringing a slow death to trees meant to grow far older than my mother would ever be.
I followed the police car knowing that if it stopped anywhere on this road, it’d be a spot I’d driven past hundreds of times.