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Day Eleven

Saturday, Day of the Auction.

My spine stiffened with fear and dread. I wanted nothing more than to race home.

But I’d die on that path if I left now. A door clanged shut in my mind.

I wouldn’t get any further with Kingi on the heroin case or Janey.

Worse, Kingi was going to tell Snow everything.

I’d come up here hoping to find the final piece of the puzzle.

Instead, the investigation was about to be blown.

Snow and Kingi were a couple.

I tossed and turned all night, wrestling with what I could have done or said to hold on to our friendship, knowing I could have steered us in one direction. But I must have gone to sleep, because I woke in the dark with Kingi standing over me, shaking my arm.

“A helicopter is out there, searching, maybe looking to land,” he said.

I scrambled out of bed and raced to the window. A light beamed from the sky into the darkness.

“It can’t be good. I’ll take you on a path no one else knows about—we’ll ride Taniwha. ”

Despite what happened the previous night, I trusted him.

I had to. Without a word, I pulled on my clothes, stiff but dry, filled one of his water bottles, and shoved it into my backpack.

Outside, he helped me climb clumsily onto Taniwha.

He slid into the saddle in front of me, then led us into dense bush with no sign of a path.

I clung to Kingi’s waist as we rode downhill, a terrifying descent that was so steep and slippery, our swaying so extreme, that I thought we’d topple at any minute. We emerged into bright light—onto a rocky path, with a sheer cliff on one side.

I squeezed my eyes, my teeth clenching through my jaw. We turned into the bush again, and I heaved a sigh of relief.

Kingi tugged on the reins to halt Taniwha and turned to me.

“You’re right.” His face was drawn and shadowy. “I am worried about Snow. I don’t know why he would do this, but it’s difficult to see how he’s not involved.”

“Thanks for saying that, Kingi.” I should have felt relieved and vindicated, but I was sad. This was someone he loved. “That’s a lot to accept.”

The path was steep again. Taniwha slipped, and we reeled to one side. I let out a cry and clutched onto Kingi.

“Kingi, let’s walk down,” I said. “If Taniwha breaks his leg or gets hurt, I won’t forgive myself. And you’ll have no way to move your stuff.”

We climbed off Taniwha’s back. Kingi tied the reins into the saddle and slapped Taniwha on his haunches to head home. We slid down the mud on foot.

I asked Kingi if Snow had let anything slip about the night Janey died.

“Honestly, I can’t think of anything,” he said .

I told him about Janey’s diary—how Sarge had stolen it—and Sarge attacking me.

“Jeez, no wonder you looked like you’d been in a fight. What the hell’s happening in that town?” he said. “Sarge seemed like a good mate and helped my family heaps.”

“That’s what your mother said.” I grabbed a branch. “But he’s covering for Janey’s killer. He admitted it. Can we go over what you saw that night? You were in your sleeping bag in the sand dunes? Think you were about a hundred feet away, like me, but you saw her from the back?”

“Yeah. Like I told you the day after, I saw her from behind the cabbage tree. She was gesturing, like you described, excited, as though she was talking to someone, but I never saw the someone.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“There’s something else,” I said.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“Please tell me what came into your mind.”

He pressed his fingers to his lips. “I had the impression she might be talking to her dog. I don’t even know why I thought that.”

I asked him to act out Janey’s motions.

He looked down. He waved his arms, moving his mouth like he was talking.

“You think you saw her talking to Honey?” I asked. “But Honey didn’t cross the road with her.”

I immediately regretted saying that. The first questioner on a scene could shape a witness’s account, without the witness realizing. That was why it was important to get to the scene and question people first. But not suggest anything to them.

Sarge had been the first person to question me the morning after Janey disappeared. He paced us down to the beach—“You must have extraordinary eyesight. It’s about a hundred feet away, the length of a basketball court,” he’d said—and asked me to reenact that night.

I’d played Janey. Sarge had played the person she was speaking to. I couldn’t remember Sarge’s questions exactly, but I was sure he had only prompted me. His questions hadn’t been disguised as suggestions. But I had been young and scared, in shock, looking up at an authority figure.

Now that I knew Sarge had covered up for the killer, it was hard to believe he hadn’t tried to manipulate me—but how? I racked my brain, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I had to put a pin in it for now.

I listened for the helicopter, but nothing. Was it Snow? Sarge? Looking for me?

The new day’s sun penetrated through the vine-tangled trees, lighting the crumpled forest floor. Time to shine a new light on this investigation, starting with Janey’s disappearance.

“I always believed Janey’s disappearance was suspicious,” I said. “Her diary suggests she might have been killed at the top of the cliff. But we need to consider other possibilities.”

With the Fontaine story, I’d justified my actions to myself, saying that no other journalist could have dug deeper. I’d missed the point—these were people’s lives, and I shouldn’t have gone forward without speaking to Fontaine, however much pressure I felt to produce front-page stories.

So, this time, when I thought about Janey’s disappearance, I tried to open my mind to nuances, shades of gray, clear myself of any preconceived ideas—even, reluctantly, my certainty that Snow was involved.

We arrived at the stream, which I would follow for six hours. Kingi said it would take me through bush, farmlands, and down the valley to the beach.

I checked my phone: 7:30 a.m. I squeezed my eyes shut and breathed in relief. I would be back in time for the campground auction at 3:00 p.m., if nothing went wrong .

The path ended at a sheer cliff. Kingi offered to help me cross the crashing river to the path on the right-hand side.

One false move, we would be sucked under, swept away, and smashed against the rocks.

He gripped my hand. My heart pounded as we leaped for the first rock, freezing waves slapping us.

I faltered, slipped, and his hand righted me.

Breathe in and out. Next. Jump. We landed.

I could barely move with fear. The water smashed around us.

Jump. I teetered over a white whirlpool. Kingi grabbed at the back of my shirt.

To the right. Jump. Argh. I grabbed at Kingi again. He swayed. No, no, no. He straightened himself. One more. Big jump.

Together, we hurtled toward the bank, banged on the ground with a yell, rolled, and splayed flat.

We groaned our way to our feet and carried on. We were both scraped and bleeding, but I felt invigorated. Leaping through the crashing water had jolted an idea.

“What if Janey turned right along the beach instead of turning left to the cliff path?” I asked. “I thought she was pushed off the cliff. But what if she never went to the cliff at all?”

Scrambling along a path spiky with tea trees snaring our faces, arms, and legs, Kingi listed all the places Janey might have walked past, as if he thought often of the beach town—which I was sure he did.

“The playground, the Surf Life Saving Club, the corner dairy, the pharmacy, the butcher’s shop, the campground…” He carried on, listing family households.

The campground .

Again, I asked myself, why was Snow, through his bow-tied business partner, willing to pay $16 million to buy the entire campground?

It was a question that had rattled around inside me for days. As Kingi said, Snow didn’t care about money. He had all he wanted in life. What compelled him to buy this ordinary piece of land? There was nothing precious over it. Nothing precious under it. My brain fired.

Unless.

Unless there was something precious underneath. Buried. Something that could put you in jail for the rest of your life. Like… a body.

Snow killed Janey and buried her in the campground.

I held my breath to silence the thrashing of my brain. I rearranged my features into a resigned expression and tried to sound final. “Nothing rings a bell… it might take us a lifetime to figure this out… we might never know.”

Kingi nodded but gave me a funny look. Did he suspect I was glossing over something?

“It’s safe for me to carry on alone,” I said. Too abrupt a transition? “You should return to packing.” We hugged, and knowing I might not see him again, I held on tight.

“Thanks for everything, Kingi. I know this has been awful for you.”

“Sulfur on the floor of the helicopter.” He exhaled.

“What?” I dropped my arms and stepped back so I could search his face.

His eyes flicked away. “Some of the times Snow landed here, I smelled sulfur on the floor of his helicopter. ”

“Sulfur,” I repeated, free associating. “Volcano. Motu. But no one’s allowed to land there,” I thought aloud.

“Why is he landing there? What is it about the island? The island has a hump, like a whale. A helicopter could fly around the back and land unseen. And it’s only five miles out—a clever place to stash drugs.

” I slapped my forehead and fizzed with unexpected energy.

“Ha—of course. That’s where Mr.Otto saw the drone fly to. ”

Kingi gave a slight, weary shrug. “If anyone can find out, you can.”

I softened, touched by his faith in me, especially as I hadn’t been entirely open with him—but I couldn’t be.

“Thanks, Kingi.” I clutched at his elbow. “Good luck for today. I’m sorry I can’t stay and help, especially as you must be knackered guiding me here.”

“Yeah, you’d be bloody useless anyway, woman. I cooked for you, got your shower ready, loaned you clothes, lit the fire, and made up your bed. And you can’t ride a horse to save yourself.”

“That’s what I wanted you to think.” I grinned.

He rolled his eyes.

“Mā te wā,” I said. See you soon.

He shook his head. “Nah, you won’t.”

“This isn’t goodbye,” I insisted.

“Always have to have the last word.”

“Not always,” I said.

He turned away, then waved over his head.

“Kia kaha,” he called. Stay strong. And the forest folded him into itself.