Instincts prickling, Will just waited.

“You’re a good listener.” Matthew gave an approving nod from behind a plume of smoke. “Would’ve made a great enemy interrogator.”

Will wasn’t the least surprised to learn the other man was a veteran. He got that haunted look in his eyes sometimes that Will had seen in the eyes of others who’d come back from war. “It used to drive my mother nuts,” he said. “For the first few years of my life she worried I was mute.”

Laughing uproariously at that, the older man slapped at his knee. “Ka mau te wehi!” When he finally calmed down, he said, “You’ll think I’ve lost my mind alone out here.”

Will held his gaze. “I’ve learned things during this investigation that make me question everyone in the Cove, so whoever you name, I’m not going to be surprised.”

The name Matthew spoke made the hairs rise on the back of Will’s neck. “Why? I need to know why you suspected him.”

Matthew took a while to think about that, smoking his roll--up halfway down before he said, “-Just… too perfect, eh.” Another thoughtful puff. “A -man—-he was a boy back -then—-who never makes mistakes has got to have a madness trapped inside. And, there was the punua kurī.”

“A puppy?”

Matthew nodded, then went silent.

“I didn’t grow up here, Matthew,” Will prodded. “What about the puppy?”

After taking a last puff, Matthew crushed his roll--up in the ashtray balanced on the window ledge. “Kid’s father gave him one for his ninth birthday, I think it was. Maybe it was eight, or maybe it was ten, eh? Tama-riki all look the same to me.”

The hunter coughed, his chest sounding clogged up. “Then one day, I see him running out of the bush near their place, saying his puppy had run away. He was crying, all -red--faced and scared.” Another hacking cough. “I knew that pup wouldn’t survive out there all alone and I had Ripper with -me—-good hunting dog, never used to get distracted. I figured he could track down the punua kurī quick enough.”

Will had the feeling he was about to hear something that wouldn’t ever leave his memory. “Did Ripper live up to his reputation?”

“Yeah, he found the puppy, what was left of it. Someone had bashed its brains in using a rock.”

Matthew looked at Will with sharp, dark eyes. “I couldn’t believe a boy that young could’ve done that, eh, so I just buried the puppy and told myself to forget it. But, I kept seeing that pup with its brains bashed out every time I closed my eyes. So next time I saw Trevor Baker down at the pub, I told him maybe he shouldn’t give his boy another puppy.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing, but that boy never again got a kurī.”

As Matthew got up to pour himself a cup of tea, Will worked out the logistics in his head. “Vincent would’ve only been fourteen at the time the hikers went missing.”

“He got his growth early, that boy.” Matthew topped up Will’s tea. “Was as big as a man by that age. As big as he is now.”

Which wasn’t huge by any estimation, Will thought, but it was plenty big enough to overpower a woman of average size. He’d looked up the files on the missing hikers, knew they’d been small boned and ranged from -five--one to -five--four in height, their weights on the lower end of the scale. A strong -fourteen--year--old boy could have taken each one.

Especially if he came at them with a rock from behind.

One blow to disorient, the other to incapacitate. And more to smash in their skulls just like the lost puppy’s.

“’Course, Vincent wasn’t the only strong boy in the Cove that summer,” Matthew added without warning. “Back when he was younger, after I told him I couldn’t find the pup, he started crying harder and said another boy in town must’ve stolen the punua kurī, that he was jealous of Vincent’s gift.”

“He ever name the other boy?”

“I never asked.” Matthew drank some of his tea, then put down the mug and began to roll another cigarette. “Needed a beer after what I’d seen, just wanted to get down to the pub.”

“You think it’s possible another child was involved?”

The hunter took his time answering. “Rich, -good--looking boy with all the nice toys living in a flash house? āe, another boy might see that and get a hot head.” Sealing the roll--up closed, he said, “No way to hide a stolen pup in Golden Cove.”

This time, every single tiny hair on Will’s body rose up. What kind of a child would bash in a helpless puppy’s brains rather than allow another boy to possess it?

45

Will drove back into Golden Cove as night was falling, not sure what he was going to do with the information, or even if he believed all of -it—-because Matthew didn’t only smoke tobacco. Will had smelled weed on him more than once, but since there was no indication the hunter was cultivating or -selling… and because of those haunted eyes, he’d let sleeping dogs lie.

If a man wanted to -self--medicate to escape the nightmares, who the fuck was Will to stop him?

He might not have made the same call as a shiny young cop, but now he knew that a man could be broken. Sometimes, oblivion was a gift.