“Right.” Robert snapped his oddly slender fingers, fingers more suited to a pianist than a cop. “I remember my commander at the time being pleased at the exposure. She was hoping it’d bring closure to some cold cases.”

“It -did—-an elderly couple came forward to say they’d given the third woman a lift to Golden Cove, while a bus driver remembered the first one getting off at a trailhead just outside the Cove.” It wasn’t an official stop, but most of the drivers didn’t mind a quick stop so hikers could jump off.

He brought up the paltry list of recovered belongings: the pack, the water bottle unique enough to be identified as belonging to the first missing woman, and finally, the identity bracelet found at the “cave” on the beach. “The bracelet was discovered two days after the end of the first official search, which focused on the bush trails.” Will had his own thoughts about the timing, but no proof.

“With the terrain and the lack of any evidence of foul play,” he said, “the disappearances were eventually ruled accidental. Most people thought the women got lost or stumbled into a crevasse or down into the sea. The detective in charge kept making notes in the files after the official accidental death finding, so it’s safe to say he had his suspicions, but he was never able to link another missing woman to the town.”

Robert’s next question was predictable; he’d been staring at the map of Golden Cove on which Will had marked the recovered items. “How far to where the water bottle was found?”

“Only about a -twenty--minute walk from here.” Will looked over at where Shane had made his chilling discovery. “The relevant track loops around to eventually join the one on which the remains were located.” The murderer amusing himself with a little game of memory. “It’s overgrown but was walked by volunteers during the search for Miriama Tutaia, so it should be passable.” Nikau hadn’t said anything overt, but he’d made sure the search covered all areas related to the lost hikers. “You want to see it now?”

Robert nodded. “I’ll pull a couple of the SOCOs off the -dump—-that’s going to take forever. They might as well walk ahead of us and collect any evidence our boy left behind.”

Will was too experienced a cop not to sense the older man’s skepticism beneath his outwardly cooperative response. Robert was wondering if Will wasn’t stretching the truth to make himself more relevant to the case. But skeptical or not, he was doing Will the courtesy of listening, because once upon a time, Will had been a hotshot cop with an instinct for running down predators.

The hotshot was gone, but it turned out his instincts had survived the fire.

Soon as everyone was ready, Will took them to the start of the track and had the forensic people walk ahead about a foot, one on either side of the trail. Tree ferns, their bodies lush and dark and their leaves a silvery light green, grew thick around them, along with taller, more ancient trees that blotted out the cloudy light.

Moss hung from branches and he saw a perfect spiderweb strung between two ferns.

In the shady and cool dark, the freshly trampled undergrowth cushioned their footsteps, creating an eerie silence that Will broke. “The water bottle wasn’t found on the track itself, but about ten feet to the left, just lying on the ground.”

“Like it fell from her pack and she didn’t notice?”

Will nodded at the younger detective’s question. “Or like she dropped it while disoriented after being injured.”

This particular track, with its hidden rocks and slight but steady incline, was hard going despite the inroads made by the searchers. He could hear Robert huffing behind him, but the other man kept on going. It was his partner who whispered, “Are we seriously planning to follow the crazy cop deeper and deeper into the bush?”

Will didn’t allow the question to distract him; he kept an eye on everything around them, just in case the killer had made a mistake this time. “That’s where the water bottle was found.” He pointed out a jutting rock barely visible through the tangled army of tree ferns. “Her family requested and was granted permission to place a memorial plaque against the rock just above where the bottle was found.”

Stepping off the path, he led the other two detectives to the spot. Such a lonely, quiet place, he thought, looking down at the -moss--brushed engraving to a “beloved daughter and cherished child.” He wasn’t a man for prayer, but he hoped she’d been hit from behind, that she’d died without fear and with the sound of songbirds in her ears.

“Imagine having only this to remember your kid.” Robert’s hand rose reflexively to his jacket pocket, where Will knew he kept snapshots of his wife and son. “Maybe we can give them something to bury at last.”

Will took his colleagues back to the path in silence, and they carried on walking.

But there was nothing to find. He could feel Robert and his partner glancing at one another, caught the edges of a furiously whispered conversation. The two scene--of--crime officers, however, kept on moving ahead, their white coveralls making them appear ghosts against the dark green of this quiet and whispering place.

Robert coughed. “We should head back.”

“It’ll be easier to go this way.” Will had never walked this track, but before leaving Nikau with Dominic, he’d asked Nik to confirm his understanding of how this track connected to the one Shane Hennessey had taken that morning.