“But you did know how to ride. Didn’t Ariki Henare teach you the previous summer?”

“Don’t get taken in by my media hype, detective. I’m no James Bond. I wasn’t confident enough to go out into a storm.” I forced a languid appearance paired with a small smile of amusement. “The most I ever did with Riki’s bike was ride it up and down the Cul-de-Sac in clear weather.”

“Could your father have ridden the bike?”

That, I realized, was the question to which they wanted an answer. “My father?” I’d never given the idea a single thought; I should have. “Yes. He used to ride a bike when he was a university student.”

“You’ve said your memories of the time around your mother’s disappearance are intense,” Neri began.

“Hard thing to forget.”

“Can you go through what you did in the days immediately afterward?”

“Not much. I wasn’t very mobile with the stitches in my leg—especially after they got infected—so other than asking Diana if she’d heard from my mum, I stayed in and waited for her to come back home.”

The two officers exchanged a glance. They obviously thought they had something, but what it might be, I couldn’t guess. What the hell was suspicious in the idea of a teenage boy lying in bed while his leg pulsed with pain? I’d listened to the ongoing rain and hoped to hear the growl of a Jaguar engine.

Regan closed his notebook. “Is there anything else you’d like to add to your statement?”

“I’ve given you everything I can remember.” Laid bare this way, it wasn’t much. “What are the chances? Of catching the person who did this to her? The person who left her to rot in the forest?”

“It’s a cold case, and you can understand that the time window since the homicide does impact our investigation, but forensic techniques have come a long way in the past decade. It’s possible we’re in a better position to solve this than we would’ve been then.”

“That’s predicated on there being forensic evidence to analyze.” Time could do a lot of damage, erase a lot of things.

“Very true. Please be assured that we’re doing everything possible—the car is being examined inch by inch and we’ve brought a forensic anthropologist on board to ensure we hear everything your mother has to tell us.” He stared at me as if expecting me to be what—startled? surprised? scared?—at the revelation, but all that lived in me was steely resolve.

“You have our numbers,” Regan continued. “Don’t hesitate to call if you decide you want to share anything else.”

I saw Neri’s eyes linger on the scar on my right elbow as I let them out the door, found myself rubbing at the spot afterward. I’d fallen off my bicycle at some point in my teenage years, cut a great big gash in the flesh. It must’ve been after. Because I had no memories of a maternal kiss on the forehead as I was engulfed by a cloud of perfume.

“Ari, what’ve you done to yourself? Aao, let me see.”

My mother had been a terrible mother when judged against traditional markers, but she’d known how to love her son.

Throat thick, I made my way onto the balcony perched outside the living area. Auckland City spread out below me in a scramble of metal and traffic with bright splashes of winter green. The waters of the Hauraki Gulf sparkled and glittered in the distance, while a chopper flew in from one of the outlying islands. The cold winter winds whipped at my skin, reminding me of another night when I’d stood here in the wind.

Paige had stood beside me then, her hand wrapped around my upper arm, and her head on my shoulder. “What does it feel like? To know that tonight, tens of thousands of people around the world will walk into a movie theater and see the inside of your psyche?”

I’d chuckled. “I write fiction, darling.”

“Yes, but it has to come from somewhere.” Fiery green eyes ablaze against the cloudy light. “You don’t write about puppies and rainbows. You write about murdered mothers and lost children.”

Transcript

Session #9

“Thank you for seeing me again after my outburst the other week. I would’ve never touched you.”

“I must admit that I did question whether or not I should take this appointment. The rage I witnessed in you . . . You realize it’s not normal? You have deep-seated issues and coming here will only work if you’re willing to be honest about them.”

“Yes, I am. Willing to be honest, I mean . . . I missed being able to talk to someone after you cut me off. I didn’t realize how much it was helping me work through things until I couldn’t anymore.”

“Good. But another outburst like that one and we’re done.”

“Understood.”

“Your rage seemed to stem from my attempt to further our dialogue in relation to your mother. Are you ready to talk about her today?”

“Yes.”

[pause]

“My mother . . . she was beautiful and sensual. No, that’s wrong. I should be honest. She wasn’t sensual—she was an intensely sexual creature. At times, I think I was as hypnotized by her as my father.”

37

Murdered mothers and lost children.

A huge generalization based on a single book.

But looking back, I accepted that Paige had been right. The same theme ran through my three unpublished and shelved manuscripts, though I couldn’t see it in my current project. Maybe now that my mother had been found, I could lay those ghosts to rest.

Leaving the balcony, I considered what I knew so far, then decided to see what I could dig up about Alice’s wife. Cora wasn’t much for social media and had no real online footprint other than what Alice had shared, and that one mention in the local news. No other references to the “mugging” where Cora’s hand had been crushed.