Such a Perfect Family, page 21
I called Richard.
Answering on the first ring, the other man told me to come to a place called Sulphur Point. “It’s just around the way from my jobsite at the Government Gardens. I’ll take a break so we can talk. Been working nonstop since it happened,” he said. “Helps to keep my mind busy. Otherwise I start spiraling, thinking of how it could happen to anyone. Partying one day, gone the next.”
It didn’t take me long to drive to Sulphur Point—per my phone’s GPS, it was only five minutes from the hospital. I’d been here before, I remembered when I parked in the small empty lot beside the wooden walkway that led people on a path that passed mud pools, native birdlife, and smoking craters in the earth.
The thick smell of sulfur filled the air as I stepped onto the walkway. A large red sign to my left listed the dangers in the area, including hydrogen sulfide gas and fumaroles—holes in the earth that emitted dangerously hot steam—but when I walked further along the path, I found myself gazing out at the edge of Lake Rotorua, this part a thick, misty blue that looked unreal: white paint stained by a droplet of blue.
Steam curled up from it, betraying the heat in the water.
Birds sat on the water much further out, where the temperatures were no doubt more normal.
Diya had brought me here, eager to show me her city. “Sorry about the smell, but this place is incredible!” she’d said, holding her nose before she released it with a laugh. “I swear you go nose blind after a little while, barely even smell the sulfur. Still, I’m glad Mum and Dad built over by Lake Tarawera even if it is a little bit of a drive!”
I’d chuckled at the idea of that scenic roughly thirty-minute drive being considered anything but a pleasure cruise. “Babe, you’re talking to someone from LA, the land of freeways and gridlock.”
Her eyes had sparkled at me as she reminded me of a drive we’d taken in LA—she’d wanted to go to one of the big outlets. That part had been fun. The return trip, however, had ended up with us sitting in traffic for three hours…while Diya pulled snacks out of her purse like some magician.
Never before had I enjoyed gridlock.
Hearing the crunch of gravel, I turned back and reached the little parking area just as Richard was getting out of his work van. His hair was matted down as if he’d been wearing a hard hat, and dust coated his upper arms and the part of his legs visible between the end of his work shorts and the thick socks he wore with steel-toed boots.
“I took a minute to grab us a couple of cold Cokes, and pies since it’s time for morning tea anyway.”
“I’ll take the Coke, but I haven’t quite gotten into meat pies, so I’ll leave that to you.”
A sharp grin as he handed me the soda. “You’re missing out. A good meat pie is a real treat.” He grabbed his own drink and one of the pies before nudging the door shut and locking up the van. “Lot of expensive gear in there, can’t be too careful.”
“I can hold your drink while you eat,” I offered, but he shook his head.
“Nah, let’s walk to that bit with the view of the lake.” Opening up the Coke, he took a long swig, then held it in one hand while—having folded down the brown paper bag halfway—he ate the pie with the other.
“Sorry I haven’t been to see Diya,” he said as we walked past the warning sign. “I wasn’t sure they’d let me in.”
“They wouldn’t. She’s still in the ICU.”
An easing of those big shoulders.
“I’m trying to put things together for the funerals in advance, help Diya. But I only really met people at the engagement party…”
“Oh, no worries. I can help you with that. Bobby and I still play the odd game of rugby with a social team, and I can round them up to help with whatever you need. I might also have a few contacts for his parents’ friends—met some of them when Bobby and I hung out as kids.”
“Thanks.”
We stopped at the spot with the view to the lake, arms braced on the wooden railing. “Look, Richard.” I held his gaze. “Thing is, the police are investigating, and they’re saying some stuff.”
His jaw tightened. “About the Prasads? That’s bullshit. They’re a good family!”
A good family.
For whom reputation was everything.
“I know. But they’re insinuating things about Bobby. About him being violent.” I didn’t imagine it—that slight flicker in Richard’s eyes.
He knew something.
Chapter 48
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: May 15
Time: 23:18
Chief has kept me busy with multiple cases, but I still can’t help returning to the Musgrave file even if it’s only late at night, for a few minutes. I hate knowing someone got away with cold-blooded murder. Yeah, I still think it’s Advani, and even Perez can’t argue with me there, but we have nothing.
Only good news is that Advani doesn’t seem to be dating anyone new.
Because one thing I know—if he hurts another woman, then it’s on me. Because I didn’t stop him.
Chapter 49
“I’m trying to push back on the police’s insinuations about Bobby,” I told Richard, “but they act like they know something I don’t.”
“Fuckers.”
“Yeah, well.” Steam rose from the stony moonscape in front of us. “Is there anything I should be aware of? In his history? I’m scared this will leak to the media and I want to be prepared to fight back.”
Richard took a big bite of his pie, chewed with too much concentration. “He was my mate.”
“I know. But he’s dead now”—or doing a good job of playing dead—“and we’ve got to look out for him. No one else will.” My voice came out rough. “Most of all, we have to look out for Diya and Shumi. They’re the ones who’ll suffer the most under a media barrage.”
Pie finished, Richard scrunched up the paper bag and thrust it into his pocket. “Cops are probably thinking about what happened to Rhiannon,” he said after taking a long gulp of his Coke.
My skin prickled. “Rhiannon?”
“It would’ve been back when we were about fifteen, I think. No, sixteen. Bobby’s and Shumi’s families have been tight for years, and they used to go to a beach campsite every year during the summer. Set up a big tent each, have a shared barbecue, sit and relax while the kids played type of thing. I went one year, and I think Diya had a school friend come a couple of times, too, but mostly it was just the two families.”
My tendons were so tight they vibrated, but I didn’t interrupt, not wanting to startle Richard out of his flow.
“Rhiannon was this kid who used to go there every year with her parents, too. Not sure exactly how old she was—maybe not quite as old as Bobby, but pretty close. All of them were friends, used to spend the time playing, swimming, climbing the sand dunes. Kid stuff.”
“Sounds idyllic.”
“Yeah. Bobby was always buzzed about it—his dad used to hire him one of those four-wheelers from around when he was fourteen, and he loved roaring up and down the beach on that. We did that together that time I went.”
I could imagine it—one of those long New Zealand beaches that seemed to go on forever into the horizon. Flags fluttering where the lifeguards had set up a safe swimming zone, but the other sections free for four-wheelers, or for surfers who wanted to be away from the swimmers and were confident in their ability to cope with the wild waves.
Salt in the air, a kind of sun-kissed glow to the people.
“Rhiannon drowned.” A slap of cold water thrown on the halcyon images in my mind. “They found her body tangled up in some buoy ropes way out in the water.”
“Jesus, how awful.”
“Neither of the families ever went back to the beach.” Richard took another drink. “I mean, would you?”
I shook my head. “But what’s Bobby got to do with it?”
“Her parents went on television, gave this big interview. They didn’t name Bobby—probably couldn’t, because he was a minor—and that meant they couldn’t name the Prasads, either, because it would’ve identified him.
“I reckon that was the TV people, because they did bleep out a couple of names. My oldest sis later said that Rhiannon’s mother was on social media talking about it, too, no censorship.”
“About what?”
“Rhiannon’s mum said that Rhiannon and Bobby were in a relationship, that they did the long-distance thing after the previous summer, but that the summer Rhiannon died, she’d decided it wasn’t worth it when they only met in the summer weeks. She broke it off.”
I frowned, my fingers tight on the can of Coke. “Surely she wasn’t saying that Bobby killed her daughter because of a summer fling? They were kids.”
“Most people said that privately, but no one said it to the lady’s face—I mean, she was grieving, right? Anyway, she said that her daughter was on the swim team, the best swimmer of the entire group, and there was no way she’d have drowned unless someone helped her.”
Finishing off his soda, he crushed the can in one hand. “That television interview, her husband sat there mostly silent, but she cried and said how the police had hushed it all up because the boy’s parents were important doctors and she was a checkout operator, her husband a mechanic.”
Richard shook his head. “I mean, it was crazy talk, but that’s probably what the cops have dug up.” His expression grew dark. “Easier to blame a dead man than look for whatever psycho it was who went into that house and did that.”
I nodded, but my mouth was dry, my heart racing. That was two dead children I’d now connected to Bobby.
“Sorry, man, I have to get back to the job.”
“Right, sure. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.” I chewed over his words as we walked back to where we’d parked. “One more thing, Richard, and this is really awkward…but Shumi’s family is saying Bobby abused her.”
Richard’s jaw worked. “He would never lay a finger on her. He was super traditional in that way—that the man is the one who looks after his woman. Back in high school, he used to be a favorite with the girls for how he helped them carry their books or opened the doors.
“We’d laugh at him, but he’d grin and say, ‘You suckers aren’t getting kissed under the bleachers, are you?’ ” A sudden smile. “He was right. He had so many girlfriends all through school.”
“Not Shumi?”
“Her parents sent her to a girls’ school about half an hour from our coed one, and he was a teenage boy. Never cheated on her after they did officially hook up at uni, though.”
I wasn’t so sure of Bobby’s fidelity given everything else I’d discovered about him, but Richard had already been confronted by too many uncomfortable truths. I waved him off with, “I think I’ll walk along here a bit longer.” The surreal landscape with its whiff of sulfur and deadly hazards suited my mood.
Finishing off my Coke, I dropped the can in the trash before I began to walk.
When my phone rang a minute later, I glanced down to see my lawyer’s name. “What’s Ackerson saying now?” I asked Ngata when I answered.
“I’ve got sources, and those sources are telling me she’s attempting to request all kinds of financial records about you from the US. Is there something I should know?”
My stomach twisted, sweat breaking out along my spine. “I used to have a gambling problem,” I said. “Pissed away everything I earned and took out a mortgage on my condo—when it sells, I’ll only clear a hundred grand.” No point hiding that when Ackerson had to have received the tip from Baxter in LA.
“But I’ve been clean since before I met Diya.” Mostly because my father had made it plain that the cops would otherwise use my addiction to convict me of murder.
Two very rich women are dead under suspicious circumstances, and you’re bleeding money, he’d said. I’d fucking convict you, too. Shut. It. Down.
Even though the program to which I’d admitted myself was top-of-the-line, it hadn’t been easy to fight the urge…but then I’d met Diya, and she’d become my new addiction.
I was fine with that—she was the kind of addiction who could get a man through life.
“This isn’t good, Tavish,” Ngata said. “It just increases what Ackerson sees as your financial motive. Talk to your father, get him to transfer you a wad of cash. No way for anyone to know if it’s a gift or a loan—and it’s an indication of your resources.”
“I saved Diya,” I reminded him. “Don’t let Ackerson forget that.”
“She’s going to say you were forced into it because of the neighbor who was with you.”
I fisted my hand. “I can’t wait for my wife to wake up and tell that cop she’s full of shit.”
“I hope for your sake that one of the women does wake up. Call your father.”
Frustrated and angry after he hung up, I strode back along the pathway while smoke curled up from the stone all around me, a small private hell.
Ani.
Rhiannon.
Shumi.
Three women Bobby had hurt. Two dead. One barely clinging to life. If those three existed, so would others. And now, thanks to Richard, I knew of one woman who would’ve tried to keep track of the boy she blamed for the murder of her child.
* * *
—
Rhiannon’s mother wasn’t difficult to locate with the details Richard had given me. Her hyphenated surname had been in the papers, and it wasn’t a common one. When I did a social media search, she showed up as the third hit down—her profile picture was of the same smiling teenage girl I’d seen in the newspaper articles, but the other images on her page were of an adult woman with deep lines on her thin face.
Only fifty but I’d have pegged her as more than a decade older. Grief and anger left marks.
Her location was listed as Auckland…and there, on her profile, was a link to a website: Justice for Rhiannon.
When I clicked through, I found myself on a badly designed site that I could tell hadn’t been updated on the back end for some time. But someone was still writing a post on it every year on Rhiannon’s birthday.
I began to read one at random.
My sweet girl would’ve been twenty-one today if only she hadn’t had the bad luck to fall in love with a psychopath. Everyone tells me I shouldn’t say these things, but I don’t care. It’s the truth and the truth needs to be spoken. Maybe they’ve gagged me with their rich people lawyers against saying his name, but I know. You all know.
My girl could swim like a fish. And you’re telling me she drowned on a clear day when the sea was all but smooth? I saw him after. He’d been swimming, too. Said it was with his sister, but he was a teenage boy, didn’t want to be hanging around with his kid sister.
He drowned my Rhi, my sweet girl. She was such a strong swimmer that he had to have held her under or done something else to her. She used to swim out to that far buoy and back without problem.
His sister was an adorable thing, though. Rhiannon loved her, used to make a special batch of cookies for her right before we went down each summer. “For my little Dee,” she’d say. “My adopted baby sister.”
I don’t know how one child in a family could be so sweet, and the other a monster. I still have the letters that little girl wrote to my girl after each summer. She loved that Rhiannon was a dancer and would always be excited for Rhiannon to teach her new steps.
He was always around them, though. Always watching. I should’ve known, but who thinks these kinds of things about a kid? Who could know that he was a murderer?
Sarita and Rajesh.
The answer to the writer’s final question.
After baby Ani, how could they not know? But I couldn’t ask them. Rhiannon’s mother, however, was alive—and Andrea Smithy-Carr had listed her personal phone number on the website, in case anyone had information about her daughter’s death.
I considered whether to call ahead, decided against it. I didn’t want her to talk herself out of it during my drive. It had been more than ten years, after all—and I was Bobby’s in-law. Better to call once I was within Auckland’s borders, give her less time to overthink.
The GPS told me the drive to Auckland would take roughly three hours. If I left now, I’d get there before five. Even if I ended up spending a couple of hours with her, I could still make it back to Rotorua tonight.
Stiff muscles were a small price to pay for critical information.
I wasn’t the least surprised when I spotted a police cruiser an hour into my drive to the country’s biggest city. I made sure to stay exactly at the speed limit no matter if traffic was flowing faster and kept passing me. But whichever cop Ackerson had asked for a favor suddenly put on their lights and siren anyway; I was getting ready to pull over when the cruiser raced past me, on its way to respond to an incident.
If another cop was shadowing me during the drive, I didn’t see them.
I made only one stop—for gas, and to use the toilet. As a result, my muscles were already tight when I pulled over at the southern border of the sprawling city of Auckland to call Andrea in the hope of getting her address. If it ended up being on the far northern end of the city, then I wouldn’t make it back to Rotorua till after midnight—rush hour had already begun, and Auckland was like LA in the sheer spread of its borders.
It was only as I input Andrea Smithy-Carr’s number that I realized I’d been stupid in my desperation—the number on the website could’ve long ago been disconnected.
“Hello.” A woman’s voice.
“Is this Andrea? Rhiannon’s mother?”
A long, long pause. “Who is this?” A harsh edge now.
Relief kicked me like an angry horse. Dropping my head against the headrest, I said, “I want to talk to you about Bobby Prasad.”
