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 thehalcyon 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.”
