I feel so free with you, as if I’m truly seeing life for the first time. No filters, no restraints. I’m myself and I remember all of me.
A sick feeling in my gut, a dawning awareness that I’d got it all wrong, that this had nothing to do with finances and pride…and everything to do with making sure Diya nevereverforged a bondoutside the closed family unit. Because then she might feel safe enough to remember…and tell about the killing that had begun all of it, destroying the foundation of the perfect, beautiful life the Prasads had built in the aftermath.
Which meant…shehadremembered at some point, had tried to talk about it. Only for her family to shut her down, tell her she was wrong, that it hadn’t been like that. It had driven her mind to fight itself, and then had come the medication.
Diya had said something the morning of the fire. Something important. Squeezing my eyes shut, I struggled to think back to what felt like another lifetime. She’d been making me the omelet and…
I had the oddest dream last night. About our old house in Fiji. I could see the mango tree from a window—and then I was trying to dig it up using a shovel.
“Oh God.” Had she brought up Ani’s death that morning? Was that what had set everything in motion?
Wind chimes whispering down the hallway, a cold touch on the back of my neck.
I swallowed hard, my mind full of images of Rajesh’s powerful body cutting through the cold waters of the lake, Sarita putting on her jogging gear for a fast circuit.
Chapter 62
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Oct 30
Time: 11:07
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Chapter 63
After asking Ajay to keep an eye on Diya and message me if she woke and was looking for me—I still hadn’t managed to get her that phone—I left the hospital to meet Aleki at a small coffee shop by his work.
“Hey, my man.” He hugged me, a big wall of gentle, kind Samoan in a business shirt and pressed black trousers.
“Hey, Aleki. Thanks again for all you’ve done.”
“No thanks between us.” He picked up a coffee from the table. “I had our orders made to go. Gotta start walking back—still have that asshole manager who watches the clock to make sure we’re not a minute over our break time.” He took a sip of his own coffee. “You cool with walking and chatting?”
“Sure.”
“Glad to hear your missus is awake.”
It had taken me a few chats with Aleki before I’d figured out that “missus” in the local vernacular didn’t necessarily mean married, just together. “You have no idea how relieved I was when she opened her eyes.” I drank deep of the coffee—the ubiquitous Kiwi flat white, for which I’d acquired a taste after Diya introduced me to it.
Aleki slapped me on the shoulder. “I can imagine, man. So, you want to know about Violet Long, huh?”
I’d reached out to Aleki after all my online searches had come up blank—Violet Long’s business website was down, and she no longer had any social media presence. I didn’t even know if she was still in Rotorua, but I figured it was a small city, and with Aleki being around roughly the same age as her, they might’ve crossed paths. Or at the least, that he could point me in the direction of someone else who would know.
I had no intention of asking Diya for her friend’s information and bringing up that past trauma. Not here. Not now.
“My wife was close with her before the assault. I thought I’d see if I could touch base with her, see if maybe she’d want to visit with Diya.” It was a flimsy reason, but it was all I had. “She’s going to be moved out onto a ward soon.”
“It was brutal, what happened to Violet—it was in all the papers, how bad she was hurt.” He shook his head. “I don’t know her, but the papers mentioned that her dad is a plumber.”
Shit, I’d seen that in one of the articles I’d found and totally glossed over it when I’d already tracked one man down by his profession.
Aleki stopped in front of a building. “This is me. But anyway, my cuz’s mate Silas is a plumber, too, so I asked him if he knew about Violet Long’s dad.”
Digging into his pocket, he took out a piece of notebook paper on which he’d written the details of one Greg Long, Plumber & Drainlayer. “He said not to hassle Greg if he doesn’t want to talk,” Aleki said as he handed over the information. “Man’s still broken up about what happened to her—but I figured he’d be okay with you calling.”
“I promise I won’t push if he wants privacy.”
