Alexa and the other searchers stood on the bank. Bush Creek scurried by in rivulets and channels. Not as wide as the Arrow River, but it means business, Alexa thought.
The female searcher looked vaguely familiar. She whispered to Alexa. “I’m Connie, and this is my husband Jack.” The younger of the two male volunteers nodded at her.
Alexa wondered why Connie was whispering. She was about to introduce herself when Julian said, “Thousands of people go missing in New Zealand each year.” He fiddled with a radio.
Jeez, Alexa thought.
The other male volunteer had thin silver hair. He asked, “How many get found?”
“Most get found safely within seventy-two hours,” Julian said.
“How long has Ms. Bowen been missing?” the woman searcher asked.
“She was last seen over twenty-seven hours ago.”
Alexa toed the damp scree with her boot tip. The Norwegian hiker she had identified by comparing the young woman’s postmortem dental X-rays with her social media selfie smiles hadn’t been found safely or within seventy-two hours. Her skeletal remains were found in a ravine a year later. She prayed the same fate didn’t await Eileen Bowen.
Julian scanned the sky. “We’ve an hour of daylight. Who besides me has a torch?”
Alexa was the only one. She felt a sense of urgency in the waning light.
Julian pointed ten yards up the creek. Boulders spanned the banks. “We’ll split up. Two on that side, three on this side. Arm’s distance apart. Inspect the bank and creek closely. Poke your stick into mounds, brush, crevices, ditches, wells, shelters. Look for foot tracks, broken branches, personal effects. Listen for cries of help, moans, anything out of the ordinary. We’ll shoot for the Chinese settlement, ’bout two kilometers.” He contacted someone by radio. “Team C starting from search subject’s backyard.”
“We hear you, mate,” came the reply.
Alexa was elected to cross the creek. It was only ten feet across where they stood, but the banks were steep. The man with silver hair jumped boulder to boulder and billy-goated up the bank. She followed suit until the last rock. One boot slid into the creek. Frigid water seeped down her ankle.
The man extended a hand and pulled her up. “I’m Dr. Wiggins. Dr. Getz recruited me. We worked together.”
So Julian was a doc. If she got a PhD at Abertay University she could reply, “I’m Dr. Glock.” As it was, she said, “I’m Alexa.”
“Like Amazon?”
She ignored the comment and hoped he and Julian were PhD scientists. Epidemiologists or entomologists, maybe. Something good. “What kind of doctor?”
“Geriatrician.”
Oh well. “What’s your first name?”
“Joe. Stick close to me. That escaped convict might be using these woods to hide.”
“He isn’t an escaped convict. He was paroled.”
“Same difference. I wouldn’t let Mrs. Wiggins search. Too risky.”
Mrs. Wiggins? This man annoyed her. Plus she didn’t need his protection.
“Are you visiting from the States?” he asked.
Hadn’t he seen her lift the caution tape in Eileen Bowen’s yard? “I’m working here. I’m a forensics investigator.”
“The missus likes My Life is Murder. It’ a TV series. That woman’s name is Alexa too. ”
Lucky her, Alexa thought.
There was no path. Joe walked closest to the creek, poking his pole into piles of debris. The woods at Alexa’s side thickened with mānuka trees. Or was it kānuka? Both trees were common natives, but it was mānuka that the bees loved. Alexa spotted a good walking stick and wedged between small prickly leaves to reach it. The foliage blocked the view. It would be a good place to stash a body.
Why was she thinking body?
Eileen Bowen had been missing for more than twenty-four hours now. This was out of character for her, everyone agreed. Her hat in the creek fueled Alexa’s foreboding. Goose bumps broke out on her arms. She grabbed the stick and pushed through to the creek. Julian and the other searchers’ bright vests made them visible on the far bank. She heard their voices but not their words. Beyond them, she spotted the back of a house. If Eileen Bowen had been thrown into the creek as the hat suggested, it had to have been from somewhere close by. She hoped DI Katakana had followed through on her house-to-house canvass.
Cindy Mulligan’s body had been found in the Arrow River. “How far are we from the Arrow?” she asked Joe.
“Bush Creek feeds into it just shy of the Chinese settlement.”
She heard about the Chinese settlement when she was at the museum. The kids in the fake schoolroom had been there. She was curious to see it.
“I holidayed round here as a child.” Joe stepped onto a sandbar and poked a pile of trapped brush. It floated clear. “There’s a caravan park nearby. We’d play in the creek, build forts, pan for gold.”
Alexa stabbed a rotten log and watched as her stick stirred up feasting beetles. “Did you find any?”
“Some flakes in my pan—always very exciting. A Southland man found a huge nugget a couple years ago. He was snorkeling in the Arrow River.”
“Really?” Snorkeling belonged in places like the Bahamas—not where the water was snowmelt-fed. And the river she’d jogged along this morning hardly seemed deep enough.
They trudged along the bank for ten minutes. The creek widened, and the voices of the other searchers faded. Alexa’s left boot sloshed. Around a bend the creek narrowed, funneling water between an island and a rock cliff that cast them in shadow. A shoulder-high opening in the rock startled her. “Look.”
Joe followed her gaze. “That’s large enough to squeeze through. Might be a mining tunnel. Surprised it’s not blocked off.” They stared into the dark recesses. The opening zigzagged like an angry mouth a kid would draw. Joe leaned forward and stuck his head in. “Some tunnels go down twelve meters or more.”
“Down?”
He backed up. “The miners used pickaxes and shovels to dig below the water table when the creeks had been ravaged. They went for the subterranean veins.”
That sounded like an attacker going for the jugular. Alexa didn’t like it.
Joe blew a whistle. Julian dashed to the opposite bank. “We’ve got a cave entrance,” Joe yelled. “Want us to take a look?”
River burble stole Julian’s reply, but he nodded. Alexa’s heart sank; she didn’t like caves. In a previous case she had dodged a killer by hiding in a cave. Glowworms had hung from every crevice. Light of the enduring world. If she survived that one, she could survive entering this one. She clicked on her torch.
Joe nodded. “Mind your head. I’ll be right behind you.”
Alexa snorted. No more “stick with me, I’ll protect you.”
She propped her stick against the entrance and scuttled through. She didn’t have to worry about snakes; New Zealand didn’t have any. The opening curved left, subjugating natural light. She stepped tentatively, aiming her beam at the sand and gravel beyond her boots and groping the wall with her free hand. She didn’t want to fall in a hole. She searched for footprints or drag marks. Nothing looked disturbed and there was no deep tunnel. The air was dank and cold. Three more steps in, she sensed space and slowly straightened. She aimed the light at dry rock walls. Something tickled her nose. She recoiled, banging her head on rock. “Dammit.”
She heard breathing. Nearby. She turned the Maglite in the direction of the sound.
Joe blinked. “Ey.”
“Sorry.” She rubbed her nose and shined the light around, surprised to be in a cell-sized space where she could stand erect. She’d read that the first evidence of Neanderthal Man was found in a cave in Germany. The article interested her because she learned that Neanderthals’ teeth grew faster than modern man’s teeth. Alexa gritted hers. This cave sheltered no Neanderthals. No bodies either.
Her beam landed on a shovel close to the wall. She walked toward it. “Wow. Look.”
Joe followed and nudged it with his boot. The head was corroded with rust and the handle was broken. Who had last touched it? She’d read at the archives about a miner who lived in a cave along the Arrow River. He’d been murdered. Her breath caught. Could this be the cave?
No. They were walking along Bush Creek, not the Arrow River.
A tin lantern rested on a ledge above the shovel, blackened by age or soot. The nub of a pale candle waited in its confines. Had it provided the only source of light for whoever sheltered here?
She moved the light in a circle looking for more evidence of inhabitancy: a sleeping loft, a pipe, or a ceramic jar of tea. There were no more remnants, but she sensed the cave had once been a refuge. “I think a miner lived in here back in the day.”
“Might have,” Joe said. “Would have kept the rain and snow off, anyway, but no sign of the missing principal.”
She searched for a passageway to more rooms, but the rock walls didn’t part. This was a dead end. The fractured skull of S1 popped into her head, and she thought wildly of taking fingerprints from the shovel handle. She had the supplies in her mini-kit. Maybe she’d come back.
Julian Getz waited outside the entrance, scaring her as she emerged. He had what looked like a miner’s helmet on with a headlamp. “Anything?” he asked.
“Empty,” Joe said.
Alexa clarified. “There’s an old shovel and lantern. You know, from the past.”
Julian raised an eyebrow. “But no sign of recent entry?”
She shook her head.
“The Chinese settlement is maybe ten minutes. We’ll meet up there.” Julian hopped back over the creek. The woman searcher waved her pole, and Alexa waved back. She filled her lungs with fresh air. The sound of a helicopter made her jump. She covered her ears as it crossed above. She hated helicopters ever since her Milford Track hike with Charlie. A helicopter pilot had tried to behead her with his dangling ton of rock.
“They’ll start using night-vision goggles shortly,” Joe said.
The creek curved sharply for a hundred meters. Individual leaves, a twig on the path, rocks, and scree faded to gradients of gray. She and Joe walked parallel to Julian and the two other searchers across the creek, who wove in and out of trees like forest sprites. At the convergence with the Arrow River, Julian and his crew crossed to their side.
Daylight hung on by a thread when the first miner’s hut—a wooden structure—came into view. It pressed its back against the hillside, and was half-hidden by draping vines. Its sharply pitched roof might have been made of straw and wood—Alexa couldn’t tell in the gloaming. A wooden railing extended like bony fingers from it. There was a door-shaped entrance. The single window was barely large enough to fit a head through.
The woman searcher pointed at it with her pole. “That’s the first of five reconstructed huts. It was originally built in 1883 by Loo Lee.”
Alexa did a double take. Now she knew why the woman was familiar. She was the schoolmarm. “You work at the museum, don’t you?” she asked.
“Part time.”
Her husband checked his watch. “This isn’t time for one of your tours, Connie.”
“I know. But I feel a connection. The first woman he killed…”
“Who killed?” the husband interrupted.
“Earl Hammer. The first woman he killed had the same job I do. Cindy Mulligan was a docent at the Lakes District Museum.”
“Whoa,” Alexa said.
Julian cleared his throat. “Ms. Bowen may be alive, and we don’t know Earl Hammer is involved.” Connie nodded. “It’s just, well, I’m devo we didn’t find her.”
It would have been more devastating if we’d found her body, Alexa thought.
“It’s too dark to continue searching if you don’t have a torch,” Julian announced. “Does everyone know how to get to their cars from here?”
“I’m at the car park,” Joe said. “Anyone need a lift?”
“We can walk home,” Connie said.
“See you tomorrow,” Joe said to Julian. His eyes landed on Alexa, and he gave a courtly bow. “Make sure you walk this little lady home.”
Alexa tightened her grip on the Maglite so she didn’t bonk Joe on the head with it. Little lady. “Do you want me to stay?” she asked Julian.
He nodded and said, “We’ll just check the huts and then you can be off, eh?” He turned on the headlamp and took out a flashlight.
She could do that. She was in no hurry to face an empty cottage.
The others faded up the path. Alexa stepped closer to Julian. “I’ll check this one.” He shined his light at the first hut built into a sloping terrace. “Take a squiz at the next hut. We’ll alternate.”
She followed the winding path. The next hut was made of chinked stone. A tiny pipe chimney poked out. The structure tapered into the hillside so that there were only three walls. She aimed her light at the roof. It was reddish thatch and extended on both sides almost to the ground. The opening was off-center and shaded by the overhanging eaves. Inside was pitch-black. She squeezed the Maglite and crept up the path.
At the threshold, her legs wouldn’t budge. It was then that she thought of the kid. The red-haired boy in Connie’s pretend classroom had said he’d seen a bad man hiding in one of the huts.
No one had believed him.