She looked out the window. The helicopter dropping from the sky was white, not yellow, and had a pointy nose. Special delivery: Bruce. She quickly finished taking Clint’s fingerprints and asked to see his hiking poles.
“Yeah, nah. I don’t use poles,” he said. “I’ll be around the lodge if you have any more questions.”
Sergeant Kramer followed her through the lobby. She braced herself for Bruce to stride up the lodge steps, pierce her with his sharp blue eyes—maybe toss her a smile—and assume the reins from Sergeant Kramer. She took a deep breath, tugged her jacket to make sure it covered the tear in her pants, and pushed open the door.
Two uniformed officers rounded the corner of the lodge. No tall resolute detective inspector from Auckland followed them. Alexa was disappointed.
“My colleagues from Te Anau,” Sergeant Kramer told her. “Constables. What have you got?”
“Missing person reports, Senior,” a female officer answered. Short and skinny, the woman wore a cap that shaded her eyes. All Alexa could see were moving lips.
“There are heaps,” the male cop said, holding a sheath of papers. “Three hundred and thirty-three.”
Alexa’s heart sank. It would take forever to wade through them.
“Some of those are cases from more than twenty years ago, though,” he continued. “Haven’t had time to weed them out yet. You know, been busy with the regatta. My lad took the dinghy race.” He smiled proudly.
“Good on Louie.”
“I printed them, since you said there’s no connectivity here,” he added.
“Used up the paper allotment, did you?” Sergeant Kramer introduced Alexa. “Ms. Glock works for Forensic Service Center in Auckland. This is Constable Daniella Chadwick, and this is Senior Constable L. C. McCain.”
The male officer took off his cap and ran a hand through his buzz cut. “You’re the one who found the body?”
She didn’t know which death he was referring to. “I discovered skeletal remains.”
“Who flew you in?” Sergeant Kramer asked the officers.
“Hank,” Senior Constable McCain said. “He’s waiting for orders.”
Sergeant Kramer turned to Alexa. “Do you want to return to the bones?”
If she separated the head from the body, they could transport the skull to the nearest doctor or dental office and take X-rays. That might be a quicker method than wading through missing persons reports. In the U.S., if bones can’t be identified, a forensic odontologist performs a dental examination and enters the results into the National Crime Information Center’s data system. If the missing person’s family contributed their loved one’s records—then presto. An identification. New Zealand didn’t have a dental data bank, but dentists knew they had a responsibility to help resolve missing persons cases. She could send a mass email to South Island dentists and hope for a match.
But separating a head from a body? That was worse than taking the thumb bone. She was sure the Māori elder she’d met in Wellington would disapprove.
Sergeant Kramer tapped his foot.
It was a temporary separation, and for the greater good. “Yes.”
“Let’s not keep Hank waiting, then. Constable Chadwick will go with you. I’ve filled the team here in on your er, helicopter encounter,” Sergeant Kramer said.
The sergeant had not wanted her to return to the bones until he could send someone with her, but the tiny constable hardly appeared big enough to serve and protect. Then Alexa decided she was being sexist—Constable Chadwick was probably a kickboxing champ. “I need to grab some things. I’ll be right back.”
She started to open the door, but stopped. The lodge might harbor a killer. An anxious killer who was a danger to others. Both cases played tug-of-war for her attention. “You have everything under control here, right?” she asked the sergeant.
“Don’t you worry.”
She couldn’t take action on both cases at the same time. Bruce would be arriving soon. She turned her thought to returning to the skeleton. What did she need? She had her pitiful crime kit, and her cell phone. She’d need something to put the skull in. And to tell Charlie.
Silas was collecting discarded coffee mugs in the lounge. “I need a box,” she told him.
“Eh?”
“A box.” She held her arms out to show how big. “And do you have an old newspaper?”
He looked at her funny. “No paperboy up here. Why?”
“I need to wrap something breakable. I’ll be right back.” She jogged past Cassandra, who scowled, and into the guest wing. Two rooms past the laundry she knocked. “Charlie?”
There was no answer.
She tried the handle, and the door opened. Charlie’s wet clothes and boots were piled on the floor. So much for using the laundry room. He was burrowed under two duvets, looking like the Michelin man. His eyes were closed and his face, peeking from the duvet, was pale. “Charlie?”
He didn’t answer.
She checked to make sure he was breathing and heard a faint whistling of exhale. She tiptoed to the closet and tried the safe, deciding to grab her camera. It was locked, just like she had asked Charlie to do. There was no key on the dresser and nightstand. The safe key was probably in his pocket. She watched the cloud of covers rise and fall, and decided not to wake him. She would continue to use her cell phone camera. She left a note on the nightstand next to the mug of hot chocolate dregs.
In the lounge Silas handed her a box and bubble wrap. “A client sent us cookies wrapped in this.”
From box of cookies to box of skull.
She hurried to the helicopter. Sunlight glared off the glass windshield. She went around to the right side, surprised to see the pilot strapped in.
He laughed. “Got your private pilot’s license, do you?”
Figures the controls would be on the wrong side. Back-ass-ward. Alexa blushed. She scurried around to the left side, ducking the whole time so she wouldn’t be decapitated if he started the rotors. Then she dropped her box and wasn’t able to open the door—if it was called a door. The pilot laughed again and opened it from the inside. Constable Chadwick smiled at her from the rear seat. Her teeth were white Chiclets. Alexa stepped on the footplate and pulled herself in. The pilot handed her a headphone and mouthpiece set. “Right-o,” he said. “Ever been in a bird before?”
She nodded. Only once, but he didn’t need to know that. She studied his profile, suspicious of any helicopter pilot right now, but he looked like any old Joe with silvery hair.
She edged close to the door, but then worried it would come open and she’d fall out, so she settled in the center. “Been flying in the area lately?” she casually asked.
“Eh?” He pushed some buttons and the rotor blades started turning.
Alexa pressed the headphones tighter to her ears to muffle the ruckus. She glanced at Constable Chadwick. Her cap was on her lap, her fingers tapping its brim. She had big brown eyes and a boyish haircut.
The whirring blades increased in speed and volume.
Hank wore a navy jumpsuit with Police Air Support stitched at the breast. He gave her a grin, and said, “Buckle up.” At the click of her belt, the Te Anua Police copter was airborne. She gripped either side of the seat and marveled at the physics of vertical liftoff. The buttons, dials, and screens of the instrument panel teased her with their import. She searched for something familiar. The ENG FIRE light was not on. Check. The gas gauge indicated three-fourths full. Check. The ALT numbers kept rising. Check.
Flying in a copter is probably safer than driving a car, especially in New Zealand. She focused out the window. Pompolona Lodge got smaller and smaller until it was a dollhouse in a fathomless forest. Then she looked up. A wall of mountain filled the windshield. Alexa cowered as they lifted at the last second.
Trees gave way to alpine tundra, granite cliffs, avalanche swaths, and patches of snow. The beauty and enormity of the landscape through the glass bubble was stupefying. A notch was gouged out between jagged mountains. “Mackinnin Pass,” the pilot said, steering toward it. “Highest point of the Milford Track.”
She didn’t dare look at the altimeter.
A thin switchbacking line with sheer drops on one side—the trail, she figured—led to the notch. A lone hiker, his backpack like an orange snail’s shell, climbed doggedly. One misstep, and it looked like he, or she, would be a goner. Alexa realized that if it weren’t for the murders, she’d be down there, tempting the abyss, and secretly felt glad she wasn’t. Some monument marked the summit. A large stone cairn with maybe a cross on top. Was it a grave? A gust of wind buffeted the copter. Alexa yelped. The pilot gave her a thumbs-up, and circled back toward the river.
She relaxed her death grip on the seat. “Dammit,” she said, forgetting about the mike.
“What is it?” Hank asked.
“Oh. Sorry. Nothing.” She hadn’t changed pants. At least her jacket covered the hole. She thought about New Zealand not having a missing persons dental data bank. When she got back to Auckland, she would propose starting one at Forensic Service Center. Her boss, Dan, would like the idea. She couldn’t wait to talk with him about it.
Fifteen minutes later she recognized the wide-open Clinton River valley where the helicopter had tried to mow her down. Leaning forward, chest against the seat belt, she peered at the corridor between the range and the river. Everything was exposed. Scrub, grass, rock. Milford Track plowing through it in a straight line. No place to hide. She’d been like a character in a video game being tracked and attacked. She wished she had her water bottle; her mouth had gone dry.
The yellow ribbon would be at the other end of the bowling-alley-like valley. In the brown, gray, and green hues, it would stand out. She strained to catch sight of it. Nothing caught her eye. She found this strange. “Can you fly lower?” she spoke through the mike.
The pilot responded so quickly that her stomach lurched. The shadow of the helicopter passed over the rubble from the rockslide. She traced its tree- and boulder-strewn path from two-thirds up the side of the mountain to the river.
She saw the behemoth boulder, the one she had watched careen down the mountain. It claimed its new spot proudly. They’d flown too far. She poked the pilot’s shoulder and twirled her finger. He circled around.
The caution tape should be close to the river, near the lone tree where she had stashed the bird’s nest. Life is fragile as eggshell. She thought of Charlie in the rapids and now a snug bug in their lodge room. Maybe the eggs were safe, too.
She spotted the rock that she’d used to gauge the river’s rising. Yesterday it had been swallowed. Today it was spit out from the deceptively charming river. The tree trunk she had climbed over was gone. She homed in on the lone tree. The skeleton had been near it. She had made a little flag with a stick and the last of the tape. She hunted in vain for its fluttering signal. No yellow anywhere. She inhaled deeply, trying to keep panic at bay.
A person could be arrested for interfering with caution tape.
She had tried to rationalize the deadly bulk bag incident after it happened: she was in the pilot’s blind spot, low visibility because of the rain, a bored cowboy having tourist fun. Now she tried to rationalize why the ribbon was missing. The wind snatched it was most likely. Or someone had removed it.
“The tape around the skeleton is missing,” she said into the mike. She kept her eyes ahead, worried the constable would think this was a wild-goose chase.
No matter. She could find the skeleton without ribbon.
The pilot said, “Where do you want to land?”
She squinted at the squat tree again. The area around it looked different. A jumble of gray rock marked where she thought the skeleton should be. It hadn’t been there yesterday. Her mind flew to the gray rock theory in dealing with a sociopath: act uninterested or unresponsive. Show no emotion. Be unresponsive.
To hell with that. “Land over there,” she told Hank.
They floated down, landed with a gentle bump thirty yards from the tree. Alexa unbuckled, removed her headset, and grabbed the door latch.
“Eh, hold on there,” the pilot said, working the controls.
She could feel vibrations even when the blades stopped. Her body tensed, ready to spring.
When Hank gave her a thumbs-up, Alexa unlatched her door and clambered out. When she was safe from the rotors, she ran toward the tree.