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“She said what?” Wiri’s fingers clung to the door frame as he kept himself upright. “She still says I didn’t go to the house?” His voice wavered with the stress of Tane’s revelation. He’d driven a patrol car up to the house at first light and Wiri’s chest pounded with anxiety at Seline’s untruth. He sensed Tane itching to take him back to the police station. “I told you she’s lying. We had a conversation. She said I couldn’t call her mother Leilah.” His pitch rose, and he heard alarm bells pealing in the back of his brain. Logan’s steady voice reminded him not to panic, but to plan.
Wiri settled the clamour in his mind and took deep breaths. He leaned against the wall and studied the delicate tassels at either end of the hall rug. Expensive and fragile, it mirrored his situation. Unsuitable for foot traffic, but there anyway. He exhaled and ran through the problem, reducing it to a series of tasks and calculations. Then he swallowed. “You can look at my phone,” he said, his tone calm. “It’ll show what time I called Phoe and how long the call took. I didn’t start driving until eleven when the bell rang for her to go to class. The call log will show it.” He turned and ran his hand along the wall as he walked, hearing Tane close the door behind him.
Wiri walked into his bedroom and wrinkled his nose at the heavy scent of sweat which hung near the bed. Hearing Tane’s light tread in the hallway, he shuffled to the window and pushed it open. Cool air flooded through, stirring up the stillness and adding its own brand of meadow grass and daisy pollen. The net curtain flooded towards the narrow gap like water heading for a plug hole, reminding Wiri of his overheard conversation between Seline and the unknown caller.
Tane’s shape blocked the doorway and obliterated the light from the hall. He stepped into Wiri’s bedroom and stared around him. His keen eyes spotted the phone lying on the bedside cupboard, the charger cable trailing from the power socket near the skirting board. He frowned and crossed the room in three long strides, snatching it up before Wiri could object. “Unlock the screen,” he commanded.
With a dramatic sigh of resignation, Wiri obeyed. His chest hurt as his fingers tapped in his code and he handed the device over to the police officer’s scrutiny. “Do you need to read all my texts?” he grumbled as Tane scrolled through his private messages to Phoenix and to Mac.
“Yep.” Tane’s jaw tightened. “Who is this?” He spun the screen to face Wiri, and he sighed.
“My cousin, Mac Du Rose. Phoenix is his sister, and my girlfriend.” There it was again. The staking of his claim. A prickle of pride warmed his chest.
“Right. You texted her, ‘Hope you’re having a great day. Thinking of you,’ at four minutes to eleven.” He switched to the call log and read her name at the top of the list. “She called you a minute later, and you spoke for two minutes and five seconds. The call ended after eleven o’clock.”
“Yep. Just like I said.” Wiri sank onto the bed. He glanced down, noticing only one trainer on his foot. Yawning, he stared at his watch. “Dude! It’s not even time to get up yet!”
“Jet’s giving evidence in Hamilton. I’m driving him up there.” Tane lifted the phone between them and waggled it. “Do you have GPS enabled on here?”
“Yeah.” Wiri released the reply in a rush. He’d scrambled it on the truck because he didn’t want Logan tracking him, but he’d never shared it with anyone on his phone. “Yeah, I do.” He tried to rise and his legs failed him. A grunt escaped his throat as he bounced back onto the mattress.
“It’s fine.” Tane’s fingers worked over the screen. He handed the device to Wiri, bending enough to observe his reaction as he spoke. “Unlock your Google account and pair my Bluetooth to yours. Then share your location map with me.”
Wiri took back his phone and stifled a yawn behind his sleeve. He performed the functions like an automaton, his mind elsewhere. Tane’s question made him jump. “What do you know about the deceased man?”
Wiri blinked. His mind processed the dilemma. Tane seemed so eager to blame him for Hendricks’ death. He tutted as he saw the identity of Tane’s phone and paired it with his own. “Nothing different from last night. I met him a total of four times and saw him through the car window just before he died,” he said, keeping his tone light.
“Four times?” Tane’s tone sharpened. “You accounted for two. In the supermarket and here.”
Wiri sighed. “He came out of Vaughan’s place the night I arrived.” He didn’t mention Hendricks exited face first with a gun pointed at him. “I met him in the cafe. Then in the supermarket when Jet showed me the town on the second night. We arrived home to find Hendricks on the porch.” Wiri shrugged. “He left.” Frowning, he cocked his head. “I didn’t see a vehicle that time either. He walked back to the road along the driveway.” The additional detail misdirected Tane from the reason for Hendricks’ visit. He’d wanted Wiri to make a statement against Vaughan. Wiri’s head bowed beneath the weight of complication. If Vaughan went to jail for assault with a deadly weapon, he couldn’t settle Wiri’s credit card bill. He looked up to find Tane staring at him. “Did you find his car?”
Tane nodded. “He parked it on the main road and walked up the hill across country. I just did it myself and it takes fifteen minutes.” He looked down at the grass on the carpet and winced. “Sorry. That cuts down the estimate of an hour for him to get from town to the water tank.” He cocked his head. “So, tell me about the meeting at the cafe.” His blond eyebrow quirked upward to emphasise the importance of the question.
Wiri blinked and sifted through his memory of the cafe incident. He swallowed and picked his words as though stepping through rubble. “I worked in Mari’s cafe for part of a shift while she nipped up to Vaughan’s place to see Seline.” A voice in his mind screamed at him to choose his next set of sentences with extreme care. “He came in for a coffee, said he knew my grandfather, and then upset Ted.”
“Upset him how?” Tane’s torso dipped as his interest grew. Wiri blinked at the speed with which the cop fast forwarded to Ted’s involvement. He’d chucked that in as an afterthought, not wanting to incriminate himself further by admitting he’d thrown Hendricks out of the cafe without his coffee.
“Not sure.” Wiri brushed off the question as Tane’s phone chirped in his pocket. “It’s asking you to pair your device with mine.”
Tane’s long fingers tugged his phone from his front trouser pocket. He unlocked the screen and jabbed his finger in line with a series of digital instructions. “Okay. Share your location app with me and take a screenshot of your call log and that text. Send those through as well.” He waited with the device held in his large palm. “What exactly did Hendricks say to upset Ted?”
“I don’t know!” Wiri’s denial carried an edge of frustration. He didn’t want to put Ted in the firing line. The old man’s distress had radiated towards him from across the cafe, infusing him with the desire to protect him. “From what I saw of Hendricks, he took pops at everyone. He said something about Ted’s lady-love and the old boy turned his back on him and didn’t engage.” Wiri ground his teeth, feeling his blood pressure rising. “What does it matter? That dude is ninety years old! You think he drove up to Vaughan’s place and chucked Hendricks down a man hole and into a water tank?”
Tane wrinkled his nose. “Ted doesn’t own a vehicle.” He exhaled. “His lady-love is Mari. He thinks nobody realises how much he cares for her, but the whole town has known forever. Unfortunately, she loved Leilah’s father, but he wouldn’t marry her and then the bugger died.”
Wiri blinked and shook his head. His head felt like a bowling ball balancing on the thin stem of his neck. “Geez,” he sighed. “It sounds like our town. They all have the same dad and he only had a bicycle.”
Tane’s laugh barked into the small room and Wiri jerked in surprise. “Yeah. Imagine trying to police all that swapping of bodily fluids.”
“Ugh.” Wiri gulped and forced his brain onto his own problems to avoid dwelling on the ramifications of Tane’s statement. He took the requested screenshots and shared his location app, waiting for Tane’s phone to ping once it received the digital items. He shook his head. “Ted just ignored Hendricks and went back to his coffee after he left. No biggie.”
“Yeah.” Tane exhaled and nodded in satisfaction as his phone vibrated. “Got all that now. I’ll add it to the evidence log. You need to come in and make a formal statement regarding your movements and everything you saw relating to Hendricks.”
“So, you know I didn’t kill him?” Wiri cocked his head and lifted his right shoulder to take the weight of his head.
“I think I’d like it if you did,” Tane replied, his voice soft. “That makes it nice and easy for me. Arrest the stranger, jail the stranger.” He shrugged. “Small town policing sucks sometimes. I grew up with these people. It takes the fun out of it when you understand their rationale and sympathise with their motivations.” Both eyebrows disappeared into his hair as he leaned closer and whispered, “Hell, I’m struggling to find anyone who didn’t want Hendricks six feet under in a watery grave.”
Wiri shivered, the motion starting at the back of his neck and rocking the mattress as it coursed through his muscles to the tips of his toes. He swallowed and looked up at Tane. “It’s not a great exit strategy, I can assure you,” he said. His mind filled with the remembered darkness and the sense of hopelessness as he tried and failed to extend the ladder. Desperation flooded his soul, as deep and bottomless as his memory of the pit. He winced and shook his head. “Bloody horrible way to die.”
Tane frowned and bent his long frame in half to sit down on the mattress next to Wiri. “About that,” he began.
