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“What’s that?” Leilah flung the door open, hearing the metal runners screech in their housing. The glass slid aside to reveal her hands on her hips. She channelled Mari-in-a-funk and watched it have the desired effect on the local guys gathered on the porch.
“Never you mind.” The new guy narrowed his eyes and made a half turn towards her. “What do you think it is?” he demanded and Leilah stared at the sorry clump of green occupying the bag.
“A plant.” She peered closer. “Is it poisonous? Was Malcolm poisoned?”
The man shook his head as though he thought her stupid and went back to his conversation. Leilah responded to Vaughan’s tug on her elbow and opened her mouth to protest as he drew the ranch slider closed. “I think it’s weed,” he whispered. “But I don’t know where they found it.”
“Weed?” Leilah’s face screwed into a grimace and Vaughan pulled her out of view. “Hector sprays ours. Don’t you?”
“Geez Leilah! You dumb or what? Weed! Hash! The stuff the stoners smoke.”
Leilah’s lips formed a round oh and she nodded, pretending she understood. She didn’t. Stoners were like zombies. People talked them up as scary, but she’d never seen one. Vaughan tugged her through the kitchen and into a narrow laundry with a door to outside. He paused to watch a cop searching through their dirty clothes’ basket wearing gloves. Leilah walked into his back with a grunt. She recoiled in horror as the man lifted a pair of Horse’s huge underpants and shoved them into a clear plastic sack, along with a blood-stained tee shirt. Vaughan tensed. “We need some air,” he said, his hand scrabbling behind him to grip Leilah’s fingers. “Please can we go past?”
The cop rose with a sigh and pushed himself back against the washtub, grumbling about interruptions. Outside, Leilah’s irises glinted in the sunshine, wide and terrified. “Did you see how massive those undies were?” she squeaked. Her brow furrowed. “Why did that tee shirt have blood on it?”
Vaughan paused for a moment and she knew him well enough to smell his mistrust. “I cut my hand on the gate the other night.” He held up his other hand, palm uppermost to disclose a long scratch along his life line. “Horse helped me clean it.”
“That’s a heap of blood for a little scratch.” Leilah swallowed and her voice trailed to a whisper. “When did it happen?”
“The other night.” Vaughan’s jaw flexed and tightened and his grip on her fingers became painful.
“When Malcolm died?”
Vaughan released her hand, casting her off like unwanted chattels. “Want me to take you down to the paddock and show you the nail?” Leilah nodded and saw the muscles in his face twitch in temper. He swallowed. “Well bad luck. I wanna see where they found that weed first.”
“Why are you lying about it?” Leilah scurried to catch him up. “If it’s innocent, it won’t matter that the cops took it. They’ll do those new tests and prove it’s yours, not Malcolm’s.”
Vaughan’s teeth clenched in his jaw and he avoided replying. Leilah pushed the question aside and followed his long strides. Police officers seemed to occupy most of the property and Leilah chewed the inside of her cheek with worry. “I didn’t know our town had this many cops,” she whispered. “What do you think they want?”
Vaughan leaned his head close and nodded, his expression older than his years. “They’re from Hamilton!” he spat. “Obviously brought in the clever boys to show Tane’s dad up. If he didn’t know someone was growing a weed stash on his doorstep, it makes him look a dick.”
Leilah’s eyes stared at the moving figures as they went about their business. “Why aren’t they looking for Malcolm’s killer instead?” A cop in a boiler suit dug through the rubbish bin. Glancing up at Vaughan, she saw the humiliation in the set of his shoulders and the way he dug his fists into the front of his worn school trousers. “Anyway, you didn’t know there was weed in the bush.”
“Thanks,” he muttered. “Thanks for believing that.”
“Oh, no you don’t!” A gruff voice halted them at the gate to the first paddock. A grey gelding lifted his head and whinnied to Vaughan, his eyes darting left and right. He looked discomfited at the sight of strangers. The grey shook his downy mane, storing energy and readying himself to run. Sharp teeth tore at the grass, comfort eating and moving on without chewing. His anxiety spread to a huddled group of Kaimanawa two-year-olds which Horse had almost finished breaking. They twitched at every movement, scenting fear and uncertainty with the wildness of their roots never far beneath the surface.
The officer held his arms out as though falling, to prevent their passage through. “You’re not going up there,” he said, indicating the police tape fluttering from the gate. “We can’t have you interfering with evidence.”
Leilah stared at the tape. She’d never seen real stuff, informed only by news images on the black and white television which preceded the broken one they owned now. She pursed her lips, not expecting the greys of the screen to translate into such a vibrant yellow. Its fluttering mesmerised her and her fingers twitched to touch it. Vaughan spoke first, extending a long arm across her torso as though to protect her. The back of his hand brushed her stomach. “You’re scaring the horses, man.” His tone sounded reasonable and his eyes flicked to the stamping gelding. “That one doesn’t like other people. Just let me move the younger ones to a different paddock before they start running. Down there maybe.” Vaughan pointed to a lower slope fenced off near the boundary with Hector’s property. Leilah followed the line of his index finger to the wide gate which knocked her flat on her back the night she found the body. Beyond it, the gully yawned as it moved underground and she shivered.
“Leilah can help me.” Vaughan nudged her shoulder with his arm, misreading the reluctance in her eyes and shrugging. “Or not.”
“I’ll come.” She gave herself a shake to release the bad feelings settling on her shoulders and ran back to the house to collect head collars and lead ropes. The cop from the laundry appeared empty handed, halting her on the steps up to the back porch.
“You’re not running in and out!” he snapped. “It’s a crime scene not an effing kindy.”
Leilah gritted her teeth. “It’s my friend’s home actually.” Her finger stabbed at the horses in the paddock nearest the house. “You’re frightening the stock. If you don’t let us move them, they’ll start running and no fence will contain them. Do you want to be responsible for shooting good horses with broken legs? Because that’s how it will end!” She felt Hector’s blood run through her veins and drew comfort from his steady confidence. Lifting her chin, she stared the cop down until he relented.
“Fine!” he grumbled. “But I’m coming with you and watching what you touch.”
Leilah reached up to the box in the laundry and withdrew the key to the old shed sitting alongside the house. When she got there, she halted so fast the cop ran into her back and knocked her sprawling. He saved her with a firm hand on her forearm, making the bone she broke the year before ache. A flare of temper swelled Leilah’s breast and she slapped at his hand and pointed to the broken shed door. It hung off its hinges with a dent and shattered wood surrounding the remains of the lock. “What did you do?” she screeched. “The key was in there. You only had to ask!”
Guilt crossed the man’s face and he took a step back. “We couldn’t get in,” he replied, his tone level. “We needed to check it.”
“For what?” Leilah hissed. “What the hell is this? What’s this about? Why have you arrested Horse?”
“Please keep calm,” the cop replied. He glanced up towards Vaughan and the other officer in the distance. His expression grew wary as he noticed Vaughan turn his head to search for Leilah. The other cop spoke to the side of his face, wasting his words and breath and Vaughan ignored him.
“Tell me what I want to know or I’ll scream.” Leilah set her jaw and started to raise her hands. News of police corruption sounded terrible on the fuzzy television screen and unconscionable in their tiny town with its two honest uniform wearers. The locals talked about it often enough in Mari’s cafe for Leilah to get the gist. “I know you’re all bent in Hamilton,” she snarled. “I’ll say you tried to hurt me.”
Her gamble paid off as the cop backed away. “I don’t want any trouble,” he said, glancing around him. His stance relaxed, feigning friendship. “I can’t tell you what’s happening, kid. It’s official police business.”
“But you broke the door.” Leilah pointed to the damage and it added to the image, creaking as though injured against an opportune gust of wind. “Wood’s expensive out here. Vaughan and Horse don’t have a pot to piss in, can’t you see that?” She swallowed, thinking of her friend’s ragged shoes and berating herself. Hector made them survive on very little, but she got what she needed and not always what she asked for. She thought he had savings, but doubted he’d give a cup of water to Horse if he was parched. Leilah shrugged, knowing Horse would rather die than take his help, anyway.
“I’m sorry.” The man took a step forward. “We thought maybe it held the gear for processing the marijuana.” He swallowed. “But it didn’t.”
Leilah shook her head and stepped inside the shed. Windowless and dark, it offered little clarity as to its contents. Sunlight streamed around her, casting a black shadow of herself on the floor. Muscle memory lifted her arm to the hooks nearest the door and she grasped two dangling head collars with attached ropes. Saddles lined the other wall, overseeing the detritus littering the ground. A mouse played in the sawdust from the break in. Withdrawing the tack, Leilah shook her head. “You’ll find nothing because it wasn’t them,” she said with a defeated sigh. “I guess what you don’t find you can always plant.” Eavesdropping on cafe talk took her down a path too confronting to tread. People got locked up with far less evidence and mistrust of the police grew with every suspect investigation. “You’re like the Gestapo, everyone knows that.”
The dirt of corruption came from the mouth of her history teacher, descended from a German Jew who died in the camps and a Dutch mother who escaped to family in New Zealand during the aftermath. He taught them the value of truth and honesty and never to bow to immorality. His passion and conviction squared Leilah’s shoulders and she hefted the head collars over her arm without effort. The police officer’s huge boots had strayed too close to her for comfort. “You’ve got two seconds to get out of my way,” she whispered. “Or I’m screaming.”
The cop smiled and his lips drew back in a nasty smile. He reached out pale fingers to bounce an escaped curl, touching her cheek in the process. Leilah recoiled at his next sentence. “You think anyone will believe you, kid? A Māori girl with a story counts for nothing here.”
She shook her head, galvanised by the photograph of her mother which Hector kept on the sideboard. Identical dark curls to Leilah’s stroked her shoulders in the image. European curls, not Māori. She kept her genealogy quiet. The cop’s racism ran through his blood. Memory of her mother’s photo overwrote the intrusion of the man’s unsolicited touch. A scream hung ready in her chest though the darkness of the shed sent prickles running up her spine. “Things are changing, officer. We can speak Te Reo in school now and you haven’t heard me scream.” Her eyes flashed a warning, belying her quailing heart as it thrummed in her breast. Tanned to an olive hue by the harsh sun, her skin lied about her heritage. The officer couldn’t know that English blood ran through her veins. She pushed her advantage. “Wanna hear it.” Her lips parted wide and she tilted her body ready to bow at the waist as she readied to release the distress call.
A voice sounded from inside the house and Leilah recognised Tane’s father’s steady tones as he spoke to someone. The cop saw the flash of inspiration in her eyes as her mind settled on someone who would listen to her. He snatched up her wrist. “You would too!” he hissed. “You people get everything you want, don’t you?”
Leilah ignored the rhetorical question as one of the lunge ropes spilled its length to the dust and wound itself around her legs. “Just tell me what’s going on here,” she growled. “Or I’ll scream and Tane’s dad will take my word over yours.” Her eyes glittered with victory. He had to. She’d alibied his son. And the cop had touched her.
“It’s a raid!” The man’s spit landed on her cheek but she couldn’t wipe it away. Beneath the high windows of the house, nobody saw him drag her closer towards him. “Hamilton got a tip off and sent someone to check. This is a big case for the detective. Your friend will go away for a long time.”
“A tip off?” Leilah’s eyes narrowed. “From who?”
The cop released her in time as Tane’s father stepped onto the back porch. His blond hair ruffled in the breeze and his expression looked conflicted. “You okay, Deleilah?” he demanded, his gaze straying from her to the other man.
She nodded and stepped out from beneath the eaves, gathering the ropes into her arms and escaping the cop. “We’re moving the horses down the hill. They’re getting upset.”
“Okay.” Tane’s father fixed a hard gaze on the other man who had the decency to shift his boots in the dirt. Awkwardness shrouded him like a cloak. Leilah glanced back and saw the grown up image of Tane turn his body towards his colleague. “We don’t behave like that down here!” he snapped.
“Sorry, Sir. I didn’t do anything,” the man protested. Deleilah smirked and carried the tack and her important nugget of information back to an impatient Vaughan.