Page 68 of Bay of Plenty

Enraged, I shook the diary at him. “She was fourteen, Superintendent. Fourteen years old. She deserved to live and not to be terrified. She deserved to be protected.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he bellowed, shaking his fists at me. I staggered back. His fists dropped to his side. “Nothing.” His voice was weaker.

“Some of your colleagues also worked that day.” I put thediary away and slapped my hands on my hips. “I’m sure at least one other person saw her coming in. I have no trouble knocking on many, many people’s doors in Ohope. You see what I’m like.” I held out my arms, like,Am I tenacious or unhinged?“I’m not going to stop. Tell me what happened.”

He peered at me, rattled, dragging a hand down his face.

“Okay, okay,” he murmured through his fingers. He took a deep breath. “Janey came in after school. She gave me her full name and address, and I noted it in the book. She wouldn’t tell me what her complaint was. She kept on saying, ‘I have to speak to Sarge. I need the top guy.’ Sarge must have heard her because he appeared and took her back to his office.

“She left the office, Sarge behind her. He said, ‘Don’t note her visit.’ He said he was getting something to eat. End of the day, I asked Sarge about her complaint. Sarge said she was being dramatic. She’d wanted to emancipate from her parents because they wouldn’t let her go out with boys. He’d pointed her toward child protection services but doubted she’d go. She wanted to scare her parents. He said nothing would be gained from recording her visit, and he would take responsibility by writing the afternoon log sheets and signing his initials.”

It seemed like he was being honest. Relief flooded me. It confirmed my theory.

“Do you think Sarge lied to you about what Janey said to him?” I asked. “The diary doesn’t match exactly what happened. It doesn’t say she reported this creeper guy, just the cops turned up to her house, like she hadn’t expected it.”

“It doesn’t quite jibe. Look, I have no idea whether Sarge was lying to me. I wanted to believe him because of what happened the next day.”

I nodded for him to go on.

“Sarge came back to the station to say Janey had killedherself. He said not to mention that she’d called in the day before—at morning conference or to anyone. He said that the parents were good people, and suspicion would naturally fall on them, and that wasn’t fair. A clear suicide, he said. I remembered the dad as eccentric, a brainy type, and the wife as highly strung, but decent people. Now I know you can’t judge parents on how they seem, but we didn’t have the insight back then, and what Sarge said made sense. And in the end, he’d written up that half of the day, so if anyone was going to get in trouble, it was him. But still, I’d lost a lot of sleep over that previous day’s log sheets. I said I couldn’t do it. Janey had come in, distraught. I couldn’t ignore that.”

I wanted to yell at him, “Why didn’t you stick to your plan? Because now your life is over.” Instead, I said nothing.

His demeanor changed. He rounded his shoulders and screwed up his face, defeated. “Sarge said I’d always been a team player who thought about the whole game. He said I had leadership qualities, and to prove he was a good guy, he’d make sure I got the upcoming promotion. I knew what he was saying. It was Sarge’s way or the highway, even if I thought he was doing the right thing by protecting the parents. We had three tiny kids, and I wanted everything for them. The promotion meant we could make a down payment on a house. I could always tell myself we’d protected a blameless couple, that we hadn’t added to their grief.”

“What was Sarge hiding?” I asked. “What had Janey spoken to him about? And who… who was the creeper?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” He held his head in his hands. “God. What a mess he dragged me into. What a horrific fucking mess.”

His foot slipped. He shored up his stance.

A shadow flicked across his face. Icy doubt slithered through me.

We were close to the edge of the cliff.

No one was around.

It was raw and naked on his face—the possibility. His eyes narrowed, and the hinge to his jaw spasmed. He had everything to lose. And he was much bigger and stronger than me. He could easily overpower me and push me over the edge.

I sprinted toward a bench in the middle. I grabbed at it, like a buoy in rough seas. I reached into my backpack and thrust my phone at him.

“Come any closer, and I call 911,” I yelled.

A group of students appeared from around the corner, complaining to their teacher in loud voices. He waited for them to gather around the map on the other side. He edged toward me.

“I wouldn’t have done it.” He shoved up his arms in surrender, as if I were the one threatening him. “Look, please. I didn’t do anything wrong, not really, so why should my family suffer for this? My wife, my three grown kids. Please keep this quiet. For them.”

I shook my head. “I can’t promise you anything.”

“Who’s to gain from this now?” His tone was wheedling, and his hands pleaded. “The poor girl is gone.”

Anger flamed through me. “But the fatherisn’t. And as a father, wouldn’t you want justice for your daughter? Wouldn’t you want to know the truth?”

Wild-eyed, he opened his mouth to say something. One of the students peered around the map at us. Thatcher Bell turned and flung himself down the mountain path.

Looks like I made an enemy.

*

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