The Shattering (5 page)

‘Very nice, thank you,' Sione said automatically, in his richest, politest voice. He reached for the bill and then looked nervously at the two girls. ‘Uh, I'll get this?'

Keri frowned, but Janna said, ‘Sure. Next one's on us,' and Keri looked away. Janna was a feminist, too, but if someone could afford to pay more than the other two could and wanted to, it only made sense to let him do it. Anyway, she was nearly out of babysitting money after buying her new amp, and Keri's paper run couldn't be bringing in much.

Sione paid with a credit card, as if he'd done it lots of times before, and for a moment Janna wished so hard for rich parents that it hurt. Then she got over it.

Emily pointed at Sione's laptop, which he was hugging like a baby, except he would probably have been a lot more awkward with a baby. The laptop fitted him. ‘You seemed pretty busy.'

‘Business meeting,' Janna said at the same time Keri said, ‘Special project.'

Sione smiled at Emily. ‘Working out Janna's big break,' he said, which was pretty smart, but did he have to go revealing the innermost secrets of her heart? In
this
town?

‘I'm going pro!' Janna said, posing with her hand on her hip. ‘Not until after I finish school,' she added hastily because she didn't want Mrs Rackard calling her mum. ‘But you know, long-term plan.'

‘Wouldn't you have to leave Summerton?' Emily said, pale blue eyes puzzled.

‘Well,
yeah
,' Janna said.

Her high school career was massively more successful than Emily's had been, but there was a whole world out there, and New Zealand was all lonely at the edge of the map, and Summerton was the loneliest place in New Zealand. Westport and Greymouth were down the coast and closeish, but they didn't count, and tiny little Karamea was up the coast and closer, but counted even less. Summerton was a three-and-a-half-hour drive to Nelson and nearly
six
to Christchurch and decent shopping.

She, Janna van der Zaag, could be a star. She wasn't good at the study part of school, but she was
great
at bass, and she knew she looked right (which shouldn't matter, but totally did). Most importantly, she wanted success really, really badly and would work her ass off to get it.

Everyone else could choose to stay in Summerton and work in the restaurants and hotels and cute boutique stores, and then they could get married and have kids and settle down and
die
, but she was going to take care of Schuyler's murderer and then skip the hell out of town. No more bratty sisters and fighting parents and small-town snoops knowing everything about anything she'd ever done from the day she was born. She could be
anyone
in a real city, and she wanted to find out who.

In fact, she couldn't work out why
Emily
hadn't left.

Some of this must have shown on Janna's face because Emily was frowning at her; deep forehead wrinkles were flaking her makeup.

‘Say hi to your mum for us,' Keri said, and Emily relaxed and smiled.

‘I will. Have a nice night.'

Keri led them outside, which, after being in the air-conditioned restaurant, was kind of like walking into an oven. Janna grimaced in the heat, but Keri just started walking to the car park, where her bike was chained to the cast-iron fence. ‘What's the plan?' she asked.

‘First we try to find out if someone left town during the times people died,' Sione told her.

‘You're sure he's a local? Some tourists come every year.'

‘That's what I said,' Janna said, brightening.

Keri looked thoughtful, then blinked. ‘No, but he has to be a local. Because of Schuyler and Jake.'

‘Jake is anomalous,' Sione said in his I'm-a-big-maths-brain voice. ‘He was the second murder in a year and the second murder in one place. It could be a copycat —'

‘Copying
what
?' Janna said. ‘No one but us knows it's murder!'

‘— or an escalation, or something we can't account for yet,' Sione continued, much quieter. ‘However, all the victims overlap over one time period — New Year's Eve — and at least a couple of days before. And we shouldn't assume the murderer's a he.'

‘Most serial killers are men,' Keri said, which was just the sort of creepy fact Keri had liked to pull out when they were kids.

‘Statistical likelihood isn't statistical certainty,' Sione told her. ‘I agree it's more
likely
to be a man, and a local, but we shouldn't rule out women or visitors. At any rate, the murderer probably chooses the victims during that time, so it makes sense to look for people who were here at that point and away when each victim was killed.'

Keri's eyes narrowed. ‘It's the twenty-second today. You're saying that we've got less than ten days to find out who it is and stop them?'

‘No, only to find them,' Janna said. ‘We have plenty of time to gather evidence and take it to the police after we work out who he — who
it
is. The murderer didn't kill the boys until winter.'

‘Except Jake,' Sione said quietly.

‘Well, we'll work fast,' Janna decided. ‘We did lots of it already. I checked the electoral roll at the library and ruled out everyone in town under twenty-six, 'cause they would have been too young when the murders started, and everyone who I definitely remember was here when Matthew died, like the teachers and the guys at Books 'n' Tunes. We can probably narrow it down a bit more tomorrow. But Sione figures the best thing is to look for suspicious people watching potential victims — guys who are fift een to twenty-five with younger siblings.'

Keri almost smiled. ‘So your plan is to go undercover . . . to hang around with guys.'

‘It's a sacrifice,' Janna said. ‘But I will totally make it.'

Keri counted off on her fingers. ‘Okay. So between now and New Year's Eve, we identify as many boys as possible who fit the pattern and are potential victims. We watch adults around them carefully for any suspicious activity. At the same time, we work it from the other end and identify as many adults as possible who were out of Summerton on the dates of the murders.' She looked thoughtful. ‘We need information, which you've got, and a base of operations.'

Base of operations
, Janna thought, and remembered that Keri was a planner. It had freaked her out when they were kids, how detailed Keri could get about terrible things that were never going to happen, but it was kind of comforting to have her doing it now about terrible things that really existed.

‘Sione, where are you staying?' Keri asked.

‘Uh . . . the Chancellor.'

‘That's my mum's hotel,' Keri said.

‘Your mum owns it?'

‘Ha! No. My mum's an assistant manager.'

‘So we'll make that headquarters?' Janna asked.

‘Meet you both there at nine tomorrow morning?' Keri asked.

‘Yeah,' Janna said. Sione nodded.

Keri pushed the button on the side of her watch and squinted at the glowing numbers. ‘Shit, I've got to go. 'Night, Stardust. Good to meet you, Sione. Thanks for dinner.' She hauled her massive bike into place and began pedalling down the hill. She could have just coasted, especially down the steep bit, Janna thought, but then she realised that this was Keri, who had won, like, four school awards for captaining the girls' rugby team to second place in the South Island champs, and probably not for coasting through anything, ever.

Sione was fiddling with his cuffs, looking as if he was working his way up to saying something embarrassing.

‘Want a ride back to the hotel?' Janna said, just to fill the space, and then regretted it when he gave her the world's most wide-eyed, grateful smile.

Luckily, all he said was, ‘Uh, thanks,' and then, ‘You've got your full licence?'

‘In two weeks. It'll be okay, though. I carry passengers all the time. We'll keep an eye out for the cops.'

‘Wow. Dangerous living.'

And that was very nearly a joke. He was actually managing to talk. Good, maybe things weren't going to be awkward.

Janna had thought about cleaning the Corolla that after-noon, but working out the riff on Patrick's latest composition had been so much more appealing. Sione carefully inserted his feet between the crumpled takeaway packets, some empty and crushed cans of Fanta, and an issue of
Remix
, which Janna had bought in August because it had an interview with Lani Purkis, bad-ass bass goddess.

‘Why does she call you Stardust?'

Janna jiggled the key into the ignition, flicking it over the sticky spot just right. ‘Because I'm vital to the existence of the universe.'

Sione's laugh got lost in the engine as it coughed to life, and Janna swung them into the sparse traffic heading down the hill and along the main road. Janna saw that Sione was clutching the handle above the door, and rolled her eyes. She was really a pretty good driver, but everyone just assumed that her driving would match the dusty, rusty car and never paid any attention to the smooth, careful way she actually handled it.

Which was why, when the black 4wd at the intersection leaped out in front of her, she had the comfort of knowing the accident wasn't her fault.

That was her first thought as she stamped on the brake and clutched the wheel tightly with her bass-calloused fingers, yanking hard to the right —
I didn't do it
— and then sanity came back in a stomach-dropping howl. The Corolla screeched and spun ninety degrees in a turn tighter than anything she'd have thought the beautiful little rust bucket could manage, slamming into the side of the black car with a force that rattled every one of her teeth and smashed the left back window into a thousand glittering cubes.

She hadn't seen the car at all. She'd had right-of-way, but she hadn't even
seen
it.

‘Mary the blessed mother of
God
!' Sione yelped.

‘Fuck me!' Janna said, and turned off the ignition before she scrabbled for the seat belt release. ‘Sione, you good?'

‘I'm good,' he panted. ‘I'm okay. Thank you, Jesus.'

Her door didn't open right away — even though it was on the other side of the impact zone, which meant the crash had buckled the frame — but she shoved it hard and stumbled out, reaching over the hand brake to help Sione. Her legs weren't working right, all trembly and weak like the new foals on her cousin's farm.

‘Adrenaline,' Sione said, taking her gloved hand without any fuss and letting her help slide him over to the driver's side and then out. His window was a haze of greenish cracks.

‘What?'

‘My hands are shaking. See?'

‘My poor baby,' Janna said, feeling her voice hitch. She touched the Corolla's side lightly, as if the weight of her own trembling fingers might damage it more. All that babysitting, saving for
years
, and now some idiot tourist had
killed
the thing that made her most free.

‘The other car!' she said, remembering, and they both staggered around the bonnet of the Corolla, clutching at each other to make up for the jelly in their legs.

The 4
WD
had fared a lot better, but the back left side of the Corolla had come to rest against its middle in a biggish dent. A fair-haired, red-faced man was wobbling toward them, looking just as shell-shocked as Janna felt.

‘Are you all right?' he yelled.

‘We're okay!' Janna shouted. ‘Are you?'

‘All fine!' he assured her, and then put his head back and laughed. ‘Jesus! Jesus H Christ! You just appeared out of nowhere!'

Janna could see a red-haired woman sitting in the passenger's seat, pushing down the air bags and staring at them with wide, horrified eyes. ‘We're okay!' she repeated, and waved at the woman. ‘It's all right.' It wasn't, it
really
wasn't, but Janna could see that yelling at people who looked this shaken up wouldn't get her anywhere.

The woman gave her a quick nod and then leaned over the dashboard to take long, deep breaths.

Janna heard a siren start. There was a problem with that, but she couldn't remember what it was. A few other cars were dotted around the intersection, people rushing toward them.

‘It was our fault,' the guy said. ‘You had right-of-way. Shit, I'm so glad you're okay.' There was a speck of something green down the middle of his short-sleeved button-up shirt.
Lettuce, maybe
, Janna thought, and then thumped the side of her head hard twice with the heel of her hand.
Enough!
Her brain had to work.

‘I'm on a restricted licence,' she remembered, and stared at Sione in horror. But the other driver understood about insurance and police reports and lost licences right away and winked at her. ‘No worries. We never saw him.'

‘Right,' Sione said. ‘Right, I'll just walk.'

‘Don't be a dumbass,' Janna said. ‘Just . . . sit over there. Pretend you're stickybeaking.'

‘Like a tourist,' he said, and grinned dizzily at her, in such obvious relief at not being abandoned that she couldn't help but grin back as he made his way over to the kerb.

Janna was just thinking that the 4wd was really far too big a car for only two people when the door on the undamaged side opened and two kids about her own age clambered out. The girl was a bit younger than Janna, maybe, all long, messy curls and long, freckly legs in a floaty orange sundress. It clashed with her reddish hair, which she'd obviously inherited from her mum.

The boy . . .

Janna sucked in a breath and then tried to make it look like the same kind of deep breathing the red-haired woman was doing.

‘I'm Steve Fisher,' the man was saying. ‘And that's Deborah, my wife, and that's Aroha, and this is —'

‘My name is Takeshi Hoshino,' the boy said. His front teeth were kind of crooked, which Janna instantly decided was
totally
cute, especially on a guy who had careful spikes of black hair folding over dark brown eyes that turned up at the corners, like they were permanently smiling. And really impressive shoulders poking out of his black sleeveless shirt.