Chapter 15
The next day, I learned that the Rotorua Hospital ICU had a generous visiting policy.
“As long as you’re not disruptive,” the charge nurse told me, “we’re not going to kick you out. If you want to visit after the main doors are closed, ask the security guys downstairs. I’ll make sure they know you’re to be let up.” Her eyes were sympathetic.
“Can you tell me anything about my sister-in-law? Her family won’t be here till later in the day, so I’m all the family she has for now.”
I was expecting her to stonewall me, but she said, “Her father instructed that you’re to be kept updated on Shumi Prasad’s status. Honestly, she’s much the same as your wife. Since the ICU is full, she’s next door, in the Coronary Care Unit, which also functions as the ICU overflow area.
“You can go look in on her when you’re ready—it’s just through here.” She pointed to an internal hallway. “No locked door between the two units, but check in with the nursing staff when you enter so they know who you are.”
“Thank you. I’ll go visit after I spend some time with my wife.”
When I walked over to Diya, I saw that someone on the staff had placed an armchair beside her bed in an act of silent compassion. I also consciously noticed the monitors on either side of the bed and what appeared to be some kind of a mechanical arm on the ceiling.
A hoist, I guessed, to help with patients who needed to be moved. I didn’t have enough interest to ask for confirmation, Diya my sole focus.
After pulling the curtain so we’d have at least a little privacy—but making sure I didn’t block the line of sight of the monitoring nurse—I sat down in the armchair and held Diya’s hand, the intricate filigree of mehndi on it seeming even darker today.
“They say the darker a bride’s mehndi,” she’d told me, “the happier and more loved she’ll be in her marriage.”
But my bride lay broken in a space filled with the sound of mechanical breaths, the brunette nurse who watched her—whose name I’d learned was Hazel—rising every hour to record her vital signs. “Any change?” I asked each time.
The answer was the same. “No.”
Diya’s life hung in precarious balance, a fact her surgeon confirmed when she came by later that day. “How much information do you want?” she asked with a bluntness I guessed might be typical for surgeons.
“Don’t worry about detail,” I said, because the last thing I wanted to know was how many times she’d been stabbed. “I’m only interested in her overall status. We can discuss the specifics with her after she wakes.”
Nodding, the surgeon said, “Overall status is critical. The head wound worries me—we’ll be monitoring that constantly.
I repaired her abdominal injuries but they were significant, so she’s not out of the woods yet.
Liver and kidney injuries on their own wouldn’t put her in the ICU, but infection is always a risk. ”
Each word was acid on my skin.
The only good news that day was that Shumi’s parents would be landing in Auckland early that afternoon. The Kumar clan had intended to rent a car to drive the three hours to Rotorua rather than waiting for the next flight to the city, but I’d talked them out of it.
“It’s a long drive and you’re not in the best frame of mind.
” I’d driven like a maniac after being notified of Jocelyn’s death, and almost plowed straight into a concrete freeway barrier.
“The last thing Shumi needs is for you to get in an accident. The closest flight to your arrival into Auckland will get you here not that much later than if you drove.”
It had been Shumi’s younger brother who’d convinced her parents I was right. “We need to be there for Shumi,” Ajay had said. “None of us are thinking straight. We shouldn’t be driving.”
Now I took Diya’s cold hand in mine, held it. “I’m here, baby,” I said in a quiet tone that wouldn’t reach Hazel. “I’ll find out what happened.” I pressed my lips to her skin, wishing I could give her the life that pumped inside my body so she’d laugh again, dance again.
My wife loved to dance, had pulled me into a dance on the sandy edge of Lake Tarawera just the other night, the only music a faint hint of a guitar being strummed somewhere along the lakefront.
Her eyes had sparkled as she looked up at me. “I never thought I’d meet my soulmate; never thought I’d get the chance to know someone like I know you. I love you, Tavi.”
No one knew me.
Susanne had come the closest, but I’d been different then. Younger, more vulnerable.
I hadn’t tried to hide myself from Diya…but I hadn’t wanted her to know about the murky corners, the places where the darkness gathered and churned. Hadn’t wanted to scare her, lose her.
“I’ll tell you everything,” I whispered to her, emotion a thick lump in my throat.
“So you really will know me inside out. Just wake up. Please.” Rising, I pressed a careful kiss to the undamaged slope of her cheek, then opened up the curtains so all the nurses had an unobstructed view of their patient.
My eye snagged on the vista through the large windows behind her bed as I finished—trees bright with spring green leaves, even a glimpse of water.
Lake Rotorua.
I struggled with the disconnect—how could my young, beautiful, and talented wife lie so badly wounded in a place where sunlight slanted through the windows, while a lake lapped peacefully beyond?
“Tavish?” Hazel’s soft voice. “Are you all right?”
Turning away from the surreal view, I said, “I have to leave her for a little while. Please take care of her.”
“She’ll never be out of our sight, I promise. If I have to get up, one of my colleagues will keep their eyes on her.”
It hurt to walk away from Diya, but after that talk with Detective Ackerson, I knew I couldn’t rely on her to unearth the truth. She’d zeroed in on me. The new husband. The outsider. The man whose last two girlfriends had died in accidents that had emblazoned his name across the headlines.
Before I left, however, I looked in on Shumi. My sister-in-law seemed, to my nonmedical eye, to be in a worse state than Diya, even more tubes going out from her body, even more bandages—including one on her face.
I didn’t try to find out if that had been a stab injury, didn’t want to know.
Having already asked the ICU staff to contact me should there be a significant change in either Diya’s or Shumi’s status and received their agreement, I went outside the hospital and called a car using a rideshare app.
If I was going to figure this out, I had to start at the beginning.
“Damn,” the twentysomething driver said as he pulled up outside the gates of the Prasad property a half hour later. “Was this your place?” His faded blue eyes were huge as he looked over the steering wheel. “Sorry to hear what happened.”
Not saying anything, I got out.
The driver lingered as I crossed the street to stand in front of the crime scene tape that was a visual fence across the property. I could see a police cruiser a bit further down the drive. A couple of cops were sitting in it, but they stayed put when I made no move to step past the tape.
From here, I couldn’t glimpse anything of the house.
“Tavish, isn’t it?” It was the neighbor who’d run toward the fire with me. “I’m Tim—I know it must be difficult remembering so many new people.” He followed my gaze. “We can see the property from our place. Did you want to…”
“Yes.” I didn’t know why; it wouldn’t make any difference to my knowledge of the situation, but I had to see.
Tim didn’t talk as he led me to his house and up to the back deck using the external steps.
That deck would’ve previously looked down on part of the roof of the Prasads’ single-level residence, the rest of the property obscured by trees.
Now Tim’s family had an expansive view across what had been Rajesh and Sarita’s home.
Ash and charred beams, blackened grass and dead trees, that was all that remained. The lake lapped placidly to the left, a silent witness to the horror that had taken place here twenty-four hours ago.
A lone canoeist rowed past, his neck turned to take in the destruction.
Movement. Someone walking through the rubble, a white blot against scorched soil.
“The forensic people have been here since late yesterday—I guess they had to wait for the site to be declared safe,” Tim said. “They still didn’t go in deep that I saw. I don’t know if they worked through the night, but they were here at first light this morning when I took the dog out.”
I knew one of those people was probably a fire investigator, while others had to be connected to the police or the ME’s office—I didn’t know how it worked in this country, who took responsibility for what, but I had enough general knowledge to guess the kind of specialists who’d be looking at the scene.
Bone people.
Forensic anthropologists, I think they were called. They’d have to be brought in if the bodies had been shattered into innumerable shards. So many pieces that they couldn’t tell if two or three people had been inside that house.
Because Ackerson still hadn’t contacted me with an update on the number of fatalities, despite the fact that the forensic teams had been working the site since late the previous day.
“The Alfa Romeo’s down there, isn’t it?” Tim’s face was sympathetic when I made myself look away from the carnage. “Cops say when you can have it back?”
I shook my head. “They’re treating all the vehicles as part of the crime scene. I’ll need to rent a car. Can you recommend a local place?”
Tim looked over to the room that flowed onto the deck. The kitchen, I realized after seeing the long sink tap in the window. A small rectangle of glass, the majority reserved for the walls that faced the lake.