Chapter 43
There was no sign of life anywhere inside the echoing vastness of the warehouse, and I realized the stupidity of my entire plan about two minutes into my heart-pounding run through the long alleyways between metal racks stacked up to the ceiling with various goods.
Purple toasters, sleek white heat pumps, and an endless array of table lamps of every variety, a blur of shiny boxes peopled by perfect faces.
The place was too damn big and too damn dark.
Bobby could be standing one rack over and I’d never know it.
But even more important—there was nowhere to hide in here.
No special office as I’d imagined. Bobby couldn’t have stayed here without being spotted, and there was no way countless employees would’ve kept his presence a secret.
Giving up, I was about to run back and out before I was busted when I spotted the small room tucked into the back right corner of the warehouse.
Unlike the pickup area out front, this one was a full cube, with a door and windows.
Sweat sticking my T-shirt to my skin under the hoodie, I turned the handle on the door.
It opened with ease.
Pushing my way inside, I looked around for anything that might be helpful.
Invoices littered the desk, anchored by a mug still half-full of a thick black liquid that might’ve been coffee.
Yellow sheets of paper sat on another end, carbon copies of the delivery drivers’ logs.
More papers were stuffed into the filing cabinets in back, while files sat spine out behind the desk.
I frowned, my eye caught by the red lettering under the mug.
I carefully moved the mug to another pile. Even if I forgot to move it back, there was no chance the person who worked here would remember exactly how they’d left this mess of a desk.
OVERDUE!
That was the red stamp, the edge of which I’d glimpsed. On its own, it didn’t mean much. Even businesses this big sometimes slipped. A human input error and a supplier didn’t get paid in time. It happened.
Except…
I flipped quickly through the pile of invoices.
OVERDUE!
OVERDUE!
OVERDUE!
The entire stack blazed red ink, and when I looked at the dates, I saw that they went back at least two months.
The wall clock ticked, the second hand sounding like a hammer.
Realizing I’d passed the ten-minute mark three minutes ago, I grabbed a handful of invoices out of the pile, then closed up the office and ran.
I was expecting to hear voices at any second, see headlights spearing through the windows, followed by the sound of a police siren, but the world was as silent as when I’d entered.
Shimmying my way out of the window, I didn’t dare linger to catch my breath and—after shoving the papers into my waistband—quickly scaled the fence.
I was literally two meters down the sidewalk when headlights turned into the street. Sliding back into the dark between the streetlights, I watched as the security guard turned into the drive and stopped in front of the gate.
No dog this time. Different guard.
I waited only until he was inside before making my way to the far end of the street and my own vehicle.
Sweat was a sticky paste along my spine, had broken out along my forehead, but I didn’t dare rip off the mask and pull off the hoodie until I was well away from the area, with no signs of pursuit.
The papers I’d thrown onto the passenger seat taunted me, but I didn’t try to look at them at the few traffic lights where I had to stop. I wanted the time and light to examine them properly.
The drive to the motel seemed to take forever.
I spotted no lights in the suite occupied by Shumi’s family, and hopefully, Ajay wouldn’t have looked for my car when he returned to the motel. If he had, I’d just say I’d gone to see Diya.
Once inside my room, I stripped down to my briefs and let the air cool down my overheated skin. At least I’d had the good sense to leave a couple of soft drinks in the small fridge, and now opened a cold Coke as I sat down on the bed to go over the papers I’d stolen.
The first overdue invoice was for a small bill from a plumber who seemed to have come in to fix an issue with the employee toilet in their flagship Rotorua store.
I set it aside.
Big businesses often pulled this shit, keeping up their bottom line while drawing out payments to smaller players, well aware of who held the power in the situation.
What was the plumber going to do? Not do business with what was probably a major client that did always come through on the bills even if they took their time?
The next two invoices were similar. I was starting to think I’d wasted the entire night when I realized the amount of zeroes on the bill now in my hand. I whistled through my teeth as I read it through. It was an invoice for the rental on the Rotorua warehouse.
Elektrik Ninja was four months behind.
The next invoice was from a major supplier and it bore a curt coda: All shipments on hold until invoice paid.
My temples throbbed. Why had these been on what I assumed was the warehouse manager’s desk, rather than going to Bobby at his much nicer office at the flagship store?
Because the warehouse manager handled any bills related to the warehouse?
No, that didn’t explain the plumber’s bill.
Maybe the entire senior team had just gathered there for an emergency meeting after the fire.
Whatever the reason, one thing I knew: Bobby had been about to lose everything.
A flash of memory, Rajesh slapping Bobby on the shoulder at the party as he told a friend how proud he was of his children.
“Bobby’s built his own life, and he never rode on my coattails even when I wanted him to!
Now Diya’s going to be settled with an accomplished life partner. I’m a very lucky man.”
At the time, I’d just been annoyed that Rajesh was ignoring Diya’s success as an event planner, had held my tongue only because I’d been standing with another group nearby, not actually part of that conversation.
But now I thought back. Bobby had smiled and shaken the hand of his father’s friend, nothing in his expression giving away the panic that had to be churning inside him.
His entire identity had been about his success as a self-made man. Men like that didn’t like to admit to failure. In the worst cases, they decided that the only way to escape what they thought of as their shame was to ensure there was no one left alive to witness it.
—
Before finally falling into a fitful sleep, I sent Ackerson an anonymous tip via a throwaway email address: Bobby Prasad wasn’t as successful as everyone thinks.
Look at his business accounts. He couldn’t even pay his rent!
His shops would soon have nothing to sell because no one was going to extend a further line of credit to such a loser!
I’d deliberately written it in a mean-spirited tone as might come from someone passing on gossip. But I couldn’t base all my hopes on Ackerson following that thread and realizing that Bobby had likely murdered his entire family to save himself from the humiliation of having to admit his failure.
I hadn’t mattered, wasn’t important, could live.
Yeah, that logic made sense.
He might even have killed himself, his body in pieces in the ruins of the house.
No way to know. The obsessive searching I’d done on such murderers—who I’d learned were called “family annihilators”—had thrown out an even mix of those who ended their own lives alongside those of their families, and those who walked away to begin a whole new life.
As if now that they’d erased their family, they’d also erased their shame and worry.
My mind was still struggling to comprehend the cold psychopathy of the entire thing when I woke the next morning.
But I couldn’t afford to be distracted by my horror at what Bobby had done.
I needed more to bolster my case, had decided to focus on Ajay’s comment about Bobby’s teenage trouble.
I knew it was flimsy, but it was all I had.
Hopefully, the more incidents I could add to his pattern of antisocial behavior, the better I’d look in comparison.
The only problem was that I had no idea where to start my research.
Standing in front of the motel bathroom’s chipped sink as I finished shaving, I thought back to the engagement party.
My mind flickered with a collage of images.
How Diya’s father had smiled indulgently at her, how her mother had brushed back her hair now and then.
Love.
Yet they’d allowed the blame for Ani’s violent death to be placed on her head.
Protecting their bigger, stronger son because he wouldn’t make as sympathetic a subject as Diya.
Blame the innocent little girl, sweep the whole thing under the rug.
Even if that meant giving her a psychic wound that festered until she needed medication to fight it.
Richard—that’s it!
My mind snagged on the name of the husky blond man with a small red birthmark near his left cheekbone whom Bobby had introduced as his fishing buddy.
“Known each other since the first day of high school,” Richard had said. “Bobby’s uniform was ironed, his hair in this real tight cut, and I thought for sure he was going to be a swot.”
They’d both laughed then, because the next day, they’d turned up to try out for the school’s junior rugby team, ended up together in the scrum, and that was it. A friendship that had lasted through school and differing career paths.
Richard hadn’t gone to college, I thought with a frown, trying to follow that thread to lock down a way to get hold of him. He and Bobby had been chatting about how Bobby would invite him and his— “Apprenticeship!” I tapped a fisted hand against the cold porcelain of the sink.
Bobby had groaned that the apprentice electricians had been a bigger hit at the college parties than fellow students like Bobby. “I shot myself in the foot inviting you lot,” he’d said with a laugh. “All the girls wanted the buff blue-collar guys, not the nerds.”
But when I grabbed my phone and looked up “Richard + electrician + Rotorua,” I got several hits and all of them came with a face attached that wasn’t of the man I’d met.
I tried to remember who else I might’ve seen chatting with Richard.
A vague memory emerged, of neighbor Tim in an enthusiastic discussion with the younger man. Could be nothing, but at least it was a start. But first, I had more important business.