The first time I saw the cliff, I understood why people call it beautiful.

Beautiful in the way a held breath is beautiful.

Beautiful in the way a locked door is beautiful when you don’t know what’s behind it.

My name is Maggie Chen, and I’m a forensic anthropologist from San Diego.

Not the kind you see on TV.

The kind who scrapes bone fragments off rocks and tells you how someone died three years after anyone bothered to look.

I got the call in February.

A woman named Rachel Bowen had found my research online—something I’d published about coastal body recovery rates in Northern California.

She said: “You need to come to Piha.”

I told her I don’t do missing persons cases unless there’s physical evidence.

She said: “That’s the thing, Dr. Chen. There’s never any evidence. That’s what’s wrong.”

Six people since 1992.

Six people who walked into a two-mile stretch of New Zealand coastline and never walked out.

No bodies.

No clothing.

No phones.

Nothing.

The authorities called it misadventure.

Drowning.

Suicide.

But here’s what the statistics actually say—and I checked every single drowning report filed between 2008 and 2017 across the entire country.

Fifty-eight percent of bodies recovered within 24 hours.

The majority found exactly where they went in.

Seven percent within six-tenths of a mile.

Thirteen percent between that and 3.2 miles.

Nine percent farther than that.

Just nine percent never recovered at all.

Nine percent.

And that’s across the whole of New Zealand—every beach, every river, every lake.

But at Piha?

Between 2003 and 2020, lifeguards performed 1,588 water rescues.

One thousand five hundred eighty-eight people pulled from the surf.

Only one death during that period where a body wasn’t recovered.

One.

So explain to me how six people vanished from the same corner of the same beach.

Explain it.

I flew into Auckland on a Tuesday.

Rachel picked me up at the airport in a dented Subaru with a surfboard strapped to the roof.

She was forty-two, maybe forty-three, with the kind of face that had been crying regularly for a long time.

Her brother Darren had been married to Sherry Vden.

Sherry disappeared December 20th, 2012.

“Six years,” Rachel said as we drove west. “Six years and I still go out there every week.”

“Go out where?”

“Mercer Bay Loop. Twenty-minute walk. She knew it better than her own kitchen.”

We passed through the Waitakere Ranges.

The road curved through dense bush—that’s what they call the forest here, bush—and then suddenly the Tasman Sea opened up on our left.

Gray-green water.

White caps.

The kind of waves that sound like artillery fire when they hit the sand.

“Sherry was forty-two,” Rachel said. “Mother to a little girl. She’d go out there to watch the sunset. Always came home with daisies she’d picked from Log Race Road.”

“Always?”

“Always. Until December twentieth.”

I watched the coastline slide past.

“Tell me about that night.”

Rachel tightened her hands on the wheel. “She drove down Log Race Road around seven-fifteen. A couple saw her walking south on the track with a bottle of wine. Probably going to watch the sunset.”

“Any sign she’d been drinking?”

“Maybe. But Sherry wasn’t a fall-down drunk. She could handle herself.”

“Her car?”

“Found unlocked a few hours later. Windows down. Empty. The passenger seat visor was down—the vanity mirror had swipe marks on it. Like someone cleaned it recently.”

I wrote that down.

Visor down.

Swipe marks.

It didn’t mean anything yet, but I’ve learned that nothing in a missing person case is random.

People leave traces.

Always.

Except here.

—

We stopped at the Piha Beach parking lot around four in the afternoon.

The sun was already low, and the light had that golden quality that photographers kill for.

Black sand stretched in both directions.

The surf was heavy—three meters at least—and the wind came off the water like a slap.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

Rachel nodded. “That’s what everyone says. Right before they ask what’s wrong with it.”

She pointed north toward the headlands.

“Mercer Bay Loop starts up there. That’s where Sherry walked. That’s where Kim Bambas ran. That’s where Lawrence Woo’s car was found.”

“How many?” I asked.

“Six officially. But some locals will tell you more. People who come here on vacation and just… don’t leave. No one notices for weeks sometimes.”

I looked at the water.

The Tasman Sea doesn’t look like the Pacific off California.

It looks angrier.

More personal.

Like it’s waiting for you to make a mistake.

“Let’s walk the track,” I said.

—

The Mercer Bay Loop isn’t technical.

That’s what every guidebook will tell you.

Well-graded.

Well-marked.

A few dangerous points fenced off to prevent exactly the kind of accidents the police keep claiming happened here.

We started at the Log Race Road carpark—the same lot where Sherry’s car was found, where Kim’s bright yellow Hyundai Getz was found five hours after she was reported missing.

The track climbs gently through coastal scrub.

Pohutukawa trees bent sideways by the wind.

The kind of silence that feels heavy.

“Kim was a runner,” Rachel said as we walked. “Twenty-one years old. Nurse at Middlemore Hospital. Her sister Storm said she was tiny—like a hundred pounds soaking wet—but tough. Independent.”

“She ran this loop regularly?”

“Regularly. Knew every step.”

“When did she go missing?”

“March twenty-fourth, 2013. Left her flat in Poni around morning. Security footage showed her buying snacks at a Countdown on William Avenue. Told her flatmates she was going for a run at Piha.”

“And she never came back.”

“Never. Police found her phone in the car. Yellow Hyundai Getz. Bright as a school bus. They searched for days—forty personnel, helicopters, drones, climbers on the cliff face. Nothing.”

We reached a point where the track bends inland, away from the cliff edge.

I could still hear the waves, but I couldn’t see them anymore.

“If she fell,” Rachel continued, “if she slipped and went over the edge, wouldn’t there be something? A shoe? A piece of clothing? Blood on the rocks?”

“You’d think so,” I said.

“That’s what Duncan Clark says. He’s been a surf lifesaver here for thirty years. Pulled more bodies out of this water than he can count. He says if someone goes in at Piha, the current takes them north. They turn up at Bethells Beach or the Kaipara Harbor within three to ten days. Every time.”

“Every time?”

“Every time except for these.”

We stopped walking.

The wind picked up, carrying salt spray from somewhere below.

“Rachel, what do you think happened to them?”

She was quiet for a long moment.

“I think someone took them. I think there’s something in this bush that doesn’t want to be found.”

“That’s not very scientific.”

“I know,” she said. “But you asked.”

—

The first person I interviewed was Duncan Clark.

He met me at the Piha Surf Life Saving Club—a low building perched on the sand like a challenge to the ocean.

Duncan was sixty-two, maybe sixty-three, with the kind of tan that comes from decades of sun and salt.

His hands were thick, calloused.

The hands of someone who has pulled drowning victims out of rip currents and performed CPR on teenagers who waited too long to call for help.

“You’re the anthropologist,” he said.

“Forensic anthropologist.”

“Same thing with more teeth.”

I smiled. “Something like that.”

We sat on the club’s deck overlooking the beach.

The waves were smaller today—maybe two meters—but they still crashed with that same artillery sound.

“You’ve been here thirty years,” I said.

“Thirty-four. Started when I was twenty-eight.”

“How many bodies have you recovered?”

Duncan stared at the water. “I stopped counting after fifty. Most of them drownings. Some falls from the cliffs. A few suicides.”

“And how many of those bodies were never found?”

“One. Before all this started, I mean. A guy in 2001—went out for a swim, never came back. We searched for three days. Nothing. But that’s one in thirty-four years. One.”

“And since 1992?”

He turned to look at me. “Six missing. Six. And I’m telling you, Maggie—I’ve dragged half-eaten bodies out of this water. Bodies that went in as men and came back as… pieces. But they always came back. The ocean gives up its dead. Eventually.”

“Not these six.”

“Not these six.”

I pulled out my notebook. “Walk me through the cases. Start with Quinton Godwin.”

Duncan leaned back in his chair.

“Quinton was seventeen. May 1992. He’d left a note at home saying he was going to Piha to end his life. But then he came back—caught a ride from a driver who picked him up on the road. The driver said Quinton told him he’d changed his mind.”

“Changed his mind about suicide?”

“That’s what the driver reported. Quinton said he’d had second thoughts. The driver dropped him off somewhere near the beach. Five days later, Quinton vanished. Never seen again.”

“His mother found another note?”

“Yeah. Said it wasn’t explicit, but you could read it as a deeply unhappy note. A plea for help.”

“But no body.”

“No body. And here’s the thing—over the next few years, there were sightings. All over New Zealand. Posters everywhere. Some woman even called claiming to be his wife, saying they had a baby together.”

“Any of those leads pan out?”

Duncan shook his head. “Nothing. Inquest in 2014 concluded he was dead. No evidence to prove it, but they ruled him dead anyway.”

I wrote that down.

Seventeen years old.

Bipolar.

Had second thoughts.

Vanished anyway.

“What about Ireina Asher?”

Duncan’s face tightened. “That one still bothers me. October 2004. Twenty-five years old. Trainee teacher. Part-time model. Bipolar, off her meds, had been drinking. But the conditions that night…”

“What about them?”

He stood up and walked to the railing.

“The waves were four to five meters. Onshore winds at twenty knots. Bitterly cold—the kind of cold that kills you in minutes if you go in without a wetsuit.”

“And you think she went in the water?”

“I think if she went in the water, we would have found her. One hundred percent. The shorebreak was so violent that night—if she’d tried to walk into the surf, the waves would have thrown her back onto the beach like a rag doll. She would have been battered. Bruised. Easy to spot on the sand.”

“But they didn’t find anything.”

“Not a thing. Not her clothes. Not her body. Nothing.”

I looked at my notes.

Ireina Asher had been seen walking naked under a streetlight near the Piha store at 1:30 a.m.

Witnesses said she talked to the light.

Kneeled.

Kissed the ground.

Then walked toward the beach.

Into the darkness.

And never came out.

“Her boyfriend left her at a house earlier that night,” I said. “She called the police claiming she’d been drugged and pressured into sex. They called her a taxi that never showed up.”

Duncan nodded. “The police report said she was having a manic episode. That’s what they always say when they can’t explain something.”

“Do you think she was having a manic episode?”

“I think she was a sick woman who needed help. But I also think something happened to her that night that didn’t involve the ocean.”

“What?”

He turned to face me.

“That’s what I was hoping you’d tell me.”

—

That night, I stayed at a rental cottage on Beach Valley Road.

The same road where Ireina Asher had been taken in by Julia Woodhouse and Bobby Carol at the Black Sands Lodge.

The same stretch of asphalt where she’d walked naked in the freezing wind.

I sat on the porch and listened to the waves.

The cottage was small but clean—one bedroom, a kitchenette, a bathroom with a shower that took forever to heat up.

On the wall hung a wooden carving of a woman’s face.

Long features.

Empty eyes.

I asked the landlord about it the next morning.

“That’s Te Aua o Hinengari,” she said. “Maori legend. The husband of Hinengari—she was a chief’s daughter—was fishing on the rocks when a wave took him. Drowned right there. Hinengari couldn’t be comforted. She sat on the point every day, just staring at the sea, until the gods took her too.”

“Took her how?”

The landlord shrugged. “Some say her face was imprinted on the rock. If you’re in the right position on the cliffs, you can still see her sitting there. Watching.”

“Creepy.”

“That’s Piha for you.”

I spent the morning reviewing case files Rachel had emailed me before I left San Diego.

I started with Sherry Vden.

December 20th, 2012.

7:15 p.m. – Last seen walking the Mercer Bay Loop with a bottle of wine.

Car found unlocked a few hours later.

Windows down.

Visor down.

Swipe marks on the vanity mirror.

The coroner’s conclusion: Sherry, in a presumed semi-intoxicated state, hopped the barricade, walked to the cliff’s edge, and accidentally fell to her death in the sea below.

No evidence of foul play.

Broken wine bottle found near the cliffs, but couldn’t be definitively linked to her.

Case closed.

Except it wasn’t.

Because Rachel and Darren and everyone who loved Sherry refused to accept that a woman who walked that trail hundreds of times suddenly got drunk and clumsy on a random Saturday night.

“She knew where the edge was,” Rachel had told me. “She knew where to stand to watch the sunset. She wasn’t careless.”

I flipped to Kim Bambas.

March 24th, 2013.

Left her flat in the morning.

Bought snacks at Countdown.

Told flatmates she was going for a run at Piha.

Car found in the same Log Race Road carpark.

Phone inside.

No sign of her anywhere.

Forty police officers.

Helicopters.

Drones.

Climbers on the cliff face.

Nothing.

The coroner’s conclusion for Kim? Same as Sherry.

Accidental fall.

Drowning.

But here’s what the file didn’t mention—something Duncan Clark told me over coffee that morning.

“In 2006, there was a woman named Fiona Hamilton. Forty-three, Australian. She was on the Mercer Bay Loop with her husband. She asked him to take a photo of her, walked off the trail, stepped back too far, and fell a hundred and fifty meters down the cliff face.”

“What happened to her body?”

“Landed on a ledge fifty meters from the sea. Died instantly. But her body was held by the cliffs. They found her within hours.”

Duncan leaned forward.

“Here’s my point, Maggie. When you fall two hundred meters—which is what the cliffs are—you don’t just disappear. You leave traces. Blood on the rocks. Clothing torn off. Body parts. The rescue climbers who recovered Fiona had to stop constantly to put protection on their ropes because the rocks were so sharp.”

“So if Sherry or Kim fell…”

“They would have left something. A shoe. A piece of fabric. Blood spatter. Something.”

“But they found nothing.”

“Nothing.”

I closed my notebook.

“Duncan, what do you think happened?”

He was quiet for a long time.

Then he said: “I think someone took them. I think there’s someone in this community who knows exactly what happened to those six people. And I think they’re still here.”

“That’s a serious accusation.”

“I’ve been here thirty-four years,” he said. “I’ve seen what this town is capable of when it wants to hide something.”

—

The next day, I drove to the Waitakere Police Station.

Sergeant Mark Fergus wasn’t in, but his junior officer—a young woman named Constable Hina Paul—agreed to talk to me in the break room.

“Off the record,” she said.

“Off the record.”

Hina was twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine.

Sharp eyes.

The kind of posture that said she’d been trained to expect trouble.

“You’re the American looking into the Piha disappearances.”

“I am.”

“The higher-ups don’t like that, you know. They think it’s all settled. Misadventure. Accidents. People doing things to themselves.”

“And what do you think?”

Hina glanced at the door.

“I think six people don’t vanish from the same two-mile stretch of coastline without someone knowing why.”

“Has there ever been a suspect?”

She hesitated.

“Off the record?”

“Off the record.”

“About ten years ago, there was a guy. Local. Lived off the grid in the bush near Mercer Bay. He had a history of violent behavior—assaults, threats. A few people reported seeing his truck near the Log Race Road carpark around the time Sherry Vden disappeared.”

“Was he ever interviewed?”

“He was interviewed. But nothing came of it. No evidence. No witnesses willing to testify. He died in 2015. Car accident on Scenic Drive.”

“And the disappearances stopped?”

Hina shook her head. “Lawrence Woo went missing in 2019. Eloi Roland in 2020. Both after the guy died.”

“So probably not him.”

“Probably not. But someone. I’ve been here five years, Dr. Chen. I’ve walked the Mercer Bay Loop a hundred times. I’ve talked to the families. I’ve read every file. And I’m telling you—these aren’t accidents.”

“What are they?”

She leaned forward.

“I don’t know. But I know the police stopped looking a long time ago. And that’s the real crime.”

—

That afternoon, I walked the Mercer Bay Loop alone.

I started at the Log Race Road carpark—the same gravel lot where Sherry and Kim had parked their cars.

The same lot where Lawrence Woo’s phone last pinged before he vanished in 2019.

The track climbs gently at first, then steepens as you approach the cliff edge.

There’s a wooden barrier at the most dangerous points—waist-high, easy to step over if you’re not paying attention.

But here’s what the police reports don’t capture.

The wind.

It never stops.

A constant pressure against your body, like something pushing you back from the edge.

I reached a point where the track bends toward the ocean.

Below me, the cliffs dropped two hundred meters to the Tasman Sea.

The water was the color of slate.

White foam exploding against the rocks.

And just for a moment—just for a single, irrational moment—I felt something.

Not a presence.

Not a sound.

Just… a weight.

Like the whole coastline was holding its breath.

Waiting.

I stepped back from the edge.

—

I stayed in Piha for two weeks.

I interviewed everyone who would talk to me.

Rachel Bowen came to the cottage on a rainy Wednesday with her brother Darren—Sherry’s widower.

Darren was a quiet man.

The kind of quiet that comes from running out of words.

“She loved those sunsets,” he said. “She’d come home with daisies she’d picked from Log Race Road. Every time.”

“What happened the night she disappeared?”

Darren looked at his hands.

“I was working late. She called me around six—said she was going to watch the sunset and she’d be home by eight. That was the last time I heard her voice.”

“The police said she might have been drinking.”

“She might have had a glass of wine. But Sherry wasn’t a drunk. She wasn’t going to fall off a cliff she’d stood on a hundred times.”

“They found a broken bottle near the edge.”

“A bottle. Not necessarily hers. And even if it was—broken glass doesn’t mean she fell. It means she dropped something.”

I looked at Rachel.

She was crying silently.

“Darren,” I said carefully, “what do you think happened?”

He was quiet for a long moment.

Then he said: “I think someone took her. I think someone hurt her. And I think whoever did it is still out there.”

“Have you ever reported that suspicion to the police?”

“Many times. They always say the same thing—no evidence, no foul play, case closed.”

“Did they ever search the bush around Mercer Bay? Thoroughly?”

“They searched. But not the way you’d search if you actually wanted to find someone. They walked the trails. They sent up a helicopter. They called it good enough.”

Rachel wiped her eyes.

“That’s why I contacted you, Dr. Chen. Because everyone else stopped asking questions.”

—

The fifth case I reviewed was Lawrence Woo.

Twenty-two years old.

Last seen March 10th, 2019, at a liquor store in Auckland.

His car was found in the Piha area.

His phone pinged there.

Then nothing.

Police Sergeant Tanya Kingi told the press that “despite extensive efforts, no information led to Lawrence being found and all lines of inquiry had been exhausted.”

They examined his car.

His laptop.

Found no evidence of foul play.

But here’s what bothered me.

Lawrence’s phone pinged near the Log Race Road carpark at 2:17 p.m. on March 10th.

Then went dark.

Not turned off—just… stopped transmitting.

No outgoing calls.

No texts.

No location data.

Nothing.

I asked Constable Hina about it.

“That’s not uncommon,” she said. “People turn off their phones. Batteries die.”

“In the middle of the afternoon? At a beach parking lot? With no evidence he’d been drinking or using drugs?”

She shrugged. “We looked into it. No signs of a struggle. No witnesses. No surveillance footage from nearby properties.”

“So he just… evaporated.”

“That’s what the report says.”

I didn’t like that answer.

I still don’t.

—

The sixth case was Eloi Roland.

French teenager.

Seventeen years old.

Missing since March 7th, 2020.

Cell phone data placed him near Piha Road and Scenic Drive at 9:18 that morning.

An exhaustive land search—over 1,600 hours—found nothing.

A teenager’s t-shirt was discovered in the Kari bush, but they couldn’t confirm it belonged to Eloi.

His parents, Terry and Catherine, released a statement.

“It will be very difficult this year as we are very close family and not being able to see our son physically is going to be hard on all of us.”

I read that statement three times.

Then I called Rachel.

“Six people,” I said. “Six. And every single one of them vanished without leaving a single piece of forensic evidence. No blood. No clothing. No hair. No trace DNA. Nothing.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“Rachel, that’s not normal. In my entire career, I have never seen a cluster of missing persons cases with zero physical evidence. Not one.”

“So what does that mean?”

I looked out the window at the Tasman Sea.

Gray and endless.

Hungry.

“It means either someone is cleaning up after themselves very, very carefully—or these people never made it to the water at all.”

—

Sir Bob Harvey met me at the Piha Cafe on my last full day.

He was eighty-two years old.

Former Waitakere City mayor.

Surf lifesaver for sixty-four years.

The kind of man who had seen everything this coastline had to offer—the beauty, the danger, the dead.

“You’re the one asking questions,” he said as he sat down.

“I’m the one.”

“Good. Someone should.”

He ordered a flat white and a scone.

I ordered black coffee.

“Sixty-four years,” I said. “How many bodies have you pulled out of the water?”

Bob laughed—a dry, humorless sound.

“Lost count. Dozens. Maybe a hundred. Young men. Old men. Women. Children. The ocean doesn’t discriminate.”

“And how many of those bodies were never found?”

“Very few. The current here is predictable. If someone drowns at Piha, they wash up at Bethells or the Kaipara Harbor within a week. Always.”

“Always?”

“Always. Except for these six.”

I leaned forward.

“Sir Bob, what do you think happened to them?”

He was quiet for a long time.

Then he said: “I think they were taken. I don’t believe in people vanishing without a trace. It’s never pleasant—especially after a few days or weeks—but bodies do turn up. We find something. Always. Except for these cases.”

“Taken how?”

Bob shook his head.

“I’ve thought hard on this. I believe these women, these young men… were abducted. I believe Ireina Asher might be separate—possibly struck by a vehicle, even accidentally, and then disposed of somewhere else. But the others? They’re linked.”

“Linked how?”

“Same area. Same circumstances. No bodies. No evidence. That’s not random, Dr. Chen. That’s pattern.”

“Did you ever report this to the police?”

Bob laughed again—that same dry sound.

“Many times. They always say the same thing. ‘No evidence, Sir Bob. No foul play. Just accidents.’”

“And you don’t believe that.”

“I believe that if someone goes into the water at Piha or Mercer Bay and drowns, the overwhelming odds point to them being found within three to ten days. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times. So when it doesn’t happen—six times, in the same corner of the same beach—I start asking different questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“The kind the police don’t want to answer.”

—

That night, I walked to the beach.

The moon was full, and the tide was low.

Black sand stretched out before me, wet and gleaming.

I stood at the water’s edge and listened to the waves.

Somewhere out there, six people had disappeared.

Six families had gone to bed wondering.

Six coroners had closed their files without answers.

And somewhere—maybe in the bush, maybe in the sea, maybe somewhere else entirely—the truth was waiting.

I pulled out my phone and called Rachel.

“I’m extending my stay,” I said.

“For how long?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’m not leaving until I find something.”

“Be careful, Dr. Chen.”

“I’m always careful.”

“That’s what they all say.”

—

The next morning, I drove to the Mercer Bay Loop at dawn.

I wanted to see the track in the early light—the same light Sir Bob Harvey had described when he talked about seeing the face of the Maori woman in the cliffs.

The wind was calm for once.

The bush was quiet.

I walked slowly, paying attention to everything.

The way the trail narrowed in certain places.

The way the barricades looked old—weathered by decades of salt and rain.

The way the cliff edge crumbled in spots, leaving loose gravel that shifted under my boots.

I stopped at the highest point—two hundred and forty meters above the sea.

Below me, the Tasman Sea stretched to the horizon.

Gray.

Patient.

Waiting.

And then I saw it.

A flash of something white, caught on a rock about fifty meters down the cliff face.

Too small to be a body.

Too regular to be a bird.

I pulled out my binoculars.

It was a shoe.

A woman’s running shoe, wedged between two jagged outcrops of rock.

White with pink trim.

Size seven, maybe eight.

And suddenly I wasn’t cold anymore.

I was something else entirely.

Something I hadn’t felt since grad school, when I found my first set of human remains in a shallow grave outside Bakersfield.

The feeling that the truth was closer than I wanted it to be.

—

I called Constable Hina.

“I found something at Mercer Bay. A shoe. On the cliff face, about fifty meters down.”

“A shoe?”

“White running shoe. Women’s. Could be Kim Bambas’s—she was a runner. Could be Sherry Vden’s—she walked the loop regularly.”

“Don’t touch it,” Hina said. “I’ll send a recovery team.”

“How long?”

“A few hours. Maybe longer. The cliff face is dangerous.”

“I know it’s dangerous.”

I sat on a rock near the carpark and waited.

The sun rose higher.

The wind picked up.

And I thought about Kim Bambas—twenty-one years old, tiny, the life of the party.

I thought about Sherry Vden—forty-two, mother to a little girl, lover of sunsets.

I thought about Quinton Godwin—seventeen, bipolar, searching for something he never found.

I thought about Ireina Asher—twenty-five, beautiful, lost in the dark.

I thought about Lawrence Woo and Eloi Roland—young men with their whole lives ahead of them.

Six people.

Gone.

And now, maybe—finally—a piece of evidence that couldn’t be explained away.

—

The recovery team arrived at 11:00 a.m.

Three climbers from the Auckland Land Search and Rescue unit.

They rappelled down the cliff face while I watched from above with binoculars.

It took them forty-five minutes to reach the shoe.

Another twenty to secure it and bring it up.

When they laid it on the grass next to the carpark, I knelt down to look at it.

White running shoe.

Asics, size 7.5.

Pink trim.

And inside—dried brown stains that could have been mud.

Or could have been something else.

“Bag it,” I said. “I want a DNA analysis.”

“Who’s going to pay for that?” one of the climbers asked.

“I am.”

—

Three days later, I got the call.

Dr. Sarah Kendrick from the University of Auckland forensics lab.

“Dr. Chen, we analyzed the shoe.”

“And?”

“The brown stains are blood. Human blood. Type O positive.”

I closed my eyes.

“Can you match it to any of the missing persons?”

“We ran it against the DNA profiles from Kim Bambas and Sherry Vden. Kim Bambas was type O positive. Sherry Vden was type A.”

“So it could be Kim’s?”

“It could be. But without a reference sample from Kim herself—toothbrush, hairbrush, something with her DNA—I can’t say for certain.”

“Kim’s family still has her belongings. I’ll ask them.”

“Dr. Chen, there’s something else.”

“What?”

“The shoe wasn’t torn. It wasn’t cut. The laces were still tied. That suggests it came off someone’s foot—not because they fell, but because someone took it off.”

I felt my stomach drop.

“Are you sure?”

“Fairly sure. The laces are intact, tied in a double knot. If she’d fallen two hundred meters, that knot would have come undone. The shoe would have been shredded on the rocks.”

“Thank you, Dr. Kendrick.”

“Dr. Chen—be careful out there.”

—

I called Rachel.

“The shoe had blood on it. Type O positive. Same as Kim.”

“Oh my God.”

“The laces were still tied. The shoe wasn’t damaged.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means Kim didn’t fall, Rachel. Someone took that shoe off her foot. And then they threw it over the cliff.”

There was a long silence on the line.

Then Rachel said: “I told you. I told you someone took them.”

“I know you did.”

“What do we do now?”

“I go back to the police. And I don’t leave until they listen.”

—

Sergeant Mark Fergus was in his office this time.

A heavy man with a heavy face.

The kind of face that had seen too much and stopped caring.

“Dr. Chen. I hear you found a shoe.”

“I did. Human blood on it. Type O positive. Same as Kim Bambas. And the laces were still tied—which means it didn’t come off in a fall.”

Fergus leaned back in his chair.

“The lab said they couldn’t confirm it was Kim’s without a reference sample.”

“Then let’s get a reference sample. Her family will provide one.”

“The case is closed, Dr. Chen.”

“The case is not closed. Six people are missing. Six families don’t have answers. And now I have physical evidence that at least one of them didn’t fall—someone put that shoe on the cliff.”

Fergus sighed.

“You don’t understand how things work here.”

“Then explain it to me.”

He stood up and walked to the window.

“Piha is a small community. Two hundred people, maybe three hundred in the summer. Everyone knows everyone. And everyone has secrets.”

“What kind of secrets?”

“The kind that get people killed.”

I waited.

Fergus turned to face me.

“There have been rumors for years. About a group. Locals. People who use the bush to hide things they don’t want found.”

“Drugs?”

“Drugs. Weapons. Other things.”

“What other things?”

Fergus shook his head.

“I can’t prove anything. That’s the problem. Every time we get close—every time someone agrees to talk—they change their mind. Or they disappear.”

“Like the six missing people?”

“I’m not saying that.”

“You’re not saying anything, Sergeant. That’s the problem.”

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he said: “Go home, Dr. Chen. Go back to San Diego. Some questions aren’t worth the answers.”

“Those families deserve answers.”

“And maybe they’ll get them. But not from me. And not from you.”

—

I didn’t go home.

I went back to Piha.

I went back to the Mercer Bay Loop.

And this time, I didn’t walk the track.

I walked into the bush.

—

The first hour was fine.

Dense, but navigable.

Ferns and pohutukawa trees and the constant sound of the waves below.

The second hour got harder.

The bush closed in around me—branches scratching my arms, roots tripping my feet.

The light changed.

Dim.

Green.

Like being underwater.

And then I found it.

A path.

Not a trail—not one of the marked tracks.

A path.

Narrow.

Overgrown.

But definitely made by human feet.

I followed it for twenty minutes.

Thirty.

Forty.

And then the bush opened up into a clearing.

And in the middle of the clearing—

A structure.

Wooden.

Rusted roof.

Boarded windows.

A cabin.

Hidden in the bush, less than a mile from the Mercer Bay Loop.

I approached slowly.

The door was unlocked.

Inside, the air was cold and damp.

A mattress on the floor.

Chains bolted to the wall.

And on a table in the corner—photographs.

Dozens of them.

All of young women.

All of young men.

All taken from a distance.

At the beach.

On the trail.

In the parking lot.

I recognized three of them.

Sherry Vden.

Kim Bambas.

Ireina Asher.

My hands were shaking as I pulled out my phone.

No service.

Of course.

I turned to leave.

And that’s when I heard the footsteps.

—

“Dr. Chen.”

A voice I recognized.

Low.

Calm.

Familiar.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

I turned around.

Constable Hina Paul stood in the doorway.

Her uniform was gone.

She wore jeans and a dark jacket.

Her eyes were hard.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am.”

“Hina—what is this?”

“You asked questions. You found the shoe. You wouldn’t stop.”

“The shoe—you knew it was there?”

“I put it there. Three years ago. After Kim disappeared. I knew someone would find it eventually. Someone like you.”

“Why?”

“Because the police weren’t going to do anything. Because Fergus told me to stop asking questions. Because someone needed to know the truth.”

“Whose cabin is this?”

Hina stepped inside.

“It belonged to a man named Thomas Koroi. He died in 2015. Car accident on Scenic Drive.”

“The guy Sergeant Fergus mentioned?”

“The same. He was… he was hunting them, Dr. Chen. Stalking them. Photographing them. And when he found the right one—when they were alone, vulnerable—he took them.”

“Took them where?”

“Here. He brought them here. And then—”

She stopped.

“Then what, Hina?”

“I don’t know. I never found the bodies. I searched this whole area—every inch of bush—and I never found anything.”

“Did you report this?”

“To who? Fergus? He knew about Koroi. Everyone knew. But they couldn’t prove anything. And then Koroi died, and everyone just… moved on.”

“The disappearances didn’t stop.”

“No. They didn’t. Because someone else took over.”

“Who?”

Hina looked at me.

And then she said the name.

—

I can’t write the name here.

Not yet.

Because I don’t have enough evidence.

But I have the photographs.

I have the shoe.

I have the blood.

And I have a confession from a police officer who helped cover it up for years.

I flew back to San Angeles two days later.

The photos are in a safety deposit box.

The shoe is in a forensic lab in Auckland, waiting for DNA confirmation.

And Constable Hina Paul is in protective custody, waiting to testify.

Six people disappeared from Piha Beach between 1992 and 2020.

Six families are still waiting for answers.

But for the first time in thirty years, the answers are coming.

I don’t know if they’ll bring peace.

I don’t know if they’ll bring closure.

But they’ll bring something.

The truth.

And sometimes—sometimes—that’s enough.