Unknown Victim

by Kay Hadashi

  “Which one? They have Catholic churches there?”

  “Of course. This one is Blessed Virgin Mary’s. Morning services aren’t in English, though.”

  “You go to church by yourself there, but not with your family here at home?”

  Gina was disappointed her mother wasn’t happier. “I thought you’d be pleased that I learned a new skill.”

  “Plumbing is for boys to do. How’d you find the church? Who took you?”

  “It’s across the street from the hardware store. We had to get a new tank to replace the old one.”

  “We who?” her mother demanded.

  “A man that works on the house.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “Mamma, do you know anybody in Hawaii besides me?”

  “Already met a man? All your life here and you turn up your nose at every man you meet. Two days there and a man is taking you to church already.”

  Even more disappointment was descending into the conversation. “Is Ana home?”

  “She’s on a date with the Rizzoli boy.”

  “He finally asked her out? Good for her. Have her call me when she gets home. What else is new?”

  “I signed up for a new class,” her mother said.

  “New cooking class? What is it this time? Burmese or Singaporean?”

  “A travel class this time.”

  “Finally talked Dad into taking you on a trip?”

  “I can go on my own. I don’t need him.”

  “Love the attitude, Mamma. What’s the class about?” Gina asked.

  “Everything someone needs to know about visiting Hawaii. I know someone there now, and I can even get a free room.”

  “Here? Wait a minute!”

  “Don’t you want me to visit?” her mother asked.

  “Of course I do, but maybe in a few months after I’ve settled into a routine. I don’t have an extra bed for you right now, anyway.”

  “I thought you were in a house?”

  “I am, but the only furniture is in the kitchen and one bedroom. I barely have a roof over my head. Give me a while, okay?”

  “You need furniture? I can send you a few things. We have a houseful.”

  “Mamma, you can’t send furniture this far. It’s not my job to furnish the place, just manage the gardens. Which reminds me I still have a few things to do this evening. Call me next Sunday?”

  “Only one day a week to call my daughter?” her mother insisted.

  “Call me Wednesday after your class. And whatever you do, don’t make any airline reservations!”

  Taking her yellow pad and a flashlight, Gina took one last afternoon tour of the estate grounds before giving up for the day. Most of her inspection was in the area of the forgotten Japanese garden and the old koi pond next to it. Pushing through grass and weeds, she found a few more overgrown shrubs that looked as though they’d been pruned and shaped in the distant past. Now knowing what to look for, she found a few more ornamentals mixed in with the weeds and out of control Morning Glory vines. With each new find, she’d mark the position on her map along with the name of it.

  When it got too dark to do any more drawing on her yellow pad, she went to the stream to splash cool water on her face. Rather than walking beneath the trees along the stream, she followed the double track back to the house. Once she was out in the open, she noticed lights at the house. They weren’t on inside, but toward the back. Several cars and pickups were there, and she saw people standing around. Maybe because she was too far away, but she hadn’t noticed anyone arrive.

  “Now what?” she muttered as she hurried along the gravel driveway. She felt her pockets for her phone, but hadn’t brought it. With no way of calling either the police or Millie, she’d have to deal with her uninvited guests alone. She also couldn’t remember if she’d locked the house doors, or even closed them. “Please tell me the house isn’t being invaded by more homeless people.”

  She was almost running by the time she got back to the house. What she found were a dozen men and women, with several kids running around, and barbecues set up. The coals were already hot and slabs of meat were being put on grills. Camp lanterns were on small tables and several folding patio chairs were arranged in a circle. Several mosquito punks were smoldering.

  “If these guys are homeless, they’re rather organized about it.”

  With a sense of safety in mind, Gina went to the closest woman. Filipino, she was pretty and very pregnant.

  “Um, hi. What’s going on here?”

  “Sunday dinner. Are you Gina?”

  “Yes. How’d you know that?”

  “I’m Clara. We’ve been waiting to meet you.” She looped her arm though Gina’s the chummy way Ana often did and led her to the rest of the group. At first she spoke in a Filipino language, and then laughing, she switched to English. “This is Gina. She’s taking over as our new boss.”

  From growing up in the Santoro family, if there was one thing Gina wasn’t it was shy. But she did feel a little intimidated by trying to learn the names of a dozen new people, especially not being able to see their faces well in the dim light. She had a speech to give, one she was planning to give the next morning.

  “You’re catching me a little off-guard right now. I wasn’t expecting to meet you until tomorrow.” When she looked around the group, they all seemed to stare back at her. She held up her yellow pad. “I have some ideas and I’m looking forward to getting started on them.”

  Still nothing. It got worse when a couple of the men went to their barbecues to tend the meat and vegetables that were grilling.

  “It might take me a few days to learn everyone’s name.”

  The smoke that wafted through the air was heavy, savory, with a peculiar scent that she couldn’t identify. It made her hungry for more than the minestrone that she was planning for dinner that evening. She still wasn’t getting much of a reaction from them. Scratching the side of her head with a fingertip, she wondered what the problem was.

  She clasped her hands together in a prayerful gesture. “Maybe you guys could tell me what you jobs are?”

  Finally, someone stepped forward. He was the shortest and roundest of all of them, including some of the women. “I’m Flor, spelled with one O. You’re not Filipino?”

  “No, sorry. I’m Italian. Actually, I’m from Cleveland.”

  “Cleveland. That’s a cold place, isn’t it?”

  “In the winter. The lake effect…never mind that. What do you do here at the estate, Flor?”

  “I’ll be taking care of the fruit trees. My wife Florinda will work with me.”

  “It’ll be easy to remember your names,” Gina said. “I have friends at home with your names.”

  A senior citizen-aged man stepped forward, bringing a young woman with him, along with two small kids. “I’m Gabe…Gabriel. This is my Reyna, and our kids, Jazlyn and Marisol. They won’t be trouble.”

  “I’m sure they won’t be.” Gina waved at the two little girls who looked like twins. “Do you help your daddy?”

  The kids barely blinked their replies, but Gabe answered for them. “They play, I dig. If you want a hole dug, come to me.”

  “Well, the old koi pond needs a lot of digging.” Gina waved her yellow legal pad with her list of ideas and her simple schedule. “This should be a fun project. I’m looking forward to getting started.”

  “When will the equipment be delivered?” someone asked after another round of introductions.

  “Equipment?” Gina asked.

  “I’ll need a backhoe,” Gabe said.

  “Backhoe?”

  “And a bulldozer with a plow attachment to dig the fields,” someone else said. He was the one responsible for returning the pea patches to their original places, a farmer by trade as he explained it. “The weeds need to be burned to the ground, and the dirt dug and turned over if you want to grow vegetables again.”

  This was all news to Gina. She’d agreed in her contract that minimal e
xpense would be used on heavy tools or machines that needed to be rented. Scratching her head while wondering what to say, she was saved when a figure come from one of the barbecues. When he got close, Gina recognized Felix’s smile. “Dinner’s ready.”

  One of the wives prepared a plate of food for Gina, and she seemed to get the chair of honor between two campground lanterns. Once most of the food had been identified and eaten, Gina knew it was time to go back to work.

  “You see, we won’t have the money for heavy equipment. Everything we’ll do will be with hand tools.”

  The collective groan was almost palpable.

  “Gotta dig with shovels?” Gabe asked.

  “Just so you know, I’ll be digging with you. And planting, pruning, whatever I can do.”

  “That’s what we figured,” Clara, the pregnant girl, said. “We heard about you on the roof this weekend.”

  Flor was seated next to Gina. He took one of her hands for a close inspection. He smiled when he gave it back, and said something in Filipino to the others. That got a chuckle from them.

  “What?” Gina asked.

  “A year from now, your hands won’t be so soft.”

  “Probably not.”

  “You gotta husband in Chicago?” Clara asked.

  “Cleveland, and no. Not here, either.”

  That got the women in the group chatting in their language, and Gina wondered how much of a mistake it was to divulge that. It took another hour of chatting about her basic work schedule for the first week, and the overall plan for the estate, before they began to pack up to leave for the night. Even though they were still grumbling over having to use hand tools, they weren’t talking about going on strike or asking for more money.

  Felix and Flor, who was emerging as something of an assistant to Felix, found Gina before they left.

  “We’ll get here early each day and start work as soon as it’s light. Pau hana is two o’clock.”

  “Pau hana?”

  “Stop work.”

  “What about overtime or a special project to do? Do you guys like to work extra?” she asked.

  “We work five days a week, eight hours a day, and never on holidays,” Flor said while walking away. “No more, no less. If we don’t get paid on time, we don’t work. Simple as that.”

  Felix stuck around as the others drove off.

  “Hey, don’t start asking these guys to work haole kind way or you’ll have trouble.”

  “Haole is mainland person, right? Work is the same here as there, isn’t it?”

  He shook his head. “Just like pau hana at two o’clock, they only do certain things. Flor only takes care of the trees, Gabriel only works with the dirt. Clara will work in the kitchen to make us lunch. Don’t try to get extra work from them unless you offer a lot of overtime pay, in cash. No one likes to work in the afternoon. These guys, self-starters. They know what to do. Your job is to make a plan, and their job is to make the plan work.”

  “Okay, fine. But I don’t have much food in the house for Clara to make lunches for everyone.”

  “No matter. She knows what we like and will bring what she needs every day.”

  “Do I need to do anything at all?” Gina asked.

  “Yeah, supervise!”

  Chapter Seven

  Gina had set her phone alarm to chime extra early on Monday morning. It had rained for a while during the night and she wondered how that might affect her work schedule for the day. All she really wanted was to finally get a decent start to the Tanizawa estate project.

  After heating tea water, she burnt some bread over the electric stove element rather than wait for the toaster. She wasn’t going to give the eggs another chance to mock her like they did the day before. Getting everything she needed to work that day situated in a knapsack, gloves, hat, sunscreen, a bottle of water, her pad of notes, and most important, the credit card from Millie, she decided to wait in the dark on the front porch for her crew to show up.

  Gina had been learning the lesson of the necessity for cross-flow ventilation in the tropics. She propped the front door open to air the house, and for Clara to go in and out, and probably the kids also, the way they always insisted on running in and out of open doors. But when she pushed the screen door outward, it hit something. With a closer look, she saw someone sleeping on his side.

  “Hey! Wake up! Time to go to wherever it is you go every day.” She gave the squatter a couple solid whacks with the door. From the way he was dressed, it looked like the same guy as the two previous mornings, except without the windbreaker. Giving him a few more whacks with the door, he still didn’t budge. “Really tied one on last night, didn’t you?”

  The only way she could get out was to shove the screen door against him and push him away enough so she could squeeze out a gap. She had to step over him, and once she had her things set on a chair, she saw the same black cat that had showed up on other mornings. She wondered if the cat was somehow a pet of the homeless guy that had taken up the habit of using her front porch as his personal bedroom. This time, the cat had something in its mouth.

  “Look what you’ve done. You’ve brought me a rat. Aren’t you considerate?” Gina got a tissue from her knapsack, and using that like a glove, she got the dead rat by the tail and carried it out to the weeds near the stream. The cat tagged along right behind. Once the rat was dropped, the cat went about disassembling its meal. “At least you know how to feed yourself and don’t need me to.”

  She went back to the man on her porch. When he still didn’t respond to her voice, her police training kicked in. Knowing better than to kneel down and wake a stranger close up, she gave his hip a nudge with her foot.

  “Sleepytime’s over, pal. Time to get lost.” When he still didn’t budge, she knelt down and gave him a thorough shake. She was sure he was the same man as previous mornings, but something was different about him. “Hey, wake up. You need to go. If I can’t sleep in, neither can you.”

  That’s when she noticed his breath was worse than bad, and when she pushed, he stiffly rocked back and forth rather than flop around.

  “What the…”

  When she rolled him onto his back, his arms and legs stayed in the same positions as though they were stiff in the joints. There was the impression of wood grain from the porch deck on his cheek. His eyes were open, but not looking at her.

  Or anything else.

  Gina took a step back and crossed herself. She knew she had to go back and check for a pulse, part of her old police training. Groping his neck on both sides, and then feeling his wrists, there was nothing that felt like a pulse. She stepped back and crossed herself again.

  “Definitely not on today’s schedule,” she said, getting her phone from her pocket. She assumed calling for the police was the same in Hawaii as at home, and she dialed 9-1-1 to get the emergency dispatch operator. “Hi. I need to report a death. I need the police.”

  “Death? Are you safe? Is someone there threatening you with a gun or knife?”

  Gina scanned the area around the front of the house. “I don’t see anyone else.”

  “Has CPR been started?”

  “It might be an hour or so too late for that. He’s already kinda stiff,” Gina said, looking down at the body. He had rolled back to his original position that she found him in.

  “I’ll send an ambulance. What’s your address?”

  “Address?” That was a good question. As far as Gina knew, there was no address for the house. The closest real street was on the other side of the stream a hundred feet away. “Not sure of the address.”

  “What’s your location, Ma’am?”

  “Just a little house in the woods. It’s off the East-West Road, wherever that is. I just got here a couple days ago.” Gina felt embarrassed, that she couldn’t give a better description of her location. She’d been on police calls a dozen times while working as an officer, trying to find someone that had given vague reports of where to meet them. “Look, the entrance to
the place is a narrow lane that goes over a little bridge across the stream. There’s a gravel driveway to follow after that.”

  “Which stream?”

  “Manoa Stream, wherever that is.”

  “You’re near the university?” the dispatcher asked with a gentle sing-song accent.

  “That’s right. On the other side of the estate are a couple of large water tanks on a ridge.”

  “Do you mean the old Tanizawa estate?”

  “Yeah, you know it?”

  “Everybody knows it. Please hold while I send an ambulance and police.”

  That’s when a pickup truck drove in. Gina recognized the driver as Felix. She waved for him to stop before he got to the front porch. Then the dispatch operator came back on.

  “Okay, police and rescue are on their way. Do you need to me to stay in the line?”

  “No, I’m okay,” she said, ending the call. She saw Felix staring at the body on the porch. He was dressed for work that day, with long, thin pants and work boots on his feet. “A little bit of a problem this morning, Felix.”

  “Looks like it. He won’t leave?”

  “More than that. He’s dead.”

  He took a couple of steps backward. “Huh?”

  “Big surprise, right?” Her police brain kicking in again, she knew she needed to secure the scene to prevent contamination of any evidence. Even though the man was simply a homeless drifter, the police liked to make sure he died of natural causes before moving him or disturbing the scene unnecessarily. Bringing up the camera on her phone, she took photos of the body from multiple angles, including a close-up of his face, hands, and soles of his shoes. Maybe she’d never made it out of field training as a rookie officer, but she knew those were the parts of the body and clothing that often held the most evidence. That’s when she saw something unusual about his shoes.

  She noticed Felix taking another step backward. “Maybe you should go to the street and watch for the police. But stay off the driveway. The police might want to look for footprints in the wet dirt.”

  “He’s really dead kind way?”

  “Unfortunately. Does he look familiar to you?”