"Nah, I'm too old to play the dating game," he muttered sadly.
She batted her eyes. "You're hardly past the point of return, Spinelli. Not to sound too cliché, but what's good for the goose is good for the gander."
"You think so?"
"I know so." She faced him. "Don't fall into the trap of playing victim. There are a lot of women out there who are good catches and looking for a good man like you."
"Does that include you?" he asked bluntly.
Natalie assumed he was just joking. Wasn't he? "I'm happily involved," she made clear. "Sorry."
"Don't be. I knew that. It was just my way of saying your guy has a good catch and, as your partner on the job, I've got your back."
She smiled. "I've got yours too," she promised, while deciding it was probably best if she didn't play dating counselor too.
The call came in about a naked woman found dead in Kama'ole Beach Park who appeared to be the victim of foul play.
Spinelli grimaced. "Oh geeze, not another one—"
Natalie shared his feelings as she thought about the hula dancer, Yoshie Akiyama, who was stabbed to death several days ago. Her killer was still at large. She could only wonder if this latest death was a homicide committed by the same assailant.
"It looks that way," she told him grimly, as they headed toward the park and what apparently was a crime scene.
* * *
Blake Seymour had tossed and turned for much of the night and he didn't know why. He wanted to blame it on work stress, as he tried to keep his detectives on their toes in solving cases the right way. But he suspected it went deeper than that. He and his wife, Mele, had made love last night dutifully. But they didn't seem to have their hearts in it. Or was it just him? Was this an overreaction on his part? Was he looking for cracks in the foundation when there were none?
After getting dressed for work, he came down the stairs of the contemporary two-story house they owned in a subdivision of Kahului on Kuualoha Street.
Mele was in the kitchen making breakfast. She was Filipino, had long brunette hair, which she always seemed to wear in a braid or ponytail, and was slender and petite with sable eyes. She was wearing a short sarong dress and thong sandals.
"Aloha kakahiaka," she said evenly.
"Good morning," he responded.
"Hungry?"
He glanced at the steaming waffle on a plate and watched as she poured batter into the waffle maker. He wasn't that hungry for some reason, but still needed to eat. "Yeah," he told her as he grabbed a mug of coffee she had made for him.
"You were restless in bed last night," Mele noted.
Seymour raised a brow, playing dumb. "Was I?"
"You have too much on your plate these days," she said, and then added while glancing at his waffle and some accompanying sausage, "figuratively speaking."
He grinned crookedly. "Maybe you're right." Now was not the time to speculate on what was wrong with his marriage, if anything. "I'll have to slow down, as soon as my caseload lightens a bit."
"Good." She sucked maple syrup off her thumb.
"Where's Akela?" Seymour asked, knowing she was usually up before everyone.
Before Mele could answer, their daughter came bounding into the kitchen. She was Native Hawaiian with big brown eyes and long dark hair that flowed past her shoulders.
He smiled at her. "Hey."
"Hi, Daddy," she said happily.
"Come and give me a hug," he told her.
He squatted down and she did just that, which he finished with a kiss on the cheek. She would be ten soon and that made him both happy and uneasy. The thought that she was growing up quickly was something no father was ever truly prepared for.
"Your breakfast is ready, Akela," Mele announced, breaking up the father-daughter bond.
Seymour didn't believe for one moment that Mele felt she was somehow competing with their daughter for his affections, any more than he thought the same of her. Whatever they were going through in their relationship, they were of the same mind when it came to loving Akela as though they were her birth parents.
"Okay," she sang, practically skipping into the breakfast nook and sitting down in front of her plate.
A few moments later, they were all seated as a family, with Akela doing most of the talking animatedly. Seymour loved listening to her young voice, seemingly without a care in the world. He preferred it that way for as long as possible.
When his cell phone rang, Seymour answered it, knowing that Mele and Akela were used to that by now as part of his job.
"Yeah," he answered, listened, and said somberly: "I'm on my way—"
Mele looked at him. "What is it?"
Seymour glanced at Akela and realized that he didn't want to talk about work around her, as if to shield her from the dark side of Hawaiian life for as long as possible.
He met Mele's eyes. "I have to go—"
She sighed. "So what else is new?"
"I don't have a choice. It's my job," he said defensively. He forked a generous piece of waffle and stuffed it in his mouth before standing. He gave her a quick peck on the lips and then kissed the top of Akela's head. "I'll be home as soon as I can."
"Bye, Daddy," his daughter said lovingly.
Mele said coldly: "I'm going to pick up some things at the grocery store this afternoon. If you want anything in particular, send me a text."
"Okay," he replied and was out the door.
In his department-issued light-colored sedan, Seymour drove to Kama'ole Beach Park, where a young woman's corpse had been discovered. According to the first responders, there was every reason to believe this was a homicide.
Without jumping to conclusions, Seymour had a bad feeling that they could be looking at another serial killer on the island. He recalled several other instances where Maui had proven to be fertile ground for serial murderers who turned paradise into a nightmare for many. That included the Maui Police Department and those working on the cases.
They didn't need another lunatic or vengeful-minded killer running around giving his team and those they served headaches.
His thoughts turned briefly to his marriage. He really wanted things to work out this time after a brief separation. Could he and Mele get past the elephant in the room—the fact that he cheated on her and, even worse, that it was with someone from the police force? Or would that forever haunt them? Never mind the underlying issues, such as lack of communication and differing perspectives on what it took to make a marriage work, that had caused them to drift apart in the first place.
Seymour put these musings away for now as he turned into the parking lot on Kaiau Street for entry into Charley Young Beach.
The place was crawling with law enforcement and crime scene investigators. Seymour flashed his identification as he walked out onto the sand.
He was approached by Officer Yuen, whom he knew was one of the first responders on the scene. "What do we have?" he asked, as though not a clue.
"I'm afraid another woman has been murdered, Lieutenant," Natalie said forlornly. "It appears she was stabbed to death, similar to Yoshie Akiyama."
Seymour sucked in a deep breath and muttered an expletive, as the thought of a copycat killer crossed his mind. "Was the victim clothed?"
"No, the killer removed her clothing. He left it and her handbag—apparently with all of its contents intact, including her cell phone—in some bushes near the body."
Seymour frowned. He doubted that a copycat would have known some details surrounding Akiyama's death, leading him to believe that they were dealing with the same killer.
"Who discovered the body?"
Natalie turned toward two pretty young women. "Amanda Crawford and Eleanor Ortiz are college students here on vacation. They were jogging when they found the victim. My partner, Officer Spinelli, is taking their statement."
"Good," Seymour said. "Maybe they saw someone hanging around the area—" He wasn't banking on that, suspecting the killer probably killed the v
ictim at night and brought her to the park under the cover of darkness.
"If they didn't see anything," Natalie said, "hopefully surveillance cameras picked up something that may help identify the killer."
"Yeah." He nodded and headed toward Leila and Chung, who began to walk his way.
"Hey," Leila said.
"Leila," Seymour returned thoughtfully.
"What are you doing here, Lieutenant?" Chung asked.
"I heard what happened and wanted to see firsthand."
Chung cocked a brow. "I thought you had pretty much washed your hands of seeing these death scenes ever since you left us mere detectives behind."
Seymour furrowed his brow, while wondering where that came from. "Well, you thought wrong." Chung knew damned well that he took every case personally and had no hesitation in wanting to be there every step of the way, when possible, for his detectives and the victims.
"He's just talking smack," Leila said, sticking up for her partner. "Either that or it's his weak attempt at sparing you from what we've seen."
"I'm a big boy," Seymour assured them. "I think I can handle staring murder right in the face."
"In that case, be my guest," Chung said humorlessly. "She's over there..."
Seymour, along with Leila, bypassed others who were busy collecting evidence and securing the scene. They came upon evidence photographer, Mitch Uemae, who had just photographed the victim.
"She's all yours, Lieutenant," he said routinely.
"I'd rather she wasn't," Seymour told the brash, thirtysomething photographer. He was in no mood to own the murdered woman.
Uemae smiled crookedly. "You can always hand her over to Detective Kahana."
"Uh, I think he already has," she said sarcastically.
Uemae chuckled. "Yeah, I guess so."
"Just stick to taking pictures," Seymour told him.
"Yes, sir."
"And while you're at it, get some shots outside the crime scene perimeter, including the beach. If the killer had an unusual escape route or dumped evidence, we want to know."
Uemae nodded. "You've got it."
"Little hard on him, weren't you?" Leila asked as the photographer walked away.
Seymour shrugged. "Probably. It's just part of my job to make sure no one ever gets complacent in their duties with the Maui PD."
"I'll try to remember that," she said lightly.
"You're the last person I worry about in that regard."
She smiled softly. "Mahalo."
Seymour grinned, while wondering if it was smart to think about her in terms that may have stretched the boundaries of professional consideration.
He turned to look at the victim. She was in a fetal position, as though purposefully put that way by her killer. Her throat had been slit and there were numerous other cuts to her nude body. Blood matted her thick dark hair and her skin was discolored. He could see that she had a nice look about her, before a brutal killer snuffed the life out of her.
"According to her driver's license," Leila began, "the victim's name is Jackie Furomoto and she was twenty-four."
"What was she wearing?"
"She was dressed in a hula outfit," Leila replied. "And, similar to Yoshie Akiyama, the killer saw fit to take off her clothes after he killed her, probably for some sort of warped display of his sick handiwork."
Chung added: "Her clothing has slash marks and bloodstains from her being worked over."
Seymour glanced at the surroundings. "She must have been killed somewhere else and was brought here by the killer to cover his or her tracks." He assumed the killer was a male, but wouldn't rule out a strong female who had a beef against hula girls.
"Yes, we're looking into that," Leila said. "If she was coming or going from a gig, she may have driven somewhere, only to be confronted by her killer."
"If she had a car, the killer must be collecting them," Seymour said wryly, "or selling them as stolen vehicles, since we still haven't located the one owned by Yoshie Akiyama."
"If whoever killed Yoshie still has her car, we'll find it—and the person." Leila glanced at the victim. "We'll find out if Jackie Furomoto owns a vehicle and, if so, where she last drove it."
Seymour nodded. "Either way, it looks like someone has it in for hula dancers."
"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing," Leila admitted.
"Do you think this has anything to do with the Aloha Hula Dance Company?"
She considered this. "I think that's something we need to ask them."
"I agree." He walked away from the corpse with her. When they had a moment alone, he asked curiously: "How are things with Chung these days?"
"Fine. He can be a jerk, or worse, at times, but we seem to work well together." Leila met his gaze. "Why do you ask?"
"No reason in particular," Seymour stated. "I just wanted to make sure you were a good fit."
"Maybe not as good a fit as you and I were," she surprised him by saying, "but we get along okay most of the time, so..."
"So keep getting along," he told her, not wanting to suggest otherwise. "You'll need that to catch a killer."
"Right." She smiled thinly. "And when we do, everyone will be able to breathe a little easier."
Seymour nodded in agreement, but added solemnly, "Except the women who are no longer breathing—"
* * *
Officer Jules Pahia was on patrol in Kihei, enjoying the drive as a way to not only take in the scenery, but take his mind off other things. One of those was impending retirement. He had six months left and, if the truth be told, the idea of no longer having a job to go to scared him to death. What the hell was he going to do with himself if he didn't have his police buddies to lean on?
He had lost his wife seven years ago to heart disease and his kids all lived on the mainland and didn't seem too interested in coming back to Hawaii to settle down. Not that he would ask them to do so. They seemed happy enough where they were.
So was he. Or at least he had been until he was more or less shoved out the door in order to make room for new recruits.
Maybe he would take that trip to Australia he and his wife had always talked about, till it was too late for her. It didn't have to be too late for him—he could go in memory of her.
Pahia slowed down as he approached the green Volkswagen Beetle that was parked unevenly on East Waipuilani Road. He parked behind it for a closer inspection.
There was nothing unusual inside or outside.
Someone must have gotten drunk or something and abandoned the car, he thought. Glancing at the nearby homes, he considered knocking on some doors to see if they knew who the vehicle belonged to.
Then his eyes landed on the street and he saw what looked like drops of blood. They were headed away from the car.
Was that human blood? Or animal?
It occurred to Pahia that someone could have been forced out of the vehicle. Or had he been watching too many TV police procedurals?
Better call it in, he told himself, and see if the car is hot. He ran the license plate number.
The car was registered to Jackie Furomoto, a woman who had been reported missing, along with her car.
He noted that the missing woman report had been updated. She had been found dead at Charley Young Beach, a victim of murder.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
At the forensic facility, Leila stood in the viewing room beside Kathleen Obayashi, the aunt of Jackie Furomoto. The victim's corpse lay covered on a slab in the refrigerator unit, waiting for identification and an autopsy. It was one of the most painful moments of the investigation for Leila, as she had to figuratively and literally hold the hand of a loved one while the person officially identified the deceased.
Gazing through a glass partition, Leila signaled for the twentysomething morgue attendant to lift the sheet off the face of the murder victim. After giving Mrs. Obayashi—the sister of Jackie's deceased mother—a moment, Leila asked delicately: "Is that your niece, Jackie Furomoto?"
Kat
hleen, who looked like an older version of Jackie with short, graying hair, burst into tears and responded softly: "Yes, it's Jackie..."
Leila nodded at the morgue worker so he could cover her up again, hoping to spare the aunt as much agony as possible. "I'm so sorry for your loss," she told her sincerely.
"Why on earth would someone do this to her?" Kathleen asked, wiping her nose with a tissue. "Jackie was such a lovely girl and she had her whole life ahead of her."
"That's what we intend to find out," Leila said, knowing no words could ease her suffering. But results could, such as bringing the hula dancer's killer to justice as quickly as possible.
She led Kathleen from the room and then asked gently: "Do you know who Jackie worked for?"
"I think it was the Aloha Hula Dance Company," Kathleen said. "She was following in her mother's footsteps as a hula performer. She had all the right physical attributes and determination to make a career of it."
Leila was at a loss for words, hating to see such talent extinguished. And for what reason? Who had decided to snuff out her life and presumably Yoshie Akiyama as well?
Maybe the answer lay with the same place both women worked as hula dancers.
* * *
Chung returned with Leila to the Aloha Hula Dance Company, where it seemed like their dancers had a bad habit of being sliced up by a psychopath. At least it appeared as if they had a serial killer on their hands. Chung could only speculate as to why pretty hula girls were being targeted. Maybe it was a sick fantasy that went to extremes. Maybe some asshole had been rejected by one and decided to make them all pay. Or maybe there were some even darker motives to the murder and madness.
Whatever the case, it was up to him and Leila to flush the killer or killers out in the open and try to prevent some other dancers from suffering the same fate as Yoshie Akiyama and Jackie Furomoto.
They met once again with the company's director, Julia Kealoha, who was clearly startled when they informed her that Jackie Furomoto had been murdered.
"That's terrible," she moaned.
Murder of the Hula Dancers Page 8