Motive ; One Last Day ; Going Viral

by Dustin Stevens

  “You guys call for us?” the driver asked, the dome light of the SUV illuminating a large Caucasian man with a shaved head and a goatee.

  The feeling of sorrow lingered as Kalani stared at the man.

  “We did,” Rip said, standing and peeling off his gloves.

  “Headed to Tripler?” the driver asked, climbing the stairs, staring down at the bag spread across the top landing, giving the strong impression that he had no real interest in picking it up.

  “Yes, please,” Kalani said, her voice just above a whisper.

  She waited in silence as they loaded the body in the back of the truck and drove away, nothing more than a wave from the driver to seal the transaction.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Rip said, putting a hand against the small of Kalani’s back, helping to steer her down the steps. At the bottom, they lifted the crime scene gear Tseng had given them over their shoulders.

  Side by side, they walked toward their cars on King Street, both lost in their own thoughts. As they grew closer, the statue of King Kamehameha appeared across the street.

  The previous hours had held such an emotional cocktail, from the heated exchange with the governor to the sadness of seeing the girl taken away, Kalani was content for the time being to put her mind in neutral. There were still innumerable questions to be answered, things to be followed up on, but for the time being, at such a late hour, she was content just to focus on the few things that stood between her and going to bed.

  Unfortunately, just as it had the night before, that list included Kimo Mata.

  The same red Focus he had driven to her house was now parked behind her Jeep. He had swapped out his khakis for a pair of shorts, still wearing the same aloha shirt and slippers. With his backside resting against the door, he waited with his arms folded, his legs crossed at the ankles.

  “Figured you guys were going to come looking for me in the morning anyway,” he said as a combination explanation/greeting. “Didn’t really want to wait that long.”

  “Nervous about something?” Rip asked, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, his arms across his chest.

  “Not at all,” Kimo said, shaking his head. “I have witnesses who can vouch for me providing every piece of information I’ve uncovered to the authorities. I just thought our time tomorrow could be better spent looking for someone besides each other.”

  Kalani couldn’t argue with the logic of his response. Despite his knack for obtaining more information than she or Rip would like, he was not a suspect in any way. If her day could be spent looking for people who actually were, she might have a chance of figuring things out and retreating back to her life on the opposite shore.

  “How did you find us here?” Kalani asked.

  “You kidding me? This was the worst kept secret at that little party tonight, even worse than the internal polls having Harris and the governor in an even race right now.”

  Kalani glanced over to Rip, who met her gaze before shrugging. There was no way to verify the response, but it made sense that he was telling the truth. Seeing the Chief of Police and the governor’s security staff buzzing about had to have turned the rumor mill up to full speed.

  “I’m surprised they even went ahead with the thing,” Kalani muttered, shaking her head at the way the governor had handled the situation.

  “Couldn’t afford to cancel it,” Kimo said, shaking his head. “He’s in a dead heat with Harris, and the unions are expected to come out and endorse her any day now. He needs the cash, badly.”

  Rip shook his head. “Asshole.”

  Kalani felt her head bob in agreement. She wasn’t an especially political person, something that was easy to do in a state as one-sided as Hawaii. Prior to a week before, she’d never thought much about the governor, having not even voted in the last election, ambivalent to the office in general.

  Now, she would vote for a dog if it was on the ballot against Randle.

  “You mentioned Mary-Ann Harris,” Kalani said. “Let’s start there. What is her angle in all this?”

  Kimo nodded. “She called first of the week and asked me to come by her campaign office, said she had something for me. I assumed she was either going to ask me to write an endorsement piece for her or try to smear Randle, but I went anyway.”

  “Candidate for the biggest job in the state calls, you find the time,” Rip interjected, his voice relaying exhaustion without sounding bored.

  “Pretty much,” Kimo said. “I showed up and she didn’t do either, exactly. Said she had it on good authority that a body had been found the other night, not 200 yards from where we’re now standing.”

  “She say where she’d gotten the information?” Kalani asked.

  “No,” Kimo said, shaking his head. “And I asked, too. She claimed she wasn’t at liberty to divulge.”

  “And you let it go at that?” Rip said.

  “At that point? Yeah,” Kimo confessed. “I’m a journalist, I know all about protecting sources. Besides, until I had a chance to corroborate it, I wasn’t buying it anyway. Thought it was just some bullshit story being fed my way as part of the usual election season run-up.”

  “Usual election season run-up?” Kalani asked. “This sort of thing happens every time?”

  “Nothing like this,” Kimo replied. “But there’s always mudslinging, anybody with a television knows that. I assumed that was all she was after.”

  Trying to avoid the television ads every election season was one of the few things Kalani’s father had ever complained about, living in Hawaii. She knew all too well what Kimo was referring to, and that he was right. If she had been placed in his position, she probably would have held the same assumption.

  “So you checked it out?” Kalani asked, choosing her words carefully.

  Kimo paused, staring back at them, before smiling. He seemed to sense exactly what was going on, the two of them pressing him to see how much he knew without giving up anything.

  “Alright,” he said, “I’ll play along.” He pushed up off the side of the car, smoothing his shirt out and shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts.

  “I talked to an old friend who used to work for gov’s security detail. No, I won’t say who because he’s no longer active, and it’s not important.” He glanced to Rip and added, “Protecting sources.”

  Shifting back to Kalani, he continued, “He more or less told me what I’d heard was true. It was being kept very hush-hush, and there weren’t a lot of details available, but it had happened.”

  All things considered, the report was better than Kalani had any right to hope for. There weren’t a lot of details, about the scene itself or the people involved. There was just enough to make someone curious, dredge up a lot of questions without providing any answers.

  She glanced over to Rip, who gave her the slightest nod. She drew in a quick breath, arranging the facts in her head. “This is going to sound like we’re giving you the runaround, but there isn’t a whole lot more to it than that. The body was found around midnight, the governor had his staff cordon off the area and wait for Chief Tseng, who then had to process it himself, and the whole thing was wiped clean by sunrise.”

  An elongated whistle slid out from Kimo’s lips. “Ballsy. Any reason to think the governor was involved?”

  “Nothing we’ve uncovered so far,” Rip said.

  “What about the other girls?” Kimo asked. His statements to Kalani the night before had already confirmed he knew about the Ala Moana dump, his presence now proved he was well aware of the third one as well.

  “Sturgis?” Kalani asked, wanting to know how he had known about the second one before moving ahead.

  Three times Kimo moved his head up and down in an exaggerated nod, answering Kalani’s question without saying a word. Only once his response was clear did he add, “I’m sorry, but I can’t divulge my sources.”

  Kalani laughed as Rip muttered, “Asshole,” again. At the sound of it, Kimo joined in the laughter.

&
nbsp; “No doubt,” Kalani said, raising her voice to get them back to the main line of questioning. “But all three women have been low-level, with no known connections among them. Even if the governor had been involved somehow with the first one, there’s no way he would have brought in the chief, or messed with his own gala tonight.”

  “True,” Kimo conceded.

  Silence fell among them, all three chewing on the information, trying to find something that might connect everything they knew. There had to be some way to bring them together, it just wasn’t quite there.

  “So how did you guys get pulled into this?” Kimo asked. “Sturgis said you still weren’t active duty, and the same friend of mine tonight said he recognized you as a retired MP.”

  There was an exchange of glances between Kalani and Rip. The situation they were in wasn’t a true police investigation, so it didn’t have to be handled strictly like one. That meant they were free to speak with anybody who might be able to assist them.

  “Governor told the chief to bring me back,” Kalani said, her eyes still on Rip, her voice almost detached. “Because I’m not active duty and could fly under the radar. I brought him in as a personal favor to me.”

  “And where do things stand now?”

  “Who’s asking?” Rip said, his eyes narrowed just a touch.

  “Easy now,” Kimo said, raising his hands. “I’m an investigative journalist, not a newspaper reporter. I have no deadline to meet, and as far as I can tell, nobody else is even aware this is going on.”

  “Meaning?” Kalani asked, waiting for him to clarify before she answered the question.

  “Meaning yes, I’m here because of work ambitions, but they aren’t time sensitive,” Kimo replied. “I won’t get in the way and screw up anything for you guys, but I would appreciate not being cut out entirely.”

  Kalani met Rip’s gaze, neither one certain how to respond. Sharing a bit of common knowledge on the curb had seemed harmless, but actually partnering up could be a disaster in the making.

  Conversely, after the events of the night, the governor would be putting more pressure on them. There might even be a call to remove them altogether. If working with Kimo could in any way help, they needed to at least explore the option.

  More than anything, if his assistance provided a way to make the thing go away that much faster, Kalani was all for it.

  “You realize we can’t tell Tseng, or anybody else, about this?” Kalani said, still focused on Rip.

  “Wasn’t planning on mentioning it to anybody,” Kimo said.

  “And we might ask you to do some digging too, earn your keep,” Rip said.

  “Trust me, I was going to be doing that anyway.”

  A feeling Kalani couldn’t quite define settled over her. Seeking help wherever she could get it just seemed like the right thing to do. If not for herself, then for people like the little girl in Chinatown, or the husband of the woman they had just sent to Tripler.

  “Right now, as best I see it, we’ve got a few leads to follow. The first is Harris, which for obvious reasons is our first stop in the morning.”

  “For obvious reasons,” Kimo agreed.

  “The second is the girl we just found,” Kalani said.

  “From what I could tell, she was a foreign national here to give birth,” Rip said, “but we’ll make a run to Tripler after visiting Harris and see if there’s anything we can use.”

  “Okay,” Kimo said, nodding. “And I get that both of those are places you two should go, having at least the pretense of law enforcement about you, but where does that leave me?”

  Kalani’s eyebrows raised as she glanced from Kimo to Rip and back again. “Motive.”

  “Motive?” Kimo asked.

  Since being asked to the gala that morning, Kalani had been wrestling with a loose idea in her mind. She had not verbalized it to anybody, wasn’t even sure how it would sound spoken aloud. Either way, she decided to say it, allowing Rip and their new ally to cut it down if it made no sense at all.

  “The way I see it,” Kalani said, “the driving force behind this has to be political. Why else would the killer be making the two leading gubernatorial candidates a part of this when it appears neither one is directly responsible?”

  The look of confusion was splayed across Kimo’s face. “What? So you think a third candidate is doing this? Or the Republican or Independent they’ll face in the general, trying to manipulate things, take them both out?”

  “No,” Kalani said. “I just know, there has to be a connection there.

  “We’ll go to Tripler tomorrow and talk to the ME because we have to, but I don’t think we’ll learn a damn thing from her. The common thread isn’t the girls, those are just convenient targets. The thread is whatever agenda this guy has behind wanting the girls dead.”

  The words, the thoughts, had spilled out of Kalani before she even realized she was saying them. It was a culmination of multiple sleepless nights, of growing angry at standing over innocent victims, of trying to find what pulled them all together.

  Untold hours of thought had led her to the belief that there wasn’t anything obvious, because there wasn’t anything at all. The girls were nothing more than props. The only way they would ever solve this case was to get on the other side of it, ferret out whatever the killer was so angry about.

  With the idea out in the open, Kalani held her breath, waiting for some visible response from either man.

  Kimo was the first, nodding his head as he walked away. “Give me until the close of business tomorrow. I’ll be in touch.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  For most of the night, the total exhaustion that Kalani had been laboring under for the past week was strong enough to knock her out. Not until well after the first light had ripped across the morning sky, finding the tiny cracks surrounding her bedroom blinds and forcing their way in, did her mind become active again.

  The images she saw were much the same as they usually were, the scene on the corner of Kapiolani and Kapahulu, a gunshot wound in her chest, her partner frightened, firing at something moving in the dark, the scene depicted in vivid detail for her to relive.

  This instance though, her mind decided to be especially cruel as the bullet struck Ben, lifting him from the ground, silhouetting his body against the streetlamp behind him.

  Only this time, gone was the blood and brain spatter that usually jolted her awake. In their place was the face of the girl she had processed just hours before, her creamy skin flawless, her eyes open and staring at Kalani as she floated by. There she hung in mid-air, her body weightless, before the image became too much, snapping Kalani into consciousness.

  An hour later, the picture remained at the front of Kalani’s mind as she drove the Pali Highway, crossing over the Ko’olau Mountains and beginning her descent to Honolulu. She had opted to leave the windows out of her Jeep, the worst of the wet season now over for the year. Overhead the morning sun peeked through palm fronds towering above the roadway, a shadow pattern splayed across the road.

  Sunglasses on, Kalani ran her fingers back through her hair, thinking about the day ahead.

  The morning was set to begin at Mary-Ann Harris’s headquarters, where she and Rip would lean on her to give up whoever was feeding her the information she was handing off to Kimo. As Kalani was not considered active duty with HPD, the things she could legally do to extract information were minimal, though the odds of Harris knowing that were low.

  She and Rip had discussed it after Kimo left the previous night and decided they would throw everything they could think of at her, threatening her with accessory to murder, calling the media and telling them exactly what they knew about her role in the slayings. As with most politicians, she would hem and haw and make veiled threats of her own about who she was and what she was capable of, but in the end, she would cave and answer their questions.

  She had too much to lose not to.

  How she answered those questions would determine ho
w the rest of their day went. If she gave them anything solid to run with, that would become priority number one. If for some reason she opted to play hardball, they would call in Tseng to extract what was needed. In the event nothing she said was of any consequence, they would leave her behind and make a third journey to Tripler, back again to visit Dr. Song.

  The Saturday morning traffic was mercifully light as the sun rose higher in the sky, burning away the morning mist, promising another gorgeous day in Hawaii.

  Kalani spotted Rip seated on the curb as she pulled up, looking exactly how she felt. His hair was a jumble atop his head, and two days of growth covered his jaw, dark circles under his eyes visible despite his deep tan. His mouth set, he stared at her without moving.

  “Morning, Sunshine,” Kalani said, sliding out of her Jeep. She took her weapon and badge with her, attaching both to her belt as she went. Knowing she was already in a less-than-ideal position for forcing her will upon a candidate who might not be prone to speaking, having them along certainly couldn’t hurt.

  “Morning,” Rip said, his voice just above a grumble as they waited for a faded Chevy Impala to roll past before jaywalking toward the front door of Harris’s campaign headquarters. Kalani could sense from just the single word that he too was beginning to feel the strain of the last several days, the combined lack of sleep and trying to determine what was going on starting to wear him thin.

  The amount she was going to owe him when it was all over was something she would just as soon not try to calculate at the moment.

  The front of the building looked like most of the others found between the capitol and Waikiki, the key difference being that every square inch of the windows was covered with advertising supporting Harris, dozens of posters and placards all stating the same thing.

  “Say Aloha to Change,” Rip said, reading one of the banners in the same disgruntled voice. “That’s original.”

  A low chuckle was Kalani’s only response as they headed for the door, her thoughts already on how the next few minutes would play out. In an ideal world, they would ask to speak to Harris, who would take them back into her office, and they would have a discussion about the information she’d obtained. More likely, all would go to hell long before any of that happened, derailed by any one of hundreds of unforeseen problems.