Motive ; One Last Day ; Going Viral

by Dustin Stevens

  The first thought to enter Kalani’s mind as she saw it was the incredible views Zall must enjoy from his secluded Hawaiian estate. Thick stands of mature trees and shrubs bordered both sides blocking the home from its neighbors, but only a long sloping lawn separated it from the stunning panorama below.

  Easing the Jeep onto the cobbled driveway, the entire city of Honolulu opened up before them. They could see the high rises of downtown, the lights of Waikiki stretched in a jagged line along the coast, and off in the distance, the dark silhouette of Diamond Head.

  “Damn,” Kalani whispered, stopping the Jeep halfway down the drive. With her badge and weapon attached to her hip she climbed out and walked around the front, meeting Rip, both of their gazes aimed at the view below.

  “Yeah, but I’m guessing the property taxes are just brutal up here,” Rip countered, glancing over to Kalani, a wry smile on his face.

  The bullet struck him just below the right collarbone, the momentum of it carrying him backward, the smile still affixed to his face, his arms flailing out as he fell heavy on the cobbled stones. His eyes were open, his face pale, relaying the shock his body was already slipping into.

  Kalani stood frozen in place, not believing what she was seeing.

  “Get...down,” Rip whispered.

  The words barely registered as she stood staring at him. Around her a pair of shots skittered off the driveway, sparks flashing at their impact. To her left, the sound of a round smashing into the front of the Jeep echoed out.

  “Get down,” Rip repeated, his voice a little sharper, deeper.

  It was the sound she needed to hear, the words finding their way into her brain, forcing her into action.

  Dropping to the ground, she rolled over to the base of the Jeep and pressed her body tight against the front tire. Propped up on her left elbow, she drew her weapon, trying to slow her breathing, willing her pulse to stop pounding through her temples.

  Three feet away she could see Rip, blood flowing from the wound. With forced effort he raised his head to stare down the driveway in the direction the shots had come from.

  Up ahead, she could hear the sound of a magazine being ejected from a gun, a fresh one being slammed home. A moment later came the slide as a bullet was loaded into the chamber. Then steps, slow and measured, as if stalking prey. Unable to see anything, Kalani kept her attention on Rip, his gaze still aimed at their attacker.

  “You should not have come here,” a voice spat through the darkness. The accent had an Asian lilt. Japanese maybe, or Filipino.

  Either way, it was one Kalani was sure she had never heard before.

  “Why the hell did you shoot me?” Rip asked, his voice weakening, unnatural pauses forming between the words. “Kill her?”

  The steps continued moving forward, growing closer, still just beyond Kalani’s sight.

  “So she is dead?” the man asked, moving ever closer, his front leg just coming into view.

  “Yes,” Rip said, his voice barely a whisper, rocking his head back and resting it on the ground for a moment. “Yes, you son of a bitch, you killed my partner.”

  The performance was so real, Kalani almost believed he thought she was gone. He had seen her fall, watched as she rolled for cover. Even without looking at her, he knew she was okay.

  Seeing his act, watching him lay exposed in the open, bleeding, drawing the target ever closer, Kalani waited for her opportunity. She had to be very careful, or both she and Rip could end up riddled with bullets.

  “Why are you here?” the man repeated, animosity rising in his voice. He took another step forward, his arm extended before him, the gun gripped in his hand. His torso was still blocked from view.

  The option was there for Kalani to make a move. She could roll her body away from the Jeep, giving herself the angle she needed, bringing her target into sight. But doing so risked her balance, drew her out into a clear firing lane. As much as she ached for the chance to get off a shot, to stop him before he could harm Rip any further, she couldn’t just yet.

  Holding her breath, she continued to wait, hoping, needing him to take one more step.

  “I...I...” Rip said, his voice barely audible, his head rising and falling, fighting to get the words out.

  “What?” the man snapped, taking another step toward Rip, his gun cocked at an angle, pointed down in anger. “You what?”

  Kalani never said a word. Just like the shooter a few minutes before, she gave no warning at all. One time after another she pulled the trigger on her Beretta, the .40 caliber bullets spitting out.

  The first two rounds struck him inches apart, one just below his sternum, the second in the middle of his chest. The impact of the first pushed him backward, the next drew him back into line, his body jerking with the force of the shots. He remained on his feet as the subsequent rounds tore into him, cleaving through his flesh and tearing out his back with blood, tissue, and bone fragments. With each blast his body continued to spasm, the life sapped from him, the gun sliding from his hand.

  For a moment he remained standing, nothing more than muscle memory keeping him upright, until it too was gone. Rocking backward, his body fell in slow motion, retracing the path Rip had taken a few moments before, a lump of lifeless flesh crashing onto the cobblestones.

  Gun still extended, Kalani drew her knees under her and scrambled to her feet, taking three cautious steps forward, alternating her glance between the corpse and the surrounding grounds. As far as she could tell, there had been no other guards, nobody else firing, but she couldn’t be certain.

  On the ground, the man lay with his unseeing eyes aimed straight upward, bloody spittle oozing from his mouth.

  Her initial reaction to his voice had been correct – Filipino.

  Kalani kept her attention on him just long enough to ensure he was dead before shifting to Rip, sprinting over to him, sliding to a stop alongside his body. “Rip! Rip, talk to me.”

  Reaching down, she grabbed at the seam of his shirt and tore away a piece of it, wadding it into a ball and pressing it against the wound in his shoulder. “Rip, dammit!”

  “I’m right here,” Rip replied, reaching a hand up and clasping her around the wrist, his voice much stronger than it was a moment before. “And not so hard, I just got shot there, dammit.”

  In another time, under different circumstances, there might have been a shred of humor in the comment. As it were, Kalani ignored it, peeling Rip’s hand away and forcing it down over the makeshift compress.

  “Here, hold this,” she said, rising and moving for the Jeep. She started in the front, reaching into the middle console and snatching up her cell phone. She jammed it into the rear pocket of her jeans and rose to put her knee on the passenger seat, digging into the foot well of the back, pushing paper sacks and wrappers aside until she came up with an old t-shirt.

  “I’m okay,” Rip said from the ground behind her. “It hurts like hell, but I’ll live. I was just leading him on to draw him out in the open.”

  Kalani moved back to his side. “Raise up.”

  Placing a hand under his shoulder blade, together they lifted his upper body a few inches, enough for Kalani to stuff the t-shirt between his wound and the stones beneath him. Once it was positioned, she helped him back into place, blood already soaking into the white cotton.

  From what she could tell, the bullet had penetrated without damaging any internal organs or arteries. The blood wasn’t seeping too badly.

  “Hey,” Rip said, again grabbing her by the wrist, holding it tight as she tried to pull away. “I said I’m okay.”

  Her every instinct was to pull away again, but she refrained, remaining crouched over him. She glanced to the man lying on the ground near them, to the house lit up as the backdrop, and shook her head.

  “What the hell was that all about?”

  “I don’t know,” Rip said, lifting his head just enough to see before lowering it again. “But you’ve got to call for backup before you go running in
there alone.”

  “No,” Kalani said, pulling the phone from her back pocket. “You call for backup, get some medical assistance up here. Something’s going on in there right now, or this guy wouldn’t have fired on two strangers like that without warning.”

  Although it was obvious it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do, Rip snatched the phone away from her, his bloody hands leaving red fingerprints across the screen. “Just go. I’ll make the calls. But be careful.”

  Drawing her mouth into a tight line, Kalani nodded. “Call Tseng, too. Warn him in case he gets the same reception at the other place.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  From where Thomas Zall stood, the scene played out like something from a movie. Perched on the second floor of his home, he remained in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of his son’s room, his hands folded behind his back. He saw the Jeep pull in, the pair of detectives climb out, watched as Danilo shot the first one without waiting to at least see what they wanted.

  In all the time he had worked for Zall, he had been prone to bouts of impulsiveness. It was far worse when William was still active, Danilo taking to him like some sort of self-appointed protector. He had acted as a mother hen over the younger Zall even long after he required it, hovering, never more than a few minutes away.

  That very reason was why Zall had kept him on after the move from New York to the islands. As instrumental as Danilo had been in the preceding months, in the three years prior he did nothing that Zall could not have hired locally, and cheaper. The main difference between Danilo and anybody else, though, was the complete devotion the man had always shown to his son.

  A pang of sorrow passed through Zall as he watched the scene play out beneath him. No matter how many street walkers and passport mothers they were able to kill, there was never going to be a chance for them to get away with murdering police officers. Danilo should have known. No amount of money could make that go away, and William was not yet in any state to be moved again.

  The moment the fool had opened fire, his fate was sealed. Even if he had somehow survived, Zall would have had no choice but to deny involvement, feeding them Danilo while at the same time trying to win back some tiny shred of favor by making a hefty contribution to the HPD Survivor’s Fund.

  In some perverse way, Danilo allowing himself to be shot down on the front drive was the best thing that could have happened. A man like him would have never survived life in prison, an inevitability given everything he had done in the preceding months.

  Shaking his head, Zall turned away from the window, his hands still folded behind his back. Opposite him, Dr. Saiki returned the empty vials to the steel case, the enormous syringes piled up beside them. He worked as if unaware of anything going on outside, his movements slow and particular.

  “Danilo is gone,” Zall said, his tone flat, not a trace of any emotion.

  Without so much as looking up, Saiki continued his work. “Where did he go?”

  “No,” Zall said, shaking his head. “He is gone.”

  “Oh,” Saiki replied, for the first time stopping, raising his head to look out into the hallway before him. “That is a shame.” Just like that he went back to work, loading the last of his items and closing the case, clasping it together at the top. “Does that mean they are coming for us now?”

  In slow, measured steps Zall went to the foot of the bed and paused, looking down at his son.

  The years had not been kind to him, his size withered to a fraction of his former self. His face, once full and smooth, was now gaunt and hollow, his skin chalky and greying.

  It wasn’t supposed to have been this way. Coming to Hawaii was supposed to have been a restoration for them both. The research program at the university was rumored to be doing great things, would be able to heal the damage done to William’s brain, bring him back into the world. Once they were reunited, they could pick back up where they had left off, father teaching his son the family business, lining up his heir to take over when he was gone. All he had to do was be patient, wait for the medical advances to come available.

  Things had started to fall apart months before, when the first budget of the year was released. The funding needed to keep the project going, to push it the last little bit toward completion, was eliminated. Even when he had tried to cut a check to finish the work, there were too many restrictions in place to allow it to happen. The entire thing, all the progress that had been made, all the hope he’d had for the future, was gone, cast aside by the whim of one man.

  When trying to get a meeting with the governor had failed despite many hefty campaign contributions, desperation had set in. Zall knew that then, just as he knew it now. Day after day of watching his son waste away had left him with precious few options.

  The first spark of anything had come about when he met with Dr. Watari, a last-ditch effort to try and save the program. She explained to him that all research was bound and confidential, held in the archives until the state revived the project. It was in that meeting that she mentioned a couple of other places in the world attempting such experiments, and the hunt for Dr. Saiki began.

  The plan was two pronged. On one hand, he needed to lure Saiki to Hawaii and do whatever it took to create the stem cell therapy that would bring his son back to life. On the other, he wanted to do everything he could to ensure that Dwight Randle never held public office again.

  The first part of it was surprisingly easy, Saiki almost jumping at the opportunity to work without the confines of a regulated lab. Within days they had a contract ironed out and the basic requirements outlined for the workspace that would be needed. A month later they were off and running, the kind of thing that evolves quickly when aided by exorbitant amounts of money.

  The second part had been a little slower coming together, not until Saiki began asking for human samples did a method for bringing Randle down occur to Zall.

  Or so he thought.

  “How is he responding?” Zall asked, watching the green line of the heart rate monitor attached to his son as it passed by one time after another on the screen. Each time it did it emitted a low beep, keeping in rhythm with the steady rise and fall of the breathing machine beside him.

  “It is still too early to tell,” Saiki said, turning back from the work table and folding his arms across his chest, staring down at his patient. “This being the first dose administered, it might be a while before there is any noticeable difference.”

  “I don’t think we have that kind of time,” Zall said, glancing over his shoulder, watching as the female officer moved about down below, making repeated trips between her Jeep and her partner.

  Contingency plans ran through his head, each one dismissed as fast as the one before it. As easy as it might be to disappear into the night, there was no point in it. The police clearly knew who he was, had managed to trace him back to both his properties in the city. If he ran now, he would always be doing it, an impossible task with William in the state he was in.

  Instead, he turned and looked back at his son, his mind registering the heart rate monitor as the beeping faded. His world seemed to slow as the gaps between them grew further apart, his breath catching in his chest.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, his mind fighting to understand what he was seeing, his voice sounding far away, even to his own ears.

  “I don’t know,” Saiki replied, arms folded, staring at the monitors. “He must be having some sort of reaction.”

  “Reaction?” Zall asked, grasping the end of the bed, using it for support to keep himself from toppling over. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, feel adrenaline pulsing through his body. “Why’s his heartbeat slowing down?”

  Saiki stood and watched the monitor, the spikes slowing even more, a single blip flashing on the screen before leveling out, the sound receding to a steady tone. Not until a flat bar stretched the length of the monitor did he go into action, circling around the foot of the bed, shoving Zall to the side.
>
  Starting with the medical cart beside the bed, he withdrew a vial and jammed a syringe into it, pulling out five cc’s of epinephrine. Moving to the IV in William’s arm, he jabbed the needle into the rubber stopper and depressed the plunger. Once the drug was expelled, he jerked it out and cast it away.

  Zall watched in horror as the readout behind him continuing to flash no signs of life.

  “What’s happening? Why isn’t it working?” Zall said, his voice rising in terror. He could feel tears forming in the corners of his eyes, sweat soaking his back.

  Without responding, Saiki slid a defibrillator case from beneath the bed, snapping it open and pressing it to activate. Across the top a series of lights came on, starting with red, shifting toward orange. While it charged, Saiki stripped back the covers on the top half of the bed, exposing William’s bare chest, little more than skin stretched across bone, his ribs jutted out, his stomach sunken beneath his hips.

  “What are you waiting for? Do it!” Zall screamed, inching his way up the side of the bed, taking William’s hand in his own.

  “It’s not charged yet!” Saiki yelled back. “If I go now, it could electrocute him!”

  Time seemed to stand still as Zall turned to again look at the heart rate monitor, an even line registering no activity. He watched as Saiki waited with the paddles, the lights switching from yellow to green, giving him the go-ahead. Pressing them flat against William’s chest, the doctor shoved a massive jolt of electricity through his body, the machine behind him emitting a loud coughing sound.

  Staring in horror, Zall saw his son’s frail body lurch, the line beside him remaining flat.

  In that moment, there was no doubt. Everything Thomas Zall had done, had tried to accomplish in the previous months, in the previous decades, was over. There would be no legacy to pass down, nobody to receive it even if there was. His last grasp at achieving immortality, of having any sort of life beyond his own, was gone.

  He held his son’s hand again in his own, but already he knew his life was past, just as he knew his own life was gone.