Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series)

by Neal, Toby

  “Dr. Gregory said the birds were alive in the bag but eventually died of dehydration after the hunter was shot.” Snelling and Rinker both winced at this, and she felt echoes of that pain within herself. “What could be a reason to capture live birds of these types?”

  “Perhaps—and it’s a best-case scenario, —for a private citizen to captive breed them. Or they could just be part of a collection, alive or dead. The ranger said there were some indications that the man responsible might not be a US citizen?”

  Lei pinched her lips together. Takama and Jacobsen shouldn’t have been talking. “All we know for sure is that he had a Chinese passport.”

  “Well, something you should know is how very passionate birders can be. Many birders come from all over the world, wanting to just spot a Parrotbill in order to check it off their list of rare avians. It’s not too far of a stretch to imagine that some people might collect rare birds.”

  “So this isn’t something you’ve come across before?”

  “Well, the habitat and dietary needs of these birds are part of what makes them so rare. It makes breeding them in captivity, one of the ways one protects species, a tall order. The nectar feeders have to have these few types of flowers they will feed on, and the Parrotbill, while an insect and bark feeder, has a preference for the koa tree, and as I mentioned earlier, it’s territorial with other birds. So keeping the birds alive would take considerable commitment. That makes stuffing them for a collection more likely.”

  “It should be a crime,” Rinker said.

  “You mean it’s not?” Pono’s eyebrows rose.

  “Well, there are fines. But jail time? I’d be really surprised to see anything like that.” Snelling shook his head. “But you folks are law enforcement, so maybe you can tell me more about that.”

  “Actually, we were hoping you could tell us more about the blind in the tree the man was shot from,” Lei said, turning the question back to him. “Were you aware of it? Are there any more blinds in the preserve area?”

  Snelling cleared his throat. “Actually, yes. There are. We have noticed several of these hunting blinds throughout the conservation area. We’ve questioned our staff and volunteers; they all deny knowing who made them. What’s noteworthy is how cleverly they’re disguised to blend into the forest, how subtly the handholds and supports are done with found materials. We’ve also discovered evidence that someone may be living in the conservation area, but until now it didn’t seem urgent.”

  Lei perked up at this. “What evidence?”

  “Well. Whoever it is knows how to live rough. Just small signs, some singed plants showing a heat source was used, crushed bedding areas, a hand-dug latrine. Whoever it is just uses a bedroll, probably a camouflage tarp for rain, and a small gas cooker. Which means, at some point he or she has to go down the hill and resupply. There’s virtually nothing up there to eat but a few berries and fern tips.”

  Lei and Pono both made notes. “Can we track him?” Pono asked.

  “I don’t know,” Snelling said, frowning. “We’ve been thinking this person might be some sort of birder, as the blinds are for bird-watching rather than hunting. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the case.”

  “That’s for us to determine,” Lei said, with a smile to take the sting out of the words. “Let’s see if we can find this mysterious camper.”

  “Well, we’d appreciate your help getting that person down out of the area in any case,” Snelling conceded.

  “Sounds like a win-win. Let’s get this guy.” Pono’s eyes were wide and nostrils flared, his muscles bunched with excitement.

  “One of our staff can guide you, or you can contact the rangers,” Snelling said.

  “I think the Park Service is more appropriate for potential confrontation,” Lei said, standing and offering her hand to dismiss the biologists. “We’ll call you as soon as we know something or if we need more information.”

  Pono had turned away, already working his phone to make the arrangements.

  “We’re going up the mountain to hunt the camper tomorrow morning, four a.m., with Takama and Jacobsen.” Pono’s eyes gleamed, and he rubbed his hands together in anticipation as they reentered their cubicle. “I think once we get this guy, we’ll have some answers.”

  “I’d like it better if you phrased it like, ‘looking for the person of interest in this case.’” They grinned at each other and Lei went on. “I think the bird hunter’s murder was a crime of opportunity. Someone was sitting in that blind when he or she saw the poacher and shot him, probably pissed anyone was stealing those birds. The camper might have nothing at all to do with this murder. We don’t have any trace tying the camper to the body, or even to the blind.”

  “That illegal camper up in the forest made the blind and did the poacher,” Pono retorted. “We just have to prove it.” He took a sip of the coffee, scowled, and rubbed his mustache. “These bird people. You don’t know them like I do from hunting. They’re crazy for those birds; will do anything to protect them.”

  “Maybe so, and I’m beginning to understand the birding craze a little more.” Lei had been doing some searches on bird watching and other avian interest activities. “People seem to really get into it. There are these lists of birds, regionally and around the world, and birders try to spot them and check them off. It’s like hunting, but without the killing. I just don’t know that catching the camper up there is going to do anything for our case one way or the other.”

  “I think it will.”

  Lei shrugged. “Okay. Any excuse to go back up there to the cloud forest is fine with me. It’s a beautiful place and outside the office.”

  They walked down to the impound lot and began processing the vehicle that had been towed down, starting with Pono jimmying the door.

  Lei was just snapping on her flashlight to look around inside when her holstered phone rang. She checked the little window on the phone and answered for Marcella, turning to walk a few steps away from the vehicle.

  “I hope you have good news about the dress.”

  “I do! You got lucky, and one of the designers I called had a reschedule and can take on the project. I have a measurement and discussion session scheduled for four thirty today.”

  “Oh, thank God. Did she have a lot of questions? Because I told you I don’t really have any idea what I want or what will look good…” Lei’s eyes wandered over the corrugated green folds of Iao Valley directly in front of her, registering the beauty without seeing it.

  “Yes. I told her you are the clueless bride type, and we’ve already had a lengthy Skype session. I forwarded her some pictures of you so she could see your coloring and body type. The dress is mostly designed, and all the fabric choices are picked out. She just needs to measure you and get a load of what she’s dealing with.”

  “Funny. That was exactly the phrase Tiare used when talking about getting my hair done. Is it very expensive?” Lei asked. setting the box on the well-lit steel counter outside the evidence room. They needed to inventory the contents before going any further.

  “Not too bad because it’s a simple design without much embellishment, but we chose a really good fabric, so that’s a little pricey. No worries, though. This is from Marcus and me and my parents as a gift.”

  “Oh my God, really? That’s too much.” Lei and Stevens had some savings, but the wedding and whatever mysterious honeymoon Stevens had planned was sure to wipe them out.

  “No arguing. It’s done. Just cooperate, okay? And try to enjoy yourself. So what’s happening with your case?”

  “We found the victim’s belongings abandoned at the Maui Beach Hotel. Checking his car left on top of the mountain now. I should go.”

  “Well, call me when you meet with the designer, I want to hear about everything. And keep me posted on this case. We’re noticing some funny activity around the Chinese consulate.”

  “Like what?”

  “Can’t say right now, and it may be nothing or complet
ely unrelated. What’s the guy’s name?”

  “Chang. Small world, right?”

  A long pause as Lei listened to the silence of the FBI agent’s mind working.

  “I don’t think he could be one of your Changs,” Marcella finally said. “It’s a common name.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling myself.” Lei punched Off.

  Pono looked back at her over his shoulder. “I thought of that when I saw the guy’s name.”

  “The Changs are over now that Healani died,” Lei said.

  “That’s not what the ‘coconut wireless’ is saying from the Big Island,” Pono said. “Seems the grandson Terence Chang has stepped up now that Grandma’s gone.”

  “Too bad.” Lei leaned into the backseat, shining her light around and suppressing an inward shudder at the memory of the young man’s narrowed eyes shooting hate at her on her last FBI bust. “Looks clean back here.”

  “Yeah, I’m not finding anything up here either.” Pono withdrew. “Not sure what we’re looking for, anyway.”

  “Maybe just some more idea of who this man was, what he was doing up there.” Lei straightened up and slammed the door. “Let’s have them move this vehicle into the garage area in case we need to do a trace search on it. Right now I don’t think it has anything to tell us about who shot its driver with a bow.” They headed back to the guard’s kiosk, and after putting in the order to have the car moved, headed back toward the main building.

  “Good news. I have a dress fitting today. Marcella set it up,” Lei said.

  Pono looked over at her. “Good girl. I’ll report to Tiare that you aren’t going to show up naked after all.”

  Lei smiled, but it felt more like a grimace. She still wished it was just her and Stevens going to the courthouse.

  Chapter 7

  After a full afternoon processing evidence, Lei arrived at a modest storefront location in old town Wailuku marked Ohana Wedding Design in curlicue script on the mirrored front door. She pressed down on the brass handle and stepped hesitantly inside as a door alarm chimed.

  The showroom lighting was dim. Spotlights were aimed at fully dressed bridal mannequins standing on silvery gray carpet in various poses. A scent of vanilla pervaded the room, and Lei sniffed appreciatively, glancing around. A satin curtain parted, and a woman stepped through it. She was petite and blonde, and she clapped her hands at the sight of Lei, lively brown eyes alight.

  “You’re even prettier than your friend told me you would be! Like my vanilla aromatherapy? Supposed to help brides feel calmer. I’m Estelle. Come on back to my workroom.”

  Encouraged by Estelle’s friendly greeting, Lei followed the designer through a connecting door into a bright workshop on the other side. Sewing machines, drafting tables, and bolts of fabric in stacks lined the walls. Estelle walked around Lei, looking her over.

  “Your friend Marcella faxed over a design sketch, and I can see she was right with what she’s suggesting. You have a wonderful athletic figure, and this dress will really set it off.”

  “Thank you,” Lei said. “Can I see the sketch?”

  “Not yet. I have to measure you first,” Estelle said. “We may need to make some modifications. Step behind that curtain and remove your clothing down to underwear.”

  Lei obeyed and came out to stand on a carpet-covered dais at Estelle’s direction, wearing nothing but her plain white bra and panties. The woman used a flexible measuring tape to measure Lei’s neck, arms, bust, waist, hips, and upper thighs, muttering all the while.

  “I feel like one of your mannequins,” Lei said, lifting her arms as the designer measured around Lei’s flat abdomen.

  “Almost done,” Estelle said, tightening the tape around Lei’s hipbones. The woman straightened and wound the tape up. “Okay. Come over here and check out the sketches your friend sent. I’m going to modify them a little for your proportions, but I think this will be a great design for your body, and since you’re Japanese, Hawaiian, and Portuguese, according to Marcella, a nod to your heritage as well.”

  Lei followed Estelle to the drafting table, and Estelle fanned the simple drawings out. Lei gazed at the sketches, and her hand came up to cover her mouth. Her eyes filled.

  “I can’t wait to see it,” she whispered.

  “The silhouette is like a calla lily, and with your figure, that’s just what you’ll look like. So you like it?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Requires you to have your hair up. I have someone excellent if you need someone to do your hair for the big day.”

  “I think my planner has someone for me to call. I love it. Marcella knows me so well.”

  “I’ve got my team starting on this today. We’ll just need you to come back for a final fitting the day before the wedding.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Lei left for home, feeling the gratitude she’d begun to experience so often in the last few years. Life was rich now that she’d been letting friends and family get close to her—so much that sometimes she felt overwhelmed. She even wished, thinking of the details of the dress that hinted at her Japanese ancestry, that her mother had been alive to see this day.

  If she’d lived, surely Maylene Matsumoto Texeira would have been clean and sober, and surely they would have healed the wounds of abuse and neglect by now. Lei knew it was progress that she could think of her mother with a different kind of grief—a bittersweet sense of what they might have shared if Maylene had lived, instead of angry, conflicted sorrow.

  Once home, Lei called the numbers Tiare had given her and lined up the hairdresser and a makeup person. After that, she reported in to Tiare and enjoyed the other woman’s rare praise.

  “I know you think this is a lot of silly fuss, but someday you’ll be turning the pages of your wedding album with your child and you want to look your best for memories that will be with your family forever,” Tiare said. “I can’t wait to see you in that dress on your big day. It sounds amazing.”

  “The design is beautiful,” Lei said. She still wasn’t comfortable imagining a family with Stevens; the thought of a child looking at her album made her nervous. She got up to fill Keiki’s food bowl. “I’m supposed to have my hair up because of the dress, so I’m glad I’ll have someone to do it for me.”

  They revisited a few more details. Lei hung up and discovered that, for the first time, she was looking forward to the wedding. Knowing she’d be wearing the perfect dress had a lot to do with that.

  She spent the evening alone, reviewing her notes. She’d called Stevens to tell him she had a very early manhunt on top of Haleakala to get to in the morning, and they both knew if Stevens came over, sleep would be the last thing on their minds.

  Chapter 8

  Lei was a little carsick from the long drive up to the top of Haleakala in Pono’s raised purple truck. It was almost enough to make her wish for the stomach-dropping ride to the summit in the helicopter, which at least had been over in a mere twenty minutes. She kept her eyes off the swaying pair of fuzzy dice and mock Hawaiian war helmet dangling from the mirror and on the view passing by as they climbed higher and higher.

  Broad, grassy meadows, dim velvet blue in the predawn light, rolled away down the volcano’s slope into the expanse of ocean. The biggest town on Maui, Kahului, nestled in the waist of the island below, its lights sparkling like a belt of stars in the purple shadow of morning.

  Dawn broke and cast a net of hot pink, lacy clouds over the vast bowl of sky as they pulled past the national park entry booth and turned left, following Takama’s pickup truck, to park in a small pullout lot at the head of a trail. Head-high yellow mamane bushes bloomed all around them, and Lei spotted a few of the bright native birds, out feeding on the flowers. She shut her eyes against the memory of the tiny, jewel-bright bodies in the evidence freezer.

  “No wonder you wanted to leave so early,” Lei said, hopping down to the ground and slamming the door of the truck. “The helicopter was faster.”

&n
bsp; “I asked to get flown up here. Captain said too expensive,” Pono replied. “Hope you wore your hiking boots.”

  Lei looked down at her feet, clad in running shoes. “All I got. It’ll have to do.”

  Takama and Jacobsen met them at a padlocked gate leading into the preserve, and Jacobsen handed them a plastic scrub brush. “Brush off your shoes. You might be carrying seeds into the preserve.”

  Pono snorted but complied, bending over to scrub at the rugged soles of hiking boots as Takama went on. “We pack in and out anything we bring. No seeds or fruit pits, nothing that could grow in this environment.”

  Takama unlocked the gate, and once all their soles had been scrubbed, they climbed over a barrier into the conservation area. Conifers of various types towered around them. The air was chill, and rosy gray morning light misted through the leaves. Lei could hear the birds singing in the distance, high, sweet notes like drifting petals.

  “These don’t look indigenous,” Lei said, gesturing to the trees as they started down a rugged red-dirt road into a dense, diverse forest.

  “No, they’re not. These are an experimental grove of trees planted by Ralph Hosmer, a territorial forester, around the turn of the century. He was trying to find types of trees that could be harvested for lumber in Hawaii,” Takama said. The two rangers strode rapidly, and Lei jogged a bit to keep up, turning her head to take everything in.

  “Seems like he found some lumber that liked it here.” Lei pointed to a towering tree she kept noticing, shedding bark in colored ribbons.