Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series)

by Neal, Toby

  “Where and when?” Pono asked.

  “I can’t tell you exactly where. I have GPS coordinates of my watch stations, though, and I could retrieve that information for you. Anyway, I use binoculars to watch the birds’ behaviors, and I could see this man had a handgun in a holster on his belt.”

  “What did he look like?” Lei asked.

  “Asian. Not sure of age. Sturdy build, medium height. Knew how to handle birds and equipment. At the time I spotted him, I was most worried he’d realize I was there and either turn me in or shoot me.”

  “These observation spots, are they the blinds the rangers and Hawaiian Bird Conservatory staff showed us?”

  Red spots appeared on Kingston’s cheeks above the luxuriant growth of beard masking his face. He opened his mouth to answer, but Shimoda cut him off.

  “Please confine your questions to the information that’s useful in apprehending someone you suspect for the murder or in catching this poacher,” he said. Shimoda was good—he was protecting his client from admitting to anything that could be later used to support criminal charges, Lei realized.

  “All right. How many times did you observe the bird hunter?” Pono asked.

  “Just once, yesterday. It appears that with the other hunter gone, they’ve sent someone else.”

  “They?” Lei pounced. “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know. Whoever is wanting to catch the birds,” Kingston said. His eyes had begun blinking rapidly.

  “Well, thank you for your concern about that, and we will alert the Park Service and Hawaiian Bird Conservatory staff that there’s someone up there catching birds, but for all you know, this guy could have been a biologist on a legitimate project,” Lei said.

  Kingston shook his head. “No. When I was trained, I learned protocols that protect the birds, and biologists up there work in teams. Besides, why would a biologist be carrying a handgun?”

  “This is all speculation,” Shimoda said. “If you have no further questions, I insist you release my client.”

  “We do. Tell us more about how and when you saw the body and your rationale for not reporting it,” Lei said. Kingston provided a time two days before they’d gone to the boardwalk as when he’d seen the body. Lei felt sick at the waste—the birds on the poacher’s belt might have been saved if the body had been found sooner.

  They eventually let Kingston go, in the company of his lawyer, with the understanding that they wouldn’t report his visa violation in the next week in case they needed him for more questioning. “But Hawaiian Bird Conservatory may want to bring charges against you for trespassing and destruction of property,” Lei said. “And we may want to charge you at another date.”

  “Don’t bother my client with idle threats,” Shimoda said, following Kingston out of the interview room. “You have no physical evidence linking Mr. Kingston to the murder. Let me know if you find any.”

  “Where is an address where we can reach you?” Pono asked Kingston.

  “I’m staying at a vacation rental cottage in Haiku,” Kingston said. “I’ve been coming down from the mountain every so often to resupply and work on the computer.” He gave them the address and left with Shimoda.

  Lei watched them leave, then got up and snapped off the recording equipment. “Now what?”

  “We have to go over the trace again and see what we’ve come up with from Kingston’s campsite. We need to find a link to the body if we’re going to charge Kingston with anything. For now he’s just a witness to another poacher being in the preserve.”

  Lei worked the phones while Pono went back down to the evidence room to process the items they’d confiscated from Kingston’s campsite.

  She called Takama first. “Just wanted to let you and Jacobsen know that Kingston confirmed there’s another bird catcher up there. Could it be anyone legitimately up there, capturing birds for a project?”

  “Working alone? No. We always work in teams.” A long silence. Finally Takama said, “I’d be in favor of taking the dog back up and looking for the other poacher.”

  Lei knew how much it cost the taciturn Park Service veteran to concede that, and she sighed. “I can ask the captain, but the time and expense of using the K-9 unit to hunt a trespasser who has no connection to our current murder investigation is not likely to get approved.”

  “I didn’t think much of bringing the dog to track, but compared to us randomly trampling through the preserve, it was effective,” Takama said. “Please let me know if you do get that approved. And you said the man is armed. That can’t be good for public safety in a place like the cloud forest.”

  Lei laughed. “You should have been a lawyer! I’ll see what I can do. Hey, I do have some bad news. The victim had birds in a bag on his belt. They were alive when he was shot, but they eventually died of dehydration because it took so long for us to find the body. Sad, huh?”

  A long pause, and when Takama replied, his voice was slow and heavy. “I’m so sorry to hear that—what a shame. I’ll get in touch with some trackers, see if we can chase this poacher out of the preserve ourselves.”

  “Be careful. Remember he’s armed,” Lei cautioned.

  “We’ll be armed too,” Takama said, and hung up with a decisive click.

  Chapter 11

  A week went by. Sitting at her desk one morning, a list of to-dos and a cooling cup of coffee at her elbow, Lei found herself rubbing the white-gold medallion on a chain around her neck. Her ribs were better, but she’d traded that ache for a roiling in her belly that never really went away. She was getting increasingly stressed as the wedding approached and there were no new breaks. She’d wanted to have this case wrapped up before they left on the honeymoon.

  Kingston’s gear had yielded no clues, Omura had nixed using the K-9 unit in Waikamoi to hunt the alleged new poacher, and her period still hadn’t come.

  Last night after work, Lei had felt tense, her skin too tight, ever since she’d taken the pregnancy test out of her purse and hidden it in the bathroom cabinet. That small, brown-paper-wrapped package seemed to be sending out sonar pings, unnerving her. What if Stevens found it? What would it tell them? She felt claustrophobic.

  She’d met him on the porch outside her house when he arrived for their usual dinner together. “I think we should take a break before the wedding,” she said.

  “Relax. It’s just me.” He reached out to hug her. She’d wriggled out of his arms. He’d taken her face in his hands, kissing her soft and full. His mouth on hers was gentle and persuasive. Lei’s lashes fluttered shut. She tried to get into the kiss.

  Her childhood rapist, Charlie Kwon, had possessed eyes so deep a brown, the pupils barely showed. Those eyes swam up from hell, filling her mind, haunting her.

  Those eyes turned her love to fear, her hunger for Stevens to sickness, her confidence to ash. She was “Damaged Goods,” his special name for her—and always would be. A fraud, a fake, a whore in disguise. Not a victim of abuse, a participant.

  “I’ll make you like it,” Kwon had said.

  Lei had never liked it. But she’d endured it, because there was no choice and because he said she was special to him. At nine years old, she’d been so starved for attention that even his abuse had been better than nothing.

  She was sick, beyond saving.

  She’d be a horrible mother.

  Even as these thoughts flickered through her mind, she knew they were old beliefs, old dysfunction. She’d combatted so much with the help of her therapist, Dr. Wilson—but right now it was all too much. Revulsion rose up her throat like bile, and she broke the kiss and stepped back. “I just need a break. Nothing’s wrong. I just need a little space.”

  Stevens stayed where he was, one foot on the top step, the other below, hands resting on a black leather belt loaded with sidearm and badge. He wore broken-in jeans, old boots, and a short-sleeved polo shirt she’d given him that brought out his sky-blue eyes.

  Those eyes had gone flat and metallic. His dark brows
drew down as his mouth thinned out into a hard line. “I’m sick of this, Lei. Really? We’re going to do this again?”

  Lei crossed her arms over her thundering heart. “Nothing’s wrong. I want to really look forward to the honeymoon and to being with you. That’s all.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t have to. You just have to respect what I’m asking.”

  He removed his foot from the step. “Prove it to me. Come here. Kiss me and show me you still love me—that this isn’t about Kwon, some last-minute psycho freak-out. I think I deserve that much before I leave.”

  Lei wanted to kiss him, but her feet were rooted to the boards of the old porch. She gulped and tasted bile. “I shouldn’t have to prove I love you like that. This is no big deal.”

  “I think it is. Now I’m worried you’re going to cut and run.”

  “I won’t. I promise.” The feeling in her legs unlocked enough for her to lean forward and give him a peck on the lips. “But even if it is about Kwon, I’m marrying you. I just need a little space before the big day.”

  “I’ll leave if you call Dr. Wilson. Call her right now.”

  “You’re treating me like a child. Calling this a psycho freak-out. Telling me to get ahold of my shrink.” Lei tried to sound angry. The best defense was a good offense, her mother had always said.

  “This is all those things—a childish, psycho freak-out—for which you need professional help. You’ve left me twice, and I’m not at all sure three times won’t be the charm.”

  Lei felt the precipice of another breakup yawning before them, a severing more terrible than all her conflicted feelings. Losing Stevens was even scarier than Kwon’s eyes, than the little wand of the pregnancy test.

  Lei sat down right where she was, folding up her legs on the porch, and Stevens turned away and sat on the top step. She took her phone out and called Dr. Wilson’s personal cell—she no longer saw the police psychologist regularly, just for “tune-ups” when needed, and she didn’t know if she was relieved or terrified when the psychologist’s phone went to voice mail.

  “Hi, Dr. Wilson. It’s Lei on Maui. Listen, our wedding’s going to be in a few days, and I’m wanting some personal space. Stevens thinks something is wrong and wanted me to call you. Please get back to me when you can.” She pressed Off. “There. You satisfied?”

  She spoke to the back of his head. His broad shoulders had sagged, and he’d threaded his fingers into coffee-brown hair, ruffling it as he did when upset. Her heart squeezed, and she set her hand on his back.

  “I’m sorry. I hate being like this.”

  “I hate it too. Makes me wonder what being married to you is going to be like, if we make it that far.” He stood and walked away without looking back at her, leaving Keiki whining, forlorn as he shut the gate behind himself with a bang.

  His words had made her run back through the house to throw up. She wasn’t at all sure she was up to either the wedding or being pregnant. Stevens had picked up on that in spite of her excuses.

  Lei refocused her eyes on her to-do list, rubbing a dry Bic pen in circles on the paper to get the ink flowing—so vigorously she hit her mug with an elbow. The coffee sloshed, dangerously close to spilling on her workspace, and she caught it, blowing out a breath.

  The thought of Stevens leaving her made her belly clench—but she’d basically sent him packing. He was probably as nervous as she was about what would happen on their actual wedding day. Tonight she was supposed to pick up Aunty Rosario and her father, Wayne Texeira, from the airport. There were only three days left until the wedding.

  She hated to leave right now. Maybe there was just a little more she could do on the bow hunter case before she left for ten days of honeymoon. She held down a speed-dial button on her phone.

  “Did you get the wedding dress?” Marcella asked by way of greeting.

  “One last fitting. It’s going to be gorgeous, Marcella. I can’t believe you know me so well. I love what the designer came up with.”

  “I knew you would.” They confirmed a few more details, including what time Lei would pick her up from the airport the following day.

  “Can you have Ang put a watch or alert out on the Internet for someone looking for native Hawaiian birds? I think we might have a poaching order out for them, possibly originated in China.” She filled Marcella in on the little they knew about the poachers.

  “Sure,” her friend said. Just then Lei’s desk phone rang.

  “I gotta go. See you when I pick you up tomorrow.” Lei clicked off her cell phone and picked up the handset of the desk unit. “Lieutenant Texeira here.”

  “This is Sally Shu at nine-one-one operations. I had an anonymous tip that someone’s dead in Waikamoi Preserve. The caller left your name to contact.”

  Lei’s heart lurched and went into overdrive. Another body up there? That couldn’t be good. “Did you send officers to respond?”

  “No. Thought it could be a hoax, and since you’re on the murder case up there, I called to see if you could go directly instead.”

  “Any other information? Like where the body is located, general description?”

  “If I had any more information, I’d certainly give it to you, Lieutenant,” Shu said.

  “We’re on our way,” Lei said, already looking around for Pono.

  Lei took her own truck up Haleakala toward the preserve since, whatever the outcome of this errand, she needed to go to the airport at four p.m. to pick up her aunt and father. Weaving up the winding curves of the familiar two-lane road to the summit, Lei found her mind returning to the confrontation with Stevens in spite of the dreamy vista of green fields and majestic cumulous clouds. Even the grim errand she was on couldn’t keep her thoughts from returning to the painful words they’d exchanged yesterday evening.

  She hoped Dr. Wilson called her back soon.

  Lei slowed the silver Tacoma and pulled alongside the kiosk at the entrance of Haleakala National Park. She held her ID up to the ranger in olive drab at the window.

  “Official business. We have a report of a death in the Waikamoi area.” The K-9 unit was also en route, since they had no idea where to look for the body.

  The ranger waved her through, Pono following in his vehicle. They turned in to the Hosmer’s Grove trailhead area. Lei’s heart rate picked up as she pushed thoughts of Stevens and the wedding out of her mind to focus on the job.

  The job. It was always there, life and death, when all else failed.

  Chapter 12

  Lei and Pono bent over the Asian man in camouflage gear lying just off the boardwalk, close to where they’d found the other body. The dog hadn’t had a scent to follow, but when they reached the reserve area, Blue had let out a howl and towed his handler straight to the downed man.

  The victim wasn’t dead after all. Lei called for a helicopter ambulance as Pono tried to assess the man’s injuries. He appeared to be conscious, his eyelids fluttering, but did not respond to their questions. Protruding from his back was another arrow, this one striped with yellow banding.

  “Same MO, though the arrows are different.” Lei squatted beside the man, patting down his pockets. She took a sleek Smith and Wesson 9 mm pistol out of a molded holster on the man’s belt. Like the other poacher, he was wearing cargo pants with loaded pockets. She whipped an evidence bag out of her back pocket and dropped the weapon into it.

  “I’d like to elevate his feet,” Pono said. “He’s not bleeding too badly, but there’s no telling what that arrow has punctured.”

  The arrow had pierced the victim’s backpack too, penetrating through tough nylon layers before lodging itself in the man’s upper back. The backpack might well have saved his life. Remembering the birds on the other poacher’s belt, Lei carefully unzipped the netted top of the backpack—and sure enough, inside in a delicate mesh bag, were several brightly colored birds.

  The birds were still alive, Lei saw with relief, as she removed the bag from the backpack. S
he photographed them both in the bag and with Pono holding them before they released all three—two red ones with curved bills and a green one. “I`iwi is the red one and `amakihi is green,” Pono said, as the birds fluttered weakly into the trees.

  “Think they’ll be all right?” Lei asked, frowning. She could hear the percussive thrum of the helicopter arriving in the open landing area.

  “Can’t have been in the bag too long. As long as they get water soon, they should be okay.” Even as they watched, the birds began to hop around on the branches, then sip nectar from the red lehua blossoms of the tree they’d fluttered onto. Pono crunched off into the ferns to try to determine where the arrow had been fired from, the dog and his handler assisting by looking for scents.

  Lei helped stabilize the victim after emptying his pockets into evidence bags—she couldn’t wait to sort through the items she’d recovered, spotting a Chinese passport.

  The man moaned and writhed in agony, still not responding to questions, as the medical technicians lifted him facedown onto a pallet for transport. The arrow still protruded from his back, blood welling sluggishly around the entry site to soak his clothing and the backpack. The victim’s sturdy build required all five of them to assist in carrying him back up the trail to the helicopter. Lei handed the med techs a pair of handcuffs.

  “When he’s been treated, cuff him to the bed until we can get there. He’s under arrest.”

  “What for?” the tech asked, frowning as she took the cuffs.

  “Trespassing and poaching, to start with.” Lei wasn’t sure what else they could throw at him, but keeping the victim from escaping was an important first step.

  Lei and Pono hiked back toward the trucks, discussing what next. “Why don’t you check on Kingston’s whereabouts?” Lei asked her partner. “I’ll call Marcella about running this guy’s passport through Interpol.”