4 Toby Neal- Broken ferns

by Neal, Toby

  “Nothing much. I have an old open murder case here, and I keep hoping something’s going to break on it. When I have a little downtime, I come by, observe, see who I can talk to.”

  “Yeah, I heard you’re like a dog with a bone when you get a case.” Lei felt her heart thudding with anxiety as well as her hard run. Of all the Honolulu Police Department detectives, Kamuela had to be the one investigating Kwon’s murder. She put her other foot up on the planter and tightened that shoelace to hide her betraying face.

  “I like to keep a good closure rate.” He moved in next to her, leaning on the planter with his hip so he was looking at her. “So you live nearby?”

  “Not really. Came down from my place off McCully. I just stopped for a stretch out here. So what case was this?” Might as well see what she could find out.

  “Child molester named Charlie Kwon. He hadn’t been out of jail ten days before someone popped him in his apartment. What I got on it is too many people with motive and nothing sticking to any of them—there was virtually no physical evidence at the scene. Wish I could let it go; the guy was scum…But he paid his debt, and the parole board swears he was a changed man.”

  “Stats don’t back that up. Child molesters are usually repeat offenders.” Lei busied herself with leaning over to place her palms on the warm, rough sidewalk. The feeling of the cement against her palms grounded her. Kamuela didn’t have a clue. He had nothing on her, and he didn’t know about her abuse, let alone that Kwon was her abuser. “Anyway, nice to run into you.”

  “Likewise.” He smiled a slightly crooked grin with a dimple in one cheek and really white teeth. “And if you hear anything about this Kwon case, let me know.” He handed her a card. Her fingers almost wouldn’t close over it, but she managed to slip it into her shorts pocket.

  “Of course. See ya.”

  She felt his eyes burning into her back as she jogged up the sidewalk toward her apartment. A platinum-blond woman in a bright pink jean jacket had been spotted at the building the afternoon Kwon was shot and was still wanted for questioning—Lei knew from the news. Marcella had given Lei a pink jacket and platinum wig for fun after the fire—items never seen again in Lei’s possessions.

  And Marcella had never asked Lei where they were.

  Or if she’d shot Kwon.

  Marcella might not have noticed the missing items. Lei certainly hoped so. But if she ever needed them, the jacket, rubber gloves, and platinum wig were hiding, gunshot-residue free, in the hollow beam of a storage shed at the police safe house in Kahului.

  Just Lei’s shit luck that the time her conflicted feet brought her to the building, Marcus Kamuela was waiting outside, a big tiger shark smelling for blood in the water.

  The bitch of it was, she hadn’t killed Kwon. She’d had him at her feet, all right—the Glock wobbling in her hands as she heard his apology. It hadn’t made anything better. If she had shot him she’d at least know what she was up against. As it was, the crime hovered over her life with all the potency of a ticking time bomb.

  The answer was obvious.

  She needed to somehow solve the case herself. It was the only way she could be sure to be safe—and a part of her really wanted to know who had pulled the trigger.

  Lei sped home, barely feeling the miles, she was so preoccupied, and set the detective’s card on the edge of the bathroom sink. She stripped out of sweat-soaked running clothes and got into the shower. Half an hour later, turning pruny from hot water, she was ready to get out. She dried off with a threadbare white towel.

  Stevens had loved her through broken bones, human bite marks, and terrible bruises. He’d shaved her head when she was injured, his fingers tender on her sensitive scalp. He’d never thought she was anything but beautiful.

  Objectively, she knew she looked better than she had many times when they were together. She’d describe herself as a five-foot-six mixed-heritage female of 120 pounds, athletic build, with a taut stomach, small round breasts, and graceful, well-turned arms. Her hair had grown out to touch her shoulders in ringlets that, when orderly, were charming and softened her angular face with its wide, full mouth.

  She had nice bones, she concluded, tracing along the length of one collarbone, marked with a jagged scar where a perp had bitten her. But her eyes were her best feature—big, tilted, long-lashed, and a warm brown that changed with her mood.

  He’d liked her mouth, too. She remembered how he’d traced her lips with his fingers and gently sucked the pillow of her lower lip into his mouth. She remembered his hands on her breasts, weighing them, flicking and circling her pale tawny-pink nipples with his thumbs until they filled her with a hungry ache. She remembered a necklace of kisses he’d laid across the freckles on her chest.

  Yes, she’d been well and truly loved in all the ways a woman could be.

  She wrenched her mind away from the memory and walked into the bedroom to dress.

  An hour into reviewing the files, Lei found a possible candidate for the burglary—Tom Blackman, age twenty-one, hired for “general duties and baggage handling.” Blackman had worked at the airline for six months and used a general delivery mailing address. The file included several write-ups for insubordination, lateness, and one for “calling Mr. Smiley a Nazi and threatening bodily injury against him.” A termination notice dated two months ago topped the paperwork in the slim folder.

  Lei ran the name in her secure database. Blackman had a sealed juvie record that would take a little doing to open, but no current warrants. She sat back a moment, sipping a glass of water and considering.

  Most juveniles who perpetrated a dramatic crime like this had a buildup of antisocial behavior. They’d start with shoplifting and work their way up to jacking a car before they stole a plane. In her mind, the Hawaii unsub was a young white male, angry, with a grudge and a sense of entitlement—and maybe even a sense of humor. Blackman could fit, though she didn’t have nearly enough on him yet. Where’d he come from, gone to school? Who were his friends? These things would begin to unlock the puzzle.

  Lei was still hungry, her stomach a little upset. She finished the water and set the glass in the sink. Her other few dishes sat lonely in the drainer. She looked in the refrigerator and sighed.

  A withered lime and a pair of Coronas still sat in the door of the fridge from when she’d invited Marcella over for a beer they’d ended up being too busy to ever have. On the shelf, a carton of half-and-half, a loaf of wheat bread, and a lump of molding cheddar. In the drawer, an apple and a head of wilting iceberg lettuce.

  Lei took the cheddar out, pared off the mold, and ate it with slices of apple. She opened one of the Coronas and slid the glass door open to get more breeze, doing a quick perimeter check below, then sat back down. Her phone buzzed and she picked it up—Marcella was calling.

  She just didn’t have what it took to talk right now. She let it go to voice mail and then listened: “Hey, Lei. Just calling to see if you’re ok, if you want to go out for a drink or something, take your mind off the Stevens thing. Well, text me if you want to. Hang in there, girl.”

  She texted Marcella back: Got your message. I’m working and can’t go out, but I’m okay. See you tomorrow.

  Luv ya, Marcella texted back.

  Having a friend thinking about her was a new thing, and she felt herself warmed, energy renewed by the brief exchange. She spotted another possible—Tyson Rezents, another young male employee at the airline, still employed but often written up for workplace tardiness, caught her eye. No record when she ran him, but he was a senior at nearby McKinley High, where Blackman had also attended. Maybe someone there would know a little more about him.

  Other candidates were a Kimo Matthews, twenty-three, fired for stealing from the baggage, and a woman, Lehua Kinoshita, twenty-two, fired for insubordination. Lehua had written a letter protesting getting fired and accusing “Mad Max” of unfair manipulation of her hours to avoid providing her health insurance.

  Lei’s eyes grew heavy, an
d she read a few more files before she decided on an early night.

  In her bed, a twin-sized blow-up mattress she hadn’t bothered to upgrade in two months, she found her eyes wandering around the barren, undecorated room. Lying on that mattress, looking at her clothes in a couple of hampers that passed for the room’s furniture, Lei realized she’d never really thought this apartment would be home.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d been getting into a king-sized bed with Michael Stevens, with room at her feet for a big Rottweiler to sleep, in a little plantation cottage on the outskirts of Honolulu. Her lack of furniture, her lack of commitment—they’d been because she didn’t know she’d end up alone and dogless.

  Lei felt tears well to sting her eyes. Her chest spasmed painfully, and she muffled a soul-deep sob in her pillow. She cried for Keiki, her beloved dog. She cried for Stevens’s marriage. She wept out fear, disappointment, loneliness, and sorrow, and finally she slept.

  Chapter 4

  Morning came too soon, beginning with a bleeding of gray-purple light that welled through the bare window. Lei’s sore eyes took in the insultingly cheerful brightening that reflected off the bone-white stucco of the ceiling, filling the room. Her feet felt heavy as lead as she dragged them to the side of the mattress and stood up, straightening the boxers and tank top she’d worn to bed. In the bathroom, her curly hair, still wet when she’d gone to bed, reared up in disarray.

  Lei slapped on a squirt of Curl Tamer to deal with it. She changed into another pair of black polyester slacks and another button-down white blouse. She strapped on her shoulder holster, loaded in the Glock, and clipped her shiny new FBI badge onto her waistband.

  For the first time, that sense of pride she’d felt touching it wasn’t there. She’d traded her Maui Police Department badge for this one—and it was just another cold, hard piece of metal. She’d already been having a hard time adjusting to the FBI, and discovering exactly how much she’d given up for the Bureau wasn’t adding to the appeal.

  Lei went into the kitchen, opened the fridge. The situation there hadn’t changed, and to top it off, she remembered she was out of coffee.

  The day was not off to a good start.

  At 6:28 a.m., her arms loaded with files, Lei got into her truck. Coffee on the way to McKinley High would have to do. In need of caffeine, she pulled into the nearest Starbucks and did her time in line to get an extra large coffee of the day—Marcella’s coffee-drinking ways were wearing off on her. Or maybe that’s just what happened in a job like this.

  The barista pushed the coffee over to her. “Nice badge.”

  Lei looked up—he was a surfer dude, sun-streaked blond hair a mass of salty-looking spikes, sea-blue eyes appreciative. Cop fetish, probably—she was alert for those, and immune, at the moment, to male attention.

  “Thanks.” She took the beverage, walking out without a backward glance.

  She called Ken on her Bluetooth as she headed to McKinley High on South King Street, right in the heart of downtown Honolulu. Ken’s phone went to voice mail, so she left a message.

  “Hey, partner. Following up a lead on a couple of Paradise Air employees at McKinley High School. Call me if anything new breaks.”

  Lei tapped the Bluetooth at her ear, missing the familiar click of her flip phone as she closed it, the smooth round feel of it as she slid it into her pocket. It had taken her longer than any law enforcement person she knew to switch to a smart phone, and she still missed the sheer physical presence of her old flip phone—like the disc she carried in her pocket, it was something she handled to dispel nerves.

  McKinley High was a historic school in the outskirts of Honolulu. Its hundred-year-old administration building had gracefully arched windows and red tile roofing over ivory stucco, a portly bronze of President McKinley holding court at the entrance. Lei walked briskly under great spreading monkeypod trees to the entrance and up worn but immaculate steps to the office.

  The staff were prompt and responsive to her badge and no-nonsense demeanor, and revealed that Tyson Rezents had dropped out of school earlier that year.

  “He just stopped coming.” Principal Tavares was a blocky ex-jock in a polo shirt with a McKinley High logo. “No paperwork filled out.”

  “Any behavior problems?” Lei asked. “Anything you can tell me about him as a student?”

  “No, not really. Poor grades and attendance, the kid works a lot out at Paradise Air. Baggage handler, I understand.”

  “Okay,” Lei said. “This last address—was this with family?”

  “I think that’s with his mother. They lived together.”

  “What about Tom Blackman?” The principal confirmed he’d graduated a few years ago, and had nothing to add to that and no current address. Lei headed out, and one of the office ladies touched her arm.

  “I knew Tyson. He one good boy, but so much sadness happened to him with his mother. Is he in trouble?”

  Lei looked into kind eyes in a round face. The woman’s black hair was wound up and pierced by chopsticks decorated with air-dried clay plumerias, a popular local craft.

  “No—we jus’ like ask him a few questions.” Lei let her voice slip into the gentle rhythm of pidgin English, the creole dialect that quickly established trust and belonging among Hawaii residents. The fact that Lei was from here and looked the part continued to open doors for her as an investigator.

  “Well, I know the principal he wen’ give you that old address. But Tyson, he stay living with friends after the mom, she went back to using.” The woman drew Lei around the corner of a rack of mailboxes, away from prying eyes.

  “Where they stay?” Lei took her spiral notebook out of her pocket.

  The woman flipped through a file and produced a card. “Here’s his last address with his mother, but I’m not sure if he’s still there. He also spends a lot of time with his girlfriend.”

  Lei’s attention sharpened as she looked up from writing down the address. “Do you know where the girlfriend lives, what her name is?”

  “She’s a student here, that’s all. I don’t know her name.” The woman seemed to have used up her goodwill, and a nervous glance in the direction of the principal’s office confirmed this.

  “Well, thank you. I may need to call you again.”

  “I jus’ want things to go better fo’ that poor boy.” The woman shook Lei’s hand self-consciously as they said goodbye, and Lei brushed through the waist-high swinging door and out of the administration building.

  Lei’s cell rang as she climbed into her Tacoma. As always, she checked the caller ID—Ken Yamada was returning her call.

  “Hey, partner. Get my message?”

  “Yes. Wanted to let you know we’ve got some employee interviews lined up down at Paradise Air.”

  “Okay. The boy I came to follow up on, Tyson Rezents, dropped out this year. There’s another one, Tom Blackman, and he graduated a couple of years ago. I have two others, young adults fired for stealing and insubordination.”

  “Sounds worth tracking down. Any of them still working at the airline?”

  “Only Rezents. He’s the youngest, only seventeen.”

  “If he’s still at the airline, should be pretty easy to interview him there. Bring in those files and we’ll focus the interviews a little more, try and get to the ones that really look like they might be connected with the hate letters.”

  Lei navigated out of the parking lot onto busy South King Street, a quadruple-lane artery that led through the heart of Honolulu. She clicked over to the Bluetooth. “Sounds good.” She angled over a few lanes. “So anything back from Waxman?”

  Lei was still nervous around the acerbic, immaculate special agent in charge. Marcella had little to say about their boss except a grudging, “He’s not bad on a case, but as an administrator, he sucks. He’s hard on female agents.”

  “Waxman looked over the case file so far this morning. Was wondering where you were; said it looked like you ballooned and are coming in
late today. Because you phoned me, I was able to fill him in on your activities. Don’t do anything without communicating; the Bureau likes all activities to be coordinated.”

  “You mean, nobody wipes their ass without asking permission,” Lei snapped. She still hadn’t gotten used to the “teamwork” that went on in the Bureau—she liked to follow hunches and run down her own ideas, and constantly checking in with a chain of command grated. “And what’s ‘ballooned?’ I never ballooned anywhere.”

  “‘Ballooned’ is slang for cutting out early, and I’ll let that one slide, Texeira.” Ken’s voice was frosty. “You need an attitude check.” He clicked off.

  Lei reached in her pocket and took out the white-gold disc, flipping it over as she drove and worked on reining in her irritation. She wondered how Ken could be such an unwavering Bureau poster boy.

  But everything was fine. She just had a problem with authority and liked to be independent, and that wasn’t something that fit with the culture of the FBI. Those traits were nothing new—they’d even been written in her very first employee evaluation as a lowly patrol officer on the Big Island of Hawaii.

  She was just turning into the parking garage at the Federal Building high-rise when her phone rang again. “Texeira.”

  “Answer the phone with ‘Agent Texeira,’ please.” Ken was still frosty. “And there’s been another burglary. Looks like the ultralight flew in, hit the place, and flew out. Meet me at the Acura.”

  A hit of adrenaline speeded up Lei’s reflexes and she pulled the Tacoma in beside the Bureau SUV just as Ken exited the steel garage door from the stairway, his light gray suit jacket unbuttoned and flapping over his weapon and badge. She beeped the Tacoma locked, hopped in the SUV, and they pulled out, lights flashing.

  Chapter 5

  “Sorry for snapping,” Lei said, as they turned left out of the garage and headed toward the freeway. “It’s hard to get used to all the protocol with the Bureau.”