4 Toby Neal- Broken ferns

by Neal, Toby

  “Not that we know of. Homeowner says there was about five thousand in there and a collection of Hawaiian gold jewelry, which as you can see, is gone,” Rogers said. “He probably took that with him. We haven’t found evidence of it.”

  Marcella drew Lei aside into the hall, leaving Ken and Rogers continuing to investigate. “Waxman sounded pretty pissed off this morning. I don’t think he likes how that interview with Watanabe backfired. The ‘new face of the FBI’ made us look bad. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m getting written up, with an administrative conference when things settle down on the case. He’d like to bench me right now, but he wanted to see if I could get anything out of Consuelo first—which I couldn’t.” Lei sighed, pushed rioting curls out of her face. “Got a rubber band?”

  “No, sorry. So how’s Angel doing?”

  “I took her out to the Smileys early this morning. It made me late to the briefing, which didn’t help. He thinks I’m an insubordinate risk taker with poor communication skills.”

  Marcella squeezed her shoulder wordlessly. “He hated me, too, for the first six months. You’ll get past it. I had a call from Alika Wolcott, asking if you were single, if that’s any consolation.”

  “Oh my God. I can’t believe he’d even give me the time of day after the way I treated him on Kaua`i,” Lei said. Alika was so attractive, and the idea that he still cared enough to ask about her did give her a little lift. “We’ll see. I was going to tell you earlier—I ran into Stevens and Anchara on Maui.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Yeah. I mean, I ran into them literally—I spotted them having breakfast. Stevens had told me he’d let me have Keiki back, which was good news—and that they were having some problems. I admit I let it get my hopes up a little bit—but no.” She looked down at the shrapnel of a china vase all around them on the floor. “It’s really over. But at least I’ll get my dog back.”

  Marcella pulled Lei’s stiff body into her arms for a quick, hard hug. Lei felt the comfort and strength of her friend’s support, letting herself lean for a moment on Marcella. Then she stood back. “I need to find a dog-friendly place where I can keep Keiki. But in the meantime, I want to go see Consuelo’s aunt, the one who took her and her father in when he was dying. Check if she’s got any information, check the girl’s room and see what we can find out there.”

  “When was she last home?” Lei asked the striking Filipina woman who’d identified herself as Sherrie Ilanoco, Consuelo’s aunt.

  “Consuelo’s with her boyfriend. Is she in trouble? Consuelo’s a good girl.”

  “I’m sure she is.” Ken made a little patting gesture with this hand. “We have an investigation going on into something at Paradise Air, and we wanted to ask her a few questions.”

  “Oh, that place.” Ms. Ilanoco’s full lips all but pulled away from her teeth in disgust. “You cops stay investigating them? Come in, then. I answer your questions.” She threw the door wide.

  “Okay.” Lei followed Ken inside, feeling conflicted about withholding the fact that Consuelo was in Tripler Hospital. If they told her right away, she’d rush off, and interviewing her would be much more difficult, not to mention searching Consuelo’s room.

  The front room was dim and cool, with a flatscreen TV that took up most of one wall. Vinyl couches made a deep V of seating, and a toddler played with a couple of plastic action figures in front of cartoons on the TV.

  “My grandson.” She gestured to the child, who looked up, big, dark eyes tracking them as they followed her into the kitchen. “I’m making pickled mango. You like?” The counter, old-fashioned Formica with metal edging, was piled with green mangoes in various stages of chopped dismemberment. The room was filled with the tang of vinegar and sweet of mango. Ms. Ilanoco went back to her mound of fruit, picking up a paring knife to run it over a mango, quartering it into quadrants.

  “I love pickled mango,” Lei said, and without another word Ms. Ilanoco opened a Ball jar filled with pale yellow spears packed into vinegary sauce. She dumped a portion on a plate and pushed it over toward them with a couple of forks. She and Ken exchanged a glance, and both of them picked up forks. Winning Mrs. Ilanoco’s trust was easier with a fork in hand.

  “I hate that airline—it stole my brother’s life. Max Smiley, he one greedy haole.” As the matron grew more agitated, her pidgin thickened and she practically spat the words. She grabbed one of the corners of mango skin and ripped it off the hard green fruit, tossing the leathery skins into a wastebasket half full of the fragrant remnants.

  “Go on,” Lei said, spearing a slice of pickled mango and taking a bite. It was delicious—soury-sweet, with a soft but firm texture. “How long did he work for them?” It was good to be able to verify Consuelo’s story.

  “He was with Paradise for twenty years, and he came here to my house to die. He couldn’t go back to work. He lost everything paying his bills after he lost his health insurance. So Consuelo, she get nothing.” Ms. Ilanoco set the mango she’d peeled on a board and employed a cleaver with such enthusiasm both Lei and Ken backed up a bit.

  “So Consuelo—does she ever bring her boyfriend here? His name’s Tyson, right?” Ken asked.

  “I nevah like that boy.” Not quite a confirmation that Tyson Rezents was Consuelo’s boyfriend, but almost. The cleaver whacked the last of the mango meat off a pit the size of a child’s fist. “I tell her no bring him around here.”

  “So you said she’s with him,” Lei prompted.

  “That’s what she said. She never came home the last couple weeks.” Lei and Ken exchanged a glance over Ms. Ilanoco’s bent dark head—this was why Consuelo was never reported missing. “She changed after my brother died—didn’t want to go to school, gone all the time, not listening to me. I figured I let her go; she come back when she ready. She told me she was going stay with him, but she never packed up her stuff.”

  Ken took up the thread. “Does she have a car?”

  “No. She get a job, though. She works for the Honolulu Surf. She work in the maintenance department there.”

  “She work there long?” Ken asked.

  “Do you mind if I look around her room?” Lei saw an opportunity—Ken could keep Mrs. Ilanoco occupied.

  Mrs. Ilanoco gestured with the knife. “Sure. Help yourself.”

  Lei went in the direction she’d indicated. A door led into the garage area converted to a bedroom. It was painted violet blue, with rag rugs over the cement floor, and the girl’s bed was a twin, neatly made. Lei checked around in the drawers, on the desk—the usual teenaged girl places. Under the mattress, she hit pay dirt—a marble notebook.

  Dear Diary read the first entry. She snapped the book shut and walked back into the kitchen, where Ken had finished off the pickled mango and Ms. Ilanoco had moved on to dissecting her third fruit. “Can we take this? Look through here for clues?”

  Ms. Ilanoco set down the cleaver, turned away to rinse her hands in the deep china sink. She dried them on a cheesecloth towel as she turned back. Her mouth set in a line, deep grooves beside it hinting at grief and anger. “Clues to what?”

  For the first time, she seemed to realize there was more going on than they’d told her, and Lei couldn’t let the kind woman find out from the hospital or the lawyer. She took a deep breath, blew it out on a sigh. “Consuelo’s actually in a lot of trouble. You’ll be getting a call anytime now, from Tripler Hospital. She’s in there under psychiatric care. The more you can tell us about what she’s been into, what’s been going on with her, the better.”

  Mrs. Ilanoco’s face paled; then her lips tightened. “You didn’t tell me this at first.”

  Ken’s voice was soothing even as he shot Lei a narrowed glance—once again, she’d stepped out on her partner in an early disclosure. “Sometimes in an investigation, we need to see what a family member knows without disclosing everything. We’re trying to get to the bottom of what’s led Consuelo to the mental state she’s in—she broke into some houses, stole
some things.”

  Mrs. Ilanoco’s hand clapped over her mouth. “Oh my God! Please, take the journal! I don’t know nothing. That girl, she never been talking to me these last few months, since her father passed. I have to go see her!” She hustled them out of the house, thrusting a jar of pickled mango into Lei’s hands as she did so.

  Back at the Acura, Lei stowed the Ball jar of pickled mango in the webbing alongside the door. She placed an evidence-bagged plastic hairbrush for DNA and fingerprints in her crime kit, along with the marble notebook journal, which she slid into another bag. “I want to take this home to read tonight.”

  Both their cells toned at the same time, and Ken, behind the wheel, read his text first.

  The face he turned toward hers was white with shock. “There’s been another Bandit strike. It’s at the original site—the Smiley estate. Waxman says it’s a major explosion.”

  The drive back over the mountains for the second time that day was a blur to Lei. All she could think of was the older couple, their emotional faces, their heartfelt response to her plea for justice for Consuelo. Max’s repentant words rang in her ears, and she could see Emmeline Smiley’s steely eyes as she confronted her husband—and Angel, ears pricked, tucked under Emmeline’s arm.

  They saw smoke as they wove through the residential neighborhood down toward the Kaneohe Bay. Three of the FBI SUVs (one containing Gundersohn and Waxman) had pulled up into the driveway crowded with fire rescue vehicles.

  The house Lei had left so recently was devastated. At least half of it was gone, splintered outward from an explosion. Smoke still billowed from the debris, and firefighters aimed hoses at the hole where the front door had been. Lei felt horror pinch her throat shut, black dots fluttering at the edges of her vision as she looked at what was left of the big beach mansion.

  Chapter 23

  The Chinese dragons in the doorway were knocked sideways from the blast. Detritus, blown outward, formed mounds and piles that looked hazardous to navigate, sparkling with broken glass and twisted metal. Lei got out of the SUV, focusing on the stainless-steel door of the refrigerator lying directly in front of her, rows of condiments still held in place by a wire rack. There were two kinds of mustard, she noted—a Dijon in a glass pot and a plastic squirt bottle of bright yellow Heinz. She wondered which of the Smileys had preferred what kind of mustard.

  Ken approached the police sergeant conferring with the fire chief in front of what would have been the entrance as the firefighters turned off the hoses. The ruin smoked sullenly as Lei picked her way carefully to stand behind him. “What’s the status on loss of life?” he asked.

  The police chief grimaced. “My men should be coming out any minute, but it looks like there were two casualties.”

  Lei walked to the edge of the shell of the house, trying to peer into the smoky interior. The fire chief put a cinder-streaked arm up to hold her back. “Your team can come in after we make sure it’s under control and the remaining structure is stable,” he said. “Stay back behind the line.”

  Where was Angel? It seemed impossible that something so tiny and fragile could have lived, and Lei felt ashamed to even be wondering about the dog when two people, people who’d showed signs of a real change of heart, were gone.

  The “line” was a roll of fire hose that bisected the bluestone front steps. Lei rubbed her eyes, stinging with smoke, and tried to puzzle through what had happened.

  Mere hours after she’d been at the lovely, peaceful home making her appeal to the Smileys, it was blown to smithereens and they were dead. Who could have done it? Consuelo was still in the hospital, and one of the other suspects, Rezents or Blackman, must have been occupied with the burglary of the Kahala house. Perhaps they’d split up? Or perhaps there was a new unsub at work?

  The smells of wet charred wood, melted plastic, and smoke competed almost overwhelmingly, but her sensitive nostrils picked up a new scent that made her stomach flip inside out—the smell of cooked meat.

  Lei turned and walked rapidly back into the driveway and around the undamaged side of the house toward the great steel barn, Max Smiley’s toy chest—the place where it had all begun.

  She made it as far as one of the clumps of bird-of-paradise before she bent over, heaving up the cup of coffee that was all she’d had that day. Every time she thought of the terrible burnt smell that must be either Max or Emmeline Smiley, she heaved again—and found her eyes stinging with tears as she did so, belly turning inside out and her emotions with it.

  This was sick, and wrong, and horrible.

  Whatever Consuelo had set in motion had taken a terrible new direction with her capture. Homeland Security would be the main player now, and this case had just gone from a courageous, idealistic, and misguided kid on a mission to domestic terrorism.

  Rubber bullets wouldn’t be used next time.

  Lei felt something bump her leg, and she whirled, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist, her hand on her weapon.

  Angel looked up at her. She wagged the tiny curled whip of her tail. Her pointed ears were pricked, big brown eyes alight with happiness to see Lei.

  “Oh my God.” Lei scooped the dog into her arms and submitted to ministrations from the tiny pink tongue. “I can’t believe you’re alive.”

  Angel in her arms, she walked to the door of the steel barn, which was up, retracted into its channel. The unsub was probably long gone, but just in case, Lei took out her weapon and held it in one hand, the dog tucked under her arm, as she moved slowly into the interior, scanning. Spray paint haphazardly defaced the antique cars in their neat rows, and the hanging windsurfer sails were slashed. The chemical smell of spray paint was sharp in her nostrils—and she realized, belatedly, that it shouldn’t be that fresh.

  An engine screaming into life came from her left, amplified to the howl of a chain saw in the echoing steel space. One of the quads came roaring out of the corner, headed straight for her.

  Lei fired a round at the black-suited, helmeted figure on the four-wheeled motorcycle bearing down on her—but it went wide as she dove out of the way, slamming into one of the antique cars, trying to protect Angel from being crushed as the quad just missed her, striking her leg as she bounced off the hood of an early-model Chevy truck.

  She slammed onto her back on the cement floor, her head spinning from the impact. Angel was still clutched to her chest and the Glock was still in her hand. She heard the high-pitched roar of the vehicle flying out of the barn and across the grounds toward the beach.

  Ken appeared at the doorway, weapon drawn. “Lei! You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Lei sucked in enough air to reply, and Ken disappeared, running in pursuit.

  Marcella and Rogers appeared next. “Unsub headed to the beach,” Lei said. Rogers took off, but Marcella ran over, helping Lei sit up with her back against the Chevy’s tire. “You hit?”

  “He grazed me on the leg with the quad.” Lei let Angel down, but the little dog stayed beside her, shivering with fright. Marcella rolled up Lei’s pants leg, taking a look at her calf. “Looks okay.” She helped Lei stand. “I’m surprised he was still here. Did you get a look at him?”

  “Not really. He was all in black with a helmet on. I hope they can run him down.”

  “I know they’ll try. You have to tell Waxman you were here this morning.”

  “I know.” Lei finally holstered the Glock. “I didn’t see any signs of anything unusual this morning. Front gate was locked; I identified myself and Max Smiley let me in.”

  “We know from the other burglary that they didn’t have much security, and the unsub could have got in off the beach.”

  “He sure knew about that.” She gestured toward the beach. “And a quad can move pretty fast on sand.”

  “I see you found a friend. I wondered what happened to the dog.”

  “She seems to have nine lives.” Lei picked Angel back up.

  “Well, this isn’t good. We’ve gone from burglaries with redistribution of goo
ds to the poor to rampant destruction and murder.”

  “This. This must be the Smiley Mafia at work,” Lei said. “It seems like Consuelo and Rezents were trying to make a statement, but I’m not sure this is what they were trying to start—it’s such a different level and type of violence. Homeland is going to come down on this like an avalanche.”

  “We’ll be lucky to pick up what’s left of the case,” Ken said glumly, returning with Rogers. Both agents were sweating and disheveled. “He got away. We did a BOLO already.”

  “Well, go put that dog in the SUV before Waxman sees it and makes you take it to the Humane Society,” Marcella said as they reached the door of the barn and she spotted their boss and Gundersohn approaching. “We’ll head him off.”

  Marcella, Ken, and Rogers strode toward Waxman, and Lei trotted in the other direction, going around the back side of the barn and back to the SUV. She set the little dog in the backseat and gave her a piece of what must have been Ken’s breakfast burrito to keep her quiet, cracked the windows, and turned back to face whatever came next.

  Chapter 24

  Lei sat on her little couch many hours of a long, sad day later, the marble notebook in front of her. They’d gotten on the road, combing the neighborhood on foot and in their vehicles for the unsub on the quad—with no further trace after the vehicle’s tracks disappeared up off the beach. She’d been able to come home and take a shower, washing off the stink of smoke and death, and the relief to smell nothing but Ivory soap on her hands was tremendous.

  Their team needed to get to whatever information the diary held as soon as possible.

  Still, she took a moment to eat the burrito she’d picked up at Taco Bell on the way home. The body was a machine, and hers had been running on empty for hours. Angel, also freshly washed, shivered beside her in an old beach towel Lei had wrapped her in. Lei had opened the sliders, and warm evening air blew over them, a natural hair dryer, scented with a little plumeria from the tree out back—an antidote to the smell of anarchy.