Mayhem, Mystery and Murder

by John A. Broussard

  Once we had that, it was back to Squirt to find out anything and everything on Kurt Harris Fitz-John. With a name like that, it wasn’t surprising to learn that only one was listed in the sources Squirt explored. When I heard Lin say, “bingo,” as she watched the screen over Squirt’s shoulder, I went over, read the data and added my bingo. Kurt Harris Fitz-John, age 47, divorced, was a Hawaii resident, had a doctorate in chemistry and was definitely the renter of 38-012 Hulia Place.

  The next hour of exploration revealed much about Kurt Harris Fitz-John. We retrieved information that would astonish the ordinary citizen at the extent to which an individual’s privacy can be invaded. A rapid succession of jobs, with no indication that those were steps up the employment ladder, indicated that the subject of our search was not an outstanding success in his field. His credit rating showed he was pushing his limits, though ownership of a boat and small plane indicated there had been better times in his past. Both the plane and boat had been bought on time, and he was three payments behind on the one and two on the other.

  Since he didn’t own a home, there was no way of knowing if he was paid up on his rent, but I was willing to bet my retainer fee that he was behind on that, too. His plastics—and he had several cards—were all beyond their limits. His bank account had been closed the previous month. Squirt fished around for assets, and came up with an empty hook.

  By then, evening was coming on and dinner was waiting for me at home so, over Squirt’s protests, I called it a day. Lin and I both went off with copies of Squirt’s discoveries to examine at our leisure. Knowing Squirt, I was sure he’d keep plugging away at home on his own computer. By evening he’d probably know what kind of pajamas Fitz-John wore to bed. The three of us decided to meet back in the war room at eight the next morning.

  Home and work phones were both unlisted, but that never blocks any private investigator worth his salt. We alternated at calling, starting early, but got nothing but answering phone messages as our reward. That was when I decided we should take a look at Fitz-John’s material possessions.

  We were on our way to the Marina when Squirt handed his Palm Pilot over to Lin. I could see his triumphant face in the rearview mirror as he announced, “They broke it. The encrypted message is a letter to Lin.”

  She immediately began to read it aloud. The date was the day on which he had drowned.

  “Dear Sis,

  It’s a strange world. I’ll be sending you the code word for this CD and the key to the encryption tonight after I get back from swimming so, if you’re reading this, I know the letter and the CD reached you. This all seems kind of silly, I realize, but Kurt has been acting strange. That’s Kurt Harris Fitz-John, who I’ve been working with. I would just as soon he doesn’t find out about this until I’ve had a chance to talk to him tomorrow.

  First, I met Kurt a couple of months ago down at the marina. It turned out he was a theoretical chemist interested in materials science. I don’t know if you remember, but I was working on that with Professor Lattimore before I left the U. He invited me out to his lab, which really isn’t a lab, since all of his work is done on computer.

  Well, to make a long story as short as possible, he was working on something I’ve been thinking about for the past six months, so I suggested we work together on it. I scored a breakthrough just last week. Ninety percent was my idea, so I feel I should be the one to decide what should be done with the discovery. I want it to become part of the public domain. Kurt doesn’t feel that way. He’s planning to go to Oahu this week to apply the formula to actual materials and bring some back to test. If the discovery works, he intends to patent it and sell it to the highest bidder. He’s convinced it will be worth a fortune.

  Maybe it will, but I don’t agree we should sell it, and he’s pretty unhappy about my view. I’m going to tell him tomorrow that I’ve definitely made up my mind. In the meantime, I’d like to have you take the formula to Professor Lattimore. I’m sure she’ll know how to make it available to the general public if it’s as worthwhile as I think it is. There are still some puzzling parts, which I’m sure she can clear up.

  Anyhow, I’ll phone you tomorrow after I’ve talked to Kurt.

  Lots of love,

  Shane.”

  When Lin looked up from the screen at the two of us, we all had the same thought, which Squirt put into two words. “The marina.” Somehow, I managed to get there without picking up a speeding ticket. I wasn’t interested in Fitz-John’s boat, and evidently the others weren’t either, since no one protested as I went into the marina office to ask about the owner rather than about his boat. It took only moments for us to find out that he was an experienced and avid scuba diver.

  Squirt could hardly contain himself. “Call the police.” Lin agreed. I didn’t.

  “We don’t have any kind of evidence that would stand up in court. In fact, we don’t have even enough to justify a search warrant. I’ll go even further than that and say that we’ll be lucky if we can even get the police to look into the matter.

  Squirt was adamant. “They could find out if he went out in his boat that day.”

  I shrugged. “Still not good enough.”

  I could see from the corner of my eye that Lin was furious. “We can’t let him get away with it. We all know he went out there, dove and came up under Shane. He pulled him under. And that was it. He’s a murderer.”

  I wasn’t too hopeful, but I thought some possible leads might cheer her up. “We can start canvassing other boat owners to see if we can find someone who was out there that day. Maybe someone saw Fitz-John doing some diving. If we could get that far, we could…”

  Squirt, who had retired back to his Palm Pilot in disgust, suddenly let a whoop. “Hey, Lin, Professor Lattimore.”

  The e-mail read, “Amazing. Shane’s discovered a new adhesive. The formula isn’t complete, but it’s evident that it would have wide application. The molecular structure is such that the material would swell appreciably and make a bond that would be considerably stronger than most of the materials it would bind to. It has fantastic possibilities. The only problem is that it may be relatively unstable. I can’t be sure until we’ve applied the formula to actual materials. Slight changes in the formulation might make it dangerously explosive. Tell him to be very careful before he tries handling it.”

  The e-mail rapidly lost me after that point, and most of the remainder of the return trip to the office was conducted in silence. I was envisioning a long hard period of investigation to prove that Kurt Harris Fitz-John had murdered Shane, followed by a trial where a smart attorney would get him off.

  Before we arrived, Lin burst out. “At the very least, let’s confront him. Let’s go to the airport and find out when he’s due back.”

  I really couldn’t see the point. Fitz-John wasn’t likely to arrive while we were there, but Lin sounded like she just had to do something. So I changed directions and headed out to Napua’s small airport. The three of us filed into the administrative office located below the flight tower. I finally found someone who was willing to look up flight plans for us—a rather harried looking male who decided, on seeing my investigator’s badge, that he might as well give me the information and get us off on our way as soon as possible.

  “Who was it you were interested in?”

  I told him.

  His expression changed. “Oh, yes. He filed a flight plan for Oahu—three days ago— but didn’t you hear the news?”

  I looked puzzled.

  “He was returning from Oahu this morning when his plane exploded. At least that’s what the early reports say.” He hesitated, then asked, “He wasn’t a friend of yours, was he?”

  All three of us shook our heads.

  ***

  It was two days later when we said our good-byes. I hated to see Lin leave, but I appreciated the hug and the peck on the cheek she gave me. Then she bent over and gave Squirt a big smack right on the lips.

  He turned crimson. As we watched her wal
k out to the jet, he said, “Let’s get back to the office. There’s work to do.”

  His voice suddenly sounded much deeper.

  “Sure thing, Morty,” I replied.

  GONE MISSING

  There were few calls Sergeant Corky Medeiros liked less. This time, “She’s gone missing,” meant a fifteen-year old had left worried parents behind. Most likely, the girl had taken off for Honolulu to find adventure in the big city, usually with another girl of like age. But sometimes the results were far more grim—a badly beaten body left in a cane field or, in some ways worse yet, just a total and permanent disappearance. As she listened to the distraught father, Corky was thankful she was part of the Elima Island PD and not over on Oahu. A rural police force didn’t have the problems on the scale their counterpart over there faced.

  Typically it was Hawaiian girls. Seldom was it a Japanese. Today, the mother was Portuguese, the father half-Hawaiian, half haole. The story wasn’t much different from the usual. The daughter’s name was Leilani Johnson. She’d driven off with her boyfriend the morning before, and there had been no word from either of them for over twenty-four hours.

  While the standard procedure was to wait forty-eight hours before acting on this kind of call, Corky rifled through her in-basket and decided there wasn’t anything else sufficiently pressing to require her sticking to standard. Besides, there was a lot to go on. Leilani had last been seen driving off with Stanley Nobriga in his pickup the previous morning. It wouldn’t be difficult to run down the plate number, and it shouldn’t be much more difficult to locate the truck. While Elima was one of the larger of the Hawaiian islands, there really were few places for a vehicle to go where the police wouldn’t spot it sooner or later.

  From what Corky could make out, the Johnsons weren’t exactly bosom friends with the Nobrigas, and they hadn’t checked with them about either Leilani’s or Stan’s whereabouts. Corky filled in the gap. No, Stan hadn’t been home since the previous morning. No, they weren’t much concerned. Stan sometimes left for days at a time. “He’s three times seven, you know,” Mr. Nobriga commented without being prompted.

  Still wondering if the missing pair weren’t just holed up on some deserted beach, recovering from a night of passion, Corky decided it might be best to check with her lieutenant, Hank DeMello, before going off on what might be the wildest of goose chases.

  Hank showed as little concern as Mr. Nobriga, and was much more inclined to speculate about Stan’s status as an adult messing with a juvenile, than with the absence of one or both of them. “Get the word out on the plates. If they’re spotted, we’ll have them pulled over, and then let the Johnsons know she’s O.K.” He paused. “It won’t hurt if you go out to see them. Better to be over-concerned about a runaway than to ignore their call and then find out something worse happened.”

  The Johnson house was a look-alike in the middle of an affordable housing subdivision. The lots were of minimum size, and the houses stood next to each other, cheek by jowl. The setback left some room for a lawn, for those interested in having one, or various assortments of plants, toys, and—in one case—a discarded vehicle. The neatness of the Johnson home made it stand out, with two large papaya trees and a small coconut palm providing shade, a closely cropped hedge, and a wooden-seated swing currently being occupied by a pre-school girl. Though they had ignored Corky’s greeting, the pair of dark brown eyes were fixed on her as she knocked at the door.

  Mrs. Johnson was obviously distraught. Mr. Johnson was more angry than anything else. His pidgin seemed to accentuate the anger apparent in his voice and expression.

  “She nevah say where she go. It was befoh daylight. Stan stay outside in his pickup. No muffluh. He wake up da whole damn neighborhood. I wen’ look out da bedroom window and see Leilani gettin’ in da pickup.”

  Corky went through the usual routine with her notebook. The Johnsons had four children. The two boys and the other girl were all considerably older than Leilani. They had left home long ago, and the child on the swing was the elder daughter’s parting gift to her parents. Corky thought to herself that the pattern might very well be in the process of repeating itself. Without expecting to learn much from it, she asked to see Leilani’s room. She didn’t learn much from it. It was remarkably clean, undoubtedly thanks to Mrs. Johnson. The granddaughter shared the room, and there was nothing to indicate Leilani had planned a prolonged absence. A half-dozen photos revealed a rather plain girl, tall (her mother said she was very tall for her age, inches taller than her own five-foot six), carrying at least twenty pounds more than she should have.

  Giving what reassurance she could, Corky left the house with the conviction that at worst, on his return, Stan was going to have a lot of explaining to do to Leilani’s grim-faced father. She figured Leilani would catch her share of hell too, since Corky remembered similar scenes on like occasions from her own wild adolescence.

  The child, still rocking back and forth on her homemade swing, changed Corky’s mind. “Auntie Lele go opihi picking with Stan,” the girl announced, apropos of nothing. Corky immediately had visions of the young people groping around slippery algae-covered rocks hunting for the elusive and precious mollusks. Every year one or more opihi pickers fell victim to the Pacific’s hungry maw. And if that could happen to the old timers who were well aware of the danger from a sudden large wave, what chance would someone like Leilani and Stan have?

  As she pulled away from the curb, the thought occurred to her that that bit of information could help narrow the search. The accessible beaches where the opihi lurked were few. A patrol of the more popular hunting grounds could easily locate an abandoned pickup. As she reached for the phone, the familiar voice of the station operator calling Corky’s number interrupted.

  Following her acknowledgement, there was reassuring news. “Hi, Sarge. That pickup you’re looking for is out at the airport, in the parking lot. Patrol Seven just called it in.”

  “Thanks. Tell him to wait, unless he’s got something more pressing to do. I’ll swing by there on my way back to the station.”

  Jerry Lance, the patrol car driver, waved her over to the end of the parking lot. “I don’t think it’s locked,” he said. “I didn’t try it.”

  Corky smiled to herself at the thought that Jerry was always careful to follow regulations, even though this was one time when it hardly seemed necessary to do so. Or so she thought.

  The pickup was a dilapidated Chevy of indeterminate age, heavily pockmarked with what the high school car crowd referred to as Hawaii Rot—the inevitable result of metal exposed to the island’s salt air. Though she didn’t check, Corky was quite willing to accept Mr. Johnson’s word that it lacked a muffler.

  To show Jerry she was as concerned about regulations as he was, she used a handkerchief-covered hand to carefully try the door. Jerry had been right, it was unlocked. He was also right about following regulations. The dirty gray seatback and cushion had a large, fresh stain. To Corky’s practiced eye, it was clearly blood. The disappearance of Leilani Johnson had now moved up to something potentially much more serious.

  The scene of crime people moved in quickly. Once they’d finished, Corky supervised the towing of the vehicle to the police warehouse and then went off to report to Hank.

  The lieutenant was waiting. He pushed two folders across to Corky as she settled back into the garage-sale armchair serving as office furniture.

  “Fast work,” she commented, leafing through the file on Stanley Nobriga. “Assault, narcotics, illegal possession of firearms, contempt of court, abuse of a family member. . .he’s covered a lot of ground in his twenty-two years. No prison time, though. How come?”

  “Plea bargain. He was in with two others on the assault charge. He copped first.” Hank picked up a couple of other files. “When you’re through with those two, take a look at the two who got time. Kelvin Amaral and Shelby Andrade. Amaral got out about a month ago. Andrade was just released from Kalani last week. I think this is serious enough
for us to send someone out to find out what they’ve been up to.”

  Corky nodded absentmindedly, having become engrossed in Leilani’s file. “Hell, Hank, she hasn’t exactly been sitting still during her fifteen years, either. Two runaways when she was thirteen. Fights at school. Truancy.”

  Hank nodded agreement. “She was in trouble and headed for a lot more.”

  “Here’s something from her school health record. Blood group AB plus. That’s not all that common. Any bets about the type from the pickup?”

  Hank checked his watch. “I’ve got the lab on it. They should be back with blood type any minute now. DNA will take a lot longer, of course, so. . .”

  Corky held up her hand as she reached for the other two folders. “I know. Back to her room. There should be hair samples around that can give us a match. We already have her fingerprints—but fingerprints won’t help much. The pickup’s bound to have hers and Stan’s all over it.

  “And maybe others,” Corky added, mostly to herself.

  “I’m moving this from missing to possible homicide,” Hank said. “We’ll get all the ID together. Both Leilani and Stan have tattoos. His should be a great identifier. . .a snake around his neck. Have someone check the airport personnel to see if either of them were seen boarding. Make sure they check both shifts. And ask around about Amaral and Andrade.”

  As Corky was leaving, he added, “Most of the lab info should be here by four.”

  “Fine. I’ll be back from the Johnson’s by then.”

  “No need for them to know about the bloodstain. Not yet, at least.”

  Corky felt annoyance at the too obvious advice, but said nothing.

  The four o’clock meeting produced few surprises. The blood was AB positive, The pickup, inside and out, was covered with fingerprints, the clearly-recent ones belonging to Leilani and Stan.