kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller)

by Chesler, Rick

  “Still available?” Tara asked.

  “Yes, unbelievably, it still is!”

  “I'll just have a look around,” Tara said. She walked out toward the lanai, or balcony, to escape the hard-sell. The place was a small, partly furnished studio condo. Tara had seen all of it and was getting ready to leave when the Asian smoker from the lobby walked in. He ignored the real estate agent's attempt at pleasantries or information by breezing past her and walking directly out to the lanai. The man wore casual business attire, was well groomed, and, if not for his brusque attitude, wouldn't have attracted undue attention.

  He went to the rail to take in the incredible view from the 43rd floor—the tallest building in Waikiki, the realtor was used to boasting. The distinctive outline of the Diamond Head extinct volcano lay before them as if one could walk right into it. To the right lay the glorious panorama of Waikiki Beach and the ocean beyond, transitioning in color from an aquamarine near shore to the deep, royal blue of the open ocean, various boats and watercraft dotting its surface. To the left lay a rain forested mountain range, its tops obscured by clouds. Overhanging everything was a brown haze that some visitors mistook for smog, although its source was a natural one: the sulfur dioxide gas emitted from the active Kilauea volcano on the Big Island, over a hundred miles away.

  Tara saw the realtor give an irritated huff at being ignored, before pursuing the man out onto the lanai. On occasion the realtors of high-floor units had to deal with tourists who only wanted entry in order to take pictures of the breath-taking views.

  The man on the balcony, however, possessed no camera. He had placed both hands on the rail and was now rocking back and forth.

  “Excuse me, sir, did you have any questions about the unit?” the realtor asked. The man ignored her and continued his trance-like rocking.

  Tara looked at the man's face and knew something was wrong. He was staring ahead but seeing nothing, eyes brimming with tears as he flexed his biceps against the waist-high rail. He wore what Tara judged to be a moderately expensive outfit—light suit jacket, silk shirt without a tie, slacks and brown leather loafers. A jeweled lapel pin was affixed to the jacket.

  “Are you feeling alright, sir?” Tara addressed the man from the opposite end of the ten-foot wide lanai.

  The man tossed his head back and uttered a guttural yell. He flexed his legs.

  Tara knew she had to get him away from the edge. She lunged toward him, hands outstretched, grabbing his sport coat just as he jumped over the rail. She clutched the fabric with both hands, wincing as her own shoulders slammed against the rail while the realtor shrieked nonsensically behind her.

  “Mrs. Garrish, get building security up here. Tell them to call 911. Now!”

  If the realtor was surprised that Tara knew her name, she didn't have time to show it. The woman had her cell-phone out and was fumbling with the buttons while Tara gripped the man's jacket as he dangled over the side of the lanai, 43 floors above a busy sidewalk.

  “I want to die!” the man said in accented English. He began kicking against the side of the balcony while working an arm free of the jacket. “You must let me die!”

  Tara tightened her grip on the man's jacket—all that was holding him up. “No! You could hit someone else on the ground. Let me help you up.”

  “They will kill my family if I do not kill myself. My death will allow good lives for my children.” The man started to worm his remaining arm free of the jacket. Tara looked into his eyes, where equal parts fear and determination stared back at her. She guessed his age to be in the neighborhood of forty, about ten years older than herself.

  “Who will?” the investigator in Tara couldn't help but ask. She felt her grip on the man began to slip away. She called over her shoulder for help. Heard the trammel of approaching footsteps.

  Then the man slid his arm from the jacket and fell away. Tara gasped, spellbound, as gravity did its work. His form seemed to shrink as it plummeted past floors. She was dimly aware of people screaming somewhere behind her—a small crowd had gathered in time to see the man plunge.

  “Look out!” she called to the people milling about like ants on the sidewalk below, but her warning was lost in the breeze at this great height.

  The man's body impacted an open patch of concrete with the force of a bomb, his bone and blood exploding up from the pavement like a human frag grenade. A woman looked over the lanai railing to witness the person’s fate and promptly slumped to the floor in a self-controlled faint.

  An eerie silence ensued on the balcony during which Tara could hear oblivious vacationers partying on another unit's lanai. Then, “What happened? Why'd he jump?” people were asking. Tara realized she was still staring over the rail, holding the man's jacket. She stepped back from the rail and examined the dead man's clothing. Rifling through the pockets, she turned up an advertisement for this unit and one other, on the 29th floor of a different building in Waikiki, but with an open house date for the following Sunday. He'd looked for a high-floor open house just so he could come up and jump. How bad could his problems have been? Perhaps police would find his ID on what was left of the clothes he still wore, Tara thought.

  Then she saw something on the jacket catch sunlight. The lapel pin: a gold form in the shape of some carp-like fish, its large scales depicted with encrusted rubies. Tara was no gemologist, but she was a woman, and she recognized a nice piece of jewelry when she saw one. This was not a costume piece. He talked about providing for his family, yet left behind a valuable piece of jewelry. Stolen?

  As she turned to go back inside, Tara neatly folded the dead man's jacket in preparation for handing it to the police. When she walked back into the condo, an elderly Asian woman who had been looking at the unit pointed at the lapel pin.

  “That was his jacket, the man who jumped, right?”

  “Yes, I'm holding it for police,” Tara said, thinking she was about to insinuate that Tara was attempting to walk off with the pin.

  “It seems the dragonfish did not live up to its name.”

  “Pardon?”

  The woman pointed at the pin. “This fish— Chinese call it the dragonfish, because of their big shiny scales. They are a common art object in my country, China. Red ones, especially, are thought to bring good luck.”

  “So much for that.”

  The woman shrugged. “Perhaps this dragon's luck is meant for someone else.”

  … CGGA3TTCA...

  Clouds of sand mingled with tendrils of blood as Dave neared his boss’s corpse. The shock and revulsion of seeing the dead man up close almost made him forget that he still needed to make arrangements for his next breath of air. Only when the body became obscured in sand was Dave startled into action.

  That Spare Air thing…

  Whenever he was on the boat, Dave had noticed that Johnson always had a small, yellow emergency air canister tucked into his waistband, semi-concealed under his loose fitting Hawaiian shirts. Dave had guessed that the old man couldn’t swim, and so carried the device as a precaution. He hadn’t wanted to embarrass his new boss if that was the case, so Dave had never asked about it.

  Dave had hoped for many things in his life—please let me pass this class, please let me get a date with this girl, please let me get this job—but he had never, ever hoped for anything so much as this moment, when he prayed with every fiber of his being that the little yellow bottle of air would still be tucked into old Johnson’s waistband.

  His hand was reaching out to the body…touching it…the sand cloud reducing his visibility to near zero, so that he couldn’t tell which part of the dead body his hands were on.

  The urge to breathe was painful now. Dave knew that the first craving was only a warning—that the human body could endure considerably more than what the brain said was enough. But if there was no air source here, he would not have enough time. There were biological limits which could not be exceeded, physical thresholds that could not be crossed.

  Dave fanned at
the corpse with one hand, hoping to push suspended sand out of the way and gain water clarity. After a moment he saw a swatch of Johnson’s red shorts—purple now due to the color filtering at depth.

  He grabbed the shorts with one hand and used his other hand to feel along the waistband.

  Nothing.

  Think!

  Dave knew that the emergency air source was sold with a holster that could be strapped to a calf or thigh. He ran his hands along the length of Johnson’s legs.

  Denied, again!

  True panic welled up within the marine biologist. The first sense of, This time I’ve really gotten myself into something I can’t get out of…

  He gripped at one of his boots, its tightness making him want to scream. It would probably take less than a minute to get out of it, but he did not have even thirty seconds per boot plus the ascent time.

  How could I ever have agreed to this?

  He needed to breathe, yet was still no closer to the surface.

  And then the water cleared some more, and he saw it.

  A flash of yellow.

  Clutched in Johnson’s right hand was the slender yellow cylinder that right now represented nothing less to Dave than life itself.

  Of course! If Johnson had the Spare Air he would have tried to use it himself as long as he was alive, Dave thought as he scrambled for the life-giving object.

  But this brought up a new fear: What if Johnson had already sucked all the air from the damn thing?

  Dave knew the reputation that the Spare Air’s had: better than nothing in shallow water situations, but don’t take it too seriously. Filled to capacity at this depth, the little bottle would only provide about three or four breaths of air.

  But what he wouldn’t give for even one of those now…

  He had a few more seconds before his body lost all control…

  He was prying the gas container loose from Johnson’s hand…Literally from his cold, dead hand, Dave somehow managed to think through the fog of his suffering.

  And then he had it.

  He brought it to his lips.

  He had to rip the full facemask part of the way off of his face to be able to insert the Spare Air’s mouthpiece between his lips, which caused the mask to flood. But he didn’t care about being able to see.

  Please let it have at least one breath.

  Dave held the device firmly in his mouth and inhaled.

  … CGAC4CGGC...

  Los Angeles International Airport

  6:57 A.M. local time, Sunday, June 14

  “There hasn’t been a trace of him for three months, Kristen. He’s gone. At some point you’ve got to accept it.”

  “He’s missing, Lance. Not gone. Please observe the distinction,” his twin sister said.

  Lance let out an exaggerated sigh as he resigned himself to the long check-in line leading to the Hawaiian Air counter. The din of LAX in full swing for the summer travel season assaulted his senses. People everywhere, loudspeakers blaring. He ran a hand through his thick head of short, curly brown hair, as if massaging away the pain of what he was about to say.

  “Hey, I know you’re the smart one, you’re the successful one, you’re the one Dad would put in charge of looking for him if he had a choice, but remember that I’m doing the best I can, and that I think we’re wasting our time. Honolulu police have called off their search,” Lance said coldly.

  “So what? That just means they couldn’t find him within the limited allotment of resources they have to operate with. They admit that they don’t actually know what happened to him. And the FBI case is still open, at least for another day or two.”

  Lance rolled the steel blue eyes that he knew women found so attractive.

  “And spare me the pity trip,” Kristen continued. “Is it my fault you got caught cheating on your wife? That your personal life has gotten in the way of professional success? But forget about all that for now, Lance. In two more days, Dad is going to be declared legally dead. This trip is our last chance to try and do something for him while he’s still...alive,” she finished, lower lip trembling, visibly upset.

  “That’s fine, Kristen,” Lance said, seeing that his suggestion that their father might not be found was too much for her. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up too much. There aren’t many leads in his case.”

  Kristen whirled around to face him as the line came to a halt. “I hope you don’t think I’m that stupid, Lance. You’re only coming with me—and on my dime, at that—to keep up appearances until you get your fair share of the estate. That’s the only hypothesis that fits your behavior.”

  Lance made a spitting noise. “Hypothesis? Will you listen to yourself?” His sister reminded him so much of their missing father. Ever the scientist, only believing in what she could prove through empirical evidence or direct observation.

  A professor of microbiology at a California State University, Kristen had achieved neither the level of fame of their esteemed father, nor the level of zeros in his bank account. Not many people had, however, and at twenty-eight, she was already much more established than Lance, both career-wise and financially. He knew that most of her paychecks had been funneled into safe conservative investments. She’d much rather spend an evening alone peering into a microscope than a night out on the town with the girls, Lance knew. He, meanwhile, had lost his house, car and what little savings he’d managed to accumulate to his wife in the divorce.

  And so here he was, in the distasteful position of having the untimely demise of their wealthy father represent the only prospect of money anytime soon.

  Lance continued to address his sister. “What is it that you hope to accomplish over there? You know something that the police, the FBI and Dad’s business partners don’t?” He grudgingly used his foot to slide his designer suitcase, bought during better times with credit cards he was now unable to pay back, a few inches forward on the floor.

  “Look, Lance, you don’t have to go with me. Stay here if you want.”

  “I can’t let my little sister go traipsing off to Hawaii to look for our missing father alone. Halfway to Asia…”

  They both knew that was a joke. She was the one who had offered to pay for both of their expenses. It was at Kristen’s insistence that they venture out to look for their father, to at least make a token appearance in the last city he was known to have visited before dropping off the face of the Earth. Lance’s struggling software sales business, combined with steep alimony and child support payments every month to his ex-wife, meant that he could not have afforded the cost of the Hawaii trip on his own.

  Kristen said nothing. She only narrowed her eyes at him while hefting the small backpack that was her only piece of luggage before following the line a few steps closer to the counter.

  “Besides,” Lance pressed, “if you had someone else to go with you, like maybe a boyfriend or a husband…then maybe I wouldn’t feel the need to accompany you.”

  Kristen felt her cheeks burn. Damn her brother. He always had to remind her of the one area of her life that wasn’t going so well. Wasn’t going at all, she forced herself to admit.

  Kristen’s professional success had come at a price. Throughout college she had spent her time studying, working challenging intern positions, and writing theses. Although not unattractive, her mousy appearance—stringy, shoulder-length brown hair and average figure which was never clothed in the latest fashions—had not exactly been a guy magnet in college. Her social life had primarily revolved around study sessions with fellow overachievers from her science classes. She was embarrassed to admit that at the age of twenty-eight, she had still had only one serious boyfriend. And that relationship had ended years ago when she had switched schools to begin her PhD, the young man deciding to finish out his degree at Berkeley, where they’d met.

  The check-in line moved again. A gaggle of tourists ahead of them realized they were in the wrong line and left, and Kristen was walking up to the counter. She turned around to face
Lance as a ticket agent called for her to step up.

  “Last chance for a free, semi-working Hawaiian vacation, brother. You coming?”

  … TTGG5TTCA...

  10:01 A.M., FBI Field Office, Honolulu

  Tara shut the door to her small but blessedly private office. After years of government cubicles, being assigned a private workspace was not only a creature comfort, but a clear indication that she was moving up. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Tara Shores, the nameplate read.

  Tara had come here immediately after reporting the jumper to police. They had blocked off the street to traffic and sheeted what was left of the body, telling her that the man was no longer even remotely recognizable and that most of his teeth had been shattered, making identification by dental records impossible. They would try DNA, but that would take a while. In the meantime, two tourists who were close enough to the impact zone to be splattered with the jumper's blood were threatening to sue the hotel, the security company that contracted with the hotel, the real estate company selling the unit, and the city of Honolulu. Tara had turned over the jacket and the lapel pin to the cops and wished them luck.

  It was a sad fact that suicide jumpers were not uncommon in Waikiki—it happened at least once or twice a year, Tara knew, sometimes more. A month after she'd arrived a couple had jumped from a 19th floor lanai together. Suicide pact? A fight gone horribly wrong? It was never determined. But these deaths almost never made the local news, and hundreds of people would be trooping over the dried bloodstains the next day on the way to the beach, Tara thought. The party must go on.

  She kicked her shoes off, sat behind her desk and put her head in her hands. She couldn't shake the image of the Asian man falling to his death. Those eyes. Her fellow agents were unsympathetic, not that she expected otherwise.