*** The wind had begun to scream through the overhead wires strung along the poles, and it howled its way out to the various boat slips. Rain was already coming down in torrents which were being whipped by the wind. In spite of the double breakwater, the swells made the small boats rise and fall like tethered scraps of paper. A second patrol car pulled up in front of the marina office. The radio in Hank's car kept crackling with messages from the helicopter. “I'm going to have to come in. Visibility's zero.”
Hank knew there was nothing to be done for it. He couldn't look at Sid. In the distance they could hear the wail of an ambulance siren, interrupted by its own piercing whistle as it raced through the streets of Napua.
It was Corky who reacted to the sound. Reaching for the radio of the newly arrived patrol car, she asked the desk sergeant to check with the hospital. “I can't get through,” was his answer. “I'm going to try the ambulance frequency.”
Moments later he was back again. Both Hank and Sid had come over to the car to listen. “They're going to the Fenton Project. Someone called who can barely speak English. It's some kind of boat accident.”
Hank said, “Let's go. It may be nothing, but there isn't anything we can do standing around here.” In a moment he had given the patrolman in the second car instructions to wait at the marina for the possible return of Harlan's boat, and the three of them piled into Hank's car.
The security man shook his head as he watched the patrol car screeching and skidding out of the parking lot, light flashing, siren blaring.
*** Kay was wide awake by the time the ambulance pulled into the emergency entrance, and her first thought as they pulled the stretcher out was how nice it was to see Sid again. She grinned, tried to open her swollen left eye, and said, “Hi.” The straps holding her to the stretcher kept her from raising her arm except at the elbow. Sid reached for her hand. The tears were streaming down his face, mixing with the water falling from his rain drenched hair. His mouth formed words, but nothing came out. Then they wheeled her into the emergency room.
*** Sid was waiting impatiently for some word from the room, when Corky and Hank came in. Corky was reassuring. “I'm sure she's OK. You can tell pretty quick if someone's been badly hurt.”
“The crowd at the beach said she came to, almost right away,” Hank added in further encouragement.
“Who were they?” Sid asked, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief. “ Bunch of German college students. Only one of them could talk any kind of decent English, but it was enough to let me know they probably need medical attention too after what happened. They'd set their tent up on the beach, but the weather was getting so bad they were afraid to stay there. So they were busy taking stuff down when Harlan's boat came roaring in on a big wave. I went out to see it, and it's sitting some twenty feet up on the sand with a big gash in the side.
“ The blonde girl who was telling me about it said they were 'thunder and struck' by what they saw. I guess they couldn't believe their eyes. Finally, someone got their courage up enough to go up to it and look over the side. That's when they saw Kay crumpled up against the cabin wall, moaning and groaning, with her hands tied behind her back. She must have crashed against the bulkhead when the boat roared onto the beach. They untied her. By then she was conscious but pretty rocky. Luckily they had a cell phone and enough sense to call 911. By the time the ambulance got there, Kay was sitting up and making sense. So I'm sure she can't be too badly hurt.”
Shortly after Hank finished his description of the event at the beach, the attending doctor came out of the emergency room. “Hi,” the doctor said, “I'm Mary Akioka. I thought I'd better report back to you since I know you want to hear the latest. She's in no danger. There's the possibility of a slight concussion, so we'll keep her overnight and monitor her. Otherwise she's just a mass of cuts and bruises.”
Sid heaved a sigh. “Can we see her?”
“Sure. We'll be wheeling her out in a minute, but you'd better talk fast if you want to say anything to her. I just gave her a heavy sedative.” Kay looked up from under a right eyelid which was already beginning to droop. A bandage was taped to the side of her forehead, and her left eye was swollen and tightly shut. She broke into a grin, then grimaced at the pain it caused. The three solemn faces looking down at her had struck her as being especially funny.
“ What's wrong with you people?” she asked.“You act like you're at a funeral.” She paused, closed her good eye and added in a low voice which trailed away, “It damn near was one.”
Chapter 23
Kay insisted on going to work after only one day at home, even though her ribs still ached, and the bruises still stood out on her face. The swelling had gone down around her eye, and the most obvious memento of the night of terror was an oversized bandage on her left temple.
“At home, the cats were using me as a playground,” she explained to her office mates. “It's a lot more restful right here.”
Craig had seen to it Kay's desk had a dozen red roses on it. “They beat calla lilies all to hell,” she said to the glowing Craig, as she gave him a kiss on the cheek. Leilani, Qual, Laura and Craig crowded around her, bombarding her with questions. “Guess I'd better start at the beginning. Sid's heard it all, already, but since he's told me at some length how dumb I was, maybe he'll refrain from commenting this time.” She looked fondly over at Sid who was sitting on the edge of Leilani's desk.
“Let's adjourn to the conference room,” he said. “You should be resting as much as possible.”
Kay laughed. “It was almost worth it all just to have Sid so attentive and concerned.”
When they'd settled around the conference table, Qual asked, “What tipped you off?” Kay winced at the memory the phrase conjured up. “Patricia did. At first I couldn't believe what she was saying, how she actually saw blood on Wayne's sleeve, before the elevator doors opened. Even after I'd gone over it several times with her, it was just hard to accept it. It didn't make any sense. That's when I decided to check her story against those of the other witnesses.
“ Once I started checking, there wasn't much question but she was the most accurate one of all. That businessman from the Mainland was by far the worst. He fouled me up from the beginning. He fouled Hank and Corky up too. We believed Laurence Quincy when he said the elevator was at the fourth floor when he got there. It wasn't. He overheard Wayne say that, and he just went along with it. If any of us had had the least suspicion to begin with that Wayne had somehow killed Anton on the elevator and then gotten down to the lobby to greet him, it would have been just a matter of time before one of us solved the mystery.
“ The notion the elevator was stopped at the fourth floor, while people were waiting in the lobby, and then moved down to the third, completely squelched my suspicion. I didn't really question this part of Laurence Quincy's testimony until I began to see how really bad a witness he was. It was then I realized the elevator had never been anywhere but at the third floor while Wayne and the others were waiting for it.
Sid broke in. “The worst of it is that while we were all nodding in agreement and saying how bad a witness Laurence Quincy was, we still kept right on accepting most of what he said at face value.”
Kay nodded in agreement. “Once I began to seriously question his story, it became obvious there were all sorts of holes in it. Then, once I was certain Patricia was not only right, but a hundred per cent accurate, all I had to do was to figure out how Wayne could have killed Anton and been there on the first floor to see him come stumbling out of the elevator with a knife in his chest.”
“How did you figure it out?” Sid asked. “You never did tell me.” “ I should have told you, since you're the one who's responsible for my finding the answer. As soon as I realized Wayne had done the killing, all on his own, I came up with all sorts of complex explanations for how he accomplished it. I remembered Corky mentioning the possibility of programming the elevator to stop at the right floors, and I worked the possibility for all it wa
s worth. Then the answer came, the simplest answer imaginable. When I was at the meeting of the League, the lieutenant governor knocked one of her charts to the floor. That reminded me of Sid's posters, which he tries so often and so unsuccessfully to put up on our walls with transparent tape. I knew then tape was the answer, because it doesn't work.”
It was Craig's turn to express astonishment. “How could something which doesn't work explain anything?” “ As I said, it's simple. Harlan needed something to hold down the open-door button long enough for him to get from the third floor, via the service elevator, down to the basement parking lot, then back up to the first floor where there was bound to be at least the security man in the lobby to give him an alibi. Transparent tape was the answer. He undoubtedly tried different kinds and different lengths several times, and long before the killing. Since it was a pressure button with a spring behind it, he taped it down with a piece of tape he knew would hold it for a few minutes.
“ The timing wasn't terribly crucial. It had to hold for only about a minute or so. If it hung on too long, he could just have stood there and finally complained to the security man about the elevator. He probably had a dozen other contingency plans, too. The only thing he had to do was to be sure to remove the tape before anyone saw it. He was poised, ready to pull out the stop button just as soon as the elevator door opened up. He figure he could rush in and, while pulling out the stop button, just yank the tape off of the opendoor button at the same time. That's why he was standing right in front of the door and why Anton almost fell on him. Anton coming out the way he did must have been quite a shock.”
“Talk about wild planning,” Laura said. “He must have had the elevator stunt figured out weeks ahead of time.” “ Months, actually. The fire at the Nikko Arms gave him the idea. With floors two and three empty on weekends, he knew he could use those unused floors to advantage. He made the appointment with poor foolish Anton, for twelve, not twelve-fifteen. He met Anton shortly after twelve in his apartment. He even offered him a beer, and Anton accepted itthough he knew it would make him sickjust to please Wayne. Then Wayne rode down to the third floor with Anton, probably telling Anton they could look at the possible paint job there.
“ When Wayne saw the floor was empty, as he fully expected it would be, he tapped Anton on the head the way he did me, then pulled out the stop button. I guess that, as an ex-Military Policeman, he knew just how hard to hit so it hardly caused a bruise. He probably had a sap on him for just that purpose. With Anton floored, he stabbed him, then turned around, taped down the open door button, pushed the stop button back in, and headed for the service elevator. He probably cursed the blood on his sleeve, but figured on being the first to get to the corpse and so explain away the blood that way.”
Craig was brimming over with questions. “This all sounds crazy. What guarantee did he have the elevator would be empty when it stopped for him and Anton on the fourth floor.”
Kay shrugged. “I'm sure he had a box full of contingency plans. I can see him now, with that calm voice of his, saying, 'Wait a minute Anton, I have something I forgot back in my apartment.' And he'd wave the elevator on. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he wouldn't actually have enjoyed something like that. He would have delighted in prolonging the whole killing so he could relish what he planned on doing.”
Craig shuddered, then asked,“But how did he prop Anton up against the elevator door?” “ He didn't. That was something which went wrong, and then it turned out to be more right than wrong for his purposes. Anton wasn't completely dead and Wayne didn't realize it. Anton must have staggered up just as the elevator started moving again. You can see why Wayne let out a yell when Anton came out of the elevator. As I said, it gave him a diamond-hard alibi, especially after he got the unconscious help of our Binghamton motel owner.”
“All our concern about a hit man was Harlan's doing,” Qual said, shaking his head in disgust at himself. “ Right! That's why he hired us in the first place. He kept dragging this red herring in front of us and in front of Hank. He had us absolutely convinced from the outset he couldn't have done it himself, and he kept reinforcing the belief by hinting at a hired killer. From his viewpoint, he couldn't ask for anything better than to have all of us looking for a hired killer who didn't exist.
“ Again, what went wrong worked in his favor. His earlier attempt to hire a hit man surfaced and convinced us more than ever there was a hired killer around somewhere. There's no way of knowing if Wayne was really serious about hiring Surrette, since both parties are dead. The blackmail note did a beautiful job of reinforcing for Wayne. I'm quite certain it wasn't planned, either. My guess is it was Surrette who wrote it. The note just made it easier for Wayne to keep us chasing hired killers when we should have been looking directly at him.
“ I'm also convinced Wayne would have been only too happy to have the police find Surrette and to have them interrogate him. If Surrette admitted to the conversation with Wayne, it would just have kept the police hunting for a non-existent hit man.”
“What made you start giving up on the hired killer,” Laura asked. “ A lot of little things. But if it hadn't been for Patricia, I never would have been certain, because a lot of Wayne's suspicious behavior was also explainable in terms of his having hired a killer. The business deal with Norman Kurohara indicated Wayne had wanted badly to stay at the Nikko Arms. I couldn't figure out why, though. It meant nothing by itself, even though he didn't need to make the deal if he was going to hire a hit man.
“ The discrepancy in the time Anton had on his pad, and the one Wayne claimed was the actual appointment time, was closer to being direct evidence there was no hit man. I never for one moment believed Wayne's explanation for the time difference. On the other hand, I couldn't see why he'd set up an earlier appointment with Anton than he admitted to. That's when it dawned on me that, for some reason, it was important for him to have Anton there at twelve while he, himself, was still presumably at the office. I put it all together with what Qual found out from the manager of Elima Real Estate, and that was how Wayne always wanted to do things himself.
“ That began to explain other mysteries. Those loose keys in Anton's pocket were given to him by Wayne. Again, I'm only guessing, but I think he told Anton to use the service elevator to see how it would work for carrying paint equipment up to the second and third floors. The key to the apartment was to get Anton out of sight at noon. Wayne undoubtedly told him he'd be late, and for Anton to 'go right in.' Wayne entered the apartment at about five minutes after twelve. He probably invited Anton to have a beer while he, himself, went into the kitchen and slipped the butcher knife into his jacket. Then they went off to see the third floor.”
“ Terrific,” Qual chimed in. “I assumed Wayne had given Anton those keys, and came to exactly the conclusion Wayne wanted me to come tothat it was part of the set up for the hired killer. I had visions of Wayne telling Anton, 'Here are some keys…I may be late…Just go into the apartment and help yourself to a beer,' at the same time having hired a hit man to wait for Anton in the apartment. Damn, but he was clever.”
“But, really,” Craig interjected, “why would he have been so eager to kill Anton? The marriage was over and done with.” “ Part of the reason was Wayne never forgot anythingor forgave it. His ex-wife was emphatic about Wayne's unforgiveness. Even more important was how he'd contracted hepatitis B and was convinced he'd gotten it from Anton via Rissa. Hank got confirmation yesterday from Wayne's doctor. Wayne did have hepatitis. It was a mild case, but the doctor told Wayne it could get a lot worse and was definitely life threatening. Wayne knew enough about it to know he was now at serious risk of coming down with liver cancer, and all because of Anton. If he was mad at Anton before, he was now insane with rage against him. So he worked out an almost perfect scheme for killing him.”
“How did he expect to get away with killing you?” Laura asked. “ I'm not sure he did, or cared whether he got away with it or not. In any case, it wouldn't have
been easy to prove he had killed me, or even that I was dead, if my body was six-thousand feet down at the bottom of the Pacificeven if Hank and Sid had been waiting for him when he came back to the marina.”
“Isn't there a security man at the marina?” Craig asked. “How did Wayne get you into his boat past the guard?” “ I can answer that,” Sid said. “Wayne must have made a phone call from his cell or some nearby booth and just let the receiver hang. There's a hooter on the marina phone, so he knew the security man would go back to the office to answer it. It was easy then for him to get to the boat with Kay thrown over his shoulder.”
Kay grimaced. “I'm sure a lot of my bruises came from his tossing me into the boat. He wasn't exactly concerned about my welfare. The biggest mistake I made was in assuming Anton's killer was completely rational. Once I figured out Wayne wasn't, how over and over again he was admitting to really strange feelings, and how other people had spotted them in him too, I knew he was the killer. But it didn't do me a bit of good to know that, since I kept thinking in terms of a hit man right up to the last day. No matter how twisted his motivations may have been, there's no denying Wayne was extremely clever.”
“ He couldn't have been all that clever,” Craig broke in. “After all, you were his attorney and you've defended plenty of clients you knew were guiltywho even confessed to you they were. And all of you have told me over and over again you can't betray a client's confidence.”
Laura was the one who answered Craig's question. “He tried to kill Kay because he was paranoid. We were told he was, over and over again, but we just ignored the signs. He would never have believed an attorney wouldn't go turning all the evidence over to the prosecutor. So, when he realized Kay knew he was the killer and knew how he'd done the killing, the only think he could think of was to get rid of her. He was paranoid, but he was damn clever.”
Qual agreed.“He did everything he could to cast suspicion on himself, knowing we'd never go along with it. Using his own butcher knife was mad genius.”
The Yoshinobu Mysteries: Volume 2 Page 32