by Rob Swigart
“Now, Mr. Welter. You have said that Mr. Linz was involved with the Japanese men in some business matter unrelated to Kapuna Shores. Is there anything you could tell us that would clarify that relationship?”
“Grant,” he said. “Call me Grant, everyone does, it’s my name. But you know that.” Welter sat forward, then slumped in embarrassment. After a few moments he looked up. “No,” he said. “No, I really don’t know any more about it. I work for Kapuna Shores. I live here, on the island, so they hired me. You see, I retired some years back, health problems, but when I got this opportunity, well, I wanted to do something useful, and the house, I could live in the house, you see. It’s a lovely place, the old Karlson Plantation place, with wonderful art. It seemed ideal. But I don’t… didn’t see Mr. Linz often, you understand.”
“All right, Grant,” Cobb said gently. “Tell me, in your opinion, why would someone want to kill Victor Linz?”
“Kill him? He’s dead, I know, he died. But I don’t know anything about it. I can’t imagine.”
Handel leaned against an ancient green metal file cabinet watching Welter. Cobb glanced at him and he shook his head. If the man was a cold-blooded murderer, he was putting on a good act.
“You’re an officer of the Kapuna Shores Development Corporation, is that correct?” Cobb asked.
“Yes. Of course, yes. Kapuna Shores. They wouldn’t let me live in the house if I weren’t an officer. Before I retired I was the chief financial officer of a development company in St. Louis. You see, the position was made for me, it seemed. Then there was some trouble, it’s true.” Welter seemed to brighten a little. “He wanted to change the deeds and everything. It was complicated, and I told him we shouldn’t do it. He was making Franklin a principal. Then Ueda showed up. You don’t think…”
Cobb raised his eyebrows.
Welter subsided again. “No, of course not. I told him it would confuse things, it wouldn’t look right. He wouldn’t listen. And now it’s down. Out there.”
Cobb’s eyebrows remained elevated. Nothing else moved. Overhead, the fluorescent light flickered once. Welter raised his eyes. Then he looked at his hands. His wrists lay against the tops of his knees. He lifted them once; faint damp stains on his trousers slowly faded. Cobb watched the hands, the thin wrists.
“What do you mean, Grant? What’s down?” Cobb asked. The silence was so fragile his voice was wrapped in cotton.
Welter looked at Sergeant Handel, who did not move. Again he looked at the window.
Cobb followed his glance. There was nothing in particular to see. Nothing out of the ordinary. Some clouds, the distant mountains shrouded in mist. The parking lot.
Was Welter looking at the mountains? “What’s down out there, Grant?”
“What? I’m sorry. I was thinking about that satellite. The rumors, there’s something on it, some poison or something. No, Mr. Linz, he was going to make her a principal, put leases, permits, shares in her name. He said that way they could make the right payments without… No, that’s not it, of course not. There were no irregularities. I told him that. It was all arranged.”
Cobb leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Of course, Grant. It was all arranged. Why are you worried about the satellite? The health authorities assure us there is nothing to worry about.”
Welter looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”
“I have the feeling you might know something about the satellite. Something we don’t know.”
“Oh, no, no.” Welter gave a sallow smile. “I didn’t mean that. You’d have to ask Mr. Linz about it. It’s his baby.”
“I see. It was Mr. Linz’s baby. What about Ueda?”
“Ueda? Yes, yes, he came in the day before. I picked them up at Burns Field. They just had business with him, that’s all.”
“That’s all? But the sergeant here told me you said you thought they were involved in something else. Something classified?”
“I don’t know. I was probably wrong. It was Kapuna Shores. Fifty-some condos, tennis courts. Expensive real estate, definitely. They were investors.”
“Why did three men come all the way from Japan just to look at a real estate investment at this time, Grant?”
Welter spread his hands out. Afternoon sun spilled through the slats of Cobb’s now-lowered Levolor blinds, barring Welter’s palms.
“I don’t know. How should I know? I don’t understand them. I don’t understand Mr. Kano, and I don’t understand them. They had jet lag, though, that’s for sure. He was up early, real early. It was the morning Linz was killed. I couldn’t sleep, I have this problem with insomnia. Ueda went out early in the morning and didn’t come back for a couple of hours. He went jogging. In the dark, can you imagine?”
“Jogging? Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
Welter’s eyes darted to the window again, but now the sun shone directly into them and he had to look away. “I didn’t think anything about it. Why should I? He was wearing a jogging suit. He didn’t take the car. Where could he go but around the neighborhood?”
“He could have met someone perhaps, out on the highway. Someone who gave him a gun and drove him to the hotel.”
Welter stared at Cobb for several minutes, his thin mouth working as if he had a ball of indigestible animal fat in there and didn’t know quite how to get rid of it.
Cobb stood up. “Well, Mr. Welter, we needn’t detain you.”
Welter looked surprised. He stood hesitantly, his hands clutching one another. He reached for his briefcase, sitting on Cobb’s desk.
“Did you shoot Victor Linz?” Takamura asked in such a casual velvet tone even Sergeant Handel looked startled.
Welter didn’t seem to hear. “Look, Lieutenant, they came in, the three of them. What did they want? They said they were going to talk to Kano. They said Makeda was worried about his investment. Did they? There was a hitch, they said. All that equipment, they tied it up for hours. He did, Ueda. What kind of a hitch?” He looked up at Cobb. “There was no hitch. I told them that. They said there was a hitch, but I told them it was all taken care of. They came in, stayed the night, talked to Kano. They used the computer links, but they wouldn’t go through Kapuna Shores links, they used Matsushima in Oahu. I’m sure you know all this. It’s common knowledge some people didn’t want them to build there. Some kind of garbage heap there, a very valuable garbage heap!”
Cobb was still standing, looking down at the man, whose hands left damp spots on the leather of his briefcase. “What are you afraid of, Grant?” he asked.
There was no answer.
“Where are Mr. Ueda and the others now?”
Welter shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“All right, you can go. You said you need to go over to the Kapuna Shores Development offices. We may need to talk to you again. We can find you there for the next two or three hours, is that correct?” Welter nodded. His hands finally wrapped themselves around the handle of his case. He stood and moved to the door. It closed behind him.
Cobb shook his head and sat down abruptly. “Ouch!” he shouted, standing up again.
Handel straightened in alarm. “What is it?”
“Damn gun,” Cobb said, standing and pulling the holster around to the side. “I sat on it.” He rubbed his back. “Well, what do you think?”
“What’s to think? He’s upset about something, but he sure wasn’t too helpful, was he?”
Again Cobb’s eyebrows went up. “I thought he was rather informative.”
“How do you mean, he was informative?”
“Well,” Cobb began, “let’s put it this way. He has for one thing given us another lead to investigate. Mr. Linz was involved in something more than property development. Something involving his son Peter, a person even more evasive than Mr. Welter, though considerably more poised. It was something, as you reported Mr. Welter saying, that was probably classified. But what does that mean, really? Does it mean classified by the go
vernment, or by the company for which they work? What we are getting, from everyone involved here, are more questions than answers. Yet, ‘Stone wall surround us. But we circle about seeking loophole. Moment of discovery will come.’ Yes, he was informative. What of your own legwork?”
“I thought I might check with the Coast Guard and the people in the tower at the airport. Trying to track the Japanese.”
“Good.”
“I found Welter at the house this morning— and it’s a fabulous house, Lieutenant— just staring out the window at this huge garden in back.”
“He knows something, for sure, Sergeant.”
Handel nodded. “Right,” he said. “But what? Well, I’ll go do a little checking.”
After the door had closed behind him a strange calm settled over the office. The sounds of footsteps in the hall, the clattering of the teletype machine in the squad room at the end, the buzzing of telephones, all seemed to cease. Even the traffic noise from Rice Street was suspended.
Cobb looked at his fingers. What did he have?
“A dead man,” he said, folding down his thumb and speaking into a Pearl microcassette recorder. “That’s victim. Suspects include: a lover, a son; one, Kano, two, Welter, three, Ueda, all business partners, with assistants; an ex-wife in Palm Springs; enemies of development; friends of development. For a motive we have changes in financial arrangements. Possibly we have betrayal of trust with the Japanese investors, betrayal of family by the victim, greed by business associates. Opportunity: the son was not on the island at the time, or was he? He says he wasn’t, says he flew in. We can check this, but anyone can buy a commuter ticket on Aloha or Hawaiian and give any name they want. He could have paid cash. He could still be a suspect. Then there’s Angela. She was in the hotel at the time. Kano is unlikely, but does he have an alibi? Ueda went jogging at the right time. Alibi? This is according to Welter, who says he had insomnia. Welter was up. He had the car keys. Does he have a convincing alibi? No, he does not. ‘Sorry. Alibi have habit of disappearing like hole in water,’ as Charlie said in The Black Camel. His word that he was awake, but still in bed. Linz had an ex-wife in Palm Springs. When telephoned with the news that her ex-husband was dead, she said, quote, Good, unquote. What were the estate arrangements regarding the ex-wife? Would she have a motive? Sure, she would. She would lose alimony with every rearrangement of Linz’s finances in favor of Angela Franklin.”
He pressed the pause button and stared out the window for a time. The bars of light had moved to the far wall, and no longer struck the faded tape on his IN and OUT baskets. The sun was settling toward the mountains, seemingly so far away. The steep slopes of the crater were shrouded, as usual, in cloud. Were those clouds laden with poison as he looked at them?
He released the pause control. “Ueda works for a Japanese corporation called Makeda. Makeda is involved in diversified manufacturing and sales, including food, liquor, pharmaceuticals, and international property management. It appears this last is the connection between Ueda and Linz. Kanzaro Makeda, great grandson of the founder of Makeda, is the president, and a heavy investor in Hawaiian real estate development. Linz was a general partner. Was he planning to cut Makeda out somehow? Makeda found out and sent Ueda here to resolve the difficulty?” He glared at the recorder for a moment, nestled in his palm. Then he said, “Bah,” switched the recorder off and tossed it into his desk drawer. “Getting nowhere,” he said to himself. “ ‘We circle about, seeking loophole’.” He stood and closed the slats on his Levolor. The strange calm persisted. Abruptly he turned out the lights and left the office, carefully shaping his porkpie hat to his head.
The weekend desk sergeant said nothing about his hat when he walked past.
Cobb crossed the street to the County Building.
Civil Defense was suddenly very active. Voices rose from the subbasement. Sammy Akeakamai, lounging against a desk chatting with the secretary, his perpetual toothpick chewed to shreds between his blunt teeth, looked up when Cobb entered. “Hey, boss,” he said. He shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe it. After starts and stops, starts and stops, all hell is breaking loose.”
“Oh?”
Sammy grinned. “Someone at the hospital let it out that there are four victims in coma from some kind of poison from the satellite. Panic seems to be developing nicely along traditional lines. The tourists are leaving in droves. His Honor upstairs is in a purple fit. Even the normally unflappable natives seem to be taking special precautions.”
“Oh?” Cobb lifted his eyebrows a fraction higher, having taken precautions himself that morning by sending Kimiko and the children over to Chazz and Patria’s. “Like what?”
“Like leaving,” Sammy said. “You should see the airport.”
“I’ll bet.” He waved as he climbed the stairs. He stood in the sunshine for a moment in the entrance to the County Building. It was an historical landmark designed by Clinton B. Ripley, a Honolulu architect, built in 1913, and the oldest continuously used county building in Hawaii. Cobb was running through the chamber of commerce spiel in his mind when a woman approached him carrying a small girl on her hip.
“Lieutenant Takamura?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you. Are you the person investigating that murder? The policeman at the desk said you were the homicide detective.”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, I don’t know if this is anything, but I thought I ought to talk to you. I mean, I don’t really know if it’s important or not. I wasn’t going to come, but then I saw him again and I thought maybe… I don’t know.” The little girl she put down immediately toddled off to the flowerbed beside the entrance.
She was a pretty woman, tanned and athletic looking. Her dark hair was neatly pinned on the side and fell thickly down her back. The child, too, had dark hair, yet there was something of the girl that suggested California to Cobb, something in the perfect teeth, the open trusting look, the athletic tan.
“I’m Lianne, Lianne Billings. That’s Corinne. We live over in Hanapepe.”
“Do you want to come inside?”
She shook her head.
“OK. What did you want to tell me?”
“Can we sit down over there? Corinne can play.”
When they were seated side by side, gazing out at the nearly empty street, she spoke. Her voice was low and even, her eyes direct and shy at the same time. Cobb nodded gently from time to time as she spoke.
“It’s about a friend of mine,” she said. “At least, I think it’s about him.”
“Go on.”
“I was in the bar at the hotel last night, and I met this man. He seemed so sympathetic, because I had a friend in the hospital. We went for a walk. I didn’t think a lot about it. I mean, I just thought he was being nice, though he did ask some funny questions. But then I saw him again.”
“This is a small island.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I saw him outside my house, early this morning. He was watching.” She tossed her hair to one side, a gesture Cobb found curious. Her hands were thin and tan, and moved all the time.
“What time was this?”
“Six, six-thirty. Corinne was fussy.” She rubbed her palms against the knees of her white jeans.
“Did he try to get in, approach the house, anything like that?”
“No. It’s a subdivision. Houses are close together there. He was on the street, looking at the house. I don’t think he saw me. He was pretending to be looking for something, looking for an address. He’d stopped, looking at my house. I just happened to look out then, and there he was. I’d forgotten about him, really. I mean, he was nice, he seemed sympathetic, not like he was trying to pick me up or anything. He got real curious when I told him about how this friend of mine got sick, and told me about the satellite and all. I got worried, thought I’d better check, so I went to the hospital and he hadn’t changed any, but they said not to worry, his vital signs were OK, so I went home. Then, t
his morning, there he was, the same man I met in the bar. Anyways, I looked out a few minutes later and he was gone.” She paused, as if looking into the distances of memory for the exact shape. “But then I saw him again.”
“You saw him again?” Cobb watched Corinne toddle at the edge of the flowerbed. She squatted with her padded behind in the air, feet spread wide, and tugged at a flower.
Lianne called her. “Corinne, come here, honey. Don’t touch the flowers. Come on, ‘atta girl.”
Corinne shook her head and toddled back to the bench. Lianne reached down and scooped her into her lap. “Today, at the hospital,” she continued. “He was asking questions about my friend: what he had, where he was, how he got it, lots of technical-sounding medical questions. He told me he was a businessman, but he sure sounded like he knew a lot about medicine. I thought it was strange. I came in, and he was standing there talking to the nurse and asking these questions like a doctor so I didn’t even notice till I got close. So then we went up to him, Corinne and me, and said hello, since he was so nice last night, and he gave me the strangest look, like he was really angry. Then he pretended he didn’t know me at all.”
“What was his name?”
“He told me his name was Peter something. I wasn’t really listening, you know. I was worried about… Look, I know this is weird, but I had this creepy feeling. Then I saw the papers and there was a picture of that man who got shot. I looked at that this morning, then I thought about this guy, Peter. They sure looked alike. I mean, this guy was a lot younger, but he sure could have been related. I mean, he had the same kind of wave in his hair, the same eyes. Then when I saw him in the hospital, I kept thinking that this guy looks like the dead man. And then it hit me that he said he was here to straighten out his father’s estate. I’m sorry, I feel so stupid, but I just thought…” She looked down at her hands.
Cobb patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “No, you did the right thing. His name is Peter Linz. And I think what you have told me could be very important.”
She stood. “Thank you,” she said.
“If you see him again, if he talks to you or anything, perhaps you could let me know.”