Black Jasmine (2012)

by Toby Neal

  “Tell us more, or I’ll take that kid straight to Child Welfare,” Lei said. A familiar rage swept over her with white-hot power. There was nothing she hated more than child abuse and neglect. She wanted to grab the baby and run away with it—to somewhere light and clean, where there was no drinking, drugs, or danger.

  “You’re right, Lei. We could do that.” Pono redirected his gaze to the homeless woman. “Or we could get you into the shelter.”

  Lei shrugged. “Guess it’s up to her, what we do with the kid.”

  “Fuck you, cop. It’s not against the law to be homeless, and I never did nothing wrong. I take good care of my baby.” The young mother snarled. On second glance, she probably wasn’t out of her teens, and her eyes welled with furious, terrified tears.

  “Watch your mouth. I’m taking that baby.” Lei reached for her handcuffs.

  Pono stepped in.

  “I’m sure you take good care of your baby. Just tell us what you heard.” His big, warm hand landed on Lei’s arm, both restraining and anchoring her.

  “Just heard the crash. And you’re right; it was loud.”

  Lei sucked in some relaxation breaths, realizing she’d been too aggressive. But she was still going to call Child Welfare. This tent in the bushes was no place for a baby. Maybe the call would help get the girl some services, a real place to live.

  The young mom didn’t have anything else for them. No, she hadn’t come out of the tent. She didn’t go out late at night with the baby. She hadn’t seen anything until that morning when she’d gone out to look at fire trucks and the commotion on the bluff. What did she think? Someone drove their car off the edge—it wasn’t the first time there was a suicide out here. Which was true, Lei remembered. There had also been some suspicious overdoses, and prior to this, a missing woman and a teenager beaten to death, both cases unsolved.

  Pauwela Lighthouse was not a homeless camp for the faint of heart or those with any other options.

  They worked their way from tent to tent, hearing much the same story, a big crash at around two a.m. Lei wondered aloud where the campers got their water, and one obliging toothless denizen showed them the former pineapple field irrigation system that had been breached. Water was brought into the central camp area under the biggest ironwood tree via a series of screwed-together garden hoses.

  They went to one last tent, a little bigger and set apart from the others, where an imposing Hawaiian woman sat at a table made from an upright cable spool. She was sorting long, sword-shaped hala leaves, which hung, drying, from a line under the tarp outside her tent. Lei wondered what a dignified woman like this was doing at the seedy camp. Usually Hawaiians took each one another in; it was shame to the family for a relative to be in need.

  The woman looked up at their approach. Long iron-gray hair was wound into a bun and pierced by a bamboo chopstick, and she wore a drab muumuu and had rubber slippers on her swollen feet. Her eyes were dark, inscrutable wells.

  “What you cops stay looking for?”

  Lei held up her badge. “Eh, Aunty. Know anything about the crash last night?” She called the woman by the title of respect used in Hawaii by younger people to elders.

  The woman picked up a long piece of hala, pandanus used to make basketry, hats, and floor coverings. She worked the long leaf with her fingers, expertly shredding off a row of spines that edged the length of the leaf with a thickened thumbnail.

  “I saw someone leaving after the car went off.”

  “What? I mean, you sure, Aunty?” Lei’s attention sharpened.

  Dark eyes glanced up, a tightening of contempt at the corners. “I know what I saw.”

  “What’s your name, Aunty?” Pono had his notepad out.

  “Ramona Haulani.”

  “Well, Ms. Haulani, tell us more.”

  “I don’t sleep so good.” The woman shredded the stripped hala leaf into half-inch sections, each about eighteen inches long. The thumbnail appeared to work as well as any paring knife. “I was awake, and I heard the car drive up to the edge. I came out of my tent.” Ramona gestured. From the door of her tent, she had a clear view of the bluff where the car had gone over.

  “I wanted to see what was going on. I knew it was late, the hour of no-good.”

  Lei considered asking about that but decided it was more important to keep the woman talking.

  “Then, after the engine was off and it had been sitting awhile, it rolled forward and went off the edge.” Lei and Pono darted a glance at each other. This scenario didn’t sound like a teenager driving off the cliff in a suicide.

  “It was loud.” It must have been; everyone had mentioned that. “Then I saw a little light, just a flash, like one of those mainland lightning bugs. It would go on and off, moving away from where the car went over.”

  “Did you see anything else? Who was holding the light?” Lei tried not to rush her.

  “No. It was dark, hardly a moon even. I saw the light—flash, flash—moving down the road.” She gestured back toward the main road. “I thought it must be someone walking, using a small-kine flashlight.”

  They pumped her for more information, but that was basically all she had. She hadn’t talked about what she has seen to anyone, and Pono encouraged her to keep quiet.

  “I can keep a secret.”

  Ramona picked up another hala leaf, slit the edge. The older woman’s nail must have been sharpened, the way it cut through the plant material with a zipping sound that reminded Lei of the body bag closing. Lei found her hand in her pocket again, rubbing the black stone.

  “Why you stay out here, Aunty?” Pono asked.

  “I nevah like the family tell me my business. I do what I like,” Ramona Haulani said, and the darkness behind her brown eyes hinted at secrets. They thanked her and hiked back to the truck.

  Lei drove them to the station while Pono wrote up notes on his laptop. She was still entertained by the sight of his big sausage fingers flying nimbly over the keys. Sunset slanted across the dash, and her stomach rumbled again. Those pretzels hadn’t lasted long.

  “We’ll have to meet with the lieutenant in the morning,” Pono said, still typing. “She’s going to want to get up to speed, stat.”

  “I know—but I don’t have to like it.” Lei and the lieutenant weren’t fans of each other. “I’m not thinking suicide anymore.”

  “It’ll be interesting to meet with the ME and go over the autopsy report. Somebody walking away from the wreck looks bad. More paperwork.” Pono liked to grumble about that, but they both knew he was better at it.

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she flipped it open. “Hey, Stevens.”

  “When you getting home? Dinner’s almost ready.”

  “Half hour.”

  “’K, then. Love you.”

  “Likewise.” Lei closed the phone.

  Pono looked up. “How’s loverboy?”

  “Hungry. He’s almost got dinner ready.”

  “When you guys going to get married?” Pono never tired of trying to get others into his own debatable domestic bliss. He and Tiare had stopped at two kids, something Lei considered a good thing, but the struggle to make ends meet with a family wasn’t something she was in a hurry to duplicate.

  “Mind your business.” Lei dropped Pono at the station lot, where his lifted purple truck was parked.

  “See you tomorrow, Sweets.” The ironic nickname her Kaua`i partner, Jenkins, had dubbed her with had been bequeathed to Pono. She’d finally given up fighting it.

  “Too soon, bruddah.”

  * * *

  I stretch out on my four-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and flick on the flat-screen TV to the news, looking for something about the crash. I sip my evening cosmopolitan, waiting through school budget crises and a whale watch gone awry. It’s been another long, productive day managing the company, doing what I love. I’m lucky—or no, that isn’t right. I’ve made my own luck, starting a long time ago when I stole that name that felt so much mo
re a fit than the one I’d been born with.

  Finally, a grainy video, obviously someone’s cell phone—a fire truck hoisting up a yellow metal mesh body stabilizer on a windblown bluff. A cluster of uniforms wrestle the basket to the ground beside the fire truck as a voice-over begins.

  “Tragedy struck on Maui when an unidentified young girl in a car went off the cliff at Pauwela Lighthouse. Authorities are still determining if the crash was an accident. Neither of the seasoned detectives assigned to the case were available for comment.”

  Just a quick blip. The “seasoned detectives” will have the devil of a time finding out who the mysterious dead girl is. I’ve made sure of that. I close my eyes to savor the high from the night before. I felt like I could fly, soaring like an owl over the moonless nightscape. That high. God, it was something. Maybe that was it—I felt like God, granting life, taking it away.

  I need to do a little research. I take out one of the prepackaged burner phones that I keep around for such moments and dial a number I’ve memorized—my contact at MPD. He doesn’t know who I am, but he likes the deposits I make every time I need him. That, and I have a few choice photos that ensure cooperation.

  I get info on Texeira and Kaihale, detectives on the case, and tell him to keep me informed. I boot up my Apple Air, thin as a wallet. In moments, I’m online, pulling up everything I can find on Pono Kaihale.

  There isn’t much. Until recently, he’d been a regular patrol officer on the Big Island. After he was promoted to detective, he moved to Maui. He looks like a tiki god come to life in his departmental photo. Buzz-cut hair, wide brown face with a bristling mustache, even wider neck. Typical "moke" cop.

  Leilani Texeira is another story. A slender, athletic-looking woman with a lot of curly hair, she has tilted almond eyes, a smatter of freckles, and a full mouth. That mouth, cut wide and set hard, shows attitude.

  Texeira’s got a face that’s more than pretty; it’s hard to forget. I feel a little frisson of unease as I read about the Cult Killer case on Kaua`i—biggest case the sleepy island had ever seen, and Texeira was in the middle of it all the way to the end. I look at her photo again. Attitude is right. I’d better monitor things closely, and that means more payments to the mole, more hassles.

  That stupid little redhead is still costing me money and I hate that. I never let anyone beat me at anything. I can’t stand losing. But she’s already dead, so I can’t take anything more out of her, goddamn it. I need something to take my mind off things. I punch in a number on the bedside phone.

  “Kimo. Send up some merchandise. I’m in the mood for dark meat.”

  I mix up the drink in a highball glass—a potent cocktail of Rohypnol and Viagra that guarantees me a good time. For this one, I go light on the roofies and heavy on the Viagra—might as well teach him something he’ll remember. When Kimo pushes the merchandise in the door, I hand him the drink with a smile.

  He’s not sure what to think, doesn’t know what’s coming, so he drinks it after I clink his glass with mine…and pretty soon he’s just what I need to get the kinks out. I like the way my beautiful white skin, so silky, looks against his mocha hide. I like the taste of a little blood, spread around like finger paint. It’s a good session.

  When Kimo picks him up, my sheets are messy so I have the maid come change them while I take the SIM card out of the phone, stick it in a chunk of apple, and grind it up in the disposal. I toss the plastic phone body into the recycle bin.

  I go back into the bedroom. It’s white and pristine once again, creamy drapes hiding the door to my bondage room, toys cleaned off and put away. I pay that maid well to not be seen and not be heard.

  I take a shower, but now my shoulders are sore from the workout. I use my regular cell to call the masseuse to come work the knots out, which he does rather nicely. Finally, oiled, perfumed, and pleasantly tired, I turn off the crystal bedside lamp and gaze out the sliders to the night sky reflecting off the black sea.

  It’s taken all that to get me to the state of relaxation I was in before I heard the name Lei Texeira.

  She owes me for that.

  Chapter 3

  Lei pulled up into the wide driveway of her and Stevens’s rental cottage in `Iao Valley. A six-foot chain-link fence held back her Rottweiler, Keiki, who’d heard the truck drive up and had her paws up on the fence in ecstatic greeting, muscular hindquarters waggling with joy.

  “Hey, baby.” Lei gave the dog a head rub, then snapped her fingers as she unlatched the gate. Keiki sat obediently. She gave the Rottweiler another pat in reward and went up the slightly sagging wooden steps onto the porch, the dog glued to her side.

  Lei loved the house’s location, only ten minutes from the Maui Police Department station in Kahului. Set slightly off the two-lane, winding road that dead-ended at a state park at the back of the valley, the cottage was isolated enough to feel a world away from work. They could afford something newer, but she and Stevens enjoyed the feeling of vintage Hawaii embodied in its older plantation-style cottages. This one had a wide, extended tin roof painted a red that was fading to terra-cotta. The roof contrasted with traditional dark green paint trimmed in white around windows and doors.

  They’d replaced the elderly screen door with a new iron security door that still allowed airflow, and he’d left it unlocked for her. The door opened straight into the wooden-floored living room, and the modest kitchen at the back looked out onto a hillside covered in green jungle.

  A delicious smell of teriyaki chicken filled the air. She looked at Stevens as he stirred something on the stove, dark head bent. The height and breadth of him set loose a flight of bubbles under her sternum, an unfamiliar feeling she’d finally figured out was happiness. She went across the room on quick, light steps and encircled his whipcord back from behind, laying her cheek against his shoulder blades.

  “Honey, I’m home.”

  “So you are.” He set a hand on the crossed wrists around his waist, gave them a pat and a squeeze as he sniffed audibly. “You stink.”

  “Thanks. Nothing like a little rappelling and body retrieval followed by a long day canvassing homeless to get the heart rate up. Do I have time for a shower?”

  “I think that would be best,” he said, and handed her a Corona he’d opened and placed beside the stove. “When you get out, it’ll all be ready.”

  “I think I could get used to this.”

  Lei showered the grime of the day off her lean frame, using a loofah sponge to scrub her arms and legs. She had an athletic build, slender-hipped and round-breasted, and she particularly liked the smooth dip of her waist and the fact that nothing jiggled that shouldn’t.

  Lei looked at her scarred arms, letting herself really see them. She rubbed the thin silver lines of past self-injury gently with body soap. She no longer needed to resort to that hollow form of coping—she’d come a long way in therapy on the Big Island. Lei rubbed the bite mark on her collarbone, feeling the throb her wrist sometimes still gave from being broken two years ago in a battle for her life. Scars marked you, but they didn’t have to hurt anymore.

  There was just one human scar she still needed to take care of.

  Charlie Kwon, her childhood molester, was in Lompoc doing time for sexual abuse of a minor, and knowing she’d been only one in a string of victims didn’t make her feel better. She had an acquaintance who worked at Lompoc keeping an eye on him. Charlie aside, she was grateful for all the people who’d come into her life, one after the other, to heal her.

  Chief among them was Michael Stevens. They’d met working a case on the Big Island, fallen in love. She’d accepted his marriage proposal only to panic, dump him, and run away to Kaua`i. Stevens had followed her over to help with the big serial case she’d uncovered, and they’d eventually reconnected. It hadn’t been easy. It had never been simple. But the poor guy couldn’t seem to stay away. He even had a purple heart tattoo on his forearm with her name in it.

  Lei looked up at a note card reminder from h
er therapy, tacked to the drywall above the shower surround. Trust your heart. She was getting better at that, now that her heart wasn’t so fucked up.

  She got out, drying off and squishing a handful of Curl Tamer into her hair. It was still short from when she’d shaved her head to go undercover for the Cult Killer case. That case on Kaua`i had garnered so much media attention that she and Stevens had been marked at the station for nonstop harassment in the form of jealousy and practical jokes. It had gotten old being recognized everywhere they went on the small island, especially after a TV movie was made of the whole thing. Six months later, when Pono called, she and Stevens had been ready to put in for transfers.

  Every month or two she got little prodding e-mails from Marcella Scott, the FBI agent she’d worked the case with on Kaua`i. Marcella was still trying to recruit her to the Bureau—and Lei was still thinking about the opportunity.

  Lei pulled on old sweats and rubbed face lotion into her sunburn, squirted her eyes with Visine for the windburn, and went back into the kitchen.

  The dining room consisted of a small bump-out area with a circular Formica table, and Stevens had set it with a pot of rice, a green salad, and a lasagna pan of chicken swimming in teriyaki sauce. Lei set the beer down by her plate and put her napkin in her lap, mouth watering.

  “Damn, Michael. This is really awesome.”

  “Glad I can get something right.”

  There was an edge to his voice, and she realized that he hadn’t really looked at her. She decided to ignore that and dug into the meal, which was as good as it smelled. When she’d finished the first ravenous plateful, she sat back, sipping the Corona, studying him.

  Big, sensitive, long-fingered hands worked the chopsticks as easily as a local. When she’d first met him, he hadn’t known how to use them and she’d teased him for it. Dark, rumpled hair fell over a high forehead, casting a shadow over his face. Blue eyes hid under thick lashes as he looked at his plate.