by Kay Hadashi
“I think that would be implied, Mel.”
“Look in that top drawer over there, the junk drawer.”
Trinh opened the drawer. “What am I looking for?”
“Cassandra’s report on the Winstons. I shoved it in there one day.”
“Nothing like that in here. Just shoelaces, rubber bands, broken pencils, old cell phones.”
“I could’ve sworn I put it in there.”
“What did it say?”
“Only that the mother was clean, but the son had been in trouble off and on since a teenager. Dang. I wish I knew where she’s been living these last few months.”
“Mel, you and I work in a hospital. For some reason, we got tangled up in being mayor and her pathetic sidekick. We know nothing about law enforcement, and right now, I’m glad about that.” Trinh got a pair of sodas from the fridge for them. “Leave the investigation alone for the police to deal with, okay?”
“You know what the weird thing was? When Nakatani told me about the most recent things available for bid on those auction sites seemed so familiar, almost like I already knew they were there, but I haven’t looked at those sites in several days.”
“Did you hear me say to leave it alone?”
“Just go along with me for a minute more.”
Trinh sighed. “Familiar how?”
“He said one was an arrow point stuck in a vertebra, and there were other arrows and a spear tip. I could see them all very clearly, but not from the auction site images, but as though I’d seen them for real.”
“When you woke up from your surgery, you were all weird about something, Mel. You were saying stuff about warriors and having something in your back. You were telling me to continue on, to attack someone. It took a little while to get your mind squared away and woken up.”
“Really? Like old-time Hawaiian warriors?”
Trinh took a swig of her soda. “Honestly, I don’t know what you dream about sometimes, but don’t include me in them, okay?”
With that, Melanie’s phone rang with a call from the detective.
“Well, Mayor, I started with asking the kid about his life back in Phoenix,” Nakatani said. “He knew the address of the house he grew up in, the same place his mother still lives, and described it. When I found images of it at Google Maps, it was close enough to be considered accurate.”
“He could’ve looked at the same images,” Melanie said.
“Then I asked him the name of the hospital he was born in. He knew the name and general location in Phoenix. That’s when I put his mother’s image in a lineup of a dozen white women in their fifties. I did that three times, and each time he picked out Mrs. Adelaide Winston. He has to be the right kid.”
“Yeah, it sure sounds like it. I’m glad for the mother, but I sure don’t like the idea of telling her the good news after all she’s been through these last couple of weeks. Especially after she’s just gone home in mourning.”
“I’ll call her. It’s a police matter anyway, not one for the mayor’s office. But you might get involved later, if she decides to sue us for mental and emotional distress over all this.”
“At least she gets her son back.”
Half an hour later, Nakatani called Melanie back.
“Well, did she have anything to say? Was she relieved?”
“She seemed reluctant to believe me. In fact, she’s coming back to see this kid in person.”
“She must be halfway home. She’s coming back to Maui already? Just take a picture of him and send it to her.”
“I offered that, but she wants to see him in person.”
“Can’t blame a mother for wanting to see her son after the scare she’s just had,” Melanie said.
“She never left the island. Her connecting flight to Phoenix wasn’t until tomorrow. Apparently, she didn’t want to interfere in your lives any longer and found a room in town somewhere. So, I had a uniform pick her up and bring her to the station in Wailuku.”
“I’d like to be there to meet her.”
“Can you travel? Your back is okay?”
“I’m fine, really. I’ll have Trinh bring me in.”
“She should be here pretty soon.”
Melanie told Trinh of the plan to go in to the police station in Wailuku and see Addie verify her son’s identity, and to offer an apology for the mix-up.
“Now you want to go for a drive, and you’re not supposed to sit for that long,” Trinh said in a scolding tone.
It took Melanie five minutes to change her clothes, and ten more to wash the baby and change his diaper.
Using Trinh’s old child carriers, the four of them rode in her large SUV into town.
“You can come in and look officious as my Vice Mayor. Bring the diaper bag, just in case.”
“Yes, exactly what the Vice Mayor does,” Trinh said, slamming her car door closed. “Lug around the Mayor’s diaper bag.”
Addie had just got there and was talking with Detective Nakatani when Melanie went in, carrying Kenny in a carrier in one hand, and holding Thérèse’s hand with the other.
“You shouldn’t be carrying so much weight,” Addie said. “Let me hold the baby.”
“Maybe we should go see your son?” Melanie offered. She handed over the baby to Trinh and told Thérèse to wait with her in the waiting area out front.
“Okay, I have him in an interrogation room. But before you go in, I want you to take a look through the window of the observation room next door to where he is, Mrs. Winston,” Detective Nakatani said. He led them through the squad room to the interrogation rooms at the far end. He showed them into an observation room with a large window hidden by a set of blinds. Melanie stood next to the woman at the window, waiting for Nakatani to open the blinds. “Okay, this is one-way glass. You can see him but he can’t see you.”
“Do we have to go through all this?” Addie asked. She was shaking with excitement, or nerves. “He said he’s my son. Just let me go to him.”
“Just take a look first.”
He opened the blinds. The light was bright in the interrogation room, giving them a clear view of the young man inside. He sat there picking dirt from under his nails, unaware he was being viewed.
The woman almost looked to be in a panic. “Oh my goodness.”
“That’s Kenny, right?” Melanie asked. It was the first time she had a good look at him since his arrest. He had the stereotypical surfer dude look, with unkempt blond hair, and an athletic physique. To her, he could’ve passed as a brother to the man in the morgue.
“My Kenny,” Addie said, just before fainting.
Chapter Seventeen
When Mrs. Winston fainted, Nakatani took her from Melanie’s hands and lowered her to the floor. He propped her feet up on a chair seat while Melanie waved air at her face. The woman came to right away.
“What happened?” Addie asked.
“You fainted. “Can you sit in a chair?”
They got her into a chair and Melanie sat with her.
“I’m sorry for all this commotion. Please let me see my boy.”
Nakatani sat with them. “Take another look. You’re sure it it’s him? Maybe his appearance has changed since you’ve seen him last.”
Addie looked through the window again. “I know my son, Detective. Why are you making me wait?”
“He’s being held for interrogation and possible booking.”
“I don’t care about that. I’d like to see my son, please.”
Melanie was impressed by how reserved the woman remained, knowing she would’ve been pitching a fit if it were her.
“Not quite yet, if you don’t mind. I’d like to interrogate this kid for a few minutes and then talk with you again,” Nakatani said.
Addie looked like she wanted to protest, and Melanie wanted to also, until a uniformed officer came in with a printout of something for the detective. They had a brief chat about it before the officer left.
Nakatani took Melanie out of the o
bservation room. “We just got the positive identification from the FBI on this kid. According to his prints, he really is Kenneth Winston, age twenty-five, of Phoenix, Arizona. That kid resembles the Arizona driver’s license picture, which resembles his current Hawaii driver’s license. Maybe a few years one way or the other and some hair dye, but the resemblance is good.”
“If this is the real Kenny Winston, who’s the kid in the morgue?” Melanie asked.
Nakatani shuffled the sheets of paper in his hand. “He’s Corey Nelson, also of Arizona, not Kenneth Winston. This is his rap sheet. Everything on here fits with the current crimes we’re investigating. Theft, burglary, grand theft auto. Dye his hair blond, and he becomes a good match for the Winston kid. They could be brothers.”
“That’s no excuse for screwing up something like this and then telling the mother her son is dead,” Melanie said. “And I don’t want to hear any crap about getting county lawyers in here to straighten it out. I want to know what happened?”
“It was a foul-up on a lot of people’s parts. Evidently, the FBI only partially ID’d the kid in the morgue as Kenneth Winston, but didn’t bother telling us that. The fingerprints that were collected weren’t great, and when they finally got the final results, they somehow suppressed them, or just didn’t bother sending the proper ID to us until just now when we made another request. Sorry.”
“Sorry my butt. Why did it take so long to get his fingerprints straightened out?” Melanie asked.
“Who knows? Back log, red tape, bureaucracy, anything.”
“What do we tell Mrs. Winston?” Melanie asked, looking at the complex set of sheets that comprised both rap sheets. To her eye, fingerprints were simply blotchy swirls.
“Any suggestions?”
“You do what you want. I’m telling her the truth,” Melanie said, before going back into the observation room.
“Why are you making me wait?”
Melanie explained about the mix-up, and tried implying it was mostly the FBI’s fault.
“Mrs. Winston, do you have anything with you that your son might’ve touched that hasn’t been cleaned?” the detective asked.
“I don’t know.” She opened her pocketbook. “He sent me this picture a while back, him and his friends. I put it in a little sleeve. You want his fingerprints, don’t you?”
“If we can collect prints for something we know he touched, we might be able to definitively match them to either the young man in that other room, or the man in the morgue.”
The woman handed over the snapshot, along with a plastic key ring her son had sent her.
“Why didn’t you do that several days ago?” Melanie asked, after she followed the detective outside the room.
“We thought we had a positive ID when she ID’d him in the morgue.”
“You made her look at that body, even after it had been in the water for at least a day. You saw what shape it was in, and you relied on that as a positive ID?”
“Like she just said a few minutes ago, a mother knows her son.” He pushed past her to take the snapshot and key ring for fingerprinting.
Melanie sat with the stunned woman for a few minutes, waiting. Nakatani returned with images of enlarged fingerprints, along with the original photo and key ring. He gave those back to Addie.
“Did it help?”
“Yes. The man in the other room is your son. His prints match what was on your snapshot and that key ring, and match the files the FBI sent us. Oddly enough, an index finger and a thumb are a close match to the body in the morgue, which might be the reason for the mix-up.”
“I’d held out hope that there had been some mistake. When you called me earlier, I was so happy. I knew I’d been right all along. May I go see him now?”
An officer took the mother to the interrogation room for the reunion, while Melanie and Nakatani remained behind. They watched as mother and son hugged. To allow them privacy, the detective muted the speaker as they reconnected.
“It sounds like she’s happy enough to have her son back that she won’t sue us,” Nakatani said.
“Couldn’t blame her if she did,” Melanie muttered.
She followed the detective into the interrogation room.
“Now what, Detective?” Mrs. Winston asked, still seated next to her son.
“We’ll be able to release him now. He’s already been booked for trespass, and I bet Mayor Kato would be willing to drop those charges, under the circumstances.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Melanie said.
“What happens next?” Addie asked.
“He can go home, either to his apartment in Kihei, or with you to Arizona. Personally, I’d prefer he stay here for a while in case we have any further questions.”
“Well, I’ve missed my flight home. Maybe there’s a message in that?” She beamed when she looked at her son’s face, patting his hand. “I know Kenny wants to stay here. Maybe a mother’s influence might keep him on the right track. Anyway, I was offered a job the other day. I’m interested, if it’s still available to me? At least until Melanie finds a suitable replacement.”
“Of course, Mrs. Winston.”
Nakatani said he would take Kenny home to his apartment in Kihei, while the mother would go home with Melanie and Trinh, with a planned dinner reunion between them later in the evening after Kenny got his pickup truck from the impound lot.
Melanie suffered the indignity of watching as the man was released. Leaving the station through the front door with an officer leading him out, he walked right past Melanie as she bounced baby Kenny on her hip. To her, there was still the matter of trespass.
“What about your luggage?” Trinh asked once they were in her SUV.
“That’s halfway to Phoenix by now,” Addie said. “Just forget about it. I’ll have a friend go to the airport to pick it up and keep it for me.”
“Addie, maybe you can help us with finding your replacement nanny, not that there’s any hurry,” Melanie said. “I never did get the chance to apologize to him for hitting him with the broom the way I did. I still don’t know what he was doing up in the hills behind my house.”
Addie sat quietly for a moment until the answer seemed to come to her. “I asked him about that. He said he went hiking in the mountains with some friends, but left them behind when the weather turned rainy. When they decided to stay back and wait out the bad weather, he let them keep the tent and food. That’s why his knapsack was empty.”
“I see,” said Melanie. Since the mountains were steep and not conducive to tent camping, it was a peculiar explanation but she accepted it. There was enough that was peculiar about the Winston family without adding more to it.
Addie looked so happy, now that she knew the truth, and had her son back. “He left Phoenix to come here. Whenever I spoke to him, he sounded so happy. He has his new friends here, and his girlfriends. I’m surprised he wants to spend the evening with his old mother instead of them.”
Melanie looked at Trinh and fired her a warning glare to keep quiet.
***
Once they were home, Melanie called Detective Nakatani with more questions. Something just wasn’t sitting right in her mind about the misidentified man.
“Mayor, if I may make a suggestion, just give it a rest. That part of the puzzle has been worked out. Now we need to adjust our focus in a different direction. It might just be that the dead bodies in the morgue are responsible for the thefts. There haven’t been any further postings of items for auction online since the third body has turned up. If it continues, we might have to assume those three are our perps, plain and simple.”
“But to know for sure, you’d have to solve their murders, right?” she asked.
“Or at least find out how they died. That’s our next big piece of the puzzle to solve.”
“You said all the stuff that had been up for auction has been bought?”
“By several different buyers.” He cleared his throat. “You bought the first two batches. Since the
n, four buyers have bought the other six batches. We’re still trying to link buyers to one specific seller, and see if it has something to do with any of our dead bodies. Or Kenny Winston.”
“He’s still a suspect?”
“Definitely on my list. He’s dirty for something, I just can’t quite figure out what,” Nakatani said. “Stroke of brilliance on your part for hiring his mother.”
“Why?” she asked.
“That kept him here. I couldn’t keep him here, even if I cited him for trespass. But he couldn’t very well leave if his mother is still on the island. As long as she’s here, he is too. It worked perfect.”
“Detective, it was less about me being brilliant and more about needing a nanny,” she said.
“Mayor, whatever it was, if you happen onto a brilliant idea again, run it past me before enacting it. Please let me run my investigation using good old-fashioned police work.”
“Maybe Detective Kalemakani can figure it out.”
“Who?”
“Never mind,” Melanie said. She willingly agreed to stay out of it and let him go. Her next chore was to write up a work contract for Addie, with an open-end date. Just as they were finalizing the details, Josh got home, bringing his mother who had spent the day in town with him.
“I just talked to Trinh outside. Why was my son in jail when he’s only three days old?”
“He wasn’t in jail.” When Addie performed her first task as their nanny and took young Kenny to his bassinet, Melanie explained the situation of the older Kenny crossing over their property and Melanie subduing him until the police came. “That’s why Addie is still here. We found her at the airport before she left.”
“You just had surgery and had a baby. Can’t you leave law and order to the police for just a few more days?”
“I’ve already been scolded by Trinh and Detective Nakatani. How was your first day of school?”
“Not as exciting as your day. You’ve hurt Mom’s feelings by insisting on hiring someone else to be our nanny. Now it turns out you’ve hired her arch rival on Maui.”
“Maybe she should’ve spent the day at home with me and Kenny instead of going shopping at the mall? If she really wanted the job as granny nanny, she’d be sightseeing less and grandmothering more.”