Zero Island (Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners Book 2)

by Chris Bauer

  This plane ride from Tahiti to Kauai was unrelated to her Tahitian work gig. A rumor kicking about the transient hotel help had found her: the Ka Hui crime family had returned to Hawaii and brought with them their private, legally suspect organ transplant business. Some risk for those who donated, most often the indigent, but, rumor also had it, with a big-money payout as the enticement. Heavy interest in Hawaiian donors with Miakamii island roots, products of a healthy, pristine, disease-less environment. It was a venture she considered cannibalistic, and a line she could never cross again, the losses too personal from both sides of the equation: one dead boyfriend, an organ donor, and one dead mother awaiting an organ transplant that never came.

  Her intention: insert herself into the mix. Spread the word among the native islanders about the danger. Become the argument against donating. It might mean sacrificing her individuality, and possibly her freedom, while she got the word out. Could she do that? She was about to find out.

  For Kaipo, the Hawaiian mob Ka Hui had been a mixed blessing. A lot of pluses and minuses, the last minus being an overture about marriage. On the ledger’s other side, the pay had been fantastic—enough that it allowed her to relocate here on a whim. It had afforded her protection, invisible as it was, as a single female in Philly providing in-home personal services in an urban environment. And Ka Hui’s crime family had also wrestled into submission the monkey on her back. Correction, they had killed it, many times over, by eliminating every drug dealer who had ever sold to her, first in Hawaii, then on the U.S. mainland, in dramatic fashion. But in some cultures monkeys had multiple lives. How many lives did hers still have?

  At least one. People in recovery were told to never forget that. There was always one monkey left, never more than one taste away.

  “Anything from the bar, miss?” the flight attendant asked.

  “No, I’m good.”

  She’d gotten lucky: both seats next to her in Economy were empty. She could stretch out, could recline rather than sleep sitting up.

  The plan was to remain in the shadows on Kauai. She’d stay off the radar of one Douglas Logan out of apprehension, and one Wally Lanakai out of self-preservation.

  How could she help her island? Other than word of mouth, she didn’t know yet, but she knew the islanders weren’t aware of what was on the horizon. She, however, was, and she didn’t want them to face it alone.

  8

  The airborne copter had a slight forward lean, was now crossing the Hanakawii Channel like it was on a zipline. Evan, helicopter-rated, was not piloting. His Navy brass had insisted on this before letting him take Philo and Patrick onboard for their ride-along. Miakamii, the Prohibited Isle, soon overwhelmed the width of the copter windshield. An azure blue lagoon gained in definition, with white beach sand edging it on three sides and green scrub beyond the beach, and beyond the scrub, tall trees. Steep cliffs rose up to the right, where higher elevations led to a mountain ridge. Just off the coast of the island, the rim of an ancient volcano dominated the view.

  Evan spoke into his headgear intercom, worn to better the chopper’s deafening blade noise. “You’re about to meet Douglas Logan, Philo. He and Miya were very close. He doesn’t need to know any more about the crime scene at her house than he already knows. It will only make him more upset. You copy?”

  “I copy,” Philo said, wearing similar headgear. “But you gotta ask the police about the dry ice. Give them a chance to explain.”

  “My assistant is checking on that.”

  This was a struggle for Evan, obvious to Philo, the three of them plus their pilot strapped in tightly aboard the Navy Seahawk. Evan was intense, but he was also grieving, at a loss about the disturbing nature of the attack. Yet Philo knew Evan well. He would carry out his CO duties, would do his job, would put other necessary people in place for them to do theirs, too, so they could all get some answers.

  “I’m impressed, Evan,” Philo said, the intercom chirping his comment.

  “About?”

  “Getting approval for us to hitch this ride.”

  “Extenuating circumstances, and you guys are in the crime scene remediation business. That’s how I sold it. I also stressed that none of us would be armed, per Mr. Logan’s protocols. The Seahawk will hang out near the radar package on the northern tip of the island and wait for us to finish up.”

  “Copy that.”

  Over land now, the copter followed the coastline. Two heliports served the island, one for its infrequent tourist drops, one exclusively for the U.S. Navy. The pilot chose neither, instead found a small open space nearer the crash site, flat enough for them to land.

  Whup-whup-whup-whup…

  Dust and sand and loose scrub swirled as the copter touched down. The blades slowed their rotation, everyone remaining seated until the pilot gave the all-clear. They removed their headgear. Evan slid open a side hatch but wouldn’t let them exit yet. Visible now was another helicopter sitting silently at the end of the clearing.

  “NTSB is here, too, still working their investigation. We’ll have to hoof it a hundred yards or so to the other side of those trees.” His tone turned somber. “You guys need to understand something about Mr. Logan and this island.”

  “Fine. Where is he?” Philo said.

  “Where we’re headed: the crash site. It’s visible from the beach, but not from where we needed to land.” He gestured for them to huddle up. They leaned in.

  “You’ll be seeing parts of the island that are off limits. Mr. Logan never lets tourists into any of the populated areas, wants to maintain his family’s hundred-fifty-year-old promise. I believe we’ll see the church and the school because of their proximity to the wreckage. Do not get pushy if you have any questions. They need help—we all do—understanding what happened, but it won’t be at the expense of badgering him or any of the people who live here. And please, please, let’s all use our Sunday school language for this. We clear?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Philo said. “Right, Patrick?”

  “No shits or fucks, Philo sir.”

  Evan led, Philo and Patrick maintaining stride alongside. They crossed white sand, then entered an open section with a heavy layer of volcano rubble that funneled into a wide dirt path with thick tree canopy overhead. In the wide expanse on the other side were two people in dark blue NTSB uniforms, one male, one female, plus another male Philo assumed was a plainclothes cop or detective from Kauai. With them was Douglas Logan, short and wiry, just as Philo remembered him from SEAL training decades ago, but with less hair, which was now all white. A tied-off yellow kerchief, a la John “Howdy, Pilgrim” Wayne, circled Mr. Logan’s neck.

  In the far left corner of the clearing sat a tiny steepled church in gray-white clapboard siding. A few hundred paces from the church, and closer in, was a one-room schoolhouse, also gray-white. Solar panels highlighted both roofs. In between the wood frame buildings were large, mangled pieces of colorful helicopter, the copter’s nose planted in the dirt like an amusement ride gone bad, the windshield blown out, the interior exposed like a cracked egg.

  “Not what I expected,” Evan said. “It looks like the flight deck split, but otherwise it survived the impact. No fire. Lucky, for the investigation at least.” He gestured at the wall of trees next to the clearing, the canopy thick and jungle-like. The diagonal path the copter and its rotating blades had taken to the ground had sheared the canopy, clearing the way.

  Gathered copter pieces were strewn across portable folding tables. Hacked carcasses dotted the animal pens spread out between the two buildings. The blades had redistributed portions of the slaughtered animals in all directions, leaving behind dried blood sprays and large fleshy chunks that had slapped against the school, with other parts taking out one window of the church.

  All of it—church, school, vegetable gardens, crumpled helo parts, animal carcasses, and the beach—were within shouting distance of each other, fully validated because that was what Mr. Logan was doing now, shouting in
the direction of a man and woman at the water’s edge. Both were on the same bareback horse, their horse standing just out of reach of the crashing surf. Philo could only assume they were indigenous to the island and, judging from how close they sat to each other, they were a couple. Mr. Logan’s shout to them had followed a quick, acknowledging glance at Evan and his guests arriving.

  “Ben and Ella,” Mr. Logan called again, “come over here, please.”

  The horse cantered with its two riders aboard, arrived alongside Mr. Logan. He eyed their bulky burlap satchels strapped like saddlebags across the horse’s rear haunches. “Goodness, Ella. That’s a good catch for today.”

  “You’re welcome to have dinner with us, Douglas,” the woman said. “Ben is making his huli-huli chicken to go with the lobster.”

  “Thank you for the offer, Ella. We’ll see. I need some time with these people.”

  He addressed Evan. “Commander. I’d like to say it’s a pleasure seeing you here but we both know it isn’t. I need the Navy’s help in dealing with the NTSB, but why this visit to the island had to be by you in person escapes me.” He laid his hands on Evan’s shoulders and pulled him in. “I am so sorry, son, for your loss,” he said into Evan’s ear. “God gets an angel, we lose one.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Evan’s lips quivered, but he stayed serious. “We’re all still processing this.” He cleared his throat. “I’m glad you let me bring along some additional expertise.” A hand wave beckoned Philo and Patrick into the conversation. “I’d like you to meet—”

  “I knew who he was soon as I saw his name in your text, Commander. I expect he wouldn’t soon forget our island. It’s Frogman Trout, isn’t it? Tristan, I believe?”

  “Yes, sir. Retired now. Going by Philo nowadays, sir. Philo Trout. Long story.”

  “I see.” The island owner sized Philo up. His hand went out, Philo accepted it. “Well, I’m still Douglas Logan. Same as yesterday, and I’ll be the same tomorrow, God willing.”

  “Copy that, Mr. Logan, sir,” Philo said. “And this is Patrick Stakes, my assistant.”

  “Hello,” Patrick said.

  How many SEALS had trained on Miakamii, Philo didn’t know. They might number in the thousands, the training arrangement in place with the Logan family for decades. He also didn’t know why someone from the family would remember him in particular, yet there it was.

  “So let’s get down to business, Commander,” Mr. Logan said. “You’re here to brief the NTSB on what goes on around here, and on my deal with the Navy.” Mr. Logan moved in closer to him. “And to see if there could be any connection to Miya. So let’s get to it.”

  He segued into his introductions of Evan and friends to the folks huddled near the helicopter’s front end, the aircraft split in half from the crash, the flight deck here, the tail with the rear rotor twenty yards away. The NTSB agent suffixed their exchange with a patronizing facial expression and a “don’t touch anything” verbal admonishment.

  “Gas tanks been emptied?” Evan asked her, eyeing both tanks behind the flight deck, their compartment splayed open beneath the blades.

  “What do you think?” she said, her tone sarcastic.

  “Just checking,” Evan said.

  He put a question to the group. “Has it been confirmed there were only two people on board?”

  A good place to start in Philo’s mind, too. The small-talk responses among them offered a few yeses, but they were still only speculation.

  Evan eyed the plainclothes cop off by himself taking photos of the flight deck with his phone. Open-collared button-down shirt, shorts, deck shoes, and a backpack. Japanese-American. He could have passed for a tourist. Evan leaned into Philo, pointed. “Go ask the detective that same question.”

  “Me? Why not you?” Philo said.

  “Just do it, Philo, please.” Evan’s jaw tightened. “It won’t end well if I talk to him now. His last name is Ujikawa. Uji for short.”

  Philo accepted this was not a debatable request; he called to the cop. The man was bent at the waist, still pointing and shooting with his phone. “Detective Ujikawa. Excuse me. How many were aboard?”

  “And you are?”

  “Philo Trout. Blessid Trauma, a crime scene cleaning service. I’m with Commander Malcolm.”

  The detective straightened up, put his phone away, and retrieved a bottle of water from the backpack. “Manifest says only two on board. No indications anyone walked away from this. It also matches the eyewitness account. So I’m going with two. Ella, Ben,” he called to them on their horse, “good to see you folks again.” He returned his attention to Philo.

  “Ella’s the eyewitness. So yeah, one of the two persons jettisoned from the helo, per Ella, was picked up in the channel by a cigarette boat. Nothing on the Kauai end yet about it. Checking cameras wherever we can find them. Ella retrieved the pilot’s body. Quite a superhuman effort.” The detective raised his chin her way in admiration, then retrieved his phone again—“so if you’ll excuse me”—and began taking more photos.

  Philo, back with their small group, reported to Evan. “Official cop assessment, two aboard. You’re welcome.”

  Mr. Logan rubbed his forehead like his head hurt. “All of this is so… senseless. I, ah, I just don’t get it…”

  Philo and Patrick slipped out of the discussion and moved back in the direction of the debris field, localized between the church and the school. The metal, glass, and plastic pieces meant little to either of them, Philo having been a passenger on military copters more than once, but certainly no expert on the aircraft’s composition. But what he felt he could say with certainty was, after looking over the front deck half and the parts catalogued on the tables, it appeared there’d been no midair explosion. No holes punched through the metallic skin in either direction, from an interior explosion like an onboard bomb, or from an exterior source, like an air strike. All this damage seemed to have come from careening through the trees and slamming into the island after falling pilotless out of the sky.

  A similar story for the tail half, severed by the trees. Its shredded skeletal remains with rear rotor sat a distance from the flight deck after a different path into the dirt.

  No midair explosion made sense; the pilot’s throat had been slit. More than reason enough for the crash. And this short but powerful-looking woman here—Ella—had recovered the body. Philo agreed with the detective’s assessment that hers had been a heroic effort.

  He and Patrick wandered away from the debris and entered the tiny church through a side door, intact save for one tall window caved inward, its glass shattered, the wood frame dangling. It was the window nearest the church’s pulpit. Something had jettisoned through the glass and its wood crossbars, hit the floor, and skidded against the pulpit itself, and was now covered in flies: the head and neck of a boar with tusks.

  “Poor Pumba,” Philo said.

  “Sir?”

  “Bad joke. Forget it, bud.”

  They wandered through the church’s interior. A familiar arrangement: pulpit and altar in front, wooden pews facing them, row after row leading to the rear, could hold maybe two hundred people. The paint on the walls and ceiling was peeling, and dust swirled in the shafts of sunlight that connected the pews to the windows. Dust had settled on the pews, the tables, the pulpit, the altar, everything. They wandered down the center aisle, toward the back, the small church steeped in shadows. Wainscoting with ornate carving and tangerine-colored stain graced the bottom half of the rear wall. A door in the back wall opened outward into the congregation, its keyed lock affixed eye-level, securing it to its frame. Safe space, Philo surmised, maybe for church artifacts and holiday decorations, the door wide enough for a lawn tractor or something larger to fit. Philo tugged at the lock, but it didn’t give.

  “It’s Philo Trout, isn’t it?” A female voice startled them from behind.

  Ella’s call to him was from the altar area. She continued her quiet entrance, passing the pulpit, moving up the ce
nter aisle, her face stern. They hadn’t heard her enter the church.

  “Sorry, but yes. And I guess we’re snooping, ma’am. A hazard of the crime scene cleaning business. Another set of, you know, eyes after law enforcement leaves. And you’re Ella. They tell me you’re a hero.”

  Ella and her stern expression stayed a course down the center aisle, soon reached him and Patrick. “Far from a hero,” she said. Round head, narrowed, smoky eyes, and the whitest of unsmiling teeth. She’d spoken to them with her chin raised, because she’d needed to. But her tough countenance soon faltered.

  “Chester, the pilot, he, um…”

  She choked up, tears forming, her aggrieved face softening. “He was a close friend. I did what I had to do, but he was hala already…” Her scowl returned. “More than gone. Murdered.”

  She wasn’t tall enough to turn this into a stare-down, her head barely reaching Philo’s shoulders, but she was doing her best despite the height disadvantage. “Why are you here, Mr. Philo Trout?”

  Direct. Skeptical. Parochial. He admired her when he first saw her on the beach, she of indiscernible age, best guess forties-fifties, and he liked her even more now. Fiery personality, fireplug physique. She could no doubt both start fires and put them out.

  “Like I said, my company cleans up after nasty events like this back on the mainland, in and around Philadelphia. Messy, hazardous situations, some accidents, some not. We mostly handle crime scenes after the cops are gone. Hardcore stuff. We try to make it like it never happened.”

  “I got that, but the damage is in the front of the hale pule.”

  “The what?”

  “The church. Why are you back here?”

  A fair question. “Sometimes there’s more damage than people realize, in places they don’t notice. And when we clean crime scenes, we sometimes find things people overlook.”