Zero Island (Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners Book 2)

by Chris Bauer

  He didn’t pry, like ask her why she was skeptical about their wandering. Her right to be, of course; they were trespassers, all of them, plus it might also be cultural. A natural, healthy skepticism, from the island’s hundreds of years of isolation.

  “How old is this church?” Philo asked, his eyes panning the ceiling, the windows, the walls.

  “Eighteen-nineties,” Ella answered, then focused more on Patrick, watching him give a hard pull at the lock on the tall storage door before moving to the far aisle. He followed the aisle toward the front of the church, got a closer look at another side window, on the same wall as the one blown out by a boar’s jettisoned head. Patrick ran his hands over the clear glass panes and the window’s puttied edges, the putty ancient, cracked, and missing in spots. Ella’s stare was now less stern, more curious. “Your friend. His look, it’s like he’s a lost keiti.”

  “A what?”

  “Child.”

  “He’s in the zone, in investigative mode. He’s also an amnesiac, from a brain injury. He’s Hawaiian, but he has no memories of himself prior to a few years ago. We’re here in the islands on vacation to see if anything looks familiar to him.” Philo raised his chin, called to Patrick. “Anything interesting, bud?”

  “No other breaches I can see here, sir,” Patrick answered from aside the destroyed window. “Nothin’ else neither, sir.”

  The “nothin’ else” related to Patrick’s search for his identity, shorthand to mean he had no latent memories of this place.

  “You need someone to help board up this window, ma’am?” Patrick said.

  “That won’t be necessary. My husband Ben will have someone take care of it. But thank you. Kind of you to offer.”

  Philo absently ran his hand along the top of a church pew, a reflex. He came away with a layer of dust, looked at it, then brushed it off his fingers. Ella didn’t miss the gloveless white-glove inspection.

  “That was rude, Mr. Trout. It’s volcanic ash. It’s tough for the island to stay on top of it, there’s always so much. Centuries of it. Resettles everywhere. You’re wearing out your welcome in here, sir. Outside now, please.”

  Ella marched them back to the group congregating near the helicopter remains. A sporty aircraft, the flight deck seating was finished in soft, camel-colored leather, like a luxury car upgrade, all except for a smudge of blood on the pilot’s seat caked brown and black in the hot sun and confined there, not enough for it to run elsewhere. Mr. Logan, Evan, and the police detective were finishing up with the NTSB folks when Ella delivered Philo and Patrick to the discussion. She retreated, rejoining her husband alongside their horse.

  “… so that’s it, then, Mr. Malcolm?” the NTSB agent said; she finished scribbling. “Your CliffsNotes version of Mr. Logan’s arrangement with the Navy?” The agent clicked her pen, lowered her clipboard. She removed her aviator sunglasses, squinted at Evan and Mr. Logan both.

  “In a nutshell, yes,” Evan said. “In place since the fifties. I’ll send over some declassified documents tonight, plus other peripheral info, some of it redacted. A little more than what the media already has. I know your superiors won’t be bashful asking for more if they need it.”

  The five of them—Evan, Mr. Logan, Philo, Patrick, and Detective Ujikawa—walked the perimeter of the fenced animal pen in observation mode, ogling the copter’s front deck pieces, blades, twisted bulkhead skin, and at the far end of the rectangular animal pen, the rear section including the tail rotor.

  “You feeling anything here, Philo?” Evan asked.

  “Nothing more than wondering what the NTSB’s going to do with these chunks of helo, how they intend to cart it off, and to where. A planes, trains, and automobiles solution to the max.”

  “Some bigger Sikorsky military-grade copters,” Evan said. “Forklifts, maybe a small crane to either move it onboard or tether it underneath for a cable ride across the channel. I’m waiting for orders.”

  “I can vouch for that,” Detective Ujikawa said. “It’s getting airlifted to a small warehouse at Lihau Airport. Chief Koo’s already gotten clearance. This isn’t only an air disaster, it’s a murder investigation. The Kauai police get to sink their teeth into it, too.”

  Philo crouched down outside the front passenger side of the flight deck, positioned himself for a clear view across one bloody seat to the other. “To the naked eye, there’s blood where you’d expect it, on the pilot’s seat—”

  His pointer finger was in motion. “… and here you can see droplets splattered around the interior. Originating from the victim probably, from the centrifugal force of a copter starting to spin out of control. And there…”

  He directed them to the pilot’s door. “A bloody left handprint, pressed against the inside bulkhead. The pilot trying to steady himself, after he’d been attacked maybe. And right here, if you look closely—”

  His finger swept its way from the bulkhead to the joystick. “His bloody right hand held onto the controls until he no longer could, which was until—stay with me—”

  Philo pointed. “Until the passenger dragged him across the interior, across his own seat, and out of the helicopter with him. See? More blood. A left-to-right bloody skid mark on the seat cushion, a smear I figure is from dragging the pilot across it.”

  The detective dropped to a crouch next to Philo, his facial expression noncommittal, his head taking its time swiveling everywhere that Philo had directed them to look. When he rose from a squat he retrieved a notepad and pen from his jacket pocket. His nod was slow and pronounced, affirming. He addressed Philo.

  “I like it. I like all of it. And I liked it just as much when our investigators arrived at the same conclusion. But one part of that scenario is problematic.”

  Philo, out of his crouch, ran a hand through his rooster-comb hairline, coming up empty on a response.

  “Time’s up,” the detective said. “The issue with that scenario…”

  “I got it!” Patrick said from the fringe. “There was, um, no need to drag the pilot out of the copter after his throat was slit, sir, because, you know, he was already gonna die.”

  “Exactly,” the detective said. “Yes. So here’s what happened, based on an expedited autopsy by the coroner, and something you guys couldn’t know: his throat was cut in two places. The first thrust of the knife caught his aviator helmet’s chinstrap on the way to cutting into his neck. Not a mortal wound, so it probably only pissed him off. Unfortunately, the second wound was. Mortal, that is.”

  Philo, seeing it now: “The second wound came after he was pulled from his seat.”

  “Bingo. They might have even struggled some after they both exited the copter. Chances are there’s a knife or some other sharp instrument out there in the channel, or maybe it’s somewhere on the island. Either way the body, and this spectacle we see here, is enough to tell what happened to bring the aircraft down.” He clicked his pen, flipped open his notepad. “Gimme some contact info on you and your associate, Mr. Trout. Maybe we can talk later. Name-wise I have Philo Trout, and it’s Patrick… what did you say your last name was again, Patrick?”

  A newly distraught Douglas Logan turned away, found a seat on a bench outside the church, and dropped hard onto it. Ella and Ben sidled up alongside, comforting him. Detective Ujikawa finished his notetaking, then checked for a phone signal, eventually finding one. Philo, Patrick, and Evan converged on Mr. Logan at the bench but kept their distance.

  He waved them forward, finished sniffling into the large yellow kerchief raised from his neck. “So this is the young man you were talking about.”

  “Yes, sir,” Evan said.

  Mr. Logan stood, took measure of Patrick, a visual scan north to south and then north again, Patrick cooperating but uncomfortable at so close an inspection. His face, his coal-black Polynesian hair, they were similar in color and texture to Ella’s. Mr. Logan’s squinty scrutiny stopped just short of gripping Patrick’s chin like a rancher does livestock.

  “The sho
rt answer is many families have left the island with their young children and moved to Kauai over the years. The timing could have been right. But no, I don’t recognize him as one of them. Ella, Ben?”

  Heads nodded in agreement, their comments to the same effect. These were not no as an answer, more like only probably no.

  “Tell you what, Frogman Trout,” Mr. Logan said. “I can check my records back home, on my ranch, if you’d like. Some hard-copy info we’re in the process of cataloging for a database. You, your friend Patrick”—he glanced at Evan—“and you too, Commander, you’re all invited to my ranch where we can go over whatever we find. I’ll check my records regarding your friend more closely. Please call my secretary.”

  He handed Philo a business card, hesitated releasing it, then did. “You don’t remember, do you, Mr. Trout?”

  “Sir?”

  “What happened during your SEAL training when you were with us?”

  “Well, I—”

  Philo sensed Douglas Logan had found a happy place to blunt the pain of losing Chester Kapalekilahao, the dead copter pilot. A moment that apparently gave the island owner comfort, as short-lived as it would be, something that made him proud. For Philo, it was a moment in his SEAL career that was less than flattering.

  “Your capture.” The warm smile spread across Logan’s face like a grade-schooler telling tales.

  “Do you know about this, Commander?” he said to Evan. “I don’t expect Mr. Trout would have told you about it. It was during one of the exercises the Navy puts you SEALS through. What Miakamiians call ‘Hide and Seek.’”

  Philo knew where he was going, made no attempt to short him on reliving the glory he was about to re-bestow on one of his island charges.

  “A SEAL team in training entered one of Miakamii’s jungles in full gear,” he began, “for an overnight stay. They were expected to make hidey-holes for themselves. A survival exercise. Sole purpose was to stay camouflaged, hidden all night until they could all be rescued in the morning, simulating their retrieval after a mission. Except one frogman was captured that night—”

  Mr. Logan’s smiling eyes shifted from Evan to Philo. He awaited a reaction, was being cute—and inclusive—by letting Philo join in the warmth of the anecdote.

  A sheepish Philo raised his hand. “That frogman… was me.”

  Mr. Logan nodded. “And to add insult to injury—”

  Philo finished it for him. He knew the impact Mr. Logan was going for. “The person who found me was a teenage girl.”

  Mr. Logan’s smile broadened, stayed close-lipped, but his eyes now showed appreciation for Philo having played along. “You were a good sport about it back then, and you are a good sport now. No shame to be had here, Mr. Trout. Let me just say she was an extraordinary kid, very resourceful, cunning, fearless. Not a wallflower. And like other islanders she also had an acute sense of smell, her other senses heightened as well. She’s someone who captured more than one SEAL during the Hide ’n’ Seek exercises the Navy approved over the years. I hope you learned something from it.”

  Philo’s answer was only half tongue in cheek. “I did. I changed to unscented soap.”

  The group shared a chuckle that petered out when the detective rejoined them, announcing he was leaving as soon as his ride arrived. Ella and Ben’s reaction was simultaneous, like a reflex: alert to the point of agitation, both with furrowed eyebrows and a laser-beam focus at a break in the trees that lined the clearing.

  “Your ride is here, Detective Uji,” Ella said. “The outboard just beached.”

  Uncanny; something Philo hadn’t heard. Impressive.

  “Detective—” This was Evan. The cat no longer had his tongue. “Mind if we walk with you?”

  They paid their respects to Mr. Logan and friends and waved to the two NTSB employees still busy investigating the wreckage. Once through the trees, out of listening distance from the crash site:

  “Chief Koo’s your boss, last I remember, right?” Evan said to the cop.

  “You know he is,” the detective said.

  The beached skiff’s pilot in shorts and shirtsleeves leaned against the boat, his arms crossed. The lagoon’s turquoise water rippled over the sand, a sea breeze catching Philo’s hair, Philo wanting to drink in this vista and blank out all the chaos they’d just seen—today’s gore, and all the gore of recent memory…

  “Great.” Evan stepped directly into the detective’s path and got up into his facial shit as close as he could without assaulting him. “You tell that motherfucker—”

  Philo leaned in to stop Evan from doing something he’d regret. Evan pushed Philo out of the way, got nose to nose with the detective again.

  “I wanna know why—the fuck—the Kauai police didn’t share with me what they found in my fiancée’s bathroom. Why I had to find that mess myself a whole day later with my posse here, no mention of any of it to me beforehand. Why the cops didn’t find my fiancée’s dead dog asphyxiated by carbon dioxide, from dry ice, damn it, thirty yards from her house. And why no one is returning my assistant’s calls! You get your fucking boss on the phone right the fuck now!”

  To the detective’s credit he stood his ground, withstood the verbal onslaught without flinching, and best of all, Philo thought, he did not retaliate. But he also didn’t retrieve his phone.

  “Commander—”

  “Call him!”

  “I don’t need to. I drew your fiancée’s case. Me. I was one of the detectives who processed the scene.”

  Evan, seething, stayed in close. “Then you better talk to me, Uji.”

  “You want me to talk to you, Commander, take a step back.”

  The man from the outboard, also a cop, had already hustled alongside Evan opposite Philo, the two of them bookending his aggrieved bravado. Evan gave ground. Somewhere other than this island, there would have been four guns in close quarters by way of two cops, a Navy captain, and a Navy SEAL. Chalk one up to Douglas Logan for his no-guns-on-the-island regulation.

  “It was info we held back. To help with the investigation. To rule out the crazies on the tip line.”

  “But you released the scene—”

  “An internal screw-up. It should have been handed off internally before they released it. A crew is probably onsite as we speak, something we never do, working the bathroom and replacing the glass in that window. To keep that information hush-hush.”

  “And removing the leftover dry ice,” Evan said.

  Detective Ujikawa swallowed hard one time, the only comment to rattle him so far. “Yes. The dry ice… he left the body in the tub for someone to find. Murdered in the bedroom, moved her to the bathroom, left her in dry ice.”

  Philo spoke up. “So your cleaners will remediate the bedroom, too?”

  “Cleaning the rest of the place will be the owner’s responsibility. Always is.”

  “The homeowner is fucking dead, Uji!” Evan screamed, spittle spraying. Philo was quick to insert himself between them, successful this time in backing his friend away.

  “Right. Sorry, Commander, my bad. Again, please accept my apologies…”

  Evan’s look was pained, incredulous, but mostly he looked lost. He pushed away from Philo and stormed off, talking to himself while he marched up the beach. On the horizon, a Navy Seahawk started its descent to the island’s military installation a half-mile north, a radar tower glinting from the installation’s perch.

  Philo and Patrick had to hustle to fall in behind him on foot along the coastline, their destination the Navy’s Miakamii radar installation to catch their ride back.

  9

  “So this is one of the land parcels,” Wally Lanakai said to the surgeon. Wally eyed the panoramic view from Dr. Umberto Rakoso’s second-story office. It stretched far to the north, the distant horizon overwhelmed by the wraparound Pacific Ocean, all blue, all heavenly.

  “Yes,” the doctor said.

  They were seated at a desk facing the doctor, Wally in a comfy side chair, one of
two, the other chair barely containing Wally’s oversized associate Magpie Papahani. Dr. Rakoso, a native Kauaiian, sat with his hands folded on his desk.

  “This property was deeded to you as a Rakoso family descendant?” Wally said.

  “Yes.”

  “A half-acre.”

  “Yes. It’s one of many parcels that total eight-plus acres owned by descendants of the family.”

  “But not for long, you say.”

  “That is the present concern. If no one does anything about it, we will lose all eight acres at auction.”

  Which was why Wally was here on a recruiting run, sent by another Hawaiian surgeon strapped for cash for a reason far less noble than Dr. Rakoso’s: exorbitant gambling debts owed to Wally. The referral came from someone onboard with Wally’s organ transplant business, but also aware of the doctor’s real estate squeeze. Wally had decided on a stable of two doctors in Kauai to start. Stealth was of utmost importance considering the risk.

  The doctor and more than two hundred native islanders were in the legal fight of their lives. A mega-billionaire was sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into acquiring northern Kauai property, much of the north shore sugar plantation town of Kilauea in particular—where land passed from generation to generation with the ownership largely undocumented, which meant property taxes often didn’t get paid. The megabucks person was looking to make his seven-hundred-acre beachfront property more private. But the islanders weren’t into selling, which meant the billionaire was into suing. In the balance were the rights to auction off the eight acres to the highest bidder, a foregone conclusion as to whom that highest bidder would be.

  The doctor and his family needed money, lots and lots of money, for legal fees to protect their rights.

  Enter Wally Lanakai. “I see your family has quite a number of crowdfunding pages.”

  “Yes. Each parcel holder has one. We’re desperate.”

  Wally nodded his understanding. “Hence my reason for being here. If you’ll let me, I can contribute.”

  The intimation was Wally would make cash donations to the doctor for his surgical services, in amounts small enough to stay below the radar.