by Toby Neal
Lei called Sophie Ang from her car, following Terence Chang in his black Tacoma down a winding, isolated jungle road.
“Sophie, I can’t talk long, but I need you to check on the whereabouts of a man named Ray Solomon and a woman named Anela Chang. They’re somewhere on the Big Island. Anything you can find out, starting with a physical address. It’s urgent.”
Sophie’s voice was taut with tension. “What are you up to, Lei?”
“I’m following a lead on the shroud killer. I need some intel that’s not filtered through the local PD,” Lei said, driving with one hand and keeping Chang in sight. He was driving slowly, within the speed limit, no doubt to keep both of them from being pulled over by any random speed traps, notorious on this stretch of quiet road leading out of Hilo.
“I can work that in.”
“I need it…like, now,” Lei said. “It’s critical.”
“I’m at the FBI in the middle of a workday,” Sophie snapped. “I need a little more to go on from you to drop everything.”
“We had another attempt on our lives,” Lei said. She couldn’t keep the tremble out of her voice as she told Sophie about the fire on Maui last night. “I’m over here on Big Island, and I’m trying to find out who’s behind this.”
“Okay, I’ll get on it right now.” Lei could hear the rattle of the woman’s keyboard as those long golden-brown fingers went to work. “I have them up. Both have records.”
“I know all about that. I just need to know where they are. Physical address.”
More rattling.
“I don’t have that. Neither of them have driver’s licenses. All I have is a PO box in Hilo.” She read it off.
“So how about business addresses associated with them?” The farther Lei got from Hilo, the more nervous she became, following Chang into the wilderness. In his living room, he’d offered to help, to show her where Ray and Anela’s compound was, and that had made sense. “You’ll never find it by yourself,” he’d said.
Now Lei was having second thoughts. Chang could be leading her into a trap.
Lei slowed down further, glancing around at the trackless wilderness they were passing through. The Big Island was full of hidden roads and so much jungle it would be no problem to hide her car—and her body.
She wished she’d returned Stevens’s calls, but she hadn’t wanted him trying to stop her.
“Hmmm,” Sophie said. “This is interesting. I see the two of them listed on the board of directors of Paradise Production Enterprises, LTD. There’s a physical address listed for that.” She rattled off a Hilo address, and Lei committed it to memory.
“So tell me more about what you’re doing. Let me help.”
“I can’t. But I need you to look for the guy who burned our house on Maui if you can.” She told Sophie about the message Stevens had left her that the fuel mixture was the same for the cane burns as for their arson attack. “I know it’s not a lot to go on. The guys are doing canvassing of Maui Sugar employees and so on, but I don’t think anyone has done a search for online connections to this firebug. Can you look for all you can on these two suspects and on this Maui arsonist? I want him strung up—he burned my house and almost took out my family.” Lei found her voice thickening. “I have to keep doing what I’m doing over here. Call Stevens at his station with anything you find.” She hung up abruptly, afraid she was going to say too much.
Lei refocused on the deserted, winding, two-lane road, ignoring the phone, buzzing like an angry bumblebee on the seat beside her. There was zero visibility ahead with the choking trees. She sped up and got the Tacoma back in her sights.
The phone was her lifeline. She had to be able to contact Hilo PD when and if she needed to call for backup—but she couldn’t call them too soon and have them try to stop her and Chang.
Where was Terence Chang leading her? Chang had said Anela and Ray had a compound out in “the sticks,” and it appeared he wasn’t exaggerating, even by Big Island–isolation standards. Lei watched her reception bars anxiously as the huge albizia trees, draped in choking veils of vines, leaned over the road to close them into a dim tunnel of green-lit jungle.
Chapter 12
The Fireman bundled his clothing into a suitcase and scooped items off his dresser: a comb, a wooden box with the few keepsakes he had from his mother, his class ring, a worn Bible. He’d decided what to do.
It was time to start over. He had cash, and right now no one was looking for him—except for the blackmailer. He could get lost in the crowds on Oahu easily. Having made up his mind, he was galvanized into action. The decision had settled his stomach.
The first thing he’d done was ditch all of his fire-setting equipment and any evidence tying him to the fires. That had been easy to do, dumping the gas and diesel cans, plastic bin, and other items into the Dumpsters behind the mall, burning the receipts.
He’d gone to Ross and bought a cheap suitcase. As he packed, he felt a lightening in his soul.
He had a chance to start a new life. He could buy a new identity on Oahu—someone, somewhere, made fake IDs—and with this cash, he had a cushion to figure out what to do next. He looked around the tattered apartment, regretting that he’d bought the flat screen TV. He couldn’t take that with him.
The doorbell buzzed, and he dropped a handful of T-shirts in surprise.
“Shit,” he muttered, picking them up. Doorbell had rung more in the last few days than it had the entire time he’d lived in the apartment. His hands were shaking.
Truth was, he was afraid the blackmailer was observing him and knew he was fleeing. Now that he’d seen how thoroughly the cops had been watched in their home, he no longer believed the windows were how he’d been observed.
He still had the tranq gun. It was his only weapon.
He picked it up and went to the door, applied his eye. Two men stood out there, but in the distortion of the fish-eye lens he couldn’t recognize them.
“Yes?”
“Kenny Rice?” One of them, a burly looking older man, spoke. “This is the MPD. We need to ask you a few questions.”
The Fireman stepped back from the door, his heart rate galloping. They were onto him somehow! What to do? He looked around wildly, but the window was three floors up and there was no fire escape.
He’d have to brazen it out.
“This isn’t a good time. I’m sick.” His voice wobbled authentically. He felt his heart doing flip-flops like a gaffed fish.
“We’re sorry for the inconvenience, sir, but this is important.” The man’s voice was implacable. “You can answer the questions here, or come down to the station.”
The Fireman felt his heart give a sort of squeeze, and then it felt like a giant hand clamped over it, as if wringing out a sponge. Agonizing pain filled his chest, radiating down his arm, dimming his vision.
“Help,” he gasped, and was only able to undo the dead bolt before he was swamped in a red wave of agony. His vision wicked out.
Ferreira looked at Stevens as they heard a muffled cry and the thump of a falling body on the other side of the door.
“Kenny? Kenny Rice?” Ferreira yelled, and pounded on the door again. “Something’s wrong in there. Maybe someone has him.”
“Exigent circumstances enough for me,” Stevens said. “You do the honors; my foot’s still sore.”
Ferreira stepped back and aimed a kick just under the doorknob. The door buckled but held. Another kick and it gave from the jamb, but wouldn’t open—there was a body blocking it.
Ferreira applied his shoulder and some heave, and the body slid inward enough for them to see that it belonged to a thin, middle-aged man of medium height, his skin dusky-white, his eyes closed. A gash on his forehead bled sluggishly.
Stevens had his weapon out. He stepped over the body, checking the
adjacent room and bathroom. “Clear. He’s alone.”
“Choking, poison, or heart attack,” Ferreira surmised, kneeling beside the man and feeling for a pulse. Stevens called for an ambulance as Ferreira checked the airway, and grimacing, began CPR.
“I’ll take a turn when you get tired,” Stevens said. “Having a look around.” He snapped on gloves he pulled from a back pocket and, in the bedroom, observed the signs of packing. “This guy was leaving in a hurry.” He picked up a printed schedule lying in the printer. “This afternoon, in fact.” He rifled through the mound of items beside the suitcase and looked inside a pillowcase filled with lumpy items. “Oh yeah. Something going on here.” He returned to the other room, holding the pillowcase open. “Check this out.”
Ferreira paused his chest compressions. “That’s a lotta cash.”
They heard the wail of the siren off in the distance. Stevens propped open the broken door, shooing some lookie-loos from the hallway. “He’s having a medical emergency. Help is on the way.” Reluctantly, the doors closed, but Stevens knew the neighbors would be back to see what they could glean—this was that kind of apartment building. “We’d better take this money down to the station for safekeeping now that we’ve broken his place wide open.” He glanced around. “There doesn’t appear to be anything else worth much in here except for that flat screen. I’ll get his wallet, too.” He gathered the man’s things and then relieved Ferreira doing the chest compressions until the medical team arrived.
After Kenny Rice was taken away, Stevens conferred with Ferreira. “I think we should search this place thoroughly for anything connecting Rice with the fires. I mean, this guy is supposed to be broke, on unemployment. So what’s he doing with a pillowcase full of cash? And then he’s packing with a one-way ticket to Oahu and has a heart attack when we come to the door. Something smells.”
“Agree,” Ferreira said, mopping his forehead. Sweat rings darkened his navy blue golf shirt.
“Okay, I’m getting a search warrant.” Stevens worked his phone for a while, getting one faxed down, and it wasn’t long before they were thoroughly searching the premises.
Stevens, in need of a physical break, sat down at the man’s computer.
The Internet cookies cache had been wiped. “Dammit,” Stevens muttered. As he sat on the plastic office chair up against a counter the man had used for a desk, he looked around at the depressing space: bare, scuffed walls, a parking-lot view obscured by broken blinds, a stolen stop sign in the window, a dirty, old tweed couch.
Yet this man owned more personal things than Stevens did right now. “Insurance is going to come through,” Stevens muttered to himself. “It better.” He was worried there might be something in the fine print excluding arson.
Sitting there, scrolling through the files on the computer, Stevens’s mind returned to Lei for the hundredth time. He’d been grateful for activity to keep his mind off her disappearance. The DMV had completed his ID, but he hadn’t been able to get a flight out until four o’clock. It was now one p.m. He’d need to get to the airport soon.
His anger with Lei was on a slow boil, tamped down by worry—but he knew, once he knew she was safe, he’d feel the full flame of it, and he had no intention of sheltering her from the blast.
“Hey.” Ferreira, sifting through the trash, held up a brown UPS box. “This came today. This morning. I wonder what was inside.” He looked into the sink, held up a bit of burned paper. “The guy went to some trouble to get rid of whatever this was. Burned it.”
Stevens stood up. “If he was the firebug, he probably has a place he stashes all his fire stuff.”
They hurried through the cupboards and closet, but found nothing but a barbecue lighter. “He must have ditched anything linking him to the fires.” Stevens flicked the lighter. “This works. I’ll take it in.”
Just then Ferreira’s phone buzzed. He took the call and looked up at Stevens. “FBI patch-through from Oahu for you. Agent Ang.”
Stevens took the phone. “Sophie?”
“Hi. Lei asked me to call you with this. I found a guy on some of these arson and firebug forums. I have a computer IP address.”
“You’ve heard from Lei? Is she okay?” He knew he sounded alarmed.
A long pause as Sophie Ang took in his tone. “I think so. She was in a hurry, said it was urgent. Wanted me to run some background on some people and search for this Maui arsonist. She told me to call you if I found a lead.”
“When was this? Did she say where she was? What she was doing?” He fired the questions like bullets.
“Just said that she was on the Big Island, chasing down some leads. She called me maybe an hour ago.”
She wasn’t kidnapped. She’s gone rogue. Just as he’d suspected.
Stevens controlled his voice with an effort. “Great. Thanks for this. We are closing in on this guy, and this might make all the difference. Who were the suspects Lei wanted you to find?”
“Anela Chang and Ray Solomon.”
Stevens’s stomach dropped. Those two names were a little piece of ancient history he’d rather never hear again. “Did she say why she wanted the address?”
“I assume to go roust them. As I said, she was on the road.”
“Thanks, Sophie.” Stevens hung up before he said anything more and unplugged the computer. “Taking this in for evidence. Rice didn’t leave much physical evidence, but we may get him with his online footprint. And now I have a few calls to make.” He speed-dialed Captain Ohale on the Big Island.
Lei pulled over behind Chang, where he’d pulled his vehicle into a long driveway off the main road. He turned off the driveway and pulled the truck up under some trees. It wasn’t hidden, but it wasn’t obvious, either. Lei pulled her battered rental in beside his. They got out. Lei kept her hands loose, assuring easy access to her weapon.
“So. Where’s this compound?”
“I didn’t want to alert them to us. They know my truck. It’s down the main road a bit farther. We could do a drive-by in your car and then park again. I’m still not sure how you plan to go about this,” Chang said. His olive complexion looked pale.
“Me neither,” Lei said, frowning. “But I need your help. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, remember?”
“I said I’d show you where it was—that’s all.” Chang tightened his jaw.
“Okay, then. I need to see exactly where it is before you take off.”
Without another word, he got into her car. Lei sucked in a breath, hoping she was even somewhat in the ballpark of doing the right thing, and got in beside him.
“Pull back onto the main road,” Chang said. “We’ll drive by the entrance. Then you can come back here and park. I think they have surveillance cams at the turnoff, which is why I didn’t want to take my truck past it.”
Silently now, they drove back onto the main road, and finally, Chang pointed down a side road, a red-dirt slash in the jungle. “It’s down there.”
Lei drove by at a sedate pace, peering down the road. “I can’t see anything.”
“You wouldn’t be able to. They’re trying to stay under the radar.”
Lei drove a while before she found a pullout to use to turn the car around, then made her way back. This situation was looking pretty impossible right now. Her brain scrambled for a solution.
She parked next to Chang’s truck again. “Now, what can you tell me about the compound? I need to know what I’m getting into.”
“I thought of that.” Chang reached inside the light khaki Windbreaker he wore over a shoulder rig with a Beretta holstered in it. Lei tensed, her hand near her weapon, but he only drew out a small tablet computer. “I can draw you a map.” Using a stylus, he drew a rectangular compound. “Ten-foot fence around the compound with razor wire around the top. Bulletproof gatehouse at the entrance.
At least six armed guards. A bunkhouse in back. This is all to guard the meth lab and distribution facilities back there.”
Lei felt her belly tighten. This compound was no place to take on by herself. “So you mean for me to drop you off and then take on armed men in a fenced compound by myself?” Lei snorted. “I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.”
Chang shrugged. “Not my problem.”
So Chang wouldn’t help, but she could call in a raid if she had probable cause, which she did with Chang as a witness. She whipped out her weapon and pointed it at Chang.
“Put your hands on the dashboard.”
Chang narrowed his eyes. “This is how you thank me?”
“For all I know, you’re lying out your ass and sending me on a wild-goose chase, or into a trap. You’re my bird in the hand right now. One dead Chang or another, it makes no difference to me.” Lei spat the words harshly, hoping he wasn’t going to call her bluff.
Chang put his hands on the dash. “I can’t believe I helped you.”
Lei pulled handcuffs out of her back pocket, keeping the weapon on him. She snapped one on his wrist, the other onto the handle of the door, and then cuffed his other wrist. She removed the Beretta and rifled his pockets. She took out a switchblade and put the items in the backseat. She tweaked up his pant leg, and sure enough, he was wearing an ankle holster, too. She reached down and pulled the weapon out. “Sorry about this, Terence. It’s for your own protection.”
“Really.” Anger stained Chang’s cheeks, the tops of his ears. “I’m not going to forget this, Texeira.”
“You were going straight, right? So go straight.” She took out her phone and called Ohale, getting out of the car to keep out of Chang’s hearing range. “Captain? This is Lei Texeira. I have some reliable intel on busting a serious meth lab.”