Lei Crime Series 02 - Torch Ginger

by Neal, Toby

  “What kind of things?”

  “Rumors. Of witchcraft, maybe a cult connection. Some of the campers would tell about animal disappearances. Then there were the stones.”

  “Stones?”

  Everyone in the peanut gallery sat forward.

  “Yeah, the stones that were left behind. Campers found three stones several times at the site where someone disappeared. I think the stones have significance.”

  “We have to find some forensic evidence showing foul play. These disappearances are certainly weird, a pattern, and something we are seriously investigating, but we can’t say for sure these people are victims yet.” Stevens was still fishing, waiting to see what Haddock would reveal on his own. The addition of other stones was already more than the store owner had told Lei.

  “You can’t, but I can.” Jazz threw his shoulders back proudly. “I’m the Guardian of the community, and I know when it’s in trouble. I know people are being taken and killed. I even think I know something about who’s doing it.”

  “Please.” Stevens made a sweeping gesture. “Let us in on it!”

  “Why should I give away the only leverage I’ve got? Not without something in exchange.”

  “Exchange for what?” Fury spoke for the first time. He’d taken the “bad cop” role, standing against the wall with arms folded and a scowl on his face. “I wasn’t aware there was anything we could help you with.”

  “Exchange for an apology from Captain Fernandez— for not taking this seriously when it was happening right under his nose.”

  Stevens looked up at the mirrored window. The captain bent forward to the microphone embedded in the Formica.

  “I’ll talk to you.” His voice had a tinny echo in the audio system of the interview room.

  “Now.” Jazz folded his arms.

  The captain leaned forward. “Turn off the tape.”

  Fury hit the switch on the wall that turned off the video camera.

  The captain stood up, straightened his jacket, shot his cuffs, and put his gold-braided hat on. He left the booth and went around to the interview room door, went in. Walked over to the table and reached out his hand.

  “Jazz Haddock. Long time no see. Thanks for coming in.” Jazz took his hand and they shook. The captain took his hat off, tucked it under his arm.

  “I should have taken your complaint seriously. I apologize for any misunderstanding we may have had over the years and if my department treated you with anything less than fairness.”

  “Accepted.”

  “I want to keep my island safe, and everyone on it. That means everyone. Please give these men your full cooperation so we can move ahead with this investigation.”

  The captain clapped his hat back on, spun on his heel, and left the room. A few minutes later he took his seat beside Lei again. His jaw was bunched with tension, but his apology had worked, because Jazz got a paper out of his back pocket and smoothed it on the table.

  “These are the facts about the perpetrator I’ve been able to develop—one: He lives here. Probably somewhere remote, where he takes the victims. Two: He drives a truck. There were truck tire marks at some of the sites when I asked fellow campers about it, and a truck would be a great way to easily transport someone.

  “Three. He may have help. I think someone assists, what have you, because a lot of the missing were young and in good physical condition.”

  Lei’s mind flew to Jim Jones. He seemed the perfect candidate, as either the murderer or the helper, and his suspicious behavior and disappearance had only made Lei more eager to bring him in. The papaya farm cult would make the perfect hunting ground and hideout— who knew how many bodies might be buried there as fertilizer. Lei rubbed the stone in her pocket and fought the urge to get up and pace.

  “Four. He’s got some means. I think he has a cover life, but this kind of activity requires a flexible schedule. Five. He’s physically fit. The victims have been a variety of sizes and body types; he seems to be able to handle them all.”

  “We were hoping for a name,” Fury said.

  “I don’t have that for you.”

  “Not bad for speculation.” Stevens took the list. “Now, how about you? Where were you Tuesday, October twenty-third?”

  Jazz gave a short laugh. “Oh, it’s that way, is it? Well—I hate to disappoint you—I was opening my store with my wife, Penny, like I do every morning. I wouldn’t have the chance to drive all the way out to the North Shore and grab a strong young man and kidnap him.” He lifted one skinny arm, flexed it. “I hire young people like Jay Bennett to help me do the heavy lifting these days.”

  “We’ll be verifying that. I think that’s all for now, and again, we really appreciate your cooperation.” They escorted Jazz out.

  The captain flung his hat down on the Formica counter. “I thought he had a name for us!”

  “It was gracious of you to talk to him, Captain,” Lei said. The other men left her alone with him. The captain picked the hat back up, turned it in his hands.

  “He was gloating.”

  “No one thinks less of you for apologizing to him. They’ll respect you for it. You said you want to protect everyone on this island—and that’s what the guys will remember.”

  A long pause, then Fernandez stood up.

  “You’re all right, Texeira,” he said gruffly, and clapped his hat back on as he left.

  Lei stuck her head into Becky’s cubicle. The young woman was hunched over her microscope, busy with a slide. Lei knocked on the doorjamb.

  “Hey. Any luck with our mummy hand?”

  “Yeah. I matched the prints and sent it to Oahu.” Becky looked up, stretched, hopped off her stool, and moved over to the computer, gesturing to a wheeled stool.

  Lei rolled it over to the computer.

  “Prints matched a missing person, John Samson.” Becky turned the screen toward Lei, showing a photo of a mid-thirties white man with long hair and a beard. “Missing since 2003. Kind of amazing the hand’s intact.”

  Lei’s pulse jumped—this was the first solid evidence that one of the missing was a homicide, just as they’d hoped.

  “Can you log this and e-mail it to the captain? I’ll make sure the rest of the team knows.”

  “Well, you’ll like this too.” Becky scrolled to a blow-up photo of the hand. “See this?” She pointed to a ragged edge of bone. “Serrated marks. This didn’t come off as a result of decay or the flood—it was sawed off.”

  “Premortem or postmortem?”

  “That I can’t say. It’s on its way to Oahu for a full tox screen and DNA analysis. Hopefully they can tell.”

  “What’ve you got?” The brusque inquiry made them both jump. Stevens stood in the doorway, brows a dark slash over intense blue eyes.

  “Come see this.” Lei gestured. “This is the hand I picked up from the Hanalei flood. Becky did prints on it—and it matches one of our missing.”

  “I don’t believe we’ve met.” Becky hopped off her stool, ripped off her latex glove and, smiling, shook Stevens’s hand. “I’d have remembered if we had.”

  Lei hadn’t noticed Becky’s petite, curvy figure until now, how attractive her tousled blond hair and bright blue eyes were. Becky made a show of straightening a miniskirt so short it disappeared beneath her lab coat.

  “Great to meet you.” Stevens flashed the smile Lei remembered, one she hadn’t seen in months. “This is very good news.”

  “I aim to please.” Becky did a little curtsy.

  “Well, I’m out of here.” Lei slid off her stool. “I’ll let you get caught up on the details.”

  “Just a minute.” Stevens’s hand clamped around her upper arm. “Let’s go together. I have to brief you on something. Private conversation.”

  Lei gave a little wave to Becky as Stevens pointed at the doors.

  His large hand encircled her biceps as if she might run. She yanked her arm away and strode ahead. They swished through the sliders and into the parking lot. Lei h
eaded for the little shade tree growing against the side of the building. They sat on the picnic table beneath it, facing the ocean’s blue smudge visible in the distance.

  Stevens cleared his throat. “This is more awkward than I thought.”

  “What did you think it would be like? We broke up; now we have to work together.”

  Lei’s voice trembled and she stilled it, thrusting her hands into her jeans pockets. She rubbed the black stone.

  “Well, I didn’t realize you’d be seeing someone so soon. Who sent the roses?”

  “What roses?”

  “Your cubicle. Who is he?”

  “None of your business.” Lei felt a hot blush blooming up her neck. She’d obviously missed something.

  “I think it is.”

  “We broke up. I moved here. Life goes on.”

  “I guess I thought you were just having another panic attack, that you needed some space. I just don’t understand you.” He looked away.

  “I don’t either.” Lei looked down at the stone in her hand.

  “Well, I wanted to tell you I miss you, and I’d like to . . . spend some time together.”

  “I don’t know. We’re in the middle of an investigation. Don’t you think we should try to focus on that?”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  She remembered him saying what she’d just said, how hard it had been keeping their hands off each other during last year’s investigation. Stevens’s phone shrilled, and he picked up, walking away from her back toward the station. She followed slowly, studying the breadth of his shoulders, the curling brown hair that he’d let grow to touch his collar.

  She missed him. She missed snuggling against his big hard strength and listening to the measured thud of his heart; she missed how safe she felt with him.

  Somehow that hadn’t been enough to get past her fear.

  Lei headed straight to her cubicle, hands sweating. Her eyes widened at the huge bouquet of blush-colored roses she’d been too distracted to notice on the way to the interview room. A tiny cream-colored card was set in a plastic holder protruding from among the glossy foliage.

  She took the little card off, flipped it over.

  Remembering last night. Alika.

  “Oh my God,” she said out loud. “Crap.”

  Stevens had probably looked at the card, but even if he hadn’t, the roses took up most of her cubicle. She stared at them numbly.

  Jenkins came in. “Woo-hoo! Nice roses! Stevens trying to get you back?”

  “No.” Lei pushed the roses off into a corner where they didn’t take up so much room. They hit her in the head when she sat down in her chair.

  “Just ‘no’? What, got a secret admirer?” Jenkins wheedled. Lei stuck the little card in the pocket of her jeans.

  “What Jazz Haddock was saying really makes me like Jim Jones for this, and we never did get an interview with the folks out there at the papaya farm.”

  “Hey now, no distracting me. What about those roses? Who sent them to you?”

  “None of your business.”

  “You’re my partner. Everything’s my business”

  “It’s Alika Wolcott, the developer dude, okay? We’ve got a case to work on. Let’s focus on that.” Lei flipped the black stone back and forth between her fingers. “I wonder if there’s some way to really see what’s going on out there—maybe by getting in undercover.”

  “Stevens isn’t going to like it.” Jenkins’s statement seemed to encompass both the roses and her idea.

  “No, this could work.” Lei did a few spins in her office chair, her head tipped back. The pent-up tension of the morning, the frustration and edginess of talking to Stevens, had begun to transmute into an idea she could take action on. “Jazz could bring me in and I could be a hippie chick ‘seeker.’”

  “What makes you think he’d take you in?”

  “I don’t know. I might need to show him I’m serious, that I can do it.” She grabbed one of the Bics, jotted a little cartoon on the pad of scratch paper by her desk, held it away to look at it.

  “You need to run all this by Stevens and Fury,” Jenkins said. He’d begun to chew the corner of his index fingernail. “Let’s go talk to them.”

  “No. I don’t think so.” Lei reached for her backpack and cotton blazer. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “It’s on your head.” Jenkins raised his voice to call after her, rare irritation twisting his mouth. “You gonna ditch me, go off on a tangent, it’s on your head.”

  “That’s right,” Lei said, over her shoulder. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  Chapter 17

  Lei pushed through the screen door into the barbershop in the shabby old-town area of Kapa`a. A dusty striped pole spun slowly outside, and the chair was occupied by an elderly Filipino gentleman who looked at her disapprovingly over half-glasses and his paper. The barber ignored her as she sat on one of the plastic seats, reading an ancient National Geographic.

  Finished, the barber dusted the chair off, the latest hair offerings joining drifts on the linoleum floor.

  “What you like?”

  Lei got into the chair.

  “Take it all off.” She rubbed the black stone to still her hands, knotted in her lap.

  “Crazy, you,” the barber tsked. “Whatevahs.” He turned on his clippers.

  Fifteen minutes later, Lei walked out rubbing her head, shorn like a lamb to within an inch of her scalp. She couldn’t bear to look in a mirror. Next stop—tattoo shop.

  She came out an hour later with henna tattoos and several imitations that looked like the real thing: a henna sun sent rays out from her navel, an ankh decorated one wrist and an “om” sign the other; and a colorful lotus blossom bloomed on her lower back.

  She drove on to Lihue and made her way to the costume shop, a little place near the community theater. She’d shopped there several times doing detective work, and Shevonne, the owner, looked up in surprise as she came in.

  “Oh my God, is that you, Lei?” she exclaimed.

  “Going for a new look.”

  After the costume shop, she hit the local hemp clothing store, where she came out with yet more packages. She drove back to Kapa`a, and at the park, went into the women’s washroom and put on her disguise. Eventually satisfied, she got in her truck and drove to her destination.

  * * *

  The Timekeeper finished the last of his Tae Kwon Do workout and dove into the ocean. The water was cool, and he stayed submerged as long as he could, swimming beneath the surface, sleek as a seal.

  “Lazy good-for-nothing. You and your brother and sister, nothing but pains in my ass.” Her voice rang in his ear as loud as the day she’d spoken those words. He broke the surface, gasping, looking around.

  Nothing but beauty as far as his eyes could see—the sculptured face of Bali Hai mountain, horseshoe of yellow beach, and ocean gone cobalt with early morning.

  “Get your ass back to work or I’ll take it out on her,” she said. His sister, too frail to withstand her. His sister, whom he’d failed.

  “Okay, Mom, I’m going,” he said aloud, and swam hard for the shore.

  Chapter 18

  Jazz Haddock glanced up from his last customer and Lei pushed the organic lamb chops and other groceries toward him at the register. He took the items without comment and rang them up. “That’ll be twenty-seven ninty-nine.”

  She handed him the cash, and as their eyes met, his widened in recognition. She put her finger over her lips and pointed to the beaded curtain. He gave a tiny nod and handed her back her change. The next customer engaged him in conversation, and Lei sidled casually through the curtain, trying to keep the beads from rattling. She parked herself on the couch, the string bag bulging with food at her feet.

  Jazz’s “office” was dimly lit, the evening light slanting through the window and falling on the coffee table, where a bamboo tray held a variety of round semi-precious chunks of stone and a loupe.

  She pic
ked up the loupe and looked at the stones. They were roughly the same size as the ones they’d recovered from Jay’s shoe. A nasty suspicion came to her as she held one of the walnut-sized rocks, an opal, up to catch the light. Jazz pushed through the beaded curtain and shut the office door, putting his hands on his hips.

  “I said all I needed to, down at the station. What’s with the disguise?”

  Lei set the stone back into the tray. “What are you doing with these rocks?”

  “Collecting. You never answered my question.”

  “Yeah. Collecting. I think these were 'collected’ from the other disappearance sites. You’ve been holding out on us.” She folded her legs Indian-style under the hemp skirt and placed her hands on her knees, thumb to forefinger in the classic meditation pose, her “tattooed” wrist symbols clearly visible.

  “You guys never asked if I had them. I answered everything I was asked truthfully.”

  “I think you know a lot more than you told us,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken.

  He clamped his lips shut, sat in the lounger. A few long minutes passed, and Lei closed her eyes, breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth.

  The pose really was relaxing.

  “How do I look?” she finally asked.

  “Like a hippie. What the hell are you doing?”

  “I need to get into the cult you told me about, the TruthWay. I’ve been all over the North Shore with my partner, showing pictures and canvassing; we can’t find Jim Jones and that group of campers, or anyone who seems to know anything about the disappearances. We do know they meet and hide out at a papaya farm owned by a Jones family. I want to get onto the papaya farm, and you said you know people there.”

  Jazz looked at her for a long time. She could see him assessing her outfit: the natural-fiber fringed dress, the strings of tulsi beads decorated with a bronze peace sign, the tattoos, and finally the waist-length black wig, which did more to change her looks than she’d hoped.

  “Lose the beads. Too much.”

  “Okay.” She took the strands off and handed them to him. “Will you help me?”