Bones of Hilo

by Eric Redman

  Hanson smiled. “Take any road you like. Just take it out of town.” He tipped his Stetson hat.

  Kawika said, “Follow me in your car, P. I’ll see you in Wenatchee.” He kissed her, then gave her a hug and whispered, “Stick close.”

  As Kawika expected, Hanson followed them no further than the main intersection in Winthrop, where he watched them turn south. Kawika continued south but passed the turnoff for the East Side Road and stayed on the highway. A mile later he turned onto a dirt road and parked under a big ponderosa, nearly hidden by the lower branches. Patience, confused, stopped her car. He jumped in. “Drive,” he said.

  She drove, but not without questions.

  “I’ve got to come back,” he explained. “The marshal will expect that. He may figure I stashed my car and rode with you, and that I’d come back here by plane. If he does, I’m hoping he’ll look for my car along the East Side Road, near the airstrip, not where I just left it.”

  “Why do you have to come back?”

  “I’ve got to talk with Melissa Harding now that we know about her brother getting killed.”

  “I can’t get over it, Kawika. Fortunato must’ve murdered his own brother-in-law!”

  “Yup, and not just his brother-in-law. Probably Thomas Gray back on the Big Island too, right? Did the newspapers suggest Harding’s death might be a homicide? That there was anything suspicious about it?”

  “Nope. Not a hint. But the Hawaii papers didn’t hint that Thomas Gray’s death might be a homicide either. Yet it was, wasn’t it?”

  “Must have been,” Kawika agreed. “Here’s where we apply Occam’s Razor, right?”

  “Right,” she said. “It’s all so spooky, not just gruesome. I mean, if you didn’t know about both deaths, you might never guess either one was a murder.”

  “Yeah, and if you did you’d never prove it,” he said. “For the Hawaii one, Fortunato must’ve had an accomplice, though—someone who brought him back to shore. They found Gray’s boat halfway to Maui. And the accomplice might still be alive; maybe we can find him. But at the lake, Fortunato could have handled it himself. Drown Harding, take the boat to shore, give it a good push back out into the lake.”

  “Could you prove they were murders now, knowing about both?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Especially if we found the accomplice in Hawaii. Two men sell Fortunato land at inflated prices, both end up dead, and both die the same way. If we could prove Fortunato split the overpayment with—”

  Kawika’s cell phone rang. It was Tanaka. “Got some news,” he said. “Kids playing near the Lili‘uokalani Gardens found two shell casings for .375 H&H Magnum cartridges.”

  “What? I thought our forensics guys already searched the whole area?”

  “It’s embarrassing,” Tanaka admitted. “Our guys must’ve missed ’em. No prints, but the casings do match the cartridges in Bruno’s garage. So now the ammo’s definite at least.”

  “No prints on the casings? The shooter wore gloves when he loaded up?”

  “Odd, I know. Maybe he wiped ’em, in case they got left behind.”

  “But why would anyone leave them behind?” Kawika asked. “And where’s the third one?”

  “Probably still in the chamber when he peeled out of there. The rifle’s bolt action.”

  “But the other two? Careless to leave ’em.”

  “Maybe he thought one shot would do it, panicked when it didn’t.”

  “Maybe. Or else, like we discussed, someone—”

  But Tanaka had other news to impart, and the faltering rural cell signal, going in and out, made it hard to interrupt him. Tanaka said the suddenly cooperative Michael Cushing had offered theories for why Fortunato gave Bruno the gun. Maybe Bruno was Ralph’s spy inside the hunters’ group. Or maybe the hunters’ group was actually Ralph’s idea—another way for a third party to stop KKL. Maybe Fortunato gave Bruno the gun so he could pass as a hunter.

  “Though it’s a heck of a big gun,” Tanaka noted.

  Kawika switched topics. “Anyone found Peter Pukui yet? Melanie? Jason Hare?”

  “Nope. Still looking. No one’s seen any of them.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “Yeah. Peter and Melanie haven’t shown up in Kawaihae. And wherever Jason is these days, he’s not walking along the Queen K.”

  “Anything useful from the Murphys then?”

  “I hammered them. They’re talking with their lawyers now. But there’s news on Shimazu. Turns out he’s got other South Pacific resorts in development. Probably couldn’t let KKL fail; might drag ’em all down. And if he discovered what Ralph was up to, who knows? Cushing says he should have thought of that. Might explain Shimazu acting a little—”

  The cell phone connection failed.

  “Damn,” said Kawika. Patience looked at him, but he was staring straight ahead. “Damn,” he repeated.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “The cell—?”

  “No, not that. Bruno Moku‘ele, the guy they arrested?”

  “Yes—the shooter?”

  “He wasn’t the shooter. Someone’s trying to frame him. That’s why the shell casings were left behind.”

  “Wait, who would want to frame him?”

  “Whoever tried to shoot me.”

  She was frightened now, thinking about Kawika’s shooter still being out there, still being unknown. “What are you thinking, Kawika?”

  “Something I can’t tell you.”

  “Kawika—”

  “Honestly, P, I’m thinking something I can’t tell you. I’m really sorry. Damn.”

  Despite her efforts, Kawika fell silent, concentrating with the look he’d had when staring at her ceiling fan, only more intensely. And this time he wouldn’t talk.

  “You’re upset,” she said, stating the obvious. “Because someone else, someone other than Bruno, must be your shooter? Someone who’s not Hawaiian, you’re thinking?”

  Kawika grimaced. And for the first time in his relationship with Patience, he didn’t even respond. Just nodded and kept staring at the road ahead.

  PART SIX

  WENATCHEE AND THE METHOW VALLEY

  He had been a stanch servant of the law. And now he was invited to defend that which, at first sight, nay, even at second and third sight, must always seem a defiance of law more injurious than crime itself.

  —Owen Wister, The Virginian (1902)

  66

  Wenatchee

  Kawika sat across the table from United States Attorney Ernesto Gonzales and FBI Special Agent Harold Billings in Wenatchee. The setting—an interrogation room—felt familiar.

  Gonzales was speaking. He sounded caring and gentle, like a favorite uncle with a slight Spanish accent. “You have to understand,” he said. “Folks in the Methow take the thing personally. They’re still grieving for Steve Kellogg, even years later. He grew up there. High school football star, local boy made good. He had a cabin, always got back there for weekends. Always had a project or two for improving life in the valley.”

  “Sounds like quite a guy,” Kawika said.

  “That’s part of it. But there’s another part. You’ve heard the saying, all politics is local? Well, all crime is local too. Local people really feel it.”

  “I understand,” Kawika said. “Believe me.”

  “Then you know a murderer is like a terrorist on a local scale. An intimate terrorist, you might say. Imagine how you’re going to feel when you hear Osama bin Laden is dead. That’s how folks in the Methow felt—heck, it’s how folks in the whole Federal law enforcement community felt—when we heard Fortunato was dead. We didn’t throw a party or break out the booze. But we felt—what would you say, Harold?—gratified.”

  Special Agent Billings nodded. “Grimly gratified,” he said. “But gratified all the same.” Billings looked tall and fit in his short-sleeved shirt, like he belonged in the NFL.

  “I get it,” Kawika said. “I’ve learned enough about Fortunato. But still, someone m
urdered him. I’m thinking it might have been someone from Fortunato’s time up in the Methow. Someone avenging Kellogg.”

  Gonzales shrugged and looked at Agent Billings. Billings shrugged too.

  “Could’ve been, I guess, although Kellogg was killed some years ago,” said Billings. “But Fortunato’s death—it sounded pretty Hawaiian, at least over here. You could check travel records, I suppose. Big job, though. A lot of folks get out of the Methow in the winter, and then there’s Wenatchee, more folks—”

  “Anyway, how can we help?” Gonzales asked, moving things along.

  “You can tell me what really happened up in the Methow,” Kawika replied.

  “Sure,” replied Gonzales. “Let’s start with the basics.” He explained there’d been two investigations of Fortunato. One for real estate fraud, with desecrating a Native American heritage site thrown in. Then a second, for murder, after Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Kellogg had been shot in Wenatchee, with Fortunato as the main suspect. Kellogg had been the prosecutor for the fraud and desecration case, the unsuccessful one that nonetheless led to bankruptcy for Fawn Ridge; he’d definitely incurred Fortunato’s wrath. Gonzales himself had led the second case, the Kellogg murder investigation, with Billings as his lead FBI agent.

  Gonzales told a familiar story about the first case: Fortunato’s suspected real estate fraud, his destruction of the wintering shelter, Jimmy Jack’s refusal to testify, and the intense frustration, in the end, of having to drop the charges. One difference: Frank Kimaio had never mentioned the name Steve Kellogg—the murdered federal prosecutor Kimaio had worked with.

  Gonzales, on the other hand, didn’t mention Bill Harding, the man who’d sold Fortunato the land for Fawn Ridge and then drowned while fishing—Fortunato’s brother-in-law.

  “Frankly,” Gonzales replied when Kawika asked, “no one suspected Harding had been murdered until Kellogg was. We thought Harding just drowned. It was a big setback; we’d subpoenaed Harding to testify to the grand jury in the Fawn Ridge case.”

  “Forgive me,” Kawika said, “but there’s something really odd here. When I met Frank Kimaio, he briefed me on Fortunato. He sorta mentioned Harding in passing, but not by name, just called him a buddy who sold Fortunato the land. But he never mentioned Steve Kellogg at all. And he never said you guys suspected Fortunato of murder.”

  “Probably a simple explanation,” Gonzales said. “Frank—and by the way, his name was Frank Carlson before he moved to Hawaii—Frank worked on the Fawn Ridge fraud case and the wintering shelter—the first Fortunato case. Frank was the lead FBI agent, working with Kellogg on those. Then Kellogg got killed. And that was a different case. Agent Billings here was lead agent on the Kellogg murder investigation, working with me.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Kawika. “Frank Kimaio was Frank Carlson before he moved to Hawaii?”

  “That’s right,” Billings said. “Frank always planned to retire in Hawaii—him and his buddy Joe Crane. They flew together in Nam. Joe worked at the phone company here, got a telecom job in Hawaii after that. Frank could’ve kept working in Hawaii too, but he wanted to retire. I understand he’s sick now—right, Ernesto? Dying maybe. Agent Orange, I heard. Anyway, he’d put away a lot of bad guys, so he changed his name. High-profile agents do that sometimes.”

  “He chose an odd name,” Kawika observed. “Hawaiian letters, but not really the right sounds. ‘Kuh-MY-oh,’ ‘Kuh-MAY-oh’? Not a Hawaiian name, it seems.”

  Gonzales laughed.

  “Don’t tell that to Frank,” Billings said. “You’d hurt his feelings. Frank tried to learn about Hawaii, studied the language a bit. He had more enthusiasm than time.”

  “Okay,” Gonzales continued, “but probably Frank didn’t mention the murder because you were investigating Fortunato’s real estate scam. That’s what Frank worked on here, the real estate scam. In Hawaii you didn’t suspect Ralph of murder, did you?”

  “Not then. He was the victim.”

  “Right. And here, of course, he was the suspect. Finally—” Billings looked at Gonzales.

  “Finally,” Gonzales said, “Frank was Steve Kellogg’s head agent. They’d been buddies a long time. That’s why we couldn’t let Frank participate in the murder investigation. Would’ve given Fortunato’s defense lawyers too much to work with. So I’m not surprised he didn’t mention Kellogg. He didn’t work on that case, and of course it was all really painful for him. Wouldn’t mention it unless you asked. He doesn’t know much about the investigation anyway.”

  “So you two are the experts on Kellogg’s murder?”

  “Well, more than Frank. Not expert enough to nail Fortunato, unfortunately.” Billings shook his head. “Couldn’t nail him for fraud, couldn’t nail him for murder.”

  “What kind of gun killed Kellogg?” Kawika asked.

  “Nine-millimeter handgun,” Billing answered. “Army surplus ammunition. As common a weapon and ammo as the killer could have chosen. We never found the gun.”

  “Did Fortunato own a nine millimeter?”

  “He owned lots of guns,” Billings replied. “Kind of a gun nut—or serious collector, depending on your point of view. He never bought from dealers, only at gun shows.”

  “So we couldn’t trace his guns,” Gonzales explained.

  “Maybe it’s different in Hawaii,” said Billings. “Over here, a gun bought at a show—you know, a private thing, like a swap meet—there’s no permit, no waiting period, no background check. No registration required. Untraceable.”

  “Still, he needed an alibi,” Kawika said.

  “Claimed to be in Seattle,” replied Gonzales. “He kept a condo there. Fawn Ridge had its corporate offices in Seattle, where most of the investors lived. So he had a legitimate reason for being there. But he had time to drive to Wenatchee and back on the night of the murder.”

  “You couldn’t prove it?”

  “Well, he’d set up his alibi in advance,” Gonzales said. “Three hours before Kellogg was shot, Fortunato asked his Seattle neighbor there for some laundry soap. And three hours after Kellogg was shot, Fortunato answered his Seattle home phone when we called. By the time we got warrants, he’d just happened to have washed his car, the tires—and also underneath. He’d even changed the air filter. We figure he covered himself for the shooting and brought Handi Wipes or something plus a change of clothes. Shot Steve, stripped and wiped down, put everything in plastic bags, dropped ’em at different places.”

  “And the gun?”

  “We checked everywhere between here and Seattle,” replied Billings. “Any place he might have thrown it. Big job. We hoped he’d tossed it right away. But he probably kept it till he got to Seattle, dumped it in Lake Washington or Puget Sound. And we couldn’t prove he’d ever owned a nine-millimeter handgun anyway.”

  “You still thought you could nail him?” Kawika asked. “Without the gun?”

  “Well, he had means and opportunity, and motive. He really hated Kellogg. He tended to be a hothead—impulsive. So we used a lot of search warrants. Tore his life apart, let’s say: the grand jury, his financial records, lots of high-tech lab tests, that sort of thing. His investors knew he was the prime suspect, even though the news media didn’t print that. And then—” Gonzales hesitated.

  “And then we wiretapped them,” Billings said firmly. “Fortunato, his key investors, his wife. All of ’em. Home phones, work phones. Joe Crane, Frank’s Vietnam buddy, ran those taps for us before he moved to Hawaii. We monitored their cell phones too.”

  “We wanted to see what they’d say to one another,” Gonzales said. “We had maximum pressure on him, and they knew it.”

  “So what did you get?” Kawika asked.

  “No smoking gun—pardon the expression. Fortunato controlled himself for once. He knew we’d tapped his phones. Still, other Fawn Ridge people had no doubt he’d done it. Among themselves they’d discuss how he hated Kellogg. Some had heard Fortunato vow to kill him. But when they’d talk to Fortunat
o himself, he’d say, ‘You know, I’m not crying about it—Kellogg was an overzealous prosecutor. But I never would’ve killed him.’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, of course not.’”

  “Did the wiretaps get you anything at all?”

  “Well, one thing,” Gonzales replied. “In one call, Fortunato’s wife said he’d flat out threatened to kill her if she cooperated with us.”

  “Who was she talking to?” Kawika asked.

  “J.J.”

  “J.J.?”

  “Jimmy Jack,” said Gonzales. “You met him, right?”

  “Oh,” said Kawika. “Jimmy. Yeah, I met him.” Odd, their knowing that, he thought. And why would she be talking with Jimmy about that?

  “That told us a lot,” Billings continued. “We knew we were on the right track.”

  “Did Fortunato’s wife cooperate?” Kawika asked.

  “Nope,” replied Billings. “She took that death threat seriously. She knew Ralph would kill her if she helped us.”

  “But we may as well tell you: that conversation did help us in another way,” Gonzales added cautiously. “We used it to get a court order letting us wiretap Fortunato after he moved to Hawaii.”

  “What?” Kawika said sharply. “You wiretapped Fortunato in Hawaii?”

  “Just one year,” Gonzales replied. “That’s all we were allowed, 1999 to 2000. We hoped he’d slip up and make a mistake once he got there.”

  “Jesus,” Kawika said. “Were you planning to tell us about this?” You’re like Jason Hare, he thought. We have to drag information out of you.

  “Detective,” Gonzales replied apologetically, “the judge imposed a specific condition that we could not reveal to non-federal authorities in Hawaii the existence of the tap or any information obtained from it. Technically, I’m violating the judge’s order right now, although it really doesn’t matter at this point, Fortunato being dead and all.” He smiled, then added laughingly, “But just the same, please don’t report me.”

  “As you know, the law won’t allow fishing expeditions,” Billings added. “The judge said, ‘This man Fortunato is a crook, he’ll commit crimes wherever he goes, but you’re tapping his phone only for the Kellogg murder case. Kellogg’s murder isn’t within the purview of the Hawaiian authorities. So you can’t tell them about any of this.’”