by Toby Neal
“Rosario never told me anything about Kwon. Oh. My. God.” He whispered it like prayer. His hands curled into fists. “Where is he?”
“Lompoc. Finally busted for molesting kids.”
“I’m so sorry, baby. So damn sorry.” He stood up, paced back and forth on the creaking porch behind her. “A pedophile. My God. Oh my God.”
Lei stayed silent. Everything she thought of sounded like a platitude, and she’d never been that good with words. It wasn’t her job to make this okay for him. It still wasn’t okay for her. She reached into the loose pocket of the sweatpants to rub the black stone she always carried.
He sat back down. His piercing eyes fixed on Lei.
“’Do not take revenge…I will repay,’ says the Lord,” he quoted.
“That might be good enough for you, Dad, but I need my moment alone with Kwon. And don’t you get in any trouble; I’ve got plans for him when he gets out. Unfortunately, not for a couple years.”
“I’m just sick about this. Like it wasn’t enough I lost you both to the game . . .” His voice trailed off. He sank his head into his hands, and she heard him mumbling a prayer.
Lei felt the shadow cast by Kwon dissolving somehow. Telling that awful secret, telling it to someone she’d blamed for leaving her vulnerable, seeing her father’s pain . . . It felt like light and air moving across a wound left too long covered up. And maybe his prayers helped too. Fucking pedophile didn’t deserve the energy it took to stay pissed. In the meantime, Wayne shared the burden, just as he should—she wasn’t carrying it alone any longer.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Wayne said again, and in the soft darkness, it was enough. For now.
Lei climbed into bed later that night and snuggled into her silky cotton sheets. She was safe. Her father was here, her dog was here, and, hanging where she could reach it on the headboard, her gun was here. Her eyes drifted shut, and she realized she was still wearing the Ni`ihau shell necklace. Her fingers touched it as she fell asleep.
Chapter 13
Sunday, October 24
The Timekeeper pulled on his rubber boots and slicker. The worst of the rain had passed, but this had been a serious flood and early in the season. He clumped out to the barn and saddled up the quarter horse. Her steady, even temperament would be needed in these weather conditions.
The mare labored uphill through the wet grass and sucking mud. He patted her sweating neck with affection and she snorted in reply. The trail got steeper, and a little rill of water poured down around her hooves. They kept going, splashing through fattened streams until he turned off on the side trail to the cave.
The stream had been in flood during the height of the storm; he spotted tufts of leaves and detritus high in the bushes and nearly to the opening of the cave, but it hadn’t gone into the narrow, slitlike mouth.
He left the mare ground-tied outside and went in with a flashlight and another gallon jug of water. The interior was mostly dry, and he swung the flashlight beam to the Chosen, deep inside the sleeping bag he’d dropped off. He nudged the man with his foot.
Matted blond curls emerged as the Chosen poked his head out. The man’s eyes were red-rimmed as he glared up into the flashlight beam. He’d peeled the duct tape off his mouth and chewed through it on his wrists. Livid red scratch marks circled his neck where he’d tried to loosen the collar.
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you.” The Chosen said it as a statement. “What I can’t figure out is why, and why you haven’t done it already.” He coughed, and it didn’t sound good.
The Timekeeper took the bucket of slops out and dumped it into the stream, went back in and set it near the man.
“My name is Jay. Jay Bennett. There will be people looking for me.”
The Timekeeper looked over at the duct tape, handily placed on some rocks out of reach, and decided not to bother. He hadn’t brought food either; the Chosen wouldn’t need it to stay alive for the Time he had left.
He walked out of the cave with its dark and stench and mounted the mare, continuing up the trail to a wide mesa. The island spread out below like a hula dancer’s skirt: yellow sandy beaches, turquoise ocean stained brown around the shore from the flood, green jungle. A rainbow draped a colored scarf off to the north.
He breathed a sigh of contentment to be here, so close to his Source. The Voices were getting bad, and he couldn’t wait for the Day.
Samhain. The day he gave them what they wanted.
He rode the mare across the rocky mesa. At one end, a crag raked the sky. He dismounted at the base and ground-tied the mare, then parted the concealing shrubbery to disclose the stairs carved into living stone and earth.
He climbed up carefully. The stairs were slick, and even though the rain had stopped, it was a long way to the bottom and it didn’t pay to hurry. He grabbed on to roots and the tough growth of waiwi, strawberry guava, and finally came to the place where the Source was strongest.
The heiau altar was intact, a great flat-topped, fire-blackened boulder that had been used for worship by early Hawaiians. All around the spire were special spots where he left his offerings after dedicating them. He checked and they were intact, tucked deep under stones marked with petroglyphs by those who came before him.
He wondered how his other site, the one in Hanalei Valley, had fared. He’d had to go there some years ago when the Voices demanded their due at that forgotten heiau. He hadn’t been able to burn the offering because of the possibility of being spotted. He didn’t like it because it was near the river, which meant human traffic. But the Voices would not be disobeyed.
He sat down in front of the altar stone and looked out across the breathtaking view. Skeins of rain swirled across the ocean in the far distance. The brown slurry of floodwater soiled the turquoise water over the reef—and the sun peeked out, brightening the rainbow.
He tipped his head back, felt the brush of the rain on his skin, a touch like a wind-borne kiss. The Chosen would never feel this again, and he let the man’s name rest in his mind a moment before the Voices squeezed it out again.
* * *
Lei blew out of Hanalei toward work, the power of the truck putting speed to her urgency. The beach was too washed out for running and the hand seemed to burn a hole in the backpack holding it on the seat beside her. She’d radioed in to speak to the captain and got on his schedule as first appointment of the day. As she hung up the radio, her cell rang.
“Hello?”
“Still dry?” That deep, warm, teasing voice. Alika. The man should be running a 900 number.
“Barely,” she said. “The flood came pretty close.”
“I was thinking about you. Hoped you were okay.”
“I’m always okay.”
A long pause. “So. You aren’t pining for me?”
She laughed. “Incorrigible.”
“You called me that already. Gotta come up with something new.”
“Arrogant ass?”
“Hmm. Overused.”
“Okay. Egotistical bastard.”
“Ouch, that one hurt,” he said. And he did sound hurt. He went on, turning brisk. “I wondered if you had any time today.”
“What, I hit a nerve with that last one?”
“As it happens, I am a bastard. But I asked for it, so I can’t hold it against you.”
“I’m sorry.” She whipped around a slow-moving commuter. “You know I was only teasing. There a story there?”
“Not one I want to tell.” He waited a beat as she remembered saying the same to him. “I wanted to see if you’d like to come over for dinner.”
“I’ve got a full day ahead, not sure when I’m going to be done.” She found herself speeding, her heart beating a little faster than it should, and she took her foot off the gas, slowed her breathing. She wasn’t going to let this guy get to her.
“It’s fine. I was just thinking to have you over to the house. I’m in a cooking mood.”
“Well, okay. As long as I can just cal
l you later if it’s not working out.”
“Such enthusiasm. Good thing I’m egotistical and can take it. So do I get to call you a name?”
“Sure. Lay it on me.”
“Ginger. Spicy Ginger, who haunts my dreams.”
The dial tone buzzed in her ear and she closed the phone. He must have heard her call sign, and she wondered how.
At the station she and Jenkins barricaded themselves in the conference room, setting up the board she’d begun and preparing to review it with the captain. Lei showed Jenkins the sealed bag containing the hand. She’d put it in a small plastic cooler with a couple of bags of frozen peas, all she’d had in the freezer that morning.
“This could be the evidence of foul play we’ve been looking for!” Jenkins’s cheeks were pink from shaving and enthusiasm. “I found out more about the stones, what they mean. All three are used in witchcraft ceremonies to enhance the power of the ritual. I think they could point toward some kind of religious sacrifice and have something to do with Samhain, on October 31.”
He’d put the stones in a little plastic tackle box. He pointed to the green one. “This one, chalcedony, is the most powerful. It’s supposed to invoke and channel the creative power of the universe. The jasper is for blood—when blood is given in sacrifice jasper cleanses it. And opal is for magic. It’s supposed to amplify the power of the sacrifice.”
“So there’s literature out there on human sacrifice?”
“Oh yeah. So these stones are significant, and I think when we do more canvassing we should be asking if anyone found stones on a shoe like those that were at Bennett’s disappearance site.”
Lei finished attaching the pictures of the missing in chronological order. She pointed to the total number of victims, looked over at Jenkins.
“I called Stevens for advice when I saw this. He thinks the FBI should be called in.”
“Crap,” Jenkins said, running his hands through his hair and turning it into haphazard misdirected spikes. “We won’t be able to do shit if that happens, and we found this case.”
“I found this case,” Lei said. “You listened to me. Get that straight.”
“Okay, yeah. Well, the FBI would totally take over.”
“I know. I plan to just lay it out in front of the captain, see if he’ll let us do a task force and work it that way.”
Just then Annette, the cap’s secretary, stuck her head in. “He’s on his way.”
Lei smoothed down her blazer, seriously wrinkled from the damp. She ran the wand of lip gloss over her mouth and patted her hair—it hadn’t yet had time to misbehave.
“Relax,” Jenkins said. “He’s too old for you.”
She opened her mouth to retort when the conference room door opened and the captain walked in, dapper as ever.
Michael Stevens followed him.
Laser-blue eyes under slashing brows found hers instantly. Her heart jumped as she drank in the sight of him. Rugged height, shadows under his eyes, rumpled dark hair falling over a high forehead, and that invisible something that made him larger than other men—oh yeah. She still felt something, and it exploded in her chest and expanded south.
“Stevens!” she exclaimed. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m bringing him in on your case,” Captain Fernandez said. “My old friend Lieutenant Ohale called me last night, seemed to think things were even more serious than you’d led me to believe, and said Stevens had volunteered to help out with the task force he was sure we were putting together. Ohale thinks we’re going to need someone with his level of experience.”
A wave of betrayal washed over Lei. He’d used a moment of weakness to snake her out of her case! She shoved off from the table, fists clenched.
“What the hell!” She started toward him, realized Jenkins was restraining her. Stevens never looked away, but she saw tension in the corners of his eyes.
“Settle down, Detective,” the captain said. “Did you hear me tell you I want him to help out?”
“Did he tell you we were engaged, and I dumped him? This isn’t about the case; this is personal.”
“If you can’t make it work, I’ll have to give it to him exclusively,” Fernandez said. “It’s too much for our station to handle, and I need more than rookie detectives working it. As I said, I’m putting together a task force.”
Lei shook her arm loose from Jenkins’s grip. She smoothed her jacket down, took a couple of deep breaths. She wasn’t going to give up so easily.
“This is my case. And I took some serious risks to get this.” She reached into the cooler beside her, carefully broke the seal on the paper bag, and took out the plastic ziplock evidence bag.
The severed hand looked forlorn and hideous, slipping back and forth in pinkish fluid, a parody of a wave. She pointed to the protruding bone.
“Tool marks. I think this might be related to the investigation.”
Lei set the bag containing the hand down on the conference table. Stevens still hadn’t spoken, but now he came forward and picked it up, held it against the light. A thin fluid, probably water from the rain, had collected in the bottom of the bag as the hand thawed from her freezer to the station.
“Blood’s long gone—but the tissue looks rehydrated, like it was drained and dried and then plumped up again in the flood. The brown color could be from soil, or just a byproduct of the mummification this underwent. One thing I agree with—this was no ordinary burial that just washed up during the flood. Someone sawed this off the body. I can’t tell if the hand was recently cut off, or was removed premortem.” He turned to Captain Fernandez. “Do you have a lab here?”
“We can do basic stuff, blood type, fingerprints. But that kind of analysis? No. Gotta send it to Oahu.”
“Recommend you do that, sir,” Stevens said. Lei snatched the bag out of his hand.
“We can at least do the fingerprints here, see if there’s a match to any of our missing. I’ll take this down to the lab. J-boy, can you orient them on where we’re at? The murder board’s over there.”
Lei pushed through the door and hurried down the hall. She hated to leave the conference room for even a moment, but Stevens so casually taking over was more than she could handle. At the same time, she couldn’t deny the tiny relief she felt at seeing him, the kick of attraction.
She wished she could have stopped herself from panicking on the whole marriage thing. She did a few relaxation breaths as she arrived at the lab, then gave a quick knock before pressing down the steel door handle.
Becky Banks, lab tech, sitting kitty-corner to the door, looked up. Round blue eyes and a white grin that showcased expensive orthodontia gave a falsely cuddly impression. Becky was the closest thing to a female friend Lei had at the station. She’d explained her position relative to the door was good feng shui, and she always knew who was trying to sneak up on her.
“Lei! Whatcha got for me?”
“Prints on this if you can,” Lei said, holding up the bag, swishing the hand.
“Eww, gross.” Becky squinched up her nose. “Well, as you can see, I’m a little backed up.” She gestured to the stack of slides and samples next to her microscope.
“C’mon, how often do you get to potentially ID a hand? Can you bump it up? Captain’s orders.” Lei was exaggerating, but was pretty sure he’d have wanted a rush on it.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks. You’re the best.” Lei stashed the hand in the refrigerator.
“You know it,” Becky said, addressing her microscope.
By the time Lei got back to the conference room, she had her emotions under control and was ready to play nice. This resolve lasted until she opened the door and saw nobody there but Stevens, sorting through the pictures of the missing. He looked up.
“J-Boy? Since when did he earn a handle?”
“It’s a Kaua`i thing. You can’t distract me with that crap. Where’d he go? Where’s the cap?”
“They’re setting up
a ‘war room’ in Conference Room B. I guess they use this one for interviews and such.”
“So what the hell are you doing here? Seriously,” Lei said, hands on her hips. Her eyes actually felt hot with rage.
“I knew you’d be mad, and you know what? Fuck that. I don’t have to pussyfoot around your emotions anymore, make everything okay for you. We aren’t together, in case you haven’t noticed, and I don’t give a shit if you’re pissed.”
“Fuck you, Stevens. You always have to be the savior.”
They glared at each other a long moment; then Stevens shook his head.
“Get a grip so we can work.” He opened the file, spreading the photos of the missing people in a swath across the table. “I came over because this case needs someone experienced on it, and I don’t trust your captain to reach out for help the way he needs to. He’s had five years to investigate this and he hasn’t, so no, I wasn’t going to sit by and wait to be invited to join some mythical task force. This isn’t about you or me. It’s about missing people who deserve some justice!” He was yelling by then, face flushed.
Lei felt black closing in around her vision, old trauma triggered by a raised voice. He’s not going to hurt me, she told herself. You know he never will. She put her hands behind her back and pinched the web of flesh between her thumb and forefinger and the black receded.
“Okay.” She sat down and looked to make sure the door was shut, then said, “That doesn’t mean I have to like it. Anyway, one of the suspects, Jazz Haddock, thinks the captain either has been paid off or has turned a blind eye all these years. It is weird that no one picked up on a pattern this regular, going on this long.”
“This is Kaua`i,” Stevens said. “That’s what they’ll tell you; that’s what everyone said when I asked around. Kaua`i is like . . . the outback or something, the last bastion of the Wild West. All kinds of shit goes on here no one talks about.”
“I know. It’s a funny place to me. Station politics. Cults and strange people, insiders and outsiders.” Lei looked down, and her gaze fell on her empty ring finger. She pulled her eyes away, found his. They were shadowed by his lowered brows and dark with emotion.