5 Twisted Vine

by Toby Neal

  “Sure. Which one do you want first?”

  “Let’s start with the one about the Bozeman murder.” It was the first time Lei had heard the name of the assassin. She was silent, stroking Angel’s head, as Kamuela stated the date, the time, their location, and their names. He looked up at Lei, gave a nod. “Tell me how you came to dial Bozeman’s disposable cell number.”

  Lei told him, including the impulse decision to try to make contact with someone who had known her deceased grandmother and how she’d come to have the number.

  “So you did not know whose number you were calling?”

  “No. I was affected by nostalgia and the message the number was written on. It was an impulse decision.” It felt odd to be so personal and truthful about something so dangerous.

  “And was there any other reason you might have called the number?”

  “No.” Was he fishing for the Kwon matter?

  “How do you think your grandmother had in her possession the number of a man who has killed at least four people that we know of?”

  Lei felt her heart beating with heavy thuds. She looked at Kamuela; his eyes were opaquely brown.

  “I have no idea.” She was able to say it with conviction. She really did have no idea.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Special Agent Texeira.” He punched off. Lei exhaled, and Keiki came to lean against her leg, her eyes worried.

  “That’s a beautiful dog,” Kamuela said. “Have you had her long?”

  “I’ve had Keiki five years. Since I was a patrol officer on the Big Island. This little girl, I’m just dog sitting for an extended period.”

  “So you started off in uniform?”

  “Yeah. Worked my way to detective, did my degree in criminal justice on the job at UH Hilo. Caught some heavy cases, got some attention for it, and Marcella was the one to recruit me for the FBI.” She’d told Kamuela her darkest secrets but not even her basic background. “I’d like to get the other statement out of the way, the one about Woo. Did you guys find anything in the house? Because I need it, if you did. It’s an active investigation.”

  “Into what, exactly?”

  “A website and assisted suicide.” Lei told him about DyingFriends and where they were in the investigation. “Did you find a note in the house?”

  “No. So either Woo’s decision was a spontaneous one, or maybe he accidentally fell in?”

  “Didn’t look like it. He really let that walker go with a push at the top of the bridge, looked down at the water for a minute, then just keeled in headfirst. After I fished him out, he said it should have been his choice to end his life, so it wasn’t an accident.”

  “We didn’t find anything about DyingFriends either.”

  “You wouldn’t. They’re cagey at the deeper levels on the site. I wonder if Woo just didn’t have anyone to leave a suicide note for. He said he was estranged from his family when we first interviewed him.”

  On that sobering thought, Kamuela set up the tape recorder and she made her statement about seeing Woo apparently fall and how she’d come to rescue him. “There is an active investigation ongoing regarding a series of suspicious suicides, and the FBI was keeping an eye on Woo for his safety.”

  Kamuela turned off the tape recorder, stood up. “I look forward to putting this whole Bozeman thing behind us. I just want to find his killer. I don’t plan to hunt down all the ‘clients’ he hit targets for unless my chief directs me to, and I don’t know if it’s even possible. Your number was one of the only ones on his phone. How he got his jobs, I haven’t been able to determine. So unless some new evidence turns up, it’s one of those cases where it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Lei started at the detective’s use of the familiar phrase. “Very true,” she said. “When Stevens and I work out our long-distance issues, we’d love to do something with you and Marcella.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll call you if I need anything more.” The entire Kwon situation lay between them unspoken, and Lei hoped it stayed that way—at least until she found out how her grandmother had had Bozeman’s number in her keepsake box.

  She followed Kamuela out, waved to Ching just as her phone rang again. It was Ken.

  “How’d that go?”

  She filled him in. “I’m going to the hospital to interview Woo. There was no suicide note at the scene. Are you anywhere near Woo’s house? Maybe you can pick up his computer.”

  “We need a warrant for that, and at this point I don’t think we have probable cause,” Ken said. “There’s no evidence that he even was truly attempting suicide, and if he was, that DyingFriends had anything to do with it.”

  “He was committing suicide.”

  “Well, get confirmation at the hospital.”

  “Okay.” Lei sighed, grabbing an apple as she locked the house on the mournful dogs and headed for the truck. “I gave my statement to Kamuela about why I called Bozeman the hit man’s phone. Are you near a computer? Can you look him up? I want to know what his background is like.”

  “I’m not, but I will and I’ll get back to you. How did that go?”

  “Kamuela was gracious. Stayed with the reason I called Bozeman’s phone—curiosity—and left the Kwon thing out of it. I’m hoping that will be the end of it.”

  “Do you know why your grandmother had his number? Really?”

  Lei got into the truck, switched to her Bluetooth, clicked it on. “No. But I’m beginning to think she might have been the kind of woman who would hire a hit man. I haven’t heard one good thing about her, even from my grandfather, who won’t say straight up, but I can tell he suspects she did hire Bozeman to kill Kwon. Said she ‘had a lot of anger’ about all that happened to the family but was too proud to reach out to me when I was living with my aunty Rosario. I’m beginning to think I’ll never know. But at least we know who killed Kwon.”

  “A lot of unanswered questions,” Ken said. Lei’s phone beeped with a second call, and she looked down—it was Stevens.

  “I’ll call you after my interview with Woo,” she said, and rang off, taking Stevens’s call.

  “Hi, Sweets.”

  “Hi. I need a nickname for you. Lover Boy? Hot Stuff?”

  “No, please no. Why’d you hang up on me? The subject of kids?”

  Lei remembered where their conversation had ended. Woo’s dive into the koi pond had completely distracted her.

  “Don’t blame you for thinking that. I actually had to run off and save a man’s life.” Lei filled him in on Woo’s suicide attempt and her statements to Kamuela regarding Bozeman the shooter. “I may still need to have you retrieve the disguise I wore to visit Kwon and make a statement as to where you found it.”

  “Happy to do it if we need to. Seems like Kamuela decided to believe you.”

  “Seems like it, thank God.” Lei navigated the light traffic leading to the Queen’s Medical Center in downtown Honolulu. “But what are we going to do about getting together? Now that I’ve had you, I’m missing you worse than ever. We can’t live like this.”

  “I like the sound of that. How about you come over to Maui next weekend? See my place. We sold the house in Wailuku Heights, and I’ve got a nice little apartment in Kuau—close to my station and right on the ocean.”

  Lei’s mind filled with images of Kuau—that aqua-blue stretch of breezy Maui coastline with its tiny hidden beaches. “God, that sounds amazing.” She navigated around a slow-moving camper and made a left into the parking garage at the Queen’s Medical Center. “The investigation’s heating up. I just don’t know when I can get away.”

  A long pause. Lei bit her lip.

  “There’s always an investigation heating up. This is how it’s going to be for both of us,” Stevens said. “We both have jobs that take more than your average pound of flesh. I just know I can’t be without you much longer without having some sort of breakdown.” He uttered a mournful-sounding howl.

  Lei laughed, relieved he’d decided to be playful
. She pulled into a parking slot. “Yeah, here it is six p.m. and I’m going into a hospital for another interview. This isn’t working, but which of us is going to suck it up, give up their job, and move?”

  “I’ll look at the transfer postings if you will.”

  “You know there aren’t any Bureau offices on Maui.”

  “Maybe it’s time there was a liaison branch over here. C’mon. You know what a hassle it was last year, coordinating everything with that interagency case.”

  Lei leaned her head on the steering wheel. “It would never fly. Waxman still thinks I’m a loose cannon. That would be giving me too much rope.”

  “I don’t know. Another way to look at it is that you’re an agent who’s a self-starter and knows how to take initiative.”

  “That’s not a big value in the Bureau that I can tell.”

  “Well, then. There’s always local. Omura still asks about you, and she’s the big cheese now at Kahului Station.”

  Lei sighed. “Michael. Let’s just agree to do some homework on it. We don’t have to figure this out right now.”

  Saying goodbye felt so awful she almost wished she hadn’t taken his call.

  “Mr. Woo is in a coma,” the nurse said, consulting a chart. “He came in with cardiac arrhythmia and some mini strokes complicated by his current diagnosis. His systems are shutting down.”

  Lei felt a clench of regret. “So he’s dying. Can I see him?”

  “Sure. Just through the window, though. We’ve got him in intensive care.” Lei followed the nurse to the viewing window and looked in at the diminutive figure in the bed. He was propped up, tubes and lines appearing to be what animated the slight rise and fall of his chest. He still looked like Yoda, with his bald, freckled skull with a few antennae-like hairs surrounding it, those wide transparent ears.

  “Who’s his doctor?”

  The nurse looked at the chart again. “Shimoda. He’s due to see him tomorrow morning.”

  “I need to interview him for an investigation. Does he have an emergency contact listed?”

  The nurse scanned through her folder, frowned. “No one listed. He was unconscious when he came in, but he had been here before, so we knew who he was and had his insurance on record.”

  “So the hospital hasn’t contacted anyone?”

  “No one to contact.”

  “Okay.” God it was sad—Woo dying alone and no one even to call. Lei knew what she was going to be working on this evening. “He had a home care service. Maybe they know something. Someone must be here for him.”

  The nurse shrugged. “Some old people don’t seem to be missed.”

  Lei felt a flush of heat blow through her body. “Everyone should be missed.”

  She spun on a rubber heel and stomped off, already on the phone with Dispatch, running a deeper background on Clyde Woo. She went to the deserted waiting room. Apparently, he’d been married, but his wife was deceased. Parents deceased. Had been an only child. She was eventually able to get the number of his lawyer.

  She dialed it after getting the man’s personal cell, glancing at the clock on the wall that gave the time as seven p.m. “This is Special Agent Lei Texeira with the FBI,” she said briskly when the phone was answered. “Your client, Clyde Woo, is here in the Queen’s Medical Center in intensive care and is not expected to live.”

  “Cyde who?” She could picture the man’s confused face. He sounded as old as Woo.

  “Clyde. Woo. Little Asian multimillionaire. Looks like Yoda.”

  “Oh, Clyde.” She heard the head smack the guy gave. “I’m retired, you know. I turned my clients over to my son.” He gave a name and number. “Sorry to hear that Clyde’s gone downhill.”

  “It was, apparently, a rapid slide in that direction,” Lei said, jotting the number on her trusty spiral pad. “I’ll give your son a call. I’m looking for who his next of kin is, his heir. Someone to inform of what’s going on with him.”

  “Oh, I can tell you that. No one. He’s a bitter old man. Had some cousins, but they’re all estranged and live on the Mainland. My son never met him, but his office has the will. Clyde was leaving everything to the Honolulu Zoo.”

  “Oh.” Lei digested that. “Well, thanks.”

  She hung up and decided not to call the lawyer son until the next morning. She was passing by the nurse’s station when the young woman waved her over. “Mr. Woo’s vitals are failing. Did you reach anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you seem to care what happens to him. Perhaps you’d like to sit with him in his final hour?” For the first time, Lei really looked at her, noting a round, plain face animated by intelligent brown eyes. She must see so much death, and now she was calling Lei on her bluster a few minutes before.

  “All right,” Lei found herself saying. “No one should die alone.”

  The nurse gestured. “I’d tell you to get sterile, wear scrubs, and all that—but I don’t think it’s going to matter to Mr. Woo at this point. You know where his room is.”

  Lei nodded and walked to the door of the room. She paused outside, did some relaxation breathing. Was she really going in to sit with a relative stranger, one she’d just tried to save, while he died?

  She turned the knob, pushed the door open. Went over to the small open area beside the bed, dragged a plastic chair over. She found herself breathing through her mouth because there was a smell in the room—that unique combination of decay and ammonia cleaner that seemed to inhabit every hospital to varying degrees. The nurse came to the doorway, pointed to the monitors.

  “See that one? It’s his heart.” The blipping line on the monitor seemed to be skipping at random intervals. “He has arrhythmia, and notice the time between beats is getting further and further apart. This is his oxygenation monitor. The blood isn’t getting oxygenated.” It was marked with a red line, and Mr. Woo’s oxygen was well below it. “Over here is his respiration monitor.” Lei could see another blipping light. It was also slowing down. “It won’t be long now. They say people go easier when someone’s with them. You could hold his hand.” Those sharp, dark eyes were challenging. “Someone should care.”

  “I don’t know why it has to be me,” Lei said miserably. “Why don’t you sit with him, hold his hand, and watch him die?”

  “Because you’re here for this one. I have others to see to who are going to make it.” She withdrew.

  Lei winced at the woman’s directness and sighed again. She steeled herself and picked up Mr. Woo’s liver-spotted hand. His palm felt soft, silky. She had a sudden flash of memory: holding a pet mouse as a very young child. The texture of its coat, its trembling delicacy as it rested in her hand, were just like this.

  “You’re not alone,” Lei said, feeling self-conscious, awkward. “I can’t tell if you can hear me, but I’m hoping you can.” She looked at the monitors, and the heart one seemed to be stabilizing, beating a little more regularly.

  “I tried to find your family and let them know you were here. You were right when you told me they weren’t around, and I’m sorry about that. I understand why you tried to take your life today.” She looked down at the gnarled hand, smoothed the back of it gently. “But no one should die alone.”

  That hand tightened suddenly, and she looked up into Mr. Woo’s open eyes. He was focusing on her, and he opened and closed his mouth. “Water,” he whispered.

  Lei thought of calling the nurse but decided to get him the water first. She poured from a nearby carafe into a waxed cup holding a sponge on a stick. Held the sponge to his lips. He sucked weakly.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  He turned his head, and she took the sponge away.

  “Like I’m dying,” he said, and one side of a smile pulled up his mouth. She remembered the nurse saying he had had strokes.

  “Well, you aren’t dying alone. I’m here.” She rubbed that silky palm. “Just rest.”

  “You came to ask me questions,” he whispered.

 
“I did. But they really don’t matter now.”

  “Yes, they do. I left DyingFriends.”

  “Why? The site was such a comfort to you.”

  “They wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do.”

  “What was that?” Lei fumbled for her phone. “I need to record this. Can you say it again? What did they want you to do?”

  “Help someone else die.” He pushed each word out past stiff lips. “Take a picture and post it to the site. Then someone would help me die. I decided to just do it myself. I didn’t need anyone’s help.” He coughed, and Lei glanced worriedly at the monitors, all showing irregularities.

  “We need your computer for the investigation. Can we have it?”

  “Yes,” he said. His eyes closed then, and his chest lifted in a spasmodic breath, settled.

  Lei leaned over to speak into his bat-like ear. “It’s okay, Mr. Woo. You’re not alone, and you helped me and others by telling me. You’re going to a better place. Just relax; take it easy.”

  She didn’t know that he was going to a better place. She didn’t know what Mr. Woo believed, what he’d done in his life, where he would go in the next life. She just knew she hoped he’d be walking somewhere wonderful in his beautiful patterned robe. “God, please give him peace.”

  In the dim light of the room, accompanied by the random beeping of machines, she felt peace come, moving over Clyde Woo’s struggling body like a warm blanket.

  Lei continued to rub Woo’s hand to let him know she was there. The beeps of the machines got further and further apart, and finally whole minutes went by without anything at all to break the silence.

  The nurse came to the door. “Well done.”

  “He knew I was there. He woke up right before the end,” Lei said, blinking, reluctant to let go of Woo’s hand.

  “They often do.”

  “Wish you’d told me that.”

  “Well, they also often don’t.” The nurse moved briskly around the bed, turning off the monitors, removing the blood pressure cuff, unclipping the IV cord. “I’ve notified the doctor on call to pronounce the death.”