by Kay Hadashi
Chapter Two
There was no point in looking any closer. Maile knew enough not to touch anything or disturb evidence, that the police would want a pristine crime scene. Saying a silent prayer for whoever it was that was attracting flies and smelled so bad, she backed away from the pillbox and went to where Thérèse waited. She wasn’t crying, but her nerves looked exposed. Maile crouched down to look in the girl’s eyes.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. That guy’s not, huh?”
“Sure isn’t. Do you know what happened to him?”
“He looked dead kind way. Maybe it was the knife sticking in his face?” Thérèse offered.
“I think so, too. But instead of running away, we have to do the right thing and call the police.”
“Really gotta talk to them?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Even though she didn’t want to any more than the kid did, Maile got out her phone to call 9-1-1. After summoning the police, she found the number for the park office at the visitor center. Once everyone had been informed there was a dead man in the pillbox at the summit, she went back to Thérèse. She sat next to her on a low wall that faced the ocean but away from the scene of death. She had some therapy to do with the kid, or at least damage control. A dead body on Diamond Head was sure to make the news, maybe even mentioning the involvement of a neighboring island’s mayor and her family.
Maile tried smiling at the kid. “Okay, it’s a really terrible thing to see a person like that.”
“I've seen dead guys before.”
“Yes, but that was on TV. What happened to him, what you saw back there a few minutes ago, is very scary.”
“I've seen real kind dead guys, too.”
“Oh?”
Thérèse nodded her head. “One guy fell from a plane and landed on the beach. Kinda messy.”
“I bet,” Maile said, cringing internally. “There was another?”
Thérèse held up two fingers. “They were in a rowboat at the beach. Not so messy but smelled just as bad as that guy. I wonder why they smell like that?”
“Kinda gross, huh?”
Thérèse sat rigidly still while chewing on a fingernail. “We have kitties at home…” She stopped herself there.
Maile needed to get the girl to open up. “Kitties are nice. How many do you have?”
“Bunch of ‘em. Mom calls them a herd. We know it when one dies, because it goes under the house and smells bad. Mom has to crawl under there and get it.”
“That would be a hard job.”
“Lotsa dead guys buried back there.”
“You mean pets?” Maile asked.
The girl nodded. “It’s how we say goodbye. Say a prayer, burn some incense, put a rock there so they won’t be forgotten.”
“That’s nice of you to do.”
Thérèse looked up at Maile, her eyes getting wet. “You think that guy will have a funeral?”
“I hope so. Everybody deserves to have a funeral.”
“Need to get him a rock with his name on it. I wonder who he was?”
“I don’t know. The police will figure it out.”
“Somebody sure was mad at him,” the girl said quietly.
Maile was surprised, or maybe alarmed, at how well the girl was taking it. She still had trouble wrapping her mind around the vision of a dead man with a knife plunged through his eye socket into his brain, a trail of blood down his cheek.
Right about then, two park security guards showed up with first aid kits in their hands. Maile pointed them to where the dead man was. After a moment, they both returned, nodding in agreement that he was dead. One called the police again, even as a patrol car’s wailing siren was heard coming into the park.
“It’ll be a few minutes before they get up here,” one of the guards said to Maile. “Maybe you should give me a preliminary statement about what you found?”
Maile was careful to leave the girl out of it as she told the short version of running to the summit and finding the body. After a few more minutes, two patrol officers arrived at the summit and took over with getting Maile’s statement, now the official one. Other visitors were arriving at the summit, curious about what was going on, and wanting to get to the vista point that was now closed. Long strings of yellow crime scene tape stretched across the trail, and one of the cops was turning people around to visit another part of the park. Maile was tired of the whole thing by the time she was done giving her account for the third time, and knew Thérèse was edging to go. She also had two great reasons for leaving as soon as possible.
“Officer, I need to use the restroom, and I bet my friend here does too, and that means a long walk down to the visitor center. Mind if we go?”
“I have your name and contact information, but not the girl’s.”
“I’m…” Thérèse started, before Maile clamped her hand over her mouth.
“She’s with me. She knows even less than I do.”
The officer looked down at Thérèse, who simply nodded back at him.
“Okay, fine. But detectives might have more questions for you later.”
Maile took the girl’s hand and pulled her down the trail, mixing in with the crowd that was descending. Partway down, the girl’s hand slipped from Maile’s.
“Maile…” Thérèse had hung back and found a place to sit. She looked close to tears. “I don’t have to go to the bathroom.”
Maile sat and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “You can cry, if you want.”
“Not gonna cry.”
“Want to go back to the hotel and see your mom?”
“She’s busy with her boyfriend.”
“Can’t sit here all day,” Maile said.
“Don’t want to do any of that dumb stuff on the list. Done all that stuff a bunch of times already.”
Maile got her phone out. “I should call your mom and see what she thinks we should do.”
“She’d tell you to lock me in the zoo.”
“Lock you in the…what? Never mind.” Maile left the girl and called the mother.
“She’s okay?” Melanie asked, after the situation was explained.
“It looked like she wanted to cry, but she seems okay now. I asked if she wanted to come back to the hotel but she said you would want her to keep going with the tour.”
“She’s right. This isn’t the first time she’s found a dead body. How much did she see?” Melanie asked.
“I have the impression she only got a glimpse. I think the smell was worse than anything visual. What do you want us to do?” Maile asked.
“It’s up to you, if you want to keep going with the tour. I don’t mean to sound calloused about it, but if she wants to hang out with you, it’s okay with me. If she wants to come back here, you’ll still get paid for the entire day.”
Thérèse had found her way over to Maile and tugged at her blouse. “Can I stay with you?”
Maile nodded. “It looks like we’re continuing on with our tour. If we decide to finish early, I’ll give you a call,” she told the mother.
Maile let Thérèse and her mother talk for a moment, deciding again between themselves that Thérèse would spend the day seeing Oahu with Maile.
Lopaka showed up then, right behind two more patrol officers that were headed to the summit. His easy smile from earlier had been replaced by an ominous look. Maile explained all over again what happened, by now having whittled the story down to bare bones.
“Okay, I guess I’ll wait in the tour van.” Lopaka smiled reassuringly to the girl.
“Do we hafta go everywhere in the van?” Thérèse asked.
“Not really. But we’d have to take the city bus instead,” Maile said.
That seemed to brighten the girl’s mood. “Can we? We don’t have the bus on Maui. Mom just drives us everywhere.”
Maile and Lopaka shared a silent message and shrugged. “Okay with me.”
“You know the routes to take?” he asked.<
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Maile took Thérèse’s hand. “Been taking the buses all my life. Got the entire route system memorized. We’ll find our way home, if it takes all day, right Thérèse?”
The girl gave her a thumbs-up. With renewed energy, they followed Lopaka down to the visitor center. After waving at him as he drove off, they used the restroom and got something cold to drink. After another short rest, they went out of the park to a bus stop to wait for the next bus. That took them to a small commercial center nearby called Kaimuki.
“Ready for an early lunch?” Maile asked. “Maybe McDonald’s?”
“We’re vegetarians. We don’t eat hamburgers.”
“Oh. They have salads there, too.”
“And fries?”
Maile got out her list of things to do that day from the mother. “There’s nothing on your mother’s list that says we can’t have French fries.”
Once they had their tray of food at a table, Thérèse looked at the receipt and started counting on her fingers.
“What’re you counting?”
“Six hour tour, right?”
“Yes. So?”
“Three hours are done. That gives us three more hours. That’s a hundred and eighty minutes.”
“How many seconds?” Maile asked.
Thérèse used her finger to draw numbers on the tabletop. “Ten thousand, eight hundred.”
“Sounds like a lot. Are you sure?”
The girl did the math over again. “Yep.”
“We’ll spend about a thousand of those seconds eating lunch. What happens after that? Go to the beach?”
“Go to the beach all the time at home.”
“Go shopping at the mall?”
Thérèse shrugged. “Already been. Can we go to your house?”
Maile was ready to call an end to the day and take the kid back to her mother. The only alternative was to take her home for a while, only to take her back to Waikiki later. She couldn’t remember how presentable she’d left the place that morning. “My apartment is so small, and there’s not much to do there.”
“No, I mean the house. The Manoa House. Your mom lives there, right?”
“How’d you know about that place?”
“You know that other lady you met this morning?”
“The blonde that checked my ID? Who was she?”
“Cassandra. Sorta like a security guard for my mom. Checks on everybody we meet. Can we go to the Manoa House?”
“I guess so. Might be just as boring there. This is the last day of your vacation. You don’t want to do something else?”
“Hang out with you is okay. You’re like a big sister.”
Maile squeezed the girl’s hand. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Half an hour later, they had to transfer from one bus to another for the second half of the trip. They were at a busy intersection in the university district with a lively commercial area of mom and pop stores. They found something to drink for when they got home, and Maile couldn’t help but buy the DIY kite Thérèse was fawning over. As it was, she’d used very little of the money meant to pay for entrance fees.
The buses that went through the Manoa Valley weren’t frequent, one of the quieter residential areas of the city. That left them with time to spare at the bus stop. Thérèse was turning out to be a bold girl, talking with strangers who were also waiting for various buses. She’d even struck up a conversation with two young Japanese women studying at the university. While they chatted about whatever, Maile not knowing a word of the language and only able to guess at their topics, she got a call. After checking the number, she got Thérèse’s attention.
“I need to take this call in private, but you stay right here, understand?”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
The girl did a quick eye roll. “Now you sound like my mom.”
“Promise me.”
“Yes, I promise.”
Maile answered the call, one she had been expecting but didn’t want.
“Detective Ota, what’s taken you so long to call me?”
“It sounds like you know why I’ve called,” the Honolulu Police Detective said.
“Something about Diamond Head? Don’t tell me you’ve been assigned to that case?”
“I’m there right now. I understand you were also?”
“Surprised?” she asked. Maile kept an eye on Thérèse a few feet away. The Japanese students had left on a bus, and the girl was making new friends with a tourist couple.
“Not really. I have more questions, and since you’re our primary witness, I need to talk to you. I wish the responding officers had kept you here.”
“I asked and was given permission to leave by one of the officers.”
“They thought you were going to wait in the visitor’s center. Somehow, you slipped away.”
“Oh, was I supposed to stick around? Because I’m right in the middle of something.”
“Whatever it is can wait. Where are you right now?” he asked.
“In the middle of a tour, and then I’m going home. But I’ve already told the police officers I met earlier everything I know. I’m not much of a witness.”
“I just need to verify that you touched nothing at the scene and didn’t tampered with any evidence. I like doing that in person.”
“Detective, you like doing everything in person, and at your desk at the station downtown. My story won’t be any different there than on the phone, or what I told the officer earlier.”
“We need to meet, and the sooner the better.”
“Can it at least wait until I’m done with this tour?” she asked.
“How long will that be?”
“Two more hours, almost three by the time I drop her…them off at the hotel.”
“I’ll pick you up. Which hotel?”
“The Hawaiiana on Beach Walk.”
“That old place is still open?”
“Apparently this family stays there whenever they visit Honolulu. Family tradition, or whatever. It’s nice. Quiet street, pretty landscaping.”
“Working for the hotel now?” he asked.
“No, but it is one of the few Hawaiian-owned hotels in Waikiki. I don’t mind steering customers their way and keeping a few tourist dollars in Hawaii where they belong.” She watched as Thérèse was left alone at the bus stop with no one to talk to. “I need to go. I’ll give you a call when I’m ready. There’s something you’ll appreciate, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m wearing short sleeves today, so it’ll be easy to put the handcuffs on me.”
Chapter Three
Instead of taking the kid to her mother’s cottage on the same property, Maile took Thérèse straight to the Manoa House.
“Okay, just like everywhere else, no shoes in the house,” Maile said, kicking off her sneakers. She’d already turned off the newly installed alarm system and let the girl in the back door.
“You live here?” Thérèse asked. She walked around the spacious living room that served as the main meeting room. “Pretty fancy.”
“My mom lives next door. That’s where I grew up. This house is more like a meeting place for Hawaiian people, and a library.”
Thérèse stopped dead in her tracks, with a new wince to her face. “I’m not Hawaiian. Is it okay I’m here?”
“Of course, as long as I’m here with you. You’re my special guest.” Maile poured their sodas into tumblers with ice. After drinking most of it, she took the girl on a tour of the old missionary-style house. The last place they went was what had been the master bedroom in the past, now the library.
“What’s in all the cabinets?” Thérèse asked, ready to pull a wide, flat drawer open. “Dinosaurs?”
“Dinosaurs? Why would I have dinosaurs in my drawers?” Maile laughed at what she’d just said. “You played a trick on me!”
“Sorry. Mom doesn’t think it’s funny and Brother doesn’t get it. What’s in here, anyhow?�
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“Old maps of the islands, drawings, letters, a few paintings.” Maile pulled open a drawer with maps and dug through. When she found the one she wanted, she laid it on a large table. “Here’s a really old map of Maui. You said you live in Ka’anapali. Can you find it on there?”
Thérèse studied the map for a moment. “Here?”
“Looks like it.”
“It’s just a little dot.”
“Right. Not very big two hundred years ago. No resorts back then, just a little fishing village. Where’s your favorite place on Maui?” Maile asked.
The girl twisted her mouth in thought.
“My room at home.”
“That’s everybody’s favorite place. Is there somewhere else?”
“School?”
“A place you like to visit but can’t go all the time.”
“La Perouse. We go there when Mom thinks Brother and me need to get a bunch of exercise.”
Maile pointed to the large cove on the map. “It’s nice there. Have you been on the King’s Walk?”
“Bunch of times. We hike along there. Mom says there’s mermaids near there.”
“Oh, really?” Maile found a tiny cove on the map labeled with a Hawaiian name. “She might be right. Look here. Can you read that?”
Thérèse looked closely. “Wahine…that means girl. Kakama…I don’t know that one. And Kapu means stay out.”
“Very good. Wahine-kakama is one of the Hawaiian words for mermaid. Kapu means forbidden, making that a cove to stay away from. I guess that means there are mermaids there and want to be left alone.”
“Kinda maybe looks like where we go hiking sometimes.”
“Better me careful. Mermaids can be tricky,” Maile said. For as much as she hadn’t wanted to take a ten-year-old on a tour that day, she was having fun with the kid.
“I wish my mom could see this. She’d know if it was the same place.”
“Let’s make a scan and you can take the print home with you.” While Maile made small prints and pieced them together into one large map, she dug into this new friend a little more. “You were really talking up a storm with those Japanese girls at the bus stop.”