Dead at Diamond Head

by Kay Hadashi

  “Came close to one or two more,” he said.

  “Should’ve brought charges when you had the chance.”

  “Still can,” Ota said, pushing his plate away. He tossed down a few bucks and left, stomping off in a huff. Once he was gone, the others relaxed a little. Then Turner sent away his junior partner on a tedious errand to their squad car.

  “Maile, this is serious,” Turner said. “You can’t push his buttons like that.”

  “I’m pushing his buttons? I had nothing to do with any of those deaths except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You’ve had arrests in all of those, except these last two guys, the Swenbergs. The guy this morning was stabbed in his eye socket. Have you checked the knife for fingerprints?”

  “We’re having issues with that.”

  “Just exactly what was my motive for killing the guy? I kept him alive once already. Why would I kill him now?”

  Turner rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. “I don’t know. Weirder crimes have been committed.”

  “Not by me.” Maile stood, ready to leave. She also threw down a few dollars to pay for her meal. “Just because someone gets murdered in this town doesn’t mean I had something to do with it. Detective Ota and the rest of the police department better figure that out, before I start getting mad.”

  “Maile, cool off a minute and have a seat. There’s more to this than meets the eye.”

  “Nothing wrong with my vision,” she said, taking a seat again.

  “Look, there’s something of a mini-crime wave going through the city. In the last few weeks, there’s been a spike in violent crimes, specifically murder, and guess what? You’ve been involved in many of them in one way or another. The DA is putting pressure on our captain, who in turn puts pressure on the detectives assigned to these cases, who just happens to be Detective Ota. He’s supposed to have you at the station right now, at least in an interrogation room, if not a holding cell. But he’s cutting you a lot of slack at risk of his status and rank in the department by not taking you in.”

  “Why? Why’s he doing that for me? Why doesn’t the DA or your captain just send someone else to get me?”

  “Because these cases are assigned to him. Someone else wouldn’t know you the way we do. Higher-ups don’t know all the facts of the cases. They only scan the case briefs they get. They need to make tough decisions based on that, and then tell the detectives to bring in suspects for further questioning. Believe it or not, but Detective Ota has been buying you time by covering for you.”

  “I’m sorry, but for all the times I’ve been there lately, I don’t know how the police department works,” Maile said. “All I know is that I stumble into these things. That first one was a man on a tour who got knocked over the head afterwards. Then I participated in an event where later the organizer was killed. Now I find the mouth-to-mouth guy dead on a tour, only a couple weeks after his brother died in the hospital. What am I supposed to do, hide under the kitchen table until the crime spree has passed?”

  “No, but it would look a lot better to Ota, our captain, and the DA if you cooperated a little more.”

  “Show me where I haven’t,” she said.

  “Mostly, you have. Until today. Who’s the kid?” Turner asked.

  “A VIP whose family doesn’t need to be involved in a criminal investigation on this island.”

  “We do have ways of talking with people so that they remain as uninvolved as possible. Why is that so important to you?”

  “If I told you the family name, you’d sit up and take notice, for a number of reasons. Ota certainly wouldn’t have the tact required.”

  “Try me.” Someone sat down at the table with them. It was Detective Ota coming back. He sent Turner back out on patrol with his underling.

  “Get your little pad out and start taking notes.” She waited until he was ready. “The kid’s name is Thérèse Kato, from Maui.”

  “Name’s familiar, but I don’t know why,” Ota said.

  “Her mother is a prominent politician who has been in the news quite a bit these last few years.”

  Ota shook his head, still not understanding.

  “The mother is Melanie Kato, the mayor of Maui, and one of Hawaii’s most prominent surgeons. When I got the job to be the kid’s tour guide, the name seemed familiar, so I searched online. I found all these news stories about Mayor Kato getting caught up in murder investigations, even her own family being involved. After digging a little deeper, I found the name of a Honolulu police detective who transferred from here to there. Apparently, he kept prying into her affairs, until it was discovered he was a part of a much deeper plot to assassinate her. Got any idea who that detective was?”

  Ota flipped his pad closed. “Nate Nakatani. Good man, until he went there. I don’t know what happened.”

  “According to the dozens of news articles I saw online, he fell in with the wrong crowd.”

  “I know what happened, Ms. Spencer. The entire department is still trying to live it down, and he wasn’t even working for us then. I just don’t know why a good cop went bad.”

  “As far as I can tell, it was simply for money. He got tangled with organized crime gangsters, who tried prying corrupt business out of Mayor Kato, and when she didn’t give in, they turned the thumbscrews on her. That’s when Nakatani got involved, trying to come up with assassination schemes, even trying to bring her husband in on the deal.”

  Ota seemed deflated. “Eventually, after a whole lot of ugliness, several bad guys got wasted, including Nate, and the Mayor ended up divorced, her ex spending a few months in prison for attempted fraud.”

  “So, you are familiar with it?” Maile asked.

  “I was the one with the miserable job of doing a post-investigation with Internal Affairs, to learn what we could, simply to prevent it from happening again. But there’s something you might not know about the Mayor.”

  “You’re not going to try and convince me she was one of the bad guys, are you?”

  “Not all. She’s anything but. She was elected on the law and order ticket, but she’s not pro-police, necessarily. All she wants is peace and quiet, and a safe island for her constituency. She’s quite vocal about that, and doesn’t care whose toes she steps on to get it. The thing that most people don’t know about her is that she’s a President’s daughter.”

  “What?” was all Maile could say.

  “You have to dig pretty deep into her life on the internet to find it. Jack Melendez was her father. He was President long before you were ever born. But she’s very tight-lipped about it. She doesn’t want that relationship effecting how people treat her.”

  Maile eased back in her seat. “That’s why she had a bodyguard with her this morning?”

  “That blonde you met wasn’t just a bodyguard, she was a Secret Service agent. Children of Presidents get protection for life, and after all the trouble Kato has had these last few years, I don’t blame her for having the agent tag along. Per Secret Service protocol, the agent came to Honolulu a day early to liaise with HPD, to let us know the family would be in town for a few days. That’s why we were following you and the kid around this morning, at least until you lost us by taking the bus.”

  “So, you’ve known all along who the kid was?”

  “Right. We just needed you to confirm you knew it, also.”

  “I didn’t know that about her being a President’s daughter,” Maile said. “The reason I brought all that up, about the trouble Kato has had on Maui and with Detective Nakatani is that there are a lot of parallels between her trouble a while back and mine currently.”

  “I can see why you might not be so trusting of the police department right now, Ms. Spencer.”

  “Not the entire department. Just you, Detective.”

  That seemed to startle him.

  “Look, Brock…Officer Turner just spent half an hour explaining how the DA and your boss are breathing down your neck to pry a confession out of me for waging a one-
woman crime wave. Sorry, but neither you nor them are gonna get it.”

  “I know.”

  “Everything I’ve told you about finding Swenberg this morning is accurate. So what if the girl saw the body first? It was barely a few seconds. Is that really so important?”

  “How many seconds?” he asked, his notepad open again.

  “Five, maybe seven.”

  “Are you absolutely sure she didn’t touch anything?”

  “No, but I’m more sure she didn’t, than you are that she did.”

  “Did you touch the body, or anything around it?”

  “I never got close enough.” She took out her little penlight to show him. “I used this to see inside the room. When I saw the knife sticking out of his eye socket, I turned around and left him and your precious crime scene alone. And don’t ask about checking for a pulse. Due to the stink that was wafting out and all the flies buzzing around, he was hours beyond finding any vital signs.”

  “What happened after you saw the body?”

  “I went back to the girl and took her a few steps to get away from the smell. I called the police, then called the park visitor center, and then took the girl even further away. We sat and talked about what we’d seen, and if she wanted to go home to her mother. That’s when the park guards showed up with first aid supplies. Then I called the mother to ask what she thought we should do. Right about then HPD officers showed up. I think if you compare notes with Turner and the other officers, my witness statement should match quite closely with what I’ve just told you.”

  “That’s one of the problems. Your statements always match what you’ve told us earlier.”

  “And that’s suspicious?” she asked. “I’d have thought it would make them more reliable.”

  “From a police point of view, there are two main reasons that statements match: one is that it is a very well-rehearsed alibi, and the other is that the witness is a great historian. Most often it’s the first.”

  “I can’t force you to believe me, Detective.”

  “How was the victim dressed?”

  “You can’t check with the coroner for that?”

  “Just appease me, Ms. Spencer. How was he dressed when you saw him?”

  “Blue and gray aloha shirt of some sort. Pants, maybe khaki or gray? I don’t know. It’s dark in those pillboxes and my penlight isn’t very bright. I saw him for only a moment, maybe a couple of seconds, before I saw the knife.”

  “Did you notice if there was a tattoo on his arm?”

  “You mean the anchor? No, sorry.”

  “What about the knife? Did you notice what kind it was?”

  “Once again, I didn’t see much. I did notice that it was deep, all the way in to the handle.”

  “Dark handle, or light? Metallic or wood?”

  “It must’ve been metallic, because the light reflected off of it.”

  “Good. Any idea if it was small like a pocketknife or large like a kitchen knife?”

  Maile tried her best to remember. “Maybe the handle was big enough to fill the entire palm of someone’s hand? Does that help?”

  “It could. What about the placement of the knife?” Ota asked.

  This was the part Maile still needed to flush from her memory. “Into his eye socket.”

  “Specifically through the socket or through the eyeball?”

  “From the angle I saw him, I’m not sure if it was through the eyeball. It seems like that would require pretty good aim. His other eye was open, if that makes a difference.”

  “It might. Notice anything else that might be helpful? Anything at all?”

  “Just the drool of blood down his cheek. I would’ve expected more, but maybe death was instantaneous, and there wasn’t much bleeding?”

  “Why wouldn’t there be?” he asked.

  “Bleeding stops at the time of death. Once the heart stops beating, there’s no pressure to push blood from wounds. There would be some from gravity drainage, but no active exsanguination. Massive penetrating trauma to the brain would bring instantaneous death. Usually.”

  “That’s what the coroner has told me a few times.” Ota put away his notepad. “That wasn’t so painful, was it?”

  “Not for you. I guess I just don’t understand why this is so important? Why all the questions about the knife and his eye?”

  “When crime scene techs got there, there was no knife in his eye, or anywhere near the vic,” he said. “And since you and the kid were the first witnesses, I have to figure out why your story doesn’t match the evidence.”

  Maile was confused. She knew she’d seen what looked like the handle of a knife, and she was pretty sure the girl said she’d seen a knife also. “What did the two park guards say? They were the next two people to see the man. Did they see a knife in his eye when they got there?”

  “According to their report, there was no knife in or anywhere near the body.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “You’re right. Something’s fishy, Ms. Spencer, and it has something to do with you.”

  Chapter Five

  “No knife at all?” Maile was confused. “I’m sure I saw the handle of a knife sticking out of the guy’s face. Maybe it was some weird reflection? My penlight isn’t very strong.”

  “Might not be the light. We’re sure the vic died from a stab wound to the face, specifically to the eye, but when the coroner did the external exam, he said there were two wounds, one through the socket and into the brain, the other directly into the eyeball itself.”

  “But no knife?”

  “No knife was recovered from the body or the scene. CSI techs spent hours searching the area around the summit with metal detectors, and uniforms searched the brush alongside the trail. Nothing. But there’s something else. It appeared to the coroner that two different knives were used, a larger one through the socket, and a smaller blade into the eyeball. In his estimation, it was the larger knife that killed Swenberg, and the smaller wound to the eyeball was a non-lethal injury.”

  “Either way, that sure makes me look stupid.” She scanned his face, wondering if she could read him. “Or guilty.”

  “You’re certainly not stupid, and I doubt you’re guilty. I can’t imagine you ever being mad enough to stab someone in the face.” He chuckled. “Maybe me a few minutes ago?”

  She tried not to smirk. “I was ready to jab a fingernail into your forehead, but not a knife in your eyeball. Did the coroner say which wound was inflicted first?”

  “The lethal wound. There was no bleeding related to the eyeball injury. What he can’t determine is which knife you and the girl might’ve seen at the scene.”

  “Why does that make a difference?” Maile asked. “Dead is dead.”

  “It helps determine the place of death. He might’ve been killed elsewhere and his body dumped at Diamond Head later. Time of death was like you thought, several hours earlier in the night, according to body temperature and estimated rate of tissue decay. But not knowing which knife was seen by witnesses is a major missing clue in the case. Maybe now you can see why it’s so important for us to talk with the girl. If she says she saw a knife handle, that corroborates your account. But if she can remember something about the knife in particular, it would really help me going forward with my investigation.”

  “Wait a minute. Something doesn’t add up. Why would someone carry a dead body all the way to the top of Diamond Head, when it would be so much easier to leave him somewhere else?”

  “We investigate every murder as if it had been committed elsewhere. There was no reason to think Swenberg’s murder had been performed in haste. That means it happened elsewhere and he was taken to Diamond Head, and for a specific reason. I need to figure out that reason why, and that should lead me to the murder site, which hopefully leads me to the murder weapon, and eventually the culprit.” Ota put away his notepad. “The good thing for you is that it leaves you off the hook for being the murderer.”

  “Why?” she as
ked.

  “Because I doubt quite seriously you’d be able to haul a hundred and eighty pound dead body to the top of Diamond Head.”

  Maile gave it some thought. “Honestly, I think my legs and back are strong enough.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they are. What I doubt is that you’d try to hide a body, but rather try to breathe life back into it.”

  Maile was hit by the realization that she’d brought Swenberg back to life once, only for him to be murdered later. “Probably right.”

  “Did the kid have anything to say specifically about the knife?” he asked.

  “We talked about it two or three times, and each time she definitely said something about seeing a knife. I never asked her to describe it, though.”

  “Mind terribly if I heard it from her directly?” Ota asked.

  “It’s your investigation, not mine. Like you always tell me, don’t interfere. I’ve done my best to stay out of your way, but you came looking for me, remember?”

  “It would help if I had the mother’s phone number. Since you said you called her at one point, I know you have it.”

  “And I’m not giving it to you, not without a warrant or subpoena, something in writing that a judge has signed and has all kinds of fancy stamps on it. There must be a phone number for the mayor’s office. Call there.”

  “I did. The woman I spoke to was even more protective than you are, especially when I said something about being from the Honolulu Police Department. What is it with women and not handing over private numbers?”

  “We watch out for each other, Detective, especially when it comes to children.”

  “You can’t lend me a hand with this?” he asked.

  “I’m following your standing orders and staying uninvolved, Detective Ota.” Maile could tell he wasn’t satisfied, and was in no hurry to leave. “You know where they’re staying. Why not just blunder in and look for them?”

  “I tried that. That’s where I went a while ago, but I couldn’t get past the Secret Service agent. She’s mean.”

  Maile chuckled. “Good for her!”

  They had a brief staring match.