Fire and Vengeance

by Robert McCaw

  “And that’s why you tried to stop my investigation?”

  Watanabe nodded his head.

  That wasn’t enough for Koa. “I want to hear you say it.”

  Watanabe hesitated before admitting what he’d done. “Yes. That’s why I tried to stop the investigation.”

  Zeke took over, asking the question Koa hesitated to ask. “And exactly what did you do to stop the investigation?”

  “I called a friend at the governor’s office, urging the state to take over, and I …” Watanabe’s voice faltered.

  “And you what?” Zeke demanded.

  “I told Mayor Tanaka he should fire Detective Kāne, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “And,” Zeke struck a hammer blow, “you falsely accused Koa of leaking information, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” Watanabe’s voice was barely audible.

  “In fact,” Zeke struck again, “you leaked the KonaWili stories, didn’t you?”

  Watanabe bowed his head. “I … I did.”

  Koa looked at Watanabe, slumped in his chair, lost in the misery of his own making. Half the story made sense. Someone wanted to stop the investigation, and pressuring Watanabe, even threatening to kill him, offered a path to that end, but why put Watanabe on the hit list? Why actually kill him even if he failed to stop the investigation? What would be gained by his death? Koa was missing something.

  “Mr. Watanabe,” Koa began, but the man seemed lost in his own world. “Mr. Watanabe,” he said louder and the press agent looked up. “Aside from stopping the police investigation, do you have any idea why anyone would want to kill you?”

  Watanabe recoiled as though Koa had slapped him. With a ghost-like expression, he stammered, “Kill me … I … I don’t know.”

  It was an odd reaction, and it reinforced Koa’s belief that the man knew some secret worth killing to protect.

  “You know something someone out there wants to keep secret. What is it?”

  Watanabe shivered and his hands shook. “I have no secrets.”

  Watanabe’s body language said lie but for the moment an impenetrable one.

  Cheryl Makela didn’t look pleased to see Koa. She answered his knock in jeans and a wrinkled white blouse, looking haggard with purplish bags under her eyes. Koa had never seen her without makeup and barely recognized her wrinkled face, splotched with sunspots. The KonaWili disaster had gotten to her. Maybe because it ruined her investment.

  “I’ve nothing to say to you. And I don’t appreciate having a police car down the road spying on me,” she said in a nasty tone.

  She started to close the door when he said, “I came to tell you your life may be in danger.”

  Her lips parted slightly, her eyes narrowed, and the corners of her mouth turned down. Fear, apprehension, or maybe disbelief—he couldn’t tell. She stepped back, let the door swing open, turned, and disappeared into the house, implicitly inviting him to follow. He trailed her into a large, luxurious kitchen. Her hands shook as she poured herself coffee from a silver urn on the counter without offering him any.

  Lovely lady. Then he told her about the threat to her life, hoping to shock her into providing more information. “We identified the man who killed Hank Boyle and Arthur Witherspoon. Those were the first two names on his kill list. You rated number three.”

  Her face turned as white as her hair, and she weaved unsteadily on her feet. Coffee slopped over the edge of her cup and splashed to the floor. “Shit,” she said softly, looking down at the spill. For a moment, he feared she might faint, but she put her free hand on the counter to steady herself. Looking up, she stood staring, her eyes unfocused, looking through him into some unseen space. He’d hit her with news of a serious threat, hoping to get her to talk, but instead, he’d driven her mind to some distant recollection. He almost turned around to see whatever apparition attracted her attention, but restrained himself, knowing the vision had to be in her mind.

  He expected her to ask the killer’s identity, but instead, she asked, “Who … who else is on the list?” Not, who is the killer; not, why would anyone be after me; not, oh my God, what can I do to protect myself; but, who else? Why would the identity of the others be foremost in her mind?

  “Tomi Watanabe—”

  She gasped, and letting go of the counter, raised her free hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God!” Wavering on her feet, she dropped her coffee and began to collapse. Koa caught her as the coffee cup hit the floor, and shattered into a thousand pieces, splashing hot coffee everywhere. He lowered the unconscious woman to the ground and instructed the dispatcher to send an ambulance.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  WHEN KOA RETURNED to the station, he found that Piki, who was off duty, had left a note. “Found a lead on the bulldozer rental. Jake’s Machinery Rentals on Māmalahoa Highway. Handles a lot of big subdivision jobs. Their rental girl, Sandy, found the paperwork. Said Jake might remember something once he sees the invoice.” Koa grinned. Now he might have evidence against Gommes. He grabbed Basa, and they headed for Jake’s.

  “I see you’re still wearing the body cam. How’s the test going?” Koa asked as they headed for the highway.

  “Okay, I guess, but there are a bunch of problems.”

  “Like what?”

  “Privacy issues for us officers, you know, like bathroom breaks, and for interviews with sensitive victims, like children or women in sexual assaults.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Then there’s access. Best practice seems to be for supervisors, not individual officers, to have access to the video; and battery life, that’s a problem, too.”

  “It’s gotta have better battery life than my GoPro. Nālani’s been using it since the volcano’s been acting up. One of the volcanologists took her down to Puna where the lava is pouring into the sea.”

  “You got new pics?”

  “Do I have new pics!” Koa unlocked and handed Basa his iPhone. “The pictures of the laze rising in huge clouds along the ocean entry will blow you away.” Koa used the local term for clouds of steam mixed with hydrochloric acid and tiny particles of glass created when lava mixed with seawater.

  Basa watched the screen. “Wow. That’s some video. Nālani should sell it to the Star Advertiser or one of the mainland papers. They’d pay big dollars for something like that.”

  “But it would violate park service regs.”

  “Too bad.”

  A half hour later, Koa and Basa pulled into the equipment yard at Jake’s and found themselves surrounded by bulldozers, front-loaders, cherry pickers, and power shovels. The heavy equipment made Koa think of his childhood. As a kid, Koa had owned a hand-me-down Tonka front-loader, and later, he and his buddies had climbed all over a yellow dozer temporarily parked at a construction site down the road from his family home. One of the crew gave them a ride on the giant machine. Even now, he felt an urge to get up on one of the big bruisers and crank it up.

  When they walked into the office, Sandy, the receptionist, had the paperwork waiting for them. Gommes Development Co., doing business as Hualālai Hui, had rented a Case crawler dozer along with an operator just two weeks before the surveyors began work on the KonaWili development. When Koa picked up the invoice, Sandy pointed toward her boss’s door. “Jake remembers that rental.”

  Koa and Basa entered Jake Forrester’s office, introduced themselves, and laid the invoice on his desk. Forrester, short, overweight, and graying, with a double chin below a friendly open face, barely glanced at the document before looking up at Koa. “I guess I’m not surprised to see you after that school thing.”

  The two officers pulled up chairs. “Why’s that?” Koa asked.

  “Strange business. Seemed odd at the time.”

  “How so?” Basa asked.

  “Gommes’s guy calls me up. His boss wants a dozer to cover up some garbage on this property he bought. I asked him how long he needed the rig, and he says a couple of hours. Well, I don’t rent out a dozer, put it on a flatb
ed, and haul it twenty miles up the road for a two-hour stint. He shoulda known that. I mean, the dude’s not a weekend warrior fixin’ up his backyard. He’s been around the development business for years.”

  “He said his boss wanted this. You mean Gommes?”

  “Yeah, Howard Gommes. This dude, he’s not some flunky. He’s the big man’s right-hand guy for construction.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ricky something or other. Name’s on the invoice.”

  “Okay, so what happened?”

  “I tell Ricky the minimum rental is five days, but I’ll give him a break and make it three days, if he promises me the contract for the heavy gear when they start the real work. He says okay, and I send the flatbed up there with the dozer and Pete, one of my best operators.”

  “And?” Koa asked.

  “The rig is back here at three o’clock the same afternoon. I asked Pete what happened. And he says he found twenty or thirty bags of garbage. Said it would have been a lot cheaper to throw them in the back of a pickup and drop them off down at the transfer station. But no, Ricky wants him to bulldoze the trash into a depression in the ground and cover it up with dirt and rocks. Pete follows orders, and Ricky tells him he can go home.”

  “How come you remember so much?” Basa asked.

  “Well, it seemed weird at the time. I mean, the rental cost them fifteen hundred dollars for something a couple of kids with a pickup truck could have done in fifteen minutes. And Ricky stiffed me on the deal. He gave the main contract to a competitor. So, I remember alright.”

  Koa and Basa went to find Ricky. It wasn’t hard. He’d scrawled his signature across the bottom of the dozer invoice, and Basa’s quick call to the station turned up his address. He added little to what Jake described. Gommes had called him up, complained about a bunch of garbage on the property, and told him to rent a dozer and bury it. When he suggested removing it might be cheaper, Gommes insisted it be buried—“bury it deep and cover it up good.” Ricky suspected Gommes had disposed of something in the trash and wanted it deep-sixed, but he was a good soldier and did as Gommes directed.

  Koa and Basa drove to Kūki‘o to see Gommes. To their surprise, the guard waved them through the exclusive community’s tightly guarded gate without an identity check. At Gommes’s place, he found four police cars and a police team, led by Roger Crane, one of the detectives out of the Kona police substation. Crane, a tall, handsome man with dark curly hair, was one of Koa’s best detectives. Koa had a sinking feeling he’d find Gommes dead. Climbing out of his car, he asked Crane, “What’s happening?”

  “Gommes came home, got out of his car, and started toward the front door when somebody took a shot at him.” Crane pointed to a bullet hole in the door.

  “Gommes hit?” Basa asked.

  “No. He says he stumbled just as the assailant fired. Damned lucky, too. Bullet went right through a solid wood door. Had to be a high-powered rifle.”

  “Where was the shooter?”

  “Gommes says he saw a flash up there on that pu‘u.” Crane pointed to a small hill about twelve hundred yards up the mountainside. “I got some guys up there now.”

  Koa took in the hill and the distance, trying to picture the trajectory from the pu‘u. He put himself behind the gun, mentally sighting through a scope, compensating for the sloping terrain, and the wind, which gusted from right to left across the line of fire, and then imagined adjusting for the distance. It was an impossibly tough shot, and he wondered if Leffler could really be that good. “You’re kidding. That’s a tough shot for a trained sniper with a DesertTech sniper rifle.” Koa was thinking of the weapon Leffler had stolen.

  “I’m guessing that’s exactly what we’ve got—a trained sniper,” Crane responded.

  “Leffler,” Koa muttered.

  “What?”

  “You must have seen the APB out on an Army sergeant named Leffler. He killed an architect in Hilo and is a suspect in Hank Boyle’s death.”

  “Yeah, I remember. You think that’s our guy?”

  “Yeah. Tell your guys, he’s a trained killer and as dangerous as they get.”

  Koa turned to examine the house—the Mercedes in the drive, the front of the building, and the door with the bullet hole three and a half feet from the bottom. He pictured Gommes getting out of the car, walking toward the house, and stumbling as the bullet zipped past him. The pieces didn’t fit quite right. Turning back to Crane, Koa asked, “If Gommes was walking toward the house when he stumbled, how would he see a flash from the pu‘u behind him?”

  Crane pointed to the large glass window to the right of the front door. “Says he caught the reflection in the glass.”

  Koa moved toward the door and looked at the window. Sure enough, he could see the reflection of the pu‘u. It could have gone down just as Gommes described. “Is Gommes inside?”

  “Yeah, but be careful. You’re not going to believe the mess inside.”

  “What mess?”

  “Best see for yourself.”

  His curiosity piqued, Koa signaled to Basa and started toward the house. “Watch out for the dogs,” Koa warned. “Gommes has two mean-looking Rottweilers. Calls them butcher’s dogs.”

  Koa opened the front door and swore. Beside him, he felt Basa tense.

  “Oh, God,” Basa moaned.

  Dante, one of the Rottweilers, lay dead on the marble foyer floor. The dog must have been up on his hindquarters, pawing the front door, when the shot caught it in the chest. Koa hadn’t liked the snarling butcher’s dog, but no animal deserved to die that way.

  “The poor beast,” Basa said, shaking his head at the Rottweiler.

  They skirted the animal and found Gommes in his home office with the blinds drawn. Hunched over his desk, he wore a white silk shirt. His sport coat hung on the back of a second chair next to the desk. Gommes looked unnaturally pale even in the poor light. Not surprising, Koa thought, for a man who’d nearly been killed by a sniper. Gommes looked up as Koa entered his office. “Somebody just murdered my goddamn dog. Shot the beast through the fucking door.” Virgil, Gommes’s remaining Rottweiler, growled and bared his teeth. “Shut up, Virgil, you dumb mutt,” Gommes screamed. The dog crawled under a table.

  “Sorry about your dog, but the real question is why someone tried to kill you?” Koa said.

  Gommes shrugged. “How the fuck should I know? An angry parent, maybe.”

  “Your school definitely created a lot of angry parents,” Basa responded.

  “Maybe it’s because you tried to cover up the vent under the school,” Koa said.

  Gommes’s face reddened and his mouth set hard. “That’s bullshit. I already told you.”

  “You sent Ricky up to KonaWili with a bulldozer to cover up the fumarole.” Koa held up a copy of the invoice.

  Gommes stared at Koa. Their eyes locked in an exchange of hostile glares. Then Gommes looked away. “I sent him up there to bury some garbage.”

  “What? A handful of plastic garbage bags?”

  “It was more than that,” Gommes responded.

  “Is that why you ordered Ricky to ‘bury it deep and cover it up good’?”

  Gommes shrugged again. “What difference does it make?”

  Koa could hardly believe the words. It made a world of difference to those kids and their families. He was about to call Gommes on it but reversed direction. “It might explain why someone hired a trained sniper to kill you.”

  “That was a sniper?”

  “It takes an expert shot to hit a man from twelve hundred yards, and it sounds like that bullet would have killed you if you hadn’t stumbled. So, yeah, somebody hired a sniper to kill you. Want to tell me who doesn’t want you to tell what really happened at KonaWili?”

  “You can go now, Detective.”

  “If you don’t level with me, the sniper is likely to try again.”

  Silence.

  Koa thought about Leffler’s hit list—Boyle, Witherspoon, Makela, Watanabe,
and Koa himself—but not Gommes. If Leffler had attempted to kill Gommes—and given the difficulty of the twelve-hundred-yard shot, it had to be Leffler—then the sniper’s instructions must have changed. Koa wondered why? And who gave those instructions?

  He and Basa left, but Koa stopped in the doorway and turned to see Gommes cradling his head in his hands. The man knew who tried to kill him. He just wasn’t going to tell.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  KOA AND ALEXIA Sheppard flew to Los Angles, took a taxi to West 3rd Street and Willaman Drive, and walked up the pedestrian mall to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. They rode the elevator to the eighth floor and entered the Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Brain Tumor Center in the Department of Neurology, where a receptionist showed them to a conference room, offered them coffee, and informed them Dr. Kepler would join them shortly.

  “Not your usual hospital waiting room routine,” Alexia commented.

  “God, I hope this works out,” Koa responded.

  Alexia frowned. “Don’t get your hopes up. I told you it’s a real long shot.”

  Dr. Kepler came in, as jaunty as ever, with a thick file under his arm. “Welcome to Cedars-Sinai. I’m Dr. Kepler.” He extended his hand to Alexia. “You’re Ikaika Kāne’s attorney?”

  “Yes. Alexia Sheppard.”

  “Good.” Dr. Kepler sat down across the table from them. “Let me tell you what I’ve found, what I’ve concluded, and what I’d be prepared to say in a legal context. Then you can tell me what you need to package the information, assuming you think it is worthwhile going forward.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Alexia responded, and Koa nodded his agreement.

  “As a preface, let me say when I reduce this to writing, there will be a certain amount of medical jargon. I’m going to translate everything into plain English for you today.”

  Music to Koa’s ears. “We’d appreciate that.”

  Kepler slid his résumé across the table. “My curriculum vitae. I won’t bore you with the details. I’ve been recognized as an expert in more than twenty-five legal proceedings. You should have no trouble qualifying me.”