by Toby Neal
She and Bunuelos each went around an opposite side of the house.
Broken glass and old beer cans and bottles littered the ground as Lei moved carefully forward. A scrawny cat scuttled into dried-out bushes in front of Lei as she approached the sound of voices, raised and laughing, along with thumping music.
Young voices.
Lei peered around the corner of the house at the outdoor party going on.
A foldable plastic table on the weedy lawn was piled high with pizza boxes and Chinese food containers. A big plastic thermal drink container held down one end of the table, a hacked-open watermelon the other. All around the yard, young people drank out of red plastic cups, played Hacky Sack, and talked and laughed in little knots as a portable stereo belted out rap music.
Lei stepped out from behind the house. “Hey.”
The effect was instantaneous. As if a light had hit a nest of cockroaches, the kids dropped the cups and scattered.
Bunuelos jumped out and grabbed a couple that charged his way. “Where are you kids going so fast?”
Lei caught the nearest teen she could get ahold of, a girl in a ratty Quiksilver hoodie. The girl screeched and fought, twisting inside the sweatshirt. She almost escaped—until Lei got a handful of her dreadlocks and knocked her to her knees. “Relax. We just want to ask you a few questions.”
Bunuelos cuffed one of his captives to a drainpipe on the house, and led the other over to where Lei was putting cuffs on the one she’d captured. “Man, you’d think they had a guilty conscience or something.”
“I didn’t see any adults, did you?”
“No.” Bunuelos picked up one of the half-empty cups, sniffed. He shook his captive, a slender boy with green hair. “Spiked punch and cutting school. Your parents are going to love the call from us.”
“Let’s take these two inside and see what’s going on in there.” Lei tugged the girl to her feet, clicking her tongue as a pack of cigarettes fell out of the hoodie. “I’ll take these. They’ll kill you, you know.”
The girl answered with a string of expletives and a gob of spit that almost got Lei.
She shook the girl and pushed the teen toward the back door. “You’re not making a friend here, you know. Gerry, can you check that the house is clear?”
“Yep.” Bunuelos drew his weapon and did a quick pass as Lei kept their captives under control. “Nobody in here.”
The inside of the house was as trashed as the exterior: trash cans overflowed beside a sink full of dirty dishes, and sand and dirt marked the floor and furniture. Lei and Bunuelos put the kids on an ancient tweed couch in the living room. Bunuelos watched them as Lei checked through the house, getting a sense of it. Only the back bedroom, with a big bed dressed in black satin sheets, seemed really livable. Bet Keo Avila slept in that bed—and not by himself.
Lei sat down in a rump-sprung armchair across from the teens. “First person to talk gets to go free. No call home, no trip to jail for underage drinking.”
“I’ll talk,” Bunuelos’s captive piped up. The kid was doing a rap culture imitation, wearing oversized pants that slid off his hips and puddled over his Nikes. He pushed a sheaf of dyed hair out of his eyes. “Ask me whatever you want.”
“Snitch,” the girl hissed. “We’ll get you, Rat.”
Bunuelos, positioned behind the kids, squeezed her shoulder at a pressure point. “I think you need a time-out in the bedroom.” He marched the girl to the room with the black satin bed, thrust her inside, and shut the door. She promptly began shrieking for help, peppering her invective with curses, so he opened the door again. “Want me to put a gag on you?”
The girl shut up as Bunuelos advanced. “I’ll be quiet.”
Meanwhile, Lei had her notepad out. “What’s your name?”
“Owen. Owen Mancuso.”
“Whose house is this?”
“We call him Uncle Keo.” The boy’s eyes darted fearfully toward the confrontation between Bunuelos and the girl.
“Where is Uncle Keo?”
“Don’t know. He’s usually here. He has parties here.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“A while.”
“Not good enough. Tell me more.”
“Keo’s a cool guy.” The boy finally met her eyes, and his were pleading. “My parents will kill me if they find out I was here and not in school.”
“So not all of you are runaways.”
“Only some of us are. Pammy, the girl in the bedroom. She’s a runaway.” He lifted his chin defensively. “She and Aaron, the kid outside.”
Lei made a note of the names. “Why would a cool guy, an adult, live in a place like this with a bunch of kids?”
“Keo says he was a runaway too. He says he wants us to have a good future. He has a job as a deejay, and he practices with us. We tell him if his stuff is good for his gigs.” The boy’s chin trembled. “Please. Just let me go. I won’t come here again.”
“When was the last time you saw Keo?”
“A couple of weeks ago. When he was hiring kids to work on a ship.”
Lei’s attention sharpened. “What kind of ship?”
“He didn’t say. But he wanted guys—bigger, older guys than me. Said they were going to . . . be pirates.” The last part of this sentence was lost as he mumbled into his shirt, his hands twisting inside the cuffs.
“What? Did you really just say ‘pirates’?” Lei raised her brows.
The kid narrowed his eyes. “They’re doing it. They’re attacking ships. I saw it on the news.”
Lei sobered and nodded. “Yes, they are. And when the Coast Guard catches them, and they will, those boys will be accessories to murder, rape, and piracy—no joking matter. What I’m surprised by is that such hard criminals are looking for runaway kids to be a part of their crew.”
“I’m not like that. Not a criminal, I mean.”
“I can see you’re not, Owen, and no matter what that girl said, you’re doing a good thing by talking to me. Saving lives, even. Now, do you know the names of any kids who went with Uncle Keo for this job?”
Lei noted down the names he gave, then met the boy’s eyes. “You need to know something. Uncle Keo is a real lowlife. He’s a recruiter. His job is to lure kids in, and then, once he knows you’re vulnerable with no one to help you, he gets you to a place where you’re locked up and shipped overseas, and sold as a human slave. I want you to tell anyone you can get to listen to you to stay far, far away from this house and anyone like him, an adult that’s pretending they’re a friend.”
Owen’s eyes had widened. He bobbed his head in agreement. “That’s heavy. “
“You have no idea.” Lei took out her handcuff key and unlocked his bracelets. “You’ve been warned. Now get out of here and tell the others.”
Owen jumped up and headed for the door. “Thanks, Auntie.”
Lei’s heart gave a little squeeze. “Don’t let me see you anywhere near here again.”
He nodded, and disappeared.
Bunuelos shook his head. “Hope we did the right thing letting him go.”
“I’ve got his name if we need him again.”
“What if he lied?”
Lei snorted. “Not that kid. Now that one you’ve got locked in the bedroom . . . Pammy’s another story. And I don’t like how quiet it’s gotten in there. She’s up to something.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lei and Bunuelos tiptoed to the bedroom door. Lei took up a position beside the door as Bunuelos unlocked it quietly and shoved it hard, hanging back in the doorway.
The door flew inward with force, and whacked into the wall. A lamp crashed down where Bunuelos would have been had he been entering. Following the missile of the lamp, a handcuffed Pammy leapt through the door in a whirl of blue jeans and tangled hair. She crashed into Bunuelos, who wasn’t where she’d expected him to be, and struggled to get around him.
Lei sprang in from the side and caught her by the arms. “Nice try, sistah.”
“Screw you, cop!” Pammy snarled.
“I don’t think these two are going to talk right now,” Lei told Bunuelos across the girl’s thrashing body. “Let’s just take her and the other boy to jail.”
“You can’t do that! We’re minors!” Pammy shrieked, trying to bite Bunuelos.
“Sure we can.” They wrestled Pammy through the house as Lei called for a backup unit. Bunuelos tied her feet with bungee cords from Lei’s truck when she continued to try to kick and bite. They loaded her prone, struggling body into the back of Lei’s truck until the MPD cruiser arrived.
Aaron, observing all of this from his place cuffed against the house’s drainpipe, chose to get into the back of the cruiser without a struggle.
“Book them on charges of underage drinking, truancy, and resisting arrest,” Lei instructed the responding officers. “Check for any outstanding warrants after you run their prints and get their full names.”
Once the teens were safely stowed in the back of the vehicle, Lei told the officers out of earshot, “We’ll come interview them later. But for now, these two need to think we’re locking them up and throwing away the key.”
“Gotcha, Sergeant.”
“And can you put in a request for a daily drive-by to this address? We want to shut down this spot as a gathering point for runaways,” Bunuelos said.
“Definitely. Yes, sir.”
Lei and Bunuelos watched the cruiser as it drove away. Bunuelos turned to Lei. “Now what?”
“Now we see what has been going on with Torufu. But first, let’s shut this place down as a hangout for these kids.” Lei got a roll of crime scene tape out of the back of her truck. They locked the windows and doors, and sealed the house with the tape.
Back in the cab of the truck, Bunuelos got out his phone and put it on speaker. They got a sitrep from Torufu as they headed back to Kahului. “No activity at the warehouse so far, and Felipe Chang’s last known address was a bust. I’m heading back to the station,” Torufu said. “How’d you guys do?”
“Got a better idea of how the Chang human trafficking operation worked,” Lei said. She glanced across Bunuelos at the sparkling blue sea off to her right. The Pali Highway between Lahaina and Kahului, with its sinuous curves and vista views of the sea and sky, was one of Lei’s favorite drives on the island. “We have a couple of runaways on ice to interview later. Hopefully they have some more info that will be useful in shutting down that particular operation.”
They agreed to meet up at the station later and regroup, checking in with the Coast Guard on how the search for the pirates was going.
Lei’s phone beeped with an unknown number even as Bunuelos ended their call. She put in her Bluetooth and answered it. “This is Sergeant Texeira with the Maui Police Department.”
“Hello. Am I speaking to the detective in charge of the Peterson murder investigation?”
“Yes, you are.”
“Very good. My name is Blair Cunningham, and I’m John Ramsey’s attorney. I’m calling because he would very much like to speak with you.”
Peterson’s shady partner was calling? “Then I very much want to speak with him,” Lei said. “I’m on the way to my office. I’ll call you back in half an hour.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Who was that on the phone?” Bunuelos asked, as Lei navigated a bend in the road that revealed another stunning vista of sea and sky, this one including the lavender smudge of Kaho`olawe in the distance.
“John Ramsey’s lawyer. Ramsey’s the guy who benefits most from Peterson’s death.” Lei pushed down the accelerator and put her cop light on the dash. “Let’s get back to the office ASAP. I want to review my notes from my interview with him.”
“But Peterson’s murder was a coincidence,” Bunuelos said. “I mean, not a coincidence because these yachts were targeted somehow. There had to be a way the pirates knew about them, and we haven’t uncovered that yet. But coincidence in the sense that he’s just another victim, like Janssen, the Norwegian billionaire.”
“I have a feeling none of this is random. The pirates have to know where and when a rich target yacht will be passing—they have to choose their attack points carefully. The problem has been that the attacks have been coming so fast and creating such a mess of leads to follow, that we can’t catch up. Think about this . . . how did the pirates know we were onto their hideout?” Lei frowned at a slow-moving rental car that didn’t pull over for her signal. She hit her siren, too, and that finally got the tourist out of her lane. “I’m just thinking out loud here . . . but wouldn’t it make sense for there to be an informant somewhere key, who fed the Pirate King the identities and routes of rich target vessels? Maybe that informant also tipped him off that the raid was planned on the sea cave on Kaho`olawe.”
“But how are we going to find a mole ‘somewhere key’?” Bunuelos made air quotes, his face scrunched with stress. “I don’t like this at all.”
“I think we need to talk it over with Aina Thomas,” Lei said. “At least put the idea out there. I should probably float it by my superiors at the FBI, too.”
“The likeliest place for this mole would be the Coast Guard. Do you trust Petty Officer Thomas?”
Lei glanced at Bunuelos. “With my life.”
“Well, Thomas dove in and saved a woman he’s got a crush on so he could be a hero . . . but that doesn’t mean he isn’t dirty.”
“Aina Thomas doesn’t have a crush on me!” Lei’s cheeks and neck heated in that betraying blush she’d struggled with her whole life.
“He does. And it was mutual a while back from what I saw. Torufu and I were wondering if you and Stevens were going to make it through that whole Honduras thing, and you can believe Thomas was hoping you wouldn’t stay together.”
“You guys were talking about us?” Lei’s hands tightened on the wheel. “I’ll admit it was a rough patch for a few years, but I would never have cheated on my husband.”
Bunuelos raised his hands. “You wouldn’t be the first to find some comfort elsewhere when things were tough at home. All I’m saying.”
“Well, how about you guys mind your own business and make sure your ladies are happy,” Lei flared.
Bunuelos chuckled. “You tell Stevens, come talk to me if you guys ever need some marriage advice, particularly in the bedroom.”
“We’ve got no problems there, Gerry.” Lei’s face hadn’t cooled down a bit. “Now can we get back to talking about the freakin’ case?” She was close enough to the station now that the traffic had increased considerably, and she slowed to get through a red light.
“Sure. Just sayin’ that Thomas is not off the list, least as far as I’m concerned.” Bunuelos took out his tablet and booted it up. “I think part of what’s got us confused is that we’re basically dealing with two cases—the human trafficking ring operating out of Kahului Harbor and Lahaina, and the pirates.”
“But we know that Keo Avila, the human trafficking recruiter, is connected to the pirates directly because we have his fingerprint at a scene,” Lei said.
“I get that. But I think we need to take a step back strategically and do a bit of analysis.” Bunuelos tapped his chin with a forefinger. “We’ve just been running around following every clue as it crosses our path. Maybe we’re trying to hit too many things at once. What’s causing the most harm right now? The pirates. Catching them will eliminate new victims. Once we have them, we can go after the various parts of the human trafficking operation.”
Lei frowned at the road ahead, loosening her death grip on the steering wheel. “But we’re really not in charge of that part of the operation. The Coast Guard is.”
“And that’s not going particularly well, is it? I think we should pull in the FBI, officially.”
“I agree.” Lei pulled into Kahului Police Station at last. The ugly gray bunker of a building had begun to feel like a refuge over the years. She drove through the large parking lot peppered with MPD cruisers and civilian vehicles alike into her
assigned parking spot under the familiar rainbow shower tree, and turned off the cop light on the dash. She turned to Bunuelos. Usually his brown eyes were bracketed by crinkles of good humor, but today his expression was serious as he met her gaze.
“You make some really good points, Gerry. As soon as I take this call, let’s see what the Captain says about bringing in the FBI. You’re right. We should be taking the lead on finding the pirates. But in the meantime, let’s find out what that jerk Ramsey has to say.”
John Ramsey was dressed with hipster style in a silky maroon button-down and a pair of skinny jeans visible in the video call on Lei’s monitor. “Hello, Sergeant Texeira. This is my attorney Blair Cunningham.”
“We spoke on the phone,” Lei said, inclining her head toward the man beside him, dressed more conservatively in a gray suit. Lei was conscious of her frizzing, disordered hair and that her tank top and cotton jacket had been worn for too many active hours and were far from fresh. “What’s this about? Why did you want to speak to me alone?”
“We’d like to broker an immunity deal,” Cunningham said.
“That isn’t something I can do on my own,” Lei said slowly. “Those have to be approved by my captain and the district attorney.” She cocked her head, narrowed her eyes. “This means you have some information about the case that implicates you.”
Ramsey sat down abruptly behind his desk and dropped his face into his hands. “Yes.”
“We talked once already. Why didn’t you bring this up then?” Lei softened her voice deliberately. “It takes courage to do the right thing. I’m so happy you’ve reached out.”
“I . . . heard from Emma Peterson.” Ramsey spoke thickly through his hands. “I’ve always admired her. What happened to her and the girls . . .” His shoulders shook.
Cunningham cleared his throat. “Mr. Ramsey would like an agreement that, in return for the information he’s about to give you, he is not charged in any way.”
Lei’s scalp prickled with anger but she kept her voice warm and soft, ignoring the lawyer. “Wow. You must have some really good information, Mr. Ramsey.” She paused and waited until Ramsey finally glanced up at her from red-rimmed eyes. “What do you know that could get justice for these women? That could save lives? Because these pirates are deadly and no joke. We just fished another corpse out of the sea and there are several more we haven’t found yet, out there somewhere. We freed four victims from their latest attack who were raped and abandoned, locked in a shed inside a cave without food or water. Left to die after their assault in total darkness! And we have good reason to believe they’re planning another attack, as we speak.” A bit of exaggeration, but likely true.