Red Death

by Alan Jacobson

  Russell laughed.

  Vail resumed strolling along the path. “So you were saying. What doesn’t work here?”

  “Vic’s name is Dawn Mahelona. Not Mary.”

  Vail twisted her lips. “What about the first vic?”

  “Mary. So that fits.”

  “Yeah.”

  But why would he break with his ritual? Doesn’t make sense.

  “For now we’ll pretend you didn’t bother me with that bit of trivia. Okay?”

  Russell shrugged. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “What do we know about Dawn?”

  “Single. Never married. No siblings. Lived here all her life.”

  “And the first vic?”

  “Widowed. A son who lives in Texas. He’s alibied, but I’ve got a Texas Ranger following up on that to confirm.”

  Vail gestured at the vegetation ahead of them. “Weird trees. I remember them, though. When I was a kid. What’re they called?”

  “Banyans.”

  “Yes! Coolest trees I’ve ever seen.”

  “You want a picture in front of one?”

  “What I want is to catch this killer. Take me to the crime scene.”

  “There are two.”

  They walked another thirty feet and just around the bend Vail saw the yellow tape swaying to and fro in the breeze, marking off the boundaries.

  “What do you know?” Russell said. “Here’s one.”

  Vail glanced around. With the body removed, there was not much to see.

  “Other crime scene is inside the building.”

  They ascended the steps and walked in the back entrance of the ornate building.

  “Pretty cool history,” Russell said. “The palace was built in the 1880s by King Kalakaua, Hawaii’s last reigning monarch. It was the official royal residence until the monarchy was overthrown about a dozen years later. The only official royal residence in the United States.”

  “Well that’s … worthy of note,” Vail said with a hint of sarcasm. “I spent some time in England and I don’t get the whole royalty thing. But I’m just an American, what the hell do I know about kings and queens?”

  Actually, I was born in Queens. So there’s that.

  Russell led the way along the crime scene tape into an office space with a few empty desks. Phones rang in the distance as workers had been moved to a different area.

  “Employees aren’t too happy that we roped off half their office space. Can’t say I blame them, being displaced like that.”

  “Yeah, well, at least they’re still alive. Dawn Mahelona would trade a little inconvenience for another two decades of life.”

  “Sorry,” Russell said. “Stupid thing to say.”

  “Not stupid. Just trying to put things in perspective.” Vail stood in the center of the room and pivoted in a circle, following the yellow ribbon. “The crime scene includes the bathroom?”

  “Yep. Dawn had just gone to the restroom when she was headed back to her desk. Started coughing nonstop, then had difficulty breathing. She ran outside and a coworker followed about a minute or so later. She’s the one who found her. Sprawled face down.”

  Vail harrumphed and made her way into the bathroom, Russell a few steps behind her. She glanced around. Nothing unusual—well-appointed but spartan. It had been updated to include electric hand dryers, but otherwise it had the original, well-maintained fixtures. Fingerprint powder dusted the surfaces.

  Vail knelt and looked under the vanity, then stood up and checked each of the stalls. “We now think she was killed with a toxin. Did Crime Scene check out the toilet paper and … well, there are no paper towels … but what about the soap?”

  “Don’t know, but I can find out.” Russell pulled out his phone and made a call while Vail continued to poke around—being careful not to touch anything. She could not be sure the technicians had taken samples of the types of items capable of carrying a toxin.

  She crouched back down, pulled out a pen, and used it to pick through the garbage pail—which was relatively empty because of the lack of paper towels.

  Russell held the phone down by his thigh. “They dusted for latents, vacuumed, took photographs. And swabbed for DNA.”

  “Get them back here. We need them to go through this garbage.” Vail stood up. “And there’s toilet paper in the stalls. A bar of soap. Toilet seat covers. We need all those things run through the lab looking for aconite. Any one of them making contact with the skin could’ve killed her.”

  Russell lifted the handset back to his mouth and asked them to send a unit there as soon as possible.

  “Half an hour,” he said.

  Vail nodded. “Then let’s make use of that time.” She led the way out of the crime scene and into the temporary quarters where the workers were setting up card tables and laptops. “Sorry to bother you,” Vail said, standing at the front of the room. “I’m Special Agent Karen Vail, FBI. I need to talk with anyone who saw Dawn Mahelona yesterday.”

  “We all saw her,” one of the women said.

  “Anyone notice anything unusual in her behavior? Anyone see a stranger hanging around that shouldn’t have been? Was Dawn upset or concerned about anything?”

  Vail looked around the room, making eye contact with each of the dozen individuals—both women and men. Some shrugged. A few shook their heads.

  Russell nodded in the direction of a male in his thirties. “Jim there was the last one to see her alive.”

  Vail gestured for Jim to join them over on the side.

  “Anyone else think of anything, contact Detective Russell.”

  The employee, well-groomed in a long sleeve dress shirt and slacks, started talking before he got close to Vail.

  “Not gonna be much help. I didn’t see anything. I’ve got no idea who killed her.”

  “Where’s your desk in relation to hers?”

  “Right next to it. I work in the adjacent cubicle. She went to the restroom, asked me to cover her phone for a couple of minutes. When she came back, she started coughing.”

  “Just coughing?” Vail asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Not short of breath?”

  “Maybe. The coughing seemed to get worse. I didn’t think of it at the time, but yeah, maybe she was short of breath.”

  “Did she say anything? Like, ‘Help—I can’t breathe’?”

  He glanced up at the ceiling. “No. She just kind of touched her chest.”

  “So she went outside,” Vail said. “Why? To get some fresh air?”

  “You’d have to ask her.” Jim winced. “Sorry. Didn’t mean that. I—I just don’t know what she was thinking.”

  “And that’s when you went to check on her?”

  “Well I heard her still coughing. Outside the window. And then she just suddenly stopped. I ran over and saw her on the ground, face down.”

  He’s right. Not much help.

  “You really think she was murdered?”

  Vail glanced around the office. “Where’s her desk?”

  Jim gestured past her left shoulder. “Second one on the left.”

  Vail and Russell made their way down the hall. “I assume you already looked at it.”

  Russell ducked under the crime scene tape. “No threatening emails. Nothing in her purse or on her phone that’d indicate she was in trouble or that she had a dispute with anyone.”

  They stopped in front of Dawn Mahelona’s cubicle. As Vail slipped on a pair of gloves, she scanned the top surface. It was fairly orderly. She pulled open a drawer and noticed a sealed letter. “Paycheck.” Vail set it aside and continued rummaging through the paperwork—all work related—and stopped. She went back to the envelope, lifted it up, and stared at the name. “Mary Mahelona?” Vail looked up and yelled down the hallway. “Hey. Jim!”

  He came j
ogging down the hall seconds later and stopped at the taped boundary.

  Vail held up the envelope. “Why does her paycheck say Mary?”

  “Mary’s her first name. Dawn’s her middle name. Back when she first started working here, we had two Marys and it got real confusing, so she started going by her middle name. It stuck. No one here called her Mary.”

  Vail and Russell shared a look.

  “It fits,” Russell said.

  Vail nodded at Jim, dismissing him. “Thanks.”

  As he headed back down the corridor, his dress shoes clacking against the tile, Russell elbowed Vail. “It does explain what we thought was a deviation away from women named Mary.”

  “Detective?”

  Russell turned and saw a Honolulu Police Department criminalist standing there.

  “Sorry to make you come back here, but we need you to check out the restroom.”

  Vail told her what they were looking for and the technician went to work.

  “Meantime,” Vail said, “let’s do some old-fashioned police work.”

  “I thought that’s what we were doing.”

  Vail ignored him. “Let’s see if we can find a male in his forties who has a mother named Mary.”

  Russell squinted. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Yes. And no. That’s a bit ridiculous, so we’ll narrow the search. Our offender’s mother likely has a criminal record that includes child abuse. Or she was arrested for abuse, even if no charges were filed or she wasn’t convicted.”

  “I thought you said earlier there wasn’t any abuse.”

  “No sexual abuse. But physical, emotional abuse? Different story.”

  “So you think that because his mother abused him, he’s angry at her and killing women who remind him of her?”

  “Exactly. He’s killing his mother each time he kills one of these women. He’s killing her over and over. And getting pleasure from it.”

  Russell harrumphed. “I didn’t particularly like my mother, especially when she drank too much. But I never wanted to kill her. Or anyone else who reminded me of her.”

  “That’s a good thing, Adam. Means you’re normal. Or—well, at least not a psychopath.”

  He looked at her. “I’m not sure, but I think that was an insult.”

  “Excuse me. Detective?”

  They turned to see the forensics technician holding up her kit. “Good to go. I’ll run these tests as soon as I get back.”

  “Ping me the minute you’ve got something,” Russell said.

  “As soon as you’re done, I want the materials sent to Tim Meadows at the FBI lab in Quantico.” Vail pulled out a card and jotted down his information. “Tomorrow if possible.”

  “For what?” Russell asked.

  “Analysis.” Vail shrugged. “Best lab in the country. Let them do their thing. Might find something, might not.” After the tech left, Vail glanced around. “I’m done here. Let’s go visit the first crime scene.”

  13

  Vail and Russell arrived at the home of Mary Burkhead in Kaneohe thirty-three minutes later, a well-maintained residential area that featured homes with terraced, dense-foliage yards that sprouted papaya and mango trees. Others sported stellar views of Kaneohe Bay.

  They parked outside the crime scene boundary and ducked under the tape. They slipped on booties and gloves and walked in the front entrance.

  “Vic was found on the deck,” Russell said as he led the way out the back slider.

  “I take it no one saw it happen.”

  “Nope. No witnesses. Like I said, daughter found her. About a couple of hours after she died.”

  Vail walked the one-story house and rejoined Russell in the kitchen a few minutes later. “You were wrong about there not being any witnesses.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Vail held out her right fist, then slowly opened it. Five microSD cards sat nestled in her palm. “Security cameras, the kind that record directly to an internal memory device.” She held up a hand. “And that’s the extent of my technobabble. I have a friend who used to work for Intel, so I’ve learned a thing or two over the years. Enough to make me dangerous but not enough to make me smart.”

  “Dangerous but not smart.” Russell chuckled. “That’s how Lance Burden described you.”

  “Funny.”

  “Be right back.” He returned a few moments later carrying a thin Surface tablet. “Do those thingama-cards go in here?”

  Vail took the Surface and rotated it around a couple of times, then popped the kickstand out and found what she was looking for. She pressed the first microSD chip into a slot on the back and navigated its contents.

  Russell huddled with her over the computer. “Looks like three files.”

  “Yep,” Vail said, studying the File Explorer window. “Videos if I’m not mistaken.” She reached out and double-tapped the screen. The program launched and played the surveillance footage.

  Mary Burkhead walked out of the bathroom and headed down the hall to another room. Two minutes later, she came back into view, bent over slightly, coughing.

  “Switch to a different camera, see if we can pick her up.”

  Russell did as Vail suggested, finding nothing of interest on the next two SD cards, before locating Burkhead stumbling into the kitchen and then the nook. She struggled to pull open the slider to her deck, then after moving about two feet, dropped to her knees and collapsed to the ground, half in and half out of the house.

  Vail straightened up. “Yep, about what I expected.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Let’s get CSU back here, have them check out that bathroom.”

  Russell laughed. “Already done. I texted them when we were on our way to the car. Probably be here soon.”

  And they were. It was a different technician, so Vail again explained what they were looking for. The man went to work while Vail took another look at the information Del Monaco had sent her.

  “You wanna see anything else while we’re here?”

  Vail lifted her gaze from the phone. “Huh?”

  “Ready to go?”

  “I’m ready to go eat. Stomach’s growling.”

  Russell chuckled. “I know a great place about a mile away. View will blow your mind. Their Polynesian and Hawaiian food’s second to none on the island.”

  She checked her watch. “We probably have time before we hear from the lab, right?”

  “At least an hour, maybe two. Depends on what they’ve got in queue.”

  “Then let’s go. I’ve had a long day of travel and I’m running out of gas.”

  While en route, Vail pulled out her phone and googled Brad Ferraro’s name. She engaged in a little law enforcement officer geography but did not stumble on anything obvious. They overlapped in a few places, particularly DC, but they didn’t work any of the same cases.

  Did he just dislike profilers? That was an attitude she encountered early in her career—buttressed by long defunct television shows that portrayed her profession as seers who could touch a victim’s clothing and get a vision of the killer. Hell, if she did not know any better and had come across a behavioral analyst, maybe she would have drawn the same ignorant conclusion.

  But it was more than that with Ferraro.

  Why is it bothering me so much?

  “What’s on your mind? Something with Mary Burkhead?”

  “Huh?” Russell’s voice jarred her back to the case. “Um, no, just … my head was somewhere else. Sorry.”

  She texted Robby and asked him to poke around online:

  dont know what it is about the guy

  has to be some reason why

  he wants to rip my heart out and eat it

  Seconds later, Robby replied:

  thats a bit extreme honey

  sure ur not
reading into this

  She almost grunted aloud.

  very sure

  poke around

  got a feeling

  has to be something

  Vail put her phone down but her mind kept working, shifting to the case. A couple of minutes later, they arrived at Haleiwa Joe’s.

  They parked and walked up to the rustic restaurant, then entered and passed the largest pair of sandals Vail had ever seen—a wood wall hanging behind the hostess stand on a rough stone facing. Ceiling fans whirred above. But what lay across the room is what caught her attention: a garden setting that was pristine. Perfectly manicured. Idyllic.

  They walked over to the far wall—which was not a wall at all but an open area with a railing that looked out over a small lake with a pier that ended in a covered gazebo. Lush foliage bordered the periphery—full trees and meticulously pruned bushes, with a picturesque mountain peak just beyond.

  “This is …” Vail paused, searching for the correct adjectives.

  “Exquisite. Outstanding. Charming.”

  “Paradise.”

  “That works, too.” Russell gestured to the greenery below. “Haiku Gardens down there. And of course the Ko’olau Mountains.”

  “Of course.”

  “Would you like a table?”

  Vail turned to see a young woman holding two menus. “Yeah. How about a window seat?”

  The hostess grinned broadly. “I think I can arrange that.”

  She gestured at a table to their left. They sat and took the menus, but Vail was still staring at the scenery. “I could retire here.”

  “Didn’t realize that was on the horizon,” Russell said. “You look … well, a little too young to retire.”

  A little too young?

  “Nice of you to notice.”

  “I didn’t mean—” He blushed. “Put my foot in my mouth, didn’t I?”

  “You can pull it out now. I forgive you. This time.”

  “Right.” Russell dropped his gaze to the menu.

  Vail perused the dishes and ultimately decided on ordering one of everything. But she thought better of it and settled on the Black & Blue Ahi—blackened ahi sashimi.

  “Good choice,” Russell said as the server turned and headed toward another table.