Red Death

by Alan Jacobson

  “Fine.” He shrugged. “So yeah, I think you look pretty hot in that photo. And you look damn good now, too. You’ve got nothing to feel bad about.”

  “Really? Are you kidding me? I can’t believe you’d call me hot. Do you think women are just objects? That’s so inappropriate. Pull over and let me out. I’m going to call my attorney.”

  Russell turned to her, unsure. She winked and he let out his breath, shaking his head. “You.”

  “Just so we’re clear. I am not making fun of women who’ve been harassed.”

  “We’re clear. Just give me a minute for my heart to return to a normal rhythm.”

  “Sorry. Sometimes my mouth moves faster than my brain. I’ve been working on it.”

  “Obviously with mixed results.”

  “Do you like your front teeth?”

  Russell glanced in the rearview mirror and pulled up his top lip. “Yeah, kind of fond of them. I use Crest whitening gel. I think it’s helped.”

  “Then you might want to consider being nicer to me.”

  Russell hung a left, doing his best to stifle a grin.

  They drove for a minute in silence.

  “I think we need to be creative,” Vail said.

  “I take it you’re not talking about sex.”

  “Now that’s harassment.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I think we should compile a list of all women named Mary on the island in their mid-fifties to sixties and seventies.”

  “And then what? Go door to door to the houses of all these women named Mary and warn them not to wash their hands or take showers?”

  “Exactly. Well, not exactly. Tell them not to buy any handmade soap. Stick to Dove and Caress.”

  Russell laughed.

  “What? We’d explain that we can’t tell you why but it’s extremely important—and equally important that you don’t tell anyone about this. Don’t post anything on Facebook about it, don’t blog about it, don’t talk to reporters from the Waikiki Vacationer, and—”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “No, the part about the Vacationer I made up. I’m just pissed at them. But the part about not telling anyone, posting about it, yeah.”

  “Too risky.”

  “Is it?” Vail asked. “We’re not real close to catching this asshole. We know his victim pool. Why not warn them?”

  “There could be women named Mary we don’t know about. Friends, relatives, tourists. It’s impossible to cover everyone—and it’d take a lot of manpower. Chief may not go for it.”

  “And it could frustrate the offender. If he can’t find what he’s looking for, he could try to leave Oahu, go hunting elsewhere. But we have a tool at our disposal. Don’t we have to try?”

  Russell stared out the windshield. After a long moment, he said, “I guess it makes some sense. There’s a lot of risk, but it’s incredibly frustrating not being able to do something to stop this guy.” He pulled out his phone. “I’ll call Ferraro, make the ask.” As it rang, he said, “Oh. I told a couple of colleagues to start going through the credit card transactions of all three vics.”

  “Makes sense. And?”

  Russell held a hand up and asked to speak with the chief. While he waited, he rotated the handset away from his mouth. “And early this morning I got a text that only one of them had a charge at a health food retailer. Dawn Mahelona. I sent a uniform over to the store so they’re there when they open in an hour. Maybe one of the employees knows something about our offender without realizing it.”

  “Worth a shot. But it should be us.”

  “Why?”

  “Bachler gave us some good background about homemade soaps, but someone who deals with these distributors and manufacturers may have inside information. That kind of insight could set us down the right path.”

  Russell nodded. “The employee might have even interacted with the killer and a beat cop may not know what questions to ask.”

  “Could even be worse than that. Remember we talked about the UNSUB needing to be in contact with the victim? If that’s the case, the only way that can happen—if Dawn Mahelona did buy soap when she shopped at that store—is if the offender works there. A cop walks in and starts asking questions? That’ll be the last we see of our UNSUB.”

  Russell sat up and spoke into the phone. “Yeah, Chief.” He told him of Vail’s idea of going door to door. After listening a moment, Russell said, “But—” and then waited as Ferraro apparently kept talking. Russell glanced sideways at Vail, then sighed in resignation. “Right. Okay. Yep, got it.”

  “What?”

  He dropped the device to his side. “Thinks it’s a waste of resources. Says we’d need a lot of officers but a few large events are going on this week. Can’t divert the manpower.”

  “We’ll deal with that later. At least we can have a staff person assemble the list. What we do with it …” She pointed at his phone. “Right now call your people and tell that officer to back off—the one going to the store. He or she shouldn’t go anywhere near it.”

  “You do the talking while I head over there in case we can’t reach him in time.” Russell hit a button on his phone and handed it to Vail. He hung a left and accelerated. “See? Your wish is my command, Karen.”

  Vail lifted her brow and grinned mischievously. “Then I better choose my wishes more carefully.”

  21

  They arrived at Ola Health twenty minutes later. They sat in the parking lot of the strip mall, thirty yards from the store’s entrance.

  “You have to go in.”

  Russell pursed his lips. “Sounds like you’ve got a reason.”

  “My very memorable photo was in the Vacationer article. Can’t take the chance.”

  “Right. But you realize the Waikiki Vacationer is not exactly the most widely read paper on the island.”

  “Sharkey, the journalist, writes for AP. So yeah, it was in the Vacationer, but it could also be picked up by the Honolulu Tribune. It’s a high-profile story. Hard to pass up unless there’s something better to feature.”

  “Not like they had a lot to report on at the crime scene.”

  “Since when has that stopped the media? They find ways of filling space.”

  They watched as a man crossed the lot and walked up to the front door of the store.

  “Here we go.”

  “Whaddya think?” Russell said, keeping his eyes on the suspect. “Hard to say. Look like a poisoning serial killer to you?”

  “Ted Bundy looked like the all-American guy.”

  Russell popped open his door. “Right.”

  * * *

  Russell removed his sport coat and slipped his badge in his front pocket, then shoved the pistol in the small of his back.

  He pushed through the door and saw the suspect behind the counter busy with the cash register. It was a modest-size space, no more than seven or eight hundred square feet.

  “Aloha.”

  “Aloha.” Russell glanced around, looking for soaps. He saw bottles of shampoo and conditioner, vitamins and minerals, herbal remedies—and bottles of body gel.

  “Help ya?”

  “Looking for soap,” Russell said.

  “About three feet to your right.”

  Russell wanted the guy to come out from behind the counter and interact with him, so he made a lame attempt to miss the products. “Yeah, um … I’m—not seeing any.”

  “Look down about—oh, hang on a sec. Be right there.”

  Russell kept his gaze on the shelves as the man approached. “Adam,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Martin.”

  His face was weathered, like a beach native who saw too much sun and too little sunscreen. Older than what he had thought when viewing him from a distance.

  “Thanks for your help, Martin. Wif
e wants a natural kind of soap. No chemical stuff in it.” He laughed. “I do as I’m told.”

  “Hear ya.” Martin leaned forward and selected two products, one featuring olive oil and the other coconut oil.

  “Which is better?”

  Martin shrugged. “Like ’em both, tell you the truth. Been carrying the olive oil soap for ’bout fifteen years. People seem to like it. But the coconut one, that’s a little newer, maybe four or five. Customers like that one, too. So …” He shrugged again. “Either will work for the missus.”

  Russell did not think Martin was their killer. If he was, he would likely prefer one product over the other. Then again, that might only be true if Russell was a sixty-something woman named Mary …

  “Any of these handmade?”

  “You mean homemade?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Doubt it. We got a rep who comes by. Not one of them huge companies, but big enough. Homemade products don’t usually have sales reps. Know what I mean?” Martin laughed. “Guess the ones we carry would be considered ‘natural.’ No chemical stuff in ’em. Seems to me that’s what people care about these days.”

  “What’s the sales rep like? He new?”

  Martin twisted his lips as if he had bitten into a wedge of sour lemon. “Known her about five years, I’d say. Maybe a couple more. Nice lady. Knows her products, if that helps.”

  Russell pulled out his phone and texted Vail:

  come in. not our guy

  Martin turned to walk back toward the counter.

  Vail entered and made eye contact with Russell. “Hey, honey.” She walked over to him and received a quick, quiet summary of what he had learned.

  “Martin,” Vail said, stepping up to the counter.

  He turned and his eyes lit up. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m with Adam. Just curious. I was in here a week or so ago and—was there someone else working?”

  “Just a part-timer. She comes in at four and closes at seven. I gotta get home to make dinner for the kids. Wife’s got health problems.”

  “So just you and—”

  “Patricia.”

  “You and Patricia. You have no other employees? No men?”

  “Nope.” He eyed her suspiciously. “Why you askin’?”

  “How old is Patricia?”

  Martin canted his head back and examined the ceiling. “Oh, uh, I’m guessing about seventy-one, seventy-two maybe.”

  Vail glanced at Russell, then reached into her right pocket and pulled out her credentials. “Working a case. Doesn’t look like you sell any homemade bars of soap.”

  “Nope. I was tellin’, um, Adam there. We got two really good natural ones, though, no chemicals an—”

  “Yeah. He told me.” Vail slipped her creds back in her pocket. “Ever see bars of homemade soap around town?”

  Martin shrugged. “Not that I know of. Possible, though. Probably be a local thing. You know, sold in small shops like mine. But not just health food stores. Gift shops, tourist shops. They’re more likely to be able to sell those things for more money. I mean, if you sell them from a store, you got another mouth to feed, so the store owner’s gonna double the price. And then it’s not really competitive with a natural soap, which is pretty much the same thing as homemade.”

  “All good points, Martin.”

  “Been in business a long time. Only way to survive is to use this.” He jabbed a prematurely arthritic index finger into his temple.

  Vail thanked him and they huffed it back to Russell’s car. “He’s got a point.”

  “About using his smarts to stay in business that long?”

  Vail stopped outside the sedan. “No, Adam. About selling homemade soap. It doesn’t make sense our offender would sell it out of a store.”

  “So how is this guy selling it? Craft fairs? Gift shops, like Martin said?” Russell turned the engine over. “Health food stores was too damn easy.”

  “Let’s go back over their credit card statements, see if there are any gift shops or craft fairs or farmer’s markets on them … anything like that where all three women shopped.”

  “And what if they used cash?”

  Yeah. What if?

  “Do one thing for me,” Vail said. “Stop asking questions that I can’t answer.”

  22

  On the way back to the station, Russell called and asked that four officers in each jurisdiction be tasked with collecting samples from all stores and markets on the island that carry homemade soaps.

  Vail and Russell went through the charge records of all three Marys and forwarded relevant information to the respective police departments for their follow-up. However, there were no common purchases among the three women, which made the task more difficult.

  Within a few hours they had a dozen samples to test. Bachler and a colleague started their chemical analyses while Vail and Russell retreated to a break room.

  “Humor me,” Vail said as she stirred some milk into a cup of coffee. “Let’s check HPD history and see if there’ve been other asphyxiation-related heart attack deaths.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  Vail looked at the swirling tan liquid in her cup. “We know there’s a chance our offender lives in Hawaii. But if he doesn’t, what if he has a relative here and he comes and goes from time to time? I’m gonna touch base with the other PDs in Chicago, LA, Dallas, and Atlanta. Maybe they’ve had other ‘cases’—not necessarily deemed murder—years before, or after, the ones they sent us.”

  Russell rose from his chair. “Nothing to lose. I’ll make a call, check into it.”

  A few moments later, while Vail finished speaking with her contacts in Chicago and Los Angeles, Russell threw open the door and poked his head in.

  “Gotta go.”

  Vail followed him down the hall, his rapid pace making her jog to catch up to him.

  “What gives?”

  “New vic.”

  Vail slowed and cursed under her breath. But getting angry was not going to get her any closer to finding the offender.

  23

  “Where we headed?”

  They entered the parking lot, Russell’s quick pace persisting. “Got a call from KPD.”

  Vail galloped a few steps to catch up. “KPD?”

  “Kauai.”

  “There’s a town on Oahu called Kauai? Or the island?”

  “The island. Next one over to the west. I put out an alert, in case our killer wasn’t limiting himself to Oahu.”

  Vail stopped walking. “So he’s gone? He’s left Oahu?”

  Russell shrugged. “Looks that way.”

  “Shit. This is not good. Not good at all. He could be on his way back to the mainland.”

  “All we can do is take a look at the crime scene. Do our thing. Could be this is just a garden variety cardiac arrest.”

  “So why’d they call you?”

  “Because it didn’t look like a garden variety cardiac arrest. Vic was coughing violently and—well, you know the story.” Russell chirped his remote and the sedan’s doors unlocked. “So we’re going to Kauai. Got a helo warming up.”

  “As long as I don’t have to rappel out of one. Did that once or twice. Crossed it off my bucket list.”

  “I fully expect to land on solid ground.” He started walking again and they got into the car. “Ever been there? To Kauai?”

  “Nope.”

  “My favorite of all the islands. Peaceful, scenic beyond belief, great hiking and waterfalls. And not touristy.”

  “How long a flight?”

  Russell shrugged. “Forty-five, give or take. Depends on traffic.”

  Vail squinted confusion. “Traffic?”

  He started the engine with a twist of his wrist. “Kidding.”

  They arrived at the helipad tw
enty minutes later and climbed onto the Black Hawk police chopper. They pushed the audio headsets down over their ears and tuned to the correct channel.

  “So where are you taking us?” Vail asked the pilot.

  “I can set you down in a clearing right in the town.”

  “The town? There’s only one on Kauai?”

  The man glanced back at Russell, his expression saying, “Is she kidding? Or just stupid?”

  Russell apparently thought Vail’s question was valid because he tilted his head and asked, “Which one, Greg?”

  “Hanapepe.”

  “Ah.” Russell turned to Vail. “They call it Kauai’s biggest little town.”

  Charming.

  They flew in silence, Vail snapping a few photos out the side window of the helicopter. The view was spectacular. She was glad the pilot had a flight plan that took them out over Oahu rather than the expansive, though monotonous, ocean.

  But as soon as that thought cleared her brain, the island below disappeared, and blue green water rolled beneath them.

  So much for picturesque views.

  24

  September 19, 1989

  Scott and Phillip walked along the plaza separating the two towers of the World Trade Center. It was late in the afternoon on a Saturday and people milled about. But one person caught their attention: a soldier in fatigues walked by with his young daughter and gave both boys a wink.

  “I’m gonna serve in the army,” Phillip said, twisting around to get another look at the man.

  “Yeah?” Scott asked.

  “Yeah. Maybe fly planes. Air force. Or the navy. I dunno yet.”

  “When?”

  “Three weeks. When I turn eighteen. Been thinkin’ a lot about it. Gonna go see a recruiter.”

  A recruiter? Scott realized this was not just a passing thought, but something that actually might happen. “But …” Scott pursed his lips with quivering sadness.

  Phillip craned his neck back to look at the top of the north tower, 110 floors above—and swayed left, nearly falling over. “But what?”

  “But what about me?”

  Phillip regained his balance and faced Scott. “You’ll finish school and join up, just like me.”