by Toby Neal
Stevens poured Lei a glass of water. “They said to stay hydrated.”
She groaned but took the glass and sipped. “Wish those pain meds would work.”
“Tell me again.”
“Oh God.” She handed him the glass. “The guy was gunning for me, no question about it. Ran me off the road; I knew the park was a dead end and he’d have to come back. So I followed him, wanted to wave him down and do a citizen’s arrest, at least get a look at the plates.”
Stevens shot up with the coiled grace that was a part of everything he did.
“That’s where I’m having a problem with this. It never occurred to you someone wanted to kill your ass? I mean, you’re well known. Who knows who might have tracked us since the Cult Killer case? You should have gotten yourself straight home! You were close to the house at that point—you should have gotten your weapon and called me!”
“I know that now. I thought it was just a reckless driver that needed to be stopped. I mean, he almost hit Keiki.”
The blow to the head had knocked the sass out of her, and her voice was small. This felt like the repeat of old arguments.
Stevens sat back down. “Yeah, and he actually did hit you, in case you didn’t notice. I know I shouldn’t be yelling. But you could have been killed, and I don’t. . .” He got up and paced again. “I don’t know what I would do if I lost you like that.”
He went to the kitchen, leaned against the sink, and looked out at the mountain behind the house, rising green and bright with full day. He turned back.
“So you didn’t ever see the car?”
“No. Nothing. It came from behind the first time, and I jumped out of the way. Second time, he ambushed me from the side and hit me here. I barely had room to go anywhere.” She touched the hip where the bumper had made contact, a purple-black bruise under the robe. “I’m actually lucky.”
“Don’t you think I know it?” Stevens banged some pots around. “Let me fix you something to eat.”
“I don’t know. Kinda nauseous.” She rested her bandaged head against the couch cushions. “Just gonna rest a minute.”
Approaching night was turning the air blue when she woke up. Stevens watched a ball game from the armchair, and a plate of omelet congealed beside her on the coffee table. He must have been watching for signs of life, because he rose at once and came to sit beside her. Keiki lifted her head off her paws and licked Lei’s dangling hand.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Better, actually. Think I need the bathroom.” She was able to totter in and do her business on her own. He’d given the omelet to Keiki and was back in the kitchen.
“Hungry?”
“Yeah.” Lei had been dreaming—and in the dream a beautiful red-haired girl pointed into the tent village. The image haunted her—her gut was telling her there was more to find out at the Lighthouse. “Can we still go out to Pauwela Lighthouse?”
“No. Absolutely not. They said a minimum of twenty-four hours of bed rest. You could have a clot or something.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
He shook his head, getting out a box of pasta. “Maybe. If you’re good.”
“Okay.” She snuggled into the couch and decided to enjoy being waited on, since she didn’t have much of a choice and her head really did hurt.
Chapter Thirteen
Stevens helped her out of the Bronco onto the wind-scored grass on the bluff at Pauwela Lighthouse the next morning. She slapped at his hands irritably.
“I’m fine. I can do it myself.”
“God, you’re stubborn.” He walked away, heading for the deep marks the fire trucks had left at the top of the bluff. She followed, already feeling bad for being so cranky and wishing she could take back her words.
They stood looking down the rugged bluff at the black rocks where the wreck had been. A crew had winched it up the bluff the day before, but glass still added an extra sparkle to the clear tide pools below, and rainbows of oil marked the water.
A blanket of clouds on the horizon threatened rain, and the ocean had gone slate blue snagged by whitecaps. Lei found her eyes scanning for whales and was rewarded by a featherlike spout bigger than any wind-driven wavelet.
A gust caught the big square Band-Aid on her head and pulled her hair. She held it down gently. Stevens had run a clipper on the number five setting over her whole head, and her curls were now evenly shorn, an inch or so long all over her head. She still remembered the intimacy of the clipper running up the back of her neck, the feel of his gentle fingers treating the wound. She pressed against his side, and he put an arm around her.
“Sorry I’m such a bitch.”
“Yes, you are.” He kissed the top of her head. “Sure you want to do this?”
“We have a photo now. Maybe there was a reason she came here or was brought here.”
Stevens turned with her to face the dense underbrush where the tent village hid. “Let’s get this over with so we can go home.”
They pushed forward through knee-high grass until they found a path and followed it straight to the first tent, the one where the young mother lived.
“Anyone home? Maui Police,” Stevens called.
A long moment passed before the door of the tent unzipped and the young woman came out. She was holding the baby this time, its dark eyes wide and serious.
“You called Child Welfare on me, bitch.” She gave Lei a hard stare.
“You deserved it, bitch.” Lei gave some attitude back, though her head and bruises hurt too much for any heat. “Thought if I called them you might get some more services, maybe a place at the shelter.” The homeless shelter was already overcrowded, with a waiting list.
“Yeah, well, it didn’t help.” The woman sat in the folding beach chair and gestured to a second one. Lei sat gingerly. Her hip hit the arm of the chair, and she winced. Stevens reached down to pat her shoulder and hit another bruise. She flinched again.
“What happened?”
“Hit by a car.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“So what do you want now?”
“We have a picture of the girl who died in the car.” Lei handed the color-enhanced photocopy they were circulating to the woman. “We’re still trying to find out who she is, what she might have been doing out here.”
The young mother looked at the lovely dead face for a long moment. “I’d remember her if I’d seen her, but I haven’t.”
“Okay.”
Lei took back the photo, stood slowly from the chair. She handed the girl her card. “You have my number, if you see or hear anything.”
“Well. There’s a girl here who might know something. I mean, she’s around the same age as this one, is all, and she’s new here.”
“Where?”
“She’s camping with Ramona.” The young woman pointed.
“We know who Ramona is. Thanks. And we’ll try to get you some services; I’ll make some calls.”
The woman laid her cheek along the baby’s downy head. “Okay.”
Lei and Stevens approached the bluff-side tent of the imposing Hawaiian woman. She was still out in front, this time working a basket. It was an elaborate construction with patterns of dark hala leaves worked into geometric shapes among light golden ones. Seated at the rickety table beside her was a dark-haired young woman. She looked up at their approach and hurried into the tent, zipping it up behind her.
“Don’t tell me, the other guy looks worse.” Ramona looked Lei over.
Lei snorted a laugh. “I wish. I was hit by a car. Run off the road.”
“Someone have it in for you?”
“I don’t know.” Ramona had a way of bringing out the truth. “Maybe.”
“Well, then you know a little about what brings a lot of us out here.” Ramona waved a hand. “This camp’s for those with nowhere else to go.”
Lei gestured to the tent. “Does she have anywhere else to go?”
“I don’t know. Probably.
She hasn’t talked much.”
“Can we ask her a few questions? We just want to see if she might know this girl.” Lei brought out the photo. Ramona peered at it and shook her head.
“Don’t know her.” She turned to the tent. “Anchara, come out. Nothing to worry about from these folks.”
The door unzipped and a face peered out. The girl knelt in the opening. She was striking, with dark almond eyes set above scimitar cheekbones. Jet-black hair hung in snarls and tangles past her hips. Lei’s hand crept up to touch her own shorn head at the sight.
“Hi, Anchara,” Lei said. “We just want to see if you know someone.” She proffered the photo.
The girl came out a little more, held out her hand. Lei put the photo in it and witnessed the moment Anchara recognized Jane Doe. She dropped the picture and it fluttered to the ground as she withdrew inside and zipped up the tent.
Stevens had a way of reining in his presence so he became like a tree or a stone, there but not threatening—a calm stillness that he could don at will. Lei called it his “cloak of invisibility,” and she wished she knew how he did it. He hunkered down by the closed flap, finally speaking.
“You know her? We just want to find out who she was.”
No answer.
“We just want to return her to her people, give her a decent burial.”
“I don’t know name.” The girl’s voice was heavily accented. Nothing Lei knew, but Stevens’s brows knit. Lei picked the photo up off the ground.
“How do you know her?”
Silence.
Stevens prompted. “She a friend?”
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“I only know her stage name.”
“Stage name?”
“You know. For the…men.” She stumbled over the words. “Her name Vixen.”
“Vixen. Hm.” Stevens sounded thoughtful. “So how did you two meet?”
“In the place.”
“What place?” Gentle and slow, he crouched beside her, talking to her through the green nylon. The darkness of not seeing him must have felt like a confessional.
Lei, however, struggled with impatience, pacing back and forth and finally sitting in the chair beside Ramona and stripping the thorns off an unworked piece of hala leaf. She didn’t have Ramona’s sharpened thumbnail, but once she got the end of the tensile strip of thorns, it was easy to pull off.
“The place where they kept us. That place.”
“Where was that?”
“The ship mostly, but sometimes we’d be in a living place.”
“Ship?”
“We came on a ship. From our countries.”
“So you were both in the sex trade?”
Silence. Lei guessed Anchara wasn’t sure what that meant. He went on.
“So you both saw men there?”
“No. We went to hotels and met them there. Then we went back.”
“Who kept you there?”
Silence.
“Did you run away? Is that how you got here?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get away?”
“Vixen. She had taken the key and she let us out. I think they caught everyone else.”
Lei felt excitement smothering her, a tight band around her chest. Could the key she’d found lead to this place where the sex slaves were kept? Could there be a connection to the cruise ships, or was it some other ship? She focused on working the hala leaf to let Stevens keep going.
“How did Vixen die?” Anchara’s voice wobbled a bit.
“Car accident,” Stevens said. “I’m sorry.”
They heard a gasp, a muffled sob.
“Can you tell us more? Where did you two come from?”
A bit of a pause while the girl regrouped; then she spoke more firmly. “We told we could be waitress on a cruise ship. They only want pretty girls who want to see the world.” Her voice had a rhythmic quality to it, like she was reciting from a brochure. “They picked us, and we said goodbye to our families. It was so exciting getting on the ship. Then they locked us up, and—did things to us.”
Lei blew out a breath, and Ramona’s sharp, dark eyes pinned her, seeing more than she wanted them to see. She looked down, focused on tearing the long, flexible leaf into four equal-width strips like she’d seen Ramona do. The older woman went on with her basket weaving, impassive.
“Who brought you here to Maui?” Stevens asked.
“I don’t know. We never knew anything.”
“When you come to the hotels, who’s in charge?”
“We have a woman. She helps us get ready for the night. Puts on makeup, gives us dresses. Then there is a man. He drives the car to the hotel and makes sure we get back.”
“Do you know their names?”
“They don’t like us to know, but I hear the woman’s name—it Celeste. The man is Kimo.”
“So have you been on Maui long?”
“Not long. We on the ship a lot. We go to different places. I don’t know where they are. It doesn’t matter where they are.”
Her accented voice had a flatness that made the words even more terrible.
Stevens picked up the rhythm again.
“So where are you from? All from the same place?”
“No. All over. I from Thailand. Vixen from Albania. She never want to talk. We all try to help each other. We talk at night in the dark after they turn off the lights. But not Vixen. She wouldn’t tell us her name. She wouldn’t be friends. She only thought of get away.”
“But she was the one to let you out.”
“Yes. And now she dead.”
“I think we should take you somewhere safe,” Stevens said.
“No!” Her voice climbed. “You deport me!”
“Would that be so bad? What about your family? Wouldn’t they rather have you back than think you disappeared?”
“It better for me to start a new life,” Anchara said. “I won’t go with you.”
Stevens looked over at Lei. They could take her in by force, but where would they put her? There was nothing to charge her with, and she was an illegal alien. She’d end up locked up and deported, and they needed her as a witness for their case if it was to go anywhere.
Lei looked at Ramona. “Is it okay if she stays with you?”
“Yes. Girl needs somewhere to stay. I look out for her.”
Stevens took out his wallet and peeled off several twenties.
“This is for food for Anchara. We don’t want to take her anywhere she doesn’t want to go, but we need her to stay here, be available in case we need to talk to her again. There may be some danger if the people who kept her captive are looking for her.”
Ramona took the money and inclined her head. “I’ll look after her and hide her if anyone else comes looking.”
Stevens turned back to the tent, gentled his voice. “I’ve given Ramona some money for food for you. This is an okay place for you to hide for the moment. Please stay here. We may need to talk to you again.”
“I heard you,” Anchara said. “You won’t deport me, will you?”
“No. You’ll hide and wait here for us?”
“Deal,” she said. The door unzipped a bit and her small brown hand appeared. Lei realized she was waiting for something. Stevens smiled as he bent down and shook it.
“Deal.”
There are only a few permanent penthouse suites at the top of the building above the gallery, and I live in one of them. I’m getting out of the shower when my work phone rings—only our contacts have the number. Ugh, it’s never good when the work phone rings.
“Yes?”
“It’s Healani Chang. Our man is on it, but he wasn’t able to finish the project yet.” Healani’s husky voice has a deep ring to it. I’ve always liked the Hawaiian matriarch of the Big Island branch, with her rich chocolate eyes and regal bearing. She took over the Chang family operations after her husband Terry’s demise, and I thought she ran things better than he ever ha
d.
“Damn. Well, thanks for taking this on. I hope I’m not overreacting, but I don’t like the look of this one.” It was an effort not to speak Texeira’s name. “I don’t know how far along her investigation is. My mole in MPD hasn’t been able to pick up much. But it worries me that if she pulls the right thread, we’re all connected.”
“You’re right to be worried. The girl’s a pit bull when she gets her teeth into something. That’s why I’m helping out—I should have taken care of it years ago.” Healani sighed. “It’s too bad, really. She’d have done well working for us.”
“Thanks for keeping me posted.”
“Watch the news. It’ll be on there when he gets it done.” Healani hung up.
The House hadn’t wanted to bring on the scrutiny of killing a cop, but…law enforcement was a dangerous profession, after all.
I rub gardenia-scented lotion into my legs. They’re looking good. I just had them waxed and I’ve been trying a new Pilates workout that’s bringing out some extra definition in the calves. I jump when the work phone rings again.
“It’s Kimo.”
“Yes. What is it?”
“It’s. . .” His voice trails off. He’s afraid to tell me something. The man is a chickenshit, and it pisses me off.
“What?”
“One of the girls is still missing. The Thai one with the long hair.”
“All the Thai girls have long hair. Which one?”
“Anchara. We called her Velvet.”
I remember Velvet. An exceptionally beautiful, delicately built girl with good skin and great hair the men love to grab. Good earner, too. I could get three or four tricks out of her a night when the ship was in town. At five hundred bucks a pop, she was worth her hundred pounds of body weight in gold.
“How’d it happen?”
“Well, you remember how Vixen let a bunch of them out of the warehouse. I said we got them all. I said that because I thought for sure we would, but—we didn’t. We’ve been looking all over the island.”
“Kimo, don’t ever lie to me. Find her; get it done. I’m going to take Velvet’s lost income out of your pay.”