by Toby Neal
The woman’s soft voice hitched, and she ducked her head so a curtain of long, shiny hair slid forward.
“Not your fault,” Lei said. “Someone’s been trying to off me since the investigation started. This was just their latest attempt.”
She was a bit fuzzy from painkillers and exhaustion; she’d spent some hours at the hospital for observation and repairs and a debrief with the police team. She had nothing more from this latest adventure than cuts, bruises, and whiplash, and they’d put her in a highly annoying foam collar. She reached up to scratch underneath it.
Her phone kept ringing with calls as the “coconut wireless” word-of-mouth relayed this latest attempt on her life through the cop world.
She glanced at the number on the buzzing device and picked up. “J-Boy!”
“Sweets!” Jack Jenkins, her former partner on Kaua`i. “I hear someone’s been trying to kill you. They should know better—you’re tougher than a boot and luckier than a cat with nine lives—though you must be down a few by now.” Under the jocular note, she heard concern. “You okay?”
“Well, this has been my worst case in a while—we think there’s a contract out on me. Been hit by a car, had my house burned down, and now run off the road.” Listing the events made her stomach feel hollow, and she realized she now no longer even had her truck, totaled at the scene. As if to remind her, Keiki sat up and licked her hand. She played with the dog’s ears.
She still had her dog, at least. “The net’s closing, though. We have a suspect, witnesses, and the perp’s apartment’s being searched as we speak.”
Omura had triumphantly flourished the signed search warrant at Lei’s debrief before setting off for Lahaina with Torufu, Bunuelos, and Stevens.
“As long as you’re safe. Anu wants to know if you need anything.” The Kaua`i girl had made a move on Jenkins, and it appeared they were still together.
“Nope. Doing fine,” Lei said, ignoring the twinge of loss she still felt for all that had been burned in the house fire.
“Well, don’t be such a stranger. They give you some time off, come recuperate with us on Kaua`i.”
“Will do.” She said her goodbyes and turned on the TV, scrolling through until she found a news station, curious to see if her accident had made the evening broadcast.
The newscast appeared, and Lei felt a punch to the gut as she recognized the worn apartment edifice behind the reporter. Its bedraggled bougainvilleas didn’t look any better on television. She turned up the volume as the woman spoke.
“Neighbors reported a loud exchange in this apartment in downtown Honolulu and a day later called police when the apartment’s resident failed to appear.”
The camera zoomed into the familiar grilled doorway, crossed with yellow crime scene tape. Lei couldn’t see the worn rubber welcome mat, but her mind’s eye supplied it.
“Investigators arrived to find the body of a man identified as Charlie Kwon, age fifty-three, who had been shot. Investigators refused to comment, but this station has discovered that Kwon was a recently paroled registered sex offender.”
The camera switched to a short, round Filipino lady in a lurid purple muumuu. Her hands trembled as she touched the tight bun pulling black hair away from a square-chinned face.
“He was real quiet, real nice,” she said. “We never expected nothing like this in our building.”
“Why did you call the police?”
“I heard fighting over there, words exchanged. Then it was quiet, real quiet. Charlie, he never come out, and he always took a walk in the morning.” The chin wobbled.
The camera panned back to the reporter, brows knit in faux concern.
“Investigators refused to confirm whether this brutal murder could have been revenge for, or by, any of Kwon’s several victims.”
Cut to the lead detective, a tall, well-built Hawaiian with folded arms and the requisite mirrored Oakleys in place. “Detective Kamuela, do you have any leads?”
“No comment except this: Kwon paid his debt to society, and all the resources available to the Honolulu Police Department are being deployed to find the killer.”
A wide, meaty hand came up to block the camera’s money shot of the black-bagged body being wheeled out of the apartment on a gurney.
Lei hit the button for the TV and turned it off. Forgetting the foam collar, she dropped her head into her hands. Instantly, a lance of red-hot pain shot up her neck. She moaned, and tears welled again.
She never used to cry this much.
She’d endangered herself and her career with that stupid trip to see Kwon. But at least she wasn’t the one to have put him down. She could only hope no one had seen her, could identify her. She felt soft hands rub her shoulders, and someone handed her a dish towel.
“Thanks,” she snuffled, mopping her face with it. Anchara helping again—the Thai woman was so kind and sensitive. She cried harder.
“Can I help?”
“No. It’s nothing.” Lei put the towel over her face, pressing her eyeballs.
“Someone shot that man. Was he a friend?”
“No. Not a friend. But I did know him.”
It was all just too damn much. Anchara rubbed her shoulders.
That’s how they were when the front door locks clacked open. Keiki made sure the visitor knew Lei was well guarded until she saw Stevens, eyes ringed with fatigue. Lei gave her wet face one last wipe and put the dishcloth down as Anchara padded to the bedroom and went inside, closing the door softly.
“Hey. You okay?” Stevens came over, kissed her forehead.
“’Course. Just blowing off a little stress. Pull up a chair. What did you find?”
“We have a BOLO out on the Escalade that hit you, which turns out belongs to Magda and according to her is missing, stolen by Walker. Our girl Walker has a few aliases at least; she left behind a fake passport in the safe in the apartment. So we have a screening out for any departing air passengers with Walker’s description, but I’m not too hopeful, since she seems good at changing her appearance.”
“Shit.”
“I said worse at the scene when I saw some of what she left behind. From what we can tell, she left with plenty of cash, a false identity, and a good number of contacts who owe her favors. Omura thinks Magda Kennedy’s in on it, but we have to find a solid connection to her, which we still haven’t.”
“Be nice for Kennedy to have Walker take the fall.”
“Well, we can make the case if our witnesses identify Magda as the Magda they worked with. I wasn’t able to make it to see the purser before I got the call about your accident.” He stroked her arm. She turned up her hand and squeezed his as he went on. “Walker had what they call ‘unnatural tastes.’ There was a whole S&M room decked out in DNA evidence and drug trace in her safe. That could tie her to the drug money the coast guard intercepted on the Duchess.”
“Wow,” Lei said. She felt a reluctant tug of admiration for someone so devious, clever, and deadly. Wished again they’d met face-to-face. Maybe they had; maybe it had been her behind the wheel of the Escalade. She’d never seen anything but a shadow behind the tinted glass.
“Did you show Anchara Walker’s photo?” Stevens asked.
“No, it was still in the truck when I got out of the wreck.”
He pulled out his folded copy of Walker’s photo from an inside pocket, set it on the coffee table, and made as if to get up.
“Wait. I have to tell you something private.” Lei set her jaw. “Kwon. He’s dead—shot. I saw it on the news.”
“Shit!” He stood up, a surge of graceful motion. Even distracted by distress, she was drawn to Stevens’s power of movement, the directness of his piercing blue gaze. “Did you do it?”
“No.” She plucked at the dishcloth in her lap. “Of course not. Just like I said, I gave him a knock upside the head—but he was alive when I left him.”
“Anything tying you to the scene?”
“I don’t think so. But with nosy neig
hbors like I saw on the news, it’s good I got rid of what I was wearing.”
“Tell me.”
“Never mind. It’s gone now. I told you I wouldn’t ever make you choose.” Lei knew he loved the law—and he loved her. Participating in a cover-up, no matter how justified it might seem, would eat away at that love. “I’ll cooperate if anything gets back to me. That’s all you need to know.”
“We’re so screwed.” He shook his head, moving down the hall. She heard the shower start. She slung her feet over to the side of the couch. She really did need to get rid of the disguise she’d worn.
Lei checked that Anchara was still in her room and took the clothing items out of the backpack she’d set by the door. She put them in a ziplock bag. Stepped out into the warm darkness, Keiki by her side. Went to the toolshed on the side of the house and stashed the bag in a hollow metal ceiling beam.
She’d get rid of it properly later.
Lei went back in the house, rubbing sweating palms on her new jeans. A shower was what she needed, too. But she wasn’t about to join Stevens in his present mood—or hers, for that matter. Charlie Kwon was a blight, a disease—and, dead, he might be able to fuck up her life even more.
Eventually, she had her shower and, feeling marginally better, limped back out to the couch wearing the yellow terry-cloth robe, rubbing her short hair gingerly with a hand towel. Anchara and Stevens generated tasty, exotic smells and cooking noises in the kitchen as Lei punched in the last phone call she needed to make.
“Hey, Sweets!” Her father had latched on to Jenkins’s version of a nickname. He couldn’t know about the accident, she remembered. “How you stay?”
“Not so good, Dad. I was in an accident today.”
“What! You okay, girl?”
“Some bumps and bruises, whiplash, but I’ll be okay.”
“Oh, honey. I’ll tell your auntie.”
“That’s fine, but that’s not why I called. Do you still watch the Hawaii news?” He’d kept up with it in the past, even in California, living with her aunt.
“Not today. What’s up?”
“Charlie Kwon was shot.”
She stared blindly out the window at the high chain-link woven with plastic privacy fencing. Her vision dimmed with familiar dissociation, and she put the side of her finger in her mouth, bit down on it. Pain anchored her in her body. The black ebbed, leaving the cheerless view.
Silence from her father. A long pause filled with an ocean of unspoken.
“No shit,” he finally said. “Bastard had it coming.”
“Dad. Did you have anything to do with it?”
“Did you?”
“’Course not. I’m a cop, Dad.” She shut her eyes, thinking of Charlie on his knees in front of her, the Glock in her hand—and how close she’d come to pulling the trigger. If she had, she’d never have known if it was an accident. “You, on the other hand, have already killed someone.”
“Self-defense,” he rapped out. He’d never said anything else of his prison killing of Terry Chang, Hilo crime boss. “I think that pervert deserved putting down. I might even imagine killing the man who raped my little girl, but I know better than to get involved with God’s justice. You don’t believe me? I’ll alibi out on this. Been working in the restaurant all day and with your auntie the rest of the time.”
“What about yesterday?”
“Same thing. I’m in California, for Christ’s sake!” His volume climbed, then went low as he seemed to catch himself. “God, give me strength.”
She heard him murmuring. Praying. Lei remembered his fervent Christianity, a “new life” he’d gained in prison. It seemed to have stuck, even two years out. Her father wouldn’t commit murder. Lei envied his certainty, his conviction.
“Okay. Sorry. Must have been someone else.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” He hung up.
Lei closed the phone, settled it in her lap. Wondered for a moment if he hadn’t been just a touch too defensive, if that attitude of outrage was to keep her from asking the next question on her lips—had he sent someone else to do it?
She pressed Redial, and this time it went to voice mail. She didn’t leave a message.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“So ono, Anchara,” Lei said, scraping the bowl for the last of the chicken curry Anchara had made for dinner. “That means delicious, in Hawaiian.”
“Yeah, I could get used to this,” Stevens said.
Anchara ducked her head with a smile. “Thank you.”
She got up as if to clear their places, but Lei waved her down.
“No. Sit. You’ve done enough. We have to show you something.”
Stevens got up and went to the coffee table, picked up the folded photo and brought it to Anchara. He unfolded it in front of her, smoothing the creases. Karen Walker’s green eyes looked up at them, haughty and beautiful.
“Have you seen this woman before?”
The girl’s eyes widened with fear and recognition. “That’s Magda.”
Lei and Stevens exchanged a glance. “When did you see her?” Lei asked.
“She came to look at us when we got off the van the first time, our first time on this island. Celeste and Kimo made us strip at the warehouse. They had us do beauty treatments.” Anchara hid her face behind her hair. Her voice trembled. “When we were all clean and had no hair even down there”—she made a gesture with her hand—“they put us against the wall. Took pictures of our faces and bodies. Then she came in.” She pointed to Walker’s photo.
“What did she do?”
“Looked at us. Said things to do to us to make us prettier. Said to Celeste what kinds of parties to send us to. Then she got out white satin robes and had us put them on.”
“What else?”
“It was the way she did it. Like we weren’t even there. Like we weren’t even people.”
Lei found herself reaching to stack the dishes, clearing the table for something to do as Stevens took another folded color photocopy out of his back pocket. Smoothed it out in front of Anchara.
“What about this woman?”
“No. I’ve never seen her.”
“You sure?”
“No. I would remember.”
Anyone would remember the pale oval of Magda Kennedy’s face, ice-blue eyes contrasting with ebony hair.
“All right,” Stevens said. “We’ve got some confirmation Walker might have been setting Kennedy up. I’ll call Omura with this, and I want to get back over to the jail, see if I can get a confirmation from the purser.” He stood and headed for the door.
“Thanks,” Lei called after his retreating back. “Thanks for understanding.” Her words were rich with meaning, pleading forgiveness. Kwon was still a shadow between them. He strode back and leaned over to kiss her, a little too hard.
“Don’t mention it.”
Those words were a warning.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lei sat with the rest of the team the next morning around the big conference table at Kahului Station, a big pink box of sugary malasadas from Komoda’s Bakery as the centerpiece. A whiteboard on the far wall was cluttered with a hand-written timeline, and a series of color photocopies were clipped to the top, beginning with Magda Kennedy. Morgue shots of Jane Doe and Lei’s attempted assassin, deceased in the night, were on the opposite wall. A final, blank sheet ended the row with “the house?” printed on it in Stevens’s block writing.
“All right, everyone, let’s begin.” Omura pulled the group to order, and Abe Torufu set down a malasada he’d been about to consume in one bite. Lei scratched under the foam collar and, suddenly frustrated, pulled the Velcro open and eased it off into her lap, earning a sharp glance from Stevens.
Captain Corpuz turned on the video screen on the opposite wall, adjusted the volume on the triangular pickup feed on the table, and in a moment Marcella and Rogers appeared via videoconferencing, nursing Starbucks cups and looking FBI in white button-downs and black jacket
s.
That outfit must get hot in Hawaii. Lei chalked up the outfit on the mental tally of minuses she was keeping on a move to the FBI.
Omura stepped up to the whiteboard. She used a laser pointer to put an unnerving red dot in the middle of Jane Doe’s forehead. “Let’s do a recap. It all started here. This girl is still unidentified except for a stage name, Vixen, and her Albanian nationality, which she shared with Anchara, our witness in protective custody. We’ve sent inquiries through the INS and Interpol to Albania to see if anyone comes forward to identify her, but so far no-go.”
Lei felt a deep tug of compassion for the anonymous girl who’d died trying to be free.
“Jane Doe’s murder investigation led us to this man.” The red dot bloomed on Silva’s greasy-looking mug shot. “He identified her as one of several ‘escorts’ provided by this man, John Wylie, at a construction job wrap party.” The dot found its next target. “Wylie led us to this woman, gallery owner Magda Kennedy. We brought her in, but we didn’t have anything on her but a business card and Wylie’s say-so, and she’s well protected. Silva also implicated the House.” The dot moved to the blank paper. “That brought in the FBI, who have been working to bring down the House’s crime organization. They were hopeful we could help make a connection, and we began working together.” Omura seemed to have an easy time taking credit for Lei’s work, with a royal “we.” Lei pinched the web of her hand to help stay calm.
“Around that time, attempts were made on Texeira and Stevens’s lives by this man.” The dot pinned the gray face of the dead assassin. “We still don’t know who he is or who he worked for—he never woke up from that coma, and his prints aren’t in the system—but we suspect he’s an agent of the House, who must have decided they were getting too close. Torufu and Bunuelos are heading up the John Doe assassin case.”
The hypnotic dot moved on, zeroing in on Anchara. “Anchara Mookjai, the runaway that escaped with Jane Doe, resurfaced. Her intel gave the go-ahead for the coast guard sweeps that have turned up a cache of girls and money on the Rainbow Duchess in Kahului Harbor and two other ships on the other islands. Texeira was able to capture the ship’s purser, Farrell, who has turned out to be the key to making a connection to the House and to Magda Kennedy, the gallery owner on Maui who ran girls and laundered money for him.”