by Toby Neal
Lei took another sip of water. Her hand trembled, and the water spilled out onto her shoes, down her slacks. She’d known the chance she was taking when she left for the Academy. She vividly remembered the morning she’d left, when she handed the leash of her beloved Rottweiler, Keiki, to Michael Stevens and got on a plane for Quantico.
She’d struck him a heart-blow that day. It had looked to be a near-mortal one, reflected in the pale granitelike set of his jaw, the arctic blue of his shadowed eyes. He’d accepted the leash she handed him in the parking lot of the airport. Keiki had sat on muscular haunches and leaned her bulk against Stevens’s leg. Her triangle ears twitched, worried eyes tracking Lei, sensing Lei’s distress. A whimper rumbled in her wide chest.
Lei heard him say the words: “I won’t wait for you. I can’t wait for you and keep hoping we’ll want the same thing.”
The same thing. Marriage. Kids.
Lei had heard the words. But that didn’t mean she’d believed them. She’d walked away, confident that no matter what he said, he’d wait for her. The hardest thing to leave at that moment had been Keiki, who’d let out an anguished bark as Lei walked into the airport building.
The next thing Lei knew, she was sitting on a hard plastic chair next to Marcella’s desk, her head between her knees, Marcella’s hand on the back of her neck and her friend’s voice in her ear. “Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.”
A knock came at the door. “Just a minute!” Marcella snarled. Lei sucked another breath, straightened up.
She’d deal with this later. Much later. Preferably never.
“I’m okay. I just need to get back to work.” Lei stood, walked over, and opened the door. Ken Yamada stood there, a crease between his brows.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Her ex married someone else,” Marcella said to Ken.
“I’ll be fine. Thanks for the update, Marcella,” Lei tossed over her shoulder as she hurried down the shiny hall.
A bright halogen lamp was already on, bathing the workroom table in harsh brilliance. Lei snapped on latex gloves. She took a fresh evidence box out from a folded stack under the table and wrote the newly assigned case number on the label.
Lei took each letter from the stack Max Smiley had given them, carefully unfolded it, and photographed each with its matching envelope and a small numbered tag she set beside the letter so it would show in the photograph.
The room was equipped with two workstations, a long table, a whiteboard against one wall, and a huge window that looked at the ocean—the Federal Building fronted the water on one side. The bulletproof reflective coating on the glass cast a bluish shade to everything in a room already toned in gray.
Ken came in. She glanced up at his frowning face. “Sure you’re okay?”
“I will be,” Lei said. “I just need to keep working.”
“Okay. I’m here if you want to talk about it.”
“No thanks.” She blinked and blurriness receded; the letter in front of her came clear again. “Thanks for asking, though.”
From behind her she could hear the tappety-tap of the keyboard as Ken uploaded the photos from the scene and began the ongoing log that would be part of the investigation at every stage. When they had their report well underway, they would email it on the secure internal server to their special agent in charge, Ben Waxman.
Lei watched her hands move through the mechanics of organizing the letters, battening down her pain and racing thoughts, the series of images of Anchara and Stevens together that her mind had begun playing. She had a job to do. She needed to focus on the task at hand. She placed each letter with its envelope on the table and left them spread out. When she had them cataloged, she sat down to read and study them.
“I don’t see many postmarks on these,” she commented. Most of the letters were typed on cheap computer paper, and most of the envelopes simply read “Smiley” or “Mad Max.” A few of them had been mailed to the airline mogul care of general delivery—from nearby areas.
None of the letters were addressed specifically to the estate they’d visited.
“There’s a mail slot for each employee at the airline headquarters. Remember what he said? Most of his hate mail came via the suggestion box in the lounge, or in his mail slot. Some were mailed, but he’s done a good job of concealing his home address,” Ken said.
“Which makes the unsub’s ability to find the house even more interesting. Probably narrows the pool of possibilities quite a bit.” Lei sorted the letters into different piles: possible threat, simple complaints, definite threat, workplace suggestions. “He doesn’t appear to be beloved with the employees.”
“Yeah. I see interviewing down at the headquarters as a priority.”
“Looks like he’s been manipulating people’s hours so they don’t qualify for health insurance, and he cut health care benefits to the bone.” Lei frowned as she made a separate pile for the health care complaints. “We’re one of the few states with mandatory health benefits for anyone who works more than twenty hours a week—but Smiley is finding a way around it. You ready to come look at these with me?”
“Almost there. Uploading all the fingerprints from the scene now. I’ll start the program scanning for matches, then come take a look.”
Lei picked up the Definite Threat pile. “So here are three letters threatening bodily harm to Smiley if they ever get him alone. These aren’t signed.”
Ken hit a couple more keys, then came to sit on one of the chairs beside her. “Interesting. Even the ones just protesting company policy aren’t signed. That tells me no one feels safe speaking up.”
“This seems like the kind of workplace that could generate an employee shooting or something.”
“I’ll see if our NAT at the front office can work up a financial report on the company. Smiley’s airline is doing well financially in a tough market. Looks as if he’s cut corners in the personnel area. Be right back.” Ken left.
A handwritten letter caught her eye.
“You stole from me, and I’m going to find a way to take from you.” The letter was signed with a hook-mouthed smiley face.
“I think I found you,” Lei whispered as she sprayed the plain lined binder paper with ninhydrin, but nothing fluoresced. Damn. She set the incriminating letter aside and went on to the rest of them.
Ken strode back in with his quick grace. He snapped on a pair of gloves and pulled a rolling stool over. “Greg is working on the employee records. The airline keeps most of that in hard copy though, so he has them photocopying the records for us and they’ll be ready for pickup in an hour or so. I was thinking maybe you could pick them up on your way home, get started reading this evening.”
“Sounds good.” Lei slid the suspicious letter over to him. “Check this out.”
“This looks like a real candidate.” Ken studied the letter. “You get the prints off this?”
“There weren’t any. Got some others, though.”
“Okay. I’ll get the database looking for a match.” He hopped up, got the computer working, and rejoined her at the table. “People are so used to seeing CSI crank out the matches on these things, they don’t realize it’s usually at least an hour for every set of prints.”
He slid a square of matte-finished glass over the paper on the next one they photographed. “Try this when you’re shooting from now on. It should help you with the crinkles in the paper.”
“Okay.” Lei watched him photograph the next one, and together they worked through the remaining stack, uploading the prints and setting the search protocol to go. The desk phone rang and Lei answered it.
“Agent Texeira here.” Saying her title still felt a little awkward.
“Agent Texeira, the Paradise Air office called. The employee records are ready for pickup.”
“Sounds good. Thanks, Greg.” Greg, the NAT, had a nicer phone manner than she remembered having. Lei put the phone down and realized her stomach was
rumbling. The digital clock on the wall read 4:00 p.m., and she’d never had lunch. Or breakfast either, come to think of it.
“Done.” Ken set down the camera.
“The records are ready for pickup. I think I’ll go by and get them, pick up something to eat, and work on reading them at home, like you said.”
“Sounds good. I’ll call you as soon as we have anything on the prints.”
Lei headed down the hall. Through the glass insert in her friend’s door, she could see Marcella hunched over her phone at her desk. Spotting Marcella brought back the painful memory of her friend’s news. She gave a quick wave, hoping not to have to talk about it again, and headed for the elevator.
“Have a good evening, Agent Texeira.” Greg, square-jawed and friendly behind the bulletproof glass, insisted on smiling at her. “I’m making some progress on these online files.”
Lei walked back over to him. “Look for a disgruntled employee. We found a letter that seems particularly strong.”
“Okay. I’ll flag that. Like I told Agent Yamada, they don’t have a whole lot of information in the online employee database, but that should be there.”
“Thanks.” She strode over to the elevator, punched the button.
“You’re welcome,” the NAT said to her back as she got on, already shrugging out of the crumpled gray linen jacket she wore over a white button-down shirt, Glock in a shoulder holster, and black slacks. The pants were now creased and smeared from the trip to the Smiley estate that morning. Unlike Marcella’s bandbox perfection, Lei seemed to be a magnet for every spot, stain, and wrinkle, and the formal look of the FBI’s dress code was one of the changes in her job that grated on her most.
She hit the Ground button and brushed at the jacket irritably, which did a whole lot of nothing. The doors opened in the dim garage, and she walked to her own vehicle this time, an extended-cab silver Tacoma truck. A brand-new replacement for the Tacoma destroyed on Maui, it had waited for her in storage while she was at the Academy. The vehicle gleamed opal in the dim yellow overhead lights and beeped a greeting, lights flashing, as she hit her Unlock button and climbed in.
Getting in the truck never failed to remind Lei of another thing she’d lost—her Rottweiler, Keiki. The dog usually sat upright beside her on the passenger seat, tongue hanging in a happy doggy grin to be going somewhere, expressive eyes with mobile brown eyebrow patches alight with excitement.
“Oh, Keiki.” Lei’s chest felt tight with unshed tears as she turned the key, the truck roaring into life. “Damn.” She missed her dog so badly.
Not that the hours she put in with the Bureau set her up to be a good dog owner; nor was the apartment she currently lived in the right situation. She navigated the dim garage and got on busy Ala Moana Avenue, heading toward the airport. Paradise Air’s business headquarters was among the maze of ancillary buildings beneath the freeway.
Lei bumped along awhile in traffic on the Nimitz Highway, a choked thoroughfare that fed into Pearl Harbor’s naval and military installations as well as the airport. Only the arc of brilliant blue sky punctuated with whipped cream clouds showed the beauty of the island—this downtown area could have been any industrial city. Her fingers tapped the wheel impatiently at yet another stoplight.
The tapping of her hand reminded her of when she’d worn Michael Stevens’s ring. It had been a pretty, old-fashioned daisy pattern of marquise-cut diamonds until the fire they’d been through on Maui melted it into slag. She reached into her pocket and slipped the disc out, and holding it in her right hand at the top of the steering wheel, turned it in her fingers as she drove the busy highway. As always, she was comforted by the disc’s weight, heft, and the roughness of embedded and indestructible diamonds. Michael Stevens had taken the blackened and melted ring to a jeweler. He’d had them clean off the black and hammer it, diamonds and all, into a shape she could carry and rub.
Was that the act of a man who didn’t love her? A man who was going to marry someone else only months later?
She found herself squeezing the steering wheel too hard, vision blurred, diamonds in the disc digging painfully into her palm. Her stomach reminded her it was there with a clench of pain, and she spotted a Burger King and pulled off the Nimitz and into the drive-through.
Maybe some food would help.
It didn’t take long to buy a couple of burgers and a Diet Coke, get back on the road eating mechanically, and pick up thick folders of personnel records from an aloha-shirted secretary at the Paradise Air building.
Lei pulled into her assigned slot at her apartment building, a forgettable beige cube in the run-down McCully Avenue section of town. The building’s only redeeming feature was a huge multicolored shower tree by the entrance that shed pink and yellow petals. Even now, handfuls of petals spiraled down to decorate the hood, misplaced wedding decor.
A bad association, weddings. The food hadn’t helped after all—her stomach still hurt. She sucked a deep draft of Diet Coke and got out of the truck, hauling her backpack and the files with her.
No one was around, as usual, and she liked it that way. She climbed the metal stairs on the outside of the building to the third floor, walked down the open walkway with its aluminum baluster to the door of number 314. Sun-faded pistachio, the door looked ordinary enough—but she hadn’t sent any misleading messages with jute mats that said Aloha or Welcome.
Lei didn’t like visitors. Never had.
She unlocked three different dead bolts with three different keys, and just inside the door, punched in a code to deactivate the alarm. When the dead bolts were back on, she rearmed it and put a bar across the door for good measure. She’d chosen the corner unit so no one could reach her little balcony from any of the other units—the side of the building dropped away to the ground in three stories of blank stucco security. She pulled up a sawed-off broom handle from the track of the sliding door and unlocked it, sliding it open to let in a draft of warm Honolulu evening air, scented from the tree out front.
Lei spread the files out on her low yard-sale coffee table. Even as she opened the top one, she knew she couldn’t concentrate—her nerves were too jumpy, her chest still tight with loss and anger—all those jumbled thoughts and images she’d held at bay jostling for attention. She stood and walked to her bare bedroom and stripped the stained and crumpled clothes off a lean, athletic figure, tossing them into the hamper in the corner. She hauled on running shorts, wrestled into an athletic bra, slid socked feet into a new pair of Nikes, and bundled her unruly hair into a ponytail.
A few minutes later she was on the road, headed for downtown Honolulu. As always, she tried to vary her route—but this time her path took her toward another kind of unfinished business.
Chapter Three
Lei felt the green-tinted glare off the windows of apartment buildings and storefronts along the avenue. She felt anonymous, shielded by Ray-Ban aviators, curly hair further restrained by a ball cap she’d added and pulled low. She turned up the speed a bit to get her heart rate where she wanted it—and to drown out thoughts of Stevens married. Stevens in bed with the striking Thai woman they’d rescued from human trafficking aboard a cruise ship.
Dark honey skin, wide doe eyes, and a waifish build made Anchara an appealing damsel in distress if there ever was one. Anchara, in danger of deportation back to the home she’d tried to escape, offering Stevens the only currency she had. Stevens, ever the gentleman and rescuer, rebuffed by Lei and lonely…
Lei could see how it had happened, how she’d let it happen. Stevens was a traditionalist at heart. He wanted a family, a white picket fence, someone to cook and greet him with a kiss when he came home from work. Anchara would be thrilled to provide all that, and more.
Probably a lot more.
Lei ran faster, until her breath tore through her lungs in ragged gasps and thoughts of Stevens with Anchara in his arms were pushed out of her mind by the need to concentrate on the sidewalk, passersby that became roadblocks, the inevitable stopl
ights, which she ignored, racing across the street between cars.
She finally began to tire, slowing to a more reasonable jog, and pulled up in front of a Pepto-Bismol-colored apartment building. Sun-dried magenta bougainvillea tangled in cement planters beside a glass front door whose tinting was peeling.
Lei didn’t know what she was looking for. She didn’t know why she’d ended up here, but this was Charlie Kwon’s old building. She’d come here more than a year ago to confront her childhood rapist, fresh out of jail—and confront him she had.
His murder was still unsolved.
She put her foot up on one of the planters, stretching her hamstrings and tightening her shoelace at the same time.
“Lei Texeira?” A deep male voice.
Lei dropped her foot and spun to face whoever was addressing her. Tall, dark, and handsome didn’t do Detective Marcus Kamuela justice—there was something elemental about him. He had a quality of charisma and power that laid-back detective attire of chinos and aloha shirt did nothing to disguise.
“Detective Kamuela! What’re you doing down here?” Lei had met Kamuela at a mixer for FBI and Honolulu PD, an attempt by the brass to encourage interagency cooperation. She’d been impressed with what she’d heard of Kamuela’s work ethic, not to mention his looks.
“Nothing much. I have an old open murder case here, and I keep hoping something’s going to break on it. When I have a little downtime, I come by, observe, see who I can talk to.”
“Yeah, I heard you’re like a dog with a bone when you get a case.” Lei felt her heart thudding with anxiety as well as her hard run. Of all the Honolulu Police Department detectives, Kamuela had to be the one investigating Kwon’s murder. She put her other foot up on the planter and tightened that shoelace to hide her betraying face.
“I like to keep a good closure rate.” He moved in next to her, leaning on the planter with his hip so he was looking at her. “So you live nearby?”