Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  The phone rang in her pocket, a buzzing vibration. She took it out, checked it before she answered.

  “Hi, Michael.”

  “Lei.” Just the sound of Stevens’s voice as he said her name made her throat tighten. “You called.”

  “I did. I had to tell you—Marcella’s dating someone. It made me miss you.”

  “Glad to hear your voice, whatever the reason. Who’s the lucky bastard?”

  “Marcus Kamuela. The detective working Charlie Kwon’s case.”

  A long pause. “That’s awkward.”

  “You think?” She made herself give a little laugh, like it didn’t terrify her. “Anyway, seeing them together—they’re really happy. It made this even harder.”

  This. Waiting. Their long separation. She heard the sigh of his exhale.

  “God. I miss you too.” She could tell he was running a hand through his dark curling hair. She could picture the shadow of his lashes falling over those blue, blue eyes, his long fingers rubbing them. “Things are moving along.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really. Anchara told me her citizenship application was approved. I met with a divorce lawyer today.”

  “Oh.” Lei stopped, leaning against a building, the sharp shadows of evening falling on the windows of the city all around her, Keiki tight up against her side as she bent her head, closing out everything in the world but his voice and the phone. Angel tilted her pointed nose up in the baby carrier and licked Lei’s chin. “So…how long?”

  “Couple weeks. Could be sooner.”

  “Oh my God.” After waiting so long to be together, the imminent end of their separation seemed like a mirage.

  “I know. It doesn’t seem real.”

  “I can’t believe it either.”

  “So what are we going to do? Are you coming here?” Stevens was embedded in his job on Maui, promoted to lieutenant of the Haiku Station where Lei had once worked under Captain C. J. Omura.

  “I don’t know.” Lei stroked a finger over Angel’s head, and the tiny dog closed her eyes in bliss. “I was really hating the Bureau for a while, but things are better. Waxman’s lightened up on me, and we’ve always got interesting cases. Let me tell you about this latest one.” She described the contradictory evidence in Corby Hale III’s death.

  “We’ve got interesting cases here too.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I just know we need to be together. Don’t you think it would be easier for you to come to Oahu? More opportunity here for you too.”

  “I’m just getting settled in as commanding officer. I’d have to see what was available for transfer. You can be sure I wouldn’t have my own station.”

  Another long pause. A horn blared nearby, startling Lei. She straightened up from the wall, continued up the cement sidewalk with Keiki at her side. The lush green mountains behind Honolulu seemed to glow in the setting sun as her eyes wandered over them, unseeing.

  “We don’t have to have all the answers now. Just…we have to be together. When you’re free.” Lei felt her throat closing on longing, a physical sensation like a fist squeezing her chest. It was beyond lust. It was a parched dryness. Only being tucked under his collarbone in her special space against his side could restore her.

  “I love you.” His voice was ragged.

  Her eyes closed for a second, and it was in that second that she walked into another pedestrian.

  “Watch where you going!” Angry words put her back into her body and in this moment on the busy street. She waved apologetically at an older woman pushing a cart.

  “I have to go. Call me when you know anything.”

  “I will. The minute I know.”

  They hung up at the same time. Lei wanted to cry at the severing. Instead she broke into a jog, Angel bouncing in the carrier against her chest. There was respite in the movement and in caring for her dogs, and that night, in getting online to find out everything she could about Corby Alexander Hale III.

  Chapter Five

  Sophie unlocked the red lacquered door of her apartment, carrying her gym bag. In the posh Nuuanu area of Honolulu, her place was the penthouse suite atop a high-rise building. It was her father’s, one of his many real estate investments, and he’d insisted she be his “caretaker” now that Honolulu was her home, a situation she was grateful for. Her FBI pay wasn’t bad, but she could never have afforded the wide-open expanse of gleaming teak floor and the view, glass unbroken by anything but an occasional steel strut all the way across the wall facing the ocean.

  At thirty stories up, the city was spread below in an entrancing tapestry of movement and glittering lights, trimmed in beach and ocean. Diamond Head was an iconic silhouette in the indigo distance with the moon a glowing coin behind it.

  Sophie toed out of her athletic shoes and carried the gym bag into the laundry room just off the sleek modern kitchen. Standing in front of the washer, she tugged off sweaty Lycra workout gear. Naked, she unzipped the gym bag and pulled out her FBI clothes from the day, loading everything into the washer and turning it on. She clipped her gloves and padded helmet to a hanging drying rack and walked across the apartment to the bathroom.

  Sophie loved the feeling of being nude—cool air wafting across her flushed skin and tired muscles. She wasn’t worried about anyone seeing her; besides being thirty stories up, the expanse of glass was both tinted and foiled so that it lightened and darkened with the sun.

  The bathroom was all marble and gold-plated fixtures. No one could accuse her father of restraint in the area of luxury. She stepped into the glassed-in chamber of the shower and turned it on. A large showerhead set to “rain” poured a gush of warm water over her, and under that flow she soaped herself, tracing the curliqued letters of the tattoos running down the insides of her arms and outsides of her thighs, places where they could be easily concealed.

  One arm said hope and respect. The other read power and truth. On one thigh was freedom and the other, courage. Circling her narrow waist, where no one saw them, were love, joy, and bliss. She had no trouble reciting the words she’d had inked on her skin after her divorce was final. They were words she tried to live every day.

  She microwaved a dinner of brown rice and stir-fry the housekeeper her father employed had prepared and left frozen in individual ceramic containers and carried it to her bedroom. She’d rigged one side of the room to duplicate her office, and she fired up her workstation with the touch of a button.

  DAVID was archived and networked to the Bureau computers so that anything she did here was automatically replicated there. For a woman who lived her work, it was a seamless transition.

  She’d just settled into eating and putting DAVID to work on comparisons of the many suicide notes, looking for commonalities, when her FBI-issued smartphone rang—it was Lei.

  “Hey, Texeira.” She was surprised to hear from the other agent.

  “Hey, Ang. Sorry to bug you at home, but I brought home my laptop, and I’ve been researching Corby Hale, just searching him by his name. He’s popping up on Reddit, advocating for right to death in several chats. He went by the name of SurfHawaii, so you can run him under that, see what you find. Did you get started on his computer yet?”

  “Not yet. I saw you left it at my station. I had to get through some stuff on my other cases before I could start on it, and I just ran out of time.”

  “Yeah, I know you and Marcella had Fight Club tonight.” There was an odd note in Lei’s voice that Sophie, with her sensitivity to nuances and language, picked up.

  “Marcella canceled, so I went alone. You never came back to Fight Club after that first time. Why?”

  “Alika. You must have heard we used to go out, when I was stationed on Kaua`i.” Lei blew out a breath, a noisy gust. “It didn’t end well.”

  “I think he might still be interested in you.” Sophie had heard about Lei’s dating fiasco with her coach from Marcella. She liked Lei, and it didn’t surprise her that Alika might still be in love with Lei
’s unforgettable face and physical bravery.

  “God, I hope not. Stevens and I are getting back to together the minute his divorce is final. Alika’s a great guy, though—you guys should go out.”

  “Ha,” Sophie said, her fingers flying as she opened a window and ran background on Alika Wolcott, something she usually did with anyone she spent time with. She’d cloned all her FBI programs on this workstation, so it was easy to do exactly what she did at work. “He’s my coach. It’s not like that.”

  “Marcella said you wouldn’t mind it being like that.”

  Sophie frowned. “I’ll give her an extra beat-down for that. I’ve got a little crush, that’s all. He’s not interested in me except as a fighter.”

  “Well. No let me stand in the way. All I stay sayin’.” Lei’s playful pidgin made Sophie smile. “Back to the case. Corby’s mom said he was really into some online activity that kept him busy when he was at home; he said he had people who ‘understood him’ online. So that points to gay friends, maybe, or maybe something to do with drugs.”

  “Or maybe just Reddit. That site is one big time sink,” Sophie said, shrinking the window with the search on Alika and opening a new one in Reddit, the massive real-time chat and news site. “I’ll see what I can dig up. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “Welcome. Sooner we can get to Corby’s computer, the better.”

  “I’ll try to get to it tomorrow. Marcella’s still bugging me to do hers too, though. The embezzlement case.”

  “You know, the cases we get at the Bureau—so much less dangerous than regular cop work. It’s not something you read in the brochure.”

  “Not necessarily. Marcella’s been shot, assaulted, and strangled. I heard you’ve been through a lot as a police officer; maybe you’re ready for things to be calmer. Our criminals are more sophisticated, that’s all. I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything in Corby’s computer.”

  “Okay. Later then.” Lei clicked off.

  Sophie set her phone down. She leaned forward, eyes intent and fingers flying, the stir-fry forgotten. Corby Hale and the zone sucked her back in.

  Chapter Six

  Lei’s phone woke her at six a.m., never a good sign. It bounced around on the side table on ring and vibrate, anchored by the charge cord. The noise brought Keiki and Angel’s heads and ears up from sleeping on their ratty old blanket at the foot of the bed.

  Lei grabbed it. “Special Agent Texeira.”

  “Caught a new case, Lei.” Ken’s voice was crisp. “Suspicious death. We’re called in because Corby Hale’s prints were found at the scene.”

  “What the hell?” Lei tossed the blanket aside. She walked in her thin tank top and boxers to the preloaded coffeemaker in the kitchen, punched it on. She’d learned it was best to make the coffee the night before or she was liable to have to do without—and the blast of caffeine was really necessary this morning after her heavy exercise and late night.

  “I know. It’s weird.” He rattled off the address. “Meet me there.”

  Lei hopped under the brisk flow of the shower, reordering her wayward curls with a few handfuls of water. She dried off and dressed in her version of the FBI uniform in less than five minutes—white short-sleeved shirt, black chinos, black athletic shoes. Her badge clipped to her belt, shoulder holster strapped on, Glock loaded up. In the kitchen she made sure the dogs’ water bowl was full, threw a couple of handfuls of food in their bowls to tide them over, and unlocked the dog door.

  Keiki looked at Lei plaintively as she filled a lidded travel mug with coffee, and Angel did a few experimental whines to see if Lei would pick her up. Lei succumbed, picking the tiny dog up and stroking her head.

  “Be good. Keep an eye out for bad guys.” She put Angel down and gave Keiki an ear rub. “See you girls later.”

  They followed her out into the dewy yard, a few stars fading from the sky with the morning blooming in the east—another gorgeous Honolulu day. Lei took in the sounds of morning as she unlocked her truck: a few cars, a rooster crowing, the chatter of mynahs and the rustle of a tiny wind in the nearby palm tree.

  Lei drove her truck through streets too early to be choked with the commuter traffic that would come later. She’d plugged the address into the on-board GPS, and her navigator guided her across town to an older neighborhood near Punchbowl. She pulled the silver Tacoma up behind a couple of HPD cruisers parked in front of a ranch-style home with an orchid-bordered walkway.

  Lei slipped a pair of latex gloves on from a box under her seat and picked up her crime kit. She made sure her badge was clearly visible and identified herself to the uniformed officer guarding the yellow tape across the garage, signing the log and entering the time: 6:27 a.m.

  The retractable garage door was still down, but the side door was ajar, and she pushed it open with a finger, poking her head in to see what she was getting into. She’d walked too fast into a few crime scenes in her time and had learned to go slow and let herself take in all the details before she zeroed in on the body—and Ken’s message had been devoid of detail.

  Her partner had his back to her, looking into a parked beige Toyota Highlander. The garage and interior lights were on, and he was looking around the motionless driver with a penlight. Detective Ching, Marcus Kamuela’s partner, gave her a little salute from the wall. “You’re getting another of our cases,” he said. “Alfred Shimaoka, aged fifty-nine.”

  Ken had the door ajar, and he pushed it all the way open and moved back so Lei could see into the vehicle. “Looks like a suicide.”

  Lei could smell auto exhaust and a whiff of decomposition. “Asphyxiation, then?”

  Ken nodded. Ching was still looking surly, doing something on his phone.

  Lei approached, her eyes scanning across the tidy cement floor in “see mode.” The walls of the garage were lined with some sort of craft supplies: bundles of bamboo, clippers, cutters, saws, and bottles of glue, stacks of what looked like paper. Against the wall that faced the house was a washer, dryer, sink, and workbench. She spotted what Shimaoka did in his spare time: a tidy row of small square paper lanterns stood in a row.

  She walked around the SUV, past Ching, to look into the driver’s side, but without opening the door all she could see was a man’s profile, his head tilted back, and the yellow interior lights of the vehicle gleaming on salt-and-pepper hair.

  Ching pointed. “Your boy’s prints were on the tape connecting the hose to the exhaust pipe.”

  Lei saw that the tape had been removed. The hose was detached and lay on the floor beside the SUV. “I’ll bag that.” She took a large paper evidence bag out of her kit, snapped it open, then coiled the hose carefully and inserted it into the bag, sealing it with paper tape and initialing it with the date and time. “Where’s the tape with the prints on it?”

  Ching pointed. The evidence bag was already sealed, so Lei set hers next to it and rejoined Ken at the door of the car. Her partner was scanning the interior of the SUV with a forensic light. “Can I open the door on the other side?” Lei asked.

  “Long as he doesn’t fall out,” Ken said.

  Lei walked back around. The window was up almost all the way, and traces of duct tape still clung to the edge of the window and the doorframe.

  “Thanks for securing the scene.” Lei addressed Ching. “I think we’ve got it covered.”

  Ken spoke up from the other side of the vehicle. “Your commanding officer called us himself when you identified Corby Hale’s print. Quick work on that, by the way.”

  “I scanned it in and it came right up—not much to it. We’re not in the Dark Ages, you know.”

  “Well, do you think you could get started gathering some statements from the neighbors? We’d really appreciate it.” Lei tried a smile, wishing her dimple worked as well as Marcella’s.

  Ching pushed off the wall abruptly. “Might as well air this place out.”

  He punched the button on the wall and the garage door rumbled up. Lei opened her mouth to p
rotest but spotted Fukushima’s van pulling up at the end of the driveway, breaking up the cluster of lookie-loos craning their necks at the end of the driveway.

  She turned away. The air did feel a lot fresher with the door open, and what did she care if there were a few gawking neighbors?

  Ching stomped off.

  Lei looked at the driver’s side door. An ashy-looking drift of fingerprint dust decorated the ground beneath the door, but there was nothing on the handle. Odd. The dead person should have left a lot of prints. “Ken, do you know anything about the victim?”

  “Alfred Shimaoka. Aged fifty-nine, an architect. This is his house. He’s Japanese and single.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “Neighbor. Heard Shimaoka’s dog barking inside, and he’s religious about walking it, according to what the neighbor told Ching. She peeked through the glass in the garage door and saw him. The SUV had run out of gas and turned off, so she thought he’d passed out or something until she approached the car.”

  “That must have been a shock.” Lei heard a far-off yapping. “Did anyone deal with the dog?”

  “Couldn’t. House is locked.”

  Lei sighed. That would be next, as soon as they were able to leave the body to the medical examiner. She finally really looked at what was left of Alfred Shimaoka.

  Shimaoka’s skin was pale but patched with red in the lips and extremities, an effect of the carbon-monoxide poisoning. His head was tilted back, mouth ajar, and most interesting, his hands were resting upright on his thighs, the thumb and forefinger close to touching, in a Buddhist meditation pose. The slender Japanese man, beginning to swell as decomposition began, was dressed neatly in a muted aloha shirt and chinos. Other than the strange coloration of his skin, he looked peaceful.

  Ken pointed his penlight at a square of white paper propped up against the gearshift. “Can you bag that?”