Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  “Here.” Lei took his big hand in both of hers, and they sat on the bench, looking out at the multilayered green tapestry of native forest. Beside her at the end of the bench, tiny purple-and-white blossoms of a rare live sandalwood tree tickled her nostrils with a subtle citrusy scent. Lei closed her eyes. She felt the pure, sweet notes of native birdsong through her body, vibrating to the sound like a plucked string.

  She felt Stevens draw her into his arms, pulling her across his lap and tucking her under his chin, and when she peeked up she saw his eyes were closed too.

  There was nothing but the whisper of wind in the trees, the liquid grace of the birds’ song. Near enough to touch, a cloud rolled down from the summit like an angel in full flight and covered the canyon with soft gray mist.

  “This place is magical,” Stevens whispered. “I see a red bird. What is that?”

  Lei pointed out the various species they could see, scanning the forest to pick them out and show him.

  Deep in the gulch, she spotted movement.

  Lei sat upright, leaping quick and quiet off Stevens’s lap and dropping down low behind the handmade stone parapet that bordered the view area. She turned back, held a finger to her lips, and made a “get down” gesture. He slid down off the bench and hurried over to her. Together they peeked down into the dim at the bottom of the canyon.

  “I don’t see anything,” Stevens whispered. Lei didn’t respond. She’d learned to sit quiet and let her eyes roam, searching for the odd angle or glint that signaled something out of place in a totally natural environment.

  There it was—Lei spotted a tiny glint, though in the wavery light of evening, with cloud cover, it was hard to tell. She spotted a dark shape, too—and it started moving.

  “Someone’s down there,” Lei whispered. Her gut was telling her something again. “We’re looking for Rinker. It might be him.” Lei scrunched down low and moved to the edge of the viewing area, climbing through the low steel barrier. She could see a faint wear pattern in the brush leading down into the canyon, an extremely steep descent. She grabbed a handhold and lowered herself over the edge, feeling for a foothold, and did it again.

  “Lei!” Stevens’s whisper was harsh from above her. “We’re off the clock. You don’t even know if this has anything to do with your case!”

  “I have a feeling, and I brought my weapon,” Lei whispered, looking up at his distressed face, blue eyes almost black in the shadows. “It’s okay. Call for backup.”

  And she kept climbing, down and down, into the murk at the bottom of the canyon.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Lei crouched behind a boulder in the dry creek bed, engulfed in the shadows of approaching evening and underbrush. She moved forward, heading as quick and quiet in her athletic shoes, keeping behind cover as she was able.

  Up ahead, she saw movement again—this time spotting the outline of a man moving away down the creek bed.

  Could it be the missing Rinker? Perhaps he’d come back up to stash something incriminating in the canyon, or finish something with the research—or perhaps he was just hiding, camping in the forest until he could get off the island.

  He was probably armed.

  Lei drew her weapon and realized in that moment that something in her had been waiting, hunting her prey even as she outwardly packed a picnic.

  On the other hand, it was also quite possible she’d just ruined her evening with Stevens to chase a tourist who’d gone off the beaten path sightseeing. It reminded her of her early days, chasing black Toyota trucks for no good reason but her gut telling her to.

  Didn’t matter.

  She was committed. Instinct was telling her to follow this guy.

  She scrambled as fast as she could, worrying she was going to be spotted, worrying she was going to lose the figure so far ahead she could barely glimpse him.

  And then he disappeared.

  Time to go faster. Lei stopped trying to hide and simply ran down the streambed as fast as she could. She remembered Kingston’s speed hopping from rock to rock, energy like a hurdler as he flew over the uneven terrain—but she wasn’t the wiry grad student with his months of practice. She hit a loose rock and tripped, going down hard on a knee. She stifled a cry of pain.

  Lei decided to stay down for a minute. After checking her knee was only bruised, she hunched in the shadow of the rocks and lifted her head to look around.

  Nothing was moving. The sky, encroached upon by trees, was streaked with gold and red high above, reminding her she was missing the sunset on this fool’s errand. Her breathing slowed, and she continued to lie and wait and watch.

  Her patience was rewarded.

  Movement behind a tree on the edge of the streambed. A male figure, height around five foot ten, coalesced from the shadows and moved toward her, light and careful, silent as the whisper of wind in the leaves above.

  She realized he was coming to investigate where she’d gone down. He’d watched her go by, and now her fall had caught his curiosity.

  She scooted backward, further behind the shelter of a large rock, and gathered her body into a crouch, drawing her weapon. Pulled back, she could no longer watch his approach—so she listened and finally heard the faintest rustle of movement. She rose just high enough to set her weapon on top of the rock and yell with the volume and command of a cannon: “Police! Stop right there! Drop your weapon and put your hands on your head!”

  An arrow buzzed by in answer, so close it nicked the top of the rock, sending slivers of rock dust flying into her eyes. Lei brought her weapon back up and fired without looking—and, rubbing her eyes, peeked up over the rock.

  Ranger Takama stood before her, hands raised. He was only about six feet away, wearing camo gear from head to toe. He dropped his bow with a clatter onto the rocks. “Don’t shoot.”

  “Did I hit you?” Lei was so surprised it was Takama that she knew her voice came out high and squeaky.

  “You missed.” Takama’s voice was calm as ever.

  “Well, I won’t miss a second time,” she said. “Get on your knees and put your hands on your head.”

  He obeyed, and she got up out of her niche and came around. She didn’t have her cuffs with her, so she patted down his pockets and slid his backpack off his arms. Keeping her gun on him, she rifled the pockets until she found a length of rope and then used it to bind his hands behind his back.

  “What are you doing down here?” Lei asked. Takama stared straight ahead and stayed silent. Only when he was secured did she sit down facing him, gun in hand, and call Stevens.

  “Got Takama down here. Any backup coming?”

  “They’re on their way. Goddamn it, Lei!”

  She hung up on his expletives and slid the phone back into her pocket. “Get up. Let’s move.”

  Takama stood, turning. She hoisted his backpack herself and they moved back up the creek, much slower this time. The backpack was heavy, and her knee had begun to throb.

  “What are you doing out of jail? I thought they had you in lockup.”

  “They let me out on bail,” Takama said. “Yesterday.”

  Lei mentally cursed the gap in communication that had led to this surprise even as she recited the Miranda warning to him.

  “You shot the poachers, didn’t you?” Lei said.

  Takama didn’t answer.

  “Tell you what. It’s just you and me here. I think I know what happened. Just nod your head yes or shake it no. I won’t capture you on tape or anything. I just want to know for my own—closure.”

  Takama nodded, his buzz-cut, salt-and-pepper hair blending with the darkness forming around them. He stumbled in that darkness. Lei hid her jubilation. She might not be taping him, but she’d Mirandized him, and she could testify to any nonverbal admissions he made.

  “Okay. Here’s what I think you’re doing here. You got out, packed up, and decided to live out here for a while and keep any poachers away from the birds.”

  Takama gave a single brusque n
od.

  “You shot the two poachers. You pretended to find the first body after it had been there awhile and the stink would have brought attention.”

  Takama gave a single nod, and she continued, encouraged. “After you found out birds died on the first poacher, you called in the second one to get us up here quicker and save them, which we did. You didn’t want to approach the body yourself and leave any trace—you’ve been very good at avoiding any trace.”

  Takama gave his taciturn nod.

  “You didn’t know your buddy Jacobsen would take it on himself to find the bow hunter, as we’ve been calling him, and get himself shot by Kingston,” Lei continued.

  A single nod from Takama.

  “You must also have been worried that Kingston saw something more, that he might trade that information when he was captured. It made you look for an opportunity to get rid of him and point the finger at him for all the murders.”

  A head shake from Takama, and he glared over his shoulder. She pushed him lightly so that he stumbled forward.

  “Keep moving. Okay, you don’t like that as your motivation. You shot Kingston because he shot your friend. For revenge.”

  The brusque head nod again.

  “Well, I’m sure it also would have been nice for Kingston to die and take the fall for all the murders.”

  Nothing from Takama. The dark was getting so thick, Lei took out her phone and thumbed on the flashlight app, shining it at their feet as they made their way along. She spotted another light, bouncing toward them—probably Stevens.

  “What about Rinker and Kingston’s arrangement? Did you know about that?”

  Head shake.

  Stevens reached them. He took one of Takama’s arms, but his eyes had gone straight to Lei. “You okay?”

  “Bruised knee is all. This backpack’s heavy and I’ve got this bow—it’s bulky. Can you help?” She handed him the backpack, and they hiked on through the dark lit by their phone flashlights.

  “Time to face the music, Takama,” Lei said as they reached the ascension area. The man’s proud shoulders sagged. Lei realized she’d never heard his first name. He was so completely identified with his identity as a ranger that he didn’t seem to have one.

  But that identity was over now, and Lei felt a pang of something like regret as she handed him over to the officers who’d descended the cliff.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Stevens took the wheel of her truck for the drive down the mountain, his jaw set. The sunset was long gone, and the headlights of the truck cut through velvet darkness, following the narrow winding ribbon of road leading down the volcano. The adrenaline from Takama’s capture had drained away, leaving Lei shaky and exhausted. She hauled the cooler bag out of the backseat, unwrapped a sandwich, but the movement of the truck had begun to make her queasy.

  “I’m feeling carsick—I kind of get that way on this road. Can we pull over and eat? There’s no hurry now.”

  “Shouldn’t you follow them to the station? Help book him?”

  “Nah. I told the responding officers to take care of that.”

  “Okay, then. We need to talk, anyway.” Stevens drove until they reached a pullout. He parked the truck.

  “I need some fresh air,” she said, opening the door. “There’s a towel or two behind the seat.” Lei made her way through the steel barrier of the overlook and onto the rolling grassy hillside that made up most of Haleakala. With the lights from the truck off, the stars blazed overhead, tossed like glitter into the vast black void. Way to the north, the moon was just beginning to come up. Distorted by the horizon’s atmosphere, it was cartoonishly gigantic, casting a silver path on the surface of the ocean.

  “I think I see the man in the moon, and he’s fishing into the sea,” Lei said, pointing. Her attempt at whimsy didn’t appear to move Stevens. He spread the towels on the tussocky grass. It was cool, almost cold enough for a sweater, and Lei was glad she’d packed her parka shell as she sat down with the cooler bag. Her knee had begun to throb, and she retrieved the reusable ice pack she’d stowed in the cooler bag and put it on her straightened leg.

  “You should probably get that looked at,” Stevens said.

  “You can kiss it and make it better.” She handed him a sandwich, unwrapped hers, and bit into it. She’d made sliced teriyaki chicken on Hawaiian sweet bread, and it was delicious.

  “Stop trying to be cute,” Stevens said, but his mouth was full.

  “I’m too hungry to fight with you,” Lei said, and bit into her sandwich.

  A few minutes went by as they devoured the meal and sucked down the bottles of root beer she’d included. Finally, biting into sweetly sour starfruit, Stevens said, “You pull a stunt like that, it won’t only be your knee that’s hurting.”

  “Gonna spank me?” Lei teased.

  “No. I’m going to put you in restraints and call for backup to deal with whatever the situation is, and we’re both going to be embarrassed as hell. But I’m not going to lose my wife in some damn-fool situation that could have been prevented!” By the end of his sentence, his voice was raised. She couldn’t see his eyes but knew the flat steely look they’d have.

  Lei felt something a lot like shame hollow out her stomach. She’d known he was going to be mad, but when she was honest with herself, she realized she hadn’t really slowed down to consider his feelings at all. Capturing the suspect was all she’d had in her mind when she spotted Takama down in the gulch—not the first time something like this had happened.

  In fact, this was an argument they’d had before. Lei’s impulsiveness and lack of a sense of personal safety frustrated Stevens. She knew it was because he was afraid for her, and wouldn’t let him protect her. She hadn’t told him how close Takama’s bow shot had come to her head, and she didn’t plan to.

  A chain of cars, pairs of golden eyes, wound down the mountain and passed them on the road.

  “This is an old argument,” Lei said. “I’m sorry I freaked you out, running off like that, not waiting. But he’d have gotten away.”

  “You could have called in a suspicious sighting. Checked on Takama and Rinker’s locations again tomorrow. Taken dogs and done a manhunt, run this thing safely and with the same good results, and we could have enjoyed the sunset and our picnic on the summit. But no, you always have to do it now, do it your way, and you know what? I’m the one who suffers when you get hurt. I need to find a way to stop caring; that’s what I need to do.” He stood, an abrupt uncoiling, and walked off into the darkness.

  Lei bundled the leftovers back into the cooler bag and carried it up to the barrier. She wrapped herself in one of the towels and stood waiting, looking into the darkness, but he didn’t return.

  Maybe he was giving her a taste of her own medicine. He’d done that before, too.

  She could just drive off and leave him up here, but he’d be angrier than a cornered mongoose when he finally got off the mountain. She remembered he had the keys, so it was a moot point. Sitting, waiting, looking out into the picturesque blackness, Lei was reminded of the shrouds. Just like now, there was nothing to do about them but wait.

  Stevens had found no useful trace in the box he’d bagged and brought home. The lengths of white linen remained, a spooky threat, in the evidence room in a box labeled Texeira-Stevens Harassment Case # 45336.

  Texeira-Stevens. Is that what they’d name a child, if they had one? Or did it sound better the other way around? Lei muttered both names out loud, decided either way was too much of a mouthful. She spread one towel on the grass below the raised turnout and lay down on it, covering herself with the other towel and looking up at the stars. She tried to spot some constellations, and felt her eyes grow heavy.

  It had been a very long day.

  Someone shook Lei awake, and she sat up so abruptly her head cracked into Stevens’s forehead.

  “Ow!” they both exclaimed, and then Lei laughed and heard Stevens give a rusty chuckle.

  “Are you still mad?
” she asked him, rubbing her head. “Or did you cool off?”

  “Cooled off so bad I’ve got hypothermia,” he said, his teeth chattering. “Let’s go home.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lei said.

  “You always are. And I’m sorry I lost my temper.” He slung an arm around her and kissed the top of her head as they stumbled through the bunchy grass toward the truck.

  They blasted the heater, but Lei had to keep the window down because of her churning stomach. The cool night air raced by her face, a lacy net of tiny colored lights filling the valley and marking Kahului far below. She could see the black negative space of ocean on either side of the “waist” of the island, and she noticed a feeling she’d never felt before: contentment, a love for the land that felt connected.

  “I don’t know why, but I feel like Maui is home.” Lei tilted her face in Stevens’s direction. “It’s so beautiful here. This island is the perfect size—more action going on than Kaua`i, fewer people than Oahu, spacious but not sprawling like the Big Island, big compared to Lanai and Molokai. Room to explore and have adventures but not so big you get lost. I love it here.”

  “I’m glad, because we should have moved to Oahu last year if we were going to. Oahu’s where you go to get ahead in law enforcement in Hawaii. But I’ve had the big city. I’m ready to settle here, see if we can stay married now that we made it to the altar.”

  “And past our first fight,” Lei said. “That same ugly fight we’ve had before.”

  “Well, I made you a promise. You will be embarrassed if you run off without me again. It’s for your own safety. You’ve been warned.”

  “And I take that seriously. I just have a hard time remembering in the moment. Let’s hope this situation never happens again, because if you were the one going after a perp and I put cuffs on you, you’d be pissed as hell. At least some of this is because I’m a woman.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s because I love you and don’t want you dead,” Stevens said. “If the shoe’s ever on the other foot, you have permission to take me down.”