by Toby Neal
But maybe Anchara’s killer had been the shroud killer. After he was taken into custody, things had gone quiet. For more than four months there had been an escalating series of events, but since the arrest, there had been nothing further. Lei took a bite of salad, wondering if she could get away to her computer after dinner. She had a secret she was working on—and there would be hell to pay if Stevens found out about it.
Chapter Three
“I need to do some office work after dinner,” Lei said to Stevens. “Can you keep him busy until bedtime?”
“No problem—right, buddy?” Stevens said, getting another spoonful into the baby, who smacked his gums happily.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early,” Wayne said, getting up and clearing his plate. “Good night.”
“Not staying for dessert?” Jared said. “Let me clear the table and I’ll get it.”
“Oh yeah.” Wayne sat back down. “Wouldn’t miss that.”
“Give me a few minutes. Let me earn my meal.” Jared cleared the table efficiently, and Lei, sipping her glass of water, thought how nice it was that not one of the men in her life had a problem with just doing what needed to be done around the house. She’d heard enough grumbles from Tiare Kaihale, her former partner Pono’s wife, not to take it for granted.
Ten minutes later Jared reappeared with a bowl piled with translucent white orbs. Lei bugged her eyes at him. “Are those lychee?”
“Got a tree in the stationhouse yard,” Jared said. “Your dad told me to chill them and that they make a great dessert.”
“Oh my God, yes!” Lei exclaimed, grabbing one of the delicious bite-sized fruits and popping it into her mouth. Sweet-tart flavor with an exotic fragrance burst across her tongue. She shut her eyes to savor as she chewed, then spit the small brown seed into her palm. “Chilling them really does make them even better.”
They dug into the bowl until the lychees were gone. “Aren’t you glad I told you those funny-looking fruits were good to eat?” Wayne said. “Soon as I knew what firehouse you were at, I had my eye on getting some off that tree.”
“You and everybody else,” Jared said. “I had to fight the guys off to get even this many once they were ripe.”
Lei had discovered the knobbly red fruit, with its tender white flesh, was a prized delicacy seldom found in stores when she’d tried to buy some.
“Well, I better get to bed. Gotta be back here early in the morning,” Wayne said, rising.
She got up and gave him a hug. “Thanks, Dad, for another great dinner.”
“Thanks, Wayne,” Stevens and Jared echoed. Wayne waved casually as he took his leave, shutting the front door behind him.
“So I better get to my office work. You boys have fun with Kiet,” Lei said, feeling a prickle of guilt and suppressing it. “Jared, see you next week—if not sooner.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Jared said. “Mike, let’s put on the game. Never too early to get Kiet following football.”
She left them arguing over which team jersey they should order in Kiet’s size.
Kiet’s room was right next to theirs, and their home office was on the other side of it. She went inside and closed the door. After a moment of hesitation, she locked it. Stevens would be suspicious if he discovered she’d locked him out, but she’d plead confidentiality on a sensitive case. That was at least partially true.
Lei sat down at her computer, booted it up, and put on earbuds. She worked the knob of the safe under her desk and took out a file, then Skyped one of her friends at the FBI, tech agent Sophie Ang.
“Lei.” Sophie’s close-cropped, elegant head appeared as she answered the call. She was just as riveting on-screen as in person, her tawny-brown skin glowing on the monitor. “What’s new?”
“Nothing much, but I’m getting ready to go to the Big Island on a case. I thought I’d take care of some Chang business when I’m over there,” Lei said.
“I’m not sure about this whole thing. Marcella and I were talking about it today, and we’re both worried.”
“I know.” Lei blew out a breath. “But I just don’t believe Anchara’s killer was the guy behind the shrouds. I don’t think we’re going to be safe until we have the real shroud killer locked down. With a baby or two to protect, I’m just not willing to sit on my ass until he attacks us again. You don’t have to help me. I won’t talk to you any more if you want out.” She pinched the web of flesh between her thumb and forefinger, an old stress-management technique. It was scary to think of investigating Chang completely solo. Just knowing her friends were there, monitoring from the technology end, had helped.
“No. We just don’t want you moving on it until you’re sure it’s Chang, and so far, I don’t have anything on him showing a connection to the shrouds.”
Months ago, Anchara’s killer had bought three shrouds—and only two of them had been accounted for. The man Lei suspected was really behind the attacks, Terence Chang, still hadn’t been identified doing anything but running a small, legitimate import-export business in Hilo. Rumor had it that he was the new head of the Chang crime empire, and business was booming—but even Ang’s best FBI online tracing hadn’t been able to identify a clear trail to that.
Sophie went on. “I think he’s onto our taps. I suspect he’s gone completely old-school, keeping everything off-line and maybe even using radios and pagers. You should talk to some of your old friends in Hilo PD when you’re there. I also know, from that other case, that Chang has the skills to build a firewall I can’t get through. Though more likely, he’s masked himself behind multiple hidden identities.”
“I have been in touch with Hilo PD, and they’re still looking at him for drug dealing, prostitution, cockfighting, and gambling. You know what the new illegal gambling craze is over there?” Lei said.
“No, what?”
“Mah-jongg. They’re opening these ‘parlors’ in houses. You can go to play and gamble. Someone’s organizing it and getting a cut.”
“Interesting. Well, thought you should know Marcella’s on the Mainland, testifying on a case.”
“How long is she going to be gone?”
“Up to a couple of weeks. You feeling okay?” Sophie asked, her brows drawn together.
“I’m feeling great, but I need to move on this soon, before getting around becomes too hard,” Lei said. “Thanks for being my backup.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Not sure yet. Just going to go over there for my other case and see what I can pick up on my own.”
“I’ll let you know if I find anything, but like I said, he’s been quiet.”
“Quiet like a snake. Talk soon.” Lei cut the connection, frowning.
Lei glanced through the photos in the case jacket on the desk before her. She’d made a copy of the whole police file and smuggled it out of the station, suppressing guilt as she did so. It was her friend Pono’s case, and he was dead-ended on it. She knew he wouldn’t like her investigating Chang any more than Stevens would, but it was time to jump outside the box before she was too pregnant to have any options.
Lei looked at the file periodically to stay motivated, even though it was emotionally harrowing to do so. Sometimes looking at the material generated new ideas.
She came to the photo of her aunt. Aunty Rosario lay dead in her bed, her pallor waxen. A wire-wrapped C-4 bomb rested on her stomach and a shroud was puddled at her feet, where Lei had moved it from her aunt’s face.
Could Anchara’s killer, a foreign national, really have hired the killer that had left the bomb at her aunt’s house? Could he have navigated this island on his own so well that he could find Anchara? Find and attack Stevens at their home?
It was highly unlikely that the man had acted alone. Someone with hacking skills must have provided him all the information he needed, but investigators hadn’t been able to get the man to talk.
No, the shroud killer was just taking a break. Lulling them into complacency. And when they w
ere most vulnerable, he’d strike again.
Lei’s hand came to rest on the slight, hard roundness of her belly as she gazed at the terrible photos of Anchara’s crime scene. By some miracle, Kiet had been uninjured.
No, the time to move was now. Lei couldn’t lose her focus in the warm fuzziness of family life. The gambling case she was currently working was taking her to the Big Island anyway—it was the perfect cover.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she made reservations. She locked the shroud file in the small fireproof safe she’d told Stevens she kept work notes in. She’d bought another one for him, too, to keep him from being suspicious.
She couldn’t ask Stevens to work with her on this. She already knew it wasn’t his style to bend the rules, and he’d want to protect her or some such old-fashioned thing, especially now that she was pregnant. Right after their wedding, he’d promised he’d turn her in himself if he needed to protect her. Now that they had Kiet, Lei had a better idea of a baby’s total vulnerability. And being pregnant just meant that she had that much more to protect.
It was time, maybe past time, to go on the offensive.
The Fireman frowned at his phone, holding up the small screen to reread the text he’d received. Enlisting your considerable fire skills to set a fire for a target I need eliminated. Cash deposit left in your mailbox to prove I’m serious.
Discovering that a man had died in that last fire had shocked him. He’d been unable to sleep last night, thinking about it, but this morning he was accepting it. The Bitch needed to be fed, and she ate whatever was in her path. He wasn’t responsible that some homeless man sleeping off a bender in the fields got toasted for her pleasure.
His fascination with the Bitch had begun in his teens. He knew from the firebug forums he liked to visit that most people experimented with setting fires at some point in their childhood, but only a small percentage developed the love of fire he had. He’d been thrilled when his skills with fire had been called for at his job. It had all been perfect—until they’d laid him off.
More fool them.
The Fireman looked out the window of his apartment onto the row of dilapidated mailboxes in the parking lot. Fear hollowed his belly. How could he have been found? His number was unlisted, and from his avid news watching last night and his monitoring of the police band, no one was even close to discovering him.
He hoisted up jeans that were falling off his hips as he stood. He’d lost weight in the months since he was laid off. His apartment was a small one-bedroom in a tired old building in Wailuku, all he’d been able to afford after his savings ran out.
It wouldn’t hurt to check the mailbox, just see what this was about.
He slid his feet into worn rubber slippers and clumped down the metal stairs on the exterior of the building, its tattered coconut palm in the corner of the parking lot. Hot midday sun beat down on the crown of his head as he opened the rusted mailbox.
Inside was a large, padded manila envelope with his name printed on it. Seeing his name in bold, block print made that empty, chilled feeling of fear tighten into something even stronger. He removed the envelope and glanced around. A car whizzed by on the road. Dazzling white clouds mocked him from the blue sky, and the cool green shadow of Iao Valley reached out to him—but otherwise, all was deserted in his seedy neighborhood.
The Fireman tucked the thick envelope under his arm and hurried back into the apartment. Sitting at his battered Formica table, he tore open the envelope, his hands trembling. He pulled too hard in his anxiety, and the package gave at the savage rip.
Hundred-dollar bills fluttered down around his feet like leaves in a fall wind.
He crouched, picking them up and piling them alongside the thick stack still left in the envelope. He sat down, knees quivering, and counted the bills.
Ten thousand in hundreds and a folded note in the same print. Got your attention? Put that stop sign you stole in the window, and I’ll text you the address I want burned. When it’s done, I’ll drop another ten grand in your box and a five-thousand-dollar bonus for every human casualty.
“Someone out there is a loony tune,” the Fireman muttered aloud.
He glanced around his barren apartment. The cigarette-burned lounger he’d picked up free from the curb faced an empty wall. He’d even had to sell his TV last month to pay rent. Twenty thousand, maybe more if there were “human casualties,” would keep him for a year, if he was careful.
Besides, he didn’t really have a choice. Whoever this was knew his identity. What he was. Where he lived. If he didn’t do what they wanted, there was no reason not to rat him out—in fact, that threat was implicit in the bold way his name was printed on the envelope.
Moving slowly, the Fireman lifted the battered stop sign he’d stolen from one of his ignition sites into the window. How did this person know about the sign, even? Looking around, he realized the window was uncovered, and someone in a nearby building could probably see right in.
He closed the blind, lowering it down behind the stop sign and resolving to keep it down permanently. He sat back down and counted his money again. That comforting activity didn’t stop his mouth from going dry as his phone dinged with an incoming text message containing an address.
Stevens and Ferreira, along with Tim Owen, ranged around the remains of the burn victim on the steel table in the morgue. The portly ME, bright in a rainbow-covered aloha shirt, pushed magnifying glasses onto the top of his head as he gestured to the body. “Cause of death is asphyxiation from smoke inhalation. Burns are secondary. Tox screens will take a couple of weeks, but the stomach was empty. I’m guessing he’ll have a high blood-alcohol count.”
“I’ve found the point of origin of the fire,” the young investigator said. He spoke in the nasal voice of someone mouth breathing. The body’s odor and appearance hadn’t improved with the autopsy. Stevens peered closely at the victim’s red, swollen and blistered face.
“We’re interested in that, of course,” Stevens said. “But we’re more interested in who this man was. Did you find any ID? Anything on or near the body?”
“No,” Dr. Gregory said. “Nothing in his pockets but a beer opener.” He handed the scorched item, neatly bagged, to Stevens. “Wasn’t enough skin left on his fingers to take prints. Maybe there’s a print on the beer opener.”
Stevens turned to Owen. “Did you find where this man was camping in the field? Maybe there was something left at his campsite.”
“I did.” Owen took out his file and opened it on an unoccupied steel table beside the body. They clustered around the fan of photos he spread out. “See this directionality?” He pointed to the way the sugarcane was pointing. “I could see which way the cane had burned from this and could see the remaining leaves on the downwind side. The char pattern is also rough in the direction of the point of origin. I found three spots along the cane-haul access road that tested positive for hydrocarbons, indicating a petroleum-based accelerant. I also found the remains of a gas can.” Owen held up a photo of a blackened metal can with a blown-out crack in it, lying in a gridded area. “This is what remains of a gas can that tested positive for the same residual trace as the origin sites.”
“What does that mean?” Ferreira asked. Stevens saw the gleam of Vicks on the older detective’s handlebar mustache below his nose, and he wished he’d thought of putting some on to head off the smell.
“It means the arsonist must have been careless. This can exploding would have been like a mine. No reason I can think of that he would have left it in the fire.”
“Any fingerprints?” Stevens asked.
“Actually, I did get a partial. Kind of a miracle.” Owen flipped to a blown-up photo of several whorls of a fingerprint, outlined in the black of char. “Lucky to have this. Brought an extra photo for you.”
“Excellent.” Stevens took the photo.
“So you said you found where this guy was camping?” Ferreira indicated the body on the table.
“Y
es. He had a small tent. Must have been able to keep the spiders out that way.” Owen gave a nod to Stevens. “The tent was burned, but I was able to find and identify the remains of the fabric, and the make is by Coleman.” He showed them another photo. “See all these bottles? Looks like you were probably right, Dr. Gregory. This guy was holed up out there on a bender. Didn’t find any ID, though.”
They wrapped up the meeting, and Stevens and Ferreira walked out with Owen to go to the sugar mill headquarters. “Been out there yet?” Ferreira asked Owen as they reached their vehicles in the parking lot.
“Yeah, we’ve had a meeting already,” Owen said, gesturing toward the central area of the island before he got into a bright yellow Maui Fire Department truck.
“I know right where the admin building is,” Ferreira said to Stevens. Stevens handed his keys to Ferreira, and the burly older detective got behind the wheel of the Bronco.
“Let’s take the lead on this interview,” Stevens said as Ferreira fired up the vehicle. “Even though Owen set it up, this investigation’s already out of his purview now that we know it’s an arson homicide.” Each state had a different way of investigating fire crime. In Hawaii, fire investigators focused exclusively on the causes of fire, and criminal investigation went to law enforcement.
“No argument there. Kid’s wet behind the ears.”
“Maybe, but he seems to know his stuff. Takes initiative, too.” Stevens already felt a little protective of Tim Owen. He knew how hard it could be to get established in a place like Hawaii, with so many hidden social rules and agendas.
For some reason that reminded him of Anchara’s simple life on Maui after their divorce. She’d been making a place here for herself and her son—before her life was stolen from her and her baby came to Stevens by default. Her murder would always haunt him.
He decided it always should.
They drove through the nondescript sprawl of urbanization that was downtown Kahului, but right outside of town, Ferreira turned left onto a semi-deserted one-lane asphalt road crusted with the red, iron-rich soil of the island. They drove down the narrow road bordered by tall, waving sugarcane and turned right into the mill area.