by Toby Neal
“Thanks for all you do,” Lei said sincerely to Sam. She’d always felt lifeguards were underpaid and under thanked. Sam glanced at her left hand, and she was glad she was wearing the simple, channel-set wedding ring from her wedding to Stevens not so long ago. Pono rejoined her with a stack of witness statements, and they went back up to the two young men she’d been interviewing.
“You did what you could to save Makoa,” Lei said to them. “I may need to talk to you again.” She handed them each cards. “I’m sorry you weren’t able to get to him in time.”
“He must have hit his head or something,” Sharkey said. “I don’t know why else a guy with skills like Makoa would have drowned from a simple wipeout.”
“I’m sure the medical examiner will have more on that. Now, since you know her, can one of you introduce me to his girlfriend?”
Gomez knew the girlfriend better, so he led Lei over to the distraught young woman crying with her friend. Lei felt the grief pouring off the girls in palpable waves and tried not to let it activate her own emotions.
“Shayla. This is Detective Texeira,” Gomez said, his hand on the girl’s shoulder. “She’s trying to find out what happened to Makoa. Can you talk to her?”
Shayla lifted huge brown eyes to look at Lei. She was one of those women who simply couldn’t look ugly, even with a red nose, eyes streaming, and hands filled with hair she’d pulled out of her own head.
“I’m sorry to have to ask you questions right now,” Lei said, feeling her hands prickle with sweat as she thought of her own extremity of grief not so long ago. She knew she’d been ugly in it: her freckled, olive-skinned face blotchy, eyes swollen to slits, curly hair matted. No, she wasn’t one of those women who looked pretty crying.
“It’s okay if it helps you find the man who did this,” Shayla rasped.
“So you don’t think it was an accident?” Lei asked, adding, “Can we go into the shade a bit?” A nearby beach naupaka tree cast lacy patterns over the yellow sand, and the girl, her friend, and Lei moved into the pool of shade.
“I think that bastard who stuffed him might have done something.” Shayla groped for something to wipe her face with. Her blonde friend pulled off a T-shirt, revealing a tanned, toned body in a fuchsia bikini. The blonde handed the shirt to Shayla, who wiped her eyes and blew her nose on it. “He’s been getting threats at the Oahu house.”
Lei’s attention sharpened. “Did you see where the guy went when he came in?”
“Yeah. I was watching Makoa surf. I always do when he’s home. So I saw the whole thing. I didn’t realize Makoa was in trouble, but I watched that guy come in because I’ve been concerned about the threats. He was maybe five-eight, and tanned with dark hair. Wearing black Quiksilver board shorts and a black rash guard. He got out of the water, grabbed his board, and ran up to the parking lot. I thought he was leaving because Makoa’s so popular. The guy knew he’d have the boys after him for dropping in on Makoa.”
Shayla sat up straight, golden-brown eyes flashing, and pulled waist-length, sun-streaked brunette hair back and braided it quickly as she spoke. “He got in one of the Sports Maui rental vans. You know the ones they rent in Kahului for windsurfers? He had one of those.” She straightened the strings of her bikini, a cream-colored crochet that revealed as much as it concealed. “He roared out of here. Then I looked back out and saw that Bear and Ipo were looking for Makoa in the water.”
Her eyes filled again as she looked out at the turquoise ocean, the breaking waves. The scene was timeless and unchanging, as if her world hadn’t just been shattered.
Lei knew that feeling too well. Shayla was bright and observant, in spite of her grief. A credible witness.
“How long was it between when the guy took off and when he drove away?” Lei asked gently.
“Maybe ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Did you get a license plate?”
“No. I stopped looking when the van began pulling out. I just noticed it because I could tell the guy was in a hurry to get out of there.”
Lei’s mind was already clicking ahead to the next steps. With Makoa’s high profile, any allegation of foul play had to be definitively ruled out before a statement was released to the public, and they were a long way from that with this kind of testimony.
“What can you tell me about the threats he was getting?”
“They were e-mails from different addresses. Telling Makoa to throw the contest or ‘we’ll make you pay.’” She made air quotes with her fingers. “He had some threatening letters in the mail, too. And someone called his cell phone, left messages from a blocked number telling him to go home to Maui. Makoa just thought it was other competitors with sour grapes.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“Yeah. He has some rivals.” She gave Lei three names, all pros Lei recognized from the circuit. “You should also check out the guys he lived with at the team house. Makoa said Bryan Oulaki was especially bitter when he won the last event. Thought it should have gone to a North Shore guy like himself.”
“Thanks.” Lei took down that information as well. “If I need to question you further, what’s a number I can reach you at?” Shayla gave her a number.
“I need to talk to his parents,” Lei said. At the mention of that, Shayla hung her head. “What are their names? We need to speak with them as soon as possible.”
Shayla had begun to sob again, and this time the friend, barely controlling her own tears, gave Lei the names and address of Makoa Simmons’s parents.
Lei stood, brushing sand off her black jeans, and tucked the notepad into her back pocket. There was pretty much nothing she hated more than going to break the news of a child’s death to parents, but it was an important interview that couldn’t be passed on to others. She walked over to Pono, who was gathering witness statements from the other officers who’d helped with the canvassing.
“Ready to go on our favorite kind of home visit?” Lei asked.
Pono put all the witness statement papers he’d gathered into a file folder. “I wish we could fast-forward this part,” he said.
“Me too.” Lei sighed.
Stevens stood slowly, feeling his face freeze into an expression he hoped was socially acceptable as he turned to the door. By the puzzlement in his subordinate Brandon’s expression, he didn’t think he’d quite pulled it off.
“Send her in.” His lips felt stiff. He hadn’t seen his mother in five years. Not since he’d left the LAPD and transferred to a series of posts in Hawaii, in fact. And there was good reason for that.
His mother, Ellen Rockford Stevens, stepped into the doorway. “Hello, son.”
Of course she led with reminding him of his obligation to her. Her voice was sanded with years of drink and smoking, but he’d have known it anywhere. She’d made an effort to clean up. Her hair was bottled blonde and brushed, and she’d been a good-looking woman in her prime and still stood taller than most. But her once-bright blue eyes were faded and watery, and she was so thin that skin hung off her bones. She’d always been slim, but this was alarming.
“Mom.” He came around from his desk and hugged her. It felt like gathering a bundle of sticks for firewood. She smelled of stale cigarettes and the alcohol making its way out of her pores. She clung to him, hiding her face.
“I have nowhere to go,” she whispered. Her voice was a rasp. He had to tilt his head to hear her even as he shut his office door on the silence that had fallen over his staff out in the front room.
Stevens’s stomach hollowed as he led her to one of the plastic chairs in front of his desk. “How’d you get here?” he asked, walking back around to sit behind his desk, taking the last few items he’d been packing and setting them in the box, finding comfort in the simple little movements.
“Took a plane, of course.” She gave a snort of a laugh. “One-way.”
“Oh.” Stevens pulled out a drawer, rechecked that it was empty, gathering his thoughts.
He’d known this day
might come. His mother was a progressive alcoholic, and when he’d moved from Los Angeles five years ago, she’d already spent time on the streets after being kicked out of bars. He’d gotten so sick of being called to come get her or bail her out he’d come all the way to Hawaii to get his own life going.
She must have run through everything their father had left her.
“I can tell you aren’t happy to see me. Haven’t had so much as a Christmas card from you this year.”
“I gave up after you couldn’t make it to our wedding,” Stevens said, narrowing his eyes at her. “I sent the ticket and everything.”
“I wasn’t feeling well.”
“Well, it looks like you still aren’t feeling well.”
“I’m ready for a new start. I think being here could help.”
“That’s good, Mom.” He swallowed all the things he wanted to say. “Where are you staying?”
“I don’t know.” She blinked, and her eyes overflowed. He continued packing so he wouldn’t have to look at her. “I was hoping to stay with you.”
“Have you contacted Jared?”
“He didn’t leave me any numbers.” She sounded hurt. “What kind of sons are you, moving six thousand miles out across the ocean? Not even letting me know where you are.”
“We wanted to have our own lives, Mom.” Stevens dropped a pile of manuals off a shelf into a box with a thud. “You have your life, and it’s in a bottle. Until that changes, we don’t have much in common.”
She sputtered indignantly. It sounded like an angry kitten.
Sorrow sliced through him in a way that stole his breath. He owed Ellen life. He owed her respect, whatever her addiction. She was his mother, and she was desperate. He looked up at her.
“I’ll take you out to our house. You can spend the night, but you’ll have to be in the tent in the yard. We’re squeezed into a tiny cottage with Lei’s dad and my son while we work on our house. It’s not the best time for guests.”
“You have a son?” Her face brightened, eyes widening. She smiled, and he glimpsed the beauty she used to be and felt that sadness again. “I have a grandchild?”
“His name is Kiet. He’s my son with my ex, Anchara.”
“Oh. You didn’t invite me to that wedding.”
“No, I didn’t. I’ll call Jared and let him know you’re here.” He didn’t want to get into any of this painful history. He reached for his phone and pressed a number for Jared.
His younger brother, a firefighter at Kahului Station and recent transplant to Maui, picked up right away. “Hey, bro!”
“Jared, Mom’s here.”
A long pause. “Shit,” Jared said.
“That was my thought.” Stevens cut his eyes over to his mother. She was groping through a backpack on her lap. He could tell by the trembling of her hands that she needed a drink or a cigarette—maybe both. “I’ll put her in the tent at our house tonight, unless you have a better idea?”
“You know I only have a one-bedroom apartment.” Jared had taken over the lease on Stevens’s bachelor apartment in Kuau. It was close to the ocean and work, he’d said, and so far he’d seemed happy there.
“Well, she’s gonna have to be out in the tent,” Stevens said. “We’re tight as sardines in the cottage, and the house needs another couple of weeks before we’re ready to move in. Anyway, can you come over tonight? Join us for dinner?”
“I don’t think so.” Jared’s voice was bitter.
Stevens turned away from his mother and hissed into the phone, “Come on, bro. You can’t leave me holding the bag on this.”
“Like you left me holding the bag when you went to Hawaii five years ago? I dealt with her shit with no help for years after you left.”
“Hey, now. It was time for you to step up, and if I were there, she’d always hit me up first.” Stevens’s voice was rising along with his emotions. Things had been so great since his brother had moved to Maui. Trust his mother to bring old tensions with her.
“I’ll think about it. You don’t know what went down between us before I moved.” Jared hung up abruptly. Stevens slid the phone into his pocket and stood.
“Jared’s not sure he can make it. I’ll take you home, Mom, if you don’t have any other plans?”
“No plans,” she said, a note of relief in her voice. “That sounds lovely.”
Stevens called Wayne briefly to let him know he was coming home early with his mother. Finally, he held down the intercom button, calling Brandon Mahoe at the front desk. “Taking the afternoon off. Getting my mother settled,” he said.
“No problem, boss,” Brandon replied, and Stevens heard sympathy in what he didn’t say.
He picked up his weapon and personal items as his mother stood, smoothing a tunic top she wore over skinny jeans and battered, cuffed boots that had been good quality at one time. She still managed to look classy, if a little run-down. He took her arm, and she leaned on him gratefully.
He had a flash of memory: him on one side of her, Jared on the other. A big copy of The Jungle Book open on her lap. He and his brother had loved that story. She’d been stroking the hair off his forehead. Her voice was husky and hypnotic as she read. He remembered how happy he’d been. He could still see the curve of his brother’s forehead across from him, Jared’s mouth plugged with a thumb.
They’d been happy, once, and she’d been a good mom before the drinking started, and escalated dramatically with his father’s death when Stevens was sixteen.
He walked her through the room, acknowledging the nods from his men. He paused at Ferreira’s desk. “This is my mother, Ellen. I’m heading out. See you tomorrow.”
“Mrs. Stevens,” Ferreira said, rising with old-fashioned gallantry to shake Ellen’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she said. “Got a smoke?”
Ferreira’s face froze in surprise as she went on. “I know Michael doesn’t smoke, and damn if that plane flight wasn’t a long time without a cigarette.”
“That’s the worst. Sure.” Ferreira dug in his chest pocket for the square pack and shook out two. “Can’t smoke in the station, though, ma’am.”
“Of course.” She took the cigarettes. “I thank you.”
Stevens endured this and walked his mother through the building. As soon as they got outside, she put one of the cigarettes to trembling lips and flicked the old silver Zippo their father had been awarded for ten years of service in his firehouse. Stevens could still glimpse his father’s well-worn initials in the soft glow of the metal between his mother’s thin fingers. Her cheeks hollowed as she drew hard on the cig, and he lost patience with her and the stab of grief he felt at that tiny reminder of his dad. He took her elbow and gave a tug.
“My truck’s over here.”
“Hey!” he heard someone call, and turned to see a minivan with a lighted taxi emblem on top. “That lady owes me for a ride!”
Stevens turned to his mother. She shrugged, making a go-ahead gesture with her cigarette. He shook his head as he walked back and paid off the driver. He then settled his mother in the passenger seat of the brown Bronco he’d been driving for years. He set her backpack behind the seat.
“Smells like dog in here,” his mother said.
“Yeah, a bit. We have a Rottweiler, Keiki. She’s one of the family. She rides back there with the baby sometimes. Wayne Texeira, Lei’s father, watches Kiet for us during the day,” he said, turning on the vehicle.
“That’s nice,” Ellen said without interest. She rolled down her window and leaned her head out. “It’s so beautiful here.” Palm trees lining the main thoroughfare flicked by as Stevens merged onto Hana Highway, heading out of Kahului into the sugarcane fields and farther north.
“Just wait until you see where we live.” Stevens felt his spirits lift as the road took them out of town and they faced the great shadowy purple bulk of Haleakala, wreathed in afternoon clouds, the sky a brilliant blue above. “It’s out in the country. Really green and pe
aceful.”
“I could use a little peace.” His mother rested her head on the jamb of the door. He looked over a few moments later and could tell she’d fallen asleep by the slackness of her jaw. Her thin blonde hair fluttered in the wind.
He called Lei, but she didn’t pick up. He left a message. “My mom’s in town and going to stay with us a few days. I’m putting her out in the tent, and hopefully Jared’s coming to dinner. Hope you’re feeling up for company.”
Chapter Three
Lei and Pono pulled up a round, curving drive planted with decorative areca palms and parked in front of a large plantation-style home at Makoa Simmons’s parents’ address in Wailuku Heights—a newer, upscale area. Pono was driving his beefed-up purple truck, and Lei reached up to tap the tiny replica Hawaiian war helmet that hung from the rearview mirror. “For courage,” she said.
“We’re going to need it,” Pono agreed, gathering his handheld recorder and a notepad.
Lei opened her door. The truck was jacked up on big tires, so she used a chrome step to hop to the ground. She straightened her clothes and shrugged into the light khaki jacket she wore to conceal the shoulder holster. She liked to use her smartphone for recording, and as she slipped it out of her jacket pocket, she saw that Stevens had called and left a voice mail.
Lei listened to the message as they walked up wide, gracious steps to a carved wooden Balinese-style front door. She grimaced at the news that Stevens’s mother was on-island. She’d never met the woman, but what he’d told her hadn’t impressed her.
“They don’t seem to be hurting for money,” Pono observed, doing a survey of the well-groomed yard in the exclusive neighborhood. This side of the valley had sweeping views of the sugarcane fields, the town of Kahului, and the rising purple bulk of dormant volcano Haleakala. Clouds crowned the summit today, and as she often did, Lei had a sense of the mountain looking down at her benignly. She slid the phone back into her pocket.
“I’m finally going to meet my mother-in-law after work today,” Lei said as Pono rang a brass bell inset in the door.