by Toby Neal
Eli was still unrestrained, pacing like a caged animal, darting hateful glances at Shayla, who was resting her forehead on the table and sobbing.
“It’s great that you are finally breaking away from your brother.” Lei hoped she wasn’t laying it on too thick. She edged toward Eli in case she had to restrain him. “You don’t need him telling you what to do. Look at how that turned out.”
“Damn straight. Eric’s sick. He has a dark side,” Eli said. “I’m sick of being his screw-up, always taking the fall for what he comes up with.”
“So whose idea was it to kill Makoa?” Lei said matter-of-factly.
“Eric’s. He knew about Shayla inheriting Makoa’s money, and when she called me and began talking about getting back together, we both realized Makoa must be getting ready to break up with her. Shayla’s not someone who can be by herself.” Even as Eli said this, his eyes softened, looking at her bent head. “She didn’t know. She needs us.”
“She didn’t know what?” Lei probed gently.
“She didn’t know that we both loved her. And we both wanted to keep loving her. But only one of us could marry her, and that was going to be me.”
“You’re sick.” Shayla flung her hair back as she confronted Eli, her eyes flashing. “I would never have married you when I could have had Makoa.”
“You and Makoa were over. You told me yourself,” Eli said. “When you called me crying and asked that I do something. About how he was dumping you now that he’d gotten Pippa pregnant.”
Lei restrained herself from leaping in the air and doing a fist pump. She still needed to know who’d actually held Makoa under.
“Hmm, what a tough situation. You must have felt trapped,” she said.
“Yeah. I didn’t want Shayla to be left broke and brokenhearted. She told me where he was going to be surfing in the morning. It doesn’t matter anymore,” Eli said, gazing into Shayla’s eyes. “You didn’t ask me, but I knew what you were really asking me—and Eric and I took care of it.”
“Shut up, you sick, cheating pig!” Shayla screamed, jumping up. “I hate you! I hate you!” She thrashed against the restraints.
Eli stood frozen for a moment, and then Lei saw the pain in his eyes turn to something else. He lunged across the table and seized Shayla’s throat in his hands, squeezing.
Lei leaped around the table to restrain him. He let go long enough to elbow her viciously in the solar plexus, and Lei flew backward to hit the wall, the breath knocked out of her so that she couldn’t even cry for help as Eli refastened his hands around Shayla’s throat.
Shayla gurgled helplessly, unable to even lift her hands, her eyes bulging as he ruthlessly squeezed.
Lei drew her weapon and pushed forward, trying to get enough air to yell at Eli to stop, but Pono flung the door open, lunged into the room, and launched himself across the table, knocking Eli back so that he lost his grip. Eli’s face was unrecognizable with a mask of violence that distorted his features.
“Don’t move.” Lei got enough air to speak. “Don’t even breathe.”
Pono came around the table and cuffed Eli, heaving him into the corner and holding him tightly.
Shayla had collapsed over the table, her hair over her face. The second Eli was no longer a threat, Lei rushed to her, uncuffing her and turning her over. She was breathing in ragged gasps. Her bloodshot eyes opened.
“I didn’t tell him to kill Makoa,” Shayla whispered brokenly. “I didn’t.”
“I believe you didn’t use those words,” Lei said. “But I think you knew exactly what you were doing when you called Eli to complain about your imminent breakup. You’re under arrest, Shayla Cummings, for accessory to murder. And Eli Tadeo, you’re under arrest for the murder of Makoa Simmons.”
Stevens arrived at work. Sipping coffee, he sat down and tried to concentrate on the training curriculum he was putting together, but found he couldn’t focus. He kept glancing over at Eric’s empty desk and wondering how Lei’s investigation was going.
And his mother was still missing. Maybe this was a hands-on training opportunity in the offing. He picked up the phone.
An hour later, Stevens drove out of the police station, his new detective trainee, Brandon Mahoe, seated beside him in the Bronco. Brandon turned toward Stevens. He was dressed in a clean, muted aloha shirt and jeans, his longish, wiry black hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, a shark tooth on a leather thong showing at the neck of his shirt.
“I can’t believe I’m not wearing my uniform right now,” he said, grinning.
“Definitely a perk of being detective,” Stevens agreed, navigating out of the parking lot. He’d gotten permission from Captain Omura and Detective Fujimoto to go out to the homeless enclaves and canvass for the dead woman they’d found yesterday, as well as for his mother. This would still the restless voice clawing at his insides, urging him into action. He knew that feeling, that voice…and it had seldom been wrong.
They pulled up to the encampment he’d left to break up the bar fight the other night. Rickety lean-tos clustered around a big green Dumpster like chicks around a hen.
Stevens got out. After Brandon slammed the Bronco’s door and joined him, he handed a folder to the junior detective. “Here are the photos. I want you to take the lead asking questions. Don’t be afraid to use pidgin. Emphasize any connection you can make with these folks. Put them at ease. Emphasize that we’re concerned for their safety and just want to make sure Ellen Stevens is alive and safe.”
“Stevens. Is this woman a relative?” Brandon’s curious brown eyes looked concerned.
“My mother.”
“Oh, damn. I’m sorry, boss.”
“I am, too. And I’m not your boss.” Stevens put his hands on his hips. “You’re the lead here. I’ll just step in if I need to.”
“Yes, sir.” Brandon took the folder from Stevens and walked into the village with a spring to his step. He dropped to his haunches beside an older man sipping from a bagged bottle inside one of the shelters.
They spent hours looking, working their way from one end of the encampments to the other. Many knew Adele; a few had spotted Ellen. The pattern of Adele’s food stamp fraud was well established by the time they hit a more solid tip.
“Hey there. We’re looking for a woman we’re concerned about.” Brandon showed the photo of Ellen Stevens. Stevens, watching, felt his stomach clench. The photo he’d given them to use was an older one, in which Ellen was smiling, her face fuller, her hair a glossy fall to her shoulders. It was a fifteen-year-old photo, but the only one he had.
“Yeah, I’ve seen her. Doesn’t look like that anymore, though,” the homeless man said, sucking his lips where his front teeth should be.
“Where was she?” Brandon asked, lifting his head to look around.
“I think she’s still here. Made herself a little squat.” The man pointed toward the edge of the cluster of dwellings.
Stevens’s heart rate picked up as the informant haggled with Mahoe for payment. He turned toward where the man pointed and strode rapidly in that direction.
He found his mother lying in the lee of a pile of flattened cardboard boxes. He recognized her instantly—the long shape of her skull, the flutter of her blonde hair protruding from the mouth of a filthy nylon sleeping bag. An empty bottle of Scotch lay on the ground next to her.
Looking down at her, Stevens felt that familiar dark shame rising to swamp him. This had been him just a day ago.
Stevens squatted down beside Ellen, smoothed the greasy hair back off her brow. She was either deeply asleep or passed out, because she didn’t move. Her eyelids fluttered, though, and her thin chest rose and fell. She was alive.
“Mom?” he called softly. “It’s Michael. I’m here to take you home.”
Chapter Nineteen
Seated in the conference room with Captain Omura and several other higher-ups, Lei finished with her account of what had happened in the interview room.
“Let’s watch th
e video.” Captain Omura hit a remote to play the recorded footage on a flatscreen across from the table. Lei winced as she watched the mistakes she’d made play out across the grainy feed.
She hadn’t cuffed Eli Tadeo and he’d attacked Shayla.
He’d been able to fight Lei off, and he’d almost killed the woman.
“What’s missing from this video? Besides proper procedure, which is going to give Shayla Cummings a huge hole to appeal her charges?” Omura said, her crimson nails tapping each other.
“A confession,” Pono said. “He never directly says he killed Makoa. It’s only implied. And then he attacks Shayla when she says she hates him.”
“Right.”
They replayed the video. Lei stood up and paced, her fists balled. “He did it, though. He practically admits it. And his behavior shows how unbalanced he is.”
“This case has to be made on a confession because we already know there’s no trace that we can use connecting to any of the players. Let’s watch this again.”
They watched the video again. This time Omura paused it at the frame where Eric Tadeo, his face congested, yelled for his lawyer.
“Sergeant Tadeo is going to be a problem.”
“I know,” Lei said. “But did you hear the part where Eli talks about how Eric slept with Shayla, too?”
“How was your interview with Eric Tadeo?”
“Not good. After he talked to his lawyer, he barely answered any questions. One word-answers. Admitted nothing. At this point I’m happy to be able to charge Eli and Shayla.”
Omura tapped her nails again. Lei realized she hated the sound.
“I don’t think this whole thing, compelling as it is in terms of drama, is going to hold up in court. We need something harder. We need one of them to admit to killing Makoa.”
“They’d be crazy to do that,” Lei said.
Omura smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I see a whole lot of crazy people in this video. You can make this happen, Texeira. I think you should reach out to Tadeo’s wife. You talked with her early on. I don’t think she’s going to take this kind of betrayal lying down.”
“At least we’ve cleared Pippa and Oulaki,” Lei said. “I feel a little better about this case after that interview.”
“Talk to Rachel Tadeo. See what she says about her husband’s affair. I bet she comes up with something that helps us put one of them in the surf with Makoa.” Omura flicked those nails in dismissal.
Lei and Pono knocked on the pretty door of the neat house in Kuau where Eric Tadeo and his family lived. Lei looked over at Eli’s tidy little cottage, feeling a twinge at the sight of the welcome mat empty of his shoes and the surfboard by the door.
“What do you want?” Rachel Tadeo didn’t pretend to be polite as she opened the door, the toddler on her hip.
“We want to speak to you,” Lei said, feeling her stomach tighten a bit. She was about to ruin this woman’s world. “About the murder of Makoa Simmons.”
“I have no idea what I could say about that,” she said, but she stood aside and they entered.
Rachel ignored them as she took her two young children into a playroom filled with toys and a television and got them settled in front of a video with sippy cups and a snack. Finally, she gestured for them to follow her into the living room.
Rachel’s face was a stoic mask as she seated herself on a chair across from the couch Lei and Pono perched on. “I’m sick of this witch hunt,” she said. “You’re going to be facing charges yourselves, for harassing our family.”
“A man has died. A man who deserved to live. A man who had a bright future ahead of him and was going to be a father.” Lei leaned forward, making sincere eye contact. “Your brother-in-law practically admitted he did it, and then he tried to kill Shayla Cummings right in front of me. I don’t know why you’re protecting him.”
Rachel dropped her eyes, plucking at a loose thread on her shorts. “I don’t know what you need to talk to me about.”
“We need to know everything we can about Eli and Eric’s relationship with Shayla Cummings.”
Rachel looked up, frowned. “Eric? He didn’t have a relationship with that bitch.”
“Oh, but I’m afraid he did.” Lei told Rachel the gist of what had come out in the interview room. “Your husband was, at least sometimes, sleeping with Shayla. Impersonating his brother. They shared her.”
The color drained out of Rachel’s face, and her eyes flew to the door of the playroom, where the children watched television. She got up and walked silently across the room, shutting the playroom door and going quickly upstairs. Lei looked at Pono, and they jumped up and hurried after her.
They found her in an upstairs office furnished with a desk. A shelf filled with trophies and commendations took up one wall, a lounger and flat screen TV the other. Rachel was behind the desk, unlocking it, pulling out a drawer. As they watched, she reached inside and took out a small metal box.
She set it on the desk and looked up at them. “He keeps something in here. Something he didn’t want me to see.”
“Do we have your permission to open the box?”
“Please.” She gestured.
Lei came around the desk, took a paper clip out of the drawer, and opened it. She inserted the paper clip into the lock, excitement surging up at the same time as regret for the pain she was causing. Rachel covered her face, beginning to cry.
“I knew something was going on. I knew something wasn’t right,” she muttered.
Lei got the lid unlocked. Inside was a box filled with authentic-looking soul patch beard sections on clear plastic.
Rachel leaped to her feet. “Oh, God!”
She grabbed handfuls of hair, pulling it, her face contorted with anguish. Lei reached over to both hug and restrain her.
“Don’t hurt yourself. He was the one who did wrong,” she soothed.
“No, no, no!” Rachel sobbed. “I had a feeling. He would be gone nights on training exercises. Something in me knew!” Her hysteria was increasing as she wailed. Just then they heard the rumble of the big truck Eric drove pulling into the driveway. Lei wrapped her arms around the other woman, pinioning her, as they heard the front door crash open.
“Rachel!” Eric bellowed. “Don’t listen to them! Rachel!”
The woman in Lei’s arms thrust a hard elbow back into Lei’s stomach, winding her, then stomped on Lei’s foot with her athletic shoe so hard Lei felt the crack of bone.
Lei staggered back with a cry. Rachel scrabbled in the drawer of the desk and pulled out a black gun case.
Pono, who’d been watching in bemusement, leaped forward to stop her, but Rachel already had the Glock out. Pono fell back, his hands in the air.
Lei leaned on the wall, shame that she’d been disabled by this cop’s wife with her weekend self-defense training combined with horror as the scene went from bad to worse. Eric Tadeo appeared in the doorway of the office. His wild-eyed wife pointed the gun at him.
“You scum!” she screamed. “You cheated on me with that bitch!”
“Put the gun down.” Eric spoke in a quiet voice, his hands in the air. “Please, honey. Please, Rachel. Let me explain. We can work this out.”
“There’s no explanation you can give that would make this right,” Rachel screamed, throwing the metal box at Eric. It caught him in the midsection. The fake soul patches scattered across the carpet.
“I’m sorry, Rachel,” Eric said. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t think anyone would get hurt.”
“You’re getting hurt!” Rachel pulled the trigger. The report was deafening in the enclosed space.
The round caught Eric in the shoulder, and he crumpled in the doorway. Rachel stared at his fallen body, the gun wobbling, and Pono wrestled it out of her hands. He slammed her onto the floor and cuffed her.
Lei heard the piping sound of the older daughter’s voice approaching up the steps. “Mommy? Daddy?”
Rachel twisted her head on the carpet and yelled, �
��Go back downstairs! Everything is fine!”
Lei hobbled to Eric, tugged him inside the room by his feet, and shut the door so that the children wouldn’t see what was happening inside the room as Pono called for an ambulance.
Eric’s mouth opened and closed as he struggled to breathe. Lei grabbed a magazine off the desk and set it over the wound, pressing down hard. She leaned over Eric, alarmed by the blood pool spreading beneath him.
“Did you kill Makoa?” she asked.
Eric’s chest heaved in a valiant effort to bring in oxygen. His face was turning blue. Frantic eyes, filled with terror and determination, fastened on her face, and he nodded.
“I did it for my brother,” he gasped.
Blood filled Eric’s mouth. He heaved upward, splattering Lei with the viscous fluid. Then he fell back into the sodden carpet, and his eyes rolled back, his mouth slack.
So much blood. It seemed to be everywhere. Lei stood, momentarily forgetting about her broken foot, then staggered to sit on the office chair.
“Holy crap,” Pono said. Rachel keened beside his feet, her sobs a monotonous backdrop as the emergency response personnel arrived and went to work on Eric.
The children were still downstairs, with no one watching them.
Lei got up and hobbled to the couple’s bathroom. She stripped off her shirt, noticing a red patch on her sternum. Rachel’s elbow, layered on top of the blow she’d received earlier in the interview room. Worse than that was Eric’s blood, splashed in a vomit pattern down the front of her shirt. On her face. On her arms.
Lei hastily splashed her face and arms, wiped with a towel, and pulled on a shirt from the nearby laundry hamper. It must have been Eric’s, because it came to mid-thigh.
Good, that would cover Eric’s blood on the front of her pants.
She hobbled past the emergency techs intubating Eric, Rachel’s prostrate, desolate form, and Pono on the phone updating the captain. Holding on to the railing, she hopped downstairs and into the playroom.