by Toby Neal
“I know. I wish we were having babies together, too.”
A long pause. The phone connection buzzed faintly with the distance between Maui and Oahu, and the different stages of a woman’s life.
Finally Lei said, “Call me the minute Baby Kamuela gets started on his or her grand entrance, okay? You know I’ll be on the next flight out.”
“What about Kiet? He’s going to miss his mama now that Daddy’s going.”
“I’ll bring him. He can stay at my grandpa Soga’s while I visit you. I’ve been wanting to take him to the zoo, anyway.”
“Sounds like a plan. Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later.”
Lei ended the call with her spirits lifted a bit as she pulled into the parking lot at Kahului Police Station, a rectangular cube of utilitarian architecture. Inside, things were quiet with only graveyard-shift personnel on the job, but Pono was already back in their cubicle.
He looked up at her entry, frowned, rubbing a finger across his bristling mustache. “Who died?”
“Never ask a homicide detective that. She’ll have too many answers.” Lei flung herself into her office chair. It emitted a squeak of protest. “Stevens is being deployed. That training gig he took on for Security Solutions.”
“Aw, no. I didn’t think he was really going to follow through with that bad idea.” Pono scowled. “When does he leave?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Holy crap. All the military deployments I’ve heard of get a lot more notice than that!”
“Yeah, well. That’s all he’s seen fit to tell me.” Would Michael have sat on his deployment date and not told her? Just sprung it on her like this? No. That would be too horrible. She refocused with an effort. “Let’s get to that GoPro footage and confirm identity of the victim so I can get home for the few hours that he’s still gonna be here.” Lei blinked away more threatening tears as Pono reached over to squeeze her shoulder.
“You’ll be okay. Tiare and I will help with the boy. Whatever we can do.”
“Thanks. I’m going to need it.” She blew her nose on a handy tissue. “Now, where are we?”
“The Coast Guard didn’t find any more evidence in their dive after we were there. And Jessup has extracted the GoPro footage. I’ll see if he can come up and help us get it user-friendly.” Jessup Murioka was MPD’s computer specialist. Though all Maui detectives were trained to do the basics, Jessup came in for anything requiring extra skills. The Kamehameha student, only seventeen, reveled in his role as MPD boy genius. Pono called the boy down to his lab.
“You rang, O Great Ones?” Jessup said in an exaggerated accent.
“Bring us that GoPro footage on a tablet, will you? And we need physical prints of the photos for the file,” Pono said.
“Let’s take a look at the photos together,” Jessup’s tinny voice said. “That’s a lot of colored ink. I’m sure you don’t need all the photos.”
Pono hung up.
A few minutes later, Jessup arrived, a little out of breath from jogging up from the basement, where he’d taken over a whole storage room for his “projects.” Gawky and pale from his indoor pursuits, Jessup was still wearing his blue Kamehameha polo shirt and shorts. He pushed his glasses up his nose as he woke up a tablet to show them. “I’ve got them here. Just pick the ones you want printed.”
Grainy and a little out of focus, the photos showed the black bottom of a Zodiac from deep underwater. Another photo showed two divers in scuba gear, apparently wrestling with a branchlike coral. Another shot showed the same divers, rendered anonymous by their gear, using a net to capture small decorative reef fish.
“I can’t tell anything about these divers.” Lei frowned in frustration, studying the photos. “Except that they appear to be male.”
“I can. In that first photo, they’re harvesting coral. Probably illegal. And the aquarium-reef-fish catching is illegal, too. Interesting situation out at Molokini. The front side, with the bay, is all protected, but fishing is allowed two hundred yards from the atoll on the back side. My guess is that these photos are an attempt to document illegal fishing,” Pono said.
Lei pointed to the speargun carried by one of the divers. “Looks like it could be the murder weapon.”
“Let’s do a quick check.” Pono scrolled to the photos he’d added to the newly opened case file on the homicide. They found a photo of the spear, still embedded in the body. Lei had shot it at the body-retrieval site and again at the dock when the body was handed over to Dr. Gregory. “We’ll have to wait until Dr. Gregory removes it from the body. But it looks like it could be.” The short metal shaft was the type shot from a compressed-air speargun, such as the one carried by one of the divers.
“So your murder was out at Molokini? The person who took these photos was the murder victim?” Jessup’s eyes gleamed behind his thick glasses, and he pushed them up again.
“You aren’t supposed to see these crime scene photos.” Lei frowned. She liked the young tech, and she especially liked his wide-eyed innocence and didn’t want to see it tarnished.
“I can totally handle it,” Jessup said. “I’m seventeen, for God’s sake.” He leaned in to get a closer look at the mutilated body. “Not much blood from those wounds.”
“I’m guessing she bled out internally, but she definitely lost some fluid to those shark wounds,” Pono said.
“I took prints off the hand she had left at the dock,” Lei said. “Let me run those as soon as we get done looking at these pictures.”
“Sounds good.” They continued to scroll. Many of the photos were blurry or hard to make out, but as they went on, Lei noticed changes in the depth and water color, as well as subject. Lei noticed that, preceding each series of photos, there were at least three of land locations before underwater shots.
“Look at this. Totally different location.” She pointed. “You can see how shallow it is here. Look at the black lava cliffs. Looks like La Perouse area.”
“Yeah. These must be over a period of time. It looks like our vic might have been trying to catch illegal fishing in the act.” Pono frowned. “Looks like some more reef fish being captured for aquariums. See this net?” He pointed to an almost invisible filament in the water, covering the area of several coral heads. “The divers are driving the tiny fish into it.”
“But I can’t tell where these are taken,” Lei grumbled. “At least there’s a date and time stamp.”
“If you knew where the reference photos at the beginning were taken, you’d be able to say. We have to talk to the Department of Land and Natural Resources right away. They might know something about these photos. What I know is that when they ticket someone for illegal fishing, there has to be proof the fish were taken from a protected area, which makes it tough to bust people,” Pono said.
“Adding DLNR to the to-do list.” Lei found her eyes growing heavy. “It’s nine p.m. already. I want to process the prints and hit the ground running tomorrow morning with an identity for our vic.” She took the card with the victim’s prints on it out of the case file and scanned it into the computer, then set the matching program to working, which usually took an hour or more. “Jessup, get home. You have school tomorrow. Just e-mail and print us the photos we marked, please.”
“You got it, Sergeant.” Jessup gave a mock salute. Lei could swear the boy skipped as he went down the hall toward his basement domain.
“Oh, to have that kind of energy again.”
“Go home.” Pono squeezed her shoulder. “You look beat, and you don’t have long to make Stevens sorry for leaving.”
“Ha-ha, that’s what Marcella said.” Lei stood up. “You okay with running the prints?”
“I’ll text you if they come back to anyone we have to follow up on immediately.”
“Thanks, partner. I’ll be back in right away in the morning. So far we have to track that ID from the Zodiac, contact UH about it, follow up on the prints, and network with the DLNR.”
“Go,” Pono said.
“And don’t be back so early that you don’t see your man off properly in the morning.”
“I’m not sure he deserves it.”
“C’mon. He deserves it for putting up with you for so long, if nothing else.” Pono pushed her toward the door so hard she staggered. “I’ll keep things moving until you get in.”
Chapter Four
The dogs got up to greet Lei, coming around from the dog door in the kitchen, but they didn’t bark, used to her late-night comings and goings. She let herself in with her key and sent them back to their beds. Heading down the hall, she felt her heart aching, a dense and sorrowful feeling.
How was she going to get the motivation to go to Michael, when she’d left in such anger and still felt that way? And yet she knew Marcella was right. She couldn’t let Stevens go overseas for six months the way they’d left things.
Lei peeked her head in to check on Kiet. He was sleeping peacefully, his arms flung wide, the night-light bathing his sleeping face in soft golden glow. She smiled at the sight. Her son needed her, and that felt good. She went into the bathroom next, stripping out of her clothes and dropping them into the hamper, soaping up quickly in the shower and checking in with herself. Was she up for this, after so long and so much anger?
The flow of water over her skin reminded her of the early days of their marriage, when passion had seemed unquenchable, when they never seemed to get enough of each other. She knew that passion still burned, only a touch away.
Silence is key. Words were like bricks forming a wall between them, and if all they had was tonight—then let it be a bubble of peace, a respite from all that was wrong between them. Touch had always been the place where, no matter what else was happening, their two bodies told the truth of what lay between them.
Lei turned off the water, dried off, and wrapped up in a towel. She tiptoed to the bedroom. She hadn’t entered the space, except to grab clothing, for two months.
The curtains were open. Milky silver moonlight fell across Stevens, lying on his back as was his habit, one hand tucked under the pillow, the other resting alongside his body. A pattern of lacy tree shadow fell across the bed.
She clung to the doorjamb, hesitating, and he sat up. He hadn’t been asleep, and she remembered that was one of his problems. He didn’t sleep much at all.
Stevens tossed the covers aside and stood up. He was naked, and the sight of him, all looming dark angles and light-touched muscle, made her suck in a breath as he came to the doorway. He stood close but didn’t touch her. The heat of his body made her heart pound, but neither of them spoke.
She didn’t pull away. Instead, she stepped a tiny bit closer. She couldn’t see his face, dark and backlit as he bent to hers, but there was hesitation in the way he touched her upturned mouth with his. A cautious hope in his tentative touch increased as she opened to him, dropping the towel to puddle at their feet.
He took her in his arms at last, squeezing her hard as he had always done, as if to enfold her into himself. A soft groan rumbled in his wide chest, and her eyes filled with fresh tears even as her body caught fire touching his.
She was never sure, later, who led who to the big, moonlit bed.
The first mynahs were chattering in the trees outside and dawn brightened the sky to gray-pearl. The morning was unkind to Lei’s hair, and she scraped the unruly thickets into a ball and anchored it on the top of her head with a rubber band. Stevens, up on an elbow, watched her as she dressed.
“Do you have to go in so early?” His voice was hoarse. They’d hardly slept, instead alternating bouts of lovemaking with drowsing as they bridged with touch the chasm that had grown up between them. It had been that bubble of peace and ecstasy Lei had hoped for, but words could still destroy it.
She glanced over. He was sitting up, pulling on a pair of boxers. They’d taken this long to make up, and in spite of the intimacy last night, he was still leaving. She felt achy and heartsick, as if coming down with a flu, her muscles heavy as lead.
“Got a fresh case, I told you. It’s not fair to Pono to leave him holding the bag.” She couldn’t feel worse, but she wanted to get to work. Needed to. As if on cue, both of their phones, plugged in on the nightstand, beeped. She glanced over and saw a message from Pono to both of them.
Got it covered. Don’t come in until 9 a.m. at least.
Damn her partner, taking away her excuses.
Stevens picked up his phone and read the message there, too. He set the phone down and gave her hand a tug.
“Come here.” She let herself fall over, and he pulled her fully clothed body into his arms. “You needed a shower anyway. We both do.”
“Yeah.” She turned her face to lean her ear against his bare chest, listening to the slow thud of his heart. “I have something for you.” She rolled out of his arms, going to the jewelry box he had given her five years ago. She took out a small velvet jewelry pouch. “I bought this for your birthday, but I’d like you to have it now.”
Stevens’s eyes were hooded, hiding his emotions, as she sat cross-legged on the bed in front of him. He opened the pouch, taking out a beautifully carved bone hook pendant on a handmade coconut-husk thong.
“I bought it at our favorite gallery, Native Intelligence in Wailuku. There’s a kahu craftsman who carves them. It represents the legend of the magic hook the demigod Maui used to pull the Hawaiian Islands up out of the sea.”
Stevens held the pendant on his palm, looking at her. She could see the feelings in his eyes now: sorrow, determination, regret. “I’m sorry it has to be this way. You know I love you. I’ll wear it if you put it on me. And I won’t take it off until I get back.”
Lei covered his palm with hers, closing her eyes in a brief prayer. “Bless this hook and may it remind my husband how much he’s loved. May it remind him of Maui, our home. Keep him safe for us, please, dear God.” She leaned forward to kiss the bone pendant, and then fastened it around Stevens’s neck with the simple bone clasp.
Stevens pulled her close again. She laid her cheek against his chest, stretched out alongside him, his heart beating against hers.
She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, the door was flying open and Kiet ran in to throw himself onto them. As Lei opened her bleary eyes, she could see happiness in the little boy’s smile that they were together in bed. Kiet had asked Lei why she slept in the office, and she’d made excuses about a bad back. She knew the situation worried him.
It crushed Lei to think what Stevens’s news would do to their son’s smile, but she knew better than to interfere. Stevens had his own relationship with his son, and though Lei was the only mother Kiet had ever known, she was respectful of Stevens’s role and of Kiet’s birth mother’s memory. She had tried to keep Anchara’s heritage and culture a part of their lives, and she honored the sweet ghost she sometimes sensed watching over the boy.
It wasn’t her job to make this goodbye easy for Stevens. She’d have her hands full picking up the pieces after he left. The thought gave her enough energy to crawl out of bed.
“I have to get that shower.”
She left Kiet gleefully pelting his father with a pillow as Stevens tried to preserve some dignity, the sheet around his waist. The clock in the bathroom read 7:15 a.m. as she stripped off the work clothes she’d prematurely donned and took the rubber band out of her matted hair, getting under the shower and working the tangles out with conditioner.
Lei wished they’d had time for the shower. She knew Stevens had meant that, too, but they’d fallen asleep. She was just finishing shaving her legs when he slipped into the steam-fogged stall with her. She widened her eyes.
“Where’s Kiet?”
“Cartoons. Thank God for TV.” He slid under the water, gently moving her out of the stream. “Now, where were we? I was imagining this, earlier.” And he put his hand there, and then his mouth. Soon all was a kaleidoscope of slippery movement and muffled sighs and heated pressure building to ecstasy, and Lei wondered how the hell
she’d go for six months without him.
Chapter Five
Lei headed her truck out through the automatic gate, waving at Stevens, who held Kiet in his arms on the porch. Wayne had volunteered to take Stevens to the airport and bring Kiet in to school late after they saw him off. This was going to be her last glimpse of her husband, and she kept her eyes on him in the rearview mirror until the gate rumbled shut and he disappeared.
Lei felt a lot better than she had on her way into work last night, but worse in a different way. Why hadn’t she been able to accept her husband’s decision sooner? At least then they wouldn’t have lost the last few months to chilly silence and cold shoulders—though, on second thought, he hadn’t been drinking last night, and that was at least in part why it had been so incredible with him.
She would never understand why he was doing this—but he was as stubborn as she was, and she should have known that.
“It is what it is,” she said aloud, her favorite therapy saying. She rolled down her window. The breeze off the ocean at Ho`okipa blew softly on her face as she drove down the coastal highway past the surf break on her commute into Kahului.
Morning came to Maui dramatically, and today was no different. Sunlight broke over Haleakala, House of the Sun, and struck the West Maui mountain range across the waist of the island in a sharp line. Alongside the highway, the slate-dark ocean transformed to turquoise as the light hit, and beyond, mounds of creamy clouds caught fire with golden light.
Lei spotted surfers in the water at the popular break and wished she had time for a quick paddle out. That would loosen her tired muscles and wash away the hangover-like feeling of too much emotion better than the coffee she sipped from a travel mug.
But she was late enough. The day was wasting, and there was nothing to be done but to get through it—the first day of six months without her husband.
Pono was in the cubicle as if he’d never left when Lei arrived, but she could tell he’d gone home by the fresh smell of the lemony aftershave he favored and his clean polo shirt.