by Toby Neal
“No match on the prints,” he greeted her. “And you look—like crap.”
“At least I took a shower. You should have seen my hair before.” Lei looked at his monitor as he swiveled it toward her. “What are we doing about the driver’s license on the anchored Zodiac?”
“I thought of going out to her house because I’ve got a strong feeling our vic is Danielle Phillips. I hope we’re wrong, but I think we should get eyes on the husband ASAP.” Pono stood. “Your car or mine?” Pono flipped a coin, catching it on the back of his meaty hand as if it were any other day of their work together. Lei smiled, grateful for that.
“Tails.”
“Heads. Purple truck today.”
“You have a weighted coin for these, I swear,” Lei complained, following him out of the station building.
Pono’s jacked-up purple truck, whose color he blamed on his dash of Filipino blood, sported a tiny war helmet dangling from the mirror and Keep It Hawaiian stickers. It was already over-the-top, but the chrome shifter ball in the shape of a skull was her favorite feature in the tricked-out cab. Lei hopped up on the metal step and got in. She gave the skull a pat. “Hey, Stanley.”
“Stanley. You kidding? Dat guy one Hawaiian. Goes by Makana.”
“Thought Makana was a musician, and he’s alive last time I checked.” The banter kept the soreness of her heart at bay, even as she glanced at her phone. From the time, she knew Wayne was driving Kiet and Stevens to the airport.
Nothing to be done. It was what it was.
Her phone chimed with a text from Stevens. Left a satellite phone from Security Solutions for you. Will call when I can and text every day. I love you.
Okay. Glad we had that shower. I’m still mad you’re leaving.
I know you are. The little man took it okay.
I don’t think he knows what it means. But okay. Travel safe.
Will do. More later.
Lei slid the phone into her pocket and deliberately focused on the scenery as they drove through town. They wound up into Wailuku Heights, a newer residential area near green, jungled Iao Valley. They pulled into the neat driveway of a nicer ranch-style home near where Stevens had lived with his first wife. Lei preferred to forget that particular chapter, a time when she’d been trying out a career in the FBI.
Pono leaned on the doorbell, and they both showed ID to a six-foot Caucasian man with dark hair and a bodybuilder’s physique who Lei guessed was Frank Phillips, Danielle’s husband. He was wearing workout clothing and carried a hand towel, as if they’d surprised him lifting weights.
“Sergeant Lei Texeira of Maui Police Department, and this is my partner, Pono Kaihale. We are following up on an ID we found in a Zodiac anchored off Molokini yesterday.”
“You found my wife?” The man’s complexion paled and he mopped his sweating face with the towel. “She didn’t come back last night. I was getting ready to call you.”
“Can we come inside? We’re trying to figure out whose boat we found,” Lei said.
Frank stood aside. “Please. Come in.” He shut the door behind them and led them to a living room with a vaulted ceiling and a view of nearby Iao Valley, clouds beginning to catch on the lush, steep slopes. “So what is going on?”
“Why don’t you tell us why you’re concerned about your wife? Then we can determine what might be going on here.” Lei kept her gaze on his face.
The man was breathing rapidly. Red spots had appeared on his cheekbones. His hand shook as he pushed it through thinning black hair. Through an open door, Lei glimpsed the home gym he must have come from. Air conditioning and eighties rock music drifted out of the doorway. He went over and shut the door with a thump, then returned to sit on the couch across from them.
“I don’t know where she is. She works for the University of Hawaii—a marine biologist. She often goes out on the ocean for one of her research projects, or doing something for Save Our Reefs. Have you heard of it?” He looked up at Lei with bloodshot eyes, the picture of a stressed, worried husband.
Lei nodded. “So did she take out a Zodiac belonging to the university?”
“She did.”
Pono had risen to his feet, and with an aimless air, was circulating around the room, looking at assorted photos clustered on the sideboard. “Your wife is lovely.” He held up a photo of the couple, arms entwined. Danielle’s long brown hair framed a smiling face that Lei had last seen, puffy and discolored, on a dead woman lying on the dock at Ma’alaea Harbor.
“Thanks. Well, I thought a person was supposed to be missing twenty-four hours before I called anyone, so…” Phillips’s voice trailed off.
“If you thought she was doing something dangerous like scuba diving alone, a call much sooner would be fine.” Lei tried not to snap. “So where did you think your wife had gone?”
“I didn’t know. I was at work.” Suddenly he stood, slapped his thighs, and glared at Lei and Pono. “What is this about? You never told me.”
“We found the body of an unidentified woman in scuba gear off Molokini. In searching for an identity, we found a Zodiac anchored off the atoll. Your wife’s ID was on the vessel, and that led us here.”
“Oh God.” Phillips’s knees collapsed, and he folded onto the couch. “I thought that might be it when I first opened the door.”
“Why is that?” Lei was on him like a mynah on a grasshopper.
“Because. She was out all night, and she did damn fool things like go scuba diving alone!” he exclaimed, and broke into a sob, covering his face with his hands. Pono fetched a box of tissues and patted the man’s back. Lei got up to roam the room, looking for clues.
All the pictures clustered on the sideboard appeared to be roughly from the same period, early in the marriage, to judge by the wedding, honeymoon, and carrying-across-the-threshold theme. The rest of the decor, arty nature shots, yielded nothing personal.
The house was almost antiseptically clean, with white carpet and a collection of expensive-looking shepherdess figurines that looked out of place, as if inherited from a relative and too valuable to get rid of. No children or pets.
“Let me make a quick call,” Lei said. “Be right back.”
“Tell me about your wife’s daily routine,” Pono said as she stepped outside to call Dr. Gregory at the morgue.
“Howzit, Lei!” exclaimed the ever-cheerful ME, a Mainland transplant who sometimes overdid his enthusiasm for all things Hawaii. Dr. Gregory even tried pidgin and Hawaiian phrases on her sometimes, and Lei wondered which bright aloha shirt he was wearing under his rubber apron today.
“Hey, Dr. G. We have a witness to come down and do an ID on that Jane Doe diver we brought in yesterday. Can you get her ready for us?”
“Sure. Haven’t done the post yet, but I did get the spear out of her. You can take that back and log it in.”
“See anything else of interest?”
“The injuries to the body, aside from the spear wound, were postmortem, as you suspected, Sergeant. Consistent with shark bites. She had no defensive wounds that I could see in an initial exterior exam. No trace under the nails on her remaining hand. I’ll know more when we do the full workup.”
“Okay, thanks. We’ll be there in half an hour or so.” Lei hung up and put her head into the garage for a quick look. Against the back wall, she saw a row of wetsuits and dive gear. Beneath the gear rested a sleek kayak with a paddle stowed in it and a small electric trolling motor on the back.
Maui Memorial’s morgue was below the ground floor. With Lei on one side and Pono on the other, Frank Phillips stared stoically at the changing lights of the elevator, then followed them into a hall shining with waxed linoleum. Pono hit the automatic door button outside the sally port, set up to open for gurneys. The twin doors swung into an anteroom used for viewing, an area Lei usually passed through to go into the bigger workroom beyond.
This time, a draped body on a gurney awaited them. Dr. Gregory, looking official in a white lab coat and holding a clipb
oard, looked up with a smile. A foot with a toe tag protruded from beyond the sheet, and Frank Phillips gave a little cry.
“It’s her! It’s my wife!”
“You can tell from a foot?” Lei asked, already knowing the answer. She’d know her husband’s foot anywhere, the long narrow shape of it, the high arch, and the middle toe longer than the rest. God, she never wanted to have to identify his body.
“Lani has a dolphin tattoo on her ankle.” Phillips pointed. Lei leaned closer, and sure enough, a tiny blue dolphin leaped over the victim’s ankle bone.
“Still, for a formal identification we need you to take a look at her face,” Dr. Gregory said. Lei spotted an aloha shirt covered with bright pineapples peeking out of the lab coat as the medical examiner lifted the drape off the woman’s face.
Frank Phillips looked at the bloodless features, still a little distorted from immersion and scuba gear, for a long moment. “It’s Lani. It looks like her, but it doesn’t.”
“Death does that to people.” Dr. Gregory had a kindly tilt to his head. He wrote something on the papers attached to the clipboard and handed it to Phillips to sign.
“I thought her name was Danielle?” Lei asked.
“Lani is her middle name. She’s part Hawaiian, and she often went by that.” Suddenly Phillips’s shoulders hunched and he turned away, covering his face.
Pono patted him on the back as Dr. Gregory wheeled the body back into the morgue, gesturing to Lei. Out of view of Phillips, he handed her a longish packet, closed with an evidence seal.
The murder weapon, he mouthed. She took it and rejoined Pono and Phillips.
“Can you come down to the station with us?” Lei asked Phillips. “We need to take a statement.”
“What? Why?” The man appeared blinded by grief, stumbling a little toward the door.
“Because her death wasn’t accidental,” Lei said gently. “It’s just a formality.”
Phillips made it through the automatic doors and blundered to the elevator, stabbing the up button repeatedly. “Not accidental? What happened?” He turned to them, his eyes wide and bloodshot.
“I can’t say more at this time.” Lei wanted to offer to call someone for him, but they needed to interview him when the news was fresh.
In Kahului Station’s cleanest interview room, Lei Mirandized Phillips and settled into the seat across from him after turning on the recording equipment. Pono brought Phillips a Styrofoam cup of the station’s coffee, black, as he’d asked for it. The man sipped, staring into the middle distance as Lei recited the date, time, and persons present for the record.
“So, Frank. Take us back to yesterday. Tell us about the day.”
“Well, we got up as usual to go to work. She has a class to teach at UH early some mornings and keeps office hours. I have my business in Wailuku. I’m a CPA. Phillips Accounting, LLC.”
“Was there anything…different about Danielle’s behavior yesterday morning? Did you know she was going out to Molokini?”
“No. She seemed…as usual.” He rubbed a hand over his pallid, sweaty face. “Just as usual.”
“So…help us understand your wife. What does that mean?” Lei asked, probing.
Phillips looked up, suddenly alert. “You don’t think I had anything to do with it, do you?”
“Did you? Have anything to do with it?”
“What? How could I? She was out there, going alone like she was always doing, trying to gather evidence for the DLNR on fish poaching. It was her passion, and it got her killed, just like I told her it would a hundred times!” Phillips was so emphatic that spit flew from his mouth. “She never listened to me. So that’s what ‘as usual’ meant in our house, damn it!”
Lei felt the hurt behind the words, the betrayal. She couldn’t help but identify—with her own marriage and how so often she had ignored Stevens’s more cautious approach and attempts to protect her. Now his departure went against her needs in the same way.
Pono, leaning against the wall, stepped forward. “What she was doing sounds kind of reckless. You must have been worried sick.”
Lei restrained herself from an eye roll as Pono laid on the “good cop” role a little thick, but Phillips nodded. “Yeah, I was. All the time. She was so involved with Save Our Reefs, and she was doing this fish-population study of Maui. She’d tell anyone who would listen about the declining fish populations, both from human impact and use and the runoff problem.”
“Runoff problem?” This was new information, and Lei perked up.
“From the development on the south side of the island. We’ve had a wet winter, and the soil is washing and blowing into the ocean. Loaded with phosphates, the soil covers the reef, changes the chemistry. Then we’ve had global warming temperature increases, leading to algae blooms and coral bleaching. All of that impacts the health of the reefs. The healthiest reefs are in the La Perouse Bay area and farther out, because it’s protected and there’s nothing but lava fields inland, so there’s nothing to run off into the ocean.” Phillips rubbed a hand across his face.
“I heard even sunscreen can harm coral,” Lei said.
“That’s right. But we’re not here to talk about that. I imagine you’re working up to asking me where I was when she died. I was at work all day yesterday. You can check with my assistant.”
“Thank you for volunteering that information,” Pono said. “Like Sergeant Texeira mentioned, it’s just a formality.”
“Can I go, then?” Phillips started to rise.
“Well, we need a DNA sample, to rule you out of any trace we find.” Lei held up a swab. “This won’t hurt a bit.” She ran it around the inside of his cheek, deposited it in the holder. “And your prints.” Using a card, she rolled each of his fingers and got the prints as he sat in stony silence. When done, she set the collection materials aside and made herself smile at him reassuringly. As usual, her smile didn’t seem to work. He glared at her, angry and defensive.
“So tell me why you didn’t call anyone about Lani being missing last night,” Lei said.
“I didn’t think anyone would listen to me or take it seriously. And I suppose…” Phillips stopped, his throat working. “I suppose I was a little angry with her. For blowing me off yet again. We’d had a few words that morning. So I thought maybe she went to a friend’s. To, you know, cool off.”
Lei knew all about cooling off. In the end, it wasn’t a good strategy, from what she could tell. Cooling off could lead to permanent distance.
“So, would you say you had a happy marriage?”
“I don’t see that asking me that is relevant,” Phillips growled. He was pissed now. She could see high color in his neck.
“She’s dead. It’s a homicide. Everything is relevant,” Lei snapped back.
“Well, then, I want a lawyer.” Phillips smacked a fist on the table, making them both jump. Lei’s hand settled on her weapon as she locked eyes with the surly man.
Pono leaned in. “I don’t think that’s necessary at this time, Mr. Phillips. We’re done for today, anyway. We’ll be in touch if there’s anything else we need to ask you. For instance, we may need to search your home for items belonging to your wife.”
“Then bring a warrant.” Phillips was not appeased and stood to his full bulky height. Lei tried to imagine the petite Danielle with this block of a man and failed. They must have started out differently.
“We’ll be in touch. Thanks for your cooperation.” Pono backed up and opened the door for Phillips, who brushed past. Her partner turned to narrow his eyes at Lei. “Barking up the wrong tree this time, partner.” Pono shut the door behind the CPA. “We always say the husband did it, but there’s not a shred of anything so far to indicate he’s involved. The logistics alone rule it out.”
“I know.” Lei sighed, stood up. “I’m off my game. Sorry I set him off.”
“Well, we’ve still got a full day to chase leads. Which next, DLNR or the University of Hawaii? Heads, we call DLNR; tails it’s UH.�
� He took out his trusty coin, flipped it, and covered it on the back of his arm.
“Tails.”
“Heads wins. DLNR it is, then. I’ll get an interview lined up with some agents. Get them down here to look at the GoPro footage.”
“Sounds good. I’ll meet you at the evidence room.” Lei held up the short, sharp steel spear, still sealed in brown paper sacking, that had been used to kill Danielle Phillips. “I still have to log this in after we compare it to the one in the photos. And get some coffee.”
Lei headed for the break room. A yawn rocked her body, and her jaw cracked. Yes, she was definitely paying the price for their night of wedded bliss. Still, her mouth quirked up in a smile. It had been worth it.
Lei got a text from Stevens while she was in the break room. Between planes. Thinking of you.
Where are you going, exactly? Lei texted back.
Sorry, still classified. I would have told you. But I’ll check in every day via text with the satellite phone I left you.
I wish I’d asked you more, she wrote back, leaning against the wall by the coffee machine. I’m just sick that it took this for us to make up. I’m sorry I was such a bitch.
A long pause. Then, I can’t believe what I’m reading here. Something happening at work to make you all mushy?
Yeah. My case. Unhappy marriage. A stubborn person on a mission. Now that person’s dead.
Another long pause. Then, That won’t be us. We’re both stubborn and on a mission.
She laughed, a snort that had tears behind it, looking around and grateful the break room was empty. She texted again. I love you so much.
I know. And you know how to make me sorry I’m gone already, damn it. Six months. It’ll be over in no time, and things will be better when I get back. I promise.
She sure as hell hoped so.
Lei poured herself a cup of the tepid coffee and, the bagged spear tucked under her arm, headed for the evidence room.
Chapter Six