Paradise Crime Box Set 4

by Toby Neal

  “Sweets, I’m so sorry to miss your call.” Stevens’s voice sounded rough, and he coughed. “I really want to talk to you, too. It’s tough here. Long days, very physical. A damp environment, that’s all I can say about it.” He coughed again. “I’m wondering what the hell I was thinking, coming out here, but it’s too late now. No way out but through. I’ve got some concerns about the op here, too, but don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll adjust. Let’s talk tonight—I’ll call in ten hours. Have the phone on, and we’ll catch up. I love you, and I miss you and the little man.”

  She felt tears prickle her eyes as she heard the click as the message ended.

  “Damn,” she muttered, and blew her nose on an old Burger King napkin wedged beside her seat. “I miss you, too.”

  At least she had a phone call to look forward to.

  Gerry Bunuelos had beaten her to the station. “I was about to put out a BOLO on you.” He handed Lei a cup of murky station coffee. “You’re always the first in.”

  “Another bad night,” she said. “Kiet was almost late to school. Tell me something good.”

  “Okay. We got a line on Costa. Someone spotted him out around the corner from Ulupalakua. You know that settlement out at Kahikinui? Apparently he’s got relatives off the grid out there and is hiding out. Omura has authorized a little home visit with plenty of backup.” Bunuelos tossed her a Kevlar vest. “Hammer down your coffee, Sergeant. We’re on a manhunt for Pono’s shooter.”

  The action was welcome. The adrenaline blew the last of the nightmare out of her brain as they got on the road in their vehicles, two MPD cruisers bristling with armed officers as backup.

  Ulupalakua was the last node of civilization after the town of Kula. Beyond that, the long wild coast all the way to Hana began. Most of the land was owned and operated by the Ulupalakua Ranch as a cattle enterprise. Past the ranch and the last rock formations of Haleakala volcano that caught rain, the stretch of steep, rocky coast was populated by the hardy and desperate, most of them living in “off-the-grid” homemade structures of roofing tin and plywood.

  There was a sense of vastness to the sweep of open coastland. Raw lava crags raked the sky, snagging rain clouds on their sharp edges, and the land, bare but for tough grasses, tumbled to a wide-open, cobalt sea. Great swaths of boulder-strewn rugged grassland and steep valleys carved by the occasional heavy rains had given Kahikinui a savage, untamed beauty. Windswept and barren, there was nothing to interrupt the broad sweep of tumbled lava, soil, sea, and sky but a few twisted wiliwili trees.

  The team kept siren and radio silence. It was forty-five silent, speeding minutes up the volcano into an area that boasted stunning views of the deep blue ocean in all directions.

  Lei kept both hands on the wheel of her Tacoma as she followed Bunuelos in his 4Runner as the GPS pinged the address of Costa’s brother. Both of them had extra officers riding shotgun. They turned off the paved, two-lane highway onto a red-dirt track carved out of the wilderness, bordered in dry scrub, giant lava boulders, and the occasional hardy Christmas berry bush.

  They pulled into a cleared dirt area surrounded by rough dwellings constructed of plywood and corrugated roofing. A few trees provided spotty shade, but the sun beat down on Lei’s head as she leaped out of the truck, taking a cover position behind her vehicle and drawing her weapon. Bunuelos, who’d coordinated the effort, due to her late arrival that morning, lifted a bullhorn to his mouth as the MPD vehicles pulled up and took defensive positions, blocking in a motley assortment of vehicles parked on the dirt in front of the houses.

  Loose dogs came boiling out from the structures, barking and complicating things as Bunuelos yelled, “T. J. Costa, this is the Maui Police Department! Come out with your hands on your head!”

  A long moment of silence filled with nothing but the hysterical barking of the dogs followed this opening salvo.

  Suddenly, a flurry of sound and movement. In one of the sheds, a roar of an engine announced a vehicle. A quad burst out of the lean-to, and someone wearing a helmet headed straight up the nearby mountain. At the same time, another quad burst out from behind the houses, heading in the opposite direction.

  Bunuelos threw up his hands in frustration.

  They had no means to pursue those vehicles in this rough, boulder-strewn country with no paved roads.

  “Move in and scoop up anyone who’s left,” Lei yelled, waving in the backup officers. Fanning out, they moved in on the houses, finding five family members gathered in the living room of one of the dwellings, everyone kneeling with hands on their heads.

  “You’re under arrest as an accessory.” Lei cuffed the man she identified as Costa’s brother from his driver’s license photo. He spat perilously close to her leg but didn’t resist as she and the other officers restrained him, his wife, and the other three adults.

  Once secured, Lei returned to the front door. “Sergeant Texeira.” One of the uniforms gestured for her to follow him. “You need to see this.”

  He led her to a back bedroom, where several filthy children were huddled, crying with fright.

  “Hey. Everything’s going to be okay.” Lei squatted beside the littlest, a tiny boy no more than three, folded in an older sister’s arms. Another child, a boy, had his arm around the other two. He glared at her defiantly.

  “What you chasing Uncle for?” he said. “He never done nothing.”

  “We think he did a bad thing,” Lei said. “So we have to ask him some questions. He’ll be fine. You don’t need to worry.” She took her phone out, scrolling to the number for Child Welfare Services. These kids should be in school. Their unkempt hair and filthy clothes confirmed the need for some outside intervention.

  “Uncle T.J., he never going to jail,” the boy said. “He said he goin’ make first.”

  The Hawaiian word for ‘die’ sounded like profanity in the child’s mouth. His lips quivered with fear and grief, hidden by anger. Lei straightened up, the phone to her ear as it rang through to her favorite social worker, Elizabeth Black. Liz’s calm, matter-of-fact manner put kids at ease, and she was a fierce advocate for them with both parents and the system.

  “This is tough,” Lei told the boy as the phone rang through. “But you have to trust us. There are better places for you than here.”

  She walked out of the bedroom to talk to Liz. She hoped like hell the foster home the kids ended up in really was better, but looking around this pigsty of a room, she didn’t think it was much of a gamble.

  The team swept through the buildings, finding evidence of further meth production in one of the back houses. They took the adults in for questioning as Liz arrived in a white county SUV, her long gray braid tidy down her back. She was some degree of Cherokee, and her mannish brows drew together in a frown as she took in the decrepit house.

  “Glad you called me,” she told Lei. “I’ve had multiple complaints on this family, but they always had some slick excuse for why the kids weren’t in school. Now I can finally get them out of here.”

  Lei swabbed the kids’ hands for traces of methamphetamine and wordlessly held up the chemical-infused wipes, which changed color in the presence of the drug, for Liz to see. The two older kids tested positive for trace, indicating they’d had some role to play in the meth production.

  Liz tightened her mouth into a thin line and gave one nod of her head. “Come on, kids. Let’s pack your favorite things. I brought new backpacks for you to put your stuff in.” The children went with her without protest, subdued by the drama.

  Hours later, finally back in air conditioning, Lei splashed her dirty, sweaty face at the sink of the women’s room. Disappointment was corrosive in her veins as she did her best to clean up before she had to report to the captain on the failed raid.

  Costa was probably dry camping somewhere on a mountain he knew like the back of his hand. It could be months before they caught him.

  “But the truth is, I don’t think he was Danielle’s killer,” Lei said a half-hour later in
Omura’s office, Bunuelos beside her. “Picking him up doesn’t answer who was with Danielle in the Zodiac. I’d like to turn the Costa investigation over to Narcotics for follow-up, much as it pains me to let go of Pono’s shooter that way.”

  “I agree,” Bunuelos said. “I think we’re looking for someone close to her. Or a second victim.”

  “Which, since we don’t have another body, we can’t pursue,” Omura said. “I see you called Child Welfare on those relatives of Costa’s. Was there any evidence of abuse or neglect?”

  Omura always kept an eye on Lei’s motives, knowing Lei’s history as a sexual abuse victim. Lei felt the back of her neck heat with anger. “Those kids were filthy, not in school, and had traces of meth on their hands from helping package product at the family’s factory. If that isn’t enough, I don’t know what is.”

  Omura held Lei’s gaze for a long moment. “I know you have a sore spot for these kinds of cases. Just protecting you and our department. So, next steps.” She flipped through the file. “I’m okaying transferring the pursuit of Costa to Narcotics. They will also have the most info on his known associates. As for you two, find Ben Miller. He’s the priority now. Dismissed.”

  Lei and Bunuelos went back to Lei’s cubicle. Gerry mopped his brow. “Thank God for air conditioning,” he said. “We’ve had a BOLO out for days now on Miller, and officers went by his known address. What else can we do?”

  “Let’s call the college again. He was pretty determined to get his PhD. That would be a lot for him to flush down the toilet just to avoid another round of questioning. After all, we don’t have anything hard on him. In fact, the baby’s DNA ruled him out as father.” Lei remembered the sample she’d dropped off at the morgue. “Let me check with Gregory about that sample I asked him to run.”

  She picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Gregory’s line. The ME picked up.

  “Maui Memorial Death Department,” Dr. Gregory intoned.

  Lei was startled into a snort of laughter. “You must have known it was me.”

  “There’s this wonder known as caller ID. What can I do for you, Lei?”

  “I’m calling about that DNA paternity sample I dropped off. Any results?”

  “Oh, damn, I knew I was forgetting something. I’ll get right on it. Takes a couple of hours to run the comparison. I’ll call you as soon as I have anything.”

  “And since I’ve got you—we’re keeping an eye out for a second victim. Found any John Does lately between age twenty and fifty?”

  “No, nothing new. Always got a few old ones waiting for someone to claim them, sadly.”

  “Nah. If this was related to the case, it would be because this man went down at approximately the same time as our vic Danielle Phillips. Well, do call me when you have anything on that DNA sample.” She hung up, turned to Bunuelos. “Let’s go over to the University of Hawaii campus and rattle some cages, shake Ben Miller loose.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lei shook Dr. Farnsworth’s hand a second time in her tidy office at the University of Hawaii. “This is my partner, Gerry Bunuelos.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” the dignified head of the Maui campus said. “I wish I were meeting you in happier circumstances. Lani’s death has hit us hard, and she’ll be difficult to replace.”

  “We’re here because our officers haven’t been able to locate Ben Miller,” Lei said. “We need him for a second interview, and he’s not at his usual address. We wondered if you knew where he might be.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” Farnsworth went around to her desk. “We sent him out to wrap up part of Lani’s fish-population study. He’s out at La Perouse Bay doing fish counts.” She picked up a sheaf of papers, along with a couple of detailed topographical maps of the area. “I’ll have my assistant make copies of these. I’m not sure exactly where he is. I’d call him for you, but there’s no phone reception out there.”

  “Thanks so much.” Lei took the papers. “How does one do a population study, by the way?”

  “You grid off an area. Count the fish within that area. Grid another one randomly, count that area. Average and project for an entire area. You use random sampling to extrapolate.”

  Lei imagined being in scuba gear, floating at just the right height, counting off the fish that wandered into a gridded area. It sounded so peaceful compared to what she did all day. She really wanted to get back in the water. Aina Thomas’s invitation to dive the wreck out in Lahaina seemed like a wonderful, tempting break from all of this.

  But no. She had a job to do. There was no room in her life for time wasters like recreational diving with a good-looking guy who wasn’t her husband.

  “Thanks so much for the lead. Can we get those map copies now?” Lei asked.

  La Perouse Bay, almost directly below Ulupalakua but at sea level, was a swath of raw black lava deposited by the island’s last active flow four hundred years ago. As Lei drove her Tacoma down the single-lane, potholed road through the lava fields, crystalline waves breaking on the rocks beside them, Lei felt a deep excitement—the familiar and addictive feeling of a hunter closing in on prey.

  “Right now I think he’s our guy.” She navigated a deep puddle in the road’s pitted surface. Tall, spindly wild tobacco and bushy native naio plants studded with feathery white blossoms were the only vegetation in the rugged area besides the occasional hardy kiawe tree. They still had a couple of miles of rough road before they’d arrive at a parking area that led into the reserve. “He’s out here carrying on her work. I can see Miller justifying her death even as he steps into her shoes.”

  “Don’t know who I like for it,” Bunuelos said. “On the one hand, there are the poachers she caught on the GoPro. We have never identified them. I felt pretty confident it was Costa until we got the footage of a male in the boat with her. Even if that guy didn’t kill her, who is he? How did he get back from Molokini? And why hasn’t he come forward to help us if he didn’t kill her? I’m with you. I don’t think she would have taken Costa out on the Zodiac. On the other hand, Costa had a speargun the right size, and his own Zodiac.”

  “So here’s how I think it went down,” Lei said. “I think she knew she was pregnant, and that’s why she was happy in spite of the husband, in spite of everything. She took Miller out for a research trip to Molokini to count fish or whatever, bringing her GoPro to catch any poachers, as she always did. Maybe she told Miller she was pregnant, or that it was over, something new that pushed him over the edge. When they were down there and spotted the poachers she photographed, he shot her to frame them.”

  “I thought you liked the husband for this.”

  “I just don’t like the husband, period.” Lei smiled at Bunuelos. “The guy’s a slimy two-timing prick.”

  “No argument there. Well, back to Miller, then. I’m still having the same problem putting him at the scene. How did he get back to shore if the UH Zodiac was still tied up on the back side of Molokini? He tried to make it look like she went out alone, which she did plenty of times.”

  “Yeah. We never found any definitive trace in that boat except the sperm.”

  “Speaking of that.” Bunuelos gave her a quick, apologetic glance. “Kevin Parker told me it matched Ben Miller’s DNA.”

  “So he was probably beating off in the boat that night he said they did it,” Lei concluded. “Yuck.”

  They mulled in silence. Lei’s gaze wandered over the great black plain of frothy, razor-sharp lava in the reserve area, which was getting a total rest for two years due to the wear and tear of both heavy tourist and local use. She knew several heiaus and burial sites added to the area’s cultural as well as environmental sensitivity, but all Lei could see was a forbidding expanse of barren, hot black rock in all directions.

  They reached the parking area. Lei spotted a white Maui county truck. Mark Nunes was behind the wheel, using binoculars to watch the ocean off the parking area where a diving float bobbed. She parked, and they got into Kevlar and checked weap
ons. She didn’t expect trouble from Miller, but after Pono’s shooting, she wasn’t going to take any chances.

  Nunes came over, holstering the binoculars at his waist. “What’s up?”

  “We’re looking for Ben Miller,” Lei said. “Wondering if you know the guy? He was Lani’s grad student.”

  “Sure, I know Ben.” Nunes rocked back on his heels, his eyes narrowed. He was wearing the standard navy DLNR enforcement uniform with heavy boots. He hooked his thumbs into the belt at his trim waist. “He in some kind of trouble?”

  “No. We just need to talk with him about something and heard he was out there doing some fish counts,” Lei said.

  “I know the area well, including the areas where Lani was doing her research,” Nunes said. “I’ll take you there.”

  It was tempting to have his help, because the maps Farnsworth had given them were hard to understand, just a series of lines of paper with little context. But Lei remembered another case where one of the helpful park rangers had turned out to be involved and decided against it. It was still a possibility that Nunes had more of a relationship with Danielle than they knew.

  “Nah, we better do this solo. Though I’d appreciate it if you’d mark the areas where you think he might be.” Lei got out the map and handed Nunes a pen. He described the route to a hidden bay some miles in and marked the area for them.

  “Thanks.” Lei took the pen and map back from the agent, liking the attractive angle of his jaw, the intelligence in his dark eyes. She could see Lani falling for this guy. Her glance flashed to his hand—no wedding ring. “We really appreciate it. Looks like you’ve got your hands full keeping an eye on those divers. What are they doing, so close to the reserve?”

  “Aquarium fishing. It’s legal up to the line of the reserve, and a lot of these guys go straight out here off the parking lot. There are more fish near the protected waters, and the fish don’t know where the line is.”