by Toby Neal
That was all the warning Lei had before Anna Scatalina, Marcella’s mother, elbowed Lei out of the way with all the fierce excitement of a pro football player moving in for a tackle. The small bright figure in a shapely muumuu exclaimed rapturously as she reached for the baby.
“’Cella! My grandson! He is here!” Anna lowered her excited shriek to a whisper as the baby twitched in reaction to the volume. Tears gleamed in her eyes and she held out her arms. “May I hold him?”
“Of course, Mama.” Marcella handed off the baby to her ecstatic mother, who turned to face her husband. Egidio Scatalina was unabashedly crying, mopping at his face with a handkerchief.
“Oh, ’Cella! We never thought to see this day!” He waved his hands, exclaiming in a wave of delighted Italian over the bundle in Anna’s arms.
The new grandparents sat down with the baby on the visiting chairs, so Lei hoisted herself up to sit on the edge of Marcella’s bed.
“The most intense thing ever, huh?” Lei asked.
On closer inspection, Marcella did look exhausted. Her lustrous brown hair was a tangled mess around her shoulders. She smelled strongly of something yeasty and dark. One of her eyes had a broken blood vessel. But Marcella’s smile was victorious and suffused with a joy Lei longed to experience.
“I feel so gross. I really need a shower,” Marcella said. “Can you help me? I’m still a little wobbly. It was like running a marathon and then shitting a watermelon.”
“Marcella!” scolded Anna Scatalina, covering the baby’s ears with a hand. “Language!”
Lei helped her friend to the bathroom and came back out. By then Marcus had returned, and she hugged the man she thought of as a brother-in-law.
“I hear you were the hero of the hour,” Lei said.
Marcus shook his head. He shared the musky smell Marcella had, and Lei realized it was the smell of birth, of physical extremity, and of new life. “No one can prepare you for something like that. Terrifying. And amazing.” He pointed his chin over at the baby, clearly the center of his grandparents’ devotion. “I can’t wait to get Marcella and the little guy home and have them all to myself. Taking some family leave from HPD.”
“So when are you getting out of here?” Lei gestured to the room.
“Tomorrow, if the baby’s tests and Marcella’s checkup go well. Brace yourself for more relatives—my parents are on the way from Maui. The Scatalinas are going to have some baby-holding competition.”
“I could use some help getting dressed,” Marcella called from the bathroom. Lei moved toward the door, but Marcus’s eyes lit up.
“I’m next in the shower. I’ll help you, honey.” He slipped inside the little room just as baby Jonas began crying, a thin mew like a kitten. His grandparents stood up in agitation, and Lei saw her chance.
“Let me hold him a minute, until Marcella gets back.” Anna Scatalina handed the infant over reluctantly. Lei put him against her shoulder, humming and rocking, one hand stabilizing his neck, the other under the baby’s plump bottom. Jonas went quiet, though still snuffling around, and clearly hungry. His plump weight felt delicious, the smell of his tender neck intoxicating.
A moment later Marcella came out of the bathroom, dressed and looking for the baby. “I thought I heard him cry.”
“Your friend, she knows how to hold a baby,” Anna said approvingly.
“Yeah, I remember this from when Kiet was tiny,” Lei said. “But I can tell he’s hungry.” As if on cue, Jonas emitted a fierce squawk that made them all jump and laugh. Marcella got back into the bed.
“Hand him over, Lei. We’re still getting the hang of this breastfeeding thing, but I’m ready for more practice, and he obviously is, too.”
Lei handed the baby over while Anna helped Marcella get situated with a pillow and blanket over her shoulder. Soon they were settled, the baby feeding contentedly. Lei watched the tableau of the Scatalinas enjoying their grandbaby as Marcella fed him. Loneliness and not belonging felt like a bubble around Lei, separating her from everyone in the room. She blinked gritty eyes, not sure why she wanted to cry.
“I’ll just go—make some phone calls,” she said to no one in particular, and went out into the hall.
Lei walked down the antiseptic-smelling hallway. All around her, people were bustling with purpose—nurses on errands, doctors with that important air they always had, and other visitors headed toward rooms with bouquets of flowers.
Lei felt unmoored. Her feet were too far away, her vision telescoping in and out as she wandered, and she realized it had been more than twenty-four hours since she’d slept. She found herself in front of the floor’s nursery window.
Clear plastic bassinets filled with precious cargo wrapped in pink and blue blankets dotted the room. Nurses moved among them, checking on the babies, adjusting blankets, changing diapers. In the back of the large space, Lei could see the neonatal unit with a tiny, wizened preemie inside, and beside that, a few incubators.
Lei stood there, staring. The sight of the babies was utterly absorbing and yet brought tears welling up from that deep, empty place inside her. She leaned her forehead on the cool glass and let the tears slide down her cheeks.
In her pocket, the phone rang, vibrating against her leg. Her heart jumped. She wiped an arm across her face hastily, scrubbing the tears away, and reached down into the cargo pocket where she kept the satellite phone.
At last, a call. An unknown number showed in the little window. Her heart beat with heavy thumps, drumming in her ears. “This is Sergeant Lei Texeira.”
“Sergeant Texeira? This is Lieutenant Commander Chad Westbrook. I’m working with Security Solutions as a liaison between the company and the United States Armed Forces. I have some news of your husband. I’m on Oahu at the Pearl Harbor naval base, and I’d like to speak to you in person, if I may.”
Lei’s lips felt numb as she told him her grandfather’s address and arranged a time to meet in a few hours.
There was a terrible roaring in her ears as she hung up the phone and slid it back into its special pocket. She clicked the snap shut, took one last look at the babies, and turned away to face whatever came next.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lei didn’t remember leaving the hospital. Didn’t remember driving back out to Punchbowl through the crowded, colorful streets. Didn’t remember getting to her grandfather’s modest ranch house. Didn’t know how she ended up with her grandfather and her son in his tidy greenhouse out back. It felt like a fast-forward film that finally slowed to normal only when she held Kiet in her arms.
“Grandfather, an officer from Pearl Harbor is coming over to talk to me in a couple of hours. He has news about Michael.”
“What is it?” Soga, who had been showing Kiet how he trimmed his bonsai trees, widened dark eyes in the fans of wrinkles that bracketed them.
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. I have to get some sleep first, before he comes. I can’t function right now. Can you…?” She nodded down at the boy, who’d latched on to Lei with both arms and legs. “Maybe something fun, like the zoo?”
“Zoo?” Kiet leaned back, looked at his great-grandfather. “I want to go!” The Honolulu Zoo was a big treat they’d been looking forward to. Lei had planned on taking Kiet herself, but she needed privacy for whatever this news was.
“Of course. Why don’t we pack a snack, little man?” Soga ruffled the boy’s hair. “I can show you how to make musubi. I have all the ingredients.”
Kiet gave Lei a smacking kiss on the cheek. “Get a nap, Mama. Your eyes look all tired.”
“I am all tired.” Lei forced a smile.
Her grandfather walked the child back into the kitchen. Lei heard the light tone of her son’s voice, the deeper rumble of Soga’s in the background. She forced her legs to move, walking into the guest room, where she set an alarm on her phone. She fell facedown on the bed.
The next thing Lei heard was the beeping of the phone alarm. Disoriented, Lei felt a surge of panic. S
omething bad is coming. She looked around wildly.
The room was dim. Late-afternoon light fell gently through windows curtained in translucent muslin. A tiny breeze stirred her hair as she sat up. Her grandfather must have shut the door, and Kiet’s colorful backpack was missing.
Lei checked her phone. She had twenty minutes before the lieutenant commander showed up, and she needed every one of them. She showered and squished Curl Tamer into her hair so it would dry into ringlets. She dressed in a favorite shirt, a scoop-necked tee in a deep olive green that Stevens had said made her look like a woods elf. She’d loved those little comments he’d make. They showed her how differently he saw her than she did herself.
She wouldn’t let her mind go to the worst-case scenario. This meeting was simply the update she’d asked for. She’d even thrown her weight around to get this information. Now the military was responding in person. It could be good news. His contract was canceled, or he was being shipped home with some minor injury.
She could hope.
Her face in the mirror was colorless, her eyes huge and haunted. Lei put on mascara and a swipe of deep rose lipstick. She tried some of the lipstick on her cheeks as blusher—a mistake ending up in clown-like circles. Lei was scrubbing the lipstick off her face when the doorbell rang.
She jumped like she’d been stung, clutched the bathroom sink, did a couple of relaxation breaths, and headed for the front door.
Lieutenant Commander Westbrook was dapper in a uniform trimmed with braid and colorful medals. A plain black sedan was parked at the curb behind him.
“Lieutenant Commander. Welcome. Please come in.” Lei opened the door and stood aside. Her movements were stiff, her voice wooden, because every physical movement was something she had to tell her body to do.
“Call me Chad.” Westbrook took her hand in his, holding it longer than necessary. Longer than a handshake. Long enough for Lei to know it was bad news.
Black spots filled her vision as it closed down to a dot. Keep breathing. Westbrook gave her hand a tug.
“We should sit down.”
They sat on her grandfather’s hard futon couch. Westbrook took off a snowy-white hat trimmed in gold braid and set it on the low lacquered table.
“I’m very sorry to tell you that your husband has been captured.”
“Captured.” Lei’s breath blew out on the word. “Not dead?”
“Not dead. No. In fact, we have proof of life.”
Lei swallowed the bile that boiled up her throat as Westbrook opened a briefcase she hadn’t even noticed he was carrying. The clasps clicked open. Inside were several files and a small brown-wrapped package.
“Our lab has gone over this packaging thoroughly. There was no usable trace,” Westbrook said. He was talking to her like a cop, like she’d be interested in the details, and that kept Lei from vomiting all over his lap as the officer took a box out of the packaging and opened it.
Lei had been prepared for a severed finger, an ear, even a lock of Michael’s brown hair—so the sight of the bone hook pendant she’d given her husband the night before he left felt almost anticlimactic.
“They also left a photo of him holding that day’s paper,” Westbrook said.
Lei took the pendant out of the box and stroked the ivory-colored bone, touching the slightly rough, handmade coconut-husk cording that banded the top of the hook and formed a necklace.
It had been a little stiff and new when she’d put it on Stevens. Now the cording was darker and softer with skin oils. It had been cut off his neck. She could tell because it was missing the bone eyepiece used to attach the necklace to a loop on the other side. The hook itself had deepened from bright white to a soft ivory.
“What happened?” Lei felt the bone warming under her fingers as she stroked the symbol of Maui and of fishermen providers.
“We aren’t totally sure. His encampment was attacked. There were casualties, and several captives were taken.”
“Where was he stationed?”
A long pause. Lei looked up into Westbrook’s cool blue eyes. She felt her own grief and anger blazing in the intense stare she gave the officer, and he finally looked away, his shoulders sagging. “I can’t tell you. It’s classified. But it was in South America. A jungle area.”
“What’s being done to get him back?”
“We’ve sent troops over. Investigators. We’re waiting for a ransom demand.”
“So how did you get the bone hook?”
“It was left at the camp, along with other proof-of-life items from the other captives. The photos were on a stick drive. No ransom demand yet, but as I said, we’re expecting that anytime now. All the contractors carry kidnapping insurance. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this situation has occurred.”
A surge of adrenaline swept through her, powering Lei to her feet. “I have to go over there. I can track him.”
“Absolutely not. Sadly, we’ve dealt with this situation before. We have experts working on this.”
“Experts like my husband? Good law enforcement people you’ve sucked out of their jobs or retirement with promises of easy money?” Lei snarled.
Westbrook stood. The officer didn’t back away, though now he was too close, looming in an intimidating way. His voice was measured and slow. “Your husband understood the risks he was taking. He’s a patriot, and you should be proud of that. He would not want you to come after him and endanger yourself. You’re in shock and grieving. That’s to be expected.”
“I’m also pissed as hell.” Lei’s fists were balled. She wanted, very badly, to hit him.
He nodded with dignity. “Also to be expected.”
Finally Lei whirled, pacing back and forth in the small living room, quickly covering the length of the sparely furnished space. “What’s next?”
“As I said before, we’re waiting on ransom demands for the lieutenant as well as the other prisoners. We’ll keep you informed, every step of the way, via the phone you were provided. Try to relax. He’s going to be fine. Now, if you’ll excuse me. You aren’t the only family I have to inform.”
Lei followed the officer to the door and shut it behind Westbrook, unable to think of anything to say that felt adequate to express the chaos of emotion she was stifling. Turning away from the door, she realized she still held the pendant.
The bone hook felt warm, almost alive, the organic material holding the heat of her skin. Lei tied the hook around her throat with the broken cord and touched it where it rested against the battered white gold pendant she always wore.
“This isn’t coming off until I can give it back to him,” Lei said aloud.
The words were a vow and a promise.
Turn the page to keep reading book eleven of the Paradise Crime Mysteries, Red Rain!
Red Rain
Paradise Crime Mysteries Book 11
Red rain, in Hawaiian culture, is an omen associated with royalty. An incident of “blood” or red rain, such as a primarily red rainbow, a shower at sea colored red by sunset, or an unusual red mist of cloud—all of these things—heralded the birth, death, or transition of a chief.
–Summarized from The Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folklore
This book is dedicated to Nalu, the biggest little dog I’ve ever known, and the inspiration for Keiki. Thank you for joining our family for sixteen years of wonderful, heroic dog love. You will never be forgotten.
June 1999 - to November 28, 2015
RIP
Chapter One
The child’s skull, stained red by iron-rich Hawaiian soil, rested on Captain Omura’s desk, its empty eye sockets gazing at Lei through the Ziploc bag it was encased in.
“Shut the door, Sergeant Texeira.” Captain Omura looked away from her monitor, the bell of her immaculate bob swinging. “You said you wanted a private meeting.”
“Yes, sir.” Lei clicked the office door shut and sat down in one of the hard plastic supplicant chairs in front of the captain’s desk
, trying not to look at the skull. “While I was on Oahu this weekend, I had a visit from an army liaison with the company Stevens went to work for overseas, Security Solutions.” Lei pushed her hair behind her ears, groping for words, forcing them past the lump in her throat. “He informed me that Michael was captured.”
“Captured? What does that mean?” Omura’s carefully groomed brows snapped together, and she leaned forward. “What kind of operation was this?”
“A training camp for military police somewhere in Central America. They wouldn’t tell me where. His role was to work with armed forces personnel on investigation techniques, and he and several others were kidnapped. The army officer who informed me said that they expected a ransom demand anytime now, and that they’d handle it. The men were insured.”
“So they expect that kind of thing?” Omura’s dark eyes widened. “That’s our tax dollars at work?”
“I don’t know about that. I don’t know much of anything.” Lei threw up her hands, stood, and paced back and forth in front of the captain’s desk. “I’d like permission to take some personal leave.”
“Denied,” Omura said immediately. “I can’t spare you.”
“Come on, Captain! He’s your man, too!” Lei’s husband, Lieutenant Michael Stevens, was one of Omura’s steadiest officers, in charge of training new detectives, always working a full roster of lieutenant duties. “Don’t you want to know what happened to him?”