by Toby Neal
Finally she was where she belonged. In my arms, her head on my chest, her hair in my face. I pushed those springing curls out of the way as I had done a hundred times before, petting them so they lay down a little. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be fainting. Are you okay?”
Lei made a little snuffling noise, and I felt her nod. She squeezed me, and damn, she was strong. “Let go a little,” I wheezed. “My ribs.”
She loosened her hold, but not that much. I didn’t mind. God, she smelled good, the coconut oil Tiare had given her scenting her skin and Kiet’s baby shampoo in her hair. She felt good, too, light and strong, but heavy in all the right places. My hands wandered a little, getting a feel of those places. She felt even better than she smelled.
“I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted. I have more calls to make.” Dr. Wilson sounded satisfied. She damn well should be. That woman had saved the day.
“Thanks, Doc,” I called as she shut the door behind her.
I pushed Lei’s hair back again, sweeping it aside with my hand and loving the texture, soft and bouncy. I tipped her face up. She was still pale, but her lips were pink again, thankfully. “Will you still love me when I’m a crazy alcoholic with a fractured skull, cognitive impairment, and a gunshot wound?”
She just kissed me. I was always the one who’d tried to tell her how beautiful she was, how she made me feel. But she just kissed me. Her mouth was like a strawberry sundae, sweet, slippery, and delicious. Those little noises she made as she turned so that she fit in her special spot alongside me—shoot me now and I’d die a happy man.
“Are you okay?” She whispered.
“Now that you’re here, I will be.”
“I have so much to tell you. Our ohana is getting bigger.”
“Oh, yeah?” My hands were wandering again.
“I rescued some boys on my last case. I’m an aunty now, and that makes you an uncle. We have a funeral and a birthday party coming up.”
“Uncle. I can do that,” I mumbled, distracted, feeling myself come alive under her touch. “I have to tell you something, too. I’m different, after this. I can feel it. Something’s gone that was messing with my head. I’m off the booze, permanently.”
“I’m so glad.” Lei pulled back a little. She undid the bone hook she’d given me when I left from her own neck. “I had a new thong put on this.” She fastened the pendant on me, warm from her skin, and gave the hook a pat as it lay against my throat. “Back where it belongs.”
We lay there for a long moment. I shut my eyes, feeling our hearts and breathing fall into sync as she snuggled close. Lei took my hand in hers and slid it under her shirt, placing it on the smooth, taut skin of her belly. “You better get well fast. We’re having a baby,” she whispered.
I thought I wasn’t hearing her right. She was finally pregnant again? I felt a wave of dizziness and shut my eyes. It was too much joy after so little. My hand, fingers spread, stroked that smooth, sacred place near her waist where our child grew. “Really?” My voice was hoarse.
“Really.” She took my face in her hands, looked into my eyes. “Are you happy?”
“I don’t deserve this much happiness. I left you. I’ll never do it again.” I could hardly force the words out past the emotion clogging my throat.
“You better not.” She kissed me. “Because I won’t let you go.”
Turn the page to keep reading book twelve of the Paradise Crime Mysteries, Bitter Feast!
Bitter Feast
Paradise Crime Mysteries Book 12
The father said to his slaves, “Quickly! Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.” And they began to feast.
Luke 15:22–24
Chapter One
Stevens
Lieutenant Michael Stevens hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and gazed down at his newest case. “Tell me what you see.”
Detective Brandon Mahoe squatted in the narrow, chilly space of the walk-in refrigerator beside the corpse. Blood had spread in a pool beneath the victim, filling the round holes of a raised rubber floor mat. The smell, more of a metallic feeling in Stevens’s nostrils, was almost lost in other competing odors: garlic, ripe fruit, mushrooms, scallions, and the produce lining the shelves.
“Male, six foot, trim build at a hundred and seventy-five pounds or so. Dark hair. Maybe thirties or younger. Cause of death appears to be stabbing.” The young detective wasn’t being sarcastic about the handle of a large butcher knife protruding from the man’s back—Mahoe didn’t do sarcastic. “Probably a kitchen staff employee, to judge by the chef’s coat he’s wearing.”
Stevens dropped to his haunches beside Mahoe. He blew into a latex glove, inflating it to go on easy. He did the same to another, snapping it on. “Good start.”
“Can we shut the refrigerator door?” A male voice, harsh with impatience, came from the doorway. “All this food. It will spoil.”
Stevens slowly unfolded to his full, intimidating height. He turned and stared down at the stocky, belligerent figure confronting him. “And you are?”
“Chef Winston Noriega. This is my restaurant.” The man, his chin outthrust, folded tattooed, muscular arms over a pristine white apron. “There are thousands of dollars of farm-fresh gourmet produce in this walk-in. I see no reason for it to go to waste just because François got himself killed in here.”
“Back up out of this area.” Stevens used his voice like a lash to cut across the arrogant chef’s posturing. He advanced toward the man. “We’ll close the door. But only so we can have privacy. I’m sure you wouldn’t in good conscience serve food to your customers that has been part of a crime scene, even if we allowed it. Officer!” He gestured to one of the uniforms gathering the names of the kitchen staff. “Put up crime scene tape in this kitchen, clear this area, and put Chef Noriega in his office until I have time to interview him.”
“Yes, sir.” The officer gestured to his partner, who shooed the staff lookie-loos into an adjacent area and pulled out a roll of scene tape.
“You can’t do this!” Noriega said. A muscle jerked in a jaw wide and square as a bulldog’s. Stevens glanced over at the officer who’d approached and now stood behind the chef. First responders had told Stevens that the chef had discovered the body.
“What did you say the victim’s name was?”
“That’s François Métier, my sous-chef. Don’t touch me.” The chef shrugged away from the officer’s hand and stomped toward his office. Stevens stared after the restaurateur thoughtfully, watching the officer accompany him to the door of his office. A woman, tall and elegant in black trousers, slipped in after the chef. Probably the wife—he’d heard she helped manage the famous restaurant.
Stevens pulled the door of the walk-in closed. Mahoe began photographing the scene. Flashes from the camera threw the tight setting into high relief repeatedly against Stevens’s eyeballs: floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with every sort of foodstuff; the body on the floor, one hand down beside the body, the other curled near the man’s face; the blood pool filling the rubber mat.
There was a gleam of something in the victim’s hand lying alongside the body. Stevens bent low to investigate the object.
A familiar twinge in his side reminded him of a gunshot wound that had gone septic months ago. Healed now, that area still tickled him with his mortality whenever it had a chance. “Look, there’s a ring in his hand. Photograph this.”
Mahoe approached with the department’s Canon and recorded the item in question; then Stevens lifted a diamond-encrusted band with a large center stone from the dead man’s hand.
“Looks like an engagement ring.” He slipped it into an evidence bag. “Did you call Dr. Gregory?”
“Yes, sir. The medical examiner’s on his way.”
“No need to call me ‘sir
.’” Stevens had been Mahoe’s original commanding officer, but they were working as partners now.
“Yes, sir.” Mahoe shook his head. “Sorry. Habit.”
A tap came at the steel door. Mahoe, closer to the entrance, pushed the handle, and the unit opened with a pneumatic whoosh. Dr. Phil Gregory entered, carrying his kit and a body bag, cheeks pink with excitement. The portly medical examiner had been on a health kick lately, and his trademark aloha shirt, decorated with hula girls today, hung loosely from his shoulders. “A murder at Feast! This is my favorite restaurant!”
“You’re looking good, Doc, so you can’t have been eating here that often,” Stevens said. “I’ve heard the food’s good, but after talking to the chef, I’m not wild about coming here as a customer.”
“Well, he’s known for being a perfectionistic prick. That just makes for better dining, and this restaurant is all about the food.” Dr. Gregory gloved up and slid booties on over his shoes as he approached the body, opening his doctor’s bag to make his initial assessment.
Stevens nodded. “Gotta say, I wasn’t impressed with the chef’s response to all this. He seems more worried about losing his produce than his employee.”
“That’s consistent with what I’ve heard about Chef Noriega.” Dr. Gregory squatted beside the body. “So how’s Lei? Has she gone out on maternity leave yet?”
“She’s hanging in there. Got a couple more days on active duty.” Stevens’s very pregnant wife had finally had to slow down and was often irritable. Being ungainly was tough for such a physical person. “Baby can’t come soon enough for either of us.”
The space felt crowded with three men and a body in the packed area, so Mahoe sidled past Dr. Gregory. “I’ll go see what’s happening outside. Gather our interviewees.”
“Leave the camera. I’ll need to get more shots when we roll the body,” Stevens told his protégé. He turned back to Gregory. “So we got the call at oh eight hundred hours, when Métier’s body was discovered by Chef Noriega, who came in early for some prep work.” Stevens prodded the corpse with his foot. “I’m guessing this guy, identified by Chef Noriega as François Métier, his sous-chef, was offed last night sometime. He’s in full rigor, plus the cold of the fridge, so probably after the night’s rush. Must have been late in the shift or someone would have found him.”
“Murder weapon appears pretty obvious.” Dr. Gregory pointed at the knife protruding from the victim’s back. “This stroke went in so deep that it broke the skin on the other side of his body. Went right through his kidney and probably nailed an artery. Bet it dropped him like a stone. Exsanguination will be cause of death, at a guess.”
“No defensive wounds, either. There was a ring in one of his hands.” Stevens withdrew the small plastic evidence bag and showed it to Dr. Gregory. “I’m guessing he knew and trusted his attacker.”
“Maybe it was a woman,” Dr. Gregory said. “He was going to pop the question in the fridge where they met, and she popped him instead.”
Stevens’s mouth twitched involuntarily at the gallows humor. “Very romantic. But doesn’t the depth of the stab wound look challenging for a woman?”
“Easy with one of these chef’s knives. This looks like one of those super-sharp ceramic blades. They go through meat like butter.”
A flashback swamped Stevens’s mind: his hand, fisted around a combat knife, driving up into a man’s throat from below. Blood poured down his arm, only slightly warmer than the jungle air.
Not real. It never happened. He shook his head abruptly to clear it. “Early days yet for speculation.”
“Of course, but this looks pretty straightforward.” Dr. Gregory moved around the body, looking it over carefully, his glasses fogging slightly. “Dr. Tanaka’s been called to another scene, so can you help me? Let’s remove the knife and roll the body.”
“Let me pull any prints first.” Stevens used gel tape to gather impressions from the handle as Dr. Gregory bagged the man’s hands. “Damn. Just looks like a few smears, but hopefully we can retrieve something back at the station. You do the honors, removing it.” He took an evidence bag from his crime kit and snapped it open.
Dr. Gregory grasped the knife handle carefully, holding it with the tips of his fingers so as not to disturb any prints. He lifted it from the body with startling ease. “Whoever did this either knew exactly where to stab, or was damn lucky. It went right where it should go for maximum damage. Hit no bones along the way, which is harder than people realize.”
Stevens held the bag open, and Dr. Gregory dropped the knife into it. While Stevens sealed and wrote on the bag, Dr. Gregory continued his examination.
Mahoe poked his head in. “I’ve got some interviews lined up, Lieutenant. Want I should start taking statements?”
“Sounds good. I’m helping Dr. G with the body. Need a little more time. Leave the chef for me to talk to, though.”
“You got it.” The young detective withdrew his head.
Stevens arranged the evidence collected so far in the open area of his briefcase-like crime kit as Dr. Gregory performed the body-temp indignity with a rectal thermometer. The ME spread the long, zip-up body bag wide in preparation for receiving its cargo. “The victim’s way cold and in rigor, as you speculated, Lieutenant. Consistent with death last night. I’ll know more after the full post. Let’s roll and bag him.”
Stevens took the man’s feet and Dr. Gregory the shoulders, and they flipped the corpse onto its back.
Blood had pooled beneath the body where the tip of the knife had penetrated the abdomen, providing an exit wound for fluid to drain out. The vivid liquid, darkened with the hours, had spread to cover the white of the man’s side-buttoned chef’s coat and looked black in the fluorescent light. Blood still trapped in the body had gathered in bruise-like, purplish lividity in visible tissues. The smell of coppery fruit felt substantial in Stevens’s nostrils.
“I’ll deal with this back at the morgue.” Dr. Gregory gestured to the blood-soaked clothing. The man’s rigor held one arm up at his side, head turned and eyes closed, just as he’d fallen.
“Sounds good.” Stevens picked up the Canon and photographed the front of the body.
François Métier had regular features and a square jaw decorated with a hipster swatch of beard. He’d been a handsome man before dusky lividity had stained his face. Stevens moved in close, photographing.
“Should be some interesting interviews ahead.” Stevens set aside the camera and rifled through the man’s pockets. He dropped a wallet and phone into evidence bags. “Don’t see anything else of interest.”
“I’ll do a thorough check for trace back at my lab.”
When they were both done recording and inspecting, Stevens lifted the man’s heels, encased in rubber-soled work shoes, and Dr. Gregory grasped the rigid shoulders. They slid the body into the black bag.
“I brought the gurney. It’s just outside,” Gregory said.
“Well, I’m not throwing my back out—getting too old for that shit.” Stevens opened the fridge’s door. “Mahoe! Need help here.”
“What’s up, LT?” The detective stepped up into the narrow space.
“You’ve got the young back we need,” Stevens said. With the three of them lifting, they soon had the black-bagged corpse on the gurney and strapped down.
“I’ll let you know anything interesting I find.” Dr. Gregory lifted a hand in farewell. The ME pushed his burden out through the kitchen, accompanied by one of the uniforms, as Stevens retrieved his crime kit.
“Mahoe, can you put crime scene tape across the walk-in? No one goes in or out until we have a chance to have Kevin go over every inch of it.” Kevin Parker, MPD’s pimply-faced University of Hawaii criminology intern, was proving a big asset at crime scenes, with an instinct for finding anything out of place and an eye for detail that had helped on several cases.
Stevens waited for Mahoe to seal the fridge with scene tape, using the time to organize his crime kit and label th
e evidence bags, but as he did so, a sense of dreamlike distance from his surroundings distracted him.
Stevens stripped off his gloves, flexed his hands, and rolled his neck as he looked around the clean, brightly lit kitchen. Months after a military contractor stint that had resulted in some serious injuries, Stevens still sometimes felt a sense of unreality about his perceptions, a barrier between himself and what was happening around him that his friend, psychologist Dr. Wilson, called “derealization.”
“A symptom of your head injury,” the psychologist had said when he’d called her not long ago to complain that the bizarre sensation was still happening. “Just weather it, along with the flashbacks. Be patient and try not to take it too seriously. Use a physical cue to ground yourself in the present moment’s reality. Remind yourself that you’re home, safe, and that your brain just isn’t firing right.”
Stevens had done a course of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, courtesy of Security Solutions, the company he’d contracted with, as part of his severance package. The EMDR had helped, but he still experienced these disorienting episodes. Looking down, he rubbed his steel watch against his wrist, eliciting a cool pinch of metal against skin as a physical cue. His wife also had a habit of rubbing something or squeezing her leg when she had symptoms—Lei still sometimes used the same sorts of techniques, though the source of her trauma was very different.
The jungle rose in his memories. Deep green light, almost black, was pierced by lance-like rays of sunlight filtering through the canopy. The smell of rot and growth was a rich synthesis in his nostrils. He moved forward through the damp mulch of the forest floor, pushing aside vines and undergrowth, the whoop and holler of monkeys in the distance, enemies at his back and hazards ahead. . .
Not real. Never happened. He wrenched himself back to the present. The men behind his kidnapping had been court-martialed. A thorough review of foreign contracted operations was underway at the federal level, Colonel Westbrook had assured him. Starchy and formal, the colonel, liaison between the army and his former private-contract company, had turned out to be a good guy.