by Toby Neal
Lei and Pono hurried to the fingerprint lab with the samples he’d collected from the van, but there were too many to scan and log. Omura, alerted to their predicament, called every available officer in to help with the scanning, but there were only two machines anyway. Lei and Pono left the other officers at it and, after putting on clean shirts, went to the conference room Omura liked for press conferences. Its gracious koa-wood podium and big brass Maui Police Department emblem on the wall sent a solid and dignified message.
Lei, Pono, and Captain Omura sketched out their announcement, and Lei felt somewhat ready when the reporters and a cameraman from KHIN-2 News came in. Omura brought the conference to order and addressed the group, giving the sad news confirming the homicide in a carefully worded statement: Surf star Makoa Simmons had drowned, and “foul play was suspected.” She introduced Lei and Pono as primaries on the case and opened up the floor for questions.
Lei felt nervous sweat prickling under her arms as she stood beside Pono under the bright camera lights. They ended up having to say, “We can’t answer that at this time,” way more often than Lei liked, but she finally ended the conference by looking straight into the camera and making an appeal.
“This young man was one of the best and brightest surfers to ever come out of our island. If you have any information about who might have wanted to harm Makoa, please call Maui Police Department and let us know.” The hastily-set-up tip line number would run at the bottom of the clip. Once the conference was over, she and Pono went back down to the lab and relieved the officers who’d been scanning the prints.
“I’ll scan, and you get the computer working, looking for matches,” Pono said.
It was one a.m. when Lei called it a night. “You can send me the results if and when you get an identity off these.” She yawned. “I’m going home for at least a couple hours of sleep.”
“Sounds good. I’m going to stay and keep working,” Pono said.
“We have another full day tomorrow. Don’t stay too late.”
Lei drove home on autopilot.
The tent was a dim shape in her yard as she parked, the cottage a dark bulk. Someone, probably her dad, had plugged in a nightlight in the kitchen so she could find her way through the living room where her dad slept, a hunched shape on the couch. She felt her way to the little back bedroom, cluttered with a queen-sized bed and the baby’s crib.
Moonlight shimmered in through the window, and there was a nightlight on in there, too. Lei could see the dark blot of Kiet’s black hair as he slept on his back, one hand curled up beside his cheek, the other down alongside his body. Looking over at the bed, she could see Stevens on his back in exactly the same pose. She smiled at the sight and peeled her clothes off quickly, leaving the garments where they lay on the floor.
Because no matter the privacy challenges, time constraints, and limits of physical tiredness, she needed her husband.
Now.
The cotton sheets were silky on her nakedness as she slid in beside Stevens, and as she moved against his length, the heat of his body warmed her cool one. Stevens woke at her nearness, then woke further at her wandering hands and turned toward her.
His touch trailed liquid fire over and through her body, and in minutes they were joined in a moving, breath-held, quiet intimacy that felt like the solid rightness of a key sliding into a lock and opening a box of treasure. She’d never get tired of all there was to discover between them, from long, fragrant, noisy hours of extreme sensation to this soft, tender clenching in semidarkness, others asleep nearby.
Lei fell into a deep and dreamless sleep for the few hours given her, held close in his arms.
Stevens sat up and hit the Off button on the alarm. He was still in bed, since Kiet had slept later than usual. Lei had left early. The bed still smelled like her…and he wasn’t eager to leave the nest of warm sheets.
As if discerning this thought, Kiet rolled over and, using the bars of his crib, pulled himself upright. He was early at that—and many other milestones, they’d discovered. Spotting his father still in bed, he smacked the top of the bar with his hand.
“Da, da, da!” he stated.
“Daddy,” Stevens enunciated carefully, sitting up and realizing he was still naked. He reached over onto the floor for last night’s boxers, shed during that surprise visit from Lei. “Da-da-da-ddy.”
“Da-da!” Kiet yelled happily.
“Okay, close enough, little man.” Stevens picked up and changed the baby on his little changing table nearby, talking to him as he did so. Kiet grinned, kicking his legs. Kiet was such a joy. He thought of their lost child with a pang. It would have been challenging but fun to have two babies. Lei would have been seven months along by now if she hadn’t had the miscarriage.
Stevens thought of the Big Island case that had brought them so much heartbreak. An old enemy from Lei’s past had been behind a series of vicious attacks, and the stress of dealing with them had caused Lei’s traumatic miscarriage. That was his secret opinion, in spite of the doctor’s “these things happen” commentary, but he’d never say so because Lei blamed herself, questioning her ability to be a mother.
It was going to take time, and the love and relationship she had with Kiet, to heal her enough to be ready to try again.
He mentally shrugged off the sorrow, setting Kiet on the bed as he got into a cotton robe. He carried the child out into the kitchen. “Let’s go over and get your grandma up for some coffee.”
Wayne was already up and had the fragrant Kona brew going. So, a few minutes later, Stevens, clad in robe and rubber slippers with a mug of coffee in one hand and the baby on his hip in the other, made his way across the dewy morning grass to the tent.
“Mom?” He couldn’t see inside because the interior flaps were zipped shut. “Mom, I brought coffee.”
No answer. He frowned and set her mug down on the grass. Awkward with one hand, he drew up the zipper and poked his head in.
Alcohol fumes met his nose, along with a musky smell he associated with old people and closed spaces. “Mom?”
Kiet wriggled to get down. He loved to play in the tent, and now Stevens had to use both hands to keep a grip on the baby. Kiet grunted and writhed, eager to crawl around, and Stevens stepped back out. Making a decision, he backtracked rapidly across the yard and up the steps, setting Kiet in the playpen in the living room.
Wayne turned away from refilling his mug. “You’re back quick.”
“Mom’s been drinking. I need to leave Kiet here.”
“No problem.”
Stevens walked rapidly back to the tent. He peered inside again. “Mom?”
Still no answer. He unzipped the tent and entered. He squatted in the dim light beside the air mattress. He reached out a hand and shook her by the shoulder. “Mom.”
Her head flopped, but her mouth opened, and he heard and smelled her boozy exhaled breath. His stomach tightened with repulsion and frustration. He glanced around, spotted the empty quart bottle of Scotch. She’d always been fond of that particular liquor, believing that it was the drink of “real women.”
Stevens was just lucky she hadn’t puked all over Lei’s nice patterned rug, but there was still time for that to happen. He backed out of the tent and strode across the grass to the newly erected carport, where he found a plastic utility bucket and brought it back, setting it down next to his mother’s passed-out form.
Just in case.
He backed out and rezipped the tent. His gut churned with familiar emotions: anger, disappointment, disgust, and grief, too, that she’d come all this way and this was what happened on day one.
No wonder she’d wanted to go to bed early. She’d had that bottle waiting. He left the coffee mug where he’d set it down. She could drink it cold when she woke up.
He reached in the pocket of his robe and pulled out his phone to call Jared.
“I should have searched her backpack,” he said when his brother answered. “She had a bottle, and she’s passed out in the ten
t.”
“Listen to you, bro,” Jared snapped. “She got drunk, and it’s your fault because you didn’t take away her booze in time.”
A long pause. Stevens pushed a hand through his unruly hair, struggling not to snap back at his brother even as he admitted to himself Jared was right. Fighting each other wasn’t going to help them, or deal with the problem of their mother. It was frustrating to be tested this way so quickly after their pact of the night before.
“I’m sorry for biting your head off,” Jared said, heaving a sigh. “I just woke up. Haven’t had my morning coffee. And I admit I was a little taken in last night. Let myself get hopeful. She was so sincere. So happy to be a grandma.”
“I felt the same,” Stevens said. “And you’re right. Searching her, trying to prevent her getting something—none of it works.”
“Wayne said he thinks she’s so thin because she’s unhealthy. Maybe she’s sicker than we know, and we need to talk to her about rehab anyway. I’m off today. How about I make an appointment for a doctor visit and come get her?”
“Sounds great.” Stevens headed back to the cottage. “I have to go in to work. First day on my new detail as official trainer for new detectives. I don’t think the captain would look kindly on me calling in.”
“Well, after the doctor we’ll know more and we can decide what to do about her.”
Stevens agreed and said goodbye, the ominous sound of his brother’s last sentence reverberating in his mind: “what to do about her.”
What to do, indeed.
And though things had gone quiet with their enemies supposedly dead or in jail, Stevens would never be able to forget the relentless attacks of the one they’d called the shroud killer. The man they’d brought down on the Big Island had his trial in a few weeks, and Lei would have to go to the Big Island to testify.
Stevens wished he was more confident that the one in custody really was the shroud killer. He still had concerns that the remaining member of the Chang crime family, Terence Chang, had some long-term plan to move on them when their guard was down.
When there was vulnerability in their lives, like his mother the raging alcoholic.
Chapter Six
Lei sipped her second cup of inky coffee at her workstation, giving a swizzle with the little plastic stir stick and hoping the chunks of creamer would dissolve. An email from Pono had come through before she left the house in the morning, and she’d been able to print out the IDs and mug shots of two men with minor records he’d identified last night from the prints. Pono had gone home at three a.m., according to the time stamp on his e-mail.
Lei scanned the photos she’d printed out. Unfortunately, either of them could have matched the description Shayla Cummings had given, and both of them resided on Oahu.
“Too many average-height men with black hair and brown eyes, medium build, and no visible tats or facial hair,” Lei muttered to herself. That was the general description Shayla had given Kevin, the sketch artist, of the suspect’s overall appearance.
She inspected the photos more closely. One of the suspects, Freddie Arenas, listed an address in Kahuku, a town near the North Shore where the pro surfers hung out this time of year. The other, August Jones, had a downtown Honolulu address.
Lei flipped through her file folder for the artist’s sketch. Holding it carefully next to the photos, she tried to see which one most matched the pictures.
It was really hard to tell. Freddie Arenas had a mustache and one of those chinstrap beards in his photo, and August Jones wore a goatee that covered the center of his chin. The man Kevin had sketched had been clean-shaven.
Stumped for the moment, Lei put the pictures and sketch away and pulled out the reference file she’d begun on the Triple Crown of Surfing and Makoa Simmons’s sponsors and career. She’d hurriedly printed some references on the event.
According to the website, the Triple Crown was won by a scoring system that went across three events: the Hawaiian Pro held at Haleiwa, the World Cup of Surfing held at Sunset Beach, and the Pipeline Masters held at Ehukai Beach Park. Events were held when surf was judged good enough, between November and December of any given year. Participation in the contests was by invitation only, and those invited were considered “big wave masters” of surfing. The contests were a part of the main American Professional Surfing circuit of contests, but were also scored and managed separately from the bigger roster of worldwide events.
Reading up on it, she found Makoa’s talent and drive even more extraordinary. To have achieved such a level at his age, and from Maui, where there wasn’t as well developed a surf scene as some other islands, was remarkable.
Lei flipped to the bio she’d found on Makoa. He’d attended a private school, Paradise Preparatory Academy, and graduated in the top of his class. According to interviews, he’d said, “I made a deal with my parents: if I didn’t make a living within my first year out of high school on the pro surfing circuit, I’d go to college.”
He’d secured a host of sponsors within his first few months of turning pro, chief among them Torque, an international surf and skateboard company with subsidiaries in motocross and snowboarding. He lived during the winter season at the Torque surfing team house on the North Shore of Oahu, famous for its regular, excellent surf during that time of year.
Lei had a business summary about the sports brand, which made clothing and “incidentals” for surfing, including wax, leashes, neoprene pads for surfboard decks, backpacks, and board bags. Torque was a division of a much larger sportswear company, NeoSport, and even Lei, who only browsed an occasional surf magazine, was aware of their successful ad campaign, “Be Amazing.”
The “Be Amazing” campaign showed athletes at the peak of their sport: oiled beach volleyball bodies flying through the air, football players crashing like rams in rut, and a shot of Makoa Simmons doing a reverse off-the-lip air on a wave much too thick and intense for that kind of freestyle maneuver. According to the blurb, he’d stuck the landing and had been able to end his ride successfully—and he’d only been at the beginning of his career.
The more Lei studied Makoa Simmons, the more tragic his death seemed. Lei traced the photo of Makoa flying with her fingertips, remembering her last glimpse of him as they’d zipped up the body bag to carry him off the beach, accompanied by the sound of the girls crying. Their grief echoed in her own heart. Her losses were never far from the surface.
The phone rang, startling Lei out of her dark thoughts. “Sergeant Texeira.”
“Lei, it’s Doc over at the morgue. I wanted to have you and Pono over for a quick review of my autopsy findings.”
“Sure.” Lei’s stomach tightened at the prospect of the morgue. Only Pono knew how much she hated going there. The morgue always reminded her of the first time she’d identified a body, that of a dear friend. “When do you need us?”
“I worked late and got the post done, but I wanted to be extra careful because I know this case is going to get a lot of scrutiny. Soon as you can get here is good.”
“Okay, thanks.” Lei hung up and phoned Pono, waking her partner. “Meet me at the morgue. The post is done.”
It wasn’t long before Lei and her partner were on the elevator at Maui Memorial Hospital, riding down to the lowest floor, marked with a nondescript “B.”
Pono was rubbing his eyes. He hadn’t shaved, and his shirt had a splotch of coffee on the front.
“Sorry to get you up so early,” Lei said. “I guess I could have gone on my own.”
“No. It’s the first twenty-four. We have to get as much traction as we can on this.” Pono glanced at her, and his mouth quirked up. “Have you seen your hair today?”
“No. And I don’t plan to,” Lei replied, but she tried to smooth the springing, frizzing curls off her forehead. She’d avoided looking at the newspaper the office stocked as well as her hair. She knew the Simmons case would be the headline, and reading what was being said would only distract her, intensifying the sense of pr
essure they were under.
The morgue was through swinging doors designed to respond to wheeled gurneys, and the inner sanctum was accessed by an automatic button on the wall or a push bar. Pono hit the push bar, and Lei took one last breath of fresh air, bracing herself, and walked in.
Dr. Gregory was behind his desk, typing. At the sight of them, he dropped his glasses to dangle around his stout neck. Today’s shirt was embellished with red and green leis. The sight reminded Lei that Christmas wasn’t far away. They’d been trying to get the house done by then, but it didn’t seem like that was going to happen.
“Ah. I’ll get our young man.”
Lei wished she didn’t have to see the body again. What I do is at least a way to get justice for Makoa. The thought brought steel back to her spine. She glanced around the large room.
The bodies were all put away at the moment in their pull-out drawers. Every other time Lei had been here, the stations had been occupied. The open space with three steel-topped tables with drains beneath them, bright lights gleaming on metal, saws, scales, and other impedimenta neatly stowed, reminded her of a restaurant kitchen.
The thought made her stomach lurch.
She and Pono followed Dr. Gregory over to a bank of square metal doors. Gregory popped the clasp on one of them with a sound like opening a soda bottle and pulled out the drawer.
Makoa Simmons’s body was naked. His tan had yellowed as blood drained from his tissues. The Y incision on his broad, once-muscular chest looked cartoonish, the skin rubbery. Lei grasped her hands behind her back as Gregory put his readers back on. He pointed to shadowy marks on the young man’s neck and forehead.
“See these? Consistent with a forceful grip used to hold him under. I’ve sent the stomach contents and blood work out, but that’s probably not notable. Cause of death is drowning.”
“So no surprises from your early assessment of homicide,” Pono said.
“Right. But I’m still wondering how the suspect, whom I heard described as medium height and weight, was able to hold Makoa down. Must have caught him by surprise.”
