Motive ; One Last Day ; Going Viral

by Dustin Stevens

  The statement pushed Kalani’s eyebrows up a fraction, the words a far cry from what she was expecting to hear. “Thank you. It belonged to my parents.”

  “Oh,” Tseng said, dropping his head. “I’m very sorry.”

  A half smile crossed Kalani’s face as she stared out over the ocean, watching the azure waves roll up with soft white peaks. “No, no. They’re fine, they just left it to me when they moved back to Pennsylvania a few years ago.”

  “Oh,” Tseng repeated. “I thought you meant...What took them to Pennsylvania?”

  “That’s where my dad grew up,” Kalani said. “Only person you’ll ever meet who left Hawaii to retire back on the mainland.”

  Tseng chuckled as he nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, that sounds a bit backward.” He paused, taking another swallow of coffee before setting the cup down and pushing it away. He laced his fingers together and said, “So you’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.”

  Kalani glanced over at him and gave a small nod, the tension in her stomach returning. “Are you here to ask when I’m returning?”

  Tseng pursed his lips, his gaze focused out on the morning coming alive before them. “How you sleeping these days?”

  Responses ran through Kalani’s head, ranging from claiming to be 100% fine to telling him she had a bad night every so often, but nothing she couldn’t handle. For whatever reason, though, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything.

  Instead, she just sat in silence and waited, hoping he would continue.

  The moment seemed to drag on forever, every second feeling like a lifetime to Kalani, before Tseng nodded and said, “The answer to your question is, I’m here to tell you, you’re returning.”

  Without processing the words, Kalani’s jaw dropped open, and her mouth went dry. She could feel her heart rate spike, beads of sweat popping out on her brow. “Sir, I know I’ve been out a couple months now, but…”

  Tseng held up a hand, cutting her off.

  “This isn’t my idea,” he said. “What you went through was hell. It shook up most of the cops who arrived that night, just seeing what happened. I can’t even imagine what it did to you.”

  For the briefest instant, the same image that had snapped Kalani awake less than an hour before passed through her head, Ben arcing backward, his body weightless as it hung suspended in the air.

  She forced it away with a shake of her head.

  “So then...?” Kalani asked, leaving the question open ended.

  Tseng hung his head down and stared at the wooden table. He remained that way until again raising his eyes to the ocean.

  “Last night, a body was found on the mosaic tile floor of the state capitol building. Governor Randle has asked that you, specifically, investigate it.”

  The words hit Kalani like a sledgehammer, smashing into her stomach and forcing the air from her lungs. Three times her lips moved to protest, though no sounds escaped.

  “Believe me, I have no idea why,” Tseng said without looking at her. “I explained to him that you were on leave right now, and that you had just been accepted into detective training when the incident occurred, but he was emphatic. You and only you would handle this.”

  Kalani’s head spun as she tried to make sense of the words she was hearing. She released the cup of coffee she was holding and drew her hands back into her lap, twisting her fingers into a ball. She stared down at them, trying to keep her breathing even, to slow the heartbeat she could hear surging through her ears.

  “Look, sir, I’m not sure what the governor thinks he knows, but I assure you, he’s wrong. There was a time I would have killed for this opportunity, but to be honest, right now, I’m not even sure I’ll return to the force.”

  Tseng gave her a sideways glance at the admission, his face impassive. “I told him that too.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Told me to get my ass up here and convince you to do it.”

  Kalani met his gaze before shifting hers back to the ocean. She pulled her feet free of the sandals and stood, walking a few feet to the side and leaning against a twisted bunch of corded roots hanging down.

  “May I speak freely?” Kalani asked without looking over.

  “Please,” Tseng replied.

  “What the hell is going on here? Since when does the governor get to assign who handles a case? Especially to someone who isn’t even active duty, when there are other able-bodied detectives ready to go?”

  “First of all, he’s the governor, so here in Hawaii, he can pretty much do what he wants.

  “Second, you think that’s weird, you haven’t heard anything yet.”

  The comment came as a surprise to Kalani, who folded her arms across her chest and turned to stare at Tseng. For the first time, the slightest hint of curiosity was starting to creep in. “How’s that?”

  “I’m the only person he called. If anybody ever asks, he did alert HPD about the murder, but I wasn’t allowed to bring in the crime scene techs, the detectives, not even patrol to secure the scene.”

  “What?” Kalani asked, her eyes bulging. “So who’s at the scene now?”

  “There is no scene now,” Tseng said. “I was given four hours to process what I could alone, then everything was packed up and scrubbed clean in time for another busy day at the capitol.”

  “What?” Kalani repeated, her voice shocked and appalled.

  “Election season,” Tseng said simply, the only response he had. “He wants you to handle the investigation because he knows you’re not active duty right now. You can move around relatively invisible.”

  “Invisible?”

  “Yup,” Tseng said, nodding. “He wants this thing as quiet and as far off the books as he can get it. He’s convinced that this was the work of one of his political foes, and he will not let this become all anybody’s talking about between now and the primary.”

  Calming down a little, Kalani furrowed her brow, listening to the explanation. It was incomplete at best, a train wreck at worst, replete with dozens of gaping holes.

  “But there are a ton of politicians at the capitol, why does it have to be about him?”

  Tseng snorted. “Have you met the governor?”

  Kalani continued without acknowledging the question. “Chinatown is only three blocks from the capitol. Why does it have to be about politics at all?”

  “Again I ask, have you met the governor?” Tseng deadpanned.

  This time, his words struck a chord, bringing Kalani to a stop. She raised her hands to her head, trying to make sense of what she was being told. The morning sun continued its ascent into the sky, bright light encroaching on their spot in the shade.

  “Any idea who the victim is?” Kalani asked.

  “None,” Tseng said.

  “Much at the scene to go on?”

  Tseng shook his head. “Physical evidence on the body. Otherwise, surprisingly little for such a violent crime.”

  Kalani nodded, linking the information in her mind.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said, her words slow and even. “Last night you were called to the capitol and told to process a scene by yourself. The second you were done, the body was removed and the entire thing washed away, which didn’t matter because there wasn’t much there anyway. And then you were told to come here and find me?”

  “You hit all the high points,” Tseng said. Still, his voice was even and nearly void of emotion, his eyes locked on the horizon.

  “And then what?” Kalani asked.

  Tseng remained perfectly still before turning to stare at her. He looked over the length of her body, Kalani feeling him assessing her attire and the bags under her eyes, before nodding once.

  “And then you go find out who did it.”

  Kalani stared at him, waiting for any sign that he was joking. When it was clear that was never coming, she shook her head, making no attempt to hide her shock at the situation.

  “I think Governor Randle has seen a f
ew too many episodes of Hawaii Five-O. He needs Steve McGarrett on this case, not me.”

  That drew out the smile Kalani had been waiting for. “There’s no such thing as Five-O, but if there were, I’m sure he’d have called them instead of me last night.”

  “Yeah, why did he call you?” Kalani asked, her inhibitions falling away. “I mean, no disrespect sir, but if a full cover-up is what he was after, why bring you in at all?”

  Tseng parted his hands and raised his palms to the sky. “Best I can figure, he had no other choice. By the time I got there last night, the body was already cordoned off and growing cold. They’d been there a while and clearly discussed every option before making the call.”

  “So they decided...” Kalani began, letting the insinuation fill in the rest of her question.

  “That they would call me to run an underground investigation,” Tseng said. “Keep it out of the papers, but give the impression everything was on the up-and-up, should anybody go snooping.”

  Kalani turned her body away from Tseng, pressing her shoulder against the gnarled trunk of the tree.

  “Politics,” she muttered, disgust dripping from the word.

  “Politics,” Tseng agreed.

  Kalani looked over to Tseng, the scowl still splashed across her features. “What do you think?”

  “Truth?” Tseng asked. “I think this whole thing is a disaster in the making. I don’t want a part of this any more than I can tell you do, but we don’t have a choice.”

  It was the exact thing Kalani had been thinking for the past five minutes, though she appreciated Tseng’s willingness to say it out loud. “The governor calls and leans on you, you come out and lean on me.”

  “No,” Tseng said, shaking his head. “The governor is leaning on both of us, he’s just letting me be the messenger on this part of it.”

  “How would I even go about this?” she asked, her tone detached, full of apprehension.

  Tseng picked up his mug and drained the remainder of his coffee. “You’ve been a cop for 10 years now, you know how to run an investigation.”

  “Yeah, as a cop,” Kalani countered. “What you’re describing is something different.”

  “True,” Tseng conceded. “But I was able to lift the girl’s prints at the scene, and while I may be stereotyping here, something tells me she’ll be in our system.”

  “It’s a start,” Kalani said.

  “I also got him to agree to let an ME examine the body. He doesn’t want anybody on the city or even state payroll to see it, so it’s being shipped out to Tripler as we speak.”

  He paused a moment before forging ahead. “Beyond that, your point of contact will be me, for everything. Whatever you need, I will try to get for you.”

  The word caught Kalani’s attention. “Try?”

  “What can I say? It’s a shit show. We’ll both do what we can, with what we’ve got, and get out of this as fast as we can.”

  Kalani fell silent, mulling over the situation. Calling it a shit show might be underselling the situation. An hour ago, she was asleep in her bed. Now she was being forced back to a life she had left months before and still saw every time she closed her eyes.

  “You know, this might be the nudge you need,” Tseng said.

  Kalani shifted her attention back to him, remaining silent.

  “What you went through...” Tseng began before pausing and shifting directions. “I don’t blame you for taking time off, and I’m sorry to be here now interrupting it, but this might not be a bad thing. Might be the kind of jolt to get you going again.”

  Kalani stared at him, feeling her eyes narrow in frustration. “You think?”

  “At the very least, it should give you some clarity on those questions you’ve been asking yourself. If nothing else, by the time this is over, you’ll know whether to hang up your badge or not.”

  What he was saying wasn’t wrong, in truth she had already considered them herself, but something about him thinking that far ahead didn’t sit right with her. She started to respond but stopped herself.

  She had another more pressing matter to get to at the moment.

  “I assume you don’t expect me to do all this alone?”

  Chapter Six

  From the outside, the building looked like 100 others throughout Honolulu. Unlike the vast majority of them though, campaign signs covered every square inch of glass along the front.

  In most states, primary campaigns were something of a perfunctory exercise. The respective political parties came together months in advance to decide which candidate would represent them in the coming election, the general thinking being not to expend precious resources eight months before the real contest.

  Perhaps even more important, the idea was to not put their candidates through too much unnecessary bloodshed and provide their opposition a roadmap on how to defeat them.

  In Hawaii - a state as close to a single-party system as any in the country - that was not the case.

  Throughout the islands, the Democratic Party enjoyed a competitive margin larger than any other state. In the 2008 presidential election, it was the only state to give more than 70% of its vote to a single candidate. As it currently stood, there was only one Republican in the entire state senate.

  The cumulative effect of such one-sided representation meant that unlike other states, the real heavy lifting of campaign season happened in August.

  If candidates wanted to obtain office, they had to do two things.

  They must first be Democrat, and second, they must survive the primary.

  The moment the front door of Mary-Ann Harris’s gubernatorial campaign office opened, both of those facts were obvious. Stacks of campaign materials, ranging from yard signs to ballpoint pens, stood piled on every available surface, all adorned with Harris’s name and the unmistakable Democratic donkey. Underscoring them was the catchphrase – “Say Aloha to change!” – everything done in red, white, and blue.

  Weaving their way among the stacks of materials were scads of workers. Some sat at desks wearing business attire, working the phones for campaign donations, trying to secure campaign stops for their candidate, rattling off information to concerned voters. Others wore t-shirts displaying the same name and slogan as the signs they carried, ready to head off for another day in the field.

  At three minutes before 9:00, Mary-Ann Harris walked through the front door, a copy of the morning Star-Advertiser under her arm, a cup of coffee from the local store on the corner in her hand. Dressed in slacks and a red dress jacket, she caught sideways glances as she walked through the room, none of the workers daring to stop her as she went.

  Standing 5’6” with blonde hair giving way to white, she was far from an imposing figure. High cheek bones accentuated a heart-shaped face, with watery blue eyes and thin lips.

  What had everyone acting skittish was the appointment she had waiting in her office. Nobody was quite sure why he was there or what he was after, but there were only a few reasons a man like him could be waiting for her, few of them positive.

  Sensing the demeanor of those around her, Harris kept her eyes straight ahead and strode to her office, ignoring the looks coming her way. The noise of the headquarters dwindled as she walked through, her heels echoing off of the tile floor. Keeping her expression impassive, she walked to the rear of the room and entered her office, closing the door behind her. In quick order, she sat the coffee and paper down on her desk, walked to the window and closed the blinds.

  Darkness enveloped the room as Harris felt her way along the wall and flipped on the overhead lights.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  Across from her, Kimo Mata slouched in a leather chair. His compact frame was turned sideways, his left leg draped over the arm and swinging free. He stared back at Harris with heavily lidded eyes, a shadow of facial hair spread across his face. His dark hair was cut short, and his cargo shorts and aloha shirt were rumpled.

  “I hope it’s worth my time,” K
imo said as way of a greeting.

  Harris kept the smile in place and walked around behind her desk, ignoring the newspaper as she picked up her coffee and settled into her chair. “Looks like you’ve had a rough morning. If I had known, I would have brought you one of these too.”

  Kimo shook his head and said, “I’m on the backend of a long night, coffee would just keep me up.”

  “Oh,” Harris said, taking a drink and setting the cup down in front of her. “I will try to be brief then.”

  “Appreciate it,” Kimo said, arching an eyebrow. He motioned back over his shoulder with a nod of his head and said, “You always have such a chilling effect on your staff?”

  “Was it that obvious?”

  “I knew the minute you walked in,” Kimo replied. “Could have heard a pin drop.”

  The remark drew a smirk from Harris as she measured the man across from her. She, like most people in Hawaii, knew him by reputation. It was the first time she’d ever met him in person, though, the image not quite measuring up to the legend.

  “Most mornings, no,” Harris said. “But I think the reaction today was more to you being here than my arrival.”

  “Should I be offended or flattered?” Kimo asked, the arched eyebrow rising a little higher.

  Harris extended her hands to either side and smiled. “You saw this place when you walked in. This is ground zero for a race to the governor’s seat that only has a couple of months remaining.”

  A smug smile stretched across Kimo’s face. “And you guys are so worried that my presence is enough to throw everyone into a panic?”

  “You’re being modest, Mr. Mata,” Harris replied. “You’re well-known as the best investigative journalist in the state. Wherever you show up, influential people tend to take a hit.”

  “I’m taking that as a compliment.”

  “You should,” Harris replied. “That’s why I called you.”

  Silence fell between the pair for a moment. Harris watched as Mata ate up the praise. She knew from a lifetime of working around men that he would milk the moment as long as he could, so she decided to let him have it.