Motive ; One Last Day ; Going Viral

by Dustin Stevens

  “You ready?” Danilo asked, pressing his chin into his right shoulder to speak to the dog behind him. A pair of shiny eyes stared back at him, a pink tongue running out over a black nose in response.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Danilo said. He slid the gear shift into drive and eased the van down the street and into the lot on the far end of the park. As he drove, the headlights splashed across the four young boys, drawing their attention over to him.

  None looked to be more than six or seven years old, two even younger than that. All had thick dark hair and dirty faces, wearing an assortment of old t-shirts. They glanced over for a second as he parked, returning to their game the moment his headlights blinked out.

  There was no particular joy for him in harming children, or a dog for that matter, but rather the delight in knowing he was the best at what he did. It would not matter if four grown men were in the park, their fates would be just as certain as the boys now before him.

  Just as certain as the young woman he found the night before.

  Wrenching the front door open, he slid out from behind the wheel and went around to the rear bench seat. Reaching inside, he unlocked the wire cage and opened the gate. The dog shot straight out from it, blowing past Danilo and down into the dusty lot. In three quick bounds it was up onto the grass, running at full tilt for the boys.

  “Even better than I could have imagined,” Danilo said. He remained in the backseat long enough to close the cage door and set it down on the floorboard before pulling back, a tennis ball in his hand.

  “Bruno, what are you doing?” Danilo chided, bouncing the ball twice, ignoring the puffs of dirt that arose each time it hit the ground. He put a broad smile on his face and walked steadily toward the boys, all four having forgotten their game and descending on the puppy. With hungry fingers, they scratched at its ears and backside, the dog eating up their attention with unbridled glee.

  “You named a girl Bruno?” one of the boys asked, rising to full height above the others.

  Danilo made a note of the boy and his position, the smile never retreating from his face as his mind went to work on a response.

  “I let my son name him a long time ago. He didn’t realize it was a girl, he just liked the name Bruno.”

  The boy nodded in acceptance of the answer, a smaller boy beside him giggling. “That’s silly.”

  “Yes, I thought so too,” Danilo said, “but what am I to do?”

  Without ever breaking stride or losing the smile from his face, Danilo stepped forward and swung his foot in a quick half-arc, connecting square, lifting the young boy into the air and depositing him flat on his back. Before any response at all could come from the group, he smacked the standing boy with a right hook that dropped him on contact.

  A third boy got half a syllable out before Danilo spun on the ball of his foot and caught him with an elbow behind the ear.

  The final boy, the smallest of the four, never even took his hands from the dog, his mouth open in surprise. Danilo finished him with a quick snap kick, a lashing movement across the cheek that sent his eyes rolling back in his head and his squat body flat onto his back.

  Four blows, all delivered in a matter of seconds.

  The dog remained motionless, its dark eyes wide with terror, as Danilo piled the four boys up and hefted them from the ground, carrying two in each arm. Together they weighed practically nothing, no match for the effects of caffeine and adrenaline surging through his system.

  Moving fast, his gaze darting back and forth, Danilo loaded them into the van and climbed behind the wheel. He started the engine and backed out of the parking spot, waiting until he made the corner before flipping on the headlights.

  From the edge of his vision he could still see the dog sitting in the middle of the park, watching in silence as he drove away.

  Chapter Nine

  “Shit,” Kalani muttered, swirling the last few dregs in the bottom of her coffee cup. She glanced again up at the clock on the wall behind the counter, indicating it was 9:30.

  The fact that she was sitting alone made sense. There was no reason for Rip to assist her, no call for him not to be offended that the first time they’d even spoken in years was when she arrived needing something.

  Still, she had hoped he might agree to help anyway.

  Attribute it to some sort of lingering familial connection, perhaps a misguided sense of duty, but for whatever reason, she thought he would show. Many times throughout the night she pictured him waiting in the parking lot when she arrived, a witty one-liner for her in greeting.

  Once more she glanced at the clock, another stark reminder of how wrong she was.

  Thinking better of the grounds still lingering in the bottom of her mug, Kalani laid $10 down on the table, nodded at the waitress, and stepped outside. She climbed into her Jeep and stayed on the back streets.

  For a brief time her father had been a patient at Tripler Army Medical Center, the result of some shrapnel taken when a long-thought dormant bomb exploded unexpectedly. By all accounts he had been lucky, receiving a two-week stay in the infirmary instead of an eternal resting spot up the road at Punchbowl.

  Others didn’t share his good fortune.

  Every day for two weeks in high school, Kalani had made the trip, sitting by her father’s side and reading his favorite Louis L’Amour novels to him. As she drove, images from the past flooded her mind, a subconscious comparison of what was and what had been.

  More homes had grown up in the previous 15 years, choking out any free space to speak of. Many of the towering trees that lined the roadways were now gone, replaced with telephone and electric lines. Missing too was the sightline to the ocean, replaced by apartment buildings and office complexes.

  With a heavy shake of her head, Kalani rolled up to the front gate of the facility. A young marine with a jarhead haircut stepped out of the guardhouse as she approached, a clipboard in hand.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” the young man in urban camouflage BDU’s said. “How may I help you?”

  Bristling slightly at the term ma’am, Kalani forced a smile and said, “Kalani Lewis here to see Medical Examiner Janice Song.”

  The young man looked down at his clipboard, using his finger to scan the list. Finding nothing, he flipped to a second page and made it halfway down before stopping. “Oh yes, here we are. Dr. Song is in the basement of building C, parking is right out front.”

  “Thank you,” Kalani said, nudging the Jeep forward and cresting a hill, the sprawling expanse of Tripler coming into view.

  The largest medical facility in the western hemisphere, it provided health services to a geographic region covering over half the Earth’s surface. Painted coral pink to match the Royal Hawaiian in Waikiki, the enormous facility was unmistakable from the air or ground.

  Kalani pushed her sunglasses up on her head and circled around to building C and parked. She checked the time and pulled a canvas shoulder bag up from the seat beside her, slamming the door shut as she walked to the front door.

  Halfway there she saw a recognizable figure unfold himself from a bench, standing to meet her on the front walk.

  “First thing you should know is, I don’t eat breakfast,” Rip said. The words were delivered without any hint of emotion, no trace of hostility or humor present.

  “I don’t either,” Kalani said, “but I thought you Army types were all about your three squares a day.”

  “Which is why I don’t,” Rip countered. “I eat whenever I want, and I never let a barber use clippers on my hair.”

  A hint of a smile crossed Kalani’s face. “You’re such a rebel.”

  “Apparently not. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  Rip nodded. “Just so we’re clear, I don’t know how long I’m sticking around on this.”

  “But you’re here now,” Kalani said. She paused long enough to let just a touch of awkward silence to settle in, before gesturing to the door. “Sh
all we?”

  “We shall,” Rip said, waiting for her to continue before following.

  Building C was not for patient care, devoid of a front desk or waiting room. Kalani knew from some online research the night before that it housed nothing but medical examination and research facilities, the office she was looking for two stories underground. Without a word, she led Rip down two long flights of stairs to the level B2 before passing through a set of steel doors.

  “Why do these places always have to be in a basement?” Kalani asked. “As if a room full of dead bodies isn’t creepy enough.”

  “Easier to keep refrigerated,” Rip said matter-of-factly. “Can you imagine trying to run temperature control on an above-ground morgue in Hawaii?”

  The thought of telling Rip that the question was rhetorical crossed Kalani’s mind. Instead, she found the room number she was looking for, a pair of swinging doors with reversible hinges. A single white placard with black letters announced it to be the Morgue, the name Janice Song, MD beneath it.

  Kalani pushed on the doors and stepped inside.

  A large, sterile lab stretched out before them, everything in gleaming stainless steel. A row of gurneys was lined along the right side of the room, two with black, zip-up body bags, the others empty. The back wall housed three rows of steel refrigeration units.

  On the right side of the room was a brightly lit operating table with a body on it, the chest cut in the standard Y for autopsy. Standing over the body, scalpel in hand, was Dr. Song.

  She looked up as they entered, her eyes crinkled in hostility before recognition set in. She leaned away from the body she was examining and pulled the surgical mask down from her face to reveal a woman of mixed Caucasian and Korean ancestry. She nodded at them, placing the scalpel down on a steel stand.

  “You must be Detective Lewis,” Song said, rising to full height and removing her gloves. She dropped them on the table and pulled a plain blue surgical cap from her head, her face creasing into a smile. “And of course, I’d recognize this big lug anywhere.”

  She walked with arms outstretched, reaching up as Rip stepped in and gripped her in a hug, smiling down at her. “What do you say, Jannie?”

  “Never thought I’d see you around here again, that’s for sure,” she replied, stepping to the side and extending a handshake to Kalani. “Janice Song.”

  “Kalani. Pleasure. I take it you two have worked together?”

  “More than once,” Song replied. “This man is practically a legend.”

  “How do you think I got in this place?” Rip said, a sheepish smile on his face.

  Kalani nodded, conceding in silence that she hadn’t considered how he got through the front gate. “Thank you so much for doing this. I know it was a rather odd request.”

  “As I understand it, the screws were put to you on this, too,” Song said, slapping the surgical cap against the palm of her hand.

  “They were,” Kalani said, “and I, in turn, did the same to him.”

  “So now that we’ve established none of us wants to be here...” Song said, letting her voice trail off.

  She walked them over to the back wall and opened a drawer in the middle row, the airlock releasing as she tugged on the handle. Stepping to the side, she opened the door as far as it would go and pulled the drawer halfway out.

  Lying on it was a young girl with blonde hair, her skin pale blue. Exaggerated stitches ran from either shoulder down to her sternum before meeting and extending straight down to her abdomen. Thick rows of sutures also extended horizontally across her throat and stomach, the lines jagged and uneven.

  “Jane Doe,” Song said, “brought in yesterday morning, express assignment from the governor himself. No other details given, just asking for a thorough analysis, oral report to be given to you, written report to be handed off to the Governor’s Office.”

  “Damn,” Rip muttered.

  Song arched an eyebrow up at him. “Right? I didn’t like it one bit, but as I said, I didn’t have a choice.”

  It was the same way Kalani had felt since Tseng arrived on her doorstep the day before. Nobody was participating voluntarily, which made the situation seem that much more suspicious.

  “Remind me how a state official was able to issue orders to a federal employee?” Rip asked.

  “He can’t,” Janice replied, “but he can promise things to federal employees working in his state, who then issue direct orders to me.”

  Kalani’s suspicion only grew, the list of infractions associated with this investigation now including blackmail and bribery.

  “What were you able to find?”

  Song pointed to the girl’s neck. “Cause of death was no surprise, blood loss from a cut throat. Whoever did it knew what he was doing.”

  “He?” Kalani asked.

  “I’m assuming it was a male, just from the violence of the murder,” Song said. “Cutting someone’s throat isn’t the nice, easy slit you see on television. There’s a lot of muscle and cartilage in the neck, a person really has to have some power to cause that kind of damage.”

  “Any defensive wounds?” Rip asked.

  “Nothing,” Song said, “which isn’t surprising. There was enough ketamine in her system to knock out a horse.”

  “Isn’t that what ketamine’s usually used for?” Rip asked.

  “Not always,” Song replied, giving a non-committal twist of her head. “It’s used in human and veterinary science, primarily as an induction agent. It wouldn’t be used as a primary anesthesia, but it’ll put a person under.”

  “So it was quick,” Kalani said. “Knocked her out and killed her in a short time span.”

  “Normally I’d agree,” Song said, “but again, there was an enormous amount in her system. Almost enough to kill her on its own.”

  “Hmm,” Rip said, nodding.

  “Anything else in her system?” Kalani asked.

  “Nothing chemically,” Song said.

  “Chemically, meaning there was something else?” Rip asked.

  Song nodded, glancing at each of them in turn. “Her blood tested positive for gonorrhea, and her vaginal wall showed a fair bit of scarring for someone her age.”

  Kalani’s eyes narrowed, her mind piecing together what little she had to go on. “She was found just blocks from Chinatown. Sex worker?”

  Song lifted her shoulders and tilted her head to the side in a shrug. “Maybe. Like I said, there was a lot of scarring, but not an unheard of amount. She could have just gotten an early start. You know how kids are these days.”

  Kalani nodded, thinking that she knew full well how kids were. She was brought up to believe boys had cooties until she was on the brink of being a teenager. Now, it wasn’t at all uncommon to hear of girls as young as 12 getting pregnant.

  “Anything else in her system?” Rip asked, steering the conversation back on course.

  Song pulled the drawer out a little further and pointed to the girl’s hip and abdomen region. She pushed in on the skin there, her hip bones barely visible beneath the surface. “See all this puffiness here?”

  “Yes,” Rip replied, peering down.

  Song leaned back, glancing at Kalani and back to Rip. “She was well into her third trimester of pregnancy.”

  Kalani stared at Rip, her mouth hanging open. She blinked several times in silence, forcing the information into place. “Was there any sign of the fetus at the scene?”

  “That I wouldn’t know,” Song said. “They brought the body here. But nobody mentioned it to me, and there was nothing, besides the cut on her stomach, to make them look for one.

  “Everything, including the umbilical cord, has been removed.”

  Chapter Ten

  Kalani watched as the sunlight faded from the sky, her long hair whipping around her face as she drove. At 6:30, the spring air was still well above 70 degrees, comfortable for driving without the plastic windows zipped into her Jeep. The evening traffic was just starting to fade, her drive in f
rom Tripler a stop-and-go affair that had made her five-mile trip take almost half an hour.

  Avoiding the H-1, she swung down toward the airport and followed the coast as it wrapped around Kalihi and headed downtown. She kept the radio off as she drove, processing everything she’d learned, getting her mind used to handling an investigation again.

  So far, she knew a young girl - possibly a sex worker - was found dead at the capitol two nights earlier. Her throat was cut and the child she was carrying was taken. She was hoping Tseng could fill in a few blanks for her momentarily, but for the time being, that was all she had.

  She pulled up on the curb outside the Honolulu Police Department and climbed out, feeding two quarters into the meter before turning to the building that for 10 years had been her second home.

  It sat on an embankment 15 feet above the street below, stretching a half block in length. Two stories tall, evenly spaced windows lined both levels, giving it the appearance of an elementary school. Police cruisers parked on the street were the only giveaway of its true purpose.

  She walked up the dozen steps to the front door and stepped inside to find little had changed in the previous months. The overdone Christmas decorations were gone, but otherwise the place was exactly as she remembered.

  Stacks of files and loose papers covered every surface, the result of a staff that was always undermanned and overworked.

  Two men stood in conversation, both in shirtsleeves and loosened ties, coffee in hand. Kalani recognized them right off as Baggs and Kitagawa, partners who had come up together on the Pearl City beat and had been detectives for years. Kalani dropped her gaze to the floor, careful to avoid eye contact.

  They were good cops, and good guys, but she wasn’t up to the forced conversation that would come with saying hello. After just a single day, she could already tell she wasn’t quite ready to be going through the motions again.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, Kalani emerged on the second floor and hooked a right. She walked past two lifeless offices before reaching her destination, Walter Tseng – Chief of Police stenciled in gold on the plate glass window. She paused and drew in a deep breath before tapping on the door and stepping inside.