Motive ; One Last Day ; Going Viral

by Dustin Stevens

  Keeping his face neutral, Danilo now realized why Zall had asked to see him. The original call for a single fetus was not going to be sufficient. Another was needed, making three in total.

  When they had first discussed the proposition, Danilo had agreed to only one.

  “Will that be doable, on your part?” Zall asked.

  The question was not truly an inquiry, but a backhanded way of letting Danilo know what was required of him. After years of working with the man, he knew this was how he operated, appealing to his employee’s ego instead of just being forthright with his demands.

  Long past letting it rankle him, Danilo nodded. When he had signed on, he knew things like this could be a possibility. He had given his word, agreed to a pact, driven to do whatever was asked of him. This would be no different.

  “What would you like me to do with the remains?”

  For the first time all morning, Zall’s smiled. “Well, I’ve got a few ideas about that.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Of all the Hawaiian delicacies, loco moco was a hearty meal that was a favorite of locals and tourists alike. It started with the staple of all island meals, two scoops of white rice. Topped with a hamburger patty, a pair of eggs over easy, and a ladle of brown gravy on top, it was a heart attack on a plate. And this particular version of the dish appeared to have an extra helping of grease oozing from the edges.

  Over half of the meal in front of Jake Sturgis was gone by the time Kimo Mata made it to the Country Kitchen. Mata looked at it and at Sturgis, who continued to attack his breakfast without glancing up.

  “Thanks for waiting for me,” he said, dropping his shoulder bag to the floor beside him.

  Sturgis grunted out a response as he shoveled a huge bite into his mouth, egg yolk and gravy already staining his shirt.

  The scene brought a feeling of revulsion to Mata, turning his stomach as he looked away. Despite living less than 10 minutes from the Country Kitchen, it was the first time he had ever been inside. One look around seemed to confirm why.

  The room was divided down the middle by a waist-high service counter, a row of metal stools with cracked vinyl tops sitting empty before it. A waitress with big hair and even bigger makeup was behind it reading a copy of People magazine. Behind her, the smell of grease and burnt toast drifted out from the kitchen.

  The other half of the room contained small tables just like the one they were seated at.

  Why it had been dubbed the Country Kitchen, Kimo had no idea.

  He held a finger up to get the waitress’s attention, and pointed to himself. “Coffee, please.”

  The request was met with an eye-roll, enough to let Kimo know he was interrupting her morning reading. He watched closely as she poured and brought it to him, ensuring she didn’t put anything in it, before nodding his thanks and taking a drink.

  Only once the jolt of caffeine entered his system did he turn his attention back to Sturgis, now finishing the last few bites of his meal. Kimo took one more drink, waiting for Sturgis to mop up the residue from his plate with a crust of toast.

  “So, Detective Sturgis, what brings us out here this fine morning?” Kimo began. This was only the second time he had ever asked to meet. The information he had delivered the first time was rock solid, enough so that when Kimo got the request an hour before, he ignored the early hour and whatever else he had planned for the morning.

  Digging into Mary-Ann Harris would have to wait.

  Sturgis laced his fingers across his bloated midsection and let out a low belch, the scent of it permeating the air between them. He opened and closed his mouth twice, before glaring at Kimo.

  “Sons of bitches stole my crime scene this morning,” he spat, his voice low, angry.

  Kimo took one last pull on the bitter swill in his cup before pushing it to the center of the table alongside Sturgis’s plate. “Who stole what crime scene this morning?”

  “Tseng,” Sturgis said, making his distaste for the man obvious.

  While the name gave Kimo the answer to the first part of his question, it did nothing for the other. He could tell Sturgis was angry, would give him everything he needed in due time.

  Sturgis thrust his body forward, resting his elbows on the the table, and leaned in closer to Kimo.

  “Early this morning, maybe 3:00, I get a call from a CI of mine. He was down on Ala Moana Beach looking for a place to take a nap and a shower, stumbled across two bodies in the sand.”

  The thought of reaching for the pad inside his bag crossed Kimo’s mind, but he let it go. Something told him this was not the kind of conversation either one would want recorded.

  “Two bodies,” Kimo said, “as in...”

  “As in dead,” Sturgis said. “Not two people, two corpses.”

  He paused, glancing over at the waitress behind the counter. She was still engrossed in her gossip mag.

  “Grisly, too. Throats cut, stomachs slashed open. Right out there on the sand.”

  “Damn,” Kimo whispered, trying not to imagine the scene. He’d witnessed enough gore to know he preferred to write about it without actually having to view it.

  “Even weirder, not a speck of blood anywhere,” Sturgis continued. “Purely a drop-‘em-off deal, but still, that’s a hell of a scene, right?”

  “For sure,” Kimo muttered, nodding in agreement. He wasn’t yet sure what had Sturgis so angry or why he had been called, but the opening shots had been more than enough to get his attention.

  “So, I go by the book, call Tseng to get clearance to close the beach, do a full work-up.” At that Sturgis leaned in a little closer. “And do you know what the bastard did?”

  Without being obvious, Kimo pushed himself back, matching Sturgis’s movement, keeping the same amount of distance between them. The smells of loco moco and body odor were rolling off the man, along with the palpable scent of anger.

  “Closed the beach and took over the scene?” Kimo guessed.

  “Oh, he took over the scene alright,” Sturgis said, narrowing his eyes even further, “but he did not close the beach.”

  As an investigative reporter, Kimo had covered stories running the gamut. Just about half of what he did included the police department. While he may not have been an expert on procedure, still, that seemed especially odd.

  There was no effort to hide the reaction on his face as he stared back at Sturgis. “Come again? He got a call about two bodies a couple hours before sunrise, and didn’t close the beach?”

  “Nope,” Sturgis said, shaking his head.

  “And so right now, there are people, tourists, locals, whoever, showing up at Ala Moana and seeing a murder scene right out there in the open?”

  At this question, Sturgis leaned all the way back in his chair. He returned his hands to his stomach, gravy stains evident around his fingernails. His mouth twisted up in a smile.

  “Nope,” he repeated, his chin swinging from side to side.

  “But how is that possible?” Kimo asked.

  “There is no crime scene,” Sturgis said, his smile turning downward, his moment of cruel victory over. “Tseng showed up, chased me away, processed the whole thing himself.”

  An hour and change ago, Kimo had been sprawled across his bed, the sheets a twisted pile around his body. Out of habit the phone was inches away, the ringer on high, in case anything important happened in the wee hours of morning.

  At no point between Sturgis’s call and now had he even considered that the reason he was being asked to meet might have something to do with a lead he was already following. He forced his face to remain impassive as he ran the scenario through his head.

  The odds that two highly visible murders within days of each other would be disposed of and wiped clean before sun-up were just too great to ignore.

  “Walter Tseng?” Kimo said, doing his best to relay extreme disbelief, giving no indication that he had heard anything about the previous incident at the capitol. “He just showed up and ran an entire cr
ime scene by himself in what, two hours?”

  The evil smile returned to Sturgis’s face. “I said he processed it himself, not that he processed it by himself.”

  It was obvious from the way Sturgis was acting that he felt like he had a real ace left to toss out on the table. Kimo gave him time to enjoy it before biting, playing the part of ignorant journalist.

  “So who helped him? I can’t imagine anybody else on the force taking part in something like that.”

  “Well, not somebody active on the force anyway,” Sturgis said, raising his hands and folding his arms over his chest.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he called in some help,” Sturgis said, again glancing over to the waitress. “Ever heard of Kalani Lewis?”

  The name struck a note deep in the recesses of Kimo’s mind, a story he had taken a glance at months ago, before moving on, deciding there was nothing but trouble waiting there for him.

  “Yeah,” Kimo said. “She and her partner were in a shootout in Waikiki a while back, right?”

  The words boiled out of Sturgis. “Yeah, that’s how it happened.”

  His response reminded Kimo of the exact reason he had stayed away from the story before. While there had been no evidence at all to indicate Lewis and her partner hadn’t acted properly, there were some rumblings within the department about how things had gone down.

  Because of that, it was also rumored that HPD had been less than responsive in trying to find who pulled the trigger.

  Combined, it had made for a potentially toxic story for Kimo to even consider touching. There was enough on his plate with an imploding economy and impending elections to keep him busy without poking through the local police force’s dirty laundry.

  At the same time, for Lewis to have shown up at the beach that morning was interesting, to say the least.

  Kimo did his best to absorb everything, remaining calm as he allowed Sturgis to enjoy his revenge for Tseng having snatched a case away from him. “If what you’re telling me is true, I could leave here right now and see nothing but business-as-usual down at Ala Moana this morning. How would I ever verify any of this?”

  The smug look of victory vanished from Sturgis’s face. His mouth fell open, a shadow of indignity passing over him. “Verify? I’m telling you I was there, and it’s all true. Isn’t that enough?”

  The question, the quick change of tone, told Kimo he was suddenly on very thin ice. He looked away from Sturgis and reached down into his bag, extracting a money clip and peeling away a $20 and a $50. He tossed them both on the table, right in front of Sturgis.

  “More than sufficient,” Kimo said, acknowledging the question before nodding at the bills lying on the table. “Thank you for the call. Is that enough to cover breakfast?”

  The look of triumph returned to Sturgis’s face as he snatched the $50 up and tucked it into the front pocket of his shirt. “Yeah, that ought to do it.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lucky we live Hawaii.

  It was an expression Kalani had heard no less than 1,000 times in her life. She’d seen it probably four or five times that, plastered on t-shirts, bumper stickers, hats. A local expression stretching back long before her time, it was a straightforward maxim that symbolized in just four words how most island residents felt. While the state was not immune to poverty, or crime, or health concerns, it also had the benefit of perfect weather and stunning views, of being a melting pot of cultures the world over.

  Despite waking up at the beach every morning, it had been a long time since Kalani took the phrase to heart. Her family was now 5,000 miles away. Her partner was dead. Her chest had a jagged bullet scar that would be with her until her last breath.

  She had just finished processing the gruesome death of two women, both younger than she was.

  Even as she sat with her bare toes buried in the sand and watched Rip paddle out on the 7’ cutter he’d borrowed from an old surfing buddy, the joys of living in Hawaii were lost to her. She didn’t focus on the fact that the sun was rising behind her or that the morning breeze carried the scent of hibiscus on it. Instead, she tried to hone in on the bodies that were now headed to Tripler to be processed, most likely revealing as little useful information as the previous one had.

  The smell of blood and death clung to her, permeating her clothes, saturating her hair. If she had any idea what she was being called to do when leaving the house, she would have brought a change of clothes for the day ahead, but as it were, she was stuck with what she had. Unlike Rip, she was unable to strip down and jump into the ocean, allowing the warm saltwater to wash her clean.

  The thought was lodged at the front of her mind, ebbed with a tinge of jealousy, as her phone began to vibrate in her lap. A quick glance at the screen showed Tseng, the man less than an hour removed from the shore beside her. A brief jolt of dread shot through her as she stared at the name, fearing what the call might bring.

  “Chief,” she answered simply, turning her head to the side to block out the wind blowing in from the ocean.

  “Yeah, I got a hit on that truck you asked me to look into,” Tseng said, skipping any kind of greeting and getting straight to business. His voice still bore the no-nonsense tone it had all morning, a direct result of a late-night cocktail of strain and sleep deprivation.

  Kalani pulled her feet in closer and sat up straight, focusing on his voice.

  “I ran a search for any vehicles matching that description,” Tseng said, the sound of papers shuffling audible over the line. “I got a hit on a Leo Reyes, a resident of Makiki.”

  “Yeah?” Kalani asked, rising up to her knees. Without a pad or paper nearby she brushed the sand smooth beside her, hand poised above it to record whatever he said next. “Do you have an address?”

  Tseng read a listing on Ke’eomoku Street less than a half-dozen blocks away, his tone never changing as he rattled off the information. “Needless to say, without a license plate number we can’t be sure this is the guy, but...”

  “Got it,” Kalani said, already knowing where he was going with the statement. He wouldn’t have given her the address without reasonable certainty it was the person she was looking for. If anybody should ask though, she got the information from a previous interview, not from him.

  “Anything on the guy?” Kalani asked, using her index finger to clarify the house number scrawled in the soft white powder.

  Again, there was more paper rustling as Tseng rummaged for something out of reach. “Some minor stuff,” he replied, distraction obvious. “I had his jacket here a minute ago, but now it’s gone. Some pushing, petty theft, that sort of thing.”

  Kalani nodded, the assessment pretty well in line with what she’d expected. Over the years she had come across enough men like him to know the type. Dirty enough that a parent would never want their daughter bringing him home, but clean enough to stay clear of the real muscle in town.

  “Thanks, Chief,” Kalani said, letting him go chase one of the dozen other things he’d been complaining about all morning.

  Kalani stood, sand falling from her jeans. Rising onto her toes, she waved an arm overhead to grab Rip’s attention, then used her phone to take a picture of the address scrawled in the sand. There was little chance she would forget it in the next 10 minutes, but in the event they might need it later, she wanted to have it recorded.

  Using her foot, she wiped the notation away and waited as Rip finished his run, the wave carrying him within just a few feet of the shoreline. In practiced movements he hopped off the board, water splashing up around him as he bounded up to the beach. Pulling the board onto the shore, he jammed the tail of it into the sand, fins digging themselves into the soft powder. “We got something?”

  “Tseng got us an address on the truck,” Kalani said, tossing him his t-shirt and jutting her chin toward the board standing tall. “That going to be okay there?”

  “Yeah,” Rip said, turning and extending a hand overhead, the gesture matched by someone
straddling his own ride, bobbing along with the waves, a handful of other figures floating beside him. “Kenu said to just leave it. Everybody here knows it’s his.”

  Kalani accepted the explanation and led the way back to her Jeep, Rip shaking out his wet hair and wiping sand away from his body as he went. Once there, he pulled his shirt over his head and tugged jeans on over his board shorts, a bit of moisture soaking through the legs, before climbing inside.

  Kalani waited until he was strapped in before taking off, the five-minute drive spent in silence, the morning sun just beginning to peek out from behind the Ko’olau Mountains. Traffic was still an hour away from becoming heavy. Reciting the address over and over again in her mind, Kalani found the street and number they were looking for and pulled up to the curb.

  “So, where are we?” Rip asked, still finger-combing his damp hair back from his forehead, both of them examining the structure before them.

  Unlike Lauren Mann’s residence, Reyes lived in a house. Designed in the old plantation style, it was a single story raised on stilts, a short staircase leading up to the front door. The roof was green corrugated metal and the exterior painted a color that was once dark red but had since faded to pink. Cracks were visible in at least two of the windows, and dry rot was evident around the door. Most of the grass on the lawn was brown and brittle, a bike lying on its side in the middle of it.

  Two automobiles sat in the driveway. One was a low-slung Cadillac Eldorado, the mud-brown paint badly in need of restoration. Beside it was an enormous yellow Dodge Ram, the silver rims polished to a shine.

  “This is the home of one Leo Reyes,” Kalani said. “I’m guessing you can see why we’re here.”

  “Yup,” Rip said, nodding as he examined the truck sitting in the drive. “Think he’s overcompensating for something?”

  Kalani arched an eyebrow without glancing over. “Could the same be said for someone who drives a van?”