Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series)

by Neal, Toby

  A few minutes later they stood in front of the door. Lei nodded, and the woman unlocked the door, turning to trot back down the steps. Lei pulled her weapon, turned the handle, and pushed it with all the weight of her hundred and twenty pounds. The door flew inward, banging the rubber stop against the wall. But before Lei had a chance to go in, a Maui Police Department squad car pulled into the driveway. A young officer got out and walked up the three cement steps to join her. He was a handsome young Filipino man she’d seen around the station.

  “Lieutenant Texeira.” He extended a hand and she shook it briefly, knowing hers was clammy with stress. “I’m Ben Cantorna.”

  “You’re here for backup while I search the house,” Lei said. “The occupant’s body was just found. Stay behind me. Keep your weapon ready until we verify the house is empty.” She crouched, weapon extended, and moved into the simple living space, rendered dim by closed drapes. Cantorna followed, imitating her, and she wondered how many times he’d ever broken into a house with possible hostiles inside.

  Lei didn’t have time to consider further, because she heard the clang of the gate on the outside of the house thumping shut. She realized that, with them breaching the front door, someone had taken the opportunity to run for it out the back door.

  “Go through the house to the back. I’m going to try to head him off!” Lei yelled, directing Cantorna through the house to the backyard as she spun, retracing their steps. She burst out the front door and leaped down the three cement steps, chasing a man in a ball cap. The man was picking up speed through the yard and down the driveway.

  “Halt! Police!” Lei cried, and was startled by the silent Prius suddenly pulling out in front of the fleeing man. The car didn’t quite hit him, but the man’s momentum caused him to crash into the vehicle. He bounced off the hood with a cry and landed on the asphalt.

  Lei ran up and rolled the suspect onto his stomach, pulling his arms behind him to cuff him. When he was subdued and restrained with a knee to his back, she looked up with a grin and thumbs-up to the intrepid landlady getting out of the car. “Quick thinking!”

  The woman raised her hand in a victory sign. Cantorna ran around the side of the house to join them.

  “It’s not Mark,” the landlady said, looking down at the suspect, whose face was obscured by the ball cap.

  Lei tweaked the hat off. Edward Kingston glared up at them. “She hit me with her car!” he complained. “That’s illegal!”

  “She just blocked you from fleeing,” Lei said. “And kudos to her for aiding in the capture of a foreign national in violation of his visa, at the very least. I’m taking you in for questioning.”

  Cantorna put the truculent Kingston in the back of the squad car. “You were supposed to get on that plane!” the young officer snapped, slamming the door on Kingston’s complaints and requests for his lawyer, Shimoda. The landlady drove off, excitedly talking on her cell phone.

  “So you took this man to the airport to be deported to Canada?” Lei asked Cantorna.

  The young man turned red. “I saw him all the way to the waiting area at the gate,” the young officer said. “It seemed like a waste of time. I thought he’d get on the plane. He’d been cooperative, said how much he was looking forward to getting home.”

  “Custodial duty of a deportee means making sure he gets on the plane,” Lei said.

  “I understand that now.” Cantorna rubbed the back of his neck, stained with the flush of mortification.

  Lei and Cantorna left Kingston in the locked back of the squad car, the windows down for air circulation. “You’re getting a crash course in searching,” Lei said. “Glove up and stick with me.” She was on the phone to Pono and the captain, updating them, as she and Cantorna tore through the modest space, bagging anything that looked out of place or like Kingston might have touched it.

  In the oven’s bottom drawer, they found what Kingston must have returned for—a laptop. Lei held it up for Cantorna to see. “Not your typical hiding place for a personal computer, so I’m hoping this is the reason Kingston returned to the house. We didn’t search thoroughly before, which is why I wanted to get back here ASAP when we found Jacobsen’s body and knew there had been foul play. Don’t dismiss any hiding place when you search.”

  “Yes, sir.” Cantorna’s excitement was evident in the perspiration rings under his arms as he followed her.

  “I would still like to find something that clearly ties Kingston to the victim and the poacher shootings. Hopefully, we’ve got something. Go put up the crime scene tape, will you?”

  Cantorna nodded and trotted off.

  Lei did a slow turn in the living room, her gaze coming to rest on the brackets in a row down the wall showing where Jacobsen’s bows had hung. There must be some connection between Jacobsen and Kingston; perhaps Jacobsen had been helping Kingston with his research all along and they’d had a parting of the ways?

  They drove back to the station and put Kingston in one of the interrogation rooms as he continued to refuse to say anything without his lawyer, whom Lei had called once he was booked. Shimoda was taking his time arriving, so Pono and Lei met in the conference room with Captain Omura.

  “So what’s going on here?” Omura asked. “I hear you found another body in the forest.”

  “Yes. It was Jacobsen, shot with an arrow,” Pono said. “I went over the truck while Rambo here was catching Kingston, and the blood pool there was consistent with a serious injury. Did you find any evidence he was shot at the house?” he asked Lei.

  “No. I think he was shot somewhere else. I’m now wondering if it was even Jacobsen who shot at me at the house originally. It seems more likely it was Kingston, that he’d shot Jacobsen and had his body stashed in the back of his truck when I got there. Then he took him out to the Maile Trail and buried him, ditching the weapon he shot him with in the gulch,” Lei said, glancing at the clock. Her twenty-four hours were melting away before her eyes—but at least she’d nailed the murderer—with the help of a lime-green Prius. She felt a smile tug her mouth at the memory of the landlady, dreadlocks aquiver, shooting a victory sign.

  “So why would Kingston be back in Jacobsen’s house after the fact?” Omura asked. “And why did he murder Jacobsen?”

  “Those are the questions we need answers for. But I think it’s because of the laptop.” Lei told them about the hidden computer she’d found. “I dropped it off at Tech. I imagine it’s password protected.”

  “Hopefully, Shimoda will get here soon and we can get this interview going,” Pono said.

  Just then Cantorna rapped on the door and stuck his head in. “Kingston’s attorney is here.”

  Omura narrowed her eyes at the young man. “You were supposed to see that Kingston left us for Canada, Officer Cantorna.”

  “I know, sir. It won’t happen again.” Sweat popped out on Cantorna’s forehead, and his cheeks flushed a mottled red. He dropped his eyes, suffering a long moment under Omura’s stare.

  Finally, Omura said, “I’m making a note in your file, Cantorna.” She stood. “Texeira and Kaihale, I’m going to be observing.”

  “Yes, sir.” They followed the young officer down the hall to the interrogation room. Lei knocked and looked through the little wire-lined port into the room. Shimoda, bent toward his client, looked up and gestured for them to enter.

  Lei turned on the recording equipment and recited the date, time, and people present.

  Shimoda opened. “My client would like to make a deal. Delay deportation to allow him to finish his project and immunity in return for his testimony.”

  “Testimony for what?” Pono led off. “We’re charging him for the murder of Mark Jacobsen, whose body was recovered in conservation lands today.”

  Shimoda didn’t bat an eye. “You do care about getting the real killer, don’t you? Not only of Jacobsen, but of the Chinese poacher.”

  “Of course. But we have to know something of what he’s going to be providing before we can authorize
any sort of get-out-of-jail-free card,” Pono said.

  “I ditched your deportation efforts because my project is so important,” Kingston said, dark eyes earnest. His beard was bushier than ever. “I’m studying blood lipids in birds who develop an immunity to malaria and factors that aid in that. I’m within months of being able to roll out a gene therapy that could save these birds—starting with our most critically endangered ones.”

  “That’s all very nice,” Lei said, with the baring of teeth she liked to employ during interviews, even as her interest piqued to hear more about his research. “But what we’re here to do is catch a killer—and from where I sit, we’ve got one.”

  “Hey!” Kingston started defensively, but Shimoda cut him off with a hand gesture.

  “My client knows who committed these killings and why. He’s prepared to testify. But he is not a party to the crimes that have been committed, and he wants a deal.”

  Lei and Pono looked at each other, and Lei frowned. She’d been so sure Kingston was the killer—it all fit together so neatly. “We have to check with the district attorney,” Lei said.

  They went out into the hall and turned in to the observation booth, a simple space used for lineup identification and listening in on interviews. Omura was seated at the table and already on the phone. She held up a finger as they entered and said, “Yes, sir.”

  She hung up the phone. “DA’s faxing over the immunity agreement. Good news is, we can still deport or charge him if we think it’s in the state’s best interest. The DA actually has no jurisdiction over Canadian visa rights, so he can agree if he wants, which he said he did, but ultimately INS will decide. We can just spell out the charges we won’t charge him with and find some others. I think it’s important to keep him in custody. He’s a flight risk.”

  “His research really does sound important,” Lei said, thinking of the difference it would make to be able to breed birds against malaria. Just the idea opened up interesting challenges.

  “Be that as it may. This case is a double murder, and we need someone to charge. Go check the fax machine for the agreement.”

  A few minutes later, Lei and Pono returned to the interview room. Lei turned the recording equipment back on, and Shimoda scanned the document before passing it to Kingston for his signature. Pulling the contract back to their side of the table, Lei eyed Kingston.

  “Start talking. How did you come to be in Jacobsen’s house, and what do you know about his death?” Lei asked.

  “Cam told me he shot Jacobsen by accident—just saw movement from one of the blinds and nailed him before he realized what he’d hit.” Kingston ran his fingers nervously through the bushy growth on his chin.

  “Cam? Dr. Cameron Rinker with Hawaiian Bird Conservatory?” Lei’s eyebrows rose in surprise. She resisted looking over at Pono. She tried to recall the sandy-blond scientist’s innocuous face and couldn’t.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, Jacobsen’s body buried in the ginger grove was no accident. What do you know about that?” Lei asked.

  “After I’d dodged the deportation a second time and was back in the woods, Cam called me on the sat phone and said there was an emergency. I hiked down and met him at the Maile Trail. That’s when he told me what happened with Jacobsen. He had the body in the truck bed, and we took Jacobsen out of the truck and up the trail and buried him. Cam’s idea was to ditch the bow he’d shot Jacobsen with. When I got to the house and saw all Jacobsen’s bows had been taken, I realized he might also be framing Jacobsen for shooting the poachers.”

  “So that’s when you knew Rinker had shot the poachers?”

  “He never said he’d done that. I just guessed. All he ever said was that I could use Jacobsen’s house when I needed to get Internet and take a shower, since it was empty and it was going to look like Jacobsen had shot the poachers and fled. He had my research laptop; he took it from my lab when I was out in the field, and he put it in Jacobsen’s house. Said it was to keep it from getting destroyed by the damp. I didn’t believe him, but I had to go to Jacobsen’s house to get it.”

  “So let’s recap. You can basically only testify that Rinker contacted you about accidentally shooting Jacobsen. You’re only speculating he shot the poachers. You suspected Rinker was setting you up when he took your laptop and left it at Jacobsen’s house. Why didn’t you come to us?” Lei asked.

  “I just needed a little more time for my work,” Kingston said pleadingly. “Just another week or two. I needed that laptop. I’m almost ready to publish this research, and I was hoping to be able to finish. I planned to call in Jacobsen’s body and my suspicions as soon as my paper was done. If I did it sooner, you’d arrest or deport me and so much work would be lost. But when I heard Lieutenant Texeira pounding on the door at Jacobsen’s house, I realized Cam had set me up too.”

  A long pause. Lei tried to picture the series of events. It felt wrong, like a smoke screen. Shimoda gazed at her, inscrutable. Lei narrowed her eyes at the agitated scientist.

  “This is all about as clear as mud. Why don’t we back up a minute to the beginning? Tell us how your relationship with Dr. Cameron Rinker began.”

  “It all started with my work with Dr. Biswandi at University of Hawaii. I thought I was onto something, but she wouldn’t let me pursue my hypothesis, so I approached the Hawaiian Bird Conservatory. Dr. Snelling also refused permission to extend my visa and continue with my project, but Dr. Cam Rinker, as the staff biologist, thought I had a good theory and signed my proposal to study the birds and stay on the conservation lands after my internship with University of Hawaii ended. He knew all about me being up there camping out, and he’d come out and help me on the weekends. He provided food and the lab supplies I needed.”

  “Where was this lab located?”

  “It’s a simple plastic structure. I’ll show you. Anyway, one day when I was out there working, Cam came out to my lab with my supplies. He was really agitated, said something had upset him on the way and he wouldn’t talk about it. A few days later, I smelled the body of the first poacher and saw what it was, but I was too scared to approach it or report it because I knew I was up there illegally and I worried I would be implicated.”

  “So why didn’t you tell us all of this when we first brought you in?” Lei asked.

  “I didn’t say anything because I wanted to find a way to get back up to continue my research. I was able to continue while you were investigating the shooting of the first poacher, and I didn’t know Cam had shot that man for sure, or I would have been more forthcoming earlier. Time went on; then I spotted a second poacher. I told Cam about him, and then you guys captured me.”

  “You should have come clean about all this the first time we questioned you,” Lei said. “If the accusations you’ve made about Dr. Rinker are true, Jacobsen might not have been killed.”

  “I know that now. Cam was protecting me. He hadn’t told anyone about our arrangement. I know how dedicated to the birds he is—but it never occurred to me until later that he was the one shooting the poachers. The thing you have to know is, we kept our bows with us all the time in case we came across any ungulates in the forest. After the first time I almost got caught by Lieutenant Texeira here, I realized what a precarious position I was in. I buried my bow and disposed of my arrows, so when you guys did find me with the dog, I didn’t have them. I didn’t want to get charged—I just wanted to stay in the forest and finish my work.”

  “So to clarify: You suspect Rinker of shooting the poachers,” Pono said.

  “Yes. But he never said he did, and I never had any reason to suspect him except that he was upset that one day. Don’t even know if that was the day the first poacher was shot.”

  Lei and Pono glanced at each other.

  “So, according to you, you’ve done nothing wrong but dodge getting deported and help bury a body?” Lei put some steel in her voice.

  “I know it was wrong to dodge the deportation, but the research is more imp
ortant than my visa. It was also wrong to help bury Jacobsen’s body. But I was scared—first of being deported and charged, then of Cam and what he’d do to me if I went to the authorities.”

  “So you’re afraid of Rinker.”

  “Definitely. He has a way of looking at you, like he really means what he’s saying—and he’s told me nothing matters but the birds. I believe he weighs a human life as less than one of the birds. Don’t get me wrong—I love the birds. I’ve risked everything to continue this research. But I’d never kill someone over them.”

  “No, but you’d help drag the body of an innocent young ranger into the forest, bury him where he’d never be found, and allow him to be framed for murder,” Lei said, feeling anger flash heat her cheeks and chest. She imagined how she looked: eyes glaring, skin patchy red. It didn’t matter—Jacobsen hadn’t deserved what happened to him. Lei saw remorse and regret in Kingston’s expression for the first time as color leached out from purple hollows under his eyes, and he covered his face with his hands.

  “I’m so sorry,” he muttered. “This has all gotten so crazy.”

  “I think you have enough for now,” Shimoda said.

  “Yes. We still have some loose ends to tie up. But we are not releasing Kingston. He’s going to be in our custody for a full twenty-four hours, and then we’re going to find something to charge him with,” Lei said. They stood up.

  “Hold on. We just signed an agreement,” Shimoda said, his brows snapping together.

  “Yeah—but your client’s too much of a flight and safety risk to let out of our custody, so we’re going to charge him with visa violation, trespassing, and whatever else we can think of that we didn’t list on your agreement, to keep him locked up,” Pono said. “All we have at this point is your client’s word that any of this is true, and we need to pick up Dr. Rinker to verify the story. Go ahead and take it up with the district attorney, if you don’t like it.”

  “You can bet I will,” Shimoda said, and his narrowed eyes promised a fight as Lei and Pono left him and his client alone.