by Toby Neal
Taking a bag? Sophie had no idea what Lei was talking about, but the effect on Taggart was noticeable as the man’s eyebrows shot up and he straightened in his chair. “Where did you hear that?”
Lei shrugged. “It’s just a rumor I’ve heard. Sometimes, when a contractor is in a hurry and doesn’t want to jump through all the hoops presented by finding an artifact or a burial on a property slated for development, they will offer a bag—meaning, a bag of cash—to the archaeologist doing the investigation. To look the other way, and speed up the process.”
“I don’t know where you’ve heard this, but it’s bullshit.”
Sophie worried at her lip, wishing she had her computer to run a quick search on that phrase, see if she could unearth any documented cases of that kind of bribery.
Pono picked up the thread of the questioning next. “One of the things that we’re hearing is that Mano had a lot of enemies. He was known to be a man with a little black book. Are we going to find your name on that list?”
Little black book? Sophie had only heard that phrase in connection with dating. Neither detective had said anything to Sophie about this discovery on Mano—it must’ve come out in their canvassing and other interviews. There was just no substitute for old-fashioned police work for uncovering some of the most important material on a case, and Sophie was forcefully reminded that she was not a part of that.
Taggart’s face seemed to have frozen. His cynical dark eyes flicked between Lei and Pono. “Little black book? I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t like what you are implying.”
Pono leaned forward, sympathetic. “It’s understandable if you took a bag. Your company really doesn’t pay you enough for the expertise that your job calls for, and there are all sorts of extra challenges that no one would think of here in Hawaii—the high cost of gas, the price of a rental, how much a drink costs at a bar to meet a woman.”
Taggart folded his hands on the table. “I think this is the part where I ask for a lawyer.”
“Before we get to that, I wonder if you could answer a few questions for our associate, Sophie Ang. She’s helping us with the part of the investigation pertaining to the burglaries,” Lei said.
Sophie blew out a breath. She had hoped, greatly, that she would not have to do this. She got up and walked around to the interview room door, opened it, and went inside. Taggart’s eyes flashed with something dark—and regretful.
Sophie wished she knew exactly what it was, but she had never been that good at reading people. Maybe he was just embarrassed about those moments in the bar, and about how they were having this moment now.
“Hi, Dr. Taggart. I’m assisting MPD on this investigation as a private contractor. In the course of our background checks, we came across some information about your financials.”
Taggart narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you need a warrant for any of my private information?” The man knew his rights. She was going to have to tread carefully or DAVID’s involvement would come under scrutiny.
“All of this is public record.” Which was true. DAVID just accelerated its discovery. “I’d like to ask you about…” Sophie looked at the yellow-lined pad she had brought in. “A certain cash payment for a piece of property on the Big Island.”
“Family inheritance. Not that it’s any of your business.” Taggart’s gaze could not have been colder.
“I’m not sure about that,” Pono said, shaking his head ruefully as he looked at a note inside the file in front of him. “We called your mother. We checked if there had been any large bequests in your family, because we thought perhaps that was a reason for the purchase.”
“This was money from my dad’s side. My parents are divorced. I didn’t tell my mother because…” Taggart hunched his shoulders. “Because it would hurt her that she didn’t have anything to leave me. If you call my father, he can verify that I inherited that money from an uncle.”
Yes, if Brett Taggart was lying, he was a good actor.
“We’d like that number,” Lei said. “Please.”
“Sure.” Taggart scrolled through his phone and rattled the number off.
“And we’d like your work and personal computer. To verify you didn’t have correspondence with Mano, or anything shady going on. We just want to rule you out,” Pono said.
Taggart narrowed his eyes. “And you can have them when I get a warrant. I believe I asked for a lawyer.”
Lei smiled, conciliatory. “No need to get so huffy. This is just a preliminary interview. You’ll know when you need to get a lawyer.” She stood, signaling the end of the interview, and extended her hand to Taggart. “Thanks so much for your cooperation.”
Taggart shook Lei’s hand perfunctorily, but his eyes were hard on Sophie as he did so. The two detectives preceded them to the door. Taggart came around the table and approached Sophie. “I’m quite interested in how you got hold of my financials,” Taggart said, his hand clamping around her elbow. “Drinking buddy.”
Sophie shook him off, refusing to meet his eyes. “I’ve signed confidentiality agreements. I cannot discuss the case with anyone but the immediate investigators.”
“I think I have a right to know how you got that information. Given your computer skills, I suspect that it wasn’t good old-fashioned police work that got the cops this far up my ass.”
Sophie opened the door and speeded up once in the hallway, stretching long legs to catch up with Lei and Pono out in the hall.
“This makes me really glad we didn’t sleep together,” Taggart called loudly after her, and Sophie cringed as both Lei and Pono turned to look at her.
“Something you want to tell us?” Lei asked.
“I guess I have to,” Sophie said. “Can we go somewhere private? It will only take a minute.”
In the detectives’ cubicle, she filled them in on her disastrous trip to the bar. Pono clapped her on the shoulder. “Well, you can be glad that at least Taggart didn’t lie and say you slept together. He could have tried to smear you with that.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But remember, he told me he was going home after I—said no. And then he told you he took someone else home from the bar. So he’s a liar.”
Pono smiled. “Most men are, when it comes to getting laid.”
Lei snorted. “Stop it, Pono. You’re going to put her off men, and she’s already about as gun-shy as anyone can get.”
“Sorry, Sophie. Men are dogs when it comes right down to it, and it’s best you know that up front,” Pono said. “But there are still some good ones out there. Loyal hound dogs that would follow you to the ends of the earth, and protect you with their life.”
Lei socked Pono in the arm. “That’s not sexy at all.”
“It kind of is,” Sophie said. “I wouldn’t mind such a one.” But could she navigate a relationship like that? Another question entirely.
Pomai Magnuson sipped from a sleek steel coffee carafe. Her polished nails flicked through a stack of papers inside a file she had carried in to the interview. Her demeanor was alert but relaxed. Clearly she felt she had nothing to fear from Lei and Pono, who sat on one side of the table as she and Sophie sat on the other.
“I brought along a copy of the offer and proposal from Blackthorne Industries,” Magnuson said. “I thought…I don’t know. Maybe some of the information in this report came from Mano. Maybe Mano was secretly brokering this deal with Blackthorne, and it has something to do with his death.”
Sophie saw the electricity of interest move through both Lei and Pono, and she felt it herself: a tightening of the abs. A spike in her heart rate. There was a sense of being on point, catching a dangerous scent that brought a sharpening of all her senses. Yes, tracking killers was addicting.
“Who benefits from a deal with Blackthorne?” Lei asked, taking the report that Magnuson handed her.
“Well, the realtor handling the sale,” Magnuson said. “And, as you may be aware, Mano owns his own real estate and development brokerage. Another pers
on benefiting would be the architectural firm who gets the contract to complete the excavation and direct the restoration of the site.” She leaned over with a pen and tapped several highlighted passages. “As you can see, a whole reconstruction of the original island’s buildings and points of interest is planned. An architectural firm would be directing all of that recreation for historical accuracy. And of course, the Hui would benefit, with a tremendous influx of cash. We could go on to excavate and restore another worthy site, and we have one in mind.”
Lei tilted her head and smiled. There was a hunter’s gleam in her wide, clear brown eyes. “You realize you have just provided yourself with motive.”
“Oh, I realize that.” Magnuson flapped her hand. “But I do not directly benefit from any of this. My salary from the Hui is fair, but small potatoes for the director of a historical nonprofit. And my job is secure, no matter what happens with this site…I benefit from none of this in any financial way.”
“But perhaps there is something other than financial,” Pono said.
Magnuson speared him with a contemptuous glance. “I dare you to find a reason for me to sabotage my job.” She seemed personally offended, and Sophie remembered that Pono had mentioned that she and his wife were friends.
“Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind submitting your work and home computer to us for a quick search. Just to rule you out as a suspect,” Lei said.
Magnuson’s large dark eyes flared wide. “That’s…awfully invasive. But I have nothing to hide. Sure, take them.”
“Good. Sophie will accompany you back to the Hui’s office and collect it, and your home computer, too,” Lei said.
“Fine.” Magnuson bit off the word. “Do you have any more questions for me?”
“Yes. We have already searched Mano’s home and collected his computer. Did he have a workstation or computer he used at the Hui’s offices? Because we will want to go through those, too.”
“He did. There is a neutral workstation set up in the Hui’s library area that all the board members can use.”
“All right, we’ll come with you and search that area, and Sophie will take that computer in for analysis as well.”
Following Magnuson’s stiff back down the hall of MPD, Sophie wished that she’d met this woman some other time—they might have become friends. It seemed impossible they ever could be now.
A wide, shallow box held a large bag of soil in the king’s hidden room. He turned on one of the spotlights trained upon it and approached. Wearing latex gloves, the king reached his hands into the earth inside the bag. Even through the gloves, he could feel mana infusing the very earth of his ancestors’ burial place. He wished, in this moment, that he could touch the soil uncovered, sift through it and find her bones with his bare hands—but the oils from his skin could corrupt the bone, and that wasn’t something he wanted to risk.
The king gently sifted the soil from one bag to another, handful by handful. Shreds of wood from the disintegrating hull of the canoe that had held her, fragmented in his hands.
The first bone he found was a slender, straight humerus, its color stained by the earth to a deep, rich red-brown. One by one, he removed her bones from the dirt as he found them, setting them in a pile on one side of the table and clearing the soil from one bag into another.
The king regretted the crudeness of her removal from her grave. He would make up for it in the future.
A bone hook that must have been a pendant around her neck was caught on the fragile arc of her clavicle. The king used a soft brush to remove the soil, keeping the two objects connected as he lifted the clavicle out of the soil and gently laid it on the pile.
He removed the bone hook.
The hook was a decorative style, not the simple arc with detachable barbs used for serious fishing. This one was a graceful crescent, the point curled inward, sharp and yet appealingly smooth. Mana seemed to emanate from it, calling to him, and the king could not resist.
He stripped off his latex gloves and cradled the hook in his hands, leaning down to breathe on it. He wondered why the impulse to do that was so strong, but did not question the need to do it again, breathing over it three times.
Making sure the hook was clear of dirt, he walked over to the drawer where its place awaited, a nest of black velvet. Setting the hook in the drawer, gazing at it, then closing it away with his other treasures gave him a deep sense of satisfaction.
Returning to the bag of soil, he removed the rest of the skeleton. His amateur study of archaeology and genealogy made the moment particularly poignant and personal.
The king was exhuming the skeleton of his great ancestress, the queen. This was the high point of his quest, and he paused to savor it as he reassembled her skeleton on the nearby table, covering her with an ornamental tapa cloth. Here she would wait, until the time was right to be returned to her resting place.
And in the meantime, he would visit her every day.
Chapter Thirteen
Sophie settled into a decent office chair in the MPD’s computer lab. One other tech officer was working with her in the space, but per the norm, no conversation took place—both of them were already wired in. Sophie already had made a clone copy of the computer she wanted to begin searching with the MPD’s write blocker. She began with the hard drive of Seth Mano’s home computer—the one most likely to contain any secrets the man had.
The technology for cloning a computer took a while, so she settled in to work as the device worked on copying the hard drives of Pomai Magnuson’s computers. Lei had also promised Sophie Brett Taggart’s work and home computers to work on before the day was over.
Searching for any hidden files with a sifting program, Sophie soon located a suspicious QuickBooks file hidden under the title Personal Accounts. Scrolling through a list of payments, going back three years and only accompanied by initials, Sophie mused over the title of the file. When she looked at Mano’s bank accounts, no corresponding record of the payments listed could be found. Sophie picked up the desktop phone and dialed Lei’s extension.
“You better come down here.”
Moments later, Lei leaned over Sophie’s shoulder as Sophie showed her the list of payments. “Pono’s out running down something for the case. What do you think these payments are?”
“Well, the initials are all different and the dates are all different, and the amounts are all different. But see?” Sophie pointed to the screen. “Many of these initials recur, either monthly or just every so often. And look at the amounts. Anything from five hundred to two thousand dollars. Nothing too huge, but they’re consistent.” Sophie glanced up at Lei. “I think we’re looking at Mano’s side job. He was a blackmailer.” Sophie pushed her chair back so she could gaze at her friend. “Was this what you were referring to when you mentioned a ‘black book’ to Taggart?”
“Exactly.” Lei sat down in an office chair beside Sophie. “One of the witnesses we interviewed about Mano, an associate at his firm, implied that Mano dealt in information—that he supplemented and strengthened his real estate development business through shady dealings. I wasn’t sure what that meant until now.”
“Well, do you think any of these initials match possible blackmail victims? Victims who might have turned against Mano? Unfortunately, there are a lot of initials here.”
Lei shook her head. “I hope it will be easier than that. All we need to find is someone involved with the Hui whose initials are also on this list. It’s unlikely that a completely unrelated blackmail victim would have chosen to meet Mano at the Kakela site.”
Sophie turned back to the computer and began to scroll. “Let’s begin by looking for PM and BT.” They scrolled through, but none of the known board members or staffers’ initials were on the list. “Unfortunately, we have to consider the possibility that these initials are coded,” Sophie said. “He could have an additional decoding key stored elsewhere. It would make sense with how relatively easy this file was to find. And another thing—have you co
nsidered that there must be a cache where he keeps the materials to back up his blackmail?”
“We’ve already searched his home, and we have a warrant to get into his safe deposit box. The tricky thing is that he didn’t have a central place where all of his accounts and bank information were stored. I had to hunt for it with the help of his housekeeper.”
“So Mano was single?”
“A widower. Wife died two years ago. Cancer.”
“By the timing, the blackmail began a year before her death. I wonder if this blackmail business is related somehow,” Sophie said.
Lei was working her phone with her thumbs. “I’m updating Pono on all this.”
“I have always thought that knowing motive can help give us a clear idea of who benefits from the crime. In a situation like this, knowing why Mano was blackmailing could help point to his killer.”
Lei glanced at Sophie. “In this case, I think we should stay focused on concrete police work, like finding the decryption key and tracking down these initials. I would like that file emailed to me so Pono and I can include it in Mano’s case jacket, and discuss it with Captain Omura.”
Sophie nodded, accepting her friend’s leadership on the case.
“And I have some other news.” Lei spun back and forth in her chair to discharge the same sort of restless energy that Sophie felt on occasion. “Pono and I met with Dr. Gregory over at the medical examiner’s office. Mano was killed with the rock we identified. Cause of death was blunt force trauma.”
“No surprise there.” Sophie raised her brows.
“No, but he found an unidentified hair stuck in Mano’s blood on the body. We ran it already—not in the system. But if we can locate that person, we have some good forensic evidence to close the case.”
Sophie was still sifting through the next computer when Pono carried in a box containing two more. “The warrant came through for Taggart’s computer,” he said, setting the heavy box down on the table next to her work area. Sophie blinked up at him. Her eyes felt gritty from staring at the screen for hours. The external sound-sensing feature on her headphones had muted the concerto she was listening to when Pono spoke to her.
