4 Toby Neal- Broken ferns

by Neal, Toby

  “I know, but at least Ang was able to find enough commonalities to give us something to check. Let me know when you’re done with your list.”

  “Of course.” She clicked off as the GPS gave the next direction and glanced at Stevens. He had the second shotgun open on his knees and was ramming the hot-pink beanbag shells into the chamber.

  “So what’re you going to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean? You should go after her.”

  “She said she needs space to think. I’m giving it to her.”

  “That’s womanspeak for, “I want you to prove you love me and come after me.”

  “I don’t know about that.” He shut the loader with a click and laid the gun on the backseat with the other one. “She’s from Thailand. Maybe it means something different there.”

  “It doesn’t. Even if she gets mad when you go after her, she’s doing this to test you. See where your loyalties lie. And damn if I can believe I’m giving you marriage advice.” Lei shook her head as she pulled into another gracious driveway bisected by a grand-looking metal gate. “Do whatever; it’s nothing to me.” She tried to say it like she meant it as they rolled down the drive, eager to change the topic. “Didn’t know there were so many of these fancy gates over here. Metalworkers must be doing okay in this economy.”

  It would always be part of Lei’s experience to identify with the workers who built the houses and kept up the estates more than those who occupied them. She’d had to work too hard just to drive a decent car to ever forget the divide between the wealthy and working class in Hawaii, a state run on a service economy.

  They went through the admissions and explanation process three more times before they’d run out of the list, and after checking with Ken, decided to head back toward Kahului in the cooling light of evening—the Bandit must have gone to ground, because even with the island-wide BOLO, no one had spotted the ultralight again.

  “So do you still want to see Keiki?” Stevens asked, as they came around the last of the curves of the Pali toward Kahului, the main town spread out through the waist of the figure-eight shape of the island.

  “Of course. And I want her back. I’m serious about that.” She angled a glance back at him. “I’m not liking my shitty little apartment on Oahu. If you’ll bring Keiki over, I’ll get a proper place.”

  “Seems like both of us wanted some things that didn’t work out,” Stevens said. A world of regret colored that understatement, and Lei kept her eyes on the road, trying not to show her inner turmoil, as he pointed out a few turns.

  He and Anchara had a nice, newer ranch-style home in the development of Wailuku Heights. Lei wound through a neighborhood complete with kids on bikes, speed bumps, and white picket fences, a sight that made her gut tighten with a conflict of longing and claustrophobia.

  Keiki barked a familiar Intruder Alert as Lei pulled the unfamiliar SUV into Stevens’s poured-concrete driveway decorated with urns of potted palms. She was relieved it didn’t look anything like the little old plantation cottage she’d shared with him in the past—but the air of domesticity filled her mind with imagined scenes she could do without.

  Lei opened the car door, and Keiki spotted her. Instantly, the big dog’s menacing tone changed to happy cries as she leaped up, paws on the fence, hind end waggling frantically. Lei felt love surge up in her, total and unreserved, as she ran to the five-foot picket fence and took Keiki’s big square head in her hands, gazing into the dog’s intelligent brown eyes.

  “I’m sorry I left you, baby.”

  “Nice to see you show some feelings.” Stevens’ voice was tight as he opened the gate for her, and Lei hurried in and went down on her haunches, hugging Keiki around the sturdy neck as the big dog sat, swiping Lei with her tongue. Keiki flopped in total submission, and Lei rubbed her belly. She traced the old track of a bullet that had gone into the glossy shoulder and left an ugly hairless exit scar on the dog’s side.

  Stevens reappeared with a couple of Coronas.

  “We still have to drop by the station so I can pick up my car. You look like you could use a beer.”

  “A beer is great, thanks. Is Anchara still gone?”

  “Yes. I’d invite you in, but…”

  “I don’t want to come in,” Lei said quickly.

  “Right,” Stevens said. They drank, wordless.

  Lei folded her legs to sit in the neatly trimmed grass, Keiki’s head pillowed on her thigh as she looked around at the immaculate slice of suburbia, feeling like an invader, as if her presence polluted the dream of this middle-class paradise. The dog’s eyes closed in ecstasy as Lei played with her silky ears. “You haven’t said you’d bring Keiki over to me on Oahu.”

  “I love her, too,” he said. “But seeing you together, I can’t keep her. Let me know when you have a proper place, and I’ll bring her over.”

  “Thank you,” Lei said, gazing into his eyes for a long moment. They’d gone gray with shadows. “We’d better get on the road.”

  Stevens said nothing as Lei bade the dog goodbye, nothing as they drove back to the Kahului Station, and nothing as she let him out at his vehicle but “See you tomorrow.”

  No, there was nothing to say. But that night, in her lumpy Maui Beach Hotel bed, she fell easily asleep for the first time in months.

  She was getting Keiki back. It was something.

  Lei woke abruptly, sitting up, her heart thundering, covers tangled around her perspiring waist—a terrible severing from a nightmare that was born in memory.

  Kwon on his knees before her, her hands, covered by yellow rubber cleaning gloves, holding her Glock, wobbling and weaving as she took aim. In the dream, she’d pulled the trigger—and he’d flown backward, brains splattering the wall behind him in a Rorschach pattern of revenge that couldn’t be undone.

  Thank God she hadn’t pulled the trigger that day, a day so emotionally loaded she still remembered the sight of the gun trembling, Kwon on his knees before her, his eyes shut tight as he waited for her to end his sorry life.

  That position of power hadn’t done a thing to bring back her childhood innocence. She hoped the clothes she’d worn for that confrontation, a platinum-blond wig and hot-pink jean jacket, were still where she’d hidden them in case she ever needed to produce them to clear her name. She wished she could find out who’d done it—only she didn’t have a single lead or any time to pursue the case. And then there was Detective Kamuela, questing about for answers.

  A run was in order. It was only five thirty, and she needed to sweat off the nightmare. She pulled on her running clothes and slipped out of the hotel, her feet picking up a familiar rhythm on the sidewalk through town. She turned toward the towering mass that was Haleakala, just beginning to be gilded by early-morning sunshine on the eastern side, a vast purple dormant volcano looming over the city nestled in the curve of Kahului Harbor.

  The road, an artery through town, curved past a wetland bird sanctuary, and there was little traffic in the pearl-gray dawn. Towering, graceful cumulous clouds reflected in the still waters of the marsh. Hawaiian stilts with their long red legs picked their way across the flats, bodies still but for their darting heads searching for prey. Reeds stood still as rapiers planted in the mud bottom, and a scent of brackish algae wafted over Lei as she jogged beside a chain-link fence separating the town from the reserve.

  At the corner of Dairy Road and Hana Highway, a big intersection with multiple lanes, Lei leaned over and stretched, stood, and when the light changed, she hurried across the intersection toward the familiar edifice of Marco’s Restaurant. The black-and-white-themed Italian restaurant was bordered by a parking lot and red-flowered hibiscus hedge, and as she jogged across the lot she spotted Stevens’s Bronco with the surf racks.

  He was having breakfast at Marco’s, something they’d often done before work when she was with MPD. Maybe she could get a coffee with him. Her heart went into overdrive, and it had nothing to do with running.


  Just when she thought she’d accepted the situation, she realized she never had. Never would.

  Lei’s feet seemed to turn by their own volition to the glass door of the restaurant, and she pushed the handle and went in, stopping at the hostess station and rack of bakery goods, scanning the black-and-white booths.

  That’s when she spotted them.

  Chapter 15

  From her spot in the doorway, their booth was straight ahead against the far wall of windows. Stevens and Anchara were deep in conversation, their eyes on each other, each of their profiles as clear to Lei as if stamped on a coin that would stay in her memory forever: Stevens’s high forehead, rugged jaw, and intense blue eyes on his wife, his hand holding hers on the tabletop, saying something as he leaned toward her. Anchara sat straight as a ballet dancer across from him. Her tawny skin, large dark eyes, and full lips were a sweet contrast to the fall of long black hair rippling over her shoulders.

  She was as beautiful as ever. Maybe more so.

  Lei felt that sensation she’d had before, an actual stab of pain to her chest that left her breathless. Apparently a broken heart feels like a heart attack. The thought rose from her mind, feeling alien and disembodied, hovering over her head, a stray conversation balloon, even as she turned and stumbled back out through the door, terrified they’d see her.

  Lei got on the road again, hardly noticing where she was going, her eyes dry and unblinking. Somehow she ended up back at the Maui Beach Hotel, autopilot a homing device as she showered and dressed.

  The feeling in her chest returned now and then as she got ready for the day, a sliver of ice inserting itself into her breathing—but for the first time in her life, she didn’t try to avoid or suppress the pain, and she was even aware of that.

  She had a broken heart, and she’d earned it. She deserved it. She just needed to endure it until it got better and get to work anyway.

  Dr. Wilson would be proud of her. Not that that changed a damn thing or made any of it hurt any less. Still, she was glad, fiercely glad, that she hadn’t once thought of cutting herself over this.

  Lei’s phone rang. She picked up to Ken’s voice full of suppressed excitement.

  “The kid’s been spotted landing on Lanai. Helicopter’s on its way to take us there.”

  Chapter 16

  Ken, Lei, Marcella, and Rogers shoehorned into the small seats of the Bell JetRanger, and moments later it took off from the seldom-used helipad of the Kahului Police Station. “Remind me to tell you something about Stevens,” she whispered in Marcella’s ear. Her friend nodded with a quick frown, but they had to put on their helmets and the roar of the rotors drowned out any conversation.

  Lei watched the nondescript houses of the suburbs of Kahului race by at dizzying speed, and soon they were over the waving green of the last of Hawaii’s sugarcane fields. Moments later, they were bucking the wind over Ma`alaea Harbor, clocked in as the windiest harbor in the world. Marcella’s face had gone a waxy green, and Ken and Rogers both looked stoic, but Lei felt fine as long as she pasted her forehead against the curved window and looked out.

  Lanai, a tiny, privately owned island, was sixteen miles off the coast of Lahaina. It been used for pineapple growing, but now was owned by a computer billionaire and was dedicated to a small, exclusive tourist trade. The helicopter flew low over the cerulean water, arrow-straight toward the island, and Lei looked for whales as she thought over what they knew about the Bandit’s latest move.

  The Bandit had been spotted taking off from Kaanapali, the sighting called in by a citizen who’d seen the shiny chrome-colored craft heading across the wind-whipped channel toward Lanai. Lei wondered what the target on Lanai was; a quick workup on the island and geomaps had produced a likely area of landing in the golf course, in an area fronted by huge and exclusive homes. Ang was busy working up a list of likely addresses.

  What could the Smiley Bandit’s endgame be, that he was taking these kinds of chances with open-water crossings? Marcella had shown her a newsfeed on her phone that the Bandit had sent to the media, and the distorted, backlit figure of the Bandit’s accomplice intoned, “The one percent can’t hide anymore. The Smiley Bandit is taking his life in his hands and going to the ‘exclusive island’ to redistribute more wealth.”

  Lei found she could hardly stand watching Wendy Watanabe’s smug face as the reporter added her commentary. The gag order still hadn’t come in, and Ken’s terse shake of the head when she asked about it wasn’t encouraging.

  She had a bad feeling about how this was going to end, even with the pile of rifles between the seats loaded with rubber ammo—the kid had a gun with real bullets. And there were a lot of cops involved who might not have really read the memo about no deadly force…or taken it seriously if they had. The little speech Stevens had made in the station about neutralizing the threat came to mind—and there was something suicidal in the way the kid kept pushing forward.

  She wished she could talk to her ex-therapist Dr. Wilson about it. She reached up and tapped her comm unit, built into the helmet. “What do you guys think of a consult with Dr. Wilson about the kid’s state of mind?”

  “Good idea,” Marcella said. “I’m a little worried about the pace of these robberies, what targets he’s picking and why. Not to mention that Walther pistol he’s packing.”

  “I’ll set it up.” Rogers worked his phone. The tinny tone of their voices barely registered over the roar of the helicopter’s engines, now laboring as the aircraft bucked against a backswirl off of the golden red, humped shape of Lanai.

  Lei focused on the steep, rocky face of the cliff overlooking a small, horseshoe-shaped bay filled with boats as they approached Manele Harbor. Everything from catamarans to fishing boats jammed the narrow docking area, and the helicopter swung alarmingly as it hit some sort of air current. Marcella heaved into her airsick bag, but Rogers and Ken, though clutching theirs, appeared to be holding off for the moment.

  Lei was delighted by her first glimpse of the wild, wind-scored island as they rose with the terrain, heading inland and tracking a back-switching paved road that led up from the harbor to the tiny town at the crest of the island.

  “Lanai City,” the pilot said into their comm units. The “city” was a village square enclosed by small, plantation-style homes left over from the pineapple days. The mansions were a newer development on the outskirts.

  “We’re landing outside of town and local PD is meeting us to drive out to the unsub’s likely targets,” Ken said. “So far, no one has spotted the Hummel.”

  “Are you sure it even went here, then?” Lei asked.

  “No. He could have gone farther south and headed for Molokai.” The three islands, clustered close, were separated by around nine miles of open ocean. “We’ve called MPD out there to send patrols to look for the aircraft.”

  Lei took in the surrounding topography—Lanai was a dry island except for the ridgeline of its highest point, dotted by tall Cook pines that wicked moisture down and captured clouds to cover the little town. Another single two-lane road led from the “city” to the industrial harbor on another side of the island from the bluff they’d arrived on.

  The helicopter began descending with more alarming pendulum swinging and landed in the emerald-green grass of a sweep of golf course. Through the curved glass, Lei could see a row of mansions, windows glittering like fool’s gold.

  She was the last to get out, running a little bent beneath the slowing rotors, carrying a pair of shotguns loaded with beanies. They’d brought several extras in case local law enforcement didn’t have theirs ready.

  That law enforcement, a sheriff and a pair of deputies, pushed away from their Maui Police Department blue-and-white Crown Vics to greet Ken and Rogers. Marcella, still a little green, refrained from shaking hands with Sheriff Beck and Officers Eno and Mikado.

  “Here are some rifles already loaded with beanies,” Rogers said. “We have a lot of media attention and child advocates watching this, so i
f we have a chance to take this kid down, use these.”

  “What’s the kid carrying?” Eno asked. He was an older local guy with acne scars and a bristling mustache that reminded Lei of her ex-partner, Pono.

  “Walther PPK, six rounds in the chamber, no other ammo that we know of. Everyone should be in vests,” Rogers said.

  “Hell, if that kid fires on us, we’re going to do what we need to do,” Sheriff Beck said, even as he took the rifle with its nondeadly ammo.

  “We get it,” Marcella said, “but I don’t think you quite realize what a media shitstorm this has become.”

  “The Smiley Bandit has his own Facebook fan page.” Lei handed the extra rifle she carried to Officer Mikado, a slender young Japanese man with the wiry, chiseled look of a martial artist. “And he’s getting national coverage. We have to take him alive.”

  They’d brought three vehicles, and Lei ended up in one with Mikado. They pulled out without sirens or lights. “I think the others have it covered here at the McMansion Strip,” Mikado said. “I’d like to go out and look somewhere off the beaten track—there’s a ripe target at the end of it.”

  “You know this island,” Lei said. “If you think there’s another target he’d pick, let’s go. We’re waiting on a list of targets from our IT agent, but she hasn’t gotten back to us yet.”

  The young officer needed no further encouragement, and they roared out of the area, streaking through the quiet streets of the village with its pickup trucks and colorful tin-roofed cottages built in the pineapple days.

  They passed the gracious Koele Lodge with its huge banyans and circle drive surrounded by more Cook and Norfolk pines and continued on the blacktop to an unmarked turnoff. Lei clutched the dashboard as he took the turn hard and accelerated up what must be an entrance to yet another opulent estate—this one bordered with beds planted three feet deep in pineapple, the purplish bromeliad that had covered the island in its agricultural heyday.