Motive

by Dustin Stevens

“No,” Randle said, his gaze boring down on Tseng. “You go back to doing exactly what you always do, but when you’re not on the clock, when nobody is around, you monitor it. You keep close tabs on everything, and you report back to me.”

  Disbelief roiled through Tseng. His jaw dropped open as once more he examined each of the faces in the room, trying to make sense of the madness he was hearing.

  “Keep tabs on what?” he asked. “There’s no going over the scene, nobody on the force is allowed to know about this, I’m not allowed to touch it.”

  “We’ve got someone in mind for that,” Wong said, drawing Tseng’s attention to the side.

  “But we’ll get to that,” Randle said. “In the meantime, we have to know you’re onboard with us. After you leave this room, this conversation never took place. Come morning, that girl was never here.”

  “You think you can just make this disappear?” Tseng asked. “There is a young girl murdered downstairs. She had a life, a family. She deserves to be investigated. Her killer must be brought to justice.”

  “She will, and they will,” Randle said, his voice as even as if he were reporting the score of the previous night’s University of Hawaii baseball game. “But it will be done quietly and with discretion.”

  Tseng drew his mouth into a tight line to keep himself from snapping back and began pacing. He thrust one hand into his slacks and other he drew into a fist, pressing it against his chin.

  “And if I don’t? You realize I have the beat reporters from KHNL and KHON on speed dial, right? I could have crews here in minutes, cameras rolling.”

  “But you won’t,” Randle said, same deadpan voice, now bearing a hint of condescension.

  “Why won’t I?” Tseng said. “What’s to stop me? You?”

  “No,” Randle said, shaking his head, “though I could.” He pressed himself up from the table and walked back over to his chair. He folded the robe across his midsection and sat down, crossing his right leg over his left. “No, the person stopping you will be you.”

  “Me?” Tseng asked.

  “Yes, you,” Randle said. “Self-preservation will keep you from doing any of that, because if you did, I would have you removed from the Honolulu Police Department. No pension, no letter of recommendation. Good luck ever getting a job again after that.”

  Tseng’s face twisted into anger. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Not just you,” Randle said. “I know all about your wife Sharon. Be awful hard for a school teacher to ever work again after an accusation of being a child molester.

  “Or your son, Walt Jr. You must have been so proud when he got that scholarship to UH. Can you imagine how damaging it would be if it got rescinded?”

  Tseng took three quick steps across the room and slammed his hands down on the desk. “You lowdown son of a bitch.”

  From the corner, the security agent matched Tseng’s movements, coming to a stop just inches from the governor.

  Randle glanced over his shoulder at the backup and smirked. “Because of the situation, I will allow you one outburst, Chief Tseng, but you would be well served to remember where you are and who you’re talking to.”

  Tseng kept his hands against the wood of the desk for several seconds before pushing himself back. Again he returned to pacing, running a hand back over his hair.

  “So you’ve got me over a barrel here. You’ve drawn me into something I had no part in, no choice on, and now I have to participate?”

  The guard receded back into the corner as Randle shook a hand at Tseng. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic, it’s not like this comes without benefit to you. Help me take care of this and when we get through the election, the favor will be repaid in kind.”

  Tseng stopped pacing and again glared at the governor. “What?”

  Randle smiled. “Do you have any idea how much discretionary funding I have access to every year? How easy it is for me to pay out a bonus to a civil servant doing a good job? Provide scholarship monies for a student in need?”

  “You’re going to bribe me into being complicit?” Tseng said, his face contorted, the word tasting nasty on his tongue.

  “No, I’m going to blackmail you into helping me,” Randle said. “I’m just going to pay you for your service so we both sleep better at night once it’s done.”

  Tseng kept his gazed aimed towards the floor, watching the cream carpet pass beneath his feet as he paced back and forth. He could feel four sets of eyes watching him as he went, but made no effort to speed up his thoughts or let them press him before he was ready.

  It was clearly the most amoral, unethical thing he had ever heard of, let alone participated in. The mere thought of taking part made his stomach curl.

  At the same time, he thought of Sharon and how much she adored those children. Of Wally and the time he spent working in the library to maintain his grades.

  The truth was there was no way he couldn’t go along with this scheme.

  And the worst part was that everybody in the room knew it.

  Tseng paced a full five minutes before coming to a stop, his face ashen and disgusted. He looked at every person in the room in turn, letting them register his disapproval, before asking, “So who’s this investigator you have in mind?”

  Chapter Four

  Dark red blood coursed from the open wound, spilling down Kalani Lewis’s chest. The stain showed shiny under the overhead street lamp, the only thing differentiating it from the black shirt of her HPD uniform.

  “Don’t look at it,” her partner Ben Jacobsen said to her over and over, his body hovering above hers, his hand on her collarbone, holding her down against the pavement.

  “How bad?” Kalani managed, her voice ragged as she drew in shallow breaths. The entire right side of her body felt like it was on fire, like a hot iron poker had been jabbed into her chest. One at a time she touched her thumb to each of her fingers, willing them to maintain sensation, forcing herself to stay in the present.

  “You’re going to be fine,” Ben said, looking down at her and trying to force a smile, the rest of his face betraying his worry. He held the glance for no more than a second before looking away, his right hand raising a two-way radio to his face.

  “Officer down! I repeat, officer down, on the corner of Kapiolani and Kapahulu,” Ben barked, strain evident in his voice.

  Using every bit of strength she could muster, Kalani forced herself to stay awake. She drew in as much air as possible and blinked her eyes repeatedly, not allowing herself to succumb to the darkness creeping in on the edges of her vision.

  “Where the hell is everybody?” Kalani gasped, trying to raise herself up only to be held down by Ben.

  “Stay down,” Ben said without looking at her, his head twisting at the neck to survey the street around them.

  Kalani watched as he started to raise the radio back to his mouth, only to drop it halfway there, letting it clatter to the pavement with a sickening crunch. The moment it hit, his hand found the standard issue Glock holstered on his hip and drew it.

  The pressure on Kalani’s collarbone disappeared as Ben released his grip on her and raised the gun with both hands, his arms fully extended in front of him.

  “Police!” Ben bellowed. “Free-“

  Kalani never heard him finish the word. The first bullet struck him in the stomach, pushing his torso back and extending his head and shoulders forward. The second hit him square on the cheekbone, throwing his head backwards, his entire body silhouetted in the streetlight as it arced away from her.

  For one brief moment he hung suspended in air, his arms flailing in slow motion by his side as the Glock slid from his fingers, twisting away into the night. As he floated, the bullet punched through the back of his skull, bits of bone and hair, thick globules of blood and brain matter, all visible as it ejected into the darkness.

  Kalani’s eyes grew large as air stopped finding its way into her lungs as she watched, her body flat on the ground.

  It was the same plac
e she woke up every time. Just before Ben hit the ground, not long before she herself lost consciousness.

  At the time, the trauma of the moment was too much to force herself to stay awake. Now, it was too much for her body to remain asleep.

  The satin sheets were slick with sweat as Kalani raised her palms to her eyebrows and ran them back over her forehead. Thick beads of sweat peeled away from her skin, streaming back into her hair line. She could feel her pulse pounding through her temples and could see the tan sheet covering her body rising and falling in rapid succession.

  Running her hands along the sheet to dry them, she rolled over onto a shoulder and stared wide-eyed at the clock. Square red digits told her it was half past seven, just minutes before the alarm was scheduled to go off. The idea of closing her eyes, of trying to catch a few more fleeting minutes of rest, entered her mind but was dismissed just as fast.

  She had seen this situation play out enough times to know what was waiting for her behind closed eyelids.

  Ben, her partner, her confidante, her best friend, silhouetted against the street light, the bullet and his soul both passing from his body in tandem.

  Once more she ran a hand over her sweat-soaked face and wiped it on the sheet beneath her. A pained groan passed from her lips as she pushed herself to a seated position and twisted to the side, tan feet finding the floor beneath her.

  “Here we go again,” she muttered, rising and making her way towards the bathroom.

  The harsh glow of the overhead light hurt her eyes as she went to the toilet and did her business before crossing over to the sink to wash her hands and face. When she was done, she stood back from the mirror and examined what she found, the corners of her mouth turning downward in a reflexive frown.

  The product of a father just one generation removed from the vineyards of Bordeaux, France, and a mother born on the windward coast of the island she now called home, her features were an amalgamation of the two. Her last name, blue eyes, and light complexion she drew from her father. The first name, thick dark hair, and round face were direct byproducts of her mother.

  In some places, the odd mix might have gotten her picked on as a child, might make her stand out now even in her early thirties.

  On Oahu, it went almost completely unnoticed.

  The frown grew a little deeper as Kalani stared at herself in the mirror, noting the dark circles that belied each of her eyes. She rolled her shoulders forward to see if her collarbones were actually as prominent as they seemed and poked at the nodules of her sternum which now showed plainly beneath her skin. In a move practiced every morning since the accident, she pulled the strap of her tank top aside to see the wound the bullet had made that night.

  The slug that was dug out of her was a nine millimeter, consistent with the scar a little wider than a centimeter on her skin. The edges of it were raised just slightly from the flesh around it, the wound sealed but still bright pink. The doctors had said she was lucky, the shot being a ricochet that imbedded itself in her flesh just short of doing any major damage.

  Kalani ran a pinkie across it, noting the smooth feel of the new skin beneath her fingertip, her face impassive as she did so. She rocked forward onto the balls of her feet and leaned her body in close to examine it in the mirror, her daily inspection interrupted by the sound of knocking at the front door.

  The air slid from Kalani’s lungs as her heart pounded in her chest, her body sliding into a balanced stance. She shuffled two quick steps out of the bathroom and peeked through the drawn curtain in her bedroom, trying to determine who would be calling on her at such an early hour.

  Wincing at the sight of early morning sun, she strained to see if a known car was parked in her driveway, but could make out nothing.

  Letting the heavy fabric fall back into place, she scooped a long sleeve pullover up off the floor and tugged it on, walking towards the nightstand as she did so. Pulling the top drawer open, she shoved aside a pile of tissues and magazines to find the holstered .38 Special revolver her father had given her when she joined the force almost a decade before.

  Sliding the leather casing away from the weapon, she tossed it on the bed and waited as a second round of pounding erupted from the front door.

  Images of that night on the street swirled into Kalani’s mind as she crossed down the hallway and into the living room, gun raised by her ear. The entirety of the house was shrouded in artificial darkness, every last shade drawn as low as it would go.

  Cursing herself for leaving the house without any kind of visibility, Kalani took a deep breath and stepped up to the door, her bare feet silent on the floor. She paused as her eye sighted in on who stood outside before recognition set in and she stepped back, turning the heavy dead belt and wrenching the door open.

  There, standing on her doorstep, was a clearly exhausted Walter Tseng.

  Chapter Five

  Kalani’s sandals slapped against the heels of her feet, tossing sand up onto her ankles and calves as she walked. Most of the time she wouldn’t have bothered putting them on, letting the white sand sift between her toes, but given the circumstances she thought some kind of shoe might lend a little more formality to the occasion.

  She was, after all, still in her pajamas.

  The warmth of the coffee she held in either hand passed through the beige ceramic mugs and into her palms, adding a bit more perspiration to them. She could think of a dozen different reasons why Chief Tseng would be showing up at her front door so early in the morning, none of them good.

  In her ten years on the force, she had known Tseng peripherally both before and during his tenure as chief. While never reporting directly to him, she knew a handful of officers that did, all of them giving the same assessment of him when pressed.

  He was honest, fair, and loyal to those that deserved it. He also had a bit of a reputation as a teetotaler, a fact some on the force frowned upon but Kalani never minded.

  In the limited interaction she had with him following the incident, she found the summary to be pretty accurate.

  Kalani walked in a straight line across the white sand that served as her front lawn towards a picnic table nestled at the base of a Banyon tree. Thick vines and twisted branches hung down in a serpentine formation, making the trunk seem twice as wide as it really was. Bunches of heavy leaves hung in clumps, most of them stopping a few feet above the table.

  Tseng sat with his back to her as she approached, perched on one side of the table, leaning forward onto his elbows. Kalani could see the profile of his face as she walked, his eyes looking out over the Pacific, pinched in thought. For a moment she considered sitting across from him before opting against it, sliding down on the opposite end of the bench.

  She sat a cup of coffee down before either of them and waited.

  It took almost a full minute for Tseng to snap himself away from his thoughts, the smell of the drink wafting up and penetrating his consciousness. He gave a sheepish smile as he looked down at his mug and then at Kalani, reaching forward and wrapping his hands around it.

  “Sorry,” he said, “long night.”

  “No problem,” Kalani said, trying her best to sound casual despite the deep-rooted nervousness that gripped her.

  She waited while Tseng took a long drink and sat the cup back down, keeping his hands on either side of it.

  “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  The statement pushed Kalani’s eyebrows up a fraction of an inch, the words a far cry from what she was expecting to hear. “Thank you. It belonged to my parents.”

  “Oh,” Tseng said, dropping his head. “I’m very sorry.”

  A half smile crossed Kalani’s face as she stared out over the ocean, watching the azure waves roll up with soft white peaks. “No, no. They’re fine, they just left it to me when they moved back to Pennsylvania a few years ago.”

  “Oh,” Tseng repeated. “I thought you meant...What took them to Pennsylvania?”

  “That’s where my dad was from or
iginally,” Kalani said. “Only person you’ll ever meet that left Hawaii to retire back in the Midwest.”

  A small chuckle rolled out of Tseng as he nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, that sounds a bit backward.” He paused, drawing in another swallow of coffee before setting the cup down and pushing it a few inches away from his body. He laced his fingers together and said, “So you’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.”

  Kalani glanced over at him and gave a small nod, the tension in her stomach returning. “Are you here to ask when I’m returning?”

  Tseng pursed his lips and tilted his head to the side, his gaze focused out on the morning coming alive before them. “How you sleeping these days?”

  A handful of responses ran through Kalani’s head, ranging from claiming to be one hundred percent fine to telling him she had a bad night every so often, but nothing she couldn’t handle. For whatever reason though, she couldn’t bring herself to say any of them.

  Instead, she just sat in silence and waited, hoping he would pick up on the insinuation.

  The moment seemed to drag on forever, every second feeling like a lifetime to Kalani, before Tseng nodded and said, “The answer to your question is, I’m here to tell you you’re returning.”

  Without processing the words, Kalani’s jaw dropped open and mouth went dry. She could feel her heart rate spike, beads of sweat appearing on her brow. “Sir, I know I’ve been out a couple months now, but—“

  Tseng held up a hand, cutting her off.

  “This isn’t my idea,” he said. “What you went through was hell. It shook up most of the cops that arrived that night, just seeing what happened. I can’t even imagine what it did to you.”

  For the briefest of instants, the same image that had woken Kalani less than an hour before passed through her head, Ben arcing backward, his body weightless as it hung suspended in the air.

  She forced it away with a shake of her head.

  “So then...?” Kalani asked, leaving the question open ended.

  A long, slow puff of air passed through Tseng’s nose as he hung his head down and stared at the wooden table surface in front of him. He remained posed like that several moments before again raising his head to the ocean.