Motive

by Dustin Stevens

  Two banks of lights provided illumination, both placed to either side of the center fields, neither reaching the outer edges of the park. Behind everything was Mount Tantalus, a heavily forested bank that rose straight up, culminating at Punchbowl Cemetery several hundred feet above.

  All told, Danilo had four young boys in his sights, isolated in the dark, with nowhere to run.

  It was almost too easy.

  Danilo let the plan come together in his mind, a bit of adrenaline entering his system. Combined with the two energy drinks sloshing around in his stomach his senses went into high-alert, every nerve in his body agitated and ready for movement.

  A person with a moral compass more attuned to right and wrong might have felt remorse for what was about to happen, maybe even a bit of disgust. Danilo felt nothing of the sort. The task he was about to perform, much like the one the night before, were bore of loyalty. Long ago he had sworn to do all that was required of him, the recent turn in job duties be damned.

  A humorless smile contorted his features as he stared out, his fingers wrapping around the steering wheel and gripping it tight. His tongue slid out over his lips, the scene as it was about to play out rolling through his mind.

  “You ready?” Danilo asked, pressing his chin into his right shoulder to speak to the dog behind him. A pair of moist and shiny eyes stared back at him, a pink tongue running out over a black nose in response.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Danilo said. Releasing the wheel with his right hand, he slid the gear shift down into drive and eased the van down the street and into the lot on the far end of the park. As he drove, the headlights splashed across the four young boys, drawing their attention over towards him.

  None looked to be more than six or seven years old, two even younger than that. All had thick dark hair and dirty faces, wearing an assortment of old t-shirts. They glanced over for a second as he parked, returning to their game the moment his headlights blinked out.

  A smirk tugged at the corner of Danilo’s mouth. The pleasure he enjoyed was not of the twisted variety found in Dr. Saiki. There was no particular joy for him in harming children, or a dog for that matter, but rather the pleasure in knowing he was the best at what he did. It would not matter if four full grown men were in the park, their fates would be just as certain as the boys now before him.

  Just as certain as the young woman he found the night before.

  Wrenching the front door open, he slid out from behind the wheel and went around to the rear bench seat. Reaching inside, he unlocked the wire metal cage and opened the gate. The moment it was agape, the dog shot out from inside it, blowing past Danilo and down into the dusty lot. In three quick bounds it was up onto the grass, running at full tilt for the boys.

  “Even better than I could have imagined,” Danilo said, fighting to hide the smile on his face. He remained in the backseat long enough to close the cage door and set it down on the floorboard before pulling back, a tennis ball in his hand.

  “Bruno, what are you doing?” Danilo chided, bouncing the ball twice, ignoring the puffs of dirt that arose each time it hit the ground. He put a broad smile on his face and walked steadily towards the boys, all four having forgotten their game and descending on the puppy. With hungry fingers they scratched at its ears and backside, the dog eating up their attention with unbridled glee.

  “You named a girl Bruno?” one of the boys asked, rising to full height above the others.

  Danilo made a note of the boy and his position, the smile never retreating from his face as his mind went to work on a response.

  “I let my son name him a long time ago. He didn’t realize it was a girl, he just liked the name Bruno.”

  The boy nodded in acceptance of the answer, a smaller boy beside him giggling. “That’s silly.”

  “Yes, I thought so too,” Danilo said, “but what am I to do?”

  Without ever breaking stride or losing the smile from his face, Danilo stepped forward and swung his foot in a quick half-arc, lifting the younger boy into the air and depositing him flat on his back. Before any response at all could be mustered from the group, he shuffled closer and smacked the standing boy with a right hook that dropped him on contact.

  A third boy got half a syllable out before Danilo spun on the ball of his foot and caught him with an elbow behind the ear.

  The final boy, the smallest of the four, never even took his hands from the dog, his mouth open in surprise. Danilo finished him with a quick snap kick, a lashing movement across the cheek that sent his eyes rolling back in his head and his squat body flat onto his back.

  Four blows, all timed out at less than a second each.

  The dog remained motionless, its dark eyes wide with terror, as Danilo piled the four boys up and hefted them from the ground, carrying two in each arm. Combined they weighed just over a couple hundred pounds, no match for the combined effects of caffeine and adrenaline now surging through his system.

  They could have weighed as much as a small automobile and it wouldn’t have mattered.

  Moving quick, his gaze darting back and forth, Danilo loaded them into the van and climbed behind the wheel. He started the engine and backed out of the parking spot, waiting until he made the corner before flipping on the headlights.

  From the edge of his vision he could still see the dog sitting in the middle of the park, watching in silence as he drove away.

  Chapter Nine

  “Shit,” Kalani muttered, swirling the last few dregs in the bottom of her coffee cup. She glanced again up at the clock on the wall behind the counter, the red and black plastic indicating it was half past nine.

  The fact that she was sitting alone made sense. There was no reason for Rip to assist her, no call for him not to be offended that the first time they’d even spoken in years was when she arrived needing something.

  Still, she had hoped he might agree to help anyway.

  Attribute it to some sort of lingering familial connection, perhaps a misguided sense of duty even, but for whatever reason, she thought he would show. Many times throughout the night she pictured him waiting in the parking lot when she arrived, a witty one-liner for her in greeting.

  Once more she glanced at the clock, another stark reminder of how wrong she was.

  Thinking better of the grounds still lingering in the bottom of her mug, Kalani laid a ten down on the table, nodded at the waitress and stepped outside. She climbed into her Jeep and stayed on the back streets, driving with the windows down.

  For a brief time her father had been a patient at Tripler Army Medical Center, the result of some shrapnel taken when a long-thought dormant bomb exploded unexpectedly. By all accounts he had been lucky, receiving a two week stay in the infirmary instead of an eternal resting spot up the road at Punchbowl.

  Others didn’t share his good fortune.

  Every day for two weeks in high school Kalani had made the trip, sitting by her father’s side and reading his favorite Louis L’Amour novels to him. As she drove, images from the past flooded into her mind, an unconscious comparison of what was and what had been.

  More homes had grown up in the previous fifteen years, choking out any free space to speak of. Many of the towering trees that lined the roadways were now gone, replaced with telephone and electric lines. No more was the sightline open to the ocean, replaced by an uneven smattering of apartment buildings and office complexes.

  With a heavy shake of her head, Kalani rolled up to the front gate of the facility. A young marine with a jarhead haircut stepped out of the front guardhouse as she approached, a clipboard in hand.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” the young man with Benson stenciled on his urban camouflage BTU’s said. “How may I help you?”

  Bristling slightly at the term ma’am, Kalani forced a smile and said, “Kalani Lewis here to see Medical Examiner Janice Song.”

  Benson looked down at his clipboard a moment, using his finger to scan the list. Finding nothing, he flipped to a second page
and made it halfway down before stopping. “Oh yes, here we are. Dr. Song is in the basement of building C, parking is right out front.”

  “Thank you,” Kalani said, nudging the Jeep forward and cresting a hill, the sprawling expanse of Tripler coming into view.

  The largest medical facility in the western hemisphere, it provided health services to a geographic region covering over half the Earth’s surface. Painted coral pink to match the Royal Hawaiian in Waikiki, the enormous facility was unmistakable from the air or ground.

  Kalani pushed her sunglasses up high on her head and circled around to building C, parking halfway back the lot. She checked the time and pulled a canvas shoulder bag up from the seat beside her, slamming the door shut as she walked for the front door.

  Halfway there she saw a recognizable figure unfold himself from a bench, standing to meet her on the front walk.

  “First thing you should know is, I don’t eat breakfast,” Rip said. The words were delivered without any hint of emotion, no trace of hostility or humor present.

  “I don’t really either,” Kalani said, “but I thought you Army types were all about your three squares a day.”

  “Which is why I don’t,” Rip countered. “I eat whenever I want and I never let a barber use clippers on my hair.”

  A hint of a smile crossed Kalani’s face. “You’re such a rebel.”

  “Apparently not. I’m here now aren’t I?”

  Kalani nodded. “Thank you for coming.”

  Rip nodded, adding a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a grunt for emphasis. “Just so we’re clear, I don’t know how long I’m sticking around on this.”

  “But you’re here now,” Kalani said, picking up on the insinuation. She paused a moment, long enough to let just a touch of awkward silence settle in, before motioning towards the door with the top of her head. “Shall we?”

  “We shall,” Rip said, waiting for her to continue before following.

  Building C was not an active patient care facility, devoid of a front desk or waiting room. Kalani knew from some online research the night before that it housed nothing but medical examination and research capabilities, the office she was looking for two stories underground. Without a word she led Rip down two long flights of stairs to the level B2 before passing through a set of steel double doors.

  A wide hallway stretched out before them, floor covered in alternating tile squares of black and white. Overhead pale yellow bulbs shined down, bathing everything in an unnatural hue. A series of doors painted black passed by on either side, their windows etched with chicken wire.

  “Why do these places always have to be in a basement?” Kalani asked. “As if a room full of dead bodies isn’t creepy enough.”

  “Easier to keep refrigerated,” Rip said matter-of-factly. “Can you imagine trying to run temperature control on an above-ground morgue in Hawaii?”

  The thought of telling Rip that the question was rhetorical crossed Kalani’s mind, but she let it go. Instead she found the room number she was looking for, a pair of swinging doors with reversible hinges. A single white placard with black letters announced it to be the Medical Examiner’s office, the name Janice Song, MD beneath it.

  Without pause she passed through, pushing on the doors and stepping inside.

  A large, sterile lab stretched out before them, everything outfitted in gleaming stainless steel. A row of gurneys was lined with precision along the right side of the room, two with black zip-up body bags, the others empty. The back wall was three rows of steel refrigeration doors, all of them closed tight.

  On the right side of the room was a work station aglow in neon light. In the center of it was an operating table with a body atop it, the entire thorax cut into the standard Y of an autopsy. Standing over the body, calipers in hand, was who Kalani presumed to be Dr. Song.

  She looked up as they entered, her eyes crinkled in hostility before recognition set in. She leaned away from the body she was examining and pulled the surgical mask down from her face to reveal a woman of mixed Caucasian and Korean ancestry. She pressed her mouth tight together and nodded at them, placing the calipers down on the steel utensil stand by her side.

  “You must be Detective Lewis,” Song said, rising to full height and removing her gloves. She dropped them down atop the table and pulled a plain blue surgical cap from her head, her face creasing into an oversized smile. “And of course I’d recognize this big lug anywhere.”

  She walked forward with arms outstretched, reaching up as Rip stepped forward and gripped her in a hug. The two held the pose a moment before releasing, Rip smiling down at her. “What do you say, Jannie?”

  “Never thought I’d see you around here again, that’s for sure,” she replied, stepping to the side and extending a handshake to Kalani. “Janice Song.” She motioned towards Rip and said, “Jannie.”

  “Kalani. Pleasure. I take it you two have worked together before?”

  “More than once,” Song replied. “This man is practically a legend.”

  “How do you think I got in this place?” Rip said, a sheepish smile on his face.

  Kalani nodded, conceding in silence that she hadn’t considered how he got through the front gate. She debated waiting to give them a moment to catch up, but decided to move ahead. “Thank you so much for doing this. I know it was a rather odd request.”

  “As I understand it, the screws were put to you on this too,” Song said, slapping the surgical cap against the palm of her opposite hand.

  “They were,” Kalani said, “and I in turn did the same to him.”

  “So now that we’ve established none of us wants to be here...” Song said, letting her voice trail off.

  “Pretty much,” Kalani agreed.

  “Okay,” Song said as the smile faded from her face and the jovial tone receded in her voice. She walked them over to the back wall and opened a drawer in the middle row, the airlock releasing as she tugged on the oversized handle. Stepping to the side she opened the door as far as it would go and pulled the drawer within halfway out.

  Lying on it was a young girl with blonde hair, her skin pale blue. Oversized stitches ran from either shoulder down to her sternum before meeting and extending straight down to her abdomen. Thick rows of sutures also extended horizontally across her throat and stomach, the lines jagged and uneven.

  “Jane Doe,” Song said, “brought in yesterday morning, express assignment from the governor himself. No other details given, just asking for a thorough analysis, oral report to be given to you, written report to be handed off to the Governor’s Office.”

  “Damn,” Rip muttered.

  Song arched an eyebrow up at him. “Right? I didn’t like it one bit, but as I said, I didn’t have a choice.”

  It was the same way Kalani had felt since Tseng arrived on her doorstep the day before. Nobody was participating voluntarily, which made the entire thing seem that much more suspicious.

  “Remind me how a state official was able to issue orders to a federal employee?” Rip asked.

  “He can’t,” Janice replied, “but he can promise things to federal employees working in his state, who then issue direct orders to me.”

  The feeling of suspicion only served to grow within Kalani, the list of infractions associated with this investigation now including blackmail and bribery.

  “What were you able to find?” she asked.

  Using her index finger as a pointer, Song motioned to the girl’s neck. “Cause of death was no surprise, blood loss from a cut throat. Whoever did it knew what they were doing, taking out every artery and the windpipe before he was done.”

  “He?” Kalani asked.

  “I’m assuming it was a male, just from the violence of the murder,” Song said. “Cutting someone’s throat isn’t the nice, easy slit you see on television. There are a lot of muscles and cartilage in the neck, a person really has to have some power to cause that kind of damage.”

  “Any defensive wounds?” Rip a
sked.

  “Nothing,” Song said, “which isn’t surprising. There was enough ketamine in her system to knock out a horse.”

  “Isn’t that what ketamine’s usually used for?” Rip asked.

  “Not always,” Song replied, giving a non-committal twist of her head. “It’s used in human and veterinary science, primarily as an induction agent. It wouldn’t be used as a primary anesthesia, but it’ll put them under.”

  “So it happened quick,” Kalani said. “Knocked her out and killed her in a short time span.”

  “Normally I’d agree,” Song said, “but again, there was an enormous amount in her system. Almost enough to kill her on its own.”

  “Hmm,” Rip said, nodding.

  “Anything else in her system?” Kalani asked.

  “Nothing chemically,” Song said.

  “Chemically, meaning there was something else?” Rip asked.

  Song nodded, glancing at each of them in turn. “Her blood tested positive for gonorrhea, and her vaginal wall showed a fair bit of scarring for someone her age.”

  Kalani’s eyes narrowed, her mind piecing together what little she had to go on. “She was found just blocks from Chinatown. Sex worker?”

  Song lifted her shoulders and tilted the top of her head to the side in a shrug. “Maybe. Like I said, there was a lot of scarring, but not an unheard of amount. She could have just gotten an early start. You know how kids are these days.”

  Kalani nodded, thinking that she knew full well how kids were. She was brought up to believe boys had cooties until she was on the brink of being a teenager. Now, it wasn’t at all uncommon to hear of girls as young as twelve getting pregnant.

  “Anything else in her system?” Rip asked, steering the conversation back on course.

  “She was clean,” Song replied, “which isn’t surprising.”