Motive

by Dustin Stevens

  The words seemed to have found their target, stopping the governor before he could protest any further. Silence fell over the line as Tseng stood in his kitchen, his backside leaning against the counter.

  “Sir, I need to know how you’d like this handled,” Tseng said. “I can treat it like a regular homicide-“

  “No, you’re right,” Randle said. Gone was any trace of his previous anger, replaced by a deep-seated weariness. “The odds are this is the same person trying to make sure they’re not hidden again.”

  Tseng nodded, relieved that his assessment had hit the mark. He’d been fearing such a thing might happen for a few days, the worries confirmed the moment Sturgis told him about the wounds.

  “How would you like me to handle this?” Tseng asked.

  “Can you keep it quiet?”

  Tseng shook his head in silent protest before glancing outside. At just three minutes after four the sun was still a couple of hours from rising, the world dark and quiet. Every bit of him wanted to say there was no way it could be kept quiet, though he knew there was no point in saying as much.

  The governor was going to do what he wanted to anyway. His asking the question only proved that.

  “I’ll do my best,” Tseng said, his gaze hard as he stared out the kitchen window into his darkened yard.

  “Do better,” Randle said, clicking the line off without another word.

  Tseng dropped the phone away from his face and slid it onto the counter before him. Again he shook his head from side to side, an explicative filled string of words filling his mind. If not for his wife sleeping two rooms away, he would have screamed every last one of them out into the night, all aimed at the pompous little man climbing back in bed across town.

  “Bastard,” Tseng managed to push out, taking the phone back up. He scrolled his way through the call log and pressed send, lifting the phone back to his face.

  The time of day no longer mattered. If his night was ruined, some other peoples were going to be too.

  “Get your ass up and meet me at Ala Moana in a half hour. We’ve got two more.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  There was a palpable tension in the car as Kalani wound through the desolate streets of Honolulu. Boxed in by the clear plastic windows zipped onto on the body of the Jeep, it reverberated around her in thunderous silence.

  “You didn’t have to come,” Kalani said quietly. The words weren’t meant as an apology per se, though they sounded that way as she said them.

  “I know,” Rip said, his gaze aimed out into the darkness, focusing on nothing in particular as the cityscape slid by.

  “I know it’s early, I just figured if I didn’t call you...” Kalani said, allowing him to infer the direction she was headed.

  “You did the right thing,” Rip said, shifting his head an inch or two without actually looking her way. “I’m not upset about the hour. I was awake. I’m upset because that storm yesterday brought with it the best waves we’ve seen since December.”

  Unable to help it, Kalani felt the left corner of her mouth curl upward. What she had mistaken as overt hostility for pulling him from his slumber was actually surfer’s remorse. Once upon a time she would have felt the exact same thing on a day like this, waking up before dawn, listening to the wave forecast on an ancient AM receiver, getting to the breaks by first light.

  Even though those days were now long behind her, she still remembered the feeling.

  “So we’ve got two more?” Rip asked, pushing the conversation into less stinging territory.

  Kalani paused a moment to make sure he was really committed to the shift in topic before exhaling through her nose. “That’s the word. Tseng called me twenty-six minutes ago and said two bodies were found at Ala Moana this morning, same profile as the one at the capitol.”

  “Two this time,” Rip said, a statement, not a question.

  Kalani nodded in affirmation. She’d been thinking the same thing since getting the call, that whoever was doing this was working their way upward. Whether that was the plan all along or in direct response to the first one being handled so quietly, she could only guess at.

  “Pregnant?” Rip asked.

  “I don’t know. I assume so, but he didn’t say for sure.”

  “Who found them?”

  “I don’t know that either,” Kalani said, turning into the front entrance for the beach park and following it as it looped along the shoreline. At four-thirty in the morning the park was void of visitors, the first stragglers of the day still several hours away from appearing. The only patrons were a few scattered individuals, their shopping carts and makeshift shelters just visible in the darkness. “I got the call, called you, washed my face, pulled on jeans, and hit the door.”

  “Hmm,” Rip grunted, shifting his focus to the unmarked cruiser sitting alone on the curb ahead. Kalani spotted it at the same time he did, coming to a stop a few feet behind it. On the opposite side of the lane she could see the hulking dark shape of an SUV, Walter Tseng crossing the street towards them.

  “He doesn’t look happy to be here this morning,” Kalani muttered, putting the car into park.

  “Are we?” Rip asked, wrenching the door open and climbing out. He circled around to the front of the Jeep and waited for Kalani to join him, the pair approaching Tseng together.

  “Morning,” Kalani said, her voice neutral. Beside her Rip nodded, but said nothing.

  “Evening,” Tseng said, a scowl in place. He returned the nod to Rip, neither one verbally acknowledging the other.

  It was about what Kalani had anticipated, all things considered.

  Following Tseng’s lead they turned off the sidewalk into the sand, walking three across towards the water’s edge. Ahead of them they could see a single silhouette waiting for them, a shapeless black mass outlined in the moonlight dancing off the water.

  Many of the same questions Rip was just asking came to Kalani’s mind as they approached, though she refrained from asking a single one. The odds were Tseng knew little more than she did at the moment, the answers they were looking for standing silent ahead of them.

  “Sturgis,” Tseng said, waving a hand as they made it halfway across the sand.

  “Chief,” the shape said without returning the gesture. He stood in silence until the trio arrived, his face just barely illuminated in the ambient light of the park.

  Kalani had never directly worked with Jake Sturgis, though she knew him by reputation to be gruff and no-nonsense, a throwback that still believed in turf wars among the various departments. Something deep inside told her he wasn’t going to be too pleased with what was about to take place, though there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it.

  “What have we got?” Tseng asked, his voice terse. A quick glance told Kalani that his face and posture matched the tone, his mouth drawn into a tight line and his brow furrowed as he stared at Sturgis.

  Across from them Sturgis returned the gaze for a long moment. He kept his hands thrust into his pockets, the sleeves of his rumpled blazer bunched around the wrists. A growing paunch extended out between them, matching a doughy face with receding hair combed straight back.

  “We’ve got a double homicide,” Sturgis said, letting his annoyance show in his voice. “And we’ve got to get a team in here to process this thing now so we can get to work on it.”

  Kalani felt her body go rigid, her earlier concerns confirmed. With just one sentence he had already tried to take control of the scene, and left no doubt that he felt this was his case to solve. She drew in a long slow breath through her nose, letting the cool, salty air fill her lungs, waiting for Tseng to take the bait and assert his control over the situation.

  To her surprise, he held off for the time being.

  “That them?” Tseng asked, nodding with his chin towards two dark shapes sprawled in the sand nearby.

  “They damn sure ain’t sea turtles,” Sturgis said, annoyance and insubordination both obvious.

  Again Tsen
g ignored it, extracting a thin flashlight from the rear pocket of his slacks and clicking it on. A wide arc of white light illuminated the sand in front of them, revealing two girls lying side by side. Tseng took three steps towards them and stopped, pulling up a full five feet short of the bodies, Kalani and Rip a step behind.

  Sturgis remained in place as they moved, his hands still in his pockets, rotating where he stood and watching them go.

  “Just like I said, two girls, cut up pretty badly,” Sturgis said. “No blood spatter here though, looks like a pretty obvious dump job.”

  None of the group responded as they stared down at the scene, processing as much as they could from where they stood.

  On the left was a young Asian girl in her early twenties. She was barefoot, in a denim skirt that covered nothing below her hip bones and a shirt that had once been pink and white, but was now crusted with dark red blood.

  Beside her lay a second girl that looked a bit older, her body much heavier. She wore a black skirt that reached mid-thigh and a dark tank-top, the color hiding the slash they knew existed across her torso.

  Across each of the girl’s throats was a second cut, wicked trenches that tore away most of the flesh, leaving them looking like life-sized Pez dispensers.

  Just as Sturgis had said, there was nothing else to the scene to comply with the injuries of the victims. Not a single drop of blood was visible in the soft white powder, not even lines in the sand where the bodies had been dragged out.

  At first glance, it appeared the girls had been dropped into place, just the same as Lauren Mann a few days before.

  Kalani drew in deep breaths as she stared down at the girls, biting back the spinning sensation that was gnawing at her. They were the first bodies, the first blood, she’d seen outside of the ME’s office since Jacobsen’s months before. She dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand and squeezed tight, letting the stinging sensation keep her focused and alert, not allowing dizziness to overtake her.

  Beside her she could sense Rip inch closer, careful to maintain a bit of distance in the presence of Tseng and Sturgis.

  “Seen enough?” Sturgis spat, distaste rising in his voice. “Can you sign off on a beach closure?”

  Once more, Tseng ignored him. “How’d you find them?”

  A long moment passed as Sturgis pushed out an angry sigh. “Informant. Guy I use likes to come down here sometimes, take a nap in the sand, grab a shower at the outdoor stalls in the morning. Stumbled across them about an hour ago, walked out to the payphones and called me.”

  “Where is he now?” Tseng asked.

  “Over by the snack stand with Li,” Sturgis said, agitation rising even further in his voice. “Hey, Chief, what the hell’s going on here?”

  Finally, his tone, his words, were enough to snap Tseng’s attention up from the bodies. He blinked out the flashlight and stared at Sturgis a long moment before turning back towards his car.

  “Thank you, Detective. We’ll take it from here.”

  “You’ll what?” Sturgis asked, remaining rooted in place, watching as Tseng headed towards his truck.

  Kalani waited a moment before turning and following after Tseng, Rip behind her. She jogged a few paces to close the gap between them, coming to a stop beside him.

  “He’s going to be pissed about this,” she muttered, keeping her voice low.

  “He’s already pissed about this,” Tseng said, his words clipped, his tone clear.

  “Can we do this?” Kalani asked, ignoring the sand spilling into her shoes and grinding against her feet.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Tseng said, walking in long strides until he reached the sidewalk. Once there he stopped and turned on the ball of his foot, staring back at them.

  “He’ll piss and moan for a few minutes, but I’ll remind him he has the case of four children missing all their teeth right now that needs his attention. In the meantime, gear up, both of you, and start processing this scene.”

  Kalani felt her jaw drop open as she stared back at Tseng. She’d been a patrol officer almost the entirety of her career, was just on the cusp of making lieutenant when the accident occurred. Never once had she processed a scene.

  “Don’t worry,” Tseng said, seemingly sensing her trepidation, nodding towards Rip. “I know he’s ran a few of these before, and I’ll be right behind you just as soon as I call Tripler and tell them we’ve got two more coming in.”

  “Jannie’s going to love that,” Rip said, the first words he’d said since arriving.

  Tseng raised his hands by his side, walking backwards away from them, towards his truck. “Be sure to tell her it wasn’t my doing. This whole damn mess is on the governor.”

  Behind them they could hear Sturgis complaining in the darkness, his feet dragging through the sand and scattering it across the ground as he headed towards his car.

  “Don’t suppose we can tell him that too?” Kalani asked, nodding at Sturgis with the top of her head.

  “Nope,” Tseng said, shaking his head. He extended a finger up towards the sky and said, “Now get moving. We have until first light to find out what we can and get these girls out of here.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Good morning, Mr. Cruz.”

  The voice came as a surprise to Danilo as he stepped through the airlock door from the stairwell into the underground lab. His head snapped up at the sound of it, knowing already who it belonged to, but still not expecting to hear it. After years of working for the man there was no fear in his response, no heart palpitations or sweaty palms, merely surprise at its presence in the lab.

  “Good morning, sir,” Danilo said, pulling himself up tall, his newest delivery balanced across each of his palms. The black plastic it was wrapped in shined bright beneath the overhead lights, the warmth of it passing through the material and into his hands like some sort of perverse pizza box.

  In all the time Danilo had been in Thomas Zall’s employee, it was one of the few times he had seen him out so early. As far as he could remember, it was the very first time he had ever been in the lab. There was no way to know for sure what brought him down this morning, especially at such an unusual time, but it most likely wasn’t good.

  An unexpected visit tended to mean somebody had screwed up. If that somebody was Danilo, it might mean putting the vow he had sworn into jeopardy, the only thing that he truly feared.

  Adding to his trepidation was the apparent state of Zall standing before him. For the first decade he had been in the man’s employee, he had hardly aged a day, his hair still thick, ever so slightly changing from blonde to silver, his skin taut. In the last couple of years though he had started to deteriorate rapidly, his hair now almost white, the skin around his eyes and neck starting to sag. While his appearance was maintained as much as his fortune would accommodate, the combined effects of age and stress were beginning to take their toll.

  “Mr. Cruz! Excellent!” Saiki exclaimed from the back of the lab, firing a hand in the air and speed walking towards the front. His white lab coat twirled around him as he approached, a childlike grin on his face, a gleam in his eye. He circled around Zall as if the man wasn’t even there, headed directly for the same stainless steel table he’d used just a few days before.

  “Please, please,” he almost exclaimed, motioning at the package in Danilo’s hand and pointing in excitement down at the table.

  Danilo flicked his gaze to Zall, who seemed to be watching with detachment, before returning it to Saiki. He crossed over to the table and laid his wares flat, stepping back as the doctor fell upon it, shearing it open with a pair of scissors.

  “Oh, yes. Yes, this will do nicely,” Saiki said, almost salivating as he pulled back the black plastic flaps revealing the still-warm fetus within. No less than an hour or two removed from the womb, its flesh still showed pink, its body glazed with a thin coating of amniotic fluid and tissue debris. The entire umbilical cord lay atop it in a coil, the end clipped clean from its host. />
  “Oh, it’s exquisite,” Saiki said, looking up at Danilo in wonder. “Wherever did you get it?”

  His face, his words, his enthusiasm, all made Danilo’s stomach curl. Death and destruction he could handle, an inhuman amount of pleasure derived from it he could not.

  “Different place this time,” Danilo said, keeping his face impassive. He did not want to display outright hostility in the presence of Zall, but wanted his tone to be clear just the same. “You shouldn’t have any problems.”

  Whether that was true or not he couldn’t be certain. The only girls that he knew to be clean were the kind that would also be missed. Taking a chance on an impure specimen was a small price to pay for keeping their operation clandestine.

  “Ha!” Saiki said, clapping his hands together in front of him in excitement. Danilo watched another moment before making a face and turning away, taking a few steps towards the door.

  “That’s a good idea,” Zall said, joining Danilo as he headed towards the exit. “I’d like to have a word upstairs.”

  “Of course,” Danilo said, dipping the top of his head in a nod of assent.

  “Doctor, you have everything you need down here?” Zall asked, turning at the waist to stare at Saiki still ogling his newest acquisition behind them.

  “Oh, yes,” Saiki said, staring down at the fetus. After a moment he raised his head abruptly and said, “Though I could use a few more teeth if possible. Some of the last batch were adult teeth, which don’t help me any.”

  Zall shifted his attention to Danilo and said, “More teeth. That a problem?”

  “None at all.”

  “You got it,” Zall said over his shoulder, motioning with a hand towards the door. Together he and Danilo left Saiki to his work, passing through the airlock and up the stairs in silence. Side by side they emerged on the main floor of the house, Zall leading the way into the empty front living room.

  Danilo walked beside him, standing in the staged room, waiting for some signal of what to do. These days, most of his meetings with his employer took place over the phone. There was no way to determine what had brought him out this morning, but something told Danilo it couldn’t be positive.