Motive

by Dustin Stevens

  Across from him, Zall settled into a stiff armchair and folded his right leg across his left, his starched blue suit pants remaining rigid as he did so. “I just want to talk to you about a few things. Please, take a seat.”

  Danilo glanced out into the hallway behind him, checking to see if any guards were eavesdropping nearby, before sidestepping to the end of a sofa and settling down on to it. The couch was overstuffed, the padding firm beneath him, the material chafing against his skin. He ignored it as he came to a full stop, staring across the room.

  “I take it from your delivery this morning that everything went well?” Zall opened.

  Danilo nodded. “Yes, it was no problem at all.”

  “Where is the girl now?” Zall asked, propping an elbow on the arm of the chair and placing a finger alongside his temple.

  “I left them on Ala Moana Beach a couple of hours ago,” Danilo said, his voice even, reciting what he knew. “You said somewhere public. I figured it would be too easy to get lost in the shuffle in Waikiki.”

  “Them?”

  The corner of Danilo’s eye twitched in a slight cringe. He’d gotten lazy, forgetting that he’d gone a bit off script in picking up Candy before reaching his ultimate goal. “Yes. I had to secure one girl to gain access to the other.”

  “Hmm,” Zall said, sniffing slightly. He paused a moment, seeming to debate the news, before pushing forward. “And there were no problems?”

  “No problem at all,” Danilo repeated.

  His relationship with Thomas Zall had begun many years before, on the opposite coast of the country. Through a friend of a friend he had been brought on to a private landscaping crew that was hired to look after the Zall family property. Over the course of several years there he ascended in rank, rising to take over the crew, before being promoted to handling special projects for Thomas himself.

  Over three years before, when the decision to relocate to Hawaii was made, Danilo was asked to come along. At first he had balked at the invitation, not until the proverbial Godfather offer was extended his way did he opt to stay on with the man.

  After more than a decade and a half in service to Zall, his job description had again recently taken a sharp turn. He understood the reasoning behind it, even agreed with the motivations for it, but it still didn’t keep him from at times having moments of uncertainty.

  Not in his own abilities to carry things out, but in the fallibility of the project as a whole.

  “I stopped by this morning to see how things have been proceeding while I was on the mainland,” Zall said, watching Danilo, his body void of any movement. “Dr. Saiki tells me things are progressing rapidly, that we should be ready quite soon.”

  Danilo remained silent, not hearing a question, waiting for Zall to continue. He sat and stared directly back at him, making it apparent that he was listening.

  “I just wanted to let you know that I, we, appreciate what you’ve been doing recently,” Zall said. “I realize the things asked of you haven’t been easy.”

  The acknowledgement came as a bit of a surprise to Danilo, his head dipping down. While his employer had always been fair, he had expressed such gratitude through the form of compensation. Rarely, if ever, were compliments doled out.

  “And to let you know that in addition to the teeth, he told me he will need one last specimen to complete the first round of work,” Zall said.

  Keeping his face neutral, Danilo stared back, now realizing why Zall had asked to see him. The original call for a single fetus was not going to be sufficient. A second was needed, making for three in total. When first they had discussed the proposition, Danilo had agreed to a single case.

  “Will that be doable, on your part?” Zall asked.

  The question was not truly an inquiry, but a backhanded way of letting Danilo know what was required of him. After years of working with the man he knew this was how he operated, appealing to his employee’s ego instead of just being forthright with his demands.

  Long past letting it rankle him, Danilo kept his face even and nodded. When he had signed on, he knew things like this could be a possibility. He had given his word, agreed to a pact, driven to do whatever was asked of him. This would be no different.

  “What would you like done with the remains?”

  For the first time all morning, a smile tugged at the corners of Zall’s mouth. He kept his gaze aimed on Danilo before rocking his head back on inch, an almost-silent smirk escaping him. “Well, I’ve got a few ideas about that.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Of every Hawaiian dish, far and away the most famous was the loco moco. It started with the basic staple of all meals in the islands, two scoops of white sticky rice. Atop those was placed a greasy hamburger patty, a pair of eggs over easy finishing the stack. In case the conglomerated grease and egg yolks weren’t enough to sufficiently saturate the rice underneath, a heavy ladle of brown gravy was spread across everything, providing the extra lubrication needed for the meal to go down fast and easy.

  Some even said it was to help the meal come out the same way.

  Over half of the plate in front of Jake Sturgis was gone by the time Kimo Mata made it to the Country Kitchen. Brown gravy had stained the barren half of the paper plate it was served on light tan, a few errant marks from the plastic knife he was using slashing through the middle of it.

  Mata looked once at the half-eaten meal while sliding himself onto the metal chair, a wheeze of air escaping from the cushioned seat bottom. Across from him Sturgis continued to attack his breakfast without looking up, knife and fork moving in well-practiced tandem.

  “Thanks for waiting for me,” Mata said, lifting the shoulder strap over his head and dropping his bag to the floor beside him. It landed with a slight smack of canvas on concrete, coming to a rest against the leg of the chair he was seated on.

  Sturgis grunted out a response as he pushed an oversized bite of hamburger and eggs into his mouth, brown gravy and yellow yolk dripping off the end of his fork, splattering against the rice below. He chewed voraciously with his mouth half open, the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching.

  The scene brought a feeling of revulsion to Mata, turning his stomach as he looked away, leaning back in his chair.

  Despite living less than ten minutes from the Country Kitchen, it was the first time he had ever heard of the place, let alone been inside. One look around seemed to confirm why, on both counts.

  The interior was no more than twenty feet square, divided in half down the middle by a waist-high service counter. A row of metal stools with cracked leather tops sat empty in front of it, all connected directly to the ground, their steeled bases badly in need of a polish. A harried waitress with big hair and even bigger makeup was posted behind it reading a copy of People magazine. Behind her a window could be seen through to the kitchen, the smell of grease and burnt toast drifting out, accompanied by a radio mix of island beats.

  The other half of the room contained a dozen small tables just like the one they were now seated at. They all had peeling wood laminate tops and mismatched chairs around them, numbers ranging anywhere from one to five per table. There was no décor of any kind on the walls, same for the tables.

  Why it had been dubbed the Country Kitchen, Kimo didn’t feign to have any idea.

  He held a finger up, waving it twice to get the waitress’s attention, and pointed it down at himself. “Coffee, please.”

  The request was met with an eye roll and a huff, enough of a response to let Kimo know he was interrupting her morning reading. He watched closely as she poured and brought his beverage to him, careful to inspect she didn’t put anything in it, before nodding his thanks and taking a long pull.

  Only once the putrid jolt of caffeine entered his system did he turn his attention back to Sturgis, now finishing the last few bites of his meal. Kimo took one more long drink, waiting for Sturgis to mop up the final bits of residue from his plate with a corner of toast before shoving it all down a
nd pushing his plate away. He crumpled his napkin into a ball and tossed it, along with his knife and fork, onto the plate, the entire stack headed for the trash receptacle by the door once their conversation was over.

  Kimo hoped that was an eventuality fast approaching.

  “So, Detective Sturgis, what brings me out here this fine morning?” Kimo began. He’d thought of making comments on the odd choice for meeting, and for the truly repulsive digestive display that he’d just been forced to witness, but thought better of both. Only once before had Sturgis called and asked to meet. The information he had delivered was rock solid, enough so that when Kimo got the request an hour before, he ignored the early hour and whatever else he had planned for the morning.

  Digging into Mary-Ann Harris would have to wait.

  Sturgis laced his fingers across his bloated midsection and let out a low belch, the scent of it permeating the air between them. He opened and closed his mouth twice as if chewing it before twisting his head to the side in an angry gesture.

  “Sons of bitches stole my crime scene this morning,” he spat, his voice low, angry.

  Kimo took one last pull on the bitter swill in his cup before pushing it to the center of the table alongside Sturgis’s trash. “Who stole what crime scene this morning?”

  “Tseng,” Sturgis said, making his distaste for the man, his name, obvious on his features.

  While the name gave Kimo the answer to the first part of his question, it did nothing for the back end. The thought of reposing it crossed his mind before fading away. He could tell Sturgis was angry, would give him everything he needed in due time.

  The silence between them lasted half a minute before Sturgis thrust his upper body forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the table, his fingers still laced before him. He extended his neck out towards Kimo, his eyes narrowed.

  “Early this morning, maybe three o’clock, I get a call from a CI of mine. He was down on Ala Moana looking for a place to take a nap and a shower, stumbled across two bodies in the sand.”

  The thought of reaching for the pad stowed away in his satchel crossed Kimo’s mind, but he let it go. Something told him this was not the kind of conversation either one would want recorded.

  “Two bodies,” Kimo said, “as in...”

  “As in dead,” Sturgis said. “Not two people, two corpses.”

  He paused for a moment, glancing over to the waitress behind the counter. She was still engrossed in her gossip mag, flipping through the pages with aplomb.

  “Grisly, too. Throats cut, stomachs slashed open. Right out there on the sand.”

  “Damn,” Kimo whispered, trying not to imagine the scene. He’d bore witness to enough such incidents before. He preferred to write about them without actually having to view the evidence.

  “Even weirder, not a speck of blood anywhere,” Sturgis continued. “Purely a drop-em-off deal, but still, that’s a hell of a scene, right?”

  “For sure,” Kimo muttered, nodding in agreement. He wasn’t yet sure what had Sturgis so angry or why he had been called, but the opening shots had been more than enough to get his attention.

  “So I go by the book, call Tseng to get clearance to close the beach, do a full work-up.” At that Sturgis leaned in a little closer, dropping his chin a few inches towards the table top. “And do you know what the bastard did?”

  Without being obvious, Kimo pushed himself back a couple of inches, matching Sturgis’s movement, keeping the same amount of distance between them. The smells of loco moco, sweat, and body odor were rolling off the man, along with the palpable scent of anger.

  “Closed the beach and took over the scene?” Kimo guessed.

  “Oh, he took over the scene alright,” Sturgis said, narrowing his eyes even further, “but he did not close the beach.”

  As an investigative reporter, Kimo had covered stories running the scale of topics. Just under half of what he did included the police force, making him far from an expert on standard police procedure. Still, even to his untrained ear, that seemed especially odd.

  There was no effort to hide the reaction on his face as he stared back at Sturgis. “Come again? He got a call about two bodies a couple hours before sunrise, and didn’t close the beach?”

  “Nope,” Sturgis said, retreating a bit, shaking his head.

  “And so right now there are people, tourists, locals, whoever, showing up at Ala Moana and seeing a murder scene right out there in the open?”

  At this question, Sturgis leaned all the way back in his chair. He returned his hands to the front of his stomach, gravy stains evident around his fingernails. The corners of his mouth both twisted up in a smile that fell somewhere between ironic and vindictive.

  “Nope,” he repeated, his chin swinging in a slow arc from side to side.

  “But how is that possible?” Kimo asked, his brow coming together, his head twisting an inch to the side in incomprehension.

  “There is no crime scene,” Sturgis said, the edges of his smile turning downward, his moment of cruel victory over. “Tseng showed up, threw me off of it, processed the whole thing himself.”

  An hour and change ago, Kimo had been sprawled across his full-size bed, his sheets a twisted pile around his body. Out of habit the phone was inches away, the ringer on high, in case anything of note happened in the wee hours of morning.

  At no point between the time when Sturgis’s call had shattered his slumber and now had he even considered that the reason he was being asked to meet might have something to do with a lead he was already following up on. He forced his face to remain impassive as he ran the scenario in his head.

  The odds of two highly visible murders within days of each other would be disposed of and wiped clean before the sun came up were just too great to ignore.

  “Walter Tseng?” Kimo said, doing his best to relay extreme disbelief, giving no indication that he had heard anything about the previous incident at the capitol. “He just showed up and ran an entire crime scene by himself in what, two hours?”

  The evil smile returned to Sturgis’s face, curling up slowly, reaching even the folds of skin around his eyes, the wrinkles on his forehead. “I said he processed it himself, not that he processed it by himself.”

  It was obvious from the way Sturgis was acting that he felt like he had a real ace left to toss out on the table. Kimo gave him a moment to enjoy it before biting, playing the part of ignorant journalist.

  “So who helped him? I can’t imagine anybody else on the force taking part in something like that.”

  “Well, not somebody active on the force anyway,” Sturgis said, raising his hands and folding his arms over his chest. They rested on his stomach, folds of skin stacked high across his torso.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he called in some help,” Sturgis said, again glancing over to the waitress. “Ever heard of Kalani Lewis?”

  The name struck a note deep in the recesses of Kimo’s mind, a story he had taken a glance at months ago before moving on, deciding there was nothing but trouble waiting there for him.

  “Yeah,” Kimo said. “She and her partner were in a shootout in Waikiki a while back, right?”

  A deep sound boiled out of Sturgis, somewhere between a snort and a chortle. “Yeah, that’s how it happened.”

  His response served to remind Kimo of the exact reason he had stayed away from the story before. While there had been no evidence at all to believe Lewis and her partner hadn’t acted in best faith, there were some rumblings from the force about how things had gone down.

  Because of that, it was also rumored that HPD had been less than responsive in trying to find whoever pulled the trigger.

  Combined, it had made for a potentially toxic story for Kimo to even consider touching. There was enough on his plate with an imploding economy and impending elections to keep him busy without poking through the local police force’s dirty laundry.

  At the same time, for Lewis to have shown up at the beach t
hat morning was interesting to say the least.

  Kimo did his best to stonewall everything, remaining calm as he allowed Sturgis to enjoy his revenge for Tseng having snatched a case away from him. “If what you’re telling me is true, I could leave here right now and see nothing but business-as-usual down at Ala Moana this morning. How would I ever verify any of this?”

  The look of smug victory softened a bit from Sturgis’s face. His mouth fell open a bit, a shadow of indignity passing over it. “Verify? I’m telling you I was there, and it’s all true. Isn’t that enough?”

  The question, the quick change of tone, told Kimo he was suddenly on very thin ice. He looked away from Sturgis and reached down into his bag, extracting a money clip and peeling away a twenty and a fifty. He tossed them both on the table, right in front of Sturgis.

  “More than sufficient,” Kimo said, acknowledging the question before nodding at the bills lying on the table. “Thank you for the call. Is that enough to cover breakfast?”

  The look of triumph returned to Sturgis’s face as he snatched the fifty up and tucked it into the front pocket of his shirt. “Yeah, that ought to do it.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lucky we live Hawaii.

  It was an expression Kalani had heard no less than a thousand times in her life. She’d seen it probably four or five times that, plastered on t-shirts, bumper stickers, hats. A local expression stretching back long before her lifetime, it was a straight forward maxim that symbolized in just four words how most island residents felt. While the state was not immune to poverty, or crime, or health concerns, it also had the benefit of perfect weather and stunning vistas, of being a melting pot for cultures the world over.

  Despite waking up right on the beach every morning, it had been a long time since Kalani took the phrase to heart. Her family was now five thousand miles away. Her partner was dead. Her chest had a jagged bullet scar that would be with her until her last breath.