Motive

by Dustin Stevens

  “Explains the sexual trauma,” Rip commented, leaving it at that.

  Kalani could tell he was referring to her name, an obvious fake either used for her career as a stripper or a call girl. Either way she elected to let it pass without comment, moving on. “What was she in for?”

  “The usual,” Tseng said, glancing over to Rip, confirming his retort about the name was correct. “Solicitation, possession.”

  Kalani nodded, leaning forward and accepting the sheet of paper, looking over the address. From what she knew of Chinatown it was located roughly in the center of it, just a few blocks from the canal.

  “What about that truck?” Tseng asked. “Anything come of that?”

  A low snort rolled out of Rip. Kalani stared down at the sheet of paper a moment longer, the sound beside her just barely registering, as she processed the new information and the question at the same time. Occurring less than twenty-four hours before, the encounter with Reyes already seemed like a lifetime ago, the details having receded from her conscious brain.

  “Low level pimp. Small timer that has a couple of girls convinced he’s the real deal. I was going to file a report, he’s there if you want him, but didn’t think that was the kind of thing you wanted us going in on right now.”

  A long, slow sigh rolled out of Tseng as he brought his hands together in front of himself and rubbed them together. Using his forearms for leverage he pushed himself back into his chair and passed his hands over his face, his skin tugging along his cheeks as he did so.

  “No, it’s not,” he said, his voice the same weary tenor. “Lord knows we’ve got enough on our plates right now.” He dropped his hands down from his face, slapping them against the arms of his chair. “Two pregnant women in the last few days. You remember that thing I mentioned the other day about children having their teeth yanked out?”

  Again Kalani nodded, choosing to remain silent. The story resonated vaguely in the back of her mind, though at the moment she couldn’t recall the exact details, or even if she’d been given any.

  “One of our CI’s called in this morning,” Tseng said. “I guess some guy rolled up to that homeless commune under the highway there by the Nimitz on-ramp, started offering ten bucks a tooth to anybody that wanted to donate.”

  Kalani felt her eyes bulge as she stared across at her boss. “You’re kidding me? Tell me nobody took him up on it.”

  “Hmph,” Tseng said, his left nostril curling up in a sneer. “Have you seen most of the people out there? Those people would cut off hands or feet for some quick cash. Guy said the place looked like Costco out there, selling teeth in bulk.”

  The thought of such a thing brought bile to the back of Kalani’s throat. She swallowed twice, trying to force it back down, and shot a glance over to Rip.

  “Did they get a look at the guy? A license plate? Anything?”

  “Naw,” Tseng said, a look of disgust passing over his features, his head twisting to the side. “I guess he was asleep when the guy showed up, didn’t hear the commotion until it was too late.”

  “Damn,” Kalani said, matching the head shake. As awful as the news was, all she could muster was relief that it wasn’t her case to solve as well. Somewhere in the precinct another pair of detectives was staring at the files, trying to draw conclusions from a bunch of loose ends, just the same as she and Rip.

  They had her sympathies, if not her assistance.

  “So how should we proceed on this?” Kalani asked, steering the conversation back. “I assume Mata’s not just going to go away. And there is the little problem of whoever is feeding him information.”

  “Right,” Tseng agreed, nodding. He leaned back in his chair, the momentary lapse behind him, his face drawn tight again. “For the time being, just keep doing what you’re doing, only faster.”

  The implication was quite clear, even if it wasn’t well earned. The pressure was coming from on high, and as such things tended to do, was being passed down the ladder.

  “I’ll ask a few questions around here,” Tseng said, “but aside from Sturgis and Li, there’s nobody else that knows a thing. I’ve stuck them on the teeth cases to keep them occupied, but I’ll circle back, tell them to keep their mouth shut just the same.”

  “What if it’s not from this side?” Rip asked, injecting himself for the first time, drawing the attention of both Kalani and Tseng. He didn’t finish the thought, though both could tell where he was going with it. Of all the people that had been present at the capitol earlier in the week, only one of them was employed by the HPD.

  “Yeah, about that,” Tseng said, a sour expression on his face. “Tonight the governor is hosting a fundraiser at the Hawaiian Hilton Village at seven. He has asked me to come by and brief him on where this thing stands.”

  “Really?” Kalani asked, her face twisted up in surprise. “He wants this far off the books, but wants to discuss it at a campaign function?”

  Tseng answered with a grim nod. “If I show up tonight, it can be written off as a quick security check. If I show up at his office in the middle of the day, a staff member or constituent stopping by might see us and wonder what’s going on.”

  The surprise receded from Kalani’s face a bit, though she still didn’t like it. The first call had come in just a couple of days ago, for the governor to be exerting such pressure already showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire investigative process.

  Potentially even worse, it displayed the audacity of a man that knew full well how such procedures were conducted, and just didn’t care.

  “I think it would be a good idea for you guys to be on hand,” Tseng said. “At the very least, it would be nice for there to be a few other asses around to get chewed out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The first job Danilo Cruz ever performed for Thomas Zall was as a landscaper. He was nineteen years old at the time, lean and wiry, skin painted dark by the sun. Unlike most young men in the greater New York City area, he wasn’t afraid of long hours or getting dirty, two facts that compensated for his limited grasp of English.

  His initial week on the job was something of a vetting process, an unending stretch of the same mundane tasks over and over again. The first was laying sod, performed by making a thousand trips back and forth between the pallets stacked high in the driveway and the yard behind the house. Rolled up in four foot chunks, they weighed over fifty pounds each, their bulk uneven between his hands.

  For hours on end he would tramp across the sun baked ground, his forearms burning with lactic acid, sweat stinging his eyes. Four feet at a time the world around him shifted from brown to green, every muscle in his body burning, aching for relief.

  When the task was completed a second group of pallets was brought into the driveway. Stacked high with sacks of black mulch, Danilo was given the unenviable chore of hauling them to every corner of the yard. Once there, he tore into them, spreading the six cubic feet of pulp wood product held inside, before heading back to the pile for more.

  All told, he made over five hundred trips across the rear of the Zall property. Every last one of them was done in silence, sweat streaming down his body, bits of dirt and wood clinging to his skin.

  What the combined effort of that week had taught him was the best way to haul anything, no matter how unwieldy or unstable it might be. If the object was contained, on the shoulder was the best approach, hefting it high and letting it settle against the chest and shoulder blade. If there was a chance that something could come loose, then it had to be handled in front of his body, balanced between the hands.

  Never had he tried to carry something in the waning months of a pregnancy before though.

  Parked alongside the house in Hawaii Kai, Danilo pulled open the side door on his van and looked at the woman draped across the backseat. The smell of the homeless children from the night before wafted out as he did so, the pungent odor of sweat and fecal matter spilling forward. Behind it was just the slightest hint of something sweete
r, the coconut scent of the girl’s body wash, fighting a losing battle against its surroundings.

  Finding her was almost as easy as the children, preying on human nature and the unique circumstances that plagued Hawaii every day.

  Instead of targeting the homeless camped out beneath the highway, he took the H-1 a few miles further from town, pulling in to the Honolulu International Airport just after seven a.m. A quick check of the HNL website had confirmed what he was looking for, a direct flight from Seoul on Korean Air, scheduled to land at half past the hour. Leaving his van on the first level of the parking garage, he had found his way to the attributed baggage claim and laid in wait for his target.

  One of the more common practices in Honolulu was for expecting mothers from Polynesian and Asian countries to hop a plane in the days before giving birth. Often times the women were from families too poor to come along, placing her and the impending young on an airliner that would carry her to American soil. Once there, she could deliver the child at any emergency room or free health clinic, effectively making the newborn a United States citizen. Passport babies, as they were known, were then entitled to full social service benefits, as well as expediting the process of green cards for their parents.

  Running low on leads for a third young woman that would fit the needed description, Danilo posted himself up in the underbelly of the airport, stalking out the baggage claim, waiting for an opportunity to present itself. Dressed in a tie and slacks, he carried a clipboard with his own name on it, hiding in plain sight.

  The first two women he encountered were both traveling with partners. Both were men he could easily subdue if the need arose, but each presented the unnecessary strain of having a second body to dispose of and doubled the likelihood of being missed. Taking a chance he elected to let both pass, waiting for what he knew would show up at some point.

  His patience paid off.

  One of the last women to make her way to the baggage claim was a Korean girl that looked to still be in her teens. Every step she took was a fight to keep her frail body upright, the bulk of her protruding abdomen throwing her balance from side to side. The pale white skin of her face was painted red with exertion as she walked, the combined effects of the trip and her condition obvious.

  Still holding the clipboard out in front of him, Danilo walked towards her. He kept a smile on his face and his shoulders slumped as he approached, his entire posture as non-imposing as possible. “Do you need a lift?”

  The sound of his voice startled the girl for a moment, her upper body jerking to the side in reactive recoil. The effort almost sent her sprawling to the ground, the duffel bag in her hand slapping against the tile beneath her.

  “Oh my, I’m so sorry,” Danilo said, holding his hands out in front of him. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wondered if you need a ride.”

  Bit by bit the fear pulled back from her features, the girl’s eyes still wide as she stared from Danilo to the clipboard in his hand. She extended a bony digit towards the name on it, then pointed back to herself, shaking her head. “Not me,” she managed in broken English.

  The smile growing in size and strength, Danilo looked down at the board and shook his head. “I know. He called and cancelled on me at the last minute. I thought since I was already here, I might see if I can help you.”

  A long moment passed as the girl stared up at him, surprise, confusion on her face. Realizing she probably had not understood a word he said, Danilo kept the smile in place and pointed at his name scrawled out in black marker.

  “Not coming,” he said using a loud, slow tone, shaking his head in rhythm to them. He then pointed at the girl and asked, “You need ride?”

  This time his overwrought pantomime impression worked, a smile tracing the girl’s face that was equal parts glad and relieved. Bending at the waste, Danilo took her bag up from the floor and gestured towards the last few bags coming down onto the carousel. An emphatic shake of the head confirmed what he already carried was all she had.

  Twenty minutes after arriving she was strapped into the back of his van, a simple rag soaked in chloroform giving him what he figured to be his last necessary pickup.

  Staring at her folded up on the rear seat, she seemed much larger than he knew her to be. Even with the bump now extended in front of her she could have weighed no more than a hundred and ten pounds, her arms and legs the width of his wrist. Laid flat across the back seat her head and feet failed to reach either end of the van, it’s five and a half feet longer than she was.

  A scowl came to Danilo’s face as he cast a glance about his surroundings, knowing there were at least two guards watching everything he did, Saiki in the basement, but not one of them coming to help him. He found the nearest camera and stared into it a long moment, letting his displeasure show on his features, before hooking his hands under the girl’s arms and wrenching her from the back seat. Her head lulled from side to side and her frail limbs splayed about as she went, her body coming free after a few moments of tugging.

  Danilo wasn’t thrilled with bringing the girl to the house, but the unique timing of the night’s festivities made it necessary. He couldn’t afford the risk of trying to pick someone up later in the day, for if things didn’t work out the opportunity before them might not present itself again. Instead, he would stow the girl here until evening, careful to keep Saiki away from her, before taking her off to perform what must be done.

  If there was anywhere else to hold her he would have, but no other venue would allow him to maneuver an unconscious woman without raising suspicion. Instead, he would sequester her away in one of the untouched rooms, sedated until ready to move again.

  Once the time was right, the package she carried would be extracted, her body placed in a way that would demand to be seen.

  He just had to somehow get her in the house first.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Regardless of time, day or night, there was no busier spot in Honolulu than Maunakea Street. Wedged into the geographic center of Chinatown, it was surrounded on all sides by four bustling blocks of activity, ranging from pawn shops to homeless shelters.

  By day, the sidewalks of Maunakea were lined with open-air markets. Sold to local growers by the ten-foot parcel, the entire stretch of cement on either side of the street was lined tight with sellers, all standing along the curb, aggressively hawking their wares.

  Some specialized in local produce, having every vegetable found in the state on display, ranging from winter melon to Thai chiles. Others preferred to work with fruits, running the gamut from mango and papaya to the more exotic lychee and star fruits.

  The corner units were dominated by meat vendors, the extra space affording them the ability to bring in glass cabinets, even the occasional standing rotisserie. Fresh butchered chickens were lined on ice for people to choose from, the entire bird sectioned off and ready for distribution. Above them hung cuts of pork and beef, a variety that encompassed intestines, shank, even testicles if a person desired.

  The markets opened each morning at seven o’clock, starting in time with the sun, regardless of time of year. Seven days a week they were open and operational, ignoring conventional work schedules and holidays, always met by a mob of locals in need of goods.

  Depending on the size of the crowd they began to break down some time mid-afternoon, boxing up their unsold product and sweeping their debris into the streets. By six o’clock each afternoon all that remained from the busy day was the thick aroma of the food that had sat in the sun for hours, the unmistakable scent of onions hanging over everything.

  A brief window of calm settled in for the two hours before sundown, followed by a second very distinct group of vendors taking to the streets. Armed not with cases of beef or cucumbers, they descended on Maunakea dressed in spandex and lace, their height unnaturally inflated by the heels on their feet. Garish makeup concealed most of their true features, their state of mind most often altered by some form of illegal substance.
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br />   It was in the second group that Kalani felt sure Candy Lee fit into, a belief based on the victim’s name and the autopsy report handed over by Dr. Song. Standing on the corner looking up at the address Tseng had given them just an hour before, Kalani was even more certain of it.

  The unit was a second floor walk-up above a pair of vegetable vendors, both well down from the traditional flow of foot traffic, an elderly man sitting silent and alone between them. His aging Chinese features had receded into a maze of wrinkles and excess skin as he sat staring straight ahead, his hands hanging down between his knees.

  The scent of roasted chicken and ribs floated down from the shop on the corner as she and Rip both stared upward, noticing the torn drapes hanging across a cracked pane of glass. Large strips of paint were peeling away from the wall and bits of graffiti could be seen dotting the entire block.

  “The way it works is, you go up to the apartment, it doesn’t come down to you,” a harsh voice said, turning both of them around. Before even looking Kalani could speculate as to who it belonged to, a feeling of dread rising in the pit of her stomach.

  A single glance confirmed it, heightening the feeling within her.

  Across from them, Sturgis leaned against a parking meter, his stomach extended in front of him. In his hand was a pastry of an indeterminate sort, the bulk of it obscured by wax paper, powdered sugar falling from it, dotting the pavement.

  “Or do you guys only specialize in showing up and stealing crime scenes, not actually investigating them?”

  He phrased the question with just a hint of mirth, as if making a joke, but his insinuation was clear. He stared at them with a hardened gaze for a moment before lifting his breakfast to his mouth and tearing off an oversized bite.