Motive

by Dustin Stevens

  “Hey, shouldn’t you be off somewhere trying to catch the Tooth Fairy right now?” Rip replied, taking a step forward off the curb.

  Without even realizing it, Kalani reached out and hooked a hand through his arm, not quite pulling him back, but keeping him from going any further. “Not right now,” she muttered, her jaw set, sliding the words out just loud enough for him to hear. “We have orders.”

  “You have orders,” Rip hissed back, his voice just as low. “I told you, I stopped taking them months ago.”

  The tips of Kalani’s fingers dug into the flesh on the inside of Rip’s arm as he remained in place, both men staring at one another. After a long moment Sturgis stuffed the remainder of the pastry into his mouth and wadded the wrapper into a ball, tossing it at them and turning in the other direction. He shook his head and muttered to himself as he went, loud enough to be heard, but soft enough to be indecipherable.

  They both stood and watched as he ambled off, not once looking back before being swallowed up by the crowd.

  “Asshole,” Rip muttered, turning back to face Kalani. “You know as well as I do he was the one that called Mata.”

  “About the second murder,” Kalani said, receding a step towards the door. “We still don’t know who leaked the first one.”

  Without waiting for a response, she slid past the old man’s vegetable stand and through the front doorway of the building. The ground underfoot changed over from concrete to brick as she stepped inside, a pair of matching wooden doors on either side of the foyer standing shut. She waited just a moment for Rip to follow her in before moving up the stairwell, the aging wooden implements creaking beneath her weight with each step.

  The chief had had no further information on the victim than her address, one she had furnished on her last arrest six weeks before. It was unknown if she lived alone, or even if she rented, all background information left blank.

  Such a short time frame meant that if the address was in fact legit there was a good chance she was still living there. On the downside, if she shared the space with anybody at all, the unfortunate task of delivering the bad news now fell on them.

  Given that Kalani could hear Rip’s angry breathing behind her, the odds were he might not be as subtle as the situation called for. She had already noticed at their previous stop that his particular brand of military infused justice was a little different than she was used to in the civilian world. That wasn’t to say it was right or wrong, just not the best for delivering the information of a lost loved one.

  Recalling the address from memory, Kalani climbed to the top of the stairwell and turned to the door on the left, the characters 2C stenciled on it in black paint. Pausing a moment she allowed Rip to reach the landing behind her before reaching out and knocking, the sound echoing through the thin wood paneling.

  Somewhere on the other side the sound of springs squeaking could be heard, followed a moment later by bare feet moving across the floor. Kalani inched a step back, her hip bumping into Rip, as a pair of shadows passed beneath the door jamb.

  “Who is it?” a voice called out. It was young and female, containing no small amount of uncertainty.

  Reaching for her hip, Kalani extracted her badge and said, “Police. Is this the home of Candy Lee?”

  There was no sound of the lock being disengaged or the knob turning, the shadows beneath the door remaining in place. “Candy isn’t here. Come back later.”

  Dread welled within Kalani as she turned and glanced at Rip. Most of the anger he had from their earlier encounter with Sturgis seemed to have faded, replaced now by concern, the same thought that was plaguing Kalani obvious on his features.

  The young girl had no idea Cherry wasn’t coming home.

  “Can you open up for us?” Kalani asked, putting on her best soothing tone. “We need to speak to you a moment.”

  The question was met with silence for almost a full minute before the door slid open just a couple of inches, a brass chain drawn taut between it and the wall. Beneath it peered out a pair of large brown eyes, a girl even younger than originally suspected staring up at them.

  Kalani held her badge out for the girl to see, sure to keep her voice even and mellow. “Honey, are your parents home?”

  The girl twisted her head from side to side, her gaze never shifting from Kalani’s face. “Our parents are gone. It’s just me and Cherry.”

  The feeling in Kalani’s gut expanded upward, passing along her spine, gripping her entire thorax. She could feel sweat form in the small of her back as her heart began to pound, willing herself not to let the girl see worry on her face.

  “Can we come in?” Kalani said. “It’s very important we talk to you for a few minutes.”

  The girl kept her gazed aimed at Kalani a long moment before shifting it upward to look at Rip. “I’m not supposed to let strange men in the house when Cherry’s not home.”

  Kalani blinked several times, drawing a sharp breath, letting the words sink in. She replaced the badge to her hip and turned to Rip, her voice low. “Would you mind waiting downstairs for a minute? Maybe calling the station and asking them to send somebody over? I’ll stay up here with her until they show.”

  Moving his focus from Kalani to the girl, Rip paused a moment before nodding. He opened his mouth as if to respond before thinking better of it and nodding again, heading back down the stairs without a word.

  Kalani waited until he reached the foyer before turning back to the girl and offering a smile. “Okay, now it’s just you and me. Can I come in?”

  The girl paused briefly before shutting the door, the sound of the chain sliding along its track echoing out into the hallway. A moment later it opened, the girl already retreating back into the room, leaving Kalani free to enter behind her.

  In total the apartment was a simple studio, no more than twenty feet square. In one corner was an ancient fridge that was once white but beginning to yellow, an industrial sized cord snaking out from beneath it and jammed into the wall. It hummed loudly as Kalani walked past, noting the sink overflowing with dishes and the two-burner oven beside it.

  A small folding table with two wooden chairs was set up beside the oven, a box television with a rabbit ear antenna atop it. The only other piece of furniture in the place was a bed, a pile of moth eaten and threadbare blankets strewn across it.

  Along the wall were two doors, one leading into a restroom, the other into a closet. With a quick glance Kalani could see an assortment of garish colors and fabrics hung inside it, the assorted attire of a girl peddling her wares each night.

  From the looks of things around the apartment, business had been slow as of late.

  The girl crawled back into her spot in the bed and sat facing Kalani, pulling the blankets up to her chin, her face the only thing visible. From the round shape of it she looked to have been well-fed, free of any visible marks or scars.

  “What’s your name?” Kalani asked, grabbing one of the wooden chairs by the table and dragging it over to the foot of the bed.

  “Is Cherry in trouble?” the girl replied, skipping over Kalani’s question. Despite the inquiry posed she seemed to be without fear or even concern, her face solemn.

  Every part of Kalani wanted to be honest with the girl. Lying to her, stringing her along, would only make things worse in a few shorts minutes when the truth came out. Still, she had questions that needed to be answered, something that wouldn’t be possible if the girl became hysterical.

  The fact that Kalani in no way wanted to be the one delivering the news was only a small part of the equation.

  Or so she told herself.

  “No,” Kalani said, shaking her head. “We just need to ask her some questions about something that happened the other night. Is she your sister?”

  The girl looked at Kalani a long moment as if trying to determine if she was being lied to before nodding her head in confirmation.

  “When was the last time you saw Cherry?” Kalani asked, leaning forward
and resting her elbows on her knees, fingers laced in front of her.

  “Couple nights ago.”

  Again there was no real amount of alarm in the girl’s voice as she responded, her face impassive. There was the distinct impression that this was the sort of thing that happened often, something the girl had long since stopped seeing as a point of concern.

  “Does she normally stay gone for a couple days at a time?” Kalani asked. Again she cast a look around the apartment for anything that might offer some clue as to what had happened. From what she could see though, the place was Spartan to the point of being barren.

  “Sometimes,” the girl replied, a hint of a smile tugging at her mouth. “But whenever she does, she always comes back with a big bag of yummy food for us.”

  Kalani nodded, expecting the information even before she heard it. For whatever faults the deceased may have had, she did at least have the good sense to keep her younger sister far from it. Any hope at gleaning usable information was almost non-existent, even though she would stay until the social worker arrived. Once the girl was secured she and Rip could do a preliminary search through the apartment, but already she knew what it would turn up.

  It wasn’t the first Cherry Lee Kalani had ever encountered. Such women seemed to be mobile to a fault, rarely having anything more concrete than a cell-phone in their life. They were transient between apartments, neighborhoods, even cities, always in search of some place with better corners to stand on, more marks to try and obtain some money from.

  There was no way Kalani could share any of this information with the girl though. Despite how much she might have wanted to, she couldn’t bring herself to share her sister’s demise with her either. The force kept child psychologists on staff for such things, people much better to handle those discussions, fully equipped to temper any ramifications that would come from them.

  Reaching down into her bag, Kalani pulled the photo of Lauren Mann from it and held it at arm’s length. “This is a friend of Cherry’s named Lauren. Have you ever seen her before?”

  The girl leaned forward and squinted her eyes for a long moment before retreating back into place, twisting her head from side to side. “No.”

  “Are you sure?” Kalani asked, leaning in a few inches, keeping the photo held out.

  Once more the girl examined the image before shaking her head in the negative. “Yeah, I’m sure. She’s very pretty. I would have remembered if she came here. The only people that ever did were ugly, old, wanting money.”

  The words were delivered in such a way that Kalani could feel her resolve breaking. Even if Cherry had done her best to shield the young girl from her life, there was no way to protect her from the residual things that came with it. Kalani could feel herself wanting to rise and go to the bed, to wrap her arms around the girl and tell her everything was going to be alright.

  Instead she rubbed her hands together in front of her, not wanting to ask the one final question, but knowing she had to before somebody knocked on the door and this child’s world upside down.

  “Is there anybody, anybody at all, that you can think of that would want to hurt Cherry?”

  A cloud of confusion passed over the girl’s face, her unlined forehead bunching up as she stared back at Kalani. “Hurt her? No, everybody loves Cherry. Why would anybody want to hurt her?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Trading in his cargo shorts for a pair of khaki chinos was as far as Kimo Mata was willing to go to blend in. His aloha shirt swung free past the hem of his pants and a pair of leather thong slippers smacked at the heels of his calloused feet as he walked through the Royal Hawaiian Resort.

  It wouldn’t be correct to call the space the lobby, though it did serve as the entrance to the expansive vacation destination positioned right in the heart of Waikiki’s famed beach walk. To Kimo it seemed more like an atrium, an open-air center encased in retractable doors, rising three stories high. The middle of the area was dominated by a fountain throwing a fan of water fifteen feet in the air, the sound of it cascading down providing the background music for all who entered. On either end were elevator tubes of tinted glass, guests looking down from within.

  Kimo ignored the observers on high and a few curious stares from resort staff behind the check-in and concierge desks, instead setting his aim on the back corner and riding an escalator to the second floor. At the top of the moving stairs a sign greeted him, welcoming him to aGala Benefit hosted by Governor Dwight Randle.

  The sign was made from thick card stock, the lettering done in red, white, and blue, the Hawaiian flag providing the backdrop. Alongside the greeting was a picture of Randle bedecked in a flowered shirt, lei around his neck, his thumb and pinkie extended outward in the colloquial local greeting.

  A smirk pulled the right side of Kimo’s face upward as he followed the arrow for the sign along an open corridor, resort staff bustling past him in both directions. Dressed in vests and bow ties, they jogged everywhere they went, frantic to make final arrangements for the benefit scheduled to begin in just a few short minutes.

  The call had come in to Mata just before noon, a terse message on his voicemail telling him to call back as soon as possible. The sound of Mary-Ann Harris’s voice on his machine had surprised him at first listen, even more so when he returned the call and heard what she had to say.

  Her mysterious source had informed her that something was going to happen tonight during the gala. She claimed to have no direct knowledge of criminal activity about to take place, but suggested he be on hand just in case. Should her name arise in any way, she had plausible alibis for the entire day and would deny the conversation had ever taken place.

  The moment her message was delivered the line was cut off. Kimo tried twice to return the call, but each time an automated response informed him the person he was trying to reach was unavailable. He had a feeling if he tried having the number traced it would turn out to be a burn phone, bought at any general merchandise store, impossible to track.

  With or without a number though, he had been sure to record the conversation. Harris could attempt to deny all she wanted, but it would be tough to convince anybody it wasn’t her voice on the other end of the line.

  Shoving aside the thought of tracing the number, Kimo moved his focus towards the night ahead. He had planned to stop by the gala early anyway for a scheduled meeting, but would now be staying longer than initially thought.

  Despite receiving two enormous tips in the last week, his investigation was coming back with a lot of dead ends. Never before had he seen such an efficient cover job, not for a DUI or even a simple jaywalking ticket. The fact that the crimes in question included three murders made the circumstances even more astonishing, a consortium that started with the governor’s office and included some of the more influential people in Honolulu.

  Kimo rounded the corner of the hallway and came to a stop in front of a long fold-out table with a white table cloth, name tags lined out across the entirety of it. Behind the table was a pair of young girls, both wearing spring dresses and smiles.

  Backing them up was a pair of oversized members of the governor’s security detail, sporting matching sunglasses and scowls. There was no way to see where their eyes were focused as they stood in stony silence, though Kimo had a feeling both were assessing him completely, warming up for the night ahead.

  “Kimo Mata,” he said, offering a half smile to the girls, pretending the guards didn’t exist.

  “Certainly,” the girl closest to him said, using a finger as a pointer and scanning the rows of nametags in front of her. Kimo’s gaze found it a full half minute before she did, but he opted to wait it out until she picked it up and handed it across to him. “Here you go, Mr. Mata. You’re a little bit early, but you can go on inside.”

  “Thank you,” Kimo said, accepting it from her with the same half smile and a nod. As he did so his gaze flicked behind her to the guards, both standing rigid.

  “Have a nice night,
” the girl said as he circled around the table and stepped inside the main ballroom for the Royal Hawaiian.

  Billed as the premier meeting space in the city, a first glance did nothing to dispel the reputation. The room stretched over one hundred yards in length, a four-tier chandelier dropping from the ceiling, crystals hanging down, sending shimmering light dancing across the floor. Along either wall buffet tables were set up, large silver serving bins sitting closed, their tops not yet removed. Teams of workers stacked dishes and utensils alongside them, nobody glancing his way as they moved everything into position.

  A wooden stage extended across the front of the room, a black skirt lining it, chairs and musical instruments already arranged in a sweeping half arc. A handful of musicians in matching black tie attire sat behind some of the seats as a few more headed towards them, ready to take their positions.

  A parquet dance floor dominated most of the floor space in the room, the remaining vacancy filled with tables and chairs, water pitchers and glasses already in place atop the white tablecloths. The back of the room housed the bar, three long tables lined with beers and liquors of every variety, two bartenders and a bar back making final preparations.

  Standing in the corner of the room, Kimo scanned and digested the scene in a matter of seconds, passing over everything until he found who he was looking for. Raising a hand above his head, he stuffed the name tag he’d just been given into his pocket and headed towards the opposite corner, cutting diagonally across the dance floor to get there. The cavernous room seemed to ignore the sound of his slippers as he went, sucking the noise away a millisecond after it was made.

  Seated by himself in the corner was Sam Nakoa, hunched forward in his chair, thick upper body leaning heavy onto a table. He watched Kimo as he approached, chewing on a thumbnail, standing only when Kimo was just a few feet away.

  “Sam,” Kimo said, extending a hand as he approached, feeling the concern in his friend’s demeanor.

  “Kimo,” Sam said, reciprocating the gesture, almost crushing Kimo’s hand in his own. “Nice pants.”