Motive

by Dustin Stevens

  “She didn’t,” a voice said from the doorway, drawing both their attention towards it, Kalani’s stomach tightening at the sight of the man behind it.

  “She called me,” Kimo Mata said, walking into the room, the sound of his sandals smacking echoing through the deserted space. “That was my phone Duke was holding.” He stopped in the position previously occupied by the governor, nodding at Rip. “Kimo Mata, journalist.”

  “You?” Rip asked, his eyebrows raised. “Mary-Ann Harris called you with that information?”

  Kalani noticed there was no offer of an introduction by Rip, merely a jump right to the information they were being handed. If he was offended, or even surprised, by the transition, Kimo didn’t let it show.

  “Yes, she did,” Kimo replied. “Same as she did a few days ago, when she brought me in and told me a body had been found on the mosaic at the capitol.”

  Flashbulbs began erupting in Kalani’s mind as she stared slack-jawed at Kimo, trying to configure what she’d just been told. Since he had shown up on her front drive and confessed to knowing what was going on, she had been convinced there was a leak coming from their side. So convinced, she had come to a private meeting with the governor and all but accused him of having a mole on his staff.

  Not once had she considered that there might be somebody from outside also feeding information in.

  “Wait,” Kalani said, twisting her head in disbelief, hoping she wasn’t right. “Are you telling me the governor’s opponent is behind this? She’s the one leaving bodies all over the city? To frame him?”

  Before Kimo had a chance to reply, a new voice entered the fray, a sharp bark coming from the doorway, harsh and nonnegotiable. “You two, come with me.”

  Chief Tseng was back out through the door and gone before any of the three even got a good look at him, his voice the only way they had of identifying who had issued the command. In its wake Kalani bounced on the balls of her feet, looking from Rip to Kimo, torn between wanting to find out everything Kimo knew and having to follow an urgent order from Tseng.

  Fortunately, Rip made the call for her.

  “You’ll be around to finish this conversation later, right?” Rip asked, staring across at Kimo.

  “If not, she knows how to find me,” Kimo said, nodding to Kalani as she and Rip headed for the door.

  They caught up with Tseng halfway down the hallway, his pace near a jog as he beat a path for the escalators, phone pressed to his ear. Together they ran to join up with him, falling in a step behind, waiting until he finished the call and they began their downward descent before inquiring what had happened.

  “What’s going on?” Kalani asked, fearing anything from a bomb threat to a mass shooting in the middle of the most visible resort in Hawaii.

  “Nothing here,” Tseng said, twisting his head. “A call just came in from patrol. We’ve got another body, matches the MO of the previous two.”

  Kalani felt her insides roil as she cast a glance to Rip, his features impossible to read.

  The previous ten years had trained her to be around some truly ghastly scenes. In those days though, her job was to secure the scene and wait for the crime scene crew and detectives to show up. Now, she was the crew and the detective, being forced into both roles without training in either, her psyche still not recovered from the incident months before.

  Given her pending uncertainty about remaining in the field at all, the change in job description was one she could do without.

  “Where?” Rip asked.

  Tseng turned and gave them each a severe look before shifting to face forward, making sure nobody was within earshot. “Iolani Palace.”

  The last fifteen feet of the ride down the escalator was in silence, Kalani running the information through her head, trying to imagine what must be waiting for them across town. The thought brought bile to the back of her throat, a bit of anger right behind it.

  Now, standing in front of the palace, she felt both even stronger.

  Nothing in the Hawaiian culture was more sacred than the Iolani Palace. The only home to royalty in the entire United States, it stood in the shadow of the state capitol, a reminder of all that once was, a hope to many for what one day may be again. There might have been more populated locales on Oahu to leave a body if a public spectacle was the end goal, but if making a point was the ultimate objective, there was no place better.

  Forcing her mind to remain clear, to process what was before her, Kalani assessed what she had at hand. The first thing to be addressed was the darkness shrouding the grounds, which meant one of two things. Either the killer needed the cover for getting the body in undetected or the message was a very specific one meant to be sent to the governor.

  As best Kalani could figure it was some combination of the two, a definitive sign that their work would not be ignored.

  “Looks like whoever it was cut the power to the entire grounds,” Rip said, motioning with a hand around them.

  “Yeah,” Kalani agreed, following his motion, noticing there wasn’t a single light of any kind ablaze in the three acre parcel. Wedged tight in the middle of the city, there were plenty of lamps glowing just out of reach, but none on the ground where they stood. “Actually cut the source? Or had someone flip the switch?”

  “Either way,” Rip replied, “had to have been done right at dusk. Any time before that, visitors would have still been touring. After that, somebody would have noticed the whole place suddenly going dark.”

  Kalani hadn’t walked it through in her mind far enough to reach that point, but the observation made sense. She grunted her agreement as they reached the front of the building, the two story structure stretched out before them.

  Over the years Kalani had been by the palace enough times to know exactly what it looked like. Built in a perfect square, it rose two stories, both of them fifteen feet in height. The outer wall was grey stone with white trim, cupolas standing on each corner, a rise with a flag pole in the center of the roof. Oversized stairwells led into the front and back entrances, porches running the length of the building on either side.

  Most of that was barely visible as they made their way to the foot of the front stairwell and stopped though, the building looming above them, shrouded in darkness.

  A pair of HPD officers in matching black uniforms stood waiting for them, a red glow stick attached to one of their waists the only indication they were even there. Upon arriving Kalani slid a thin Maglite from her back pocket and clicked it on, an elongated cone of fluorescent light appearing before them. With her opposite hand she extracted her badge and held it at arm’s length, letting the light catch it, leaving it visible for them to see.

  “Lewis and Ripowski?” the man on the right asked, his voice betraying a local lilt. He stood a few inches shorter than Kalani and quite a bit heavier, the rest of his appearance obscured from view. Not wanting to blind them, Kalani kept her light aimed at the ground, allowing their voices to identify them for the brief time they would be interacting.

  “That’s us,” Kalani replied. “Chief Tseng tell you we were coming?”

  “Said to secure the scene and then hand it over to you guys,” his partner said, the local tilt even stronger in his voice. He was much shorter and lighter than his partner, the tell-tale signs of a surfer born and bred on the island.

  “Who found the body?” Rip asked, his hands hanging free by his side. His voice was free of any inflection at all, a simple question meant only to gather information.

  “We did,” the man on the right said. “We round here a couple times a night anyway, but when we noticed the power was out we came to take a closer look. Found her up at the top of the stairs.”

  A small wince slid out of his partner at the last few words, drawing even more dread from Kalani at what lay just feet away. She couldn’t yet smell the blood or hear any flies buzzing, but she knew both would be hitting her soon.

  “Any word on the power outage?” Kalani asked. “What caused it
? If anybody is coming to fix it?”

  The sound of items shifting on a loaded police utility belt met their ears, most likely from one or both of them shaking their heads in the dark.

  “Chief said to leave it down for the night,” the partner said. “Told us it would make it easier for you guys.”

  “Easier...right,” Rip muttered, shaking his head, shifting a bit and staring back out towards the street they had come from.

  “Alright guys, thanks a lot,” Kalani said, sensing that they wanted to be no closer than necessary and that Rip was already getting agitated with the situation they now found themselves in. “And we’re really sorry about this. Trust us, handling it this way isn’t our idea.”

  “Hey, no complaint here,” the man on the right side, his palms turning out to face them. “You get up there, you’ll see why we’re all too happy to step aside on this one.”

  Two minutes later, Kalani saw exactly what he meant.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The passing of her husband had resulted in two distinct impacts on Mary-Ann Harris’s life.

  On the professional front, it had provided an opportunity for her to finally step out of the shadows. It allowed her to no longer simply be the woman who never wore the same outfit twice and always had her hair and makeup in place. No longer was she the soldier’s wife, or the mayor’s wife, or sometimes simply and wife.

  In a matter of just a few shorts years she became someone that had graduated top of her class from Vassar. Held a master’s degree in business administration from Villanova. Came from a blue-blood east coast family that supported the Kennedy and Clinton Administrations, was a staunch supporter of the new Obama regime.

  Lauded for her poise in the wake of her husband’s passing and for her ability to stand behind the microphone and give a compelling speech, she was ushered forward within the state’s Democratic Party, a suitable fill-in for the gaping hole a heart attack had created.

  Somehow, at the age of fifty-two years old, Mary-Ann was more successful and working harder than she had in the previous fifteen years combined.

  And loving every minute of it.

  The effect on her personal life was a case study in indirect proportionality. As much as the story of a soldier’s widow made for a compelling read, as great as selling herself as trying to fill the political void left by her husband’s passing made, it turned her into an asexual being. Those narratives only worked if she continued to play the part, going home to an empty house every night, shooing away dating in the name of fighting the good fight, carrying forward the family name.

  The endless clichés attached to her candidacy had worn themselves almost as thin with her as going home to an empty house every night.

  Tucked away on the second floor of the home she had shared with her husband for two decades, Mary-Ann Harris sat in bed with her reading glasses on the tip her nose, staring down at the latest Lee Child novel. She read with bemused detachment the adventures of Jack Reacher, his signature character known for being the Goliath-with-a-heart-of-gold, a complete flip on the classic underdog story.

  The sound of her cell phone ringing on the night stand beside her shattered the silence of the house, her heart rate spiking, the breath catching in her chest. A quick glance at the digital readout on the alarm clock beside her showed the time was nudging towards midnight, well beyond what her campaign staff knew to be acceptable hours for calling.

  Cocking her head towards the phone, she saw the number come up on her caller ID, a string of digits without a name attached. Even so, only a moment passed before she recognized who the number belonged to, despite having used it only a couple of times before.

  The realization did nothing to slow her heartbeat as she closed the book and set it aside, sliding her glasses from her nose. She dropped them on the table and lifted the phone, pressing it to her ear with her right hand, massaging her forehead with her left.

  “Good evening,” she said, weariness, resignation, in her tone.

  “Good evening,” Thomas Zall replied, his voice containing equal parts annoyance and his omnipresent condescension. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  Again Mary-Ann glanced at the clock, shaking her head at the question, her lips pursed. “Of course not. What can I do for you, Mr. Zall?”

  “Where are you?” Zall asked, moving right past the question, the annoyance fading a bit, a sense of urgency moving in.

  Mary-Ann’s brow furrowed as she lifted her left palm towards the ceiling before dropping it back against her thigh, the heavy quilt enveloping her absorbing the sound. “I am at home, as most people of our age are at such an hour.”

  The last part had been added as a tiny barb, just a slight nudge to let Zall know he wasn’t the only one that could be a bit condescending when the moment called for it.

  If the strike found its mark in any way, there was no response at all from Zall.

  “Good,” he replied. “I will have a car there waiting for you within twenty minutes.”

  It took a full moment for the words to penetrate, Mary-Ann’s mouth dropping open. “What? At this hour?”

  “Yes,” Zall answered. “And bring an overnight bag. A couple of nights worth of items should suffice.”

  Her jaw fell an extra inch as Mary-Ann sat in silence, her eyes open wide. A series of expressions ran across her face, ranging from shocked to appalled, as she tried to articulate her thoughts.

  “What?” she repeated. “I’m not going anywhere with you, much less for a few nights.”

  She could hear an angry sigh come across the line, followed by a voice with a clear edge to it. “I didn’t say we were going anywhere. I just think it would be best if you were away for a couple of days.”

  Instantly all shock fled from Mary-Ann, followed by an overwhelming sense of dread. Her eyes slid shut and she raised her left hand back to her forehead, laying her palm flat against her skin. For days now she had feared such a call was coming, questioning that very afternoon whether or not she should even call Kimo Mata.

  “What have you done?”

  There was a silent moment before Zall responded. When he did, his voice was void of any inflection, a man that seemed to be exhausted with everything. “I think it’s a little late for that isn’t it?”

  A hundred responses came to Mary-Ann, but she let each of them go, one after the other. There were so many things she could say to the man, so many accusations she wanted to level at him, but the fact was she had agreed to his plan, and it hadn’t taken much convincing to get her to do so.

  She knew when she entered the race for the governor’s seat she was facing an uphill battle, one that had only been achieved a single time in history. Still, the backing of a few key party officials long since disenfranchised from Randle had made her think it was possible. When Zall had come and presented his plan to her, it seemed so feasible, such a small role for her to play that would almost guarantee her success.

  Now, it was far past any of that. The man had made a mess of things, and he had potentially torpedoed her career before it ever began. What had started as her just making a few phone calls could soon be casting her back to the sidelines.

  She only hoped it wouldn’t be taking her someplace even worse.

  “Where am I going?” she asked, her voice sounding far away, even in her own ears.

  “Nowhere in particular,” Zall said. “You will be on my boat for the weekend. Tell your staff you aren’t feeling well and need to recharge, be back and ready to go on Monday.”

  Her eyes still closed, Mary-Ann ran through her schedule for the weekend, picturing her date book in her mind. “I have an event in Kapolei on Sunday.”

  “But you won’t be feeling well,” Zall countered. “And at this stage of the election season, nothing can be more important than your health, right?”

  The inside of Mary-Ann’s mouth tasted dry as she tried to work her tongue around it, lifting her jaw a few times in an attempt to get some saliva moving. “Will it
be over in a few days? Or are you just trying to get rid of me for a while?”

  There was another moment of silence on the line, punctuated by a second lengthy sigh.

  “One begets the other,” Zall said, speaking slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “To answer your first question, the hard part, the part you have been attached to, will be done this weekend. In fact, it is already done.

  “As to the second, you not being around in the immediate aftermath should make it easier for both sides until things slow down.”

  The answer was much what Mary-Ann had been expecting, her head rotating upward an inch or two in acknowledgment. “You realize at some point my contact might take all this to the police? And if he does, they will come asking me how I knew what I did.”

  “I suspect, based on the events at this evening’s gala, he already has,” Zall said. “Which is why my driver will be there for you in what is now ten minutes.”

  Once more Mary-Ann glanced at the clock, the digits growing ever closer to midnight.

  “And when they do?” Mary-Ann asked.

  “Just get on the boat,” Zall said, his voice still detached. “When you return, it will be taken care of.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The swipe of menthol salve under her nose did nothing to lessen the scent for Kalani. The metallic, sharp scent of blood still managed to work its way into her nostrils, turning her stomach, bringing a sheen of moisture to her eyes. Every few minutes she would pinch them tight, feeling the residual tears slide off the side of her cheeks, before getting back to work.

  The problem wasn’t so much with the scent itself. The body was still warm, free of any desiccating flesh or bug larvae. There was no heat-induced bloating or gases bulging the skin at grotesque angles. Not even the scent of charred flesh from the powder burns of a gunshot wound.

  The problem was with the psychosomatic response it evoked in her. Two days before she’d allowed Tseng and Rip to do the prep on the body itself, keeping herself busy on the surrounding scene. Now, up close to it, she couldn’t help but receive the full effect of the smell, the scent pulling her back.