Zero Break

by Neil Plakcy

  I snagged a parking spot on River Street, about two blocks from the school, and we took off, both of us fastening our radios to our shoulders. By the time we got there, cop cars were arriving from every direction, and the scene was controlled chaos. We checked in with a lieutenant who was managing the situation, and he said there was a kid holed up in the cafeteria with a gun. We were told to stay close and wait for instructions. Then I saw Lieutenant Sampson’s daughter, Kitty, who had become a uniformed officer a few months before, and headed toward her.

  “Howzit, Kitty?” I asked. “You know anything about what’s going on?”

  I first met Kitty when she was a senior at UH. Since then, she’d graduated, gone through the police academy, and finished her probationary period.

  “Just that there’s a kid holed up inside, and there’s been some shooting.”

  “You know what kind of gun he has?” Ray asked.

  She shrugged. “Just got here myself.”

  We heard a series of rapid-fire bursts that sounded like they’d come from a semi-automatic shotgun. We all looked toward the source of the sound, a single-story building at the back of the school grounds. The shots were followed almost immediately by screaming and crying.

  The one-story building had a flat roof and a series of louvered windows, and looked out on a small patch of worn grass shaded by a big kukui tree. The three of us ducked down and made our way toward the end of the building, where I could see a couple of other cops hunkered down.

  “Where’s the SWAT team when you need them?” Ray asked as we reached the other cops.

  “On their way,” one said. “ETA ten minutes.”

  A cop named Gary Saunders, whom I’d known for years, came hurrying across from the main building, accompanied by a short, rotund man in a clerical collar. “Reverend Hannaford is the principal of the school,” Gary said. “My daughter goes to school here and she’s inside.”

  Another cop asked, “Who’s the kid?”

  “His name is Randy Tsutsui,” Hannaford said. “He’s fifteen. Discipline problem. His father committed suicide about a year ago, and since then he’s been acting out. He’s been suspended twice already for insubordination, mouthing off to teachers, and bullying younger kids. I called his mother and she’s on her way.”

  There was another staccato burst of gunfire. “I don’t think we have ten minutes,” I said.

  A dark-haired girl in a plaid skirt and white blouse came running out of the building, tears streaming down her face. She was about ten; she was followed by a blonde girl a few years older, dressed the same way, who was crying, too. Only she was bleeding as well.

  Ray and I looked at each other and nodded. We took off toward the two girls, who were perhaps ten feet from the building by then. I grabbed the older girl, Ray the younger, and we carried them onward. I didn’t even think about the kid inside, or the possibility that he would be shooting at us through all those louvered windows. I just knew that we had to get those girls out of the way as soon as possible.

  The older girl was Laura Mercado, the younger one Janice Chee. A pair of EMTs raced up as soon as we had the girls safe and started checking them out. I stood there and held Laura’s hand, as the EMT examined her arm, where a bullet had grazed her. He spoke quietly and with authority, and between that and my hand-holding Laura stopped crying.

  Ray didn’t have as much luck with Janice. She was crying so much, and so loud, that the EMT working on her had to give her a sedative in order to get her calm enough so she could be bandaged.

  I sat cross-legged on the skimpy grass, holding Laura’s hand. “Mrs. Nguyen heard someone shooting,” she said between hiccups. “She went out in the hall to see what was going on.”

  She sniffled, and blew her nose. “But as soon as she went out we heard more shooting. Janice and I like Mrs. Nguyen a lot so we went to look outside. Mrs. Nguyen was lying on the floor and there was a lot blood.”

  Around us I heard other cop cars arriving and lots of confused orders being given over the radio as the brass tried to figure out what was going on and coordinate everyone. The rotating blue lights of a dozen cop cars bounced off the school windows in crazy patterns.

  Laura nodded toward the other little girl. “Janice was scared and started crying so I took her hand and we ran down the hall. Randy kept shooting at us.”

  “Did you see what kind of gun he had?”

  “Shotgun, but one that goes really fast. My dad has one but he says we can never touch it.”

  I keyed the mike on my radio and relayed the news. The school building was almost ominously quiet—no shooting, but no crying or screaming either.

  Gary Saunders came over. “Do you know Penny Saunders?” he asked, kneeling next to Laura.

  She nodded. “She’s in my class with Mrs. Nyugen. She’s inside.”

  The look on Gary’s face was one I hope I never see again.

  A lieutenant from the hostage negotiation team stepped out of the crowd, holding a loudspeaker in his hand. “Randy Tsutsui!” he called. “This is Lieutenant Starrett from HPD. Put down your weapon and come outside.”

  There was no response from inside the building. Starrett had just raised the megaphone again when a tall, gawky girl with blonde hair stepped out the door. “Penny!” Saunders called.

  She held up her hand. “Randy wants to come out,” she said, in a quavering voice.

  She turned back and opened the door, and a teenager in a blood-spattered T-shirt and pair of camouflage pants stepped out, with his hands up. There was no gun in sight.

  In what I thought was admirable restraint, Gary Saunders walked slowly across the twenty feet that separated us from the door.

  “It’s okay, Randy. That’s my dad,” Penny said to the boy.

  Carefully, Gary unhooked the handcuffs from his belt and held them up. Randy looked down at the pavement as Gary hooked the cuffs on him. He motioned his daughter over to us, and took Randy toward his squad car.

  Within a minute the building was swarming with cops and EMTs. A cop emerged a moment later holding a semi-automatic shotgun, and he was followed quickly by a series of stretchers, carrying kids in blood-stained clothes.

  It seemed like every ambulance on the island was there, and once they’d quieted down both girls were bundled up and taken to the Queen’s Medical Center.

  My old partner from Waikiki, Akoni Hapa’ele, came by as we were waving goodbye to the girls. He’s a big guy, built like my brother Haoa, tall and broad. I could see from his face that he was shaken up by what he’d seen. “You know what happened in there?” I asked.

  “Sad story,” Akoni said. “The kid’s father used to go shooting wild pigs in the hills. Last year he killed himself with that shotgun. The kid cleaned it up and held onto it. He started having problems in school after that, and he had it in for two of his teachers. He went to the English teacher’s classroom first, walked inside and shot him. Then he went down the hall to the math teacher’s and shot her in the hallway. A couple of kids from her class ran away, but the rest were stuck in the classroom with him. Gary Saunders’ daughter talked him into giving up.”

  “How many kids got hurt?” Ray asked.

  “A half-dozen.” Akoni had always said he didn’t want kids—he called them hostages to fortune. But his wife Mealoha had given him a son the year before, and I had seen him transformed when he was around the baby, into a combination of fierce and gentle. “One of the boys has a chest wound, but the others are just banged up.” He shook his head. “It boggles the mind.”

  I agreed with him. We walked over to the main school building, where a makeshift triage area had been set up. Kitty, Lidia Portuondo, and a few other female cops were in one of the classrooms, trying to calm down a bunch of kids who had not been hurt.

  Ray and I stayed around the school most of the day, helping with crowd control and matching up kids with frantic parents. It was hot in the bright sun, and there was little shade or breeze. The worst part was the having to tell
a young mother, in a faded t-shirt and jeans, that her daughter’s name was on the list of those taken to the hospital. Her mouth gaped open and her whole body sagged. Ray and I had to help her over to Lidia, who volunteered to drive her there.

  By the time we left, I was soaked in sweat, my hair plastered down to my scalp. Laura Mercado’s blood had dried on my aloha shirt, I smelled like a visit to the morgue, and I felt bone-weary. I dropped Ray back at headquarters to pick up his car, and drove home on autopilot.

  Roby came bouncing up to me as I opened the door, and I sank to the flagstone in front of the doorway and hugged him for a long time. We were sitting there, him licking my face, when Mike pulled up in the driveway. “Don’t tell me you were at that school shooting,” he said, jumping out of the car. “You look like you’ve been through Hell.”

  Roby abandoned me for a minute to welcome Mike home, then rushed back to me. I nodded. “I feel like it. Remember we were talking about maybe having kids some day? Not on your life.”

  He took my hand and pulled me up and into a bear hug. I rested my head on his shoulder and sniffled. “Come on,” he said. “You need a long, hot bath.”

  He led me inside, parked me at the kitchen table, then pulled a Fire Rock Pale Ale out of the fridge, popped the cap, and handed it to me. “Drink this.”

  A minute later I heard the water running in the oversized Roman tub in the bathroom. Mike had remodeled the room a year or so before he met me, and the tub had been his big indulgence. He liked to take baths, and at six-four, he needed a lot of space. Roby sat at my feet on the kitchen tile, resting his big golden head on my thigh, and I stroked his fur as I drank the beer. When Mike returned he said, “Come on. The bath’s ready.”

  I was almost catatonic. He gently unbuttoned my shirt and slipped it off, tossing it into the laundry basket. He removed my holster from my pants, and put the gun on top of the bureau. Carefully he took off the rest of my clothes, kissing my cheek and the top of my head now and then. Then he led me into the bathroom.

  I stepped into the warm water, then sunk down below the surface, closing my eyes and letting the water wash over me. When I came back up, I saw Mike, naked, ready to step into the water with me. I moved over to make room, and he joined me, careful not to splash the tile floor.

  We turned toward each other, and I rested my head on his shoulder. “It’s okay, baby,” he said. “I’m right here.”

  Somewhere in there he lathered me up with lavender soap, then bundled me into a fluffy terrycloth robe. He led me into bed, and then brought me dinner on a wooden tray, elbow macaroni with butter and cheese, my comfort food. I remembered being home sick from school, and my mother would make that for me and bring it to me in my favorite bowl, a gray porcelain one with a handle in the shape of an elephant’s head.

  I wondered what ever happened to that bowl, if my mother was still using it when she took care of her grandchildren. And then I burst into the tears I had been holding back all day. Mike got into bed next to me, and Roby jumped up with us, and when I stopped crying we lay there together and watched TV for a while.

  NUMBERS DON’T

  Our phone rang off and on that night. Everybody I knew was shaken up by what had happened at Chinatown Christian Academy. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing the police moving around the school, and the story took up most of the front page of the Star-Advertiser. My family was horrified, and my sister-in-law Liliha was one of many parents who planned to go to Punahou to demand an audience with the principal about security measures.

  Harry and Arleen had considered sending Brandon to Chinatown Christian, and they were filled with relief that they had decided against it. The only person I didn’t hear from was Terri, and that was because she was skiing in Idaho with her son Danny, and with Levi and his daughter.

  The mood at headquarters was somber the next morning. Everybody wanted to talk about Randy Tsutsui, about why he had done what he had. Theories abounded. He had been an abused child. He had been bullied. No, he was a bully himself. Why had he been allowed to keep the gun his father committed suicide with? Had there been any warning signs that he was unbalanced?

  No one had any answers, but everyone had a theory. We were listening to Gary Saunders bluster about something when my cell rang. “Detective? My name is Ellen Toyama. You called me?”

  I explained that we were investigating Zoë Greenfield’s murder, and she said, “Fo’ real? Like on TV?”

  “Yeah, we’re for real,” I said. “Can we talk to you?”

  “I’m on my way to work?” The way she raised her voice at the end of the sentence made it sound like a question, one I didn’t have an answer for.

  “Where do you work?”

  “At the Old Navy in Ala Moana Mall?”

  “If we come over there, you think you can take a break and talk to us?”

  “My boss loves Hawai’i Five-O,” she said. “I’m sure she’d let me take break.”

  Finally, a sentence that didn’t sound like a question.

  I told her we’d be there in a half hour or so. Ray and I were glad to get out of the station and the gloom that pervaded it after the events of the day before.

  We parked at the far end of the mall, near Sears, and waited until a tour bus had disgorged a horde of tourists heading for the Hilo Hattie store next door before we could go inside, where Hapa was singing “Lei Pikake” over the sound system. Ellen Toyama was an elf of a girl, only about five feet tall, with short dark hair and a perpetual smile. I wondered if Zoë had known any women who weren’t Asian.

  Ellen got permission from her boss to take a break, and we walked out into the center of the mall. We bypassed a convention of moms and strollers to find a quiet corner. “You knew Zoë Greenfield?” I asked.

  She nodded. “We met at this girls night out party?” she said. “Like a year ago?” She pulled a package of gum from her pocket and offered us sticks. Ray took one.

  “She was quiet, you know? But I was going through this thing, where I was sort of figuring out my own identity? And she was going through this thing, too, because she had met this guy on line?”

  “Wyatt Collins,” I said.

  She nodded. “At first, she was just like being a friend, you know? And then as she got to know him, she was sort of reconsidering?”

  I found Ellen’s habit of making every statement sound like a question irritating, you know? But I kept my mouth shut.

  “So we used to talk about it?” Ellen said, chewing her gum. “She was really, like conflicted? At least at first? Because, I mean, she had this girlfriend, and this family? But this guy, it was almost like he was hypnotizing her or something?”

  “What do you mean, hypnotizing?” Ray asked. “Like in person?”

  Oh, God. He was catching it, too. I’d have to ask for a new partner.

  Ellen shook her head. “It wasn’t anything bad like that,” she said, definite for a moment. “But it was like his emails? She said they were like things she could have written herself? Like he could see into her soul?”

  Zoë Greenfield didn’t seem like the kind of woman who talked about her soul a lot. But still waters run deep, I guess.

  Ellen went back over the same ground again, about the almost mystical connection between Zoë and Wyatt, but that was about all she could say. By the time we finished with her I was ready to bury myself in talk radio, where at least they had definite opinions, even if most of the time they were crazy.

  We walked over to the Foodland after we’d finished with Ellen, bought a couple of bottles of cold water, and then strolled through the mall, thinking out loud. I said, “Wyatt has the violent background, and according to Ellen it was like he’d hypnotized her. He could have asked her to do something, and if she refused, he went off on her.”

  “Like, if you believe Ellen?” Ray said.

  “I have a gun,” I said. “And I’m not afraid to use it if you don’t stop talking like that.”

  Ray laughed. “Then there’s Anna Y
ang. She could still have a thing for Zoë, be the spurned lover, in danger of losing her kids. That’s a big motive.”

  “Same for Greg Oshiro,” I said. “He wanted those kids, and he said how much his parents loved them. He could have been protecting his position.”

  “And there’s the marriage between him and Anna,” Ray said. “They could have been planning something together.”

  We’d just about finished our water, and run through our ideas, when Harry called. “I finally broke into that online storage, brah. You want to come over and see what she had there?”

  “Sure. We’re at Ala Moana. Be there in a few.”

  “Hey, if you’re at the mall, can you do me a favor? We’re trying to bribe Brandon into going to school without so much complaining, and he loves these little anime toys from Shirokiya. They come out with a new one every month, and he’s about two months behind. Can you stop by and pick up the latest two?”

  “Sure. Got any dry cleaning you want me to pick up, too? Prescriptions at the pharmacy?”

  He ignored the jibe and told me the two toys he wanted, and hung up the phone. We detoured past the big Japanese department store and then drove up to Aiea Heights.

  “Zoë had these spreadsheets,” Harry said, when we were sitting in his office looking at the computer monitor. “I don’t know exactly what they are, but she gave them names that have nothing to do with their content, and had them hidden away in a folder with a weird name, which makes me suspicious.”

  I know about as much about spreadsheets as I do about fertilizer or national politics—which come to think of it, are pretty similar. “Weird name?” I asked.

  “The names on the files and the folder don’t match the contents. There are rows and rows of statistics there, and she called one file ‘flowergirl’ and another one ‘winnebago.’ And they’re in a folder called ‘plaid.’”

  I looked at Ray and he shrugged. “What is it that you said she did for a living?” Harry asked.

  “She worked for the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism,” I said. “Monitoring energy statistics or something like that.”