Chapter 6
If Wilson had been struck by a vehicle, he certainly showed no signs of it now. Laura could not help but admire the young Filipino’s physique, and she made no attempt to avoid doing so. Having decided to go by the building site to see him, she had caught him just as he was finishing work on a new condominium along the shore north of Napua. He had his shirt off, was wearing blue-jean cut-offs and high-top work shoes. He was just taking off his heavy, leather tool belt when she found him at the construction shack.
With no effort, Wilson Jacinto could pass as a handsome male. Tall for a Filipino, Wilson had toothpaste-ad white teeth, and a fascinatingly rugged face to go with his heavily tanned, muscular body. He also had an unabashed interest in this attractive woman attorney who had come to talk to him about the accident which had happened in front of his house.
“I’m sorry I can no help you. Wish I could, but Jerry and me slept all through it. Old man McMahon caught me when I was go to work next morning an’ told me ‘bout all the excitement. That was the first I heard anything ‘bout it.”
There had been no stranger in the neighborhood that he knew of. It had been a miserable night. It was not surprising someone walking across the street had been hit. Wilson drifted on to small talk eddying further and further away from the subject. He was obviously trying to prolong the interview. Laura felt herself going along with the game. At first she had felt a trace of disappointment in not having a damaged Wilson to account for Kimo’s story. She soon admitted to herself it would have been a shame to have had anything do injury to such a nice body. In spite of both of their efforts, the conversation languished.
As she drove off, Wilson urged her to “drop by, any time.”
***
The attorneys had all agreed the size of the firm now justified and actually required a weekly conference to bring everyone up to date. Leilani turned the reception desk over to an assistant so she herself could participate and take notes. Craig, who enjoyed such sessions, made it a point to delay his Friday shopping so that it followed the meeting. “The vegetables are always fresher if I buy them at the last possible minute,” he had said the first time he had sat in on the conference.
“At this rate, I’m going to have to get a bigger office,” Qual commented as he looked at the five of them crammed around his desk.
“Maybe that should be the first order of business,” Sid said. “We do need more office space.”
Leilani broke in. “That’s for sure. The annex is crowded as it is. If we hire the accounts clerk you folks want, we’ll have to put her out in the carport.”
“We’re paying the price of growth,” Kay said.
“We can get Ron Crockett looking for a location here in town.” Sid chimed in. “He did a great job of running down a really nice piece of property for Kay and me. If the firm owned some land, we could build our own offices to suit. I’m sure Gil Iwamoto would be happy to help out.”
Kay laughed. “Now that we’re planning our new house, Sid has caught the building bug. Don’t go biting off more than you can chew, Chu.”
After the laughter died down, Qual started through the cases being currently handled by the firm. The Stanner case was the first one on the list. Laura summarized the information she had gathered.
“Every time I talk to Kimo, I’m convinced he did hit someone and injured him badly—probably killed him. Then, when he’s not around, and I talk to someone else like the police or the prosecutor, I’m convinced it was all Kimo’s imagination.”
“Welcome to the world of criminal defense,” Sid said. “I don’t know how many times I’ve been absolutely convinced a client was telling the truth when I was talking to them. Then five minutes after they leave I’m convinced they’re lying through their teeth.”
“This is different, Sid,” Craig said. “Kimo has no reason for lying.”
Leilani shook her head, saying with considerable emphasis, “He isn’t lying. Kimo’s absolutely convinced he hit someone and killed him. I’ve talked to him about it. Kimo doesn’t have hallucinations either. He just had to have hit someone.”
Craig rescued the group from the embarrassed silence following the outburst. “Why in the world worry about finding someone who Kimo may have hit? Won’t the whole trial go a lot better is you don’t find any such person?”
“Maybe Craig’s right,” Qual said. “Let’s let sleeping dogs lie and move on to how you’re going to deal with the case as it stands, Laura.”
“I’d sure like to ask for a jury trial, but after all I’ve heard about Judge Wong, I think it would be the wrong tack to take with him.”
“Why?” Craig asked. The reception of his earlier comment had given him renewed interest in the case. “When we talked about it before, everyone seemed to agree a jury would be more likely to find Kimo innocent?”
“That’s fine,” said Qual, “but now we have to weigh that against what Wong will do if we have the trial drags on. He wants to move things along, and a jury trial can take three or four times as much time as a non-jury trial. If we’re lucky, and the jury finds Kimo innocent, he’s in the clear. If we guess wrong, and the jury finds him guilty, he could end up with a year in jail. Jail could destroy someone like Kimo.”
Leilani shuddered.
“On the other hand,” Sid picked up on the point, “if we put it all in the judge’s hands, he may be more likely to find Kimo guilty. He’d also be much more likely to let him off light if he does. He could find him innocent, if we do a good job of presenting the case.”
Laura was watching Sid as he spoke. There’s not much question about who he means by ‘we,’ she thought.
Qual addressed his next question to Sid and Kay. “Have you two had a chance to listen to the first tape of Laura’s interview with Kimo?”
Both nodded.
“Do you have any suggestions.”
“It was a good interview,” Kay said. “I think you covered all the important points, Laura.”
Laura enjoyed the praise, momentarily. Sid was looking over some notes. “Kimo said part of the reason the police ran a blood test on him was because of his story about killing someone they couldn’t find. What were the other reasons?” Laura cringed. “I missed that. I just assumed they’d smelled beer on his breath. That was all the police listed in their report. I’ll ask him to be sure.”
“Did you check his military record?” Qual asked.
Laura was relieved to see she had done something right. “Yes. It’s clean. I checked with Corky to see if the police looked into the national files on him. They did. He’s clean there, too.”
“Hmm!” Qual said, pushing his glasses up with both hands and speaking as though thinking aloud. “I don’t suppose there’s any way of checking on his California driving record. It seems to me they wipe the slate clean of minor traffic offenses every two or three years.”
“You could check with the military about that,” Sid suggested. “Recruits have to list all arrests, including traffic tickets. I don’t know how closely the army checks to see if the reports are accurate, though.”
“That might be worth looking into, Laura,” Qual said. “It can be a disaster if the prosecutor finds out something like that when we don’t know about it.”
Laura nodded and made a note on her pad.
“How did Kimo’s story about the accident check out with the police record?” Qual asked.
“There are no problems there. There was no way they could check the speed of the truck, because the skid marks were all washed away, if there were any in the first place. The damage to the truck fits with a speed under twenty, if we assume it was a running pedestrian. So he was driving well below the twenty-five mile per hour speed limit, as he said he was. The times are right on.”
“Have you checked out his drinking buddies yet?”
“Uh-uh. I finally located Roger Kekua this morning. The two of them, Roger and Kevin Laramie, will be at Roger’s house tomorrow morning. I’m going to go talk to
them there.”
Sid was still leafing through his pad. “Kimo said something like, ‘Maybe I was lucky, but I’ve never been arrested for anything.’ Doesn’t that sound to you as though he’s hiding something?”
Laura could feel her ears turning red. “Guess I missed that, too. I’ll ask him what he meant.”
***
Driving home from the meeting, Kay said, “You didn’t have to be so rough on Laura. There was no reason you couldn’t have talked to her privately about those points in the interview with Kimo.”
“I did that on purpose. It’s good training. If she flubs in court, Wong isn’t going to wait to talk to her privately. She’s got to learn to take her lumps out in the open, because there’ll be plenty of them.”
“Good training?” Kay asked rhetorically, anger showing in her voice. “Good torture, you mean, but I guess the Chinese are noted for that. You probably have some Mandarin ancestor who was famous for pulling out people’s fingernails.”
Sid could see storm clouds on the horizon. He decided it would be wise to shift course. Kay knew what he was doing, and went along with the new heading. Life had become smoother since they had both become more sensitive to the winds, spotted the thunderheads early, and avoided the worst of the raging storms and typhoons.
“Gil says he’ll have the final estimate and bids by tomorrow morning. He wants to meet us at the property to go over them with him.”
“Did he give you any idea on the final figure?”
“I asked him, but he wouldn’t say. He claimed he wanted to go over it all in detail to be sure there were no mistakes or any last minute changes. From the sound of his voice, I think the whole thing is coming to less than he thought it would. My guess is he wants to surprise us with a lower figure than expected.”
“That would be a pleasant change. Final estimates have the unhappy quality of always being higher than preliminary estimates. Now, if the final costs stay under the estimates, I’ll be real happy—and surprised.”
Since the skies were clear again, Sid swung back to the earlier heading. “What do you think Kimo’s chances are?”
“Leilani’s worried, that’s for sure. Laura’s nervous. I certainly don’t fault her for that, since it’s her first case. Besides, there’s the shadow of a possible corpse hanging over it. Just generally, I think it will turn out OK. I sat down with her, and we went over strategy. Hers is sound.
“The major point is Kimo’s blood test came out just above the minimum, and she’ll make the most of that. She’s also going to push his military record, including combat duty in the Gulf. She’s going to stress how he’d just gotten back from the service and, first offense, of course. It’s the way I’d do it, so I guess I can’t criticize her approach.”
“Is she going to bring in any witnesses?”
“It depends. She’ll have to decide whether Roger and Kevin will help or hurt. That’s not an easy one to figure out. Drinking buddies may be able to vouch for Kimo’s character, but they’re not the best ones to testify to his sobriety. She’s also going to go see the guy who phoned the police. He might be good, since he can bear witness to Kimo’s concern for whoever he might have hit. Again, that’s going to depend on the impression Kimo made on him at the time. Laura will have to make up her mind what to do after she’s interviewed him.”
“What about the disappearing corpse?”
“I guess that’s the one thing bothering me most. I can’t just shrug it off the way Craig feels we should. This is far too puzzling, and annoying. Jimmy Hoffa’s isn’t the only body that’s been known to disappear, and there are always plenty of people around to claim they didn’t kill someone who’s missing, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say they’d killed someone who nobody can find.”
Chapter 7
Following the interviews with Roger and Kevin, Laura was amused at herself. The law has sure made me look at people differently than I ever did in the past. The first thing I thought of when I saw those two was, “What kind of witnesses will they make?”
Laura had had problems finding the Kekua home. Despite the recent county ordinance requiring all houses to have street numbers on them, little had been done to enforce the regulation. And, so far as Laura could see, few householders had made any voluntary attempts to comply with it either.
The Kekuas certainly had not. It had not helped that she had started off looking for their home on the wrong street. Even after she had located the right street, she ended up having to randomly choose a house to go to in order to ask directions. Fortunately, this was a neighborhood much like any of the older ones in Napua. Everyone knew everyone else, and the helpful neighbors showed her where the Kekuas lived.
The house must have been one of the oldest ones in the city, in the oldest part of town. The lots were minuscule and the houses, with walls of rough planks and built for the workers on the now long-gone coffee plantation, were necessarily small as well. The Kekuas lived in a long narrow one separated from its neighbors by less than a foot on either side. I’ll bet they hear more of what’s going on next door than they would if they lived in an apartment, Laura thought.
The home gave every appearance of being crowded. Two mattresses were rolled up in a corner on the front room floor. Even with them out of the way, the room was filled to overflowing with a few pieces of furniture and a large television set. Mrs. Kekua was a tall and rather gaunt woman, at least three-quarters native Hawaiian. On learning Laura was Kimo’s attorney, she immediately said how unfortunate it was that Kimo had been arrested.
“Kimo’s a real nice boy. He’s never been in trouble before. I know it was just an accident.”
Laura mentally added Mrs. Kekua to the list of possible character witnesses, though she was not sure how a DUI being interpreted as an accident would go over with a jury. Roger Kekua was something else again. He entered the small front room as Laura was talking to his mother.
It was quite evident Roger had had a haole father. What was surprising was how little any native-Hawaiian showed in his features. Dark haired, his face badly pock marked, Roger was of medium height and had a rather strange build. His legs seemed extraordinarily short and his waist abnormally long. On the basis of his appearance, Laura decided Roger would not be a good witness. Then she decided it was stupid to make such a snap decision.
While his mother went off to the kitchen, Roger agreed to having the interview taped as he answered Laura’s questions.
“Yeah. Kimo got here ‘bout six or so. He show up with Kevin Laramie. When I hear Kimo was in town, I call him up at his auntie’s house and tole him to come on out. He say he pick up Kev on his way over. It was like old times. Sure nice to see him again.”
Laura tried to shake off her first impressions, but could not do so. Roger just seemed too nervous, too shifty eyed, to make any kind of favorable impression on a jury. “Do you have any idea how much the three of you drank.”
Roger jutted out his lower lip and seemed to be doing his best to remember. “I bought a six pack. Kimo and Kev brought one along each. We kill ‘em befoh the night was over.”
“Any idea how many Kimo drank?”
“No can say.” He grinned and added, “No count drinks when you jus’ sit ‘round and talk story. Kev, he’s the big drinker. So I guess if you figure he had one, maybe two extra, then maybe Kimo have five beers.”
“Starting about six o’clock?”
Roger nodded.
Something failed to add up in Laura’s mind. She had checked the tables on absorption and the rate of alcohol dispersal in someone of Kimo’s size. Five beers in five hours would have kept Kimo well below the legal limit. Even six should not have pushed him over. This was all he had said he had had, and now Roger was confirming the amount.
“Where’s Kevin?” Laura asked, having expected him to be there.
“He’s hitching a ride over. It might take him a while to get over here.”
“Would you describe the evening?” she
asked.
“No much to tell. We just sat ‘round and talked. Kev and me no see Roger for one long time.”
“You stayed here during the whole time?”
“Most of the time. We went over to look at my bruduh’s four-by-four. He lives a couple houses down.” Roger nodded his head to indicate the direction. “He uses a four-wheel drive for to go pig hunting, and jus’ pick up a new one. It’s new for him, anyway. It’s used. We checked out his poi dogs too. Kev’s thinking he goin’ get one new one for the next hunt.”
“What time did you go over there?”
“‘Bout seven, I guess.”
“When did you get back?”
“Maybe hour or so later.”
“Did you do most of your drinking before or after you went over there?”
“After. We just had one before we left here. We would have taken some over for Jess, my bruduh, but I knew no one was home. We waited ‘round for him, but Kimo had a headache and wanted some aspirin, so we came back over here and settle down on the porch.”
“So most of the drinking was from about eight o’clock on.”
Roger nodded.
“What time did Kimo leave?”
“Eleven-thirty, I guess. No can say for sure. It must have been right ‘round dat time.”
The figures had begun to add up, but Laura still could not come out to a blood alcohol level justifying a DUI. It was Roger who supplied a possible answer without her asking, and it gave her a new tack to use in court.
“Kev had to get to work by midnight,” Roger said. “He’s on night shift at the plantation office. So we drank up, and him and Kimo took one along with them for each.”
He added, “For the road.”
***
When Kevin arrived, shortly after Roger had finished describing the events of the night of the get-together, he made a far more favorable impression on Laura than Roger had. Tall, blond, athletic looking and smiling—Laura could see him charming a jury. He definitely charmed Laura.
Where Roger had been hesitant, almost evasive, Kevin was direct. Essentially the same description of the evening’s activities emerged, but Kevin was far more certain of times and quantities. Quickly admitting to having had eight beers, he confirmed five for Kimo and a like amount for Roger.
Dead and Gone Page 5
