“Did the defendant appear to be intoxicated when you saw him and spoke to him?
“Objection.” Emil stood up. “The witness is being asked an opinion in an area where he has no expertise.”
Kay grinned at the thought of the trap Laura had set out for the prosecutor and the ease with which she had sprung it on him.
Laura turned to the bench. “Your honor, if I may, I would like to ask the witness some questions which may establish his expertise in this area.”
Judge Wong eyed her. “Proceed. I’ll hold my ruling in abeyance for the moment.”
“Could you tell us your occupation?”
“I’m a retired bartender.” A snicker could be heard in the audience. Judge Wong turned his head in the direction of the disturbance. It ended abruptly.
“How long ago did you retire?”
“About six months ago.”
“Have you done any bartending since?”
“Sure. I help out at the Prince Kuhio on weekends. Just enough not to cut into my social security.”
“Are you aware there is a state law specifying that the bartender is responsible if a customer of his is arrested for driving under the influence?”
“I sure am. In the three years the law has been on the books, I’ve never had any problems in that direction.”
Laura looked at Judge Wong.
“I believe you’ve established your point, counselor. Objection overruled. Proceed.”
“Now, to go back to our earlier question. Do you feel the defendant was intoxicated when you saw him and spoke to him?”
“Nope. He was sober as a judge.” Judge Wong had to gavel the court back into silence. For the first time Laura thought she detected a smile on his face.
From there she led Merritt carefully through a description of Kimo’s actions. He was definitely concerned about the accident, he was coherent, he was impatient to have the police arrive at the scene.
Kay was pleased at Laura’s skillful questioning. She found herself wishing Sid were there to see how well Laura was doing. Glancing over at the prosecutor, she saw his clerk handing him a note. Emil read it twice, stood up, and interrupted the questioning. “May I approach the bench, your honor.”
“No need, prosecutor. Simply state the matter you wish me to consider.”
“I’ve just received word a body has been found near the scene of the accident. It appears likely it is the person struck by the defendant’s vehicle. In the light of this development, I am asking for a postponement of the trial so the prosecutor’s office may reconsider the charges.”
Laura looked stunned and turned to face Kay. Kay nodded.
“The defense joins with the prosecution in asking for a postponement,” Laura said to Judge Wong.
***
“What a bummer!” Craig said, with feeling.
The three attorneys, along with Craig and Kimo had gathered around Leilani’s desk and were discussing the new twist in the trial.
To the surprise of the others, Leilani saw the discovery of the body in a positive light. “They won’t be able to say anymore that Kimo was hallucinating.”
“I wish I had been,” Kimo said morosely.
“The worst of it is Laura was doing a bang-up job when the news arrived,” Kay said. “I’m almost sure she would have gotten Kimo off. Fred Merritt was superb. He made me wish we’d gone to a jury trial.”
“You’re going to get your wish,” said Qual. “The prosecutor’s almost sure to up the charge to negligent homicide. We’ll have to go all the way.”
“As soon as the charge is in,” Sid said, “I think we should ask for a month’s extension. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of work to do.”
Kay nodded. “To begin with, we have to be darn sure the body they’ve discovered is the one Kimo saw on the road. Turning to Kimo, she asked. “Do you think you’d be able to make an identification?”
He shook his head. “Like I told you, his head was all twisted, and his face was turned away from me.”
“It really doesn’t make any difference,” Qual said. “The word I got from the station is the corpse is almost totally unrecognizable. A month in the gulch behind Wiliwili Circle with flies and rats and mynah birds didn’t leave much to identify. Corky’s in charge. She says they couldn’t get even one decent fingerprint. We may never find out who he is.”
Laura turned to Kimo. “Did you see any other cars come down the loop while you were at Merritt’s house.”
“Uh-uh. We were both watching for the cops. I’m almost sure we’d have seen a car come by, unless it came from the other end of the loop, turned around, and went back out again. Even then, I think we’d have seen the lights when they turned around.”
“I guess that answers it,” Qual said. “Our work’s cut out for us.”
“Answers what?” Craig asked. “What in the world are you people talking about?”
“Well, if no car came around the loop, how do you suppose a dead man got from the middle of the road down into the gulch?”
“Oh,” said Craig. “I see what you mean. Someone in those six houses went out in the street, picked up the body, and threw it into the gulch.”
“Right. Which means that we have to find out who did it and why. Probably the only way we’ll be able to find that out is to identify the dead man. That, according to Corky, may be ‘one hell of a job.’”
Chapter 10
“It’s the worst one I’ve ever seen.” Corky was describing the condition of the corpse to Lieutenant DeMello.
“Who found it?”
“Some kids, a half-dozen grade-school boys. They’re sure going to have nightmares. They’ve got a little lava tube along the bank they use as a kind of club house. The tube empties into Green Sand Gulch, about four, five hundred yards below where the gulch turns away from Wiliwili Circle. The body was wedged under the roots of an old kiawe tree near their club house. It was covered with swarms of flies crawling and flying all over it. What was left of the body was a mass of maggots.”
“So it could have been dumped in the gulch near where the accident happened?
“It sure could have. It was pouring down rain, and the gulch was running full. Any body thrown in at Wiliwili Circle would have been bound to go downstream, through the big culvert under the highway and around the bend. In fact, I’m surprised it got hung up so soon. It was his clothes that did it. They caught the roots of the tree when he came floating by.”
“Lab boys pretty certain it’s the guy Kimo hit?”
Corky nodded. “They’re damn near positive. The shirt’s made of the same kind of fabric we found on the fender and broken headlight. The blood type’s the same. We’re sending samples off to the state lab for DNA typing. There’s no question about his having been run over. The whole chest was caved in, skull crushed, lots of other broken bones. The body’s just generally a mess. I doubt Victorine will be able to separate the damage done by the pickup from the beating the body took going down the quarter-mile-or-so over all those rocks.”
“What about time of death?”
“That comes out about right. Victorine gave a preliminary estimate. Even though he insists it’s preliminary, his estimate’s probably as good as any later ones are going to be. He figures death occurred about a month ago, maybe a little less. What makes it hard to decide for sure is the gulch had a lot of water in it after that big rain. So there’s no way of telling how much time the body was in water and how much it was out, making a big difference in establishing time of death according to Victorine.”
“Sounds like identification isn’t going to be easy. What did Clyde have to say about that?”
“You know Victorine. He was his usual optimistic self. He figures the teeth will do it for us. He has no idea how hard it is to canvas dentists and what you have to go through to get them to even look at dental charts. Unless the guy was from Elima, we’ve got a long job ahead of us.”
“No other identification?”
“
Yes and no. He was six foot or so, around a hundred-and-sixty pounds. Definitely a haole. His pockets were pulled out and completely empty. The fingers were all chewed up by rats. We got a few partials, but I doubt they’ll do us much good. The one bright spot is a dragon tattoo on the left shoulder blade. Lucky for us, the corpse was on its back. A few more days and the tattoo would have been gone too.”
Hank grunted. “Tattoos don’t mean a damn thing around here. Every second person has one of one kind or another, but be sure to take a picture of it, and we’ll circulate it.”
“I did already.”
“Good for you. For a woman, you have a good head on your shoulders.”
Corky gave an exasperated sigh and changed the subject. “I’ve made appointments to interview everyone along the gulch again.”
“Kimo Stanner?”
“Of course. I have to admit he sounds like a much more reliable witness now than he did before. Still, I don’t think he can add anything to what he already told us. It’s too much to believe he had anything to do with moving the body. He had nothing to gain by doing so if he was going to call the police and tell them about running over someone. By the way, Laura Correa wants to know if she can go along when I check out the residents along the loop. Any objection?”
Hank pursed his lips. “I’ll talk to Kimo myself. Can’t see anything wrong with your taking Laura along, unless you begin to run into something which might dig Kimo in deeper. You should be able to play it by ear.”
“Thanks. I have good ears to go with that good head on my shoulders.”
Hank was puzzled by the irritation he thought he detected in Corky’s voice.
***
“I’d think you’d object to working evenings after being on duty all day,” Laura said, as they pulled away from the curb on the way to Wiliwili Circle.
“I don’t have much choice,” Corky answered. “About the only way to find people at home when there’s full employment is to do the interviews in the evening. Besides, this means I won’t have to get to work until noon tomorrow. God! How I hate to get up before seven. I’d rather take a beating. But Hank thinks nothing of showing up at the station while it’s still pitch dark outside.” She shook her head in disbelief at such outrageous behavior.
“Check the glove compartment,” she continued, changing the subject. “There’s a photo of the tattoo in it, the one I told you about. If the guy was a local, that should spot him for us. It’s pretty distinctive.”
Laura examined the photo, then giggled. “I knew a boy in high school who had one just like this.”
“Hey. Maybe we’ve solved the identification problem already.”
Laura grinned. “I’m afraid not. It wasn’t on his back.”
Corky glanced over at her companion. “C’mon! Don’t be coy. Where was his tattoo?”
“On his lower right buttock. He figured the girls would hear about it and get curious. He was right. I asked him to show it to me one night.”
Corky laughed. “That’s quite a ploy. Did he let you touch it? No. Don’t tell me. I’ll bet he even encouraged you to.”
Laura joined in the laughter. “He encouraged me to do a lot more than that. Sometimes I wonder how I got through high school without getting pregnant.”
“You aren’t alone. I’ve wondered about that, myself. Would you believe it? I thought there wasn’t any danger of getting knocked up if you didn’t screw on your first date.”
The two continued to reminisce about carefree and dangerous high school days, and Laura commented how in some ways the present days were even more dangerous. “At least now we’re more convinced they’re dangerous.”
“You mean because of AIDS?” Corky asked, glancing over at her companion.
Laura nodded. “We should have been thinking about it in high school, but we were too hormone thrashed to act rationally. I sure give it thought these days.”
“Yeah. That’s been in the back of my mind for the last few years, but I think my roaming days are over. Alan and I seem to be hitting it off pretty well. With luck, this could be it.”
Laura felt a twinge of envy as Corky went on to describe the comfortable living arrangement she and her current live-in had worked out. Laura was still mulling over the differences in their present social arrangements when they turned into Wiliwili Circle. “Have you met Hank’s wife, Toni?” Corky asked, as she pulled up in front of the last house on the road, turned off the engine and took out the key.
Laura shook her head.
“She’s a real nice gal, and sharp. I trust her judgment, and she doesn’t think much of her cousin, Bruce Cambra. She says she can’t figure why his wife stays with him. According to Toni, he’s beat her up a few times. He’s a steady boozer, with a couple of DUI’s of his own back in the past when it meant only a license suspension. I checked his record. He had an assault charge against him about five years ago. The victim refused to testify, so the charge was dropped. The patrolman who talked to Cambra this time says he resented the whole interview. All in all, he sounds like he’ll be a prime suspect for any kind of crime and a pain in the neck to deal with.”
Corky wasn’t far wrong about the latter assumption. Bruce Cambra greeted them with a glower. He was in his early forties, medium height, dark and barrel-chested. His wife, a thin, blonde woman with a frightened expression, hovered in the background. Sounds of children emerged from one of the rear bedrooms. Cambra barked at them to shut up. Silence abruptly followed. His first words to the two visitors were, “I already talked to a cop about the accident. I don’t know no more now than I knew then. There’s no damn need to keep annoying us about some drunk banging up his pickup.”
“It’s more serious than that now,” Corky said. “A body’s been found in the gulch. It’s pretty certain whoever it is was hit by the pickup.”
Cambra shrugged, indicating a total lack of concern. “I told the cops before. I don’t know no one who could have been involved. We didn’t have no one come by that night. We were all in bed long before the accident happened. We didn’t hear nothing about it until the next day when a cop came by asking us a lot of questions.” Corky looked in the wife’s direction. She said nothing, simply appearing even more frightened and merely nodding in agreement with what her husband had said.
“Did you notice anyone in the neighborhood during the day? Someone who isn’t here usually?” Corky addressed these questions to Mrs. Cambra. She shook her head. After the interview, Corky said to Laura, “His poor wife is even afraid to talk. What a way to live.”
The photo of the tattoo had produced a further shrug from Cambra, and another head shake from the wife. Not too hopefully, and from a Cambra who was none too helpful, Corky got a short list of men’s names, mainly some of his fellow workers from the plantation. These were persons who occasionally visited the Cambra home. He insisted they were all alive and well.
“We might as well take the neighbors in order,” Corky said to Laura as they walked along the narrow sidewalk to the Pak house, which was the next one up the loop from the Cambras. The Paks were hidden from their neighbors by a thick, and fast growing oleander hedge.
“I hope we have better luck here,” said Laura. “We got a zero negative at the Cambras. Do you think they know anything about the accident?”
“I got the impression he was telling the truth, even if he is a horse’s ass. There’s no telling about her. She’s so scared of him I couldn’t tell whether or not our questions were adding anything to her nervousness.”
Their reception at the Pak household was a pleasant contrast to what they had encountered at the Cambras. An attractive couple, Roderic and Phyllis were in their late twenties. Later, Laura commented to Corky on how handsome Rod appeared. Phyllis, of Korean descent like her husband, had worked at the Napua library, and Corky remembered her from that time.
“I was waiting for an opening at the school,” Phyllis explained. “Now I sometimes wish I were back in library work. There were a lot fewer headach
es there.” As she spoke she was bringing out coffee and tea plus a variety of cookies, simply assuming the two visitors would take time for a snack.
“You must be new at the Napua Medical Center,” Corky said, addressing Rod while relishing the aromatic coffee. “Otherwise, I’d have run into you when we were investigating the murder of the records clerk there?”
Rod smiled. “Uh-uh. I’ve been there almost five years now. I was working there when it happened, but I managed to avoid all the excitement by developing a blood infection ahead of time.”
“Sure,” Corky said. “You must be the X-ray technician who was in the hospital at the time. Now I remember.”
“Right,” Rod said, then added in amusement, “Lucky for me I was when the murder happened, so you couldn’t list me as a suspect. I hope you aren’t going to make up for lost time on this case. I hear a body’s been found in the gulch.” He nodded his head in the general direction of the back of the house.
“Hm-mm. That’s why we’re back. We’re fairly certain the guy was involved in the accident. We’re checking again to see if anyone saw someone around during the day or evening who might fit the victim’s description.”
Rod and Phyllis looked at each other. She shook her head. “We were gone all day after seven in the morning.” Rod nodded in agreement and Phyllis continued. “Right after work, Rod picked me up, and we went over to my mother’s in Wanakai for dinner. We didn’t get back until about eleven. Then we went right to bed. Sorry we can’t help, but we didn’t even find out about the accident until you called Rod at the Center.”
While Laura appreciated the Paks’ willingness to help, she quickly decided this interview was as unproductive as the previous one. As they were leaving, she not too hopefully pulled the photo of the tattoo out of her briefcase.
Dead and Gone Page 7
