Dead On Arrival (A Malia Fern Mystery)

by Kym Roberts

  Dead On Arrival

  By

  Kym Roberts

  COPYRIGHT 2014 Kym Roberts

  Published by: Kym Roberts

  ISBN 978-0-9905506-2-4

  All rights reserved. No part of this

  Book may be used or

  Reproduced in any manner

  Whatsoever without written

  Permission of the author except

  In the case of brief quotations

  Embodied in critical articles or

  Reviews.

  Cover Art by

  Susan Coils of Custom Covers

  www.coverkicks.com

  Edited by

  Blue Otter Editing

  http://www.blueotterediting.com/

  Special Thanks

  There are so many people who took part in the creation of this book, The Lit Girls: Jessica Davidson, Mary Duncanson, Kimberly Quinton, Misa Ramirez, Rebekah Reed, Beatriz Terrazas, Marty Tidwell, Tracy Ward, and Wendy Watson who have helped me in countless ways, to the women of Chick Swagger who walked with me on this journey, to Jerrie Alexander who made this book possible, and to all the members of NTRWA for your continued support —

  Thank you!

  But most of all thank you to my family, who sacrificed so much for me to catch the wave.

  To my husband, you will always be my addiction.

  Chapter One

  My brother says I’m vain.

  I pretty much think he’s an idiot, so we’re even.

  He’s the oldest of the four of us, and he followed our dad’s footsteps into law enforcement (that’s not the idiotic part). But I found the uniforms boring, so I forged my own trail in the sands of paradise, where board shorts and bikinis rule. Favorite pastimes on Kaua’i consist of surfing the waves and catching some rays. Both of those activities require endurance and very little clothing, which is the reason why I run. A lot. Whether I’m narcissistic, or a masochist in denial, remains to be seen.

  To avoid the tourists, I jog the beaches only the locals know about, in the dark, before the sun crests the inky line across the white-capped ocean. Those early morning hours when vacationers are asleep in their beds dreaming of island sex trophies. (Been there, done that. Big mistake.)

  This morning’s run was supposed to launch my day with the rejuvenating effects of nature. It should have been peaceful — the surf beating against the shore, my feet pounding the sand, my heart striking my ribs — while I convinced myself that I absolutely loved to work out, and that it had nothing to do with vanity.

  But an unexpected intruder interrupted my routine. I would have missed it completely if I’d left my flashlight in the car. (Why didn’t I leave the damn thing behind?) At the high tide water line — like he’d crawled his way up the smoothed surface of the beach.

  A body. A body that didn’t look very appealing. Youngish, maybe 30-something, it was kind of hard to tell. Bloated. Discolored, with parts missing. Fish bait or decomp, I don’t really know. This was a first for me.

  I apologize for sharing the creepy facts and gory details. The image of a body being a piece of discarded driftwood is the last thing anyone wants to see. When you live on an island, it’s a well-known fact that when bodies wash up, they rarely look like the gorgeous models you see on television.

  Maybe I reached down to roll it over because my brain expected to see the television image. You know, bulging pecs erupting from his shirt. A strong jaw accentuated by wet strands of wavy hair and a slightly grayish color to an intensely male mouth.

  Nope, that’s not reality. That’s television. And this wasn’t a TV show. What I got was worse than seeing an obese grandpa in a white Speedo. It was beyond revolting. It was DOA. And I was stupid enough to put my hands on it.

  Trust me when I say the last thing you want to do is touch a floater. I made that stupid mistake. Just to make sure it was completely dead. Like the sand, seaweed and bugs weren’t enough evidence for me? Even the light of my flashlight couldn’t hide the dark holes filling the eye sockets as I rolled it over by its arm.

  Help me.

  The plea disappeared with the granules of sand in the outbound tide. A small utterance, tumbling into the depths. Never spoken. Never heard. At least not in any reality I cared to live in.

  A hope that the scene I discovered was just a vivid nightmare, raced to the forefront of my thoughts. “Wake up,” I whispered.

  Nothing happened.

  “WAKE UP!” I commanded.

  But I wasn’t asleep, and I couldn’t escape the sight in front of me.

  My body spasmed and my shoulders hitched. A juicy slurping noise followed with the immediate response of a bone-chilling crack. In horror, my reflexes froze, and I was left with an arm.

  In. My. Hand.

  Like, totally detached from the rest of the body. A cold squishy arm with jellyfish-like skin slipping from the bone. In terrorized awe, my fingers refused to disconnect from the vile waste. Instead, they sank into the flesh, vanishing into the muck that once held human form.

  A ten-foot wave of nausea built in my stomach, thrusting my body into action. I dropped the arm, my mini flashlight, any sense of reality I’d had two minutes earlier, and sprinted for the rocks. My momentary brain fart cost me the contents of my stomach. Last night’s dinner no longer came close to resembling my dad’s sumptuous Saimin recipe. Life turned into piles of discarded refuse. No longer appealing. No longer the rare lovable form it once held.

  I lost the weight in my stomach the hard way. Bulimics might say it was the easy way, but they’d be lying. When my stomach could give no more, I stumbled for the ocean, determined to rid my hand of the contagions I’d contacted.

  I should have been able to stop there…right?

  Wrong.

  I saturated my entire body while imaginary insects skittered up my arms and legs. I knew they weren’t real, but they trailed across my stomach and onto the back of my neck anyway.

  The creeping just would not stop.

  Too afraid to venture out any further, I immersed myself in shallow water. My wobbly legs, however, were no match for the beating surf and I collapsed. My knees sank into the earth as the tide retrieved the sand — pulling and pulling, in what I imagined to be an attempt to swallow me whole.

  Depthless eye sockets flashed in my mind, forcing me to crawl closer toward shore. I would not end up like that mushy thing on the beach.

  Sightless. Lifeless. And now almost armless...thanks to me.

  The water should have been cool and refreshing. It should have soothed my violently quivering body as I used the sand like a loofah pad. Instead, the ocean did absolutely nothing to calm my panic.

  I rubbed and scrubbed beyond the point of pain, but I still couldn’t shake the sense of contamination. I’d been exposed to the worst possible toxin.

  Death.

  No matter how hard I tried, nothing worked. Nothing made the corpse on the beach jump up, laughing hysterically. Nor did a camera crew pop up from behind the rocks to say I'd been punked.

  I hadn’t considered myself naïve until a few minutes ago. Now, I knew. My blissful innocence was gone.

  Finally, the crawling sensation across my body eased. I left the water with skin that felt, and undoubtedly looked, like the raw bright flaky meat of red salmon. Forcing myself back on the beach, I refused to let my eyes stray toward the body, now lit up from the beam of my flashlight like a retail display window.

  Why hadn’t I looked closer before turning it over?

  Thoughts of approaching it to retrieve my flashlight had my already hung-over digestive tract threatening to explode. It didn’t help that the earth no longer absorbed death’s odors like a s
ponge. Instead, a mocking swirl of wind carried the stench through the air to meet its final resting place — permanently attached to the inside of my nose.

  Help me.

  I ignored it. Again. I couldn’t help myself, let alone the lost soul of a dead guy who I imagined was talking to me.

  Instead, I retched again, making a frat boy on spring break look like a professional yakker. The decision to abandon my hundred dollar Mag-lite the size of my palm was simple. I’d rather risk the jagged path to the road in total darkness than approach that thing again.

  However, as I passed its final resting place, I couldn’t stop myself from apologizing. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  The slight incline to the road, covered with the roots and branches of a variety of coastal plants and bushes, became as difficult as scaling the Napali Coast. Slipping to my knees, I clawed my way to the top and collapsed at the finish line — exhausted, wet, whipped and warped. I pulled myself to my feet and frantically waved at the few passing vehicles, but none of them stopped.

  Frustrated and exhausted, I gave up and staggered down the side of the road. My only option was to run back to my car and get my phone. An option I really didn’t want to take, and wouldn’t have to take, if only I’d listened to my parents and carried my phone with me while I ran. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. It might kill me, but they’d be asleep and oblivious to my predicament.

  That mile to my car was the longest, stupidest run of my life.

  Chapter Two

  The police finally arrived, and I was ever so grateful to punt the case in their direction. Rid myself of the questions that plagued my mind like the death cooties that contaminated my body. I’d hoped to get back in my car and head home to take a nice hot shower. Instead, I was stuck standing outside my car with a yellow plastic crime scene blanket wrapped around me for warmth while we waited for the detectives. Shaking and trembling, I bounced back and forth from one foot to the other in my disposable blanket.

  A dark colored Dodge Charger with tinted windows pulled to a stop in front of my car and I cringed, half-expecting, half-hoping it wouldn’t be him. But I knew better. Pulling the blanket tighter, I waited for the moment our eyes met, for him to actually see who had stumbled upon the body.

  I expected him to be emotional. Angry. Concerned. Something.

  I got none of that. Beyond an eye roll, he refused to acknowledge our relationship. No hug. No questions about my health. Nothing. He just ignored me, until it was time to issue orders.

  “Have a seat in my car before you freeze your ass off.” He turned toward the uniform.

  For a moment, I just stared at his back. Then I gathered my pride and said, “Sure thing, detective sergeant.” I think I may have spat out his title in anger.

  I stomped my way to his car and ignored the conversation I couldn’t hear between Detective Sergeant John Kumu and the young officer who’d already taken my information.

  A lot of my friends thought John was hot. The strong silent type. I didn’t see it, nor would I ever see it, because John was my older brother.

  Remember? The idiot.

  I slammed his car door shut and waited, staring out the windshield into the dark blue sky. John slipped into the driver’s seat a few minutes later and sniffed. “What’s that smell?”

  “The man’s arm…” I was unable to finish, unable to fathom the actions of my brother, as he got comfortable in his police car.

  John opened a bag on the seat between us and raised a soft glazed pastry in front of my face. “Want one?” His tone was innocent as a child. A devil child.

  My innards seized. I shook my head, afraid to say anything as my stomach searched for something to throw at him. Acting oblivious to my discomfort, John tilted back his head, closed his eyes and moaned in an act of savoring every bite. His fingers sank into the sugary casing.

  Like mine had indented the shell of the corpse.

  Red jelly filling oozed from the side of his pastry.

  Like the fatty tissue on the arm that had separated from the body.

  I stared in horror as the jelly plopped on his napkin.

  Like…

  I would never eat a donut again.

  John had the nerve to snicker, his lips drawing back in defective cop humor as a strangled laugh escaped his lips.

  Strong silent type, my ass.

  I laid into him. “You jerk. You’ve never touched a body. Your hands have never come in contact with cold flesh. No. You study bodies with your eyes. When the time comes to get dirty, you leave that job to the body snatchers.”

  “The men and women of the Medical Examiner’s Office don’t particularly like being called ‘body snatchers,’” he lectured.

  Ignoring his correction, I focused on the obvious. “You couldn’t pay me to do that job.”

  “Yeah, just call Malia Fern, part-time go-fer for Private Kaua’EYE’s Investigations; she’ll do it for free,” he countered before taking another bite of his donut. “Why couldn’t you just call the cops like a normal person without tearing up the crime scene? Do you think you’re a private detective now?”

  I glared at him as he chewed and looked back at me. We were reduced to our old staring contests. The ones we’d mastered when I was four and he was ten. He always won, but I was determined not to lose this time. I wrapped myself in anger and self-pity. My legs irritated me with involuntarily twitching. The sand in my shorts was driving me crazy, but I refused to show any more discomfort for John to use as props for his sick sense of humor. I would win this contest if it killed me.

  His phone rang and John looked away. He was using work as an excuse for losing. I smiled. Chalk one up for Mal.

  I turned to stare out the window, flexing the muscles in my legs and concentrated on getting the feeling back in all of my extremities. I ignored his conversation, until something in his voice caught my attention.

  Was it the inflection? The words? The slight lowering of his voice when he said, “Missing tourist.” Whatever it was, it snagged my curiosity and awakened the part of my brain the detectives at my job were always trying to engage — the private investigating part. The voice I’d been trying to silence. Until now.

  I listened. My ears pricked as the officer on the other end of the phone reeled me in. “…wife said he was a recovering addict.” John moved the phone to his other hand, making the conversation mumbled to my ears.

  The garble grated under my skin almost as badly as the sand chafing my ass. Who was the man I’d found? That body hadn’t look like that of an addict’s. Although the clothes were dirty, I didn’t believe the cause was from poor hygiene, at least not before the time of death. No, the clothes had appeared business-like, professional. I’d seen my fair share of addicts. If this guy had been an addict, he’d been into the expensive shit.

  Before I could obtain any more information, John ended the conversation. “See you in a bit, Officer Natua.”

  Natua. My brow furrowed as I tried to stretch my over-extended brain. I knew the name, but how?

  Casually, I pulled down the visor and looked at my yellowed reflection in the mirror. I tried to smooth my mangled hair before calmly asking, “Do I know Officer Natua?”

  “No, he…” John stopped and turned to give me a serious big-brother warning. “You won’t get to know him either, if you know what’s good for you.” John’s sentence ended like the beak of a heron grasping a fish. Smack — end of story. Yet his response piqued my curiosity. Did he swallow the words whole, out of jealousy of Natua, or chomp them up with irritation?

  Officer Natua.

  Dawning struck me like the slow rising sun in the Eastern sky. Sluggishly, it seeped into my weary brain.

  “Ohhhh, that Officer Natua.”

  “He’s out of your league, Mal.” John’s voice was back to the ordering-me-around-tone.

  Someday he’d learn that tone didn’t work well on me. “I was merely asking who he was, not for his phone number. If I want a g
uy’s number, I’ll ask him for it.”

  “Is that what you were doing with the dead guy on the beach, putting your phone number in his hand?” John pulled out his notebook and began jotting down information.

  “Your brotherly concern is heartwarming.”

  That earned a long, drawn out sigh from John. “Do you know how long it took me to calm Dad down when your name came over my radio?”

  “Dad knows?” Hua. The last thing I wanted was to worry my parents. “Does Mom?”

  “No, Dad and I agreed the less she knew the better. So tell me what happened.”

  For a few moments, we got down to business. Me telling him all the yucky details, and John taking my statement while asking questions here and there. Then John went to talk to the officers for a few minutes, while I thought about the officer who was ‘out of my league.’

  I hadn’t met Officer Makaio Natua, but I’d heard about him from Lani. Trouble had earned him a transfer from the Big Island to working dogwatch on Kaua’i, and after Lani’s intel, I’d quickly put Natua in the low-life category. Wrote him off as pariah. He may be a god to look at, but a woman would have to be lō.lō — crazy stupid to get involved with him.

  John, the smartass, interrupted my thoughts. “Could you give me a hand?” He asked as he got back in the car. His face was blank, expressionless, waiting for me to bite, like I didn’t know he was making fun of the hand I’d recently held.

  He glanced down at my lap, and brought my attention to the fact that I'd been rubbing my palms against my shorts. A pathetic attempt to remove excrement cooties I’d subconsciously felt lingering on my abused skin. I stopped, crossed my arms over my chest and resisted the impulse to strike out. I bit my tongue and refused to respond. Tapping my foot, I waited for him to explain what kind of help he needed.

  Two could play this game.

  He gave in first. Again. I was getting better at it.

  “Could you talk to some of the surfers and see if they’ve heard anything about this guy?” He flipped through his notebook, as if his favor was just a teeny thing he needed done.