Zero Island (Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners Book 2)

by Chris Bauer

Philo’s eyes absorbed the room’s chaos. A jumble of broken furniture, lamps, mirrors, the tossed mattress, and the slug holes in the bedroom door. “How many people live here?”

  “One, far as we know. Something the neighbors confirmed. Nobody says they heard anything, but we have more people to talk to. The vic is in the bathroom.”

  She sure was. What was left of her, her torso split open from neck to abdomen. Her rib cage was parted, and her internal organs had been ransacked, her spine visible because there wasn’t much else inside getting in the way of it. Her head was bruised but otherwise intact, including what Philo noticed as newly colored black hair, with dark trails of dye framing her naturally tanned face, running down her neck and on the lip of the tub.

  “She’s a civilian worker at the military outpost in Howling Sands,” Chief Koo said.

  “You sure?”

  “Her ID was in her bedroom, is in evidence now.”

  “Shit. That’s not good. What’s her name? You call the CO yet?”

  “The ID said Vena Akina. Commander Malcolm? Didn’t call him yet. We’ll get to it.”

  “You’ll get to it? Fuck that, I’m calling him now.”

  “Fine, I get it, he’s your friend, but”—Koo grabbed Philo’s forearm—“we have two crimes with similar circumstances involving people in the same circles. That includes Evan Malcolm. I’ll let you call him in a minute. First, what do you see here, Trout? Anything stick out to you?”

  “You’re saying Evan’s a suspect?”

  “Person of interest.” Chief Koo relaxed his shoulders and his grip on Philo, calmed himself, and gave a measured, more personal answer. “Officially he’s a POI, but in my book, no, not really. I know him too well. It’s just… procedure. Give me your feedback, then you and your associate can get a hold of him and get the hell out of here.”

  They walked back through all the other rooms, Philo and Patrick in the lead, eyeing the counters and other visible surfaces, touching some with their gloved hands, breathing in the stuffy air, opening and closing cabinets, doors, drawers, appliances, but generally not disturbing anything at the scene, just observing it.

  Philo addressed Patrick. “What do you think, bud?”

  “Someone else was here, sir,” Patrick said, quick to respond. “Not just the killer or killers. Someone else. Someone who did some cleaning, sir.”

  “I agree with my associate, Chief.”

  “One other person at a minimum,” Chief Koo said. “The person who found her and made the anonymous call to 9-1-1. A woman. No leads on her yet.”

  “So the victim gets surprised by an assailant,” Philo said. “She puts up a fight. Those bullet holes… she was armed. She shoots an assailant, and the guy drips blood around the house.”

  “Why his blood? Why not hers?”

  “Considering what they did to her when they finally cornered her, I’d say they didn’t want to shoot her. So she went down with guns a-blazing. Your people find a gun in the house?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Your caller shows up later, finds her. But before her call, someone, maybe the caller, cleans the place. Really, really cleans the place, hopes you guys find no trace of him, or her, being here. All these surfaces in these rooms, they were wiped clean. Not as clean now because your people are here, but the cleaning agents are still evident. The other bathroom is spotless, the mirror sprayed down. I smelled the bleach. In the kitchen I smelled the Lysol. Floor’s been mopped, the mop in the closet is still wet. Problem is, why clean up everything and not clean up after the actual crime?”

  “The person wasn’t involved and didn’t want to be blamed.”

  “Exactly. Plus something else. Did you search the house for the hair dye kit the victim used to color her hair? Looks like she was interrupted while she was coloring it.”

  “We did. Unopened dye kits are under the bathroom sink, but no used kits anywhere else, trash cans included.”

  “No stray splotches on the counter, or in the sink, no drips on the floor. Dye on her head, face, and neck, and on the tub porcelain, but nowhere else. And the hair dye kit is gone. Add to that, no gun. My take is the caller—maybe also the cleaner—gathered up evidence of his or her arrival and left with everything.”

  Soon as he finished his summary, a pang of awareness hit. “Whoa. The clear plastic gloves.”

  “From the hair dye kit?” Chief Koo said.

  “Yes. My guess is the cleaner used the disposable gloves for the cleanup, didn’t want to leave them behind.”

  Behind them a restless Patrick moved from foot to foot, his hand raised. It took Philo a minute to realize Patrick had been raising and lowering his hand the whole time Philo was in the zone, talking cleaning forensics. “Sorry, Patrick. What is it, you gotta use the john?”

  “No, sir. I have a real good guess who it was, sir.”

  “The 9-1-1 caller? Go for it, bud.”

  “Could be that lady who disappeared from Philly, sir. The Hawaiian mob cleaner lady we met at your fight in the grain silo. Remember her, sir? She was really good…”

  Philo’s jaw unhinged and stayed that way as he remained speechless, piecing it together, the Philly angle meaning nothing to the chief but meaning everything to Philo.

  Her name was Kaipo, her last name escaping him. Wally’s woman friend. Hawaiian. Very competent. Someone, maybe her, knew how to clean up after herself but had little on hand to do it with, MacGyvered her way into what was needed. Wanted no trace of her visit discovered. Didn’t want to be found out. By anyone. Least of all by—

  “Tell me what you know about Wally Lanakai and the mob here in Hawaii, Chief, and we’ll tell you what we know about them in Philly.”

  17

  Wally pointed at the empty curb, barked at his driver, today not Magpie. The spaces in the adjacent parking garage were too tight and not long enough. He wanted the Caddy limo parked on the street.

  “These two spaces here. You know the drill.”

  The driver parallel parked across adjacent spaces, cut the engine. The other passenger objected. “Wally, this is police headquarters. Don’t do anything to antagonize—”

  “Shut it, Amos. You’re my attorney, not my babysitter.”

  Defensive parking 101, to make sure the Escalade didn’t mingle with the beater cars and the Maryjane-farming pickups and the Harleys that Kauai’s police department headquarters seemed to attract nowadays. Which meant two parking meters to contend with, which meant two fares. Which meant Wally was behaving as he should, would cover his ass and operate within all aspects of the law this time around, needing no reminders from his attorney.

  Back in the day, he’d say fuck the Kauai parking authority, fuck the police, and fuck the local government, because he’d paid them all off. Then the Department of Justice swooped in, indicted the city government, indicted the police department hierarchy, and put Wally in prison on racketeering charges. Years after his release from the judicial system, he’d turned over a new leaf. He was still into questionably victimless services, was still in the rackets on the East Coast, in Philly. He’d embarked on a business play that at best pissed all over the medical industry’s ethics. At worst it could do major harm, some patients lost during surgery and needing to be dealt with. On the radar in Philly, but nothing had ever been proven. Still, he’d remained below the radar in Hawaii this time around, yet the police asked him to stop in for a chat to talk about some of the most horrifying and sensational crimes in recent memory on Kauai.

  “We will cooperate fully,” he’d told a Detective Ujikawa on the phone, but where had this detective gotten his number, he asked.

  “You don’t need to know that, Mr. Lanakai.”

  Wally’s best guess: Douglas Logan, who had a big reach across the islands. Would Wally be pissed at Logan for having given out his contact info, or gratified Logan had retained it? Either way, he’d need to be wary.

  The driver loaded the meters with coins. Wally and his lawyer waited in the car, sipping guav
a juice, until the driver finished.

  Inside headquarters they were led to a police interrogation room and made comfortable: coffee, bottled water, snacks. Two law enforcement types entered, both Hawaiian, one in rumpled plainclothes, one in a decorated uniform. A slight relief on Wally’s part: his visit had at least merited the island’s top cop. Smart on the police chief’s part, too, to show some respect; props to their approach. The cops took seats across a table from them.

  “I’m Kauai Police Chief Koo, this is Detective Ujikawa. I thank you and your attorney for coming in. Let’s get started. Detective, you’re up.”

  “Thanks, Chief. So why are you back in Hawaii, Mr. Lanakai?”

  His felonies were well documented, but the men at the table shared no personal history. Clean slate for Wally, with time served. This was more than a getting-to-know-you question, it was a fishing expedition.

  “Back in my home state? For business and for pleasure. I’m interested in purchasing a local cottage industry.”

  “Yes. The Miakamii shell lei business,” the detective said. “Douglas Logan told us. But you want more than the business. You want the island.”

  Wally’s attorney leaned forward to interrupt. “What does this line of questioning have to do—”

  “It’s okay, Amos. You’re spot on, Detective. The island’s stewardship has suffered of late. But Mr. Logan wants to sell none of it. Does not see the merit of returning the island to indigenous owners. Not the island or the business. With the right pricing, I hope I can change his mind.”

  “Or the right intimidation,” the detective said. He shuffled through a pile of photos, set two aside, then slid them across the table in front of Wally. “Mr. Logan’s helicopter, in pieces on the island. Here’s Mr. Logan’s pilot. His throat was cut.”

  “So everybody heard.”

  “Yes. Big news.” Detective Ujikawa stood, arrived at Wally’s side. “Like these other incidents were, too.”

  He placed a crime scene photo atop those of the helicopter carnage. In it a naked woman lay in a bathtub on a bed of dry ice, her chest flayed open, the dry ice surrounding her. The next photo showed the body of a Hawaiian man sliced open stem to stern who, according to bystanders, had been in a rolled-up blanket pushed out of a car onto the asphalt. What followed were more photos of the two respective crime scenes, horrific images with staying power, the detective dropping one after another onto the table, under Wally’s nose.

  “The woman was a middle-aged research doctor, lived near the Navy base. The man was a young street performer, his body left in front of a restaurant. All three murders are only days old. And now, a new one. A fresh female body in Pakala Village. From yesterday.”

  Another bathtub picture, the young woman gutted, more dry ice in the tub with her. Wally registered the appropriate amount of disgust as he viewed the photos. Honest reactions, maybe even a grimace, considering he’d never been anywhere near these victims or events.

  “You seeing a trend here, Mr. Lanakai?”

  “All the victims are Hawaiian. Excluding the pilot, someone or thing appears to have been interested in their internal organs. This is pure barbarism. Savage attacks…”

  “Planned savage attacks. So here’s what we’re struggling with, and why we have you here. You want to buy Miakamii, take it off the Logan family’s hands. The owner says he’s not interested. Out of the blue, the owner’s tourist copter pilot is murdered in flight, the copter crashes, his tourism business crippled.”

  “I had nothing to do with—”

  “You return to the islands, and the bodies start piling up—”

  “I’m not involved, Detective. Ex-cons might be first in line as suspects, but that’s too convenient a circumstance, don’t you think?”

  “… and your borderline unethical business practices on the mainland look like they’ve found their way here, Lanakai, along with you. You know something about all this, damn it!”

  The detective’s fist pound rattled the coffee cups and spilled an open water bottle. Wally didn’t flinch; the water and coffee rivered together, running off the table edge.

  “Are you finished here, Detective?” Wally said. “Because I am. Like I said, not me. If anything, I’m as interested in whoever is doing this as you are, bad as it’s making me look. If this is all, I think I’ll be going—”

  The door to the interrogation room opened. A surprise guest.

  Douglas Logan pushed through, a uniformed cop chattering at him from behind, about to try to wrestle him into cuffs for ignoring her.

  “They said I could find you all here. I need to clear something up, Chief.”

  Chief Koo rose. “Officer.” He eyed the cop. “The cuffs won’t be necessary. Douglas, you can’t be in here. Let’s go, we can speak in my office.”

  “It will only take a second. It involves him.” The river of spilled liquid drip-drip-dripped off the table. “Lanakai’s not the problem. There’s someone else.”

  Direct eye contact, Douglas Logan to Wally. Still no love lost on Douglas Logan’s face, but there was also no contempt.

  “Lord knows how I struggle reconciling his history, Terry, but he told me to my face that he wasn’t involved in Chester’s murder, and that he wants to help find out who was, and I believe him.”

  “I appreciate the feedback, Douglas,” Chief Koo said. “Now give me a name. Who?”

  “No one person. A group.”

  “And that would be…?”

  “The Yakuza.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Wally could see the ticket tucked under the limo’s windshield wiper as soon as he exited the police building and was now one pissed-off parallel parker. His attorney matched him stride for stride as they bore down on the car.

  “Don’t say a fucking word, Amos.”

  Wally was ready to strangle his driver for letting this happen, but the driver was MIA, only now approaching from a few storefronts away, a pack of cigarettes in his hand, exasperated and just as surprised. “Boss, sorry, thought I could step away—”

  Wally snarled at him—“You had one fucking job, damn it”—and ripped the paper from under the wiper, was going to shred it. Except it wasn’t a parking ticket, it was a typed note on a small piece of white paper, which he read, but not aloud:

  Airport locker #46. Blood type A. You’ll make it work. — Y.

  Included were one- and two-digit numbers with dashes in between. The lock’s combination.

  Another gift, same anonymous benefactor. His first thought, I’m gonna kill this smug bastard, faded into his second, that the grotesque, savage photos he’d just seen during his precinct visit may well have been of the previous owner of the organs he expected to find in the locker.

  He shoved the note into his lawyer’s chest, yelled to his driver. “Get in. We’re going to the airport.”

  Inside the limo Wally seethed while on the phone with Magpie. “Another gift arrived from my secret admirer. Drop what you’re doing and get a hold of one of our surgeons to see if we can put it in play. Then here’s what I want you to do. Go to our storage space…”

  Wally had absorbed Douglas Logan’s input at the police station. That the Japanese Yakuza had not stayed in the lanes they’d established for themselves pre-WWII. Their activity had expanded beyond the Japanese-Hawaiian communities. Ruthless and barbaric in their dispensing of violence, they were bumping up against other neighborhoods, some of them where Logan’s ranch employees lived.

  And where, Wally speculated, they were rushing to fill the space that his Ka Hui family’s exit years back had vacated. Were the trafficked organs appeasements to Ka Hui, the prior ruling class, or was the prior ruling class being ridiculed, or worse yet, framed?

  “… and get me an inventory of what’s in there, Magpie.”

  “Everything, boss?”

  “Just the guns and ammo. Especially the military-grade shit.”

  18

  “You sure of the address, ma’am?” the Uber driver
asked.

  The address was right, Kaipo’s timing was wrong. Three years too late. Three years since her last visit here, which was during the time she was handling mob cleaning projects in Hawaii for Wally Lanakai. Which begot Wally’s scorched-earth approach to keeping her sober when he realized she had an addiction problem. The Uber driver idled his vehicle in front of a sprawling ranch home on a small property in a residential neighborhood. The house was boarded up due to extensive fire damage. Halloween decorations were still on the lawn. Typical crystal meth house approach, the owners wanting to blend in, maintain a quiet coexistence, decorate for the holidays, keep the grass cut and the bushes trimmed, etc. Until, apparently, one end of the home burst into flames from a meth lab explosion in a bedroom. Amateur manufacturers, riding the wave. Meth production in Hawaii had reached pandemic proportions, proliferating in quiet neighborhoods as well as out-of-the-way barns on empty plantation farmland, operating below the radar. Everyone wanted some of the action because anyone could make the product. But not always safely.

  Meth never interested her. Heroin and opium did, and the mom-and-pop business operating out of this address peddled whatever drugs could make them money. This one operation hadn’t caught Wally Lanakai’s attention. Which meant they’d sold to her back then because they hadn’t known what Wally would do to them if he found out they had.

  “Hold on,” she said to the driver. Exasperated, she checked her phone, scrolled further down her contact list.

  On her mind as she thumbed around her screen: Vena. Alive before Kaipo showed up on her doorstep, dead now. Too painful to accept. Kaipo needed to numb herself, right the hell now.

  A few more texts to local Kauai contacts that were years old. Private phone numbers, not burners. She was using her alias. It got her only one response, and that was, I don’t know you. Not interested.

  No quick fix, damn it. She closed her eyes, searched deep for a reassessment of her short-term needs.

  Inconsistencies. They impinged on her guilty conscience, questioning her grasp of the situation. Her close friend had been gutted, her organs taken. Wally was in the organ redistribution business, ergo, this was Wally’s doing. But if Wally had tracked her to Vena’s, he would have waited for Kaipo to return. She’d gotten in and out with no issue.