Fire Beach: Lei Crime Book 8 (Lei Crime Series)

by Toby Neal

  “I’m feeling great, but I need to move on this soon, before getting around becomes too hard,” Lei said. “Thanks for being my backup.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Not sure yet. Just going to go over there for my other case and see what I can pick up on my own.”

  “I’ll let you know if I find anything, but like I said, he’s been quiet.”

  “Quiet like a snake. Talk soon.” Lei cut the connection, frowning.

  Lei glanced through the photos in the case jacket on the desk before her. She’d made a copy of the whole police file and smuggled it out of the station, suppressing guilt as she did so. It was her friend Pono’s case, and he was dead-ended on it. She knew he wouldn’t like her investigating Chang any more than Stevens would, but it was time to jump outside the box before she was too pregnant to have any options.

  Lei looked at the file periodically to stay motivated, even though it was emotionally harrowing to do so. Sometimes looking at the material generated new ideas.

  She came to the photo of her aunt. Aunty Rosario lay dead in her bed, her pallor waxen. A wire-wrapped C-4 bomb rested on her stomach and a shroud was puddled at her feet, where Lei had moved it from her aunt’s face.

  Could Anchara’s killer, a foreign national, really have hired the killer that had left the bomb at her aunt’s house? Could he have navigated this island on his own so well that he could find Anchara? Find and attack Stevens at their home?

  It was highly unlikely that the man had acted alone. Someone with hacking skills must have provided him all the information he needed, but investigators hadn’t been able to get the man to talk.

  No, the shroud killer was just taking a break. Lulling them into complacency. And when they were most vulnerable, he’d strike again.

  Lei’s hand came to rest on the slight, hard roundness of her belly as she gazed at the terrible photos of Anchara’s crime scene. By some miracle, Kiet had been uninjured.

  No, the time to move was now. Lei couldn’t lose her focus in the warm fuzziness of family life. The gambling case she was currently working was taking her to the Big Island anyway—it was the perfect cover.

  Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she made reservations. She locked the shroud file in the small fireproof safe she’d told Stevens she kept work notes in. She’d bought another one for him, too, to keep him from being suspicious.

  She couldn’t ask Stevens to work with her on this. She already knew it wasn’t his style to bend the rules, and he’d want to protect her or some such old-fashioned thing, especially now that she was pregnant. Right after their wedding, he’d promised he’d turn her in himself if he needed to protect her. Now that they had Kiet, Lei had a better idea of a baby’s total vulnerability. And being pregnant just meant that she had that much more to protect.

  It was time, maybe past time, to go on the offensive.

  The Fireman frowned at his phone, holding up the small screen to reread the text he’d received. Enlisting your considerable fire skills to set a fire for a target I need eliminated. Cash deposit left in your mailbox to prove I’m serious.

  Discovering that a man had died in that last fire had shocked him. He’d been unable to sleep last night, thinking about it, but this morning he was accepting it. The Bitch needed to be fed, and she ate whatever was in her path. He wasn’t responsible that some homeless man sleeping off a bender in the fields got toasted for her pleasure.

  His fascination with the Bitch had begun in his teens. He knew from the firebug forums he liked to visit that most people experimented with setting fires at some point in their childhood, but only a small percentage developed the love of fire he had. He’d been thrilled when his skills with fire had been called for at his job. It had all been perfect—until they’d laid him off.

  More fool them.

  The Fireman looked out the window of his apartment onto the row of dilapidated mailboxes in the parking lot. Fear hollowed his belly. How could he have been found? His number was unlisted, and from his avid news watching last night and his monitoring of the police band, no one was even close to discovering him.

  He hoisted up jeans that were falling off his hips as he stood. He’d lost weight in the months since he was laid off. His apartment was a small one-bedroom in a tired old building in Wailuku, all he’d been able to afford after his savings ran out.

  It wouldn’t hurt to check the mailbox, just see what this was about.

  He slid his feet into worn rubber slippers and clumped down the metal stairs on the exterior of the building, its tattered coconut palm in the corner of the parking lot. Hot midday sun beat down on the crown of his head as he opened the rusted mailbox.

  Inside was a large, padded manila envelope with his name printed on it. Seeing his name in bold, block print made that empty, chilled feeling of fear tighten into something even stronger. He removed the envelope and glanced around. A car whizzed by on the road. Dazzling white clouds mocked him from the blue sky, and the cool green shadow of Iao Valley reached out to him—but otherwise, all was deserted in his seedy neighborhood.

  The Fireman tucked the thick envelope under his arm and hurried back into the apartment. Sitting at his battered Formica table, he tore open the envelope, his hands trembling. He pulled too hard in his anxiety, and the package gave at the savage rip.

  Hundred-dollar bills fluttered down around his feet like leaves in a fall wind.

  He crouched, picking them up and piling them alongside the thick stack still left in the envelope. He sat down, knees quivering, and counted the bills.

  Ten thousand in hundreds and a folded note in the same print. Got your attention? Put that stop sign you stole in the window, and I’ll text you the address I want burned. When it’s done, I’ll drop another ten grand in your box and a five-thousand-dollar bonus for every human casualty.

  “Someone out there is a loony tune,” the Fireman muttered aloud.

  He glanced around his barren apartment. The cigarette-burned lounger he’d picked up free from the curb faced an empty wall. He’d even had to sell his TV last month to pay rent. Twenty thousand, maybe more if there were “human casualties,” would keep him for a year, if he was careful.

  Besides, he didn’t really have a choice. Whoever this was knew his identity. What he was. Where he lived. If he didn’t do what they wanted, there was no reason not to rat him out—in fact, that threat was implicit in the bold way his name was printed on the envelope.

  Moving slowly, the Fireman lifted the battered stop sign he’d stolen from one of his ignition sites into the window. How did this person know about the sign, even? Looking around, he realized the window was uncovered, and someone in a nearby building could probably see right in.

  He closed the blind, lowering it down behind the stop sign and resolving to keep it down permanently. He sat back down and counted his money again. That comforting activity didn’t stop his mouth from going dry as his phone dinged with an incoming text message containing an address.

  Stevens and Ferreira, along with Tim Owen, ranged around the remains of the burn victim on the steel table in the morgue. The portly ME, bright in a rainbow-covered aloha shirt, pushed magnifying glasses onto the top of his head as he gestured to the body. “Cause of death is asphyxiation from smoke inhalation. Burns are secondary. Tox screens will take a couple of weeks, but the stomach was empty. I’m guessing he’ll have a high blood-alcohol count.”

  “I’ve found the point of origin of the fire,” the young investigator said. He spoke in the nasal voice of someone mouth breathing. The body’s odor and appearance hadn’t improved with the autopsy. Stevens peered closely at the victim’s red, swollen and blistered face.

  “We’re interested in that, of course,” Stevens said. “But we’re more interested in who this man was. Did you find any ID? Anything on or near the b
ody?”

  “No,” Dr. Gregory said. “Nothing in his pockets but a beer opener.” He handed the scorched item, neatly bagged, to Stevens. “Wasn’t enough skin left on his fingers to take prints. Maybe there’s a print on the beer opener.”

  Stevens turned to Owen. “Did you find where this man was camping in the field? Maybe there was something left at his campsite.”

  “I did.” Owen took out his file and opened it on an unoccupied steel table beside the body. They clustered around the fan of photos he spread out. “See this directionality?” He pointed to the way the sugarcane was pointing. “I could see which way the cane had burned from this and could see the remaining leaves on the downwind side. The char pattern is also rough in the direction of the point of origin. I found three spots along the cane-haul access road that tested positive for hydrocarbons, indicating a petroleum-based accelerant. I also found the remains of a gas can.” Owen held up a photo of a blackened metal can with a blown-out crack in it, lying in a gridded area. “This is what remains of a gas can that tested positive for the same residual trace as the origin sites.”

  “What does that mean?” Ferreira asked. Stevens saw the gleam of Vicks on the older detective’s handlebar mustache below his nose, and he wished he’d thought of putting some on to head off the smell.

  “It means the arsonist must have been careless. This can exploding would have been like a mine. No reason I can think of that he would have left it in the fire.”

  “Any fingerprints?” Stevens asked.

  “Actually, I did get a partial. Kind of a miracle.” Owen flipped to a blown-up photo of several whorls of a fingerprint, outlined in the black of char. “Lucky to have this. Brought an extra photo for you.”

  “Excellent.” Stevens took the photo.

  “So you said you found where this guy was camping?” Ferreira indicated the body on the table.

  “Yes. He had a small tent. Must have been able to keep the spiders out that way.” Owen gave a nod to Stevens. “The tent was burned, but I was able to find and identify the remains of the fabric, and the make is by Coleman.” He showed them another photo. “See all these bottles? Looks like you were probably right, Dr. Gregory. This guy was holed up out there on a bender. Didn’t find any ID, though.”

  They wrapped up the meeting, and Stevens and Ferreira walked out with Owen to go to the sugar mill headquarters. “Been out there yet?” Ferreira asked Owen as they reached their vehicles in the parking lot.

  “Yeah, we’ve had a meeting already,” Owen said, gesturing toward the central area of the island before he got into a bright yellow Maui Fire Department truck.

  “I know right where the admin building is,” Ferreira said to Stevens. Stevens handed his keys to Ferreira, and the burly older detective got behind the wheel of the Bronco.

  “Let’s take the lead on this interview,” Stevens said as Ferreira fired up the vehicle. “Even though Owen set it up, this investigation’s already out of his purview now that we know it’s an arson homicide.” Each state had a different way of investigating fire crime. In Hawaii, fire investigators focused exclusively on the causes of fire, and criminal investigation went to law enforcement.

  “No argument there. Kid’s wet behind the ears.”

  “Maybe, but he seems to know his stuff. Takes initiative, too.” Stevens already felt a little protective of Tim Owen. He knew how hard it could be to get established in a place like Hawaii, with so many hidden social rules and agendas.

  For some reason that reminded him of Anchara’s simple life on Maui after their divorce. She’d been making a place here for herself and her son—before her life was stolen from her and her baby came to Stevens by default. Her murder would always haunt him.

  He decided it always should.

  They drove through the nondescript sprawl of urbanization that was downtown Kahului, but right outside of town, Ferreira turned left onto a semi-deserted one-lane asphalt road crusted with the red, iron-rich soil of the island. They drove down the narrow road bordered by tall, waving sugarcane and turned right into the mill area.

  The rusted steel outbuildings and belching stacks of the processing plant rose around them like a factory out of a Dickens novel. Ferreira navigated past a row of parked red Ford trucks caked in filth and down an alley between towering corrugated metal buildings. A clattering rumble of machinery surrounded them and made it hard to think, and the cab of the truck filled with the rich, tactile scent of boiling molasses.

  “I’m in favor of the sugar industry, but you wouldn’t see me working here,” Ferreira said, parking in front of a rusty metal outbuilding with no windows.

  “It’s quite a contrast to the beaches—that’s for sure,” Stevens said, stepping out of the truck into the parking lot. Dirt rose in reddish, powdery puffs under his boots.

  Owen had parked beside them, and he got out of the yellow truck. “Gonna have to wash this when I get back to base,” he said, gesturing to the residue that already coated the vehicle.

  “That’s why the workers stay covered up.” Ferreira pointed to a group of workers getting off a beat-up old school bus. They were attired in long-sleeved shirts and pants, big cloth hats, and bandannas covering their faces. “Let’s get inside where it’s air-conditioned.”

  Lei walked onto the plane and slid her tightly packed backpack into the overhead compartment. She took out the case file to review during the flight. Settling in her seat, she wrestled one last time with her conscience.

  She should have at least called Stevens. She’d gotten better at remembering to communicate, but she didn’t want to call now and have Stevens realize there was more going on than she was willing to say. Once she was in Hilo and checked into the cheap motel she’d picked out, she could text him. If he called, she’d tell him about the case that had brought her over to the Big Island. Less was more right now.

  Still, Lei’s gut roiled uneasily at the deception. “No help for it,” she muttered.

  How she was going to pull off anything useful remained to be seen.

  She’d had to check her weapon in its special case, and she felt a little naked without it. She buckled her belt over her unfamiliarly tight waist and settled back in the seat, telling herself to relax.

  She shut her eyes as the plane took off, remembering last night with a pang of guilty loss. After Lei locked everything back up in her office, she’d come out to the living room. Jared was gone. Kiet was asleep in his bouncy seat, an empty bottle beside him, and Stevens was on the couch.

  “Alone at last.” Stevens had hooked a long arm around Lei, hauling her over to him on the couch and giving her a thorough kiss. She’d melted against him, her tender breasts prickling with need. She didn’t remember hearing about how pregnancy made women feel sexy, but now that the nausea was gone, Lei always seemed to be “in the mood.” Just a look or a touch from her husband seemed to be enough to get her going these days.

  Kiet belched softly from his seat.

  “Well, not quite alone,” Stevens said, turning back to the baby and loosening the straps that held him in. “I’ll put him down. Meet you in the bedroom.”

  “I’ll be a few minutes. Got to clean up.” Lei went into the kitchen as he carried the baby off. She put away the leftovers and loaded the dishwasher. Part of their agreement with her dad was that he got a clean kitchen in the morning. She went to the bedroom after brushing her teeth, stepping inside and shutting the door.

  He’d closed the curtains, and the light was off. In the total darkness, the known became new again. “Where are you?”

  “Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.” Stevens growled, and she smiled, feeling her way forward.

  “Thought that was my line,” Lei said. “I don’t want to grab Keiki by mistake.” The big Rottie slept on the bed with them.

  “She’s banis
hed for the moment.”

  “Oh. You have some devious plan, I can tell.”

  “You told me you liked my devious plans. Back when we weren’t old married folk.”

  “I do like your plans.”

  “No more talking.”

  Lei’s heart rate spiked at his low, commanding tone. Her nipples tightened as a soft ache tugged at her. Prickling awareness rippled up her arms and made the tiny hairs rise in instant response.

  She’d reached the side of the bed. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the faintest outline of his long, naked body, and her mouth went dry. She swallowed, trying to see more, savoring the anticipation. There was only enough light to glimpse the heavy curve of his shoulder, the slant of his side, the long plane of his extended thigh.

  “Come here.” His voice was a vibrating chord that thrilled her.

  No, marriage and family hadn’t quenched their passion. At least not yet.

  Lei forced her attention back to the file, feeling bad again for leaving him. Deceiving him. Well, maybe nothing would come of it. She’d work her case and go home. Still, this was an opportunity to get an eye on the Changs’ operation. She had to take it.

  Fortunately, no one had taken the seat beside her, so she was able to open the file and sort through the records she’d collected on the gambling ring that had emerged on Maui. Just a week ago, a confidential informant she’d cultivated had gotten her involved in what was developing into a case with deep roots.

  “So, mah-jongg one Chinese game,” her CI, Claudine Figueroa, an innkeeper in Wailuku she’d met on a murder investigation, had told her. “I been getting these invitations on e-mail. Me and my friends, we like go. Sometimes we watch the players. Sometimes we play and we bet.”

  “How high are the stakes? I mean, this sounds like small potatoes,” Lei said. She’d responded to Claudine’s phone call that she had some “important information for the MPD,” and now that she was here, at the woman’s inn, the equivalent of organized bingo didn’t sound like a big concern.