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

by Toby Neal

  He knew what he had to do.

  Lei drove her rental car through the winding back streets of residential Hilo, heading for her old, familiar neighborhood with its narrow, weed-choked shoulders, buckling sidewalks, and sagging power lines. The run-down area was brightened by the colors of the old plantation houses—green, red, and mustard yellow trimmed in white with painted tin roofs and the arching lushness of hapu`u fern trees and sprays of blooming orchids decorating yards and driveways. Lei remembered every crack in those narrow sidewalks from all the running she used to do when she lived here.

  Lei felt a tight band of anxiety and guilt around her chest as she thought of Stevens. She wished, oh, how she wished, that she had some other idea of how to find the shroud killer than pursuing Terence Chang. After her conversation with Ohale, she’d almost decided not to come this way. Her conversation with Stevens showed he was just as suspicious.

  But she was here in Hilo. She had to at least take a look at Terence Chang. Just see what his routine was. Keep her options open. Let her gut tell her what to do. It rarely steered her wrong, and it was telling her to confront Terence Chang about the shrouds. How she would do that, she wasn’t sure.

  Lei had rented a car from Rent a Wreck Hilo, and the vehicle she’d chosen, a faded silver Toyota Corolla, felt like a cloak of invisibility. She’d stocked up for her surveillance with a big bottle of the Vitaminwater she’d taken to drinking for the baby and a bag of beef jerky. Maybe not the healthiest option but the best she could come up with at the Minit Stop gas station, where, again, she’d paid cash and worn a green University of Hawaii ball cap, pulled low, to avoid surveillance cameras.

  Lei knew exactly where she’d park. She’d chosen the spot when she’d been with the FBI on their last raid of the place and, in casing the big, old, plantation-style house for that police action, she’d checked for spots to do a stakeout if one was ever needed in the future.

  She drove slowly but steadily past the house, doing an initial assessment.

  Terence Chang had cleaned the old place up. The junked cars parked on the lawn were gone, and instead he’d erected a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. Lounging on the steps of the compound were two brindled pit bulls. Lei would never forget meeting the one that was Chang’s personal pet. She’d almost had to shoot the beast.

  The house had been freshly painted and repaired and was now a traditional dark green with white trim and sported a new roof. The lawn was neatly mowed and clear of any cover.

  “Nice,” Lei muttered. In spite of what the FBI and Hilo PD had been able to find out, Lei felt confident that Terence Chang was sending a message with the facelift to the property: There was a new crime boss in town, and he ran a tight operation.

  Lei kept her speed steady as she passed, and then circled around and parked at the spot she’d chosen, behind a neighbor’s hedge, where the car, pulled off the shoulder, would be out of view of the house.

  By sliding down in her seat and leaning out the window, she could see past the hedge to the porch of the Chang house, where the pit bulls still snoozed.

  Lei took in additional details: a locked, automated rolling gate; a closed, double-width garage, so there were probably a couple of cars parked there at least. She spotted a towering satellite antenna anchored to the roof.

  He might be cleaning up the outside of the house, but it looked like he was ensuring he had the highest tech available, which meant anything could be happening inside. She couldn’t see them, but he probably had exterior surveillance cameras.

  She would if she were him.

  Breaching the house wouldn’t be easy, and what was visible was probably only a fraction of the defenses he had.

  Lei opened the Toughbook laptop she’d brought over from Maui and punched up Chang’s information. He had two cars registered: a black Tacoma truck and a baby blue Lexus.

  Black Tacomas. They occurred way more than statistically likely in this corner of the world. Well, at least she knew which cars coming out of the garage to follow, because getting Chang from his vehicle was looking a hell of a lot easier than trying to get into his house.

  Chapter 7

  Stevens and Ferreira drove through Kahului in the Bronco. Ferreira played navigator, punching addresses into the GPS mounted on the dash.

  “Seems like Maui Sugar’s not paying much, if these addresses are anything to go by,” Stevens said, mopping his brow with a forearm after their most recent stop, an employee fired for stealing some equipment. The maze of junked cars and illegally sublet semi-habitable shacks on the big lot in the middle of Kahului reminded Stevens of some of the neighborhoods he’d seen in third-world countries during his stint in the army.

  “It’s hard agricultural labor. Don’t imagine it’s any better anywhere else,” Ferreira said. “I didn’t like the situation with some of the kids there, though.” They’d passed one of the dwellings, a room made out of an old Matson shipping container, and there had been at least six children under the age of five milling around with a few toys on a scrap of shag carpet inside. Windows cut in the metal sides provided the only ventilation, and a half-door held shut with an industrial-strength bolt kept the kids inside with a surly teen who eyed them through shaggy bangs, her ears plugged with headphones. “I think I’ll call Child Welfare to check the situation out. What did you think of Adeno Arias?”

  They’d found the sometime-thief asleep on a futon under a mango tree in the backyard, covered by a beach towel. A nearby empty quart of Ocean Vodka lay next to him, telling its own tale. He’d been very hard to rouse.

  “I don’t think he has the wherewithal to plan these fires. Doesn’t have a car. I don’t think he’s our man,” Stevens said.

  “Agreed.” Ferreira jotted their impressions next to the man’s name and address as Stevens followed the refined voice giving directions to their next stop, a three-story apartment building in Wailuku. A depressing beige when freshly painted, it now sported the ubiquitous rusty shade of blowing red Maui dirt.

  “Kenny Rice,” Ferreira read off the Department of Motor Vehicles information sheet. “Aged fifty-four. Not married. Fired for something they wrote up as ‘negligence.’”

  They parked the Bronco and marched up the metal exterior stairs to the man’s door and knocked.

  “What?” The door whipped open and a dark-complexioned man faced them, a beer belly barely contained by an undershirt straining over his belt line.

  “Maui Police Department. We’re looking for Kenny Rice,” Ferreira said, holding up his cred wallet. Stevens just stood, hands on his hips, his holstered weapon and the badge clipped to his waistband more than enough ID for this civilian.

  “Don’t know him, but he lived here before,” the man said.

  “Got an ID for yourself?” Ferreira said. “We want to speak to him.”

  “Be right back.” The door slammed.

  “Nice guy,” Ferreira said to Stevens. Stevens shrugged. He was feeling hot and annoyed. This kind of fishing expedition took so much time and seldom went anywhere. He wished he had some more staff to put to this kind of canvassing, but his station was just too small to spare anyone. Still, it was something to do, and it kept his mind off Lei…

  The door reopened. The man dragged a frail-looking older woman in a flowered muumuu forward and handed over his driver’s license. “I’m Frank Viela. This is my mother, Grace. Mama, tell them what you told me about Kenny.”

  “What you cops want with Kenny?” The woman’s voice shivered with age and apprehension. “Kenny, he my cousin’s boy. He’s a good man.”

  “Just want to ask him a few questions about a case we’re investigating, Aunty,” Ferreira said, smiling with local-boy charm. “Anything you could tell us would help.”

  “Well, he lost this apartment when he got fired,” Grace said, tweaking her elbow out of her son’s hand. “He ha
d to move.”

  “Do you happen to know where?”

  “Over in Happy Valley, I heard,” Grace said.

  “Thanks so much for your help,” Stevens said. “We appreciate it.”

  “He’s on unemployment, so they will have his address,” Grace contributed, batting rheumy eyes at Stevens.

  “They’re cops, Ma. They can figure it out,” Frank said. He pulled her back from the door and shut it firmly behind them.

  “Happy Valley,” Stevens murmured as they clunked down the stairs. “Now, there’s a misnamed spot.”

  “It didn’t used to be so bad,” Ferreira said, referring to the bottom of Iao Valley, where a low-income housing area had taken on a self-perpetuating cycle of drugs and urban decay.

  “Well, Grace had one thing right. We should call the unemployment office and get his latest address.”

  Back at the Bronco, Stevens ran the engine and sorted through their notes as Ferreira called the state agency and procured the man’s address. It wasn’t far to the decrepit area. Stevens and Ferreira navigated down Main Street, the artery through old-town Wailuku, to the new address for Kenny Rice provided to them by the unemployment office. The road passed a series of coffee shops, pawnbrokers, and threadbare boutiques with hand-lettered signs and dipped down into a seedy neighborhood.

  The area had a history of having been the first low-income housing on the island, and it was a haven for the unsavory, with broken culverts, graffiti-covered walls, and a series of barracks-like low-income apartments. The address the GPS guided them to was one of the regulation-height three-story buildings that populated the area. This one was painted pistachio green.

  Stevens pulled the Bronco into a cracked asphalt lot, unembellished with even a palm tree. A row of listing steel mailboxes in front of their parking spot held the number they sought. “This is his place.”

  “Feeling like we’re on a wild-goose chase,” Ferreira said, unbuckling his seat belt.

  “Yeah, guess it’s been a while since either of us had to do so much old-fashioned shoe-leather police work,” Stevens said with a grin. “Let’s keep working through this list until five p.m. It’s three now, so whatever we get done, we get done.”

  They got out, and Stevens scanned the empty lot. Happy Valley was a place where it never paid to get sloppy. He liked driving the old Bronco because the rust gathering on the back bumper and dents from a few chases just added to its island cruiser vibe, and the surf racks on top didn’t scream “cop.”

  Stevens and Ferreira ascended a set of metal stairs on the outside of the building’s chipped cement block exterior and knocked on the door of 3A, a thin plywood edifice marked with a spyhole in the middle.

  No answer.

  Stevens looked for a bell to ring, pushed it. He knocked again. They waited.

  “Guess the guy’s not home.”

  “We’ll have to come back.” Ferreira made a note on the clipboard he carried.

  Stevens spotted the twitching of curtains in another unit as they moved back down the outside stairs. The hairs on the back of his neck rose the way they did when there was a gun on him.

  “Let’s wear Kevlar next time we come,” Stevens said once they were inside the Bronco.

  The Fireman approached the home’s address from downwind so as not to alert the dog. He’d come fifteen minutes early, so he could be sure the old man had taken the baby and left. From his treetop lookout, he used binoculars to watch the old man exit the house, baby carrier in hand. The man stowed the child in one of those click-on car seats, got into the truck, and fired it up. He must have hit a remote because the gate retracted, he backed the big vehicle up, turned around, and drove out.

  The gate shut and the truck rattled down the driveway.

  So far, so good.

  The Fireman climbed back down the tree, a cumbersome business. He’d worn zip-up work coveralls with leather gloves and work boots, a cap pulled low. The outfit would camouflage his identity and provide protection from the hazards under the house, where he was planning to set the fire.

  The blackmailer had told him there were no surveillance cameras except his own planted ones. The Fireman wasn’t worried about being seen, though as usual, mud obscured his plates and he wore his billed cap low just in case. He pulled his vehicle into the driveway and punched in the gate code. He had no intention of facing the dog unprotected.

  Sure enough, as the gate rolled open, the big Rottweiler trotted around the corner of the house, triangular ears pricked, its expression curious. It was not expecting a car to come in so soon after the old man’s departure, the Fireman could tell. He pulled the truck forward toward the house and saw the dog’s expression change.

  It lowered its head, a ruff rising along its shoulders, and the barking that issued from its scarred barrel of a body echoed ominously inside his tin can of protection. It stalked toward his vehicle, barking. When the truck drew to a stop, the dog still came, stiff-legged, a growl like a grizzly bear vibrating its chest.

  The Fireman rolled his window down partway, resting the tranquilizer pistol on the edge of the glass. He saw the amber gleam of intelligence in its eyes as the dog, still approaching, decided to jump. It gathered its huge body and leaped off the ground, aiming at his lowered window, and as it flew toward him, he pulled the trigger.

  The dart buried itself all the way to the red-tufted hilt in the broad chest of the beast as it hit the side of the truck like a rhinoceros in full charge, snapping jaws reaching for him through the narrow gap of window. The truck rocked at the impact, and the Fireman recoiled, dropping the gun as the Rottweiler slid down the side of the vehicle to land on its feet, unharmed.

  The Fireman rolled the window back up as the animal trotted away, turning to make another charge. The dog seemed to finally notice something was wrong. He saw it try to paw at the dart lodged in its chest, bending its head to try to grab the dart, but couldn’t reach it.

  His aim had been good. The red tuft protruded in the juncture of its neck and shoulder, sunk as deep as it would go.

  The dog looked up at him again, and the Fireman felt his testicles shrivel at the look in its eyes. He could swear it was promising vengeance as it lay down carefully, resting its head on its paws, and still facing him, slowly closed its eyes.

  He waited another five minutes.

  He’d expected the Rottweiler to collapse in some way that he could be assured it was knocked out, but instead it had posed like an Egyptian sphinx, pointed right at him, its eyes shut like it was just having a tiny nap, waiting to sink its teeth into his leg as he tried to pass.

  The Fireman opened his door carefully. No movement from the dog. He extended a leg out onto the ground slowly, checking his watch. This had already taken fifteen minutes, longer than he’d budgeted. He lifted the pistol, took careful aim, and shot the dog again. He hit it right in the neck. It didn’t move.

  Two doses ought to hold the beast. If it died of a heart attack, so much the better. All he needed was to be undetected until he could torch the house.

  He reached back into the truck and got out the bin of materials he’d brought for the fire, and still biting his tongue, the tranq gun lying on top of the bin, he walked up to the dog. He set the bin down, holding the gun on the dog.

  He couldn’t leave the darts in to be found. No movement, still, from the dog. He tweaked the darts out of its neck, hyperventilating.

  No movement from the animal—it was out cold. He hurried on as quickly as possible.

  He could always shoot it again, if he needed to, but ideally it would be waking up as the old man came back. Drugging it for too long would arouse suspicion.

  The Fireman carried the bin to the opening in the latticework that covered the three feet or so of clearance below the house’s post-and-pier construction. He pushed up his cap, flic
ked on the headlight he wore underneath, and crawled under the house. Carefully, he pushed the heavy bin ahead of him through the dirt.

  It was dark in the crawlspace, with a faint musty odor like fresh mushrooms. Once in the center of the even rectangle of the house’s footprint, the Fireman took out his hand-drawn map and oriented himself. Using it as a guide, he found the front entrance. Using the wide-bit drill, he bored up through to the subfloor, a three-inch-distance layer before the plywood of the floor. Pushing up with a battery-operated saw, he cut a rectangle in the subfloor and then, once more checking his map, he drilled all the way up through the floor above to create air-ventilation holes that would draw the flame up into the house.

  Fire needed just a few things to blossom: an ignition source, fuel, and a lot of oxygen—and to get going hot and deadly, it needed a lot of everything.

  Using the interior surveillance video, he’d been able to choose positions for the holes underneath a cabinet next to the front door. While not as good as having an ignition site directly in front of the door, it would have to do to block the main entrance.

  He crawled on, boring four other sets of ignition and ventilation holes. Finally, he went back to the bin and got out the double-bagged ziplocks of fuel.

  The Fireman’s back was hurting by then, his knees sore from the dirt and rocks, and his hands wouldn’t stop the trembling they’d begun ever since the big Rottweiler hit the side of his truck. Still he pressed on, setting the bags of accelerant carefully up inside the subfloor. He was encouraged that he couldn’t smell any fuel as he carefully inserted one bag per opening.

  He’d fire the front door area first and give it the longest time to catch. Now that he’d done the prep work, all that remained was to set up the ignition of that first bag. Once the origin site was going, it would spread quickly to the others, especially with the nice updraft he’d created by drilling holes in the floor.