by Toby Neal
“We talk here. Nowhere for sit inside.”
Lei and Stevens brought the chairs over, sat on them gingerly. The older woman dropped the cigarette butt into a jar of water at her feet, lit another one with hands that fumbled with the red Bic lighter. She took several drags and her eyes skittered away.
“Where’s Haunani’s father?”
Shrug. More drags on the cigarette. “Haven’t seen the fucka in years.”
“Well. I’m sorry fo’ say we get bad news,” Lei said in pidgin. She steadied her voice. “Haunani stay make. She’s dead.”
No reaction. Nani looked blankly out into space, took another drag off the the cigarette, but now her hand shook as if with an ague. Lei reached over and captured the one holding the lighter in both of hers. Stevens shot her a quick glance.
“I’m sorry.”
Nani’s hand felt like a bundle of sticks. The woman’s throat worked as she swallowed. “How?”
“She was drowned.”
“I told her a hundred times never go swimming by the rivermouth but she never listen. She always get one hard head, that girl.”
“It wasn’t accidental.” Stevens’ low voice sawed across the tension.
Another long pause.
Moving faster than she could have believed, Nani brought the lit cigarette down on the back of Lei’s hand, spitting into her face. Nani’s black eyes were empty pits of wild as she clawed at Lei, screaming incoherent curses.
Lei recoiled with a cry, flying over backwards in the flimsy beach chair as Stevens surged up and grabbed the woman, spinning her around and putting her against the wall. He cuffed her as she continued to yell incomprehensible abuse.
Lei scrambled up and went to the Bronco, listening with one ear as Stevens tried to calm Nani down. She fumbled in the glove box for the first aid kit, hoping there wasn’t HIV in the spit making its way into her eyes, down her cheek. She ripped open a Bactine-soaked wipe and scrubbed her face with it, rubbed another one on the blistering circular burn on the back of her hand, using the minutiae of attending the small wound to collect herself.
Fucking rookie move, getting close, touching the woman like that. She deserved to get burned.
Nani’s invective had switched to a dry sobbing that sounded like branches rubbing in a high wind. Lei finally turned to face the tableau of Stevens beside the frail, hunched woman on the stoop, her hands cuffed behind her, skeins of black hair trailing.
“Do you want to press charges?” Stevens asked. She could tell by the timbre of his voice he didn’t want her to, and Lei knew that would shut down any further communication they might get out of Nani. Lei shook her head-she couldn’t seem to find her voice.
“I’m going to take these restraints off,” Stevens said gently. “But I’ll put them back on and take you down to the station if you try anything more.”
A tiny nod among the terrible sounds coming from the slight form. Stevens took off the cuffs. “Who can we call for you?”
He needn’t have asked, as doors had been opening along the row of dwellings and neighbors came out. A tall, wide woman in a muumuu and slippers approached.
“What you wen’ do to Nani?”
“Her girl, she drowned,” Lei said, coming forward.
“Oh the poor ’ting!” the neighbor exclaimed. It was unclear whether she meant Nani or her daughter, but she wedged her bulk between Stevens and Nani on the stoop, effectively squeezing him off as she looped a hamlike arm over the woman. “I going take care of you.”
“Fuck you, Ohia,” Nani snarled, trying to get up, but Ohia just hoisted her closer.
“I take you inside, fix you something for eat. Bet you never wen’ eat today,” the neighbor went on, hauling Nani into the fetid interior. They disappeared, and the door slammed.
“That went well.” Stevens gestured Lei over. “You okay?”
“Worried about HIV, but yeah.” Lei put her hands in her uniform pockets, missing the cowry.
“Shit.” He seemed at a loss, finally went on. “So much for the female officer breaking the news strategy. Let’s canvass these neighbors since we’re here, maybe she’ll be calm enough to answer some questions later.”
“Okay.” She followed him as they went to the next house and worked their way down the street.
The neighbors were voluble on the subject of Nani, Haunani and the younger brother Alika, a high school freshman. Nani, a known drug addict, had been turned in to Social Services multiple times over the years and the neighbors had given up doing much besides feeding the kids when they came by. One witness alluded to Haunani being picked up and dropped off by someone in a “dark Toyota truck.”
Stevens shut his notebook after the fifth house. “We’ve got some leads here. Let’s head back to Nani’s and see if she’s ready to talk.”
Chapter 6
Stevens’ cell rang as they walked back through untrimmed grass along a cracking asphalt road that had never seen a sidewalk. Various barking dogs marked their progress.
“Yeah, come down,” Lei heard him say. “We’re heading back for another run at the mother. She didn’t take the news well, got a little belligerent.”
That was one word for it, Lei thought, looking at the band-aid on the back of her hand. She could still felt the shocking wet of spittle on her face. She put her hand back in her pocket. No cowry. She bent and picked up a kukui nut out of the grass, slipped it into her pocket with an immediate feeling of relief.
He slid the Blackberry back into a holder on his belt. “Jeremy’s on his way with your partner; he’s swinging by to pick you up after we talk to Nani.”
Lei didn’t answer. He gave her a sidelong glance, a quick blaze of blue that seemed to see more than she wanted him to.
“Stay back from her.”
“I have more experience with her type than you think.” She couldn’t help the bitterness that crept into her voice. Her mother’s face flashed into her mind’s eye, dreamy as she pushed down the plunger of a syringe.
“She got you good with that cigarette. You may not be able to make this any better for her, but I appreciate that you tried.”
They reached the stoop and Stevens banged on the plywood door. He had to bang twice before Ohia’s face appeared, eyes like raisins pushed into rich brown dough.
“She lying down. She high.”
“Let us in.” Stevens pulled the door further open, and brushed by Ohia into a dim interior that smelled of mildew and rotting food. A living area furnished with futons on the floor and a TV with rabbit ears opened into a bedroom. Lei followed Stevens in and stood over a mattress on the floor.
Nani lay in the center of the bed on a quilt that had once been beautiful, handsewn in a traditional Hawaiian pattern. Her legs were together, her arms crossed on her chest. She laid perfectly straight, eyes closed. The glass pipe and red Bic were set on an upturned coffee can beside the mattress, along with an empty twist of foil.
“Nani. Can you answer some questions? We need to know anything we can about who Haunani was seeing, who might have done this to her.”
No reply.
“Nani.” He reached down, nudged her shoulder. Her body went loose then, wobbling with the force of his shaking, and her head dropped to the side, mouth falling open.
He put two fingers on her neck. “Still got a pulse, but she’s too far gone right now. We’ll have to come back.”
Lei turned to Ohia, who stood behind them, a bulky shadow.
“Can you keep an eye on her? Maybe get some friends in to clean up a bit?”
“She nevah get any friends.” Still the woman backed up, headed toward the sink piled with pots and pans.
“Thanks,” Lei said. “We’ll be back to talk to her again.”
They pushed out into sunlight that felt blinding, air that tasted sweet. Lei rubbed the kukui nut. Its ridges were soothing under her fingers. The Crown Victoria, with Pono behind the wheel and Jeremy in the passenger seat, pulled up on the lawn in front of them. Stevens reac
hed into his pocket, handed her his card.
“Call me if you think of anything else. Thanks for helping.”
“You know I’d like to work on the case full time.”
“I’m holding out for more detectives. I may still be able to use you though.”
“Okay. I guess.”
She headed for the Crown Vic and passed Jeremy, who deliberately avoided eye contact. He must resent her replacing him, however briefly, she thought as she got into the cruiser beside Pono. She glanced back at Stevens and Jeremy as they pulled away. They were looking at his notebook and discussing something. Stevens gestured to the houses they had already canvassed.
She turned her eyes away.
“How’d it go?” Pono had his Oakleys down but she could see concern in the deep line between his brows.
“Not well.” She held up her hand with its band-aid and gave a brief summary. Pono rubbed his mustache, shook his head.
“Fucking tweekers.”
“She’s still a mother whose child was killed.” Lei wished she could forget the way Nani had arranged herself like an effigy on the bed.
They drove in morose silence on a beat of downtown Hilo, which Pono called his “hood.” The cruiser rolled past the corner of a warehouse in the industrial section, and Lei spotted several teenage boys with paint cans tagging the side of a building.
Pono hit the siren and lights, and the Crown Vic roared forward. Lei snorted a laugh at the way the kids jumped about two feet in the air, dropped the cans, and ran. The squad car chased them down the alley until they scattered in different directions.
“Feel like running?” Pono asked.
“Oh yeah!” Adrenaline surged through her, the perfect antidote to angst, and she jumped out of the rolling vehicle to chase one of the miscreants. Pono continued after the others in the cruiser.
She charged after the teen until he ran into a chain-link fence, and grabbed the back of his shirt as he began to climb. She peeled him off the fence and slammed him down, her knee in the middle of his back as she cuffed him. He spat curses at her but shut up when she gave his arms an extra upward wrench. She walked him back toward the main road with a hand on the back of his neck, the buzz of adrenaline singing along her veins.
Pono had caught another of the kids and they took them down to the station and walked them in.
“You Chang boys getting in trouble again?” Sam at the watch desk frowned when he saw the teens. “I going call your grandma. She going give you lickins.”
The kids hung their heads as he berated them, following them into the station. Lei spotted Stevens filling up a plastic water bottle from the water dispenser. She hurried across the bull pen toward him.
“Stevens-how’d it go after I left?”
“You look hot.”
“Yeah.” She brushed sweaty curls back from her forehead. “Chasing some taggers downtown.”
“Get your man?”
“Of course.” She gestured toward Pono and Sam at the booking desk with the boys. “So how did the canvassing go?”
“Didn’t get much more than when you were there.” He screwed the top back onto his water bottle. “We have some leads with Haunani’s cell phone, which that neighbor Ohia found at the house. We also have a shitload of stuff to process from the campsite.”
“What about talking to Kelly’s parents today? Need any help?”
“No, Jeremy and I are handling that. You can get back to… whatever you do.” He made a vague gesture that encompassed her sweaty hair, crumpled uniform and the hangdog teenagers at the booking desk.
“You know what? Forget it. Good luck with the investigation.” Lei spun away, a hot prickle of rage sweeping up to her hairline, knowing she was over-reacting and no longer giving a damn. She stomped back over to Pono. “Let’s go, Pono. I think we missed a few.”
Pono ripped the boys’ incident writeup off his pad, slapping it down on the desk.
“Yeah, okay. Sam, can you finish this up? My partner’s out for justice.”
Lei blew through the double doors and was in the Crown Vic revving the engine when Pono got in. She pulled out and laid down some rubber turning onto the busy avenue, roaring back toward town.
“What’s up?”
“Fucking Stevens.”
“Turned you down for a date?”
“Turned me down for the investigation.”
“Asshole,” said Pono, rubbing his lips hard to suppress a grin. “So I guess you asked to be on the case.”
“I have an interest,” she said. “And a lot to offer. But whatever. He’s a prick.”
“For the record, did you for once think about how this would affect me if you got reassigned?”
“Hey, you get along with everybody. It’d only be temporary.”
“Well… if you feel that strongly you should go to the Lieutenant and ask.”
“Maybe I will.”
After a long pause, Pono turned the radio to the Hawaiian station. Slack key guitar filled the Crown Vic with soft rhythms.
“Let it go a’ready. Otherwise you come stress out,” he said, leaning back with his trademark mellow. “Seems like those Chang boys we picked up are following in their grandpa’s footsteps.”
“What do you mean?”
“Terry Chang. He was a real crime godfather around here. Got put away finally and some good citizen offed him in prison. Word is his wife is running things now. She’s not going to be happy with those boys drawing attention by getting picked up.”
“Looks like they wanted to get to work building their rap sheets,” Lei said. She hit the steering wheel in frustration. “Those girls deserve more.”
“Like what? You’re not even a detective yet.”
“Something about this case-it’s like it found me. But whatever, it seems like you and Stevens are on the same page.”
“I never said I agree with him, but I understand why he’s trying to get the best. This is the biggest murder to happen in Hilo in forever.”
Lei had no answer, no way to explain her need to help-because what he said was the truth. They drove back through the industrial area, but the taggers were long gone. They continued on their normal route as late afternoon turned into evening.
“There’s more to this than meets the eye,” Pono said eventually. “It could have gone down like people’re saying, with the girls going to party with some nasty icehead or something. But I like Kelly’s stepdad for this.”
“Really?”
“He’s squirrelly. Lawyered up for his interview today, and so far there’s no reason to.”
“How’d you hear this?”
“I have my sources.” Pono knew everyone, and the station was full of his ‘talk story’ moles.
“Maybe he felt discriminated against,” she said, elbowing him. “It’s not easy being the white minority.”
“He one stupid haole,” Pono stated. ‘Haole’ meant Caucasian or newcomer, and the word wasn’t always complimentary in a state where only a third of the population was white.
“Huh,” Lei said. “Hey, it’s trash day, early evening… maybe he put their trash out on the road already.” She typed the stepfather’s last name into the ToughBook computer screwed into the dash with her right hand while steering with her left. He lived in central Hilo, only a few miles away.
“No need we go look. They always saying, do your own job. You so nosy, you going get us fired,” Pono lapsed into pidgin, cracking his big brown knuckles.
“Not nosy. Pro-active. If that trash is out there, it’s in the open and fine for us to take it, and tomorrow morning it will be gone as an option. We’ll turn anything we find over to the detectives. What are you so scared of? Extra work?”
“Shut up. I just know Stevens and Ito won’t like it.”
“So what? We’re helping them. If we find anything, we’ll give it to them, let them take the credit.”
“It’s a miracle we found the crime scene. Now, we’re investigating. It’s not our kuleana,
our responsibility.”
“I don’t know about you, but I care about catching a killer. I care about what happened to those girls, and if you like the stepdad for it, that’s a valid hunch. We’re just looking for another miracle.”
Pono subsided, moodily adjusting his side mirror.
“What’s the baby up to these days?” she asked, to distract him.
“You don’t really care.”
She didn’t, so she shut up and drove.
It didn’t take long to get to the middle-class neighborhood where Kelly had lived. They rolled quietly along the street, lit tastefully by carriage-lamp streetlights. Lei passed the house, a modest ranch. The black plastic trash cans sat on the curb.
“They’re out there. What do you think?” Lei tried to suppress the excitement in her voice.
“Since when did you listen to what I think? Let’s just get this over with. Cruise back by, we’ll dump the trash into the crime-scene bags,” Pono said, his mouth tight.
The backseat held a box of heavy-duty transparent garbage bags from emptying the junked cars. Pono pulled on latex gloves as she turned the corner again and drove slowly toward the house. She pulled up and put the car in park, as Pono leapt out and headed for the first can. She was still pulling on latex gloves when he dumped the contents of the can into one of the plastic bags.
A dog began barking from inside the house as she helped him with the second can, holding the thick transparent plastic open so the garbage, fortunately already bagged, tumbled in.
“Shut up, goddamnit!” someone yelled at the dog, as they emptied the third one, threw the bags into the backseat, and jumped back in the cruiser. Lei put it in gear and they quietly picked up speed.
Pono sighed, leaning back and closing his eyes, rubbing his lips hard with his right hand.
“That imaginary cigarette taste pretty good?”
“You have no idea,” he said, his eyes still closed.
“Let’s pull over, have a quick look,” Lei said. Her hands were actually itching to rip into the bags.
“No way. Pollute the chain of evidence? What if there is something there, you want to be able to give it to Stevens, don’t you?”
