Torch Ginger

by Toby Neal

  Captain Fernandez stroked his beard some more. “Okay, wait on that one until the narco team brings in Nakamoto. You can move ahead with pursuing this, but keep it under wraps for now.”

  “Of course.” She collected the folder. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  Lei hurried back to the workstation, tense and energized. Jenkins followed as she started a new case file online, titling it “May/October Missing Persons,” while Jenkins got a case jacket going, filing duplicates of the missing persons photos with a two-hole punch.

  “We’re on a roll now.” Jenkins rubbed his hands together gleefully and slapped them down on his thighs. “What next?”

  “Let’s get out and do some canvassing, start at the south side of the island and work our way back through the parks to Ke`e Beach, the beginning of the Na Pali cliffs. This time of year more of the park dwellers will be on the dry side of the island.”

  Lei put the file with pictures of the pairs of missing into her backpack, Jay Bennett’s on top.

  “Sounds good.” They got to the parking lot and flipped a coin for which car to take. Jenkins won, so they got into the Subaru.

  “It’s pretty unbelievable that so many people have disappeared without anyone in KPD putting the pieces together.”

  Lei shook her head—conflicted. Jenkins criticizing the way locals did business wasn’t something she wanted to hear; but she couldn’t help agreeing that the law enforcement community had missed what was happening. If it had been local teenagers disappearing, the community would have been up in arms. Still, part of her understood resentment toward these outsiders, whose biggest contribution to the area was increased drug sales and overflowing toilets in the parks.

  “We’re dealing with it now,” she said shortly.

  Her cell rang.

  “Texeira.”

  “It’s Alika Wolcott. This an okay time?”

  She glanced over at Jenkins. “Shoot. What’s up?”

  “I wondered when you were coming by to check out my burglary.”

  “Oh crap. I totally forgot.”

  “Way to make me feel special.” Flirtatious, slightly mocking tone.

  “There’s a big case. It’s taken over everything, and I completely spaced it. I can send a unit to take your statement.”

  “I’d rather you came yourself.”

  Lei paused, chewing her lip. Jenkins glanced at her, cocked an eyebrow.

  “Okay. I guess I can swing by on my way home from work, but it’s going to be later, a lot later.”

  “No problem. You got the address?”

  “Yeah. You gave it to me at the office.”

  “Bring a swimsuit.”

  “What?”

  “Bring a swimsuit. I want to show you my new pool.”

  “This is business,” Lei said frostily. “I’ll come and take a statement and an inventory, see what I can see. That’s all.”

  “I hope you’ll change your mind when you see the pool. Later, then.” He wisely hung up before she could.

  “Who was that?”

  “Dude I met at Paradise Realty. Wants me to check out a break-in at his place.” Her scalp flushed with annoyance and something else.

  “He hitting on you?”

  “Trying. Wants me to come swimming in his pool.”

  Jenkins laughed. “He obviously doesn’t know who he’s up against, Sweets.”

  “Hey. I like guys as much as the next girl. Just not slick developer dudes with pools.”

  “Right. Tell that to the working slobs who’ve tried to ask you out.”

  Lei ducked her head. “I’m getting over a relationship. ’Nuff said.”

  “Okay, if you say so.” Jenkins concentrated on the road and Lei leafed through the folder of missing persons photos they planned to show around. They drove on in silence, out past Lihue and Waimea to the park called Polihale, which marked the southern end of the Na Pali Coast.

  Polihale was in the lee of precipitous mountains that blocked rainfall, so it was as dry as the opposite side of the island was green and lush. A mile-long stretch of windswept beach culminating in rugged red cliffs, Polihale was the wintering ground of the peripatetic homeless community.

  They parked the Subaru and got out. Hot wind tugged at Lei’s curls, and she bundled them back with a rubber band, taking off her jacket and draping it over the seat. She slipped her gun and her badge into her pants pockets; Jenkins did the same. No sense advertising they were cops—the park dwellers would pick up on that soon enough.

  Locking the car, they set off across the dunes. Kiawe trees, brought in by missionaries centuries ago, strewed the path with thorny, brittle twigs.

  “Good thing we’re not barefoot,” Jenkins said.

  “Think that’s the idea.” Lei referred to the rumor that the missionaries had brought the trees in to force Hawaiians to wear shoes. She tipped her head back to look at one of the gnarled trees, slanting sideways from the prevailing wind direction. “Annoying as the thorns are, without the kiawe we wouldn’t have any shade at all out here.”

  Over the rise of the first dune the park appeared—a series of desolate cement pavilions with built-in barbeques and chained-down picnic tables. Graffiti covered everything, and the metal oil-barrel trash cans were overflowing. Jenkins made a little disapproving sound and Lei surveyed the area with her hands on her hips.

  Clustered beneath the rise of another dune were a group of tents. She pointed. “Over there.”

  They struggled a bit though the shifting dunes, the wind-blown sand stinging like needles. The tent village had made the most of the landscape—huddled in a hollow and sheltered by several large kiawes, the area was pleasantly warm and still. On a carpet scrap in front of one of the tents a young mother changed a baby’s diaper. She shaded her face to look at them, and called to someone inside a nearby tent.

  They slithered down the embankment into the cuplike hollow.

  “Hey. We’re looking for some missing people and wondered if you could take a look at some pictures.” Lei indicated the file folder of photos.

  “Sure,” the woman said. She wore a paisley smock, strings of puka shells, and her blondish hair was in waist-length dreads. The nut-brown baby burbled a greeting, waving both hands.

  A lean, muscular man emerged from the nearest tent, standing upright in a patterned brown sarong. Thick sun-streaked hair brushed his shoulders, his skin gleamed with oil, and if Lei wasn’t mistaken, he wasn’t wearing anything but the sarong.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’d like to take a look at those pictures.”

  “Sure.” Something about his narrowed eyes and arrogant physical stance put Lei on alert, but she kept her voice and demeanor relaxed, her eyes down. She handed over the file of printed color pictures.

  As they stood there, the occupants of five tents emerged one by one. They ranged in age from an older couple in their sixties to several young people. They clustered around Sarong, looking at the photos of the missing.

  The older man pointed to one of the pictures with a knobbed forefinger.

  “I knew her. She was a nice girl.” He was missing several teeth, so the words were slurred, but there was no mistaking the snap of intelligence in his eyes.

  Lei took the picture out of the pile. He’d pointed to Tracy Enders, age twenty-six, disappeared in October of 2008.

  “When did you see her last?”

  “Ha`ena,” he said. “We switch parks when our permits expire. Tracy didn’t like Polihale as much, but the rain started early that year and so we were packing up to hitchhike out here, get away from the rain. When we went to leave, Tracy’s tent was still up but she was gone. We looked around, called for her, figured she’d hitched into town or something.” He shrugged.

  “Did you find anything unusual at her tent? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “No. I knew something was wrong, though, when we went back after the ten days on our permit was up and her tent was still there. It was ticketed though—and then the park guys
took it down eventually.”

  The young woman with the baby piped up.

  “I knew this guy.” She pointed to Jay Bennett’s photo. “Camped with him out at Ha`ena; he even came to the papaya farm a few times. Nice guy. What happened to him?”

  “We don’t know.” Lei belatedly remembered she and Jenkins had meant to go by a papaya farm where a noise complaint had been reported. In the excitement of following up on the Island Cleaning lead, it hadn’t seemed important.

  “All these people are missing?” Sarong asked, dark eyes piercing.

  “Yeah. We want to know where they might have ended up.”

  “I can guess.” He smiled, a wolfish display of extra-long canines that hadn’t seen a toothbrush in a while. “Suicides. Lotta people come here to disappear, find it lonelier and harder than they thought paradise should be.”

  “We’re considering all angles,” Jenkins said.

  The older woman spoke up, pushing long white braids behind her shoulders. “What Tiger is saying is that some things go on here, it’s better not to look into too much. Better to camp with friends and watch out for each other.”

  “That’s right. For your own safety, stick together,” Lei said. “Can you look through these again?”

  The file made the rounds. The old man handed them back.

  “I hope you find them.”

  Jenkins collected names. Lei doubted there was a single real one in the list he earnestly wrote down in the spiral notebook he carried, and the address had to be listed as “Local Parks” as the little colony made no bones about their lack of address.

  Done interviewing, Lei and Jenkins trudged the length of the sun-scoured park and found no one else.

  “Real tourist attraction, this.” Jenkins, back at the Subaru, dumped sand out of his shoes.

  “Yeah, the hidden Hawaii no one misses seeing.” Lei took a pull off her water bottle. “Something about the way they live is kinda appealing…No responsibility, just enjoying the outdoors all day.”

  “Those tents were hotter than hell and the shower didn’t look like it worked,” Jenkins said. “I’d rather go to work and be able to get in a comfy bed at night.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” She looked back as they pulled away. The man they called Tiger looked down at them from the top of the dune, his brown sarong somehow blending with the sand, muscled torso gleaming. He did remind her of a big cat, watchful eyes on the car as they pulled away.

  “Let’s run that guy they called Tiger,” she said, pulling the Toughbook computer out of its custom fold-down support arm in the glove box. “I like him for something. Not sure what, but he’s got a smell about him.”

  “Yeah, BO,” Jenkins said. “He said his name was Jim Jones.”

  The name reminded Lei of something, but she wasn’t sure what. She punched in the name. No matches on Kaua`i. Expanded the search. Came up with a few hits on the other islands, but no one matching his description.

  Suddenly, she remembered the name.

  “Jim Jones is the cult leader who made his people drink the Kool-Aid!” she exclaimed. “He’s sending us a message, all right. Turn around. I want to bring him in!”

  Chapter 7

  Jenkins cranked a turn, and they hauled ass back to the park. This time Jenkins drove the all-wheel drive as far as he could up onto the sucking sand while Lei radioed that they were bringing someone in for questioning.

  Lei hit the dune at a run, her cuffs in her back pocket, baton in hand, gun in sight in the holster, badge clipped to her belt. Jenkins was right beside her as they ran into the little tent village.

  It was deserted.

  The tents were empty, belongings neatly stacked inside, but the campers were gone.

  Lei hurried through, checking, then ran to the top of the nearest dune. She looked in all directions. Nothing but sand and sparkling ocean as far as the eye could see.

  “Can we search these tents for ID, substances?” Jenkins asked, peering into the one Tiger had come out of.

  “I think they are considered temporary dwellings, so we’d need probable cause.”

  “I think I see some probable drugs in here,” Jenkins said mockingly, and unzipped the tent.

  They ended up rifling through the belongings in all the tents. The total lack of anything personal was notable—left behind were sleeping bags, food in plastic Tupperware, toiletries, even a small kitten. But no personal items, not so much as a photograph.

  They rezipped the tents but made no effort to conceal their search—after all, it was evident the group had anticipated it. Lei made sure the kitten’s water dish was full. She frowned.

  “How did they do it? Where did they go?”

  She surveyed the area again. Dunes, clumps of dry bushes, a few twisted kiawe trees, the barren pavilions. She and Jenkins tramped the length of the park and banged the bushes with sticks, getting hotter and more frustrated by the minute. There was nowhere to hide. And yet they were gone, vanished. “Jim Jones” was taunting them from some hideout; Lei was sure of it.

  They went back to the Subaru, emptied their shoes again, drained their water bottles, and radioed in defeat.

  Back at the station, evening was encroaching with a cooling of the light. They booted up computers in their workstation to enter notes.

  “Seems like they must have something to hide. Like they were prepared to get made.”

  “I think that’s exactly what they’re prepared for,” Lei said. “They’re more than just a random group of campers. I think they might be some kind of cult, and ‘Jim Jones’ is their leader.”

  They put out a Be On Lookout—a BOLO—on one mixed-race male, mid-thirties, approximately six foot, wearing a sarong and going by “Tiger” or “Jim Jones.” Lei had little hope it would yield anything; the guy could disappear if he wanted to, which reminded her why this case wasn’t simple.

  So many of these people wanted to disappear—that’s what they came to Kaua`i for.

  She drove homeward distracted, mulling over the case, and halfway home turned into the subdivision on the bluffs overlooking the ocean where Alika’s development was going up. She drove around gracefully curving roads studded with full-sized transplanted coconut trees and pulled into the driveway of a huge Mediterranean-style mansion. Its gracious edifice was punctuated by wrought-iron railings and red tile roofs on multiple levels. The house appeared finished, though the lawn wasn’t yet filled in; roped off with plastic tape, sprinklers whirled over thin shoots of grass.

  She rang the bell, a chiming song deep inside the house. Alika came to open the massive double door with its beveled glass insets. He had nothing on but a great physique and a pair of swim trunks.

  “Thought I told you this was business.”

  “I was planning to take a swim in the pool. It’s out back.” He gestured. Her scalp prickled with embarrassment—she’d overreacted.

  “You said you had a burglary?” She held up the little Nikon and a clipboard with incident report forms attached.

  “Upstairs, and the garage. It’s for real, in case you thought I lured you here on false pretenses. But maybe after you investigate you’d like to take a swim too?”

  The idea sounded wonderful. Lei felt sticky from tackling the Polihale dunes, but she shook her head.

  “Think I’ll pass. Where’s the supposed crime scene?”

  “Follow me.” He preceded her up a curving staircase trimmed in native hardwood koa and led Lei into an office off the landing.

  “I bought some nice furniture for showing the house. Leather couches, a flat-screen TV. Everything is still here but the TV.” He gestured to the leather couches, still partly covered in plastic bubble wrap. “It looks to me like they decided not to take them.”

  Lei pulled out the Nikon and took some pictures, began filling out the form.

  “Any damage? How did they get in?”

  “Don’t know how they got in. Kinda like those other burglaries that way. I don’t have the house alarmed yet, but not
hing was broken into. It seems like the burglars unlocked the door, took what they wanted, and locked up again.”

  “Anything else?”

  Alika was standing a hair too close. She couldn’t help feeling the heat from his near-naked body and pick up his scent—a subtle hint of clove and cut grass.

  “Yeah. They took some supplies I was storing in the garage downstairs.”

  “I better see that; then you can put in a claim with your insurance.”

  He led her back downstairs. She looked out the sliding-glass doors off the living room to the patio, where a cobalt-tiled pool shimmered.

  “Wow. The pool really is gorgeous.”

  “I’m kind of proud of it.” His voice warmed. “I wanted it to go with the Mediterranean feeling of the house, so I used Portuguese tiles.” He led her over to the sliders, pushed one open. The pool area was surrounded by a redwood fence that cut the wind. Areca palms bent gracefully over smoothly groomed grass, and oversized terra-cotta planters bloomed with bright red geraniums. The pool was set among them like a giant lapis lazuli.

  “Oh—that looks so good,” Lei said longingly.

  “Well, let’s go swimming. The garage isn’t going anywhere.”

  She paused, considering. She felt suddenly intolerably hot and itchy from the day.

  “Okay. Let me get my suit.”

  She went back out to the truck, dug the brand-new bikini out from behind her seat. The tags still dangled as she hadn’t had time to wear it, and she eyed the scraps of yellow material apprehensively. A fast-talking saleslady had gotten her to try it on when she went in for her annual black tank suit and wouldn’t take no for an answer once she saw it on Lei, giving too deep a discount to turn down. Lei put it behind her back as she returned to the house and Alika.

  “Where can I change?”

  “Through there, guest bath.” He pointed.

  Lei walked through the house and into the elegant bathroom, where she reached over to the sink and splashed water on her face. She peeled off smelly clothes, avoiding looking at herself until she had the suit on.

  It really was amazing. The halter top was just ruched enough to give her a little more fullness up top, and the high-cut bottom with a gold ring at the hip emphasized her long, toned legs. The yellow highlighted her tan, and tiny brown polka-dots subtly mimicked her freckles.