Death of a Messenger

by Robert McCaw

  Koa paused and thought for a minute. “Get on the horn to Jimmy Hikorea, and get him up here as soon as you can. He can help you inventory the stuff. We’ll want a seizure order, so we’ll have to submit an affidavit with a listing to a judge.”

  “Okay, Koa. What are you going to do?”

  “I want to look at the paperwork for this container and have a word with the driver. Then we’re going to book Mr. Garvie Jenkins.”

  Koa retrieved a sheaf of documents, including the bill of lading, from the cab of the tractor and flipped through them. Just as Sergeant Basa had said, the international bill of lading identified the shipper as “The Alice Telescope Project” and described the contents as “used machine tools, computer parts, servos, and other miscellaneous industrial parts.” The shipment had been consigned to a freight forwarder in Honolulu for transshipment to a Hong Kong address for Oriental Reprocessing. Scrawled, almost illegibly, in the bottom right-hand corner of the bill of lading was the shipper’s authorized signatory.

  Koa noticed Jenkins watching him as he walked over to speak to the forlorn trucker. The trucker, too, noticed Jenkins and turned his back on his employer. Koa regarded that as a good sign.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. Where did you pick up the load?”

  “That Alice place. You know, the HQ up in Waimea.”

  “Anybody supervise the loading?”

  “Not really.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The container, she was all packed and buttoned up. This guy, Charlie, one of the Alice guys, he signs the paperwork. He’s got a big red face, like he drinks. Ya know the type.”

  Koa nodded crisply. Even though Charlie Harper, the pervert, was on probation, Koa couldn’t suppress a tingle of satisfaction.

  “The container was locked and sealed when you picked it up?”

  “Yup.”

  Koa couldn’t decide whether the driver was borderline dumb or complicit. “Anybody tell you what was inside?”

  “Just astronomy stuff, like it says on the lading.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Mr. Jenkins.”

  “You work for him?”

  “Yup, sometimes. Like whenever he needs a driver, he calls me. Might be a couple times a month.”

  The man answered without hesitation, and Koa began to think he might be no more than a hired driver. “When was the last time you worked for him before today?”

  “About ten days back when I hauled the empty container up to that Alice place so them astronomy guys could pack it.”

  “You left the container on the truck bed?”

  “Yup. They ain’t got no derrick up there at that Alice place.”

  If the container hadn’t been moved off the flatbed at Alice, the secret compartment must have been packed before the vehicle had reached Alice. “Where did you pick up the truck?”

  “Jenkins’s place, a shop near the docks in Hilo.”

  “You know about that hidden compartment?”

  “No, honest. I didn’t know nothing about it.”

  Again, no hesitation, just a straightforward response. “But you knew that the container didn’t fit right on the truck. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  The driver shrugged, and his expression remained unchanged. “Yup. I asked Mr. Jenkins about that. He said it was just an old container made before they standardized ’em.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I didn’t think much about it. Honest, I didn’t.”

  That had a ring of truth. “Give your name and address to the detective over there. Give him a complete statement. Everything just like you told me. Understand?”

  The wrinkles in the man’s brow smoothed, but Koa saw no indication that he thought he had pulled a fast one. “Yup, I understand.”

  “Then you can go.”

  “I ain’t gonna git paid?”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  Koa turned to Garvie Jenkins. “You are under arrest. You have a constitutional right to remain silent—”

  “I heard that shit before,” Jenkins interrupted.

  “Yes, I know, but I’m not going to be happy until you’ve heard it again,” Koa responded, before continuing with the standard Miranda warning. He handcuffed Jenkins, placed him in the backseat of a police vehicle, and instructed Basa to take Jenkins to Hilo for booking on illegal antiquities charges.

  Eager to pursue the next link in the chain, Koa headed up the hill toward Waimea and the Alice administrative offices. On the drive, he called Police Chief Lannua, who expressed great interest in the container with the secret compartment. Koa had no doubt that the state police and the FBI would soon be tracing all its previous movements. Although chomping at the bit to confront Charlie Harper, Koa knew he had to exercise caution. If the secret compartment had been packed before the container arrived at Alice, Harper could be innocent, but then again, why would a premier outfit like Alice use a slime ball shipper like Starfish?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  A CALL TO Julie Benson, Director Masters’ assistant, told Koa that Charlie Harper was “on the mountain” adjusting a detector on Alice I, so Koa headed for the summit of Mauna Kea. On the way, his car phone rang, and he answered to the booming voice of Zeke Brown, the county prosecutor.

  “I hear you busted Garvie Jenkins. Nailed him while in possession. Nice work.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “Your chief called, said Alice was the shipper. Is that right?”

  “Yes, for the legitimate cargo, but I’m not sure about the artifacts in the separate compartment.” Koa explained what they had found. “The way I see it, that hidden compartment must have been loaded in Hilo. Jenkins may have been using Alice to cover up his movement of artifacts. I’m on my way to talk to Harper now. He signed the bill of lading.”

  “Hmm, that’s good,”—Koa held the phone away from his ear to avoid being deafened by Zeke’s voice—“but I’ve got news for you. Remember the GPR machine? We traced the serial number.”

  “And?” Koa asked. As he listened, his eyebrows shot up at the content of Zeke’s report. The portable GPR machine had originally been purchased by the Alice Telescope Project.

  After gaining entry to Alice I, Koa stopped in the control room to see if he could catch Nālani. She was surprised and delighted when he popped in the door. Since she was alone, they embraced, sharing a kiss. Releasing her, he asked her where he could find Charlie Harper.

  “You’re not going after him for harassing me, are you?” she asked, concern flashing in her eyes.

  “No. It’s about a shipment of stolen antiquities we just stopped.”

  Her hand went to her mouth. “Charlie? I know he’s got roving hands, but antiquities theft?” She looked dubious. “He’s into hula dancers and martinis, not Hawaiian history or artifacts. Gee, Koa, he’s the last person I’d suspect of looting graves.” She added that Harper was inside the dome, working on the telescope.

  Koa walked across the floor of the dome, looking up at the huge telescope, before entering a small elevator cage. The lift carried him up two floors to the platform surrounding the telescope. Charlie, wearing headphones, sat with his back to Koa, hunched over a laptop connected to a large box. Koa steeled himself. One part of him wanted to hammer Charlie Harper for his unwanted advances toward Nālani, but he forced himself to put his personal feelings aside.

  “Mr. Harper?” No answer. “Mr. Harper?” Koa yelled.

  “Oh.” Charlie Harper turned and removed his headphones. “You’re Nālani’s date. What are you doing here?”

  “Mr. Harper, I’m actually Chief Detective Koa Kāne of the Hawai‘i County police. I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Did that bi—” He caught himself.

  Koa was ready to pound him for that. “Did you say something, Mr. Harper?”

  “Nothing important. Have I done something wrong? Do I need a lawyer?”

 
; “I don’t know, Mr. Harper.” Koa forced himself back down to his regular calm. “Is there someplace we can talk?”

  “We can talk here. Besides, I got this detector opened up. I can’t leave without closing her back up.”

  “Okay. You shipped some used parts to a Hong Kong reprocesser?”

  “Right. Anything wrong with that?”

  “You make such shipments often?”

  “Not often, maybe once or twice a year. What’s this all about, anyway?”

  “Who packed the container?”

  “Most of the stuff came from up here. Some of it was packed up here. Techs packed the rest at the admin offices. Something wrong with the packing?”

  The man seemed oblivious to the import of Koa’s questions. Or maybe it was an act to throw him off. “Who put the boxes in the container?”

  “I don’t know. Techs and some day laborers at the admin offices. Did the container break open? Was there an accident?”

  “They packed the container while it was on the truck?”

  “I suppose they must have. We don’t have a crane at the admin offices.”

  “Who arranged for the shipment?”

  “I did. That’s part of my job.”

  “What company did you use?”

  “Jesus, I don’t rightly remember. StarFreight, StarLight, Star something. What difference does it make?”

  Koa didn’t like the evasion and probed harder.

  “Has the Alice Telescope Project ever used that company before?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Didn’t you arrange the previous shipment?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you use the same company?”

  “No, I don’t think we did.”

  Harper wasn’t acting as Koa had expected. He seemed genuinely confused. “Why did you choose Starfish Shipping?”

  “That’s it. Starfish. I knew it was Star something.”

  “Why did you choose Starfish?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  Koa had had enough of the man’s questions. “Mr. Harper, I’m asking the questions. Why did you choose that particular company?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Who did?”

  “Deputy Director Nelson handled it while I was over in O‘ahu at a symposium.”

  That answer would need to be checked. In the meantime, Koa wanted to move on to another subject. “What do you know about ground penetration radar?”

  “GPR? Not too much. We have a machine. I know that.”

  “Why would Alice have a GPR machine?”

  “Because of the old graves.”

  Koa’s ears pricked up at the mention. “Graves?”

  “Ancient Hawaiians viewed this mountain as sacred. It’s historical mumbo jumbo, but Director Masters doesn’t want to roil the damned native sovereignty crowd, so whenever we construct something, we can’t touch old grave sites. But nobody knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak. We check the construction areas with the GPR machine.”

  Didn’t any of these astronomers ever get sensitivity training? Koa wondered. “When was the GPR machine last used?”

  “I don’t rightly remember. Maybe eighteen, maybe twenty months ago, somewhere around then.”

  The lead that Zeke Brown had given him didn’t look so damning now. “Where’s the machine?”

  “One of the storage rooms.”

  “I’d like to see it.” Koa’s request was a clear command.

  “What? You want to see the GPR machine?”

  “Yes and now.” Koa’s voice brooked no opposition.

  “I’ve got to button this detector up. It’ll take me a few minutes.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

  Harper unplugged several electrical cables from the detector, replaced covers, and latched the device closed. Then Koa followed Charlie down to the main floor into the storage wing of Alice II.

  “Should be in here,” Charlie said as he unlocked a storage room. Yet when they looked, they didn’t find a GPR machine. They searched three other storage rooms, but the machine was nowhere to be found.

  “Jesus Christ,” Harper exclaimed, “the machine’s gone, and I’m responsible for the physical plant. Masters is gonna hang me by my balls when he finds out.” A light seemed to dawn in his eyes. “Hey, you knew it was missing. You knew, that’s why you asked. You found it, didn’t you? You found it and traced the serial number.”

  Koa ignored Harper’s questions. “Who has access to these storage rooms?”

  “Gee, the director and the assistant directors have keys to everything. So does the duty tech. Anybody could borrow the duty tech’s keys. They’re kept in a drawer in the control room.”

  “When were these storage rooms last inventoried?”

  “Uh, I don’t rightly remember.”

  Koa frowned. The man was responsible for the physical plant and didn’t remember the last inventory. That didn’t make sense. “You were responsible for the inventory, weren’t you?”

  Harper hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Then you must remember when the last inventory was taken.”

  “Yes, but …”

  “But what?” Koa’s voice took on a hard edge.

  “Well, sometimes the inventory isn’t done that carefully.”

  “Are you telling me you faked the last inventory?”

  Charlie didn’t answer, but his sheepish look and downcast eyes were all the confirmation Koa needed. Damn, he thought, Harper’s either incompetent or he’s covering something up.

  “So you have no idea when the GPR machine went missing? Or who took it?”

  Charlie shook his head.

  The reading he was getting on Harper was inconclusive, but he did seem like a natural-born loser. Koa decided to use the opportunity to check whether the man had an alibi. “Where were you on Wednesday night, January 21?”

  “That’s my poker night. Five of us get together every Wednesday night.”

  “Where?”

  “Pete Chalmers’s house in Hilo. He’s a buddy I met on the golf course.”

  “You there all night?”

  “Naw, I got bad cards and went home about midnight.”

  That fit the time frame. “And you were home the rest of the night?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  That didn’t sound convincing. “What do you know about the relationship between Nakano and your wife?” Koa asked the question with a steely edge in his voice.

  Harper opened his mouth and seemed to shrink away. “I didn’t …”

  “You didn’t what, Mr. Harper?”

  “I didn’t like her hanging out with that fuckin’ history group.”

  “So, what did you do about it, Mr. Harper?”

  “Nothing.” The anger in his eyes telegraphed the lie.

  Koa remembered Linda Harper’s huge sunglasses at the astronomy party. He’d wondered then if the sunglasses covered an injury. Maybe Linda Harper was a battered wife. Koa framed the question unfairly and took a certain pleasure in it. “Did you take it out on Keneke Nakano or your wife, Mr. Harper?”

  Harper’s face turned red and his chin quivered. After a moment’s hesitation, he fessed up. “Okay. I hit her. I didn’t like the bitch hanging around with that history club crowd. It was just wrong, them meeting at a hotel and all. Hell, I don’t even like her going out on her own. Made me nervous. But I didn’t kill Keneke. I swear, I didn’t.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Koa counted no fewer than fifteen law enforcement officers outside the ramshackle garage of Starfish Shipping in Hilo’s warehouse district. Two unmarked cars and six agents from the FBI, two cruisers and four uniformed officers from the state police, and two DEA vehicles. Zeke Brown, the county prosecutor, had an investigator with him.

  “Christ, they need twenty officers to serve a search warrant on an empty building?” Koa asked rhetorically.

  “They all want credit for your Jenkins bust. The
y think he’s a drug kingpin,” Basa responded.

  “They’re in for a disappointment.”

  “Why? You don’t think Jenkins was moving drugs?”

  “Oh, he was moving drugs and other contraband. FBI chemists found traces of marijuana and cocaine in that phony container. I just don’t think they’re going to find anything.”

  “Why?”

  “Jenkins is an ingenious bastard. His forged map scheme, the secret compartment in that container, the way he hid the Kaho‘olawe obsidian mine … he’s cunning. He almost fooled us on Kaho‘olawe.”

  “So you think he’s got another hideout?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d bet a half-dozen canoe lengths in the next race that he’s covered his tracks.”

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  Zeke Brown banged on the front door. “Police open up.”

  There was no response. On Zeke’s signal, his investigator hit the door with a sledgehammer. The door shattered with near-explosive force and swung inward, banging violently against a counter. Two FBI agents, guns drawn, entered the building. “Clear … clear … clear” sounded three times. One of them hit the light switches while the other found the controls for the bay doors, which groaned upward on rusty tracks.

  Koa entered the garage and stood alone in a corner watching the officers comb through the place. The building consisted of four rooms—a small office area with a customer service counter, a large double bay equipped with a single hydraulic lift, a cramped equipment room for the air compressor, and a tiny bathroom littered with filthy rags and other refuse.

  Battleship-gray paint splotched with petroleum stains covered the uneven concrete floor. Steel beams embedded in the walls supported a mobile hoist on rails near the ceiling. It was a well-equipped shop, where mechanics could easily have modified the sham container.

  Zeke’s investigators, the FBI men, and the DEA agents ransacked the place. They emptied a small file cabinet at the back of the office and rummaged through the cupboards under the counter. Two DEA agents methodically sorted through the tool chests. One of them pulled the cover from the electric arc welder, as though he expected to find a cache of contraband inside. One of the Bureau boys drew the nasty job of searching the filthy bathroom, only to be rewarded with a couple of dog-eared girlie magazines.