Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  Sirens announced the arrival of reinforcements. Lei looked up to see the new detective from L.A., Michael Stevens, striding toward them with a tall man’s loose-limbed grace. His wiry Asian partner, Jeremy Ito, trotted in his wake. She’d seen the pair around the station but never worked with them before.

  Blue eyes lasered her briefly from under black brows as Stevens scanned the scene and the bodies, hands on jeans-clad hips. Ito imitated Stevens’ stance.

  “Hey. What do we have?” Stevens was all business.

  “We came out on a vandalism call. Someone had trashed the bathroom, done some tagging.” Pono gestured to the dreary cinder block bunker mottled with graffiti beside their parked Crown Victoria. “We did a foot patrol around the pond and found the blonde first. Then Lei spotted the floater and towed her in.”

  Stevens and Ito both turned to look at Lei, incredulous. She felt a hot blush stain her cheeks, and her dripping slacks and squishy shoes screamed bad judgment. She extended a hand to Stevens.

  “Lei Texeira. I’ve seen you around.”

  He shook it, a brief hard pump. “Michael Stevens. I assume you know you shouldn’t have moved the body. Supposed to wait for the techs to get here, photograph it, all that.”

  “I thought she might be drowning.” Lei’s scalp prickled fiercely at the lie.

  “With the other one right here, obviously gone?” Ito’s soft voice had a hard edge as he narrowed eyes at her.

  “I’m sorry. It seemed wrong to leave her out there.” Closer to the truth, but still not the compelling need she’d had to bring the girl’s body in, to turn it over and see her face.

  “Well, what’s done is done.” Stevens squatted down to get a better look, leaning out over the mud. “The medical examiner’s on his way. Why don’t you two put up the tape before anyone else disturbs the scene.”

  “We know who the brunette is,” Pono said. “Lei busted her with weed at school awhile back.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. She’s a Hilo High junior. Haunani Pohakoa.” Lei shut her eyes against a flash of memory of sun on that shiny black hair—but when she closed them, she saw the girls’ drowned faces, and between them her own: tilted almond eyes closed, wide mouth slack, olive skin so pale the cinnamon freckles across her nose stood out like paint spatters.

  She recoiled, stepping back, and stumbled a little in the rough grass.

  Ito’s brows had come down in a frown as both detectives glanced at her. Pono gave her arm a tug.

  “Let’s go get the tape,” he said. She followed him, fleeing toward their parked cruiser, her pant legs rasping and shoes squelching.

  “I’ll expect all the details on how you know the victim in your report,” Stevens called after Lei as the M.E.’s van and the Lieutenant’s cruiser pulled up, and the dismal little park filled with the organized chaos that follows death.

  After combing over every inch of the banks of the small pond, Lieutenant Ohale ordered all available officers to search the two feeder streams for the original crime scene where the girls had gone into the water. Lei and Pono split from the others, taking the lower stream.

  Pono trailed behind her, his eyes scanning the ground, as Lei chugged a bottle of water one of the crime techs had given her. Adrenaline from the initial discovery had worn off, leaving her shaky and exhausted—but the same compulsion that had driven her into the water to retrieve the body drove her on now.

  Lei’s damp uniform chafed and her duty belt, loaded with radio, sidearm, cuffs, pepper spray, ammo, evidence bags and more, caught on scratching branches as they moved along slowly, looking for any signs of human presence. Humidity caused her rebellious brown curls to frizz out of the tight ponytail she’d restrained them with. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she swiped it away, glad of physical discomfort that distracted her from drowned faces.

  Once outside the immediate area of the park, their progress through underbrush along the creek was slow, impeded by tall christmasberry bushes. The invasive species from Brazil had become an islandwide problem, smothering native growth with its rapid spread. Dark green, glossy bushes peppered with clusters of red berries blanketed miles of open space, and almost choked the stream.

  A real estate sign marked the edge of the park and abandoned cars filled with trash, a rusted Jeep and rotting Pontiac, had been pushed into the undergrowth from the nearby road.

  “We might as well tag these abandoned cars for pickup.” Pono, ever conscientious, took out his pad of orange removal stickers.

  “I hate the way people dump their cars around here.” Lei picked her way over boggy ground to the first vehicle by stepping on top of grass clumps. “But it doesn’t help we don’t have any recycling facilities on the island. Anyway, you tag ’em, I’m going to keep looking.”

  Pono was still writing his description of the Pontiac as she pushed through long grass, hearing the rushing of water beyond the overgrown bushes. She spotted an opening.

  “Pono, looks like a break here. I’m gonna check it out.”

  “Right behind you.” Pono peered in to look for the VIN number on the Jeep’s dashboard.

  Lei edged her way across the boggy ground, pushing through raking branches. On the other side of the wall of shrubbery, a stream flowed beside a clearing marked with a fire ring and a shelter made by tying a tarp to the bushes. A palm tree leaned out over ruffled water, fronds waving in the slight breeze.

  Something about the setting oppressed Lei as she walked forward, surveying the area carefully. Perhaps it was the pile of discarded propane cans, soda bottles, and a dirty sleeping bag that testified to someone having camped there not long ago. Rocks made a handy access point to water otherwise choked by thick grass.

  A white rag was caught in the vegetation, along with something shiny. Lei squatted on the rocks and fished the objects out of the water: a long strip ripped from a T-shirt and a cluster of iridescent ribbon attached to an elastic hair tie.

  “Hey.” Pono crashed through the bushes, muttering as he slipped on the mud. “Anything interesting?”

  “These were caught in the stream.” Lei held up the hair bow. “It looks familiar.”

  “Looks familiar to me too. That’s a little girl’s hair tie.” Pono squatted beside her, examining the items.

  An image burst across Lei’s brain, indelible. Bluish closed eyes, straggling blonde hair on one side, and on the other ...a pigtail with a sparkly ribbon cluster.

  “Oh my God, Pono. I think we just found the primary crime scene.”

  Chapter Two

  “Shit. We trampled all over the ground,” Pono said. He hooked his radio off his belt and called it in.

  Lei let her eyes wander slowly over the lush scene, looking for anything out of place. She pictured a scenario: the girls coming out here, maybe to party, and then drugged and tied up. Raped? Maybe they knew their captor?

  “Detectives are on their way. They want us to stay put, secure the scene.”

  “Okay,” Lei said, standing at last. It was weird she’d found the crime scene so easily; almost like it was staged. This was one of those times Lei felt an electric tingle that signaled she was onto something, and that inner drive she’d followed hardened into resolve. She had to get assigned to the case—Haunani needed justice.

  She turned to look at the shelter. They would have to take everything there into evidence, including the trash in the junked cars. Stevens, Ito and the crime scene techs arrived, groaning at the mud and the amount of garbage that they would have to sort through.

  Lei helped empty the junked cars, putting garbage into heavy-duty evidence bags. Her uniform was hopeless by then, the legs of her pants soaked and muddy, mosquito bites peppering her arms. Replacements eventually arrived, sensibly dressed in boots and zip-front canvas overalls, with big portable lights to work into the night.

  “Stevens.” Lei addressed the tall detective as he sifted through the grass along the bank, latex gloves on his hands.

  “Yeah?” He straighte
ned up. “Funny how you keep finding things, Texeira.”

  “Just lucky. That’s why I think I should be on this investigation, Detective. I really want to find whoever killed Haunani Pohakoa.” She was surprised to feel tears stinging the backs of her eyes and blinked hard.

  “No offense, but I need experienced detectives. I’m asking the other districts to send us some of their best people.”

  Lei felt slapped. “You’ll find out for yourself how strapped for personnel Hilo District is. We’re always fighting the budget battle.”

  “Yeah, well, I gotta try.”

  “Let me know if I can help. I feel like this case found me as much as I found it.”

  “You take initiative, I’ll give you that.” He made a gesture that took in her filthy uniform and bedraggled appearance. “I’ll try and find something for you.”

  “Great. Hope you can use me.” Lei didn’t bother to suppress the sarcasm in her tone as she spun on a muddy heel and pushed back through the bushes to the cruiser.

  Sunset gilded the surface of the creek as a full moon crested above a backdrop of swaying trees. Lush grass lined the bank where a single palm leaned out, leaves fluttering over two girls floating in light-streaked water. The creamy skin of one contrasted with the earth tones of the other as their hair swirled in the stream.

  He adjusted the colors in Photoshop and tried black-and-white and sepia tones, eventually rejecting them. The final version enhanced the darkening blue of evening sky, fat pearl of moon and waning sunbeams caressing naked, facedown bodies. Blunt fingers rattled the keys as he titled the photo Orchids, and saved it to an external hard drive in a file filled with flowers.

  Not that photos were ever enough—that was why he kept a few reminders.

  He took a shiny new metal key ring out of his desk drawer, along with a Ziploc bag. Two long hanks of hair twined together in the bag—one silky blonde, the other a glossy raven-wing black. He eased the hair gently onto the desk, stroking and separating the colors, brushing them with a soft doll’s brush.

  Each piece was exactly twelve inches long. He savored the memory of measuring the hair on each sleeping girl’s head, his fingers finding the barely noticeable spot where he cut it, two inches up from the tender dip where the skull joined the neck.

  He doubled the blonde hank into a loop and tucked it in through the key ring, inserting the tail and tugging down so the hair hung secured by its own strands, and trimming it with surgical scissors so all the ends were aligned.

  He lingered a bit over the black hair, brushing and remembering. It was too bad he’d had to get rid of Haunani, but when she’d showed up to their special spot with her friend, he just had to have them together. The photos brought his art to a whole new level, and he could remember his time with them anytime he wanted. He opened his drawer and looked in at the other key ring, lush with a rainbow of red, blonde, brunette and black hair.

  That ring was full and the girls deserved their own—after all they’d given their lives.

  He attached Haunani’s hair to the new ring beside the blonde hank and leaned back in his chair, trailing the hair down his arms, across his chest. He stroked it beneath his nose where he could inhale their scent—grass, girl, and sunshine.

  That scent took him straight to his afternoon with them faster than jewelry, clothing, or even the photographs. As the criminologists said, he was evolving. He chuckled at the irony of it all, and closed his eyes again.

  Chapter Three

  Lei pulled into the detached garage of her little cottage. It had been a long day. The single-walled wooden structure built in the 1960’s—dark green with white trim—was characteristic of Hawaii plantation homes, right down to the galvanized tin roof that amplified the frequent Hilo rain to a percussion orchestra. Lei particularly loved the deep covered porch and the fenced yard where her Rottweiler could patrol during the day.

  Keiki put her massive paws up on the chain-link gate and whuffled with joy. She’d bought the young, police-trained dog for security when she moved to Hilo two years ago, and in that time Keiki had become much more than a guard—she was someone to come home to.

  “Hey, baby.” Lei rubbed Keiki’s ears. “Go around the back and I’ll meet you for drinks.” The big dog peeled off the gate and galloped around the side of the house as Lei unlocked the front door and let herself in, deactivating the alarm with a few keystrokes. Pono had teased her about her security measures since few people in Hilo locked their doors, let alone had an alarm system—but he’d backed off when she told him a little of her story. More than anything, she needed to feel safe in her home.

  Keiki burst through the unlocked dog door. She skidded to a stop as Lei held up her hand. The dog plunked her hindquarters on the floor, grinning. Lei squatted in front of her and rubbed her wide chest.

  “Good girl. Mama’s home.”

  Keiki snorted, burying her nose in Lei’s armpit.

  “Yeah, I know I’m ripe,” she said, getting up and dumping food into Keiki’s bowl. “You pour the wine and I’ll be out in a minute.”

  The dog buried her nose in the bowl. Lei had grabbed a burger on the way home—food was not something she liked to spend time on—just fuel for the body. She went into the linoleum-floored bathroom and took the cowry out of her pocket, setting it on the sink as she stripped the filthy uniform off her lean muscular body, dropping it into the laundry hamper.

  She’d picked up the smooth little domed shell with its ridged base at the beach the last time Aunty Rosario visited, and rubbing it was one of the ways she’d learned to manage anxiety. She stepped into the shower, luxuriating in hot water pouring over her petite frame, washing away mud and aches as she mulled over what was being called the Mohuli`i case.

  She’d asked around about Stevens, the lead detective. He had a solid reputation, and as a seasoned big-city cop his experience was going to be important on a double homicide that was looking complicated and inflammatory. His partner, Jeremy Ito, was a local boy whose biggest case prior to the girls was a homeless guy beaten to death in a park.

  It was a good thing Stevens was there to take the lead—South Hilo Police Department seldom had homicides, let alone this kind of case.

  Lei scrubbed mud off her legs and out from under her short, unpainted nails, trying to keep her mind from wandering back to images of the drowned girls. Her eyes lighted on the note thumbtacked to the peeling drywall above the shower surround: Well-behaved women rarely make history. —Laurel Ulrich.

  Haunani Pohakoa hadn’t been well behaved when Lei met her at the high school.

  “I nevah going show you notting.” Her dark eyes flashed defiantly as she spoke pidgin English—thick as burnt sugar in the cane fields that spawned it, the language of choice among ‘locals’ in Hawaii. The dialect had evolved as the many races brought over to work the plantations learned to communicate.

  “Open up the backpack,” Lei said. “Your principal called me and we already know you’re carrying.”

  “Haunani, no give the officer hard time.” The principal, Ms. Hayashi, wore a muumuu over athletic shoes with a jangling bunch of keys on a lanyard around her neck. The older woman shook her head and the keys rattled. Per protocol, Haunani had already been searched in the library conference room by the principal and a teacher before the police were called. No one had answered at the girl’s parents’ numbers.

  “I don’t have to,” Haunani insisted. Lei rolled her eyes. The girl shoved the backpack over abruptly, refolding her arms across a shapely chest that spelled out HOTTIE in rhinestones.

  Lei opened the backpack. Inside a rolled up pair of socks were a baggie of pot and a glass pipe.

  She pulled a plastic evidence bag out of the snapped pouch on her duty belt and put the marijuana and pipe in, labeling them with a Sharpie marker.

  Pono stuck his head in the door. “What’s the story?”

  “Got some pakalolo and a pipe here.” Lei held the bag up.

  “All right. Let’s go.” Pon
o gestured. “We’ll try your parents again at the station.”

  For the first time, a ghost of fear stole across the girl’s face. “I going be in so much trouble,” she whispered.

  Lei took her by an elbow and escorted her past staring and gossiping students to the cruiser and put her in the back. She got in front and waited as Pono finished up paperwork with Ms. Hayashi, glancing in the rearview mirror to see Haunani curled up with her knees beneath her chin and tears tracking down her cheeks through dark makeup.

  She felt a pang for the girl. She’d been that miserable once.

  “It’s not going to be so bad,” Lei said. “You’re a juvenile so you’ll probably get community service or something.”

  “It’s too late now,” Haunani whispered. “He’s going to be so mad I got busted.”

  Lei knew what it was like to be abused—by a mother whose drug use ruled her life, by a father who’d abandoned her when he was incarcerated.

  “We can help you.”

  “No you can’t. Not that I want help from cops anyway.” More tears belied this statement but Lei couldn’t get another word out of her, and in the end no one answered at any of the numbers they called. Pono and Lei would have sent Haunani home with Child Welfare Services, but the worker said there was nowhere to put her.

  Lei remembered Haunani’s stony stare as the teen walked out of the police station, thumbing her phone to call someone. It had seemed there was no one who cared about the girl—but now, with shower water cooling around her, Lei wondered if someone in Haunani’s life had been angry enough to kill her.

  Lei rubbed the scars on the inside of her arms with a washcloth—thin silvery threads left from days when she’d been desperate to express her pain. She was glad to have those reminders of how far she’d come, and wished she could have shared them with Haunani somehow. Maybe it would have made a difference.

  Later, Lei moved through the house, checking the sturdy hasps on the windows. She locked the dog door and rechecked the locks on the both entrances, arming the alarm. Even without her duty belt, she knew she still walked like a cop, energy coiled, arms away from her sides to keep them from catching on her sidearm.