Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  “I’d like you to stay. It’s a chance for us to catch up a bit.”

  “You sure? I know I should have called… I just couldn’t find the words.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. You have anyone you have to check in with?”

  “My reintegration specialist—a fancy name for a parole officer. I’m supposed to let him know I’m with you. He’s working on getting me into a halfway house—pardon me, a restoration center. I’m supposed to get ready for a job.” He gave a short bark of laughter.

  “Well, why don’t you make the call while I’m in the shower? I’ve got to get out of this suit.”

  “Sounds good.” His voice was reluctant. Lei refused to feel sorry for him—he’d just landed on her doorstep after being out of her life for twenty years.

  Wayne had gone to prison for dealing when she was five, leaving her with a drug-addicted mother who eventually overdosed when she was nine. That had left her in the care of his sister, Rosario, to be raised in California. Aunty Rosario had kept her father’s letters from Lei until last year, after which Lei decided to visit her father in prison.

  She got up, fetched her cell phone, and handed it to him.

  “I don’t have a land line,” she said. “I’ll be out in fifteen minutes or so.”

  A short time later she came out of the bathroom, squeezing her hair with a towel, a loose tee over sweatpants enfolding her in cozy comfort. Her father came in from the porch with the phone.

  “Done. The fancy name parole officer thinks it’ll take a few days, though. Can I stay with you until then?”

  “What’s his name? I’ll call and verify.”

  “Okay.” He handed her the phone as he went past her into the living room. She looked at the Numbers Dialed and called the most recent one.

  “Hello, Corrections Aftercare Solutions. This is Aaron Spellman.”

  “Corrections Aftercare Solutions, that’s a new one,” Lei said. “Is this the parole officer for Wayne Texeira?”

  “It sure is. Is this the daughter?”

  “Detective Leilani Texeira. Badge number 2367.”

  “Thanks for getting back to me, Detective. I told your father you would have to call in.”

  “I know. What’s the situation on the halfway house?”

  “Kauai Restoration Center is what we call it. Well, it’s full right now. I’m trying to get a space for him in the dorm across the street; it’s cheap but clean, and he can go to the meetings with the social worker and job skills classes easily, on foot.”

  “How soon?”

  “Not sure, but I’m working on it as fast as I can. Can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip, as we say here on the Mainland.” He had a humorless chuckle that abraded her nerves.

  “What are the alternatives?”

  “Well, I need for you to be responsible for him until he gets into the program. Can you do that?”

  Lei blew out a breath. She’d wanted to get to know her father a little more; now it looked like it was going to be a crash course in togetherness.

  And if so, there was something she had to tell her father. Finding a way to do it was going to be the tricky part.

  “Okay. Call me back at this number as soon as you have something.”

  She went back out on the porch, and a few minutes later Wayne rejoined her.

  “Appreciate you having me. I wish things were different, that I was doing something for you.”

  “It is what it is.” That phrase had carried her a long way.

  “Your mother and I had some happy times when you were little,” Wayne said. A candle Lei had set in an empty mayonnaise jar gleamed on his silver-streaked curls. “She loved to dance, that girl. You know, your grandparents on Oahu—strict Japanese. They weren’t happy when she fell in love with a paniolo. A cowboy wasn’t what they had in mind for their girl.”

  Lei had never heard much of anything about her grandparents, the Matsumotos, and Rosario and Wayne’s parents had died before she was born. She turned toward him, eager to hear more.

  “We met at a rodeo. I was doing calf roping. She was with friends, sitting in the bleachers. She was wearing a white dress, probably not the best choice for a rodeo, and she had on a red straw cowboy hat.” He sighed. Lei almost held her breath, seeing her petite young mother through his eyes. “I brought her a shave ice, and it spilled on that dress. She gave me her number and the rest is history.”

  “So my grandparents. They didn’t approve?”

  “Turns out they were right.” He sighed again. “They wanted her to date a Japanese boy. I was too Portagee, too Hawaiian.” The racial and cultural lines of the islands often were hard to understand for outsiders, but like elsewhere, people tended to stay in their groups.

  “So why…didn’t they ever look for me?”

  “I don’t know. We can look them up if you want.”

  “No. If they didn’t care enough to find me after Mom died, I don’t want to know them either.” Her words came out more forcefully than she meant them to.

  The rain pattered gently on the roof, and patchy moonlight glimmered on the swollen chocolate river as the clouds thinned and parted in a restless wind, revealing a mercury drop of moon.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay. I see a lot of how people treat their families in my job and it isn’t pretty most of the time. I’m used to it now. So where did you get married?”

  “We eloped. We were only eighteen. Got married at the county courthouse. Maylene had on that same white dress, and carried an armful of wild orchids I’d picked for her.”

  He went on with a few more stories from when Lei was little, before he was arrested and her mother went down into the darkness of her addiction. They’d been a happy family once. In the flickering light of candles, Lei was almost able to forget all that came after he was taken away.

  Chapter Nine

  Friday, October 22

  The smell of coffee woke Lei. She propped herself up, pushing curls out of her face as she peered at the clock on the nightstand—and groaned when she saw the time. No time for a jog this morning. She flung her covers back and belted on her old kimono. The sight of that robe always reminded her of Stevens—of all the times he’d taken it off her, or taken her with it on… She hated to be reminded, but she couldn’t bear to part with it—a familiar tug-of-war.

  She went out into the kitchen and glimpsed the silver-streaked, curly top of Wayne’s head through the screen door leading into the backyard. A mug of coffee, already dosed with cream, waited by the pot. She picked it up, pushed the screen door open, and sat down next to her father on the top step.

  Keiki nosed through the grass of the yard below, snuffling in the dew. The river flowed past, a great shiny-skinned eel, rippling with hidden power. Golden hau blossoms swirled in the current—it must have been raining somewhere in the mountains. She looked up at massed gray clouds hanging over the green peaks in the distance.

  “Sleep well?” Lei took a sip of her coffee. Delicious.

  “Pretty good. It’s so quiet here,” Wayne said. Her mind flashed to the constant clangor of prison—even at night it would be filled with sound, most of it that of human misery.

  “The prison coffee is terrible.” He looked at the mug of coffee in his hands. “It would either be burned, like it had cooked for hours, or it was pale as tea, like they just took the burned stuff and threw water in and served it again. I got used to it, so now this tastes funny to me.”

  “Quiet and good coffee will grow on you quickly—don’t worry. Why don’t you just kick back today? Keiki needs a walk, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure, whatever I can do.”

  Jenkins had saved her a seat for roll call. She slid into it, barely on time, as the captain monotoned about departmental business and the week’s priority cases, none of which they were involved with. Several of the Island Cleaning employees had been rounded up, but Lisa Nakamoto was still in the wind.

  The captain didn’t mention Lei’s
new missing persons case.

  Back at the cubicle, Lei found a stack of pink message slips marking calls from Kelly Waterson and Norville Bennett, probably Jay’s father. Lei’s stomach clenched. Best thing to do was something for the case—she didn’t have anything to tell them, and for now that justified not returning their calls.

  She taped white paper over a cork board, then took a Sharpie marker and began a timeline that started with the approximate date of Jay Bennett’s disappearance, October 19, and Kelly’s visit that began the case the morning of October 21.

  She added a branch for when she found Jay’s personal items and opened the missing persons case on him, and followed that with the visit to the Health Guardian, confirmation of multiple missing, and the trip out to Polihale that had resulted in discovery of the mysterious park dwellers led by “Jim Jones.”

  That was as far as she could go. She propped the board up and stood back from it.

  Jenkins blew in. He’d been “talking story” in the conference room.

  “More canvassing today? The parks might be more crowded since it’s Friday.”

  Friday. Lei remembered she was going with Alika to an event tonight. She had only one dress, and it wore memories. She would have to find time today to grab something new.

  “Yeah, we can go back to Polihale and make our way this direction. I just wanted to work up a board, look at a few things first.”

  She pinned Jay’s blown-up picture to the board. Jenkins booted up his computer as she fetched the binder Jazz Haddock had put together and sat down with it.

  “Too much of a coincidence that Jazz Haddock knows so much. He has to be involved somehow,” Lei muttered. She’d printed up his driver’s license picture and now tacked it onto the board above the date/time of her interview with him.

  Haddock’s seamed face frowned at her from the photo. He must have hated having to go to the DMV for that photo, that involvement with “the system.” She drew a question mark above his head with the Sharpie and wrote knows too much, too quick to point out blame, too much research under his photo. Jenkins glanced up from his e-mail.

  “Totally agree. That health food guy is suspect number one.”

  Lei went back to her seat, opened the binder again. Once again she compared the file contents on the missing Jenkins had pulled up with those Haddock had compiled. She found that Haddock had actually provided more thorough profiles, nicknames, and descriptions of several of the missing than just the missing persons data sheets Jenkins had printed up. “J-Boy, check this out.”

  She passed the items over to him and started a new timeline under the one beginning with Jay Bennett. That timeline began with the first “pair” of missing in 2005. She filled in the names and as much detail as she could find on each missing person on the timeline:

  Kassie Feldman

  Peter Krakouwer

  Neil Powers

  Grey Smith

  John Samson

  Tracy Enders

  Brize Calloway

  Susan Herzog

  Hal Bloom

  Jay Bennett

  Lei did a quick count again: ten victims.

  She circled the number.

  She stood back, still holding the uncapped Sharpie. Suddenly the magnitude of what she was looking at overwhelmed her. Somehow it hadn’t really sunk in before. She felt her throat closing, the telltale dizziness that signaled dissociation narrowing her vision with encroaching black. She dropped the Sharpie as she fell into her chair, digging her nails into her thighs in desperation. Fortunately Jenkins was absorbed in reading Haddock’s binder.

  The pain grounded her. The black receded.

  She was here now; she was safe. She sucked breaths in through her nose, out through her mouth. In, out. In, out.

  They were in over their heads. Deeply, totally in over their heads. She knew it down to her bones. She just hadn’t let herself think about it yesterday. She needed to talk to someone, and there was only one person she knew she could trust—with her fears, with the case, with the politics of the station. When the symptoms abated she stood up, picked up her phone.

  “I need to make a phone call.”

  “Uh-huh. I’m pulling up background on Haddock now.” Jenkins’s fingers flew over the keys, absorbed. The gelled spikes of his blond hair seemed to vibrate with excitement.

  Lei headed down the shiny hall lined with corkboards papered in memos and alerts toward the front door of the station. She pressed down the button on her phone that had the number worn off from use—but hadn’t been called in six months.

  Chapter Ten

  “Stevens.” His brusque answer in her ear felt instantly reassuring. Her breath blew out in a whoosh as the pneumatic doors of the station slid open.

  “Michael. It’s Lei.” She strode over to sit on the break table under the plumeria tree at the side of the building.

  “You’re not the only one with caller ID. What do you want?” His tone was cold, a bracing slap. She gathered her thoughts.

  “I’m sorry to call you, but I need to talk about a case. It’s huge.” Her voice trembled and she tried to firm it. “I need some advice.”

  “So I’m good for advice, huh? Glad I can be there for you when you need something.” A long pause. She knew his cop curiosity would overcome the bitterness, and sure enough, after another long moment he said, “What’s going on?”

  “It’s a serial. I’ve stumbled on a pattern of missing people going back at least five years. I told my captain about it on Friday, but he’s not moving on it besides letting me work the recent missing guy… There have been so many victims, and it has gone on so long with no one doing anything. This is big.”

  “Tell me everything,” he said. And she did.

  A long silence followed. The wind tumbled her hair, and a plumeria spiraled down, a creamy pinwheel. The ocean gleamed in the distance, the horizon a blurred blue line as the phone crackled with static and all that couldn’t be said.

  “You need to go to your captain. He should bring in the FBI,” Stevens said.

  “No. This is my case. I know I need help though, maybe a task force…”

  “Go and talk to the captain again. If there are as many as you’ve said, the FBI should get involved and, frankly, you want them involved. This is too big for little old Kaua`i; it involves vics from all over, and when it breaks it’s going to be huge.”

  “I know.”

  She took the black stone out of her pocket, rubbed its silky surface. “Thanks for listening. I know J-Boy and I are in too deep with this thing, but I don’t want to let it go. We’ve had such crap since we got here, and this is finally something real, something big.”

  “Too big. Sometimes being a good cop is knowing when to say when.”

  “I guess. It’s good to hear your voice.” Like a low, vibrating chord that struck deep within her, just listening to him made her feel safe.

  “Likewise. Keep me posted. I might volunteer for that task force if you don’t go FBI.”

  “I can handle this. I just needed…a second opinion.”

  “You need more than that for a case this size. But useful—that’s me. Bye now.”

  He hung up abruptly, and she closed her phone. The dragging, bruised sensation in her chest—she didn’t want to identify it even as tears prickled the backs of her eyes. A broken heart actually did ache. Damn, she missed him.

  Her feet felt like lead as she walked back into the station. She flopped into her chair, gave it a spin. “We need to get a plan. I’m not sure what we should do next.”

  Jenkins turned toward her. “The health food store guy has a record.”

  “I know; he told me. Pakalolo?”

  “Yeah. Possession and intent to distribute eight years ago. He ended up with fines, community service, and probation. Only had a few ounces on him when he was pulled over.”

  “He hates Captain Fernandez.”

  “Well. Nothing since.”

  Lei flipped through her spiral notebo
ok, and the small square of tapa cloth Lehua Wolcott had given her fluttered out to land on the desk. She picked it up thoughtfully.

  “Let me make one more call. Lehua Wolcott gave me this lead—I’m not sure what it’s about, but I can fish around. Then we should go out for one more round of canvassing, maybe end up at the papaya farm, see if we can find Jim Jones. We were supposed to go follow up on the complaint out there anyway. I’d also like to see if we can get a meeting with the captain to get more eyes on this thing. I’m starting to think it’s a little big for the two of us.”

  “Glad to hear you say that. I mean, ten missing people. Shit.”

  “Exactly.” Lei pulled the phone over, punched in Esther Ka`awai’s number.

  “Coffee break.” Jenkins disappeared.

  Lei looked down at the little square of tapa cloth. She wasn’t even sure why she was calling.

  “Hello?” An older woman’s voice.

  “Hello, this is Detective Texeira with the Kaua`i Police Department. How are you today?”

  “I’m glad to hear from you. I was hoping you’d call.”

  “Really? I got your number from a woman named Lehua Wolcott. Did she tell you I’d call?”

  “She’s my daughter. And no. I just knew you needed to contact me. So I’m not surprised you did.”

  Lei took a couple of relaxation breaths as the silence stretched out. This was more than surprising. It was bizarre.

  “Well, I don’t know what I’m calling for or why Lehua wanted me to call you. Maybe you can help me with that.”

  “No. I don’t know either.” The other woman seemed perfectly calm.

  Lei looked down at the tapa square for the woman’s name again.

  “Well, Mrs. Ka`awai, I guess I’d better go then. I thought you might be of some help with my investigation.”

  “Call me Esther,” the woman said. “And I will call you Lei.”

  “I don’t remember telling you my name. How did you know my name?”

  “Sometimes I just know things.”

  “Really.” Was the woman psychic? “Do you know anything about people disappearing on the North Shore?” The words popped out before she had time to think about them.