Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  Marcella, Rogers, and the pilot moved past her. Stevens ran toward her, and she felt her knees wobble for the first time. He folded her in against him, blood and all.

  “You hurt?”

  “Not my blood,” she said into his shirt.

  “You did good. You always do good.”

  “I love you,” she mumbled against his shirt. “I really, really do.”

  “Adrenaline talking,” he said again, but he squeezed her so hard her bones creaked.

  Marcella reappeared. “Looks like you’re right about the rib. He’s unconscious. We have to try to keep him as still as possible. But Bennett seems to be coming around.”

  The whine of another helicopter filled the air; they looked up, but there was nowhere for it to land. Marcella waved it off, talking into her cell phone.

  They loaded Jenkins and Bennett into the helicopter, stabilizing them as best they could.

  “Who’s the dead guy?” Marcella turned to Lei, cell phone still against her ear.

  “Cal Haddock. Real name Chalcedony,” Lei said. “Brother of Jazz Haddock.” Marcella’s eyes widened.

  “What the hell,” she said. “Goddamn it—right there in front of us. Bet Jazz is short for Jasper. Gimme a thumbnail sketch of what happened, so Rogers and I have something to go on.”

  Lei did so while Marcella unloaded a black crime scene kit out of the copter. She and Rogers snapped on gloves as the pilot warmed up the engine. Marcella opened an evidence bag.

  “Weapon in here.” Lei took the Glock out of her waistband and dropped it in the bag. Marcella sealed it and put it in the kit. “You’ll get it back as soon as we check it for ballistics. You, Mac, and Stevens take Bennett and Jenkins to the hospital. We’re securing the scene.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Lei stood against the gray backdrop in the interview room, one wall of which was lined with light-absorbent felt. Becky’s face was expressionless as she photographed the blood patterns that decorated Lei—front, back, side view, front of arms, back of arms. Lei felt herself sway as the flash burned her eyes.

  She closed them, and immediately saw the purple face of barely alive Jay Bennett and Jenkins coughing blood. She opened her eyes and the flash seared them again.

  At least it looked like they were both going to live. “Almost done,” Becky said. “You can sit now.”

  Lei sat. Becky got out her evidence collection kit, using sticky pads to collect gunshot residue from her hands and swabs to swipe beneath her nails, take samples of the blood on her face and arms, and a small comb to collect any further trace out of her hair.

  “Not much here,” Becky said, gently tugging the comb through the short curls on Lei’s head. Her mouth was near Lei’s ear as she whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m almost done.”

  “It’s okay. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

  “Now for the clothes. Please remove your outer garments and put them in here.” Becky pushed a large paper evidence bag over to Lei. Hoping the surveillance camera was off, Lei shimmied out of the cargo shorts and put them in the bag along with the contents of her pockets and her Ni`ihau shell necklace.

  “My top’s got trace on it, but I need a shirt,” Lei said.

  “You get mine.” Becky handed her a bright pink tee emblazoned with Mickey Mouse and a pair of sweatpants. “It’s either these or prison orange.”

  “Mickey Mouse it is.” Lei took off the crochet bikini top and whipped the T-shirt on as fast as she could. “Thanks.”

  “Camera’s not on, and I have the blinds rotated.” Becky read her mind. “Captain said to do everything by the book since this is the FBI’s investigation, so I have to leave you in here until one of them gets here to take your statement. Can I bring you anything?”

  “Seriously, I could eat my arm I’m so hungry. Can I get food, something to drink?”

  “Way ahead of you.” Stevens came through the door with a bag from Burger King. The smell of fries, familiar and thick, made Lei light-headed with hunger, and she reached for the bag, stopping when she saw Becky’s wide eyes and squinched-up lips. The lab tech handed her a pile of antibacterial wipes from the dispenser by the door.

  “You never know where that blood has been,” Becky said.

  “Oh my God, you’re so right.” Lei took the wipes and scrubbed her face, neck, and arms, the chill welcome. Becky collected the samples and evidence bags, putting everything on a steel tray.

  “See you guys later.”

  “Bye,” Stevens said. He sat next to Lei, opening the Burger King bag as she rubbed her hands with the wipes. Lei noticed the wistful way Becky looked back at him as she closed the door, but Stevens didn’t.

  Lei bit into her Whopper, closing her eyes in bliss.

  “I love you,” she said when she could speak. “Now I know I do.” She sucked half her root beer down in one long draft.

  “Starvation talking,” Stevens said, addressing his burger. His dark brows were drawn down. He didn’t look at her.

  “Becky said the camera’s off,” Lei said, finishing the last of her meal. It hadn’t taken long.

  “Oh yeah?” He got up and came back with several more of the wipes. She closed her eyes as he rubbed her face gently, straddling the bench as she sat. He held them up. “You’re still a little scary.”

  A brownish smear of blood marked the wipe and he tossed it into the trash. “You were saying?”

  “I love you. And the camera’s off.”

  She moved in on him, sliding her hands up his arms to encircle his neck, pulling him down to her. His lips, when they touched hers, were hesitant, and she teased at them, light kisses until he let his arms come down, wrapping her close, and this time she wasn’t sure who was consuming whom and didn’t care anymore.

  He pushed her back gently, his hands still caressing her arms, hips, wherever he could touch.

  “What’s all this? Posttraumatic stress? The urge to merge after a near-death experience?”

  “That’s rude,” she said with dignity. “Okay, maybe a little of that, but I left you a message that—um. I realized I loved you.”

  “That bit about melodrama? I was supposed to get ‘I realized I love you’ from that?”

  “Maybe not.” She picked at one of the peeling hippie tats on her wrist. “I’m not good at this part.”

  “I know.” He sighed. “C’mere.”

  She was wound around him and sitting in his lap when the door opened.

  “Sorry to interrupt.” Bob Arizumi, Flea’s older brother and Lei’s union attorney, entered, horn-rims askew. “I hope you didn’t tell them anything at the site.”

  Stevens stayed composed as Lei stood up and straightened the Mickey Mouse tee.

  “Just a thumbnail sketch so they could reconstruct the scene.”

  “You shouldn’t have said anything. Let the evidence speak. It always tells a clearer story than the witness.”

  “I had to tell them something.”

  “That’s why the captain called me. Whenever there’s a shooting, you shouldn’t say anything to anyone without a representative present.”

  The door opened again, FBI this time. “How’re you holding up? Okay for a few questions?” Marcella asked. She’d had time to clean up from the site and looked beautiful and composed, every smooth, glossy hair in place.

  “Ready when you are.” Lei kept her voice steady. She felt neither beautiful nor composed.

  “My client is just going to make a brief statement. She hasn’t even been able to take a shower,” Bob said. His intimidation stare didn’t appear to be working. Maybe it was the horn-rims. Marcella ignored him, opening the door for another gray-suited agent.

  “This is Special Agent LaSota. She’s a profiler with the Behavioral Analysis Unit.” Lei shook the new agent’s hand. The psychologist had a soft grip and hard, dark-olive eyes.

  “Detective Stevens, you can watch from the peanut gallery with Captain Fernandez if you wish.”

  Stevens gave Lei a final
kiss, a stamp of intent, and let himself out.

  The “brief statement” turned into a long interview. Lei felt completely wrung out when they were done, folding their notebooks, video camera, and tape recorder into Dr. LaSota’s square briefcase. Arizumi followed them out, demanding to be kept informed of developments.

  The captain entered. Lei had her head down on folded arms by then.

  “Lei, you’re on administrative leave pending the results of the investigation. I need your badge.”

  “I gave it to Becky with everything else.” Lei blinked gritty eyes. She wasn’t crying. She was tired.

  “Just a technicality—you know it’s procedure. You earned a few days off,” Captain Fernandez said, giving her a comforting pat. “You did good.”

  “I’ll take her home,” said Stevens, meeting them in the hall. “She’s been telling me she loves me all afternoon.”

  Lei hid her head in Stevens’s shoulder as wolf whistles chased them out of the building.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Making love all night after killing a man did strange things to you.

  Lei drove the truck toward Esther’s house, trying to stay in her body. Her skin felt too thin, every tiny hair like antennae. She could almost hear the roar of blood through the chambers of her heart. Colors were too bright, and she was sensitive and sore in unexpected places.

  She was headed out for mandatory post-shooting counseling, and the captain had cleared Esther as a native Hawaiian healer in lieu of traditional therapy. Starting with a new counselor had seemed impossible after all that had gone down, though the sharp-eyed psychologist Dr. LaSota had volunteered to do her debrief.

  Lei wasn’t that much of a sucker.

  She tapped the steering wheel with the fingers of one hand, and even that motion vibrated through her whole body. Her eyes fell on her empty ring finger for the first time in a long time. Surely Stevens wouldn’t wreck things by bringing up marriage again.

  They’d both been called early that morning—her call had been Fury letting her know both Jenkins and Bennett were going to be okay and that the KPD had raided the papaya farm and busted everyone including Tiger. Stevens’s call had been the FBI summoning him to organize a search of the valleys Chalcedony “Cal” Haddock frequented.

  “Totally anticlimactic,” Lei told Esther a half hour later in the teaching room. “I shoot the guy who did it, but I don’t get to be around for any of the proving it. Stevens said he heard the evidence in the cave seemed to be supporting my story and it’s looking like a good shoot, but it’ll be at least a week until I’m cleared to be back on duty.”

  Esther sat facing Lei, her legs crossed under a long purple muumuu. She was weaving a lauhala basket, her brown fingers darting sparrows among the strips. Lei sorted the pile of dried material from the hala tree, using a paring knife to peel off the strip of thorns that lined either side of the long swordlike leaves.

  “I think you stay in the right place, right now.”

  A thorn stabbed Lei, and she bit back a curse. “I don’t think I’m the type to be good at this.”

  “You’re a Hawaiian woman; you’re the right kind,” Esther said. “You never learned much about our culture. Shame, that.”

  “My aunty, she tried,” Lei said. “I’m only part Hawaiian, but she told me the legends at bedtime. She taught me how to cook Hawaiian style. For all the good it did.”

  “Well, now you have a man. You can cook for him.”

  Lei ducked her head to hide the flame of her blush. Damn the woman. She could see right into her head. “I won’t ask how you knew that.”

  “I’m sad it never worked out with Alika, but you already loved someone else.”

  “You could have saved me a lot of trouble and told me that back when I asked you about it.” Lei ripped a long strip of thorns off with unnecessary force.

  “You wouldn’t have believed me then. And all I knew was that you had something to learn from each of them.”

  “I still don’t know what that is.”

  “Think about it. Close your eyes and see each face and tell me.”

  Lei put the knife and the leaves down. Closed her eyes, breathed in the sweet, musty scent of the dried hala and the richness of coconut oil, and let her mind’s eye wander to Alika’s face—eyes alight with excitement to show her the helicopter. Golden with passion as he tugged her down beside him on that fateful carpet. She smiled at the same time as tears pricked.

  “Alika taught me to take a few risks, enjoy life.”

  “They cleared him, you know,” Esther said. Lei’s eyes snapped open to see the kahu picking up a fresh strip of hala, working it into the section in her lap that was ending. “All charges dropped. Even the insurance thing. Only thing he was guilty of was giving Lisa Nakamoto a gold bracelet.”

  “I’m sorry. I misjudged him.” Lei swallowed. “I hope you’ll tell him.”

  “You tell him yourself.”

  “Ha. Okay. What other bombs you got for me? You way too well informed for a civilian.”

  “They still consulting with me, now that Alika is cleared. Captain Fernandez, he called me himself to tell me that drug dealer who killed Lisa finally got clean enough to talk. Darrell Hines, he was working with that hippie Tiger to make the meth. They got the cult people working the lab, then Darrell’s people at Island Cleaning doing the selling.”

  “Yeah, Marcella and I saw it firsthand.” Lei absorbed this. “That bitch Marcella—I actually liked her, but she just used me.”

  “Language! This the house of the Lord.”

  “Sorry. Okay. So why did they tell you all this?”

  “Captain wanted my opinion on the cult. Had me talk to that guy Jazz Haddock yesterday, hear all about what the cult believes. Wanted to see how that might relate to the killer. I tol’ the captain the cult was just the starting point for what that pupu`le crazy man did.”

  “Poor Jazz. I wonder how he’s taking it that his brother is the Cult Killer.”

  “Not well, I think.” Esther reached for another strip of lauhala and the spine of palm frond that formed the ribs of the basket. “His full name’s Jasper. He one sad and tormented man. Especially with the way his sister and mother went make.”

  “Who died?”

  “His little sister. Her name Opal. She died when she only twenty, the mother too. Their house burned down and they never made it out.”

  “Opal must be the third stone. Cal always left three stones at the place where he took a victim: a chalcedony, a jasper, and an opal.” Lei mulled this over. “I think Jazz knew more than he let himself, or he couldn’t have come up with the binder.”

  Lei focused on slitting the leaf she was working on into long strips. Having something useful to do with her hands felt good, keeping her grounded as she sorted through all this new information.

  “Your Ni`ihau necklace is missing.”

  “I had to turn it in. It had trace on it.” She wondered if the blood would come off the tiny precious shells. She couldn’t wait to get the necklace back; she felt naked without it.

  “Mac—he’s going be one strong kumu someday—if he can forgive himself for having Cal on his land.”

  “I think so too. I better get going. I want to go visit Jenkins and Bennett in the hospital now that they’re stable.” Lei put away the prepared strips of basket material on the shelf against the tapa-covered wall. “Thank you for everything.”

  “I just doing what God called me to do.”

  Lei sat next to Jenkins. He was awake, but his color was bad. He had an oxygen tank beside the bed and a cannula in his nose, but he was breathing on his own—something the doctor she’d met in the hall said was “very promising.”

  “How’re you feeling?” she asked. He rolled his eyes. “Stupid question, sorry.”

  Lei rubbed the smooth black stone in her pocket—her hands had become sweaty almost the minute she got into the room. She still hated hospitals.

  “I brought you something.” She g
estured to the bouquet of folded palm-frond roses Esther had made.

  “Nice,” he croaked. “Manly.”

  She snorted a laugh. “I didn’t make them.”

  “No surprise.”

  “I know, right? Esther made them. She sends love.”

  He closed his eyes as if tired. “Tell me everything.”

  “Well, they must have interviewed you, right?”

  He shook his head.

  “Oh crap,” Lei said, looking up to see Agent Marcella Scott with her new sidekick, Dr. LaSota, in the doorway. “The FBI’s here now. I knew they’d be talking to you, but the timing sucks. I’ll have to come back later.”

  His hand groped across the covers, found hers. “Stay.”

  “I’m sorry. Detective Texeira’s part of the investigation and can’t be privy to your interview,” Marcella said. Lei had expected as much but still narrowed her eyes at the agent. Marcella was back in FBI gray, glossy curls tamed into a French twist. Only gold snakeskin sandals peeking out from under the slacks gave away her unique style.

  “I’ll go, but I’d like have a word with you, Agent Scott.” Lei patted Jenkins’s shoulder. “I’ll be back.”

  She led Marcella out into the hall and turned to face the other woman, hands on her hips.

  “You could have thrown me a bone the other day. Told me you were going to the mesa heiau at least. You took my intel and went to make my case without me.”

  “Who said it was your case? I seem to remember your captain calling in ViCAP to solve it. But if I’d known you would go off half-cocked like that, I’d have kept a much closer eye on you. As it is, you killed the guy. Now we have to go back and try to figure out why he was murdering people instead of just asking him.”

  “You should have kept me in the loop. We could have worked together and things might have ended differently.”

  “You’re a loose cannon. I suspected as much; now I know beyond the shadow of a doubt.” Brown eyes clashed with brown and neither blinked.