by Toby Neal
I get info on Texeira and Kaihale, detectives on the case, and tell him to keep me informed. I boot up my Apple Air, thin as a wallet. In moments, I’m online, pulling up everything I can find on Pono Kaihale.
There isn’t much. Until recently, he’d been a regular patrol officer on the Big Island. After he was promoted to detective, he moved to Maui. He looks like a tiki god come to life in his departmental photo. Buzz-cut hair, wide brown face with a bristling mustache, even wider neck. Typical moke cop.
Leilani Texeira is another story. A slender, athletic-looking woman with a lot of curly hair, she has tilted almond eyes, a smatter of freckles, and a full mouth. That mouth, cut wide and set hard, shows attitude.
Texeira’s got a face that’s more than pretty; it’s hard to forget. I feel a little frisson of unease as I read about the Cult Killer case on Kaua`i—biggest case the sleepy island had ever seen, and Texeira was in the middle of it all the way to the end. I look at her photo again. Attitude is right. I’d better monitor things closely, and that means more payments to the mole, more hassles.
That stupid little redhead is still costing me money and I hate that. I never let anyone beat me at anything. I can’t stand losing. But she’s already dead, so I can’t take anything more out of her, goddamn it. I need something to take my mind off things. I punch in a number on the bedside phone.
“Kimo. Send up some merchandise. I’m in the mood for dark meat.”
I mix up the drink in a highball glass—a potent cocktail of Rohypnol and Viagra that guarantees me a good time. For this one, I go light on the roofies and heavy on the Viagra—might as well teach him something he’ll remember. When Kimo pushes the merchandise in the door, I hand him the drink with a smile.
He’s not sure what to think, doesn’t know what’s coming, so he drinks it after I clink his glass with mine…and pretty soon he’s just what I need to get the kinks out. I like the way my beautiful white skin, so silky, looks against his mocha hide. I like the taste of a little blood, spread around like finger paint. It’s a good session.
When Kimo picks him up, my sheets are messy so I have the maid come change them while I take the SIM card out of the phone, stick it in a chunk of apple, and grind it up in the disposal. I toss the plastic phone body into the recycle bin.
I go back into the bedroom. It’s white and pristine once again, creamy drapes hiding the door to my bondage room, toys cleaned off and put away. I pay that maid well to not be seen and not be heard.
I take a shower, but now my shoulders are sore from the workout. I use my regular cell to call the masseuse to come work the knots out, which he does rather nicely. Finally, oiled, perfumed, and pleasantly tired, I turn off the crystal bedside lamp and gaze out the sliders to the night sky reflecting off the black sea.
It’s taken all that to get me to the state of relaxation I was in before I heard the name Lei Texeira.
She owes me for that.
Chapter Three
Lei pulled up into the wide driveway of her and Stevens’s rental cottage in `Iao Valley. A six-foot chain-link fence held back her Rottweiler, Keiki, who’d heard the truck drive up and had her paws up on the fence in ecstatic greeting, muscular hindquarters waggling with joy.
“Hey, baby.” Lei gave the dog a head rub, then snapped her fingers as she unlatched the gate. Keiki sat obediently. She gave the Rottweiler another pat in reward and went up the slightly sagging wooden steps onto the porch, the dog glued to her side.
Lei loved the house’s location, only ten minutes from the Maui Police Department station in Kahului. Set slightly off the two-lane, winding road that dead-ended at a state park at the back of the valley, the cottage was isolated enough to feel a world away from work. They could afford something newer, but she and Stevens enjoyed the feeling of vintage Hawaii embodied in its older plantation-style cottages. This one had a wide, extended tin roof painted a red that was fading to terra-cotta. The roof contrasted with traditional dark green paint trimmed in white around windows and doors.
They’d replaced the elderly screen door with a new iron security door that still allowed airflow, and he’d left it unlocked for her. The door opened straight into the wooden-floored living room, and the modest kitchen at the back looked out onto a hillside covered in green jungle.
A delicious smell of teriyaki chicken filled the air. She looked at Stevens as he stirred something on the stove, dark head bent. The height and breadth of him set loose a flight of bubbles under her sternum, an unfamiliar feeling she’d finally figured out was happiness. She went across the room on quick, light steps and encircled his whipcord back from behind, laying her cheek against his shoulder blades.
“Honey, I’m home.”
“So you are.” He set a hand on the crossed wrists around his waist, gave them a pat and a squeeze as he sniffed audibly. “You stink.”
“Thanks. Nothing like a little rappelling and body retrieval followed by a long day canvassing homeless to get the heart rate up. Do I have time for a shower?”
“I think that would be best,” he said, and handed her a Corona he’d opened and placed beside the stove. “When you get out, it’ll all be ready.”
“I think I could get used to this.”
Lei showered the grime of the day off her lean frame, using a loofah sponge to scrub her arms and legs. She had an athletic build, slender-hipped and round-breasted, and she particularly liked the smooth dip of her waist and the fact that nothing jiggled that shouldn’t.
Lei looked at her scarred arms, letting herself really see them. She rubbed the thin silver lines of past self-injury gently with body soap. She no longer needed to resort to that hollow form of coping—she’d come a long way in therapy on the Big Island. Lei rubbed the bite mark on her collarbone, feeling the throb her wrist sometimes still gave from being broken two years ago in a battle for her life. Scars marked you, but they didn’t have to hurt anymore.
There was just one human scar she still needed to take care of.
Charlie Kwon, her childhood molester, was in Lompoc doing time for sexual abuse of a minor, and knowing she’d been only one in a string of victims didn’t make her feel better. She had an acquaintance who worked at Lompoc keeping an eye on him. Charlie aside, she was grateful for all the people who’d come into her life, one after the other, to heal her.
Chief among them was Michael Stevens. They’d met working a case on the Big Island, fallen in love. She’d accepted his marriage proposal only to panic, dump him, and run away to Kaua`i. Stevens had followed her over to help with the big serial case she’d uncovered, and they’d eventually reconnected. It hadn’t been easy. It had never been simple. But the poor guy couldn’t seem to stay away. He even had a purple heart tattoo on his forearm with her name in it.
Lei looked up at a note card reminder from her therapy, tacked to the drywall above the shower surround. Trust your heart. She was getting better at that, now that her heart wasn’t so fucked up.
She got out, drying off and squishing a handful of Curl Tamer into her hair. It was still short from when she’d shaved her head to go undercover for the Cult Killer case. That case on Kaua`i had garnered so much media attention that she and Stevens had been marked at the station for nonstop harassment in the form of jealousy and practical jokes. It had gotten old being recognized everywhere they went on the small island, especially after a TV movie was made of the whole thing. Six months later, when Pono called, she and Stevens had been ready to put in for transfers.
Every month or two she got little prodding e-mails from Marcella Scott, the FBI agent she’d worked the case with on Kaua`i. Marcella was still trying to recruit her to the Bureau—and Lei was still thinking about the opportunity.
Lei pulled on old sweats and rubbed face lotion into her sunburn, squirted her eyes with Visine for the windburn, and went back into the kitchen.
The dining room consisted of a small bump-out area with a circular Formica table, and Stevens had set it with a pot of rice, a green salad,
and a lasagna pan of chicken swimming in teriyaki sauce. Lei set the beer down by her plate and put her napkin in her lap, mouth watering.
“Damn, Michael. This is really awesome.”
“Glad I can get something right.”
There was an edge to his voice, and she realized that he hadn’t really looked at her. She decided to ignore that and dug into the meal, which was as good as it smelled. When she’d finished the first ravenous plateful, she sat back, sipping the Corona, studying him.
Big, sensitive, long-fingered hands worked the chopsticks as easily as a local. When she’d first met him, he hadn’t known how to use them and she’d teased him for it. Dark, rumpled hair fell over a high forehead, casting a shadow over his face. Blue eyes hid under thick lashes as he looked at his plate.
Something was wrong. She wondered if she had what it took to ask about it. Decided she didn’t. She’d never been good at the talking part of being a couple—Pono said she was more like a dude that way.
Lei helped herself to seconds. He’d bring up the problem when he got tired of waiting for her to ask, and the truth was that she wanted to talk to him about the case. He’d been promoted during the transfer and was now detective sergeant for Kahului Station, while she was still only a detective grade II at the small Haiku station. She missed working with him, but now that they were living together, a little distance had been a good thing.
“So we got a weird one. Teenage-looking Jane Doe went off a cliff in an old Plymouth at Pauwela Lighthouse. Plates come back to a stolen Lahaina car.”
“Suicide?” He perked up. They could always talk about work. She got to see his eyes finally, and there was sadness behind them that interest in a murder couldn’t dispel.
Shit. She hoped it wasn’t the marriage thing again.
“We’ll know more at the autopsy, but when we canvassed we found a wit who saw the whole thing, says the car drove to the edge, shut down, and then a few minutes later, rolled off. Says she saw a penlight turning on and off as someone walked away from the scene.”
Stevens straightened up, that spark of intensity back in his eyes. She loved that about him.
“Does sound weird. The scene tell you anything?”
“Nothing but a shiny door key I found in the rocks. Interior of the car was empty, no purse or anything left inside. Body spent the night in the ocean rinse cycle, so I wonder how much it’s going to tell us.”
“Interesting. What are you going to do about those other cases? They’ve been taking a lot of time.”
“Oh, that.” Lei plunked down her beer and sighed. “You know, I don’t know why we try. Damn chicken fighting is a whole layer of economy around here. A part of me hates even busting these people. It’s their main source of income.”
“That’s why the Maui Police Department’s kind of been turning a blind eye for years. But with Mayor Costales in office on his reform platform, we gotta bring in some numbers.”
Now that Stevens was doing administration, he’d developed a sensitivity to what he liked to call “The Big Picture” and Lei called the “Company Store Line of Crap.”
“Yeah, I know. We’ve got some good confidential informants on it; Pono’s amazing at working that end. Good thing, too, because I suck at getting people to talk without giving ’em a smack upside the head.”
“Yeah, you have a way about you.” The tension around his jaw had eased; he patted his knee. “C’mon over here, shrew.”
“What?” Lei felt a grin moving across her sunburned face. He wasn’t going to bring up whatever-it-was—she’d dodged a bullet again. “What’s a shrew? This isn’t a Hawaii thing, is it?”
“It’s a Shakespeare thing.” He’d minored in English lit and liked to show off now and then.
“I know to come when I’m called.”
She sat on his lap, put her arms around his neck, and stroked the hair out of his eyes. He felt so good in her arms, like everything about him fit everything about her.
“I’m gonna be sore tomorrow. Fell out of a bush on the way down the cliff and tweaked my back. Not to mention my ass. Think you can help me with that?”
“I can do something with my hands, yeah.”
He demonstrated, and she forgot to ask more about what it meant to be a shrew.
Chapter Four
The next morning, Lei and Pono sat with the commanding officer of Haiku station. Pono had downloaded their pictures from the crime scene and printed color copies for the lieutenant to review.
Lieutenant Omura was a petite Japanese woman with a poker face and the imposing presence of a much larger person. Lei had heard a rumor that Omura had an IQ of 155, a black belt in judo, and a master’s in criminology. Her flinty dark eyes scanned the hastily written paperwork and photos.
“Homicide or suicide?”
“ME hasn’t said yet. Initial impression is suicide. Our meeting’s at ten a.m. He said he was still working on it.” Pono got along better with the “Steel Butterfly,” so he did the talking.
Lei was still smarting from the dressing-down she’d received for being late. She’d awakened stiff and sore and had tried to fit a run in before the briefing. The run hadn’t helped with the stiffness and it had made her late—something the lieutenant looked upon as a sign of bad character.
The commanding officer was immaculate in a trim navy uniform she must have had altered to hug her perfect figure. She wore a pair of decidedly nonregulation heels on her tiny Asian feet—Imelda Marcos shoe habits had contributed to the nickname she didn’t know she had. Lei felt lumpy and unkempt beside her, and nocturnal activities with Stevens hadn’t done good things for her hair. She wriggled in her plastic seat, feeling like she had to pee. The lieutenant did that to her every time.
“Hear you made a Child Welfare call, Texeira.” Those sharp eyes were on Lei now. Her bladder cramped.
“Yeah, there was a baby out there. Not a good situation. Wanted to have it looked into, just in case.”
Omura clicked her tongue, looked back at the paperwork. “Your complaint isn’t going to go anywhere and you might need the parent as witness, so I wonder at your judgment.” She assembled the materials into the folder and handed it to Pono, giving a tiny flick of dismissal with glossy red nails. “Keep me informed.”
They got up and filed out.
Lei contained herself until they got to their cubicle.
“I hate her. I mean, I really hate that bitch.”
“I get the feeling it’s mutual, and we know who’s on top.” Pono gave her a worried glance, stabbed a thick finger at her. “You don’t want to piss her off, Sweets. She’s made tougher men than you cry. How do you think she edged out the competition in a department that’s never ranked a woman higher than sergeant?”
“Okay, I know. I’ll keep kissing the toes of her shoes. How much do they cost, do you think?”
“More than you make in a week.”
Lei sighed. “So let’s work on the cockfighting thing until the meet at the morgue.” She fumbled in her drawer for a rubber band, but her hair was too short to pull back. She took an MPD ball cap and stuffed it on her head, booting up her computer to review their contacts on the underground gambling and cockfighting case.
Lei and Pono took the stairs to the basement floor of Maui General Hospital, where the only morgue on the island was located. Lei practiced some relaxation breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth—as she approached beige double doors bisected by a steel push handle. Pono glanced at her, patted her elbow.
He knew how she felt about morgues.
Dr. Gregory was hosing something nasty off one of the long steel tables as they breached the inner sanctum. He looked up, pushing multilensed glasses up onto his egg-shaped head.
“The report’s not done.”
“That’s all right,” Lei said. “We’re just hoping for some preliminary results. The lieutenant’s on us for a homicide ruling—or whatever you think.”
“Okay.” He gestured for Tanaka, who
was tying a toe tag onto a body, to come take over his cleanup.
He led them over to the bank of refrigerator boxes, flipped the compression handle on one. It made a sound like popping the lid of an old-fashioned Coke bottle that had been shaken up. He picked up a clipboard and rolled the shelf out.
The body wasn’t draped and the girl’s eyes were still open, the Y incision on her chest cartoonishly stitched into rubberlike skin. Lividity had set in, mottling her face, neck, and shoulders to a dusky shade. She looked like she’d been dipped headfirst into something purple. The girl’s midsection was pulverized, organs barely contained by perforated skin blackened by bruising, the rib cage crushed.
Lei breathed through her mouth, slipping her hand in her pocket for the stone, but she’d forgotten to pick it up in her hurry that morning.
“I should be able to get the report done by tomorrow, but I can give you an oral recap.” Gregory read from the clipboard. “Female, approximately seventeen years old. She has a butterfly tattoo on her ankle. Maybe that will help identify her.” He indicated a tiny, optimistic yellow butterfly on the girl’s anklebone, tapping it with his pen. “Cause of death is massive blunt force trauma.”
“What about her broken neck?” Lei was glad the girl’s head was held upright in a small metal stanchion on the shelf, but her imagination supplied a picture of the head flopping off the table, held on with nothing more than skin.
“Broken neck also a result of blunt force trauma, simultaneous with impact of the steering wheel. Premortem injuries indicate the victim was alive when the car crashed. She has some interesting bruises. Look here.” He held up a hand. A sharp, dark line encircled each wrist. “She was bound at some point. There are no other injuries, except the obvious.” He made a dismissive gesture that encompassed the girl’s mangled torso.
