by Toby Neal
Marcus nodded. His big brown hands were gentle and deft as he slid the slip of paper out without touching it, held it by its sides, and read it. “Shape your destiny.”
“I know, right? So it would really help me to know a little more about this strange man whose number my grandmother had.”
He ignored this, setting the slip on the bench and easing the letters she’d included in the bag out as well, giving them a quick once-over. Lei had included letters with characters, English phrases, and even some numbers. “Looks the same. She Japanese?”
“Yes. Full blood. She’s gone now, like I said.”
“How did she die?”
“Heart attack, a year ago.”
A long pause as he put the items back into the bag, still not touching them except by the edges, and folded down the top of the bag in a neat, ruler-straight line.
“I’ll take these in,” he said. They both looked at the sunset that had decided to go glorious, a Technicolor display of light and color against the purpling sky. Keiki and Angel belatedly realized their mistress had been approached by a stranger and bounded back, sniffing Kamuela thoroughly. As usual, Angel was the most suspicious, yapping. She looked like she was considering latching on to his ankle until Lei scooped her up and scolded her.
Finally the dogs took themselves off for more playing, and Kamuela turned to Lei. “So here’s the weird thing, other than this bizarre situation. I think I solved my old homicide case. Remember that one a year ago?”
Lei kept her face blank. “We both have a lot of cases.”
“Two years ago. Cold case. Charlie Kwon, child molester, shot dead in his apartment with a nine millimeter. This stiff we found today—his gun matches that bullet. Kwon and at least three other unsolved homicides. This guy was a professional, and someone offed him.”
Lei had to lean down and tie her shoe because she felt the hot blush prickling her chest at hearing Kwon’s name. Thank God she was off the hook for his murder! She had to get better at subterfuge in her line of work. She wasn’t that easily rattled anymore, but interviews didn’t get more stressful than this one.
“That’s a good day for you,” she said to her toes, tying her other shoe. “So great when criminals off each other and save us taxpayer dollars.”
“Yeah. Of course, I’m trying to solve the dead assassin’s case, but even more stoked to cross off four cold ones. My closure rate just bumped big-time.”
She glanced at him, smiled. “Congrats.”
“So what was your grandmother doing with a pro hitter’s number on a fortune cookie slip in her box?”
“No idea,” Lei said, and the blush that she’d just fought down surged up her neck. She jumped to her feet, dug a ball out of her pocket, and threw it for the dogs, who took off after it in a rush of excitement.
“You know something.” Kamuela had not been distracted by her camouflage.
Lei considered her options. If he dug deeper and found a connection to her some other way, lying to him even by omission at this early stage would look even worse. Her career could be endangered by being formally interviewed in connection with multiple murders even if she was cleared.
“I do know something, but nothing about this guy whose number it was.” She sat back down. “I know something about Charlie Kwon. You aren’t recording this, are you? Because you better turn it off if you are.”
“Holy crap. You think I came to talk to you in a park wearing a wire?” He sounded outraged, his eyes wide and nostrils flared.
Lei squinted at him. “It’s possible.”
Kamuela ripped the subtly patterned aloha shirt he wore off over his head, holding it bunched in his fist. “No wire. I don’t operate like that with my friends.” Lei was a little alarmed by the expanse of broad, muscular brown chest. No wonder Marcella was looking so happy and distracted lately.
“I’m glad you called me a friend. And I’m sorry.” Lei averted her gaze. She tried not to notice the other park visitors staring. Kamuela unbuttoned the shirt and shrugged back into it. She did some relaxation breathing. “This is really hard for me. Personally and professionally. Marcella might have told you I had a rough childhood.”
Kamuela seemed a little mollified as he finished buttoning up the shirt, a relief to her sensibilities. “She did. Said your dad was in the game and you grew up with an auntie because your mom died of an overdose.”
“Yeah. So the reason my mom died was Charlie Kwon. He had a score to settle with my dad, targeted us when Dad was in prison. Raped me while he was manipulating my mom and feeding her drugs.”
“Damn,” Kamuela said. “He really deserved what he ended up getting.”
Somehow she was able to glance at him with a bit of humor. “I know, right? I tracked him in prison, and right before I joined the FBI, I paid him a visit. I was in disguise. It didn’t go like I’d hoped, with him being sorry for what he did. I clocked him with my weapon and left him alive.”
“So that was the goose egg on the body’s head.”
“Yes. And I hope the ME could tell that happened several hours before he died.”
No answer. Kamuela just stared at her, brown eyes inscrutable, the gaze of an investigator in “cop mode.” She was very familiar with that look.
Lei hurried on. “So, anyway. I was horrified to see on the news that he’d been shot that night, and I’ve been trying to figure out who did it ever since. I hid my clothes, gloves, and wig in a safe place, and they will exonerate me—they don’t have GSR.” She didn’t point out the obvious holes in this explanation. He would do that himself if he wanted to. “I want to help solve this, and that’s why I’m telling you all I know. Coming clean. I hope we can figure it out, because I’m tired of living with this hanging over my head.”
“God. Lei.” He leaned back against the bench, rubbed his face. “I want to believe you. Abused by Kwon. Shit.” His eyes narrowed. “But just because you didn’t kill him yourself doesn’t mean you didn’t call a professional hitter who did. My dead guy from today. And the hitter’s number written in your grandmother’s handwriting doesn’t mean a thing except that maybe she was the one to give it to you.”
Lei felt her throat dry. She’d been so focused on the physical evidence connected to the visit she’d made to Kwon that she’d forgotten how this other connection, her number on the assassin’s phone, would look.
“But I didn’t,” Lei whispered, and felt the blood drain from her head as his face telescoped into the distance, black encroaching from the sides of her vision. She felt despair swamp her. She’d thought these blackouts were over, and to have one in front of Kamuela felt like suicide.
Keiki’s bulk leaned against her leg, a heavy, warm weight she could feel, anchoring her back in her body. The rasp of Angel’s tiny tongue on her calf made the blackness recede.
“I didn’t do it,” Lei repeated. “And I didn’t hire anyone to do it. I don’t have a thing I can say or do to convince you. I know it looks bad.”
A long moment. Kamuela was still looking at her as if searching inside her head. She’d just revealed everything to him, and she was vulnerable. The flow of blood under her skin—the flush when she lied, the ebb of it when she almost fainted with terror—were easy to read. Her demeanor could add up to her innocence or solidify her as his prime suspect.
His cell phone rang. “Kamuela here.” A pause, and he stood up. “I’ll be right there.”
Kamuela holstered the phone, turned to her. “Caught a fresh one. I’ll be in touch.” He turned and loped away.
Relief warred with anxiety as Lei watched him go, the evidence bag in his hand.
Chapter Fifteen
Sophie had decided to just stay at work until she got tired. Not having her network at home had removed all interest in even going there. She’d gone earlier to the workout room, done an hour running on the treadmill, skipping rope, and doing free weights, then showered and changed into her “home” clothes, a racer-back tank and a pair of yoga pants. She sat uprig
ht on the large exercise ball and logged back in to DyingFriends.
The email link to the “deeper level” on DyingFriends had finally arrived in her in-box and she clicked it, a smile of anticipation tugging up one side of her mouth.
The next level opened to a portal where she had to read and agree to a nondisclosure clause and a “leave-no-footprint” policy in which she deleted her cookies nightly off her computer. She hit “agree” even as she kept a tracker program open in a window in the corner of her monitor.
After clicking the box, the next level of the site opened. A blog post greeted her, a treatise on right to death written by someone with the handle “KevorkianFan.” It was the first open reference she’d come across to assisted suicide and the famous “Dr. Death” who’d battled hard for rights to death in the 1990s.
Tabbed down the side of the page were different forums, and she popped onto “Suicidal Thoughts.” Browsing among the threads, she was glad that she hadn’t had to go out with Lei and Ken to the canvassing—it would have been very hard to put a face to the names and stories she was already finding heartrending.
ShastaM contributed some comments here about how bad her pain was and that she wanted to spare her children visits to the hospital as she died. The deeper level seemed to have shucked off trolls like CancerCurmudgeon with their antideath rhetoric. After an hour or two of exploring, she still had no way to track down the site admin.
She started a thread: “Whose brilliant idea is this? My dying wish: to meet the visionary behind the site! email me!” She provided ShastaM’s fake email.
Almost immediately she was replied to by someone calling themselves Lightbody: “It’s dangerous for him to reveal himself. He doesn’t contact you or anybody.”
ShastaM: “I just want to thank him personally. What’s the danger? I’m a dying single mom all by myself in Honolulu!” Sophie felt a little adrenaline boost at this bite from someone close to the fish she was after.
Lightbody: “There are close-minded people who would love to shut us down, and the greater good is served by having DyingFriends available to all who need its support.”
ShastaM: “I don’t get it. I just want to thank the site administrator. Surely someone is in charge here.”
Lightbody: “Take no for an answer or I’ll report you.”
Sophie paused, gazing into the bluish glow of the screen as she considered how her “character” would respond and what bait might work.
ShastaM: “Go ahead and report me. I want him (or her!) to know I’m dying, and I just want to thank him.”
Sophie waited minutes, her long fingers poised—and nothing happened. Lightbody had disappeared.
Sophie found herself irritated. Impatient. Annoyed. She rolled the ball away from the desk and did her push-ups and sit-ups. Checked the computer again. Still nothing.
She did stretches now: rolled backward off the ball into a bridge. Did hamstrings, splits. She was bent over, her face between her knees, pulling hard behind her calves to get herself completely jackknifed, when she heard a delicate throat-clearing behind her.
She straightened up immediately. Waxman was standing there, looking uncomfortable. “That is nonregulation attire,” he said.
“Sorry, sir. Now that DAVID is disabled, I saw no point in going home. I worked out at the gym downstairs and ended up changing into my after-work clothes. No one’s here, so I thought it would be okay. I’m phishing for the site admin of DyingFriends, and he’s ignoring me.”
“You can’t live here, Sophie.” There was a chiding note in Waxman’s voice. “I came down to give you a sit rep on the DAVID software.”
Sophie waited, hands on her hips. She saw her boss’s eyes on her well-developed biceps and triceps, and she crossed her arms self-consciously. He made a half turn and addressed a spot over her shoulder.
“The national tech department is very excited about DAVID’s potential, but the legal and privacy ramifications are a real tar baby. So while the techies are looking at it, our defense counsel is getting involved. This is going to take a while.”
Even after many years in the United States, Sophie still came across phrases she wasn’t familiar with. “Tar baby?”
“It’s from an old folk tale. Br'er Rabbit. Google it when you get home. It’ll give you something to do. Did the site admin respond?”
Sophie leaned in, looked at her in-box. “No, sir.”
“Well, go home. It’s Friday night. Find another interest besides computers and working out, Agent Ang. Life is short; you’re young. Don’t let it go by before you know it.”
Sophie cocked her head. There was a harsh note in her boss’s voice, but he’d spun on his heel and walked away before she could be sure.
“Go home, Sophie. That’s an order!” he said over his shoulder.
“Yes, sir.”
The pneumatic door of the lab slid shut behind him. She frowned, checked the email in-box again. Still empty. She sighed and shut down her most faithful friends. Amara, Janjai, and Ying whirred into silence, and as Sophie padded across the felted carpet, she wondered what the hell she could do besides work out and her computers.
There was only one other place she wanted to be—Fight Club.
Sophie managed to ignore the flatness that Alika’s absence had brought to sparring at Fight Club later that evening. She and Marcella finished their bout, bumping fists in padded gloves. She’d trounced her friend fairly well, as usual. “Want to get something to eat?” she asked.
“Let me check something first,” Marcella said, swiping escaped strands of chocolate-brown hair out of her eyes with her forearm. Sophie felt the simmering irritation she’d been battling all afternoon rise to the fore. She poked Marcella’s shoulder, not lightly.
“Checking with the boyfriend?”
Marcella looked up, narrowed her eyes. “Hey. We already sort of had plans.”
“Whatever.” Sophie turned away, ripped her gloves off, and stuffed them in her bag. “Let me know when my friend Marcella gets back.”
“Geez,” Marcella said. “Touchy, aren’t we? Okay, I’ll cancel.” She worked her phone with her thumbs. “There. You happy?”
Sophie turned back. “I don’t need your pity date. Seriously. Go bang your boyfriend already.”
Marcella poked Sophie’s shoulder back hard. “That was bitchy. What’s gotten into you?”
Sophie picked up her bag and walked away. She could hear Marcella following, and she blinked tears out of her eyes. She was jealous, and it hurt to know it. She kept walking across the parking lot, Marcella following. She heard the other woman’s phone ring and a one-sided conversation. She was too intent on getting to her car, getting inside, and escaping to listen to it.
Sophie beeped the Lexus open, and Marcella jumped in, throwing her gym bag into the well between their bucket seats. “God, you’re so high maintenance.”
Sophie set her jaw, turned the key. “You aren’t going to get out of my car, are you?”
“No. I know I’ve been blowing you off since Marcus and I went public, and I feel bad about it. Let’s go out and have girl time with pool cues and beer. I’ll give Lei a call, see if she can join us.”
Sophie glanced over at Marcella’s dimpled white grin and felt a tug of gratitude—she’d canceled plans with her man to spend time with a friend.
“Since you insist,” Sophie said. She wasn’t about to show how much it meant to her.
Chapter Sixteen
Lei ran home post-sunset—that time between day and night, which, in Honolulu, was warm, flower-scented, and filled with tourists on foot in the downtown areas and commuter traffic everywhere else. She had to concentrate on getting herself and the dogs home safely, distracted as she was from the meet with Kamuela. She played an endless feedback loop of the conversation between herself and the detective, wondering if she should have tried to lie, should have asked for legal counsel—anything but what she’d done.
Told all and trusted him.
T
urning into her own quiet side street at the edge of town was a relief until she saw the black Ford Explorer parked outside her gate. Her heart lurched—another detective here to interview her? Had Kamuela turned her in already?
She drew abreast of the car and the door opened. “Lei.”
A familiar voice. The one voice that could bring joy surging through her body.
Lei threw herself into Stevens’s arms as he got out, squashing Angel in the baby carrier between them. Those long arms embraced her, hard and gentle. Her head fit into the space measured for it, just beneath his jawbone. She breathed in the smell and heat of his body, and her world tipped to where it wanted to stay.
Now and forever.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” She burst into tears, letting go of the stress of the day.
“Wow.” He hugged her again, set her away from him so the wriggling Chihuahua could get some air. “I guess you’re glad to see me?”
“Yes.” Lei sniffled, letting Angel out as Stevens greeted Keiki, giving the big dog ear rubs. Angel, freed from her carrier, bounced around yipping. “Let’s get out of the street.”
In the yard, the rapturous greetings between Stevens and the dogs continued as Lei took the little dog’s carrier off, hung it on a hook, and unlocked the front door. She grinned, watching them, brushing the tears off her cheeks with her hands, combing hair out of her face, self-conscious about her sweaty workout wear.
Finally, he advanced toward her. “A proper greeting,” he whispered, looking down into her eyes.
Her lashes fluttered shut as his mouth descended to touch hers, gentle as a night moth. She reached up to encircle his head with her arms, stroking his hair as they deepened the kiss, exchanging all the promises that could be shared between lovers sworn and long-parted.
She remembered their first kiss in that moment. Her fear a cloud around her, so easily triggered by the past. That kiss so tender, so careful—yet full of hope and possibility even then.
