Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  “Deported to Canada. His visa was canceled. Just heard the news on my way over to Jacobsen’s.”

  “You sure he got on the plane?”

  “Heard an officer accompanied him to the airport.”

  “Hmm.” Lei frowned. “Kingston seemed so fanatical. I’m actually having a hard time seeing Jacobsen as someone so bird crazy he’d commit murder, but not Kingston.”

  “We have to follow the evidence, and right now the evidence is pointing to Jacobsen.”

  Lei and Pono bounced along the rutted dirt road, following an employee from Haleakala Ranch, who drove ahead, unlocking the gates for them. The fields were rich and lush, dotted with volcanic rocks and a few clusters of runaway prickly gorse and stands of eucalyptus. The SUV carrying the tracking dog, Blue, his handler, Freddie Lee, and a partner, followed them. Lei’s heart rate was up, excitement to catch Jacobsen finally banishing the angst brought on by postponing her wedding.

  They reached a clearing with a final fence and pulled up beside Jacobsen’s black Tacoma. Wild green forest beyond beckoned Lei as she jumped down from Pono’s truck. She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and looked into the bed of the truck. Sure enough, there was a significant bloodstain pooled in the metal channels.

  “That could be deer or pig blood,” Pono said. “That’s kind of how my truck looks after hunting.”

  “We have to test it.” Lei got out her crime kit and took several swabs. She turned on her high-powered light and shone it over the truck. Smears and blots lit up here and there. “We might have some prints here.”

  Blue barked, a deep, eager sound, as Freddie Lee unloaded him from the SUV they’d pulled up in.

  “We’ll have to come back and work the truck over. Let’s mark it and leave it for later.” She and Pono draped crime scene tape over the black Tacoma, and as she did so, Lei couldn’t help remembering another black Tacoma and the part it had played in her life.

  “This brings up the question—with this restricted access, how would Jacobsen have got through these locked gates?” Lei took her Kevlar vest out from behind her seat and slipped it on over her head.

  “I thought of that. The rangers are issued keys, in case they need to go retrieve something or respond to a park-related emergency on shared land. Jacobsen had apparently checked the keys out two weeks ago, and they hadn’t been returned.”

  Lei bundled her hair into a ponytail and pulled a dark green-billed hat down over her curls.

  “I called and spoke to Takama about Jacobsen,” Pono said. “He was pretty shocked Jacobsen was being looked at as a suspect. Said the guy was hardworking and dedicated, but didn’t show a lot of—what did he call it—‘outside the box thinking.’ He also, according to Takama, was fairly new to Maui and had gained his tracking experience working in other parks.”

  “Hmm,” Lei said, frowning as she checked her Glock, expelling the clip to check it was full, ramming it home inside the cool pebbled grip. She patted the cargo pants pockets, checking that she’d brought a spare clip and had packed Taser, pepper spray, and handcuffs. She slung on a light backpack loaded with crime kit and water bottle.

  Lee and his partner, Kahakauwila, also checked their gear. Blue was already questing about on the ground after being given Jacobsen’s hat to sniff. Lei lifted her feet to look at the soles of her shoes for trapped seeds—she didn’t want to bring anything new into the forest.

  Blue flung up his head and gave a single bark, tugging on his leash to go through the gate in front of a trail that led into the forest. “Dog’s ready to work,” Lee said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  They all moved at a fast walk, single file behind the dog. Blue trotted confidently up the path.

  The Haleakala Ranch employee who’d unlocked the gates brought up the rear.

  “Sure seems to know where he’s going,” the young man said. He’d introduced himself as Henry Ferreira, and they’d brought him along to answer any questions about the ranch or flora and fauna they encountered.

  “This dog helped us catch our last perp within an hour,” Pono said. “So tell us more about this forest while we’re going through here. Pretty big path here. Where does it go?”

  “This is a shared sanctuary area called the Maile Trail,” Ferreira said. They’d begun to climb, and the trail had gotten narrower. Blue showed no signs of slowing down. Lei spotted the shiny, dark green leaves of the sacred maile vine twining around the trunks of guava, ohia, and old-growth koa trees, interspersed with thick clumps of kahili ginger, whose stems grew long, glossy sword-shaped leaves forming fernlike patterns. Tall spires of sweet-smelling blossoms thickened the air with scent.

  “We try to manage the invasives, like all this kahili ginger, which really came from India.” Ferreira made an arm gesture encompassing the vast stand of six-foot-tall, showy plants. “Ginger’s really hard to kill because it spreads via rhizome. If even one little root is left in after you dig it out, it’ll come back.”

  “Why is it important to get rid of?” Lei asked, her heart pumping as the trail narrowed and the incline increased. Hundreds of the gingers had been hacked down beside the trail, but new sprouts were already growing.

  “Well, it chokes everything else out. It’s pretty, though,” Ferreira said. Lei thought the air had a velvety texture to it from the acres of rich orange, yellow, and white ginger blossoms.

  Suddenly, Blue bayed again and turned off the path into a hacked-down stand of ginger plants, dragging Lee over to a patch of turned-over soil.

  “Uh-oh,” Lei said.

  “Seems like a pretty good spot for a body dump. If we hadn’t used the dog, we’d never have found this,” Pono said.

  Lei took her backpack off, removing her crime kit and putting on gloves. Blue continued to circle the mound of disturbed earth, whining.

  Lei and Pono used their hands to dig, and it wasn’t long before the coppery tang of blood rose through the earth, causing Blue to put his head back and howl. The dog was still agitated when Lei uncovered a portion of torso clad in a camouflage T-shirt. They had enough confirmation for Pono to call for the medical examiner.

  “I wonder who it is,” Lei said, hanging her soil-covered, gloved hands off the ends of her bent knees.

  “Seems that there must be more than one perp involved in this situation,” Pono said, frowning. “Dr. Gregory said he’s about forty-five minutes out. Henry, can you drive back and open the gates for him?”

  “Sure.” The young man, looking green, trotted off quickly.

  Blue had begun casting around on the ground again, and he gave an assertive bark. “He’s picked up a scent,” his handler said. “Do you want to follow it?”

  “Can you tell if it’s Jacobsen or someone else he’s wanting to follow?” Lei asked, straightening up and stripping off her gloves.

  “Can’t tell, but the scent will be related to Jacobsen in some way,” the dog’s handler said.

  “Then we should follow it. If we have anything to follow, we should get it while we can,” Lei said to Pono. “But someone needs to stay and secure the body.”

  “We should go,” Freddie said, gesturing to his partner. “We can run down whoever it is.”

  “It’s our case,” Pono said. “One of us should go. Lei, you stay with the body. It’s my turn to fall into a gulch.”

  “No. You know I’m faster,” Lei said. “Besides, I outrank you. Stay with the body, Pono.” She winked at her glowering partner. “Put up the tape around it. Probably won’t get the perp, since whoever buried the body has had several hours’ head start—but I need a workout.”

  Pono folded his arms and scowled as she and the K-9 unit set off up the trail.

  Blue really seemed to have the scent, towing his handler up the path, which grew increasingly narrow and steep. The trail finally dead-ended at a tall fence with a built-in step to climb over it. The hound, stopped by this obstacle, trotted back and forth.

  “This must be the edge of the fenced conservation lands,” Le
i said. “The fence is to keep the goats, deer, and pigs out.”

  “Seems pretty effective,” Kahakauwila said. “The scent seems to continue on the other side.”

  The two helped the dog over the barrier, and Lei followed them.

  The trail, hardly more than a track now, wound back and forth through a thick jungle of maile vine and ohia and koa trees. Ferns and olapa plants, their slender leaves shimmering, moved in an almost imperceptible breeze. As before, Lei felt her jangled nerves settling in the forest, even with the deadly discovery they’d just made and the possibility of danger ever-present. Sounds reduced to the clink of the dog’s chain, the panting of their breath as they wound their way through the overgrown jungle, the padding of their feet, the sweet calls of the native birds as coins of golden light fell through the canopy around them.

  Lei wondered who was in that shallow grave. If it was Jacobsen, it meant he had an unknown partner, or had somehow been involved with the shootings. If it wasn’t, then Jacobsen was the one Blue was so earnestly seeking. She’d been so wrong in her estimation of the young ranger as to be embarrassing.

  Blue suddenly tugged off the trail, and now the going was really rough. Lei clambered over rotting fallen logs covered with moss and lichen, through tight clumps of ferns, around trees leaning in all directions, until they came to the steep edge of another gulch.

  Blue sat back on his haunches, panting, as Kahakauwila and Lee looked around. “What do you think?” Lee whispered to Lei.

  Lei could hear the tinkle of a stream, hidden by ferns, at the bottom of the gulch. “If he’s camping out here, he’s going to be by water. If he comes this way, or came this way in the past, there must be a way down.” She kept her voice low.

  “I think there would be more signs that he’s climbed down,” Lee said. “I don’t see a trail, any broken growth, nothing.”

  “What is Blue telling you?” They all looked at the dog, who was lying down, tongue hanging out in apparent exhaustion.

  “He’s lost the scent here,” Lee whispered.

  “Well, I think there’s some reason he led us here. I’ll find a way down, look around.” Lei took off her backpack, chugged down half a bottle of water. She then scouted along the edge, finding a spot where the grade was not quite as steep. Holding on to clumps of fern, she lowered herself over the side and picked her way to the bottom of the gulch. It was so covered with ferns at the bottom that she couldn’t see back up to the edge. Instead the ferns created a tunnel of green, lit with sunshine from above, as the stream chuckled over slippery dark stones.

  Lei squatted beside the stream, letting her eyes drift in “see mode” over everything around her. The water followed the gentle slope of the canyon down toward the sea. Taller ferns arched over the steep dirt-and-rock banks with tender, trembling maidenhair and bright green mosses growing closer to the water.

  It was an enchanted grotto—except for the straight line of a bowstring, foreign in the natural setting. A bow, painted in camouflage colors, was caught among the rocks, almost blending with the broken branches it was mixed with. Lei stood and made her way to the weapon, which had lodged between some stones. She put gloves on to pick it up, but there were no further clues to be had from the weapon itself, at least that she could determine at that moment. She searched thoroughly for any arrows, finding none.

  Back at the top of the gulch, sweaty and disheveled, Lei held up the bow. “Found what he was ditching here. Let’s see if Blue can pick anything else up.”

  Blue didn’t find anything new, and he ended up leading them back down to the body site, where Dr. Gregory and his assistant, Tanaka, were already hunched over the mound of soil.

  Lei held up the bow for Pono to see. “Pretty sure this is significant.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  “The perp pitched it into a gulch. Nothing else down there, but I definitely got that workout.”

  “Do you guys need us any longer? We have to do a missing person search down the hill,” Kahakauwila said.

  “No, but thanks for all your help. I hope we don’t need you any more on this case,” Lei said. “Can I pet Blue?”

  “We don’t like to distract him when he’s working, but since we’re done, it’s okay.” Lee had Blue sit, and Lei squatted to rub behind Blue’s long, floppy ears. The hound blinked long-lashed, soulful brown eyes and shut them in bliss.

  “Good boy,” she said. “Great work today.”

  Blue wagged his tail so hard it seemed like he might sprain it, and Lee tweaked his leash to lead him away. The dog glanced back at the shallow grave and what was being uncovered and gave another low, sorrowful howl.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lei slipped another pair of gloves on and knelt beside Dr. Gregory. He and his assistant, Tanaka, wore masks and long rubber gloves. They used trowels and wide paintbrushes to uncover the body as if it were a specimen at an archeological dig.

  “Anything I can do?” Lei asked.

  “Yeah. Why don’t you and Pono move the dirt we take out farther away and do another check through it for any useful trace?” Gregory swiped his arm across his forehead, leaving a muddy streak. Under the rubber coveralls, he was wearing a bright aloha shirt decorated with hula dancers.

  Pono turned back, his phone to his ear, holding up a finger. “I’m updating the captain,” he said.

  Lei moved the dirt away from the grave and sifted it through her hands, piling it a couple of feet away from the body.

  Gregory glanced up and around. “Beautiful out here. What’s with all the chopped-down ginger?” Lei told him what Ferreira had shared earlier. Pono rejoined them just as they got to the victim’s face.

  Tanaka used her paintbrush to gently dislodge the dirt from familiar features. “Six-foot white male, late twenties or early thirties,” Gregory said. “Brown hair. Anyone recognize him?” Gregory turned to look at Lei and Pono.

  “It’s Mark Jacobsen,” Lei said. She rocked back on her heels and looked at Pono. “He was our suspect, but it turns out he’s a victim. I don’t know what this means.”

  A long pause. No one else had anything to say. Lei was sickened by sorrow and anger, looking at the young ranger’s gentle face, dirt filling his mouth and nostrils. Someone had murdered him and dumped him here. She wondered if he’d been the one to shoot at her—or if he’d been dead, lying in the back of his own truck, when she’d pulled up to his house.

  “I already checked the pockets for ID—nothing. I’ll take prints,” Dr. Gregory said.

  “I don’t think he’ll be in the system unless he has a record,” Pono said. “Visual ID on the body by us should be enough, and I confirm this is Jacobsen, the ranger we’d worked with.”

  “Cause of death appears to be an arrow wound.” Gregory pointed to the nub of black fletching protruding from the man’s chest. “Looks like the killer got him right through the heart. Whoever is taking these shots is damn good with a bow.”

  “I know how hard it is to hit something,” Lei said. “I took a shot at the tires of Jacobsen’s truck and it was a total fail.”

  “In all these cases, the shooter hasn’t removed the arrow,” Pono said. “The arrow’s a lead. It can be matched to others. It might carry trace. It’s interesting that the killer left them.”

  “Be pretty messy to take them out,” Lei said. “That could cause other trace, a cascade effect with wound bleed and transfer.”

  “Or the killer could be squeamish about what he—or she—is doing,” Pono said.

  “Well, since I’ve handled all the arrows, including the one recovered from your Chinese poacher who lived, I can tell you that these are very common, cheap arrows. Anyone could grab these down at Sports Authority in Kahului. That said, they are each a different brand,” Dr. Gregory said.

  “Maybe it means there is more than one shooter. Or maybe it means the perp likes variety,” Pono said.

  “Since this is Jacobsen, it really changes our assumptions. Maybe he wasn’t the one who sho
t at me in his house.” Lei glanced at Pono. “I’m thinking he was already bleeding and possibly dead in the back of his truck when I pulled up at his house, and the real murderer was the one to shoot at me.”

  “So who could it be?”

  “Anyone. The biologists, another bird lover—whoever shot the poachers. We got no direction here.” Lei paced back and forth a bit as Dr. Gregory and Tanaka continued to work quietly. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want to go back to Jacobsen’s house. After we pulled the bows off the wall this afternoon, we didn’t thoroughly search the place. I want to go back over it. I have a feeling we missed something there.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Pono said. “Dr. Gregory, if you don’t mind, I’ll go back down the trail to process Jacobsen’s truck. Then, Lei, I’ll meet you at his house if you still need me. If not, I’ll see you at the conference room back at the station when we brief the captain.”

  “And I’ll call you if anything more definitive turns up on the body,” Dr. Gregory said. “With any luck at all, this young man’s body will tell us something.”

  “Yeah, this case has been terrible that way—no trace anywhere. Okay to take your truck, Pono?” Lei asked.

  In reply, Pono tossed her his keys. “I’ll get a ride with the transport vehicle.”

  Lei rose to her feet, filled with a sudden urgency. She lifted a hand to Pono, who was helping get the body into the black plastic bag. She trotted back down the trail, carrying the bow she’d recovered from the gulch. At Pono’s truck, she stowed the bow in a large paper evidence bag and labeled it, setting it on the seat beside her. Henry Ferreira, who’d been leaning on his vehicle, came to her window.

  “Need me to let you out?”

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

  She followed the young man’s battered Haleakala Ranch Ford pickup and they drove along the one-lane dirt road through the pasturelands. Lei gazed at the rolling fields, which disappeared into a distance of lavender ocean punctuated by scoops of vanilla-ice-cream-cloud floating over the sea as sunset approached.