Lei took extra time in the mirror the next morning, whisking on a little mascara. She mashed in one last handful of CurlTamer, trying to get her hair to lie flat. It refused, as it usually did. When she realized what she was doing, she gave up and went to the station. She didn’t care what she looked like, she told herself, and felt the lie stick like a chicken bone in her throat.
“Hey.” Stevens met her at the coffeepot in the break room, dark hair damp and spiky and cheeks red with razor burn. He smelled like soap. “Ready to get started?”
“Of course.” The station was quieter than normal-Sunday mornings being more about church and hangovers in Hilo, and staffing allocated accordingly. Lei plunked down her coffee and booted up a workstation in the computer lab. Stevens sat next to her on another machine.
“So what’re you looking for?” she asked.
“I’m rolling through Haunani’s cell phone calls. I want to see if I can find any connection with Kelly’s stepdad or anyone else interesting. I think we’re going to have to track down and interview everyone she has in her contacts.”
“Oh.” Lei keyed in her password and logged on to the server. She began searching under “black Toyota truck.” The page loaded with entries. She opened each one and began screening the DMV information against the early-to-mid thirties male profile.
Stevens printed something, and then hopped up from the workstation.
“Gotta check something out.” He snagged his black leather jacket off the back of the chair. She envied that as a detective he didn’t have to wear a uniform. “Call me on my cell if you see anything likely.”
“Like what?” She swiveled the chair around. “‘Sugadady’ on a license plate? How the hell are we going to investigate all these dudes anyway?”
“I have a witness from the high school who says she saw the guy in the black Toyota. If we can show her the license pictures, she might be able to pick him out.”
“Nice. Thanks for sharing.”
“Just find the guys who fit the profile, print their pictures and make me a folder.” He shrugged into the jacket.
“For giving up my Sunday I expect to be at the interview,” she said, giving him her best stare. Arrogant asshole, she thought-not for the first time.
“Fine. I’ll check in later.”
She watched him go, enjoying her tiny victory. It was a nice view, and she grinned as she spun her chair back around and got on with the boredom. A thought occurred-she opened another window and tapped in Kelly’s stepdad’s name and a second later, stared in astonishment.
James Reynolds drove a 2007 charcoal Toyota Tacoma. She hit P RINT and pulled the page out of the laser. Heavy brows and a receding hairline bracketed a square jaw; dark eyes looked truculently at her. She threw the page into the growing pile, then fished the dog-eared card out of her pocket and punched in the number.
“Stevens.”
“Stevens, the stepdad drives a dark Tacoma!”
“I know. We’re looking at him pretty hard. Alibi’s holding up though.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? He doesn’t fit the profile, too old.”
“Sorry, I meant to. I’ve been pretty damn busy,” Stevens said. “That’s what I have you for now. Thanks for checking.”
“I’m putting him in the pile with the others.”
“Why don’t you expand the search, add navy blue, charcoal? Maybe our witness was confused on the color. We’ll be bringing Reynolds in again.”
“What’s the alibi?”
“Tell you later,” he said, and rang off.
She snapped her phone shut, rubbed her chest briskly.
That’s what I have you for now. The butterflies or bubbles or whatever they were that had flown up at those words were still there. They were enough to fuel the long day of poring over records, and at the end of it she had a folder of fifty-seven printed license photos, one of whom was James Reynolds. She set it on Stevens’s desk, leaving a note on the front:
Looking forward to the interview.
Monday came too soon. She had Criminology class that night, and hadn’t studied. She let Pono drive and she read factoids aloud to him from her textbook, one ear tuned for a call from Stevens to help with the case.
“Did you know seventy-nine percent of long-term prisoners have at least one diagnosed mental health disorder?”
“Maybe we should be spending a little more on treatment and less on punishment,” Pono said.
“Now you’re sounding like a Democrat. I don’t give a shit why they do what they do-dysfunctional childhoods, economic challenges-whatever. Criminals should be locked up where they can’t hurt anybody.” The words came out more heated than she meant them to as she thought of her father, incarcerated for dealing. She hated him for what he’d done: first for being taken from her, and then for forgetting about her after he was gone.
“C’mon, you know better. Mostly victimless crime like drugs around here.”
Even in Hawaii where they tried for a more rehabilitative approach with innovations like Drug Court where a defendant completed incarcerated rehab in lieu of a sentence, the jails were overflowing.
“You do the crime, you do the time.” Lei flipped the page.
“I just wish the stats were better for Hawaiians,” Pono said. “There’s got to be a reason so many of our people end up in prison.”
“It’s the cycle of addiction, they call it.”
“We need more things fo’ the young people, so they no go into the game,” Pono said. The topic was getting him down. He’d slipped into pidgin, and he absently rubbed his lips with a forefinger.
“Hey, did I tell you Stevens came by? He roped me in to helping him on the case Sunday.”
“Seriously? Did he kiss your ass to get you to do it?”
“Properly, thank you.”
“Glad you’re on the case. You wanted it bad enough.”
Lei looked up. They were in Haunani’s neighborhood, as if the discussion on drugs had led them there. Lei wondered if Stevens had ever got back to re-interview Haunani’s mother.
“Slow down.”
Pono did, and they rolled along the cracking road until they came to the plywood door in the shadow of an extravagant plumeria tree. Sure enough, Nani sat there, cigarette smoke curling upward in a ribbon around her head.
Lei held her hand up, the small circular burn on it suddenly itchy.
“I need a minute.”
“Here we go again,” Pono groaned, but pulled over. Lei got out, straightening her duty belt with its heavy accoutrements, and strode across the tufted grass. Without a word she took one of the beach chairs from its leaning position against the wall, flipped it open, and sat down next to Nani.
“How you stay?” she asked in pidgin.
A shrug of the narrow shoulders, a heavy drag on the cigarette, but Nani’s eyes looked clear if sunken.
“I’m sorry about your daughter.”
Again the shrug.
“Did the detectives ever come back and talk to you?”
Slight shake of the head.
“We need to know anything we can about who might have done this. Who was Haunani seeing?”
“Someone she shouldn’t have been.” Nani’s voice sounded like it came from the bottom of a rusty metal bucket. “She wouldn’t tell me. Had that damn cell phone going all the time, got her pot for free and never gave me notting.”
“What kind of vehicle did he drive?”
“Black Toyota truck.” Another drag. This time she let the smoke curl up from her bottom lip, inhaling it into her nostrils. “I could tell he was too old for her, I told her not to see him, but I never could do notting with that girl. I told you, she get one hard head.”
“So how old was he? Did you ever get a look at him?”
“Saw him one time, picking her up. Not too tall, dark hair. That’s all.”
Lei thought of Reynolds, who was 6’3” and on the bulky side. But, his hair was dark and it would be hard to judge height sitting down in the cab of a truck.
“Did she have any special jewelry or clothing on her the day she disappeared?”
“Nothing special. Just her gold ring-had an initial H on it. Her grandma gave it to her.”
“Anyone else who might want to-hurt her? What about her father?”
“Haven’t seen his sorry ass in ten years. Never gave me one dime of child support.”
“So where is he?”
“I told you, ten years since he got popped.”
Lei sat with that a minute. Another father incarcerated and gone from a child’s life, abandoning her to a druggie mother. Too much of a theme. Well, so much for the theory of a vengeful father. That left the questionable boyfriend, mysterious enough to be a candidate.
“Well, thanks for talking with me. Detective Stevens may be back by to talk to you again.”
“Probably won’t be here.” She dropped her butt into the cigarette-clogged water jar, stood up and went back into the house.
Lei got out of the chair and headed back to the cruiser, speed-dialing Stevens on her cell.
He hadn’t been back to talk to Nani, and after grilling her for details, he thanked her.
“You’re good at taking initiative. Just check with me first next time, okay?”
“Got it,” Lei said. “We were just in the neighborhood, thought we’d just try, save you some time.” She closed the phone, got in the cruiser and slammed the door, putting on her seatbelt.
“We?” Pono rolled his eyes, and dropped the Oakleys down over them. “‘We nothing.”
“Well it worked out okay, didn’t it?”
“Just because she didn’t get you with her cigarette this time?” He shook his head. “You got lucky she wasn’t high at the moment, is all.”
“Well, if I keep getting lucky, I might just catch this killer.”