The dog licking her face brought her up out of a deep well of medication-induced sleep. My girl’s okay, she thought. She put her arms around Keiki’s big, solid body, burrowing her face into her fur, savoring the warmth and safety of her bed. Even the doggy smell was heavenly. Keiki had been found trapped in the steel gardening shed. She’d been Tased but seemed no worse for it.
“I hate to interrupt this love fest.” Stevens’s voice. She opened her eyes. He was at the foot of the bed on the futon, sitting up with the covers around his waist. “How’re you feeling?”
“Glad to be alive,” she said huskily. “Love the pain meds.”
“You should’ve stayed in the hospital.”
“I hate those places. Nothing so wrong with me that a little first aid and some sleep won’t cure.”
“Yeah. That’s what you said last night.” He jumped up with lithe grace. “I’ll go make some coffee.”
She stroked Keiki with her good hand, staring at the ceiling. The previous night was blurry except for a few moments-Stevens and several squad cars arriving. Stevens wrapping her in a clean blanket, taking off her restraints. The flash of crime scene photos being taken even as she was helped to the ambulance. Lying on the gurney, Stevens beside her, holding her hand.
“You should be at the crime scene,” she remembered saying.
“I am,” he’d replied.
The cast on her arm felt stiff and hard. Her wrist had indeed been broken. Pain throbs echoed the struggle from various points on her body. She tried not to remember it, thinking instead about giving her statement to Stevens and the other detectives.
Thank God this whole thing was finally over. She closed her eyes again, feeling tears well up. She didn’t know why she was crying.
“Sit up,” Stevens said, his voice brisk. He was carrying two steaming mugs of coffee. She scooched herself upright, whacking her pillow into shape behind her with her good hand. He handed her the coffee and sat in the folding chair he’d set in the space beside her outsized bed. She took a sip.
“Mmm. Strong.”
“You’re gonna need it,” he said, reaching over to stretch a curl out, watching it spring back into the matted mass around her face. “The Lieutenant wants us to do a press conference at 11:00 AM.”
“Oh my God. I can’t,” Lei said. Keiki stiffened and growled at the terror in her voice.
“You won’t have to say much, just stand there in your dress uniform with a sling on your arm, look heroic. I’ll be making a statement too.”
His voice was grim, and she reached out to touch his arm. “I’m so sorry, Michael. He was your partner, your friend.”
“Obviously not.” He looked down. One of his hands sported bruised, scratched knuckles. “I had to punch the wall because I couldn’t do it to his face. I just keep kicking myself-there were clues if you knew to see them. The photo we found on Reynolds’s hard drive, the ring. He planted both, and if I hadn’t been so eager to close the case, I would have remembered that not only was he computer savvy, his hobby was photography. All along he was trying to point the investigation towards Reynolds.”
She rubbed his arm, little circles. He looked down, traced the bruise on her wrist from the cuffs with the tip of his finger.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know.” The tears she’d been holding back welled, dropped on the cast she held over her stomach. “I’ve never killed anyone before.” She sniffed loudly, wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I’m alive, and that’s what counts. Alive, and not raped.”
“Yeah.” He put his arm around her, pulled her over in a rough hug. His voice was harsh with emotion. “I’m glad you did what you had to do. I just wish I could have done it for you. I figured you were missing when I called and your phone kept going to voicemail. I went to the house and found it in the driveway. I knew he’d just outwaited us then. I was going crazy.”
She shuddered, a flash of memory making her shut her eyes. “God-I hope that was the last time I ever have to kill someone. And it’s not like I got to shoot him. It was gross, so up close and personal, both of us naked.. I didn’t have time or room to think about my plan not working, but it almost didn’t work.”
“You did what you had to do,” he repeated. “And I’m proud of you.” Abruptly he got up, paced back and forth. “Guy was the worst kind of scum, a police officer preying on women. It’s going to take me awhile to stop wishing I could be the one to kill him.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair in that familiar gesture, took a breath. “I’ll be back to pick you up at ten-thirty. Oh, and after the press conference you have an appointment with Dr. Wilson.”
“That was inevitable, but I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it.”
“Lieutenant’s orders,” he said, leaning down to give her a kiss on the forehead. “See you soon. Put your game face on.” He hooked his jacket off the chair and closed the door behind him.
It seemed like only a short time later she was standing in front of the police station behind a lectern, surrounded by bristling microphones, lights shining in her eyes. It wasn’t hard to look pale. She leaned on Pono for support.
“Officer Texeira was abducted two nights ago,” Lieutenant Ohale started off. “She was able to overpower her assailant and he is now deceased. We then searched his home, and have found proof that he not only killed Haunani Pohakoa and Kelly Andrade, but was responsible for a series of kidnap rapes that began on Oahu and ended here with the recent kidnapping and murder of another police officer from Puna. The perpetrator’s name is Jeremy Ito and he was a detective here in Hilo.”
The crowd of reporters exploded with questions, and he raised his hands and outstretched them, Moses calming the Red Sea.
“And now if you’ll settle down, Detective Stevens will take questions.”
Stevens replaced him, taking questions from the crowd. Pono sheltered Lei with his bulk, and then steered her by the elbow through the reporters as the press conference ended. He pushed open the double glass doors of the station and walked her to her cubicle.
She held court for a while in her creaky office chair with the officers that stopped by. It seemed Jeremy had not been well liked, and she nodded and smiled as different staff came up to tell her “something was off about him,” and how glad they were she had survived. Finally Lieutenant Ohale shooed her visitors away.
“So of course you know you’re on admin leave until your investigation wraps up. Take it easy, get better. Now it’s time to go see Dr. Wilson. No arguments,” he said as he hoisted her up gently from her chair, giving her an affectionate pat that pushed her down the hall.
She walked to the office and seemed to fall into Dr. Wilson’s arms as the psychologist opened the door.
“Thank God you’re alive. Come in here and tell me all about it.” And Lei did.