Saturday morning dawned grey and wet. Lei slept in, tired from being up late at Criminology class at University of Hawaii the night before, but got up when Keiki woke her to go out. They did their morning run, but Lei still felt restless and unsettled when they got back and decided to clean. She hung the rag rug from her living room on the chain link fence and was taking her frustration out on it with a broom when she heard a shout.
“Hey Lei!”
She turned, the broom raised, and her heart rate jumped.
“Stevens! What’re you doing here?”
“I’d feel better if you put the broom down.” He chuckled, his hands raised.
“Sorry.” She laughed a little too, lowering it. “Spring cleaning.”
“I was in your area and I thought I’d stop by to talk about the investigation. Turns out you were right. We aren’t getting any other detectives from Hilo District, and I still need help, a lot more manpower than Jeremy and I.”
“Okay. I won’t say I told you so.” She whacked the rug a few more times and thought of the stalker note. “How’d you get my address?”
“Irene gave it to me. She told me I needed to come talk to you.” Irene Matsumoto was in charge of Dispatch, personnel records, and general morale. She also knew how much Lei wanted to make detective.
“Nobody crosses Irene. So does this mean you’re putting me on the investigation?”
“I asked the Lieutenant if I could borrow you, yeah. He said okay. I’m still hoping for some more detectives since the community is making so much noise, but until then-” He shrugged. “We’re it. I’m going to use Pono too.”
“Let’s go inside.” Keiki began barking from inside the house, a deep snarling Cerberus boom. “Don’t worry. She only eats assholes.”
He laughed, but it was a little hollow. She opened the front door and signaled Keiki to sit.
“This is Stevens,” she said in her ‘friend’ voice, making the hand signal.
“Michael,” he said. “Call me Michael.” Keiki sniffed him, a little leftover growl rumbling in her chest, but she moved aside and followed them in. Lei took him to the little Formica table with its delicate orchid plant.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Yeah, please. Nice place.”
“It’s perfect for the two of us,” she said, getting him a mug and filling it up with the strong morning brew.
“Oh. Where’s your boyfriend?”
“No, I meant the two of us.” She pointed to the dog. “Keiki and I.”
“Right. Okay.” He covered the awkwardness by taking a sip of his steaming coffee. She sat down after refilling her own mug. Keiki put her head on Lei’s leg and eyed Stevens, her triangle ears pricked.
“We got some more details back from the autopsies,” he said. “Looks like most of the girls’ injuries appear to be postmortem. The lab matched blood on the rag to Haunani Pohakoa. It doesn’t seem like there was much of a struggle, so hopefully they didn’t suffer.”
“I guess that’s something.” Her stomach churned at the images that flashed through her brain. She took a relaxation breath.
“I’ve seen a lot more of this kind of thing in LA. I told the DA my opinion on the case, which is that I don’t think the murder part of it was premeditated. I think he had his fun, and then decided they could ID him and he put them in the stream so he wouldn’t have to deal with it.”
“What were they doing out at that campsite anyway?”
“Got a theory. The one girl, Haunani Pohakoa, had a pretty regular pot habit.”
“I know. That’s how I met her, picking her up for possession.”
“Well we’ve started interviewing the kids she hung out with. Some of them said Haunani was getting Kelly into drugs. I think both girls were troubled, experimenting. But something fishy was going on with Kelly and her stepdad.”
“How do you know?”
“He wouldn’t say squat when we brought him in for another interview after you picked up the trash. He stonewalled with his lawyer, acted hinky. When we canvassed the neighbors they reported late-night fighting between Kelly and the parents, and Kelly ran away overnight more than once this last year. Before the mom married the new guy, Kelly used to be a happy, normal kid.”
Lei struggled to focus on the present moment, taking a couple relaxation breaths, tightening her fist in her lap so the nails dug in, the pain anchoring her.
I need to pay attention, she told herself. I need to stay with this.
His words vibrated through her. She closed her eyes and it got worse: she saw the looming black of expanding pupils, felt herself slipping away to the place she went when things got bad.
Stevens was patting her shoulder and Keiki was growling, a distant thunder, as she blinked, the room regathering itself around her.
“What happened?” He frowned. “You okay?”
“Sorry, I got distracted,” she said. She squeezed her fist. The pain answered, and her body was hers again.
“It was more than that. Did you hear what I said? You were totally out of it there for a minute.”
“Sure,” she said, racking her brain for what they’d been discussing. “Which part?”
“The part about the girls meeting some older guy to go out,” Stevens prompted.
“Right,” Lei said. She knew she was missing information. I can’t remember what he said that made me black out. What if it was important to the case? Her brain skittered around, but it remained a blank from when he had said Haunani had a pot habit. She would just have to look for clues, managing and hiding the “lost” moment as she had for years
“Anyway, it looks like there’s some substance to that idea,” Stevens went on. “Haunani stopped buying from her regular dealer and started flashing some bling, a new cell phone, stuff like that. She told her friends she had a ‘secret admirer’ and he was taking care of everything she needed.”
“Why would he need to drug her then? Was it for a threesome with Kelly?”
“I don’t know. But there’s that witness in her neighborhood who talked about her being dropped off from a Toyota truck, and a student who saw her get picked up after school one day in a black Toyota truck. That’s the lead I want you to run down: possible sugar daddies with black Toyotas.”
“Great,” Lei groaned. “You know how many black Toyota trucks we have in Hilo?”
“Yeah, I know. Why do you think I’m here on a Saturday, eating crow and roping you in on this thing?”
“Okay,” Lei said, not about to argue with this chance to help. “What else should I be looking for?”
“We’ve consulted Dr. Wilson, the police psychologist, for a profile on the type of guy Haunani would be with. She’s thinking someone twenties- to mid-thirties, probably single, with a newer black Toyota, Tundra or Tacoma model. He lives in this area since he was able to carry on a relationship with the girl for a while.”
“Sounds like most of the younger guys in Hilo. Okay, I’ll get on it Monday.”
“I got overtime authorized for you,” he said sheepishly. “I was hoping you’d want to get started tomorrow.”
She stared at him, laughed.
“Wow. What a turnaround. Okay, fine. Want to meet up?”
They set a time, and he keyed it into his Blackberry. She walked him to the door.
“See you tomorrow, Stevens.”
“Call me Michael. Really.”
“Doubtful,” she said, smiling.
In the bath that evening, Lei leaned her head back against the cool porcelain, taking one of those deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth her therapist had recommended, hoping this time it would be different. This time she’d be able to reclaim one more thing he’d taken from her.
It was getting to be more and more important that she manage the weird memory loss and blackout moments she’d struggled with since she was nine. She thought back over the conversation with Stevens, and decided the moment that had triggered her was when he said “she’d been a happy, normal kid.”
She saw Kelly’s bloated, empty face again in her mind’s eye and felt her heart squeeze.
At one time Lei had been a happy, normal kid too-but she’d already been messed up by her dad’s arrest and her mother’s lifestyle by the time Charlie Kwon got his hands on her.
These thoughts weren’t helping her relax. She closed her eyes, but as soon as she did, she smelled the Stetson cologne Charlie always wore. She took another relaxation breath, blowing out the remembered scent. The next second Charlie was there, leaning over her, the soap in his hand.
“Let me wash you,” he said. The pupils of his eyes were wide and black, swallowing her with their need.
Lei reared up, the water sloshing. Keiki, who’d been napping on the bath mat, lunged to her feet. Dripping suds, Lei reached out a trembling arm to pet the dog’s wide chest.
“My guardian. It’s okay, girl, I’m safe now.”
Keiki subsided with a whuff, her ears still swiveling for possible danger. Lei’s heart was still thudding, and she dried a shaking hand on a towel and thumbed open her phone, speed dialing Aunty Rosario at her restaurant in California.
“Baby girl!”
“Hey Aunty. How’s the rat race treating you?’
“Not bad. Been getting some new customers from the ads my busboy put in the mailboxes.”
“Still serving the lilikoi pie?”
“Of course. My regulars would mob me if I didn’t. ’Sides, how else can I say I serve Hawaiian food?”
“What about those poi rolls you were doing?”
“Turns off the truck drivers. They won’t eat anything purple. So what’s new in Hilo?”
They chatted and when they hung up Lei was waterlogged and ready to get out, the flashback gone but not forgotten.
She wondered if she’d ever be able to take a bath without his appearance. Charlie’d had a way of getting to her, twisting everything he did to her into something she’d wanted. Most of her childhood memories remained mercifully elusive but she knew the bath had been bad.
The only thing she remembered for sure were his eyes.
That night she hung her holster from the bedstead and fell asleep with the matte black, boxy shape of the Glock only inches away.