been a beautiful, lively hair salon just the day before. I could still make out the walls, the wash station, and a crumpled shelf that had once held Tico’s Barbie dolls, which were now a pile of melted rubber and charred fabric.
Looking down the center, through what had been the dividing walls between premises, I could see that the travel agency, karate studio, acupuncture clinic, cell phone store, and pharmacy were all gone, too. “Any idea where the fire started?”
“Behind the acupuncture clinic,” Mike said. “But the place went up fast. The wind carried the flames down the block-when the first engine got here the beauty parlor was already engulfed. The guy in the back didn’t have a chance, especially if he was asleep. Doesn’t look like there were fire alarms or sprinklers.”
“And now it’s up to us to figure out what happened.”
“Yup,” Mike said. “You and me.”
GHOST MARKS
Ray showed up a few minutes later. He’s about five ten, wiry and tough, with sandy brown hair. He’d just made detective in Philadelphia when his wife announced she wanted to pursue a master’s degree in Asian studies at the University of Hawai’i. He’d joined HPD a little over a year before and become my partner.
He was Italian, very laid back, with an ironic sense of humor. He was also a savvy investigator, and though he was a newcomer to the islands, or malihini, he had a keen understanding of human behavior.
Two crime scene investigators were behind him, and after I got out of the fire suit, I briefed them all on what we knew. We blocked off the site with tape, and Ray and I walked out to the edge of the parking lot. The night was dark away from the arc lights; there was only a neon sign half a block away. I could see the pattern of streetlights that rose into the mountains around us, broken in places where the ridges were too steep for housing.
With all but one of the fire engines gone, traffic had resumed on Waialae Avenue: trucks and motorcycles and low-riding sedans. “We know who made the 911 call?” I asked.
“Nope.”
I looked across the street. Most of the block was taken up with a two-story office building-insurance agents, doctors, and so on. Next door to that was a used car lot, dark behind a high fence. “No neighbors to see anything,” I said.
“Nope.”
“Got any ideas?”
“Nope.”
“Know any words other than nope?”
“Yup.”
The perils of having a partner who thinks he’s a comedian. There wasn’t anyone to canvass, though perhaps the next morning our 911 caller might resurface, or a passing driver might call in a clue. Mike came over and said, “They’re working on the overhaul now.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Once we think the fire’s been extinguished, we send some guys in to search for any bit of fire we might have missed. They pull out the furniture, open the walls and ceilings. We want to prevent any possibility of rekindle-when the fire starts up again, after it’s been extinguished.”
In the glow of the arc lights next to the remaining fire truck, I followed Mike’s gaze back to the smoldering ruin. “I’ve got to stick around for the overhaul,” he said. “If they don’t do it right, they could remove evidence I need to determine the cause and origin of the fire.”
He stretched his shoulders back and flexed his arms. “Going to be a long night. After that, I’m going down to company 22 to talk to the guys there. How about we meet back here at six? Should be first light then, not too hot.”
“Ray and I are just finishing a night shift. We’re supposed to have two days off, then go back to days, but I’ll talk to my lieutenant and see if I can go straight to days tomorrow morning,” I said. “How about you, Ray?”
“Julie’s in school. Won’t matter to her if I’m off or at work.” He smiled. “Will get me out of a bunch of chores, though.”
The crime scene techs went off to look for anything related to cause of death-spent cartridges, rope that might indicate the victim was bound. Then the medical examiner’s office took away the body, and Ray and I waited around until they had cleared the site.
Then we went back to the District 1 station, inside the police headquarters downtown, and spent the next few hours clearing our desks so that we could focus on the dead body at the back of Tico’s salon. I believed it was Jingtao, who had so carefully touched my hair on Saturday, and felt that I owed it to him, to Tico, and to my family to figure out what had happened to him and bring his killer to justice.
Sampson came in at seven, and I explained the circumstances to him. He told us both to go home, get a couple of hours’ sleep, then clock back in. Ray left for home, but I drove directly up to Waialae Avenue. I was tired, but at the same time my adrenaline was high, and I was determined to work through my fatigue.
I wasn’t sure I could work with Mike again without all the baggage of our personal relationship. On the way up to the center, I wondered if I could shift coordination with Mike to Ray. That would be the coward’s way out, though. I would have to suck it up and work with him, and avoid being distracted by memory or sexual attraction.
By the time I got to the burned center, Mike had set up a temporary command post in an Army tent in the parking lot and it was already hot and humid. The night’s strong winds were gone; no breeze came down from the Ko’olau Mountains, and not a single cloud blocked the sun’s rays. I parked on a side street, out of the way, and walked across to the center, waving at an officer I knew named Lidia Portuondo, who was keeping foot and vehicle traffic out of the center while consoling the pharmacist and his wife, who had seen the morning news in disbelief.
The trees my brother Haoa had carefully planted and tended over the years had burned, leaving no shade anywhere except under the tent, and when I met Mike there it was swelteringly hot.
Mike had two firefighters delegated to him, who were already out in the ruins looking for clues. “The ME hasn’t given us a cause of death for the body we found,” he said. “And it was burned so much that he might not be able to tell. Looks like the work of a pro. I want to isolate the ignition point and see if I can identify any accelerants. Every pro has his own signature; if we find the clues we find the guy.”
Mike had a pint bottle of water in his hand, and he unscrewed it, then took a deep gulp. His radio buzzed and he stepped away to take the call, leaving his water bottle on the table. I used the sleeve of my aloha shirt to wipe my sweaty forehead, and grabbed the bottle for a drink.
As soon as the liquid hit my tongue, though, I knew it wasn’t water. Way too much kick for that. I jerked the bottle back, spilling a few drops on the counter, and then sniffed. The liquid was odorless and colorless, but I thought it was vodka.
I capped the bottle, wiped the spilled drops with a tissue, then put the bottle back on the table and went out to the ruins of the shopping center my father had built, in part with his own hands.
As I walked, I yawned, and wondered if I’d have passed the call to another detective if I’d known Mike would be involved. Maybe. But how could I have justified that to my family? They had met Mike a few times before we broke up, and liked him. No one had ever questioned why we’d stopped seeing each other, and until I told Harry when we were surfing, I’d never volunteered an explanation.
And what was up with the vodka bottle, at eight in the morning? When we’d dated, Mike had been a wine drinker, preferably red and Italian. He’d gotten a little loopy sometimes, but I had too. I’d never considered that he had a drinking problem.
In the daylight, the center looked worse than it had at night. Traffic slowed on Waialae Avenue as onlookers gaped, but Lidia kept the cars moving, and prevented foot traffic from getting in our way. The devastation the fire had caused was clear, and the harsh smell of burnt wood and plastic was still everywhere. I stifled another yawn as Mike and I started at the far end of the center, by the acupuncture clinic, looking for anything we could find.
“A fire needs three things,” he said, as we began investigating. “Oxygen, heat, and a fuel source. Last night, I
