“Stevens-how’d it go after I left?”
“You look hot.”
“Yeah.” She brushed sweaty curls back from her forehead. “Chasing some taggers downtown.”
“Get your man?”
“Of course.” She gestured toward Pono and Sam at the booking desk with the boys. “So how did the canvassing go?”
“Didn’t get much more than when you were there.” He screwed the top back onto his water bottle. “We have some leads with Haunani’s cell phone, which that neighbor Ohia found at the house. We also have a shitload of stuff to process from the campsite.”
“What about talking to Kelly’s parents today? Need any help?”
“No, Jeremy and I are handling that. You can get back to… whatever you do.” He made a vague gesture that encompassed her sweaty hair, crumpled uniform and the hangdog teenagers at the booking desk.
“You know what? Forget it. Good luck with the investigation.” Lei spun away, a hot prickle of rage sweeping up to her hairline, knowing she was over-reacting and no longer giving a damn. She stomped back over to Pono. “Let’s go, Pono. I think we missed a few.”
Pono ripped the boys’ incident writeup off his pad, slapping it down on the desk.
“Yeah, okay. Sam, can you finish this up? My partner’s out for justice.”
Lei blew through the double doors and was in the Crown Vic revving the engine when Pono got in. She pulled out and laid down some rubber turning onto the busy avenue, roaring back toward town.
“What’s up?”
“Fucking Stevens.”
“Turned you down for a date?”
“Turned me down for the investigation.”
“Asshole,” said Pono, rubbing his lips hard to suppress a grin. “So I guess you asked to be on the case.”
“I have an interest,” she said. “And a lot to offer. But whatever. He’s a prick.”
“For the record, did you for once think about how this would affect me if you got reassigned?”
“Hey, you get along with everybody. It’d only be temporary.”
“Well… if you feel that strongly you should go to the Lieutenant and ask.”
“Maybe I will.”
After a long pause, Pono turned the radio to the Hawaiian station. Slack key guitar filled the Crown Vic with soft rhythms.
“Let it go a’ready. Otherwise you come stress out,” he said, leaning back with his trademark mellow. “Seems like those Chang boys we picked up are following in their grandpa’s footsteps.”
“What do you mean?”
“Terry Chang. He was a real crime godfather around here. Got put away finally and some good citizen offed him in prison. Word is his wife is running things now. She’s not going to be happy with those boys drawing attention by getting picked up.”
“Looks like they wanted to get to work building their rap sheets,” Lei said. She hit the steering wheel in frustration. “Those girls deserve more.”
“Like what? You’re not even a detective yet.”
“Something about this case-it’s like it found me. But whatever, it seems like you and Stevens are on the same page.”
“I never said I agree with him, but I understand why he’s trying to get the best. This is the biggest murder to happen in Hilo in forever.”
Lei had no answer, no way to explain her need to help-because what he said was the truth. They drove back through the industrial area, but the taggers were long gone. They continued on their normal route as late afternoon turned into evening.
“There’s more to this than meets the eye,” Pono said eventually. “It could have gone down like people’re saying, with the girls going to party with some nasty icehead or something. But I like Kelly’s stepdad for this.”
“Really?”
“He’s squirrelly. Lawyered up for his interview today, and so far there’s no reason to.”
“How’d you hear this?”
“I have my sources.” Pono knew everyone, and the station was full of his ‘talk story’ moles.
“Maybe he felt discriminated against,” she said, elbowing him. “It’s not easy being the white minority.”
“He one stupid haole,” Pono stated. ‘Haole’ meant Caucasian or newcomer, and the word wasn’t always complimentary in a state where only a third of the population was white.
“Huh,” Lei said. “Hey, it’s trash day, early evening… maybe he put their trash out on the road already.” She typed the stepfather’s last name into the ToughBook computer screwed into the dash with her right hand while steering with her left. He lived in central Hilo, only a few miles away.
“No need we go look. They always saying, do your own job. You so nosy, you going get us fired,” Pono lapsed into pidgin, cracking his big brown knuckles.
“Not nosy. Pro-active. If that trash is out there, it’s in the open and fine for us to take it, and tomorrow morning it will be gone as an option. We’ll turn anything we find over to the detectives. What are you so scared of? Extra work?”
“Shut up. I just know Stevens and Ito won’t like it.”
“So what? We’re helping them. If we find anything, we’ll give it to them, let them take the credit.”
“It’s a miracle we found the crime scene. Now, we’re investigating. It’s not our kuleana, our responsibility.”
“I don’t know about you, but I care about catching a killer. I care about what happened to those girls, and if you like the stepdad for it, that’s a valid hunch. We’re just looking for another miracle.”
Pono subsided, moodily adjusting his side mirror.
“What’s the baby up to these days?” she asked, to distract him.
“You don’t really care.”
She didn’t, so she shut up and drove.
It didn’t take long to get to the middle-class neighborhood where Kelly had lived. They rolled quietly along the street, lit tastefully by carriage-lamp streetlights. Lei passed the house, a modest ranch. The black plastic trash cans sat on the curb.
“They’re out there. What do you think?” Lei tried to suppress the excitement in her voice.
“Since when did you listen to what I think? Let’s just get this over with. Cruise back by, we’ll dump the trash into the crime-scene bags,” Pono said, his mouth tight.
The backseat held a box of heavy-duty transparent garbage bags from emptying the junked cars. Pono pulled on latex gloves as she turned the corner again and drove slowly toward the house. She pulled up and put the car in park, as Pono leapt out and headed for the first can. She was still pulling on latex gloves when he dumped the contents of the can into one of the plastic bags.
A dog began barking from inside the house as she helped him with the second can, holding the thick transparent plastic open so the garbage, fortunately already bagged, tumbled in.
“Shut up, goddamnit!” someone yelled at the dog, as they emptied the third one, threw the bags into the backseat, and jumped back in the cruiser. Lei put it in gear and they quietly picked up speed.
Pono sighed, leaning back and closing his eyes, rubbing his lips hard with his right hand.
“That imaginary cigarette taste pretty good?”
“You have no idea,” he said, his eyes still closed.
“Let’s pull over, have a quick look,” Lei said. Her hands were actually itching to rip into the bags.
“No way. Pollute the chain of evidence? What if there is something there, you want to be able to give it to Stevens, don’t you?”
That shut her up.
It only took a few more minutes to pull into the station, haul the bags in past the startled night watch officer and back to the evidence room. They logged the three bags in and locked the room.
“That’s not going to smell so good tomorrow morning,” Pono said.
“We could go through them now.”
