He just narrowed his eyes at her, gave her back a whack that made her stagger forward toward the door.
“Okay, okay. Tomorrow then.”
He’d opened the Orchids file again. He couldn’t resist looking at his handiwork, savoring the sequence, the tragic beauty of the girls in the water. He played with the key ring, smoothing the girls’ hair through his fingers.
The newspaper article was such a wonderful contrast. He picked up the paper with its grainy, obligatory shot of twin white-shrouded gurneys, and in the background the tense-looking female officer who’d found the bodies. He read the snippet aloud.
“Officer Leilani Texeira and her partner Pono Kaihale were first on the scene of a possible double homicide at Mohuli`i Park.” He tapped her face with its aureole of curly brown hair. “Officer Texeira. You look like you’d photograph well.”
Chapter 7
Sam was at the watch desk again when she got to the station the next morning.
“Hey, do you know a seven-letter word for ‘outrageous female pop star’?” he asked, pencil in hand.
“Try Madonna,” she said, pushing through the glass interior door.
“It works!” He looked up. “We’ve been getting a lot of calls on those girls you found. Community’s pretty upset. Even had to send a unit down to the high school to deal with the students.”
“Bummer. Don’t know why we aren’t putting more people on the case; I’m trying to get on the investigation but Stevens is holding out for more detectives.”
“Good luck with that.” He went back to the crossword as the door swung shut behind her with a muffled clunk.
Lei picked up some coffee and headed for the back room with a box of various-sized evidence bags and a pair of latex gloves. Pono had sent her a text message that the baby kept him up all night and now they were all sick. He didn’t like it when she took chances, so she wasn’t surprised he’d left her holding the proverbial trash bag.
“You the one brung the rubbish in there last night?” Sherlyn, the veteran evidence clerk, was at her station outside the door. “It can’t stay here. It’s stinkin’ up the place.”
“I know, that’s why I’m here early,” Lei fumbled on the gloves. “I’ll try to work fast.”
“What case is this for?” Sherlyn shoved the sign-in sheet at Lei.
“Uhm… the Roosevelt case.” Lei named the owner of the lot with the abandoned cars on it and filled it in on the check-in sheet.
“Never heard of it. You get that rubbish out of my evidence room today.”
“I’m on it.” Lei took the key from her and opened the door. She wrinkled her nose at the smell. “You’re right, Sherlyn, it’s nasty in here. I’m going to turn on the AC unit, air it out.”
“Just turn it off when you finish.” Sherlyn went back to her computer.
Lei closed the door behind her, facing the three bags of trash arranged in a row. Her heart picked up speed and she felt a bubble of excitement clogging her throat. Truth was, she was thrilled not to be slowed down by Pono’s nit-picking or Stevens’ patronizing.
She plunked her coffee mug down on the small steel table inside the door and turned on the outside-vented AC unit.
She dragged the first bag toward her, sat on the metal chair, ripped open the transparent evidence bag and tore into the black liner underneath, filling her gloved hands with garbage. She dumped it in carefully explored handfuls into the steel trash container by the table. Most of it was the usual: coffee grounds, ripped up bill envelopes, a pile of crumpled, stained schoolwork, orange peels, and globs of what looked like a tuna casserole.
She was just sorting through a browning bunch of carnations when the door swung open so hard it banged into the steel trash can. Lei started, dropping some of the carnations. She kept her eyes down, but could see that the man who’d come in was long legged, wore jeans, and his shoes were muddy. Michael Stevens. Damn.
“What are you doing?”
She looked up into blue eyes slanted into hard triangles.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re investigating my crime.”
“Stevens, this is just a little research.”
“The Roosevelt case? I don’t think so.” He folded his arms. “Primary crime scene? Ring a bell? It should, you were there most of yesterday.”
“Okay, yeah. This is not trash from that site.” She threw the handful of carnations into the discard can.
“You got that right. If you want trash to sort, we’ve got plenty! What the hell are you up to?”
“I’m following a hunch.” She stood up, but it didn’t make her feel any taller. She glared back at him and refused to look away.
“What hunch?” he said, and she exhaled.
“Kelly Andrade’s stepdad. This is his publicly discarded trash, right there for anyone to take.”
“We interviewed him. Alibi seems solid.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I just decided to grab the trash while it was available and see what’s there. I’ll turn anything I find over to you.”
“No way,” he said. “You got company.”
He hooked the other chair over with his foot and pulled a pair of latex gloves on from the box on the table. His cell phone bleeped, and he tersely told his partner to “keep at it” and that he was following a new lead.
Lei kept her head down, her hands carefully digging, as that bubble of excitement tightened her chest. A new lead! Maybe there was something off about the stepdad after all.
A few minutes went by. Still nothing of interest.
“Kinda sad. All her schoolwork,” Stevens said, dropping a handful of crumpled, stained papers into the discard can.
“I know.”
“So I know you want to move up. What are you doing to make detective?”
“Putting in the time, getting experience. I’ve been taking criminology classes at UH, working on my bachelor’s in Criminal Justice.”
“Well, you gotta be a team player,” he said, shaking out a soggy coffee filter. “Tell people everything you’re thinking.”
“Like you’d listen to me.”
“You found the bodies, the crime scene. Not bad. Not afraid to take initiative. Also not bad.”
She blushed and hated it. She reached down into the last few bits at the bottom, and her hand wrapped around the hard steel circumference of an empty propane can.
“What do you think?” She held it up.
“There were a couple of those at the campsite, so I think you better try not to smear any fingerprints,” he said, snapping open an evidence bag. She dropped the canister into the bag and he sealed it, filling out a label.
She was galvanized now, carefully sifting every bit at the bottom. He helped her open the next bag of trash. This one yielded some bondage porn magazines, which he wordlessly bagged. The last sack was mostly full of the dead girl’s clothes.
“Doesn’t this seem odd to you?” asked Lei, holding up a little spaghetti-string top. “I mean, dead less than a week and they throw her clothes out in the trash?”
“Not really. Most people give them to Goodwill or something, but I’ve seen people burn everything just to have it gone forever… grief takes people different ways.” Stevens had gone out and gotten a camera, and he bent over, photographing the items they had spread on the floor.
“What’s missing from this picture?” he frowned. They had laid the clothes out in neat rows.
