“Her underwear,” Lei said. Goosebumps erupted all over and she rubbed her arms, her gut clenching. “Wow, that AC unit really got going.” She squinched her eyes shut against a memory of Kelly’s naked body sunk into the mud.
“You look like you’ve had enough,” he said, cocking his head to look at her. “Jeremy’s coming anyway.”
“I’m fine.” She gazed blindly at the ruffled yellow skirt at her feet.
“Well, thanks for following your hunch. Call me on my cell with any more you have and I promise I’ll listen.”
“Okay.” She picked up one of the discarded bags of trash and fumbled open the door handle.
“Hey,” he said. She stopped, looking back. “Good job.”
“Thanks.”
Lei pushed through the steel door.
“I don’t see enough bags of trash going out.” Sherlyn looked up from her keyboard.
“Detective Stevens is finishing up some things in there and will dispose of them,” she replied, swinging the bag up to her shoulder. Lei chucked the bag of trash including the gloves, and after a brief wash turned on her computer.
While it booted up, she fished Stevens’ card out of her pocket. She slid the card into her desk drawer, shut it, then opened it again and put the card back into her pocket. She called Pono at home and briefed him on the case, then went on her assigned patrol route, still mulling over the encounter with Stevens.
Not her type. Still, those blue eyes were hard to forget. She wondered at the swings of emotion she felt around him, what they meant. She fingered the card in her pocket, trying not to remember Haunani’s face, trying to make her boring patrol matter. It just didn’t seem that important to catch speeders and call in loose dogs with the bodies of two dead teenagers lying in the morgue.
The dark truck he drove blended in with so many others, the ride of choice in that rural area. After finding her address it hadn’t been hard to follow her to this regular destination, an evening class. His camera sat on the seat beside him, along with a pair of night vision binoculars.
He waited, and scrolled through the pictures on his phone-women he’d spotted and secretly photographed. Each of them had something special that had caught his artist’s eye-a special curve to the ass, shiny long hair, a sweetly drawn mouth. He loved to capture that uniqueness at the moment it was surrendered to him. Beautiful women wanted to be discovered, captured, conquered. He did them a favor, fulfilling their secret fantasies as he acted out his own.
This next target was a police officer, holding back the crowd at an accident scene. Her navy-blue uniform hugged her body. This one would be a risk, but he was ready for a challenge. He’d titled each photo, and he brushed his thumb across the name on the slightly glowing surface of the cell phone.
Chapter 8
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.
