my mother’s. She took Tatiana’s arm, gently prying her away from Haoa. “We’ll all go to my house, Tati,” she said. “I want you to look at this catalogue with me. I’m thinking of changing around the living room.”
I watched my sisters-in-law and my nieces and nephews load up and move out. Jeffrey and Ashley complained; they wanted to stay and help, but they were no good in the face of opposition from their parents, no matter how much they complained that they were teenagers and ought to be treated better than the little keikis.
When the last of the guests had driven away, I went around to the back yard, where Akoni and Tony Lee where talking with my father and brothers. I could smell a faint odor of smoke on a breeze that came down the mountainside. “Somebody needs to evacuate the park,” Akoni said. “Lee and I can do that.”
“I’ll have backup meet you at the entrance to the park,” I said. “Lui, you and Haoa go with them, help them scout the perimeter of the park, then come back here. The fire department should be on their way. You guys will have to coordinate with them, too.”
“I’ve never seen the park so dry,” my father said. “You all better be careful.”
We all walked around to the front yard. My father looked stronger, more energized than he had the day before, and he was able to walk by himself, only touching my mother’s arm occasionally.
Haoa said, “I’ll drive,” and Lui, Akoni and Tony Lee jumped into his old panel van to head down to the park entrance.
My parents stopped at my mother’s Lexus in the driveway, and I said, “Dad, remember those old maps of the park? We’re going to need them.”
He nodded, and my mother said, “Mei-Mei, you and Genevieve come with us. It’s not safe for you to stay here.”
Aunt Mei-Mei shook her head. “No, I stay with Chin. Genevieve, you go.”
Genevieve took her mother-in-law’s hand. “No, Mother. I will stay with you.”
My mother looked at me, and I shrugged. So she and my father got into her car and drove off. Aunt Mei-Mei and Genevieve walked back inside, past the implacable card players, just as Lieutenant Sampson arrived.
“Run down for me what you know so far,” he said.
We walked around the house to the back yard, where we could look into the park, and as we did I organized my thoughts. It was about three in the afternoon then, a hot, dry day with variable winds. Perfect weather for a forest fire.
“This case started when somebody shot that chicken in Makiki,” I said. “I’m only speculating here, but I think both Jeff and Sheila White are wound pretty tight. They must have gotten tired of the rooster crowing every morning, and one of them went out and shot it to shut it up.”
Sampson looked grim. “Go on.”
“The homeless man, Hiroshi Mura, was shot because he saw something. Maybe he saw one of the Whites shoot the rooster. Maybe he knew what they were doing in that shed in the back yard. Either way, the same gun was used in both shootings.”
I paused to think about what to say next. “Ballistics matched the gun to the one used to shoot Charlie Stahl as well. Until we made that connection, we had no idea that the Makiki shootings could be connected to the bombing at the Marriage Project party.”
Sampson’s radio crackled. Akoni and Tony Lee had closed the park and gotten the picnic areas evacuated. No one matching the suspects’ description had been seen, but I knew there was a lot of wild country beyond the public area.
“Kitty said Eli Harding’s family had a cabin somewhere in the park,” I said. “My dad’s bringing over a bunch of old maps which show the trails and locations of cabins. If we can skirt the fire, we can head up some of those trails.”
Akoni said he and Lee were on their way back, and signed off. Sampson turned his attention back to me.
“Mike Riccardi, the fire inspector, was at the rally at Waikiki Gateway Park and he saw the woman who shot Charlie Stahl get away in a dark sedan, and he got a partial license plate,” I said.
“What was the fire inspector doing at a rally?”
I stopped. When I’d first seen Mike, I’d assumed he was there for the rally itself, that my influence was going to gradually move him out of the closet.
But of course, that wasn’t the reason at all. “I think he was worried that there might be another bombing attempt. After all, the rally was organized by the Marriage Project and the Marriage Project had just been bombed. You know that some of the arsons over the last few weeks have been at gay and lesbian businesses?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Mike thinks the arsonists are amateurs, that they’ve been getting more sophisticated with each attack. At the rally, he was keeping an eye out for suspicious behavior. That’s how he spotted our shooter.”
I had to stop and regroup. “Okay, so we had these shootings that matched up. When I was canvassing in Makiki, I talked to both Sheila and Jeff White. A couple of days later, when I was at the Marriage Project party, I saw a sweaty guy who looked familiar to me, and we identified this unknown guy as a chief suspect. Then we pulled a fingerprint off a paper bag that had been tossed at the Marriage Project office a few hours before the bombing, and we traced it to a guy at Pupukea Plantation, where the Church of Adam and Eve holds some services.”
My father and mother returned with the maps, and I set my father to figuring out where the Hardings’ cabin might be. My mother went back into the house to stay with Aunt Mei-Mei and Genevieve Pang. Even the increased smell of smoke in the air didn’t seem to faze the gamblers, though.
“The guy at Pupukea Plantation told us that Jeff White had paid him to throw those shit-filled bags at the Marriage Project office, but White denied it. At that point, you and I were talking about a lineup to try and connect White to the sweaty guy.”
“Which we can still do, if we need to.”
My cell rang, and I could see from the display it was Mike Riccardi. “Yeah, Mike?” I said, answering it.
“I’m on my way over to Wa’ahila State Park, with a couple of engines,” he said. “There’s a big fire brewing there. I remembered your parents live up there and wanted to tell you they might want to get out.”
“Already ahead of you.” I told him where we stood.
He whistled. “You think White started this fire?”
“Don’t know. But I know he’s up there somewhere, with a bunch of innocent people.” I glanced over at Sampson and knew he was thinking of Kitty.
“Listen, I gotta go,” Mike said. “Be careful out there.”
“You too.”
PICNICKERS
I hung up and turned back to Sampson, telling him what Mike had said. Then I continued explaining the situation. “We got our big break when my friend Harry connected the partial plate Mike saw to a dark sedan that the Whites own. That helped us get the search warrant from Judge Yamanaka. At White’s house, we found a bunch of unregistered handguns as well as a makeshift laboratory. Mike is having the materials we found there analyzed at the fire department’s lab.”
“So we have the Whites connected to two shootings and the bombing.”
“That’s right. Kitty and I met the Hardings at the Church of Adam and Eve, and it appears that the Whites went with all of them on their picnic.”
Lui and Haoa returned from the park then, and joined us for the rest of my rundown. I was pretty sure that Sampson didn’t want my TV station manager brother to hear every detail of our case, but we were in a crunch situation and as long as we needed Lui’s knowledge of the park, he had to hear what we knew.
“The Whites aren’t married, as they’ve been presenting themselves; they’re brother and sister. I think that their own incestuous relationship is what’s motivating them to protest against gay marriage.”
Lui asked, “The minister and his wife aren’t married? They’re brother and sister?”
I could see the headlines in his eyes. “About an hour ago, a sightseeing helicopter headed up from Diamond Head spotted a fire at a cabin up on Wa’ahila Ridge and flew up to take a closer look.”
