left for the day.
“I’m worried about Treasure,” I said to Ray, as we walked to the elevator. “If the same person killed the two women and Norma, she may already be dead.”
“Or maybe Treasure’s our killer. Or maybe she was the one who called 911 about the girls.”
“At this point, anything’s possible.”
I drove Ray up to the apartment building in Makiki. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot, which meant somebody was home. “Good luck. How about I pick you up tomorrow morning on my way in? Save Julie the trip.”
“Have fun on your date. I’ll try and get the case solved for you.”
I realized on walking in to the steak house that I wasn’t dressed well enough; an aloha shirt and black jeans are fine for homicide, but the men around me were all wearing business suits. Mel Torme was on the sound system, and even the waiters wore ties. It was like I’d stumbled into my brother Lui’s world.
Dr. Phil was waiting for me at the bar with a glass of fizzy water in his hand. “Alcohol doesn’t mix well with medicine,” he said, apologetically. “But you go ahead and have a drink if you want.”
“I think I will,” I said, imagining that if I did start dating Mike again this was how our relationship might play out. I ordered a cosmopolitan.
“Not the drink I’d expect of you,” Dr. Phil said. “You seem more like a beer-and-a-shot kind of guy.”
I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I chalked it up to those getting-to-know-you jitters. “I do like a beer now and then. What’s the matter, you not masculine enough for a fruity drink?” I wanted it to sound like a joke, but I don’t think Dr. Phil thought of it that way. Another date off to a rocky start.
The hostess came over and showed us to a booth of dark wood, with a single spotlight hanging high above us and shining on the glossy table top. The menu and wine list were bound together in a leather-covered book, and the prices were a lot higher than I’d expected. I was cranky with Dr. Phil for picking such an expensive place, and for not telling me about the dress code, either.
But then he said, “Now, this was my invitation, so it’s my treat. This is my favorite place and I don’t get over here often enough. The food is amazing.”
I followed his lead and ordered the filet, with a baked potato and a Caesar salad. The potato was as big as my foot, and the beef was tender enough to cut with a butter knife.
“What’s up?” Dr. Phil said, as we were eating our main course. “You’ve been kind of distracted. Bad case?”
“Three murders in one day.” I told him, briefly, about Norma and the two Chinese girls, and their connection to prostitution at the acupuncture clinic.
“I can’t tell you how many prostitutes we treat at the ER,” he said. “Not just STDs, either. Girls who get beat up, or cut, who don’t have medical insurance, so anything that happens to them gets very bad before they come to us. Not just girls-boys, too. A couple of weeks ago, I saw this Chinese boy who somebody had used pretty badly. Rectal bleeding, anal fissures, and a bad infection. He didn’t speak a word of English, and he had this older man with him who was supposed to be his translator, but I think he was more like a guard.”
“Did you call anyone?”
Dr. Phil shook his head. “Not my job. The older man said that the boy was over eighteen, that he’d been attacked in an alley by some guys who got away.”
Immediately I thought of Jingtao. “You remember a name for this boy?”
He shook his head. “And whatever name they gave, I’m sure it wasn’t his real one.” He drank his fizzy water. “Prostitution’s a victimless crime. We ought to decriminalize it, regulate it, make sure the girls-and guys-get regular checkups.”
I was tempted to tell him about Jingtao, how he’d escaped from the acupuncture clinic and then died in the fire. But I couldn’t find a way to make it sound like I wasn’t accusing Dr. Phil in his death, and neither of us said anything else for a while; we just sat listening to Dean Martin and the rest of the Rat Pack singing about the past. I didn’t have the energy to court Dr. Phil when my mind was on Mike, and I’m sure he figured out something was up.
I yawned when the waiter asked if we’d like dessert, and Dr. Phil said, “No, I’ve got to get to work, and I think my friend here needs a nap.”
“Sorry. I’m normally more animated on a date.”
“It’s okay. With schedules like ours, we’ve got to fit dates in when we can.”
He paid the bill and said, “I’ll see what my schedule’s like for next week and I’ll call you.” I had a feeling that he wouldn’t. He did let me leave the tip-which was more than I’d have spent on dinner with a date at a restaurant of my choice. It made me feel better about the way things were ending-but only a little.
TREASURE HUNT
Wednesday morning, as promised, I picked Ray up on my way to work. “Any hope you guys are getting a second car?” I asked, cranky after my failed date with Dr. Phil, and after battling early morning traffic to get over to Ray’s place.
“I’ve got a line on a used SUV. I do a couple more special duty gigs, I can put a down payment on it.”
“You learn anything last night?”
He shrugged. “Next door neighbor lady didn’t like the girls-they dressed like tramps. Nobody I talked to heard or saw anything.”
“We could track down the doctor whose license was used for the clinic,” I said. “Maybe he knows something.”
When we got back to the station, Dr. Hsing-Wah Hsiao was easy to find, considering he’d been dead for five years. The first hit I got on Google was his obituary. “Another dead end,” Ray said. “This case has a million of ’em.”
I e-mailed the obit to Ricky Koele so that he could follow up on the clinics licensed in the good doctor’s name.
We put in a couple of hours reviewing arrest reports for prostitution and otherwise trying to track Norma and the two dead women in Makiki. I checked Doc Takayama’s report on Jingtao; he cited “reddening of the perianal region, together with multiple linear shallow fissures within the anal canal and moderate edema of the distal 5 cm of the rectum.”
“What does that mean, in layman’s terms?” Ray asked, looking over my shoulder.
“Somebody butt-fucked him pretty badly.” I shuddered, remembering my ER visit after Lucas had left me bleeding.
Ray didn’t look too happy either. “A john?”
“Can’t say for sure. All it means is that he was sexually active.” I thought about the boy Dr. Phil had treated and made a note to show him the picture of Jingtao that Tatiana had drawn. If he could identify the boy, then maybe the records of his hospital visit would give us a lead.
Just after nine, Karen Gold at Social Security called with an address on Treasure in Hawai’i Kai, and we drove out there. It was a nice apartment building with a lobby and a locked front door, and we had to call the management company and ask them to send someone over with a key to Treasure’s apartment.
While we waited, we got coffee from the Kope Bean in the Hawai’i Kai Town Center, where the Disney version of Aloha ‘Oe was playing on the sound system, Tia Carrere singing the song Queen Lili’uokalani had written. I couldn’t help but think of the lyrics: aloha ‘oe means “farewell to you,” and we’d said that to too many people on this case already.
“Gonna have to put the medical examiner on speed dial, this keeps up,” Ray said.
“I can’t remember the last time we had a case with four dead bodies and almost nothing to go on,” I said, looking out the window at the mountains across from the center. Clouds were massing at the tops, casting strange shadows down the valley. “Maybe Treasure knows something. That is, if she’s still alive.”
We drove back to Treasure’s building, where a pleasant-faced haole with flyaway light brown hair met us. “I’m Stephen Viens,” he said. “You guys the detectives?”
