The black-and-white film footage started, was shadowy but cleared up quickly, from an outside camera above the store’s front door. Parked cars lined the street, at least one with its flashers on. A Japanese man entered the store, was casually dressed, his collar open, showing gold neck bling, a bare chest under it, his long pants sharply creased. The second camera, trained on the first fifteen or so feet of the store’s interior, picked him up as he selected a few packs of chewing gum, then grabbed a single red rose in a tube.
“It was Valentine’s Day,” Chief Koo offered.
The customer moved out of the frame and passed a young man, more like a kid, who was stocking shelves.
“Pause the video,” Koo said. He waited for a reaction from Patrick. “Anything familiar here, Mr. Stakes?”
“No, sir.”
The spliced footage continued, moving onto a third overhead camera, this one trained on the cashier, a Hawaiian man, the camera above and behind him, hanging from the ceiling. The man with the gum packs and the single red rose approached the counter. The camera showed the aisle that ran the entire length of the store from the cashier counter to the entrance door, a north-south view from on high.
Chief Koo spoke. “Pay attention to what goes on behind this customer.”
A second customer entered the screen from the right, a man, this one Hawaiian, someone who was already in the store. He stood behind the first customer in line, looked past him, over the man’s shoulder, to make eye contact with the cashier.
“Stop the film, Detective,” Koo said. “Here is the tell that made all the difference in the world to the cashier, who was the store owner.”
The cashier’s nod was almost imperceptible, directed at the second customer in line. The detective re-ran it in slow motion a few times to prove what was there: the nod was a signal. The film started up again.
The second customer started an argument, words only, no threatening gestures, until the Japanese customer puffed up his chest and got nose to nose with him. The cashier could be seen leaving the counter and reentering the camera footage in the rear, behind the arguing men, who now circled each other. The cashier grabbed his son’s shoulders and shoved him out of the aisle, off camera.
In full view from behind, the Hawaiian man punched the other customer to the floor, ripped the rose tube out of his hand, and pushed the thorny rose into the Japanese customer’s mouth, cramming it down the man’s throat with both hands until he drew his gun and put it under the Japanese man’s chin.
Over the next three seconds the struggle moved the gun from the throat of one man to the cheek of the other before it went off. Neither customer was hit, but the cashier, still in the aisle, took a bullet to the mouth and was killed instantly. When the gun fired, it was in the Hawaiian man’s hand.
Chief Koo glanced at Mr. Logan. His cue. “Douglas?”
“The store owner,” Douglas said in a grim tone, “was one of my ranch hands before we moved our cattle operation from Miakamii to Kauai. I helped him get that store. He was a good man, Mr. Stakes. He left behind a wife and the pre-teen son you see here on the film, both of whom I lost sight of years later, the two having left Kauai. Was that pre-teen boy you? Was this your father’s murder?”
Patrick sat quiet, blinking hard, didn’t answer, seemed nearly catatonic until a tear rolled down his cheek.
“Patrick, I know that was tough to watch,” Philo said. “What do you think?” Still nothing from Patrick. Philo turned to the chief. “You have names for them? The father and the son?”
“Yes, of course. Detective, would you—”
“No!” Patrick said, his chest heaving. “He wasn’t my father. That wasn’t him. No. And that’s not me in the store.”
Philo looked to prod him more on this, thinking he hadn’t given it enough consideration. “Maybe if we have more info on the people. You know, bud, some names, the storeowner, the boy—”
“Know why I know it’s not me, Philo? You really wanna know why?”
Patrick was suddenly enraged, his tan Hawaiian face reddening, with no “sir” suffixes on the horizon. “You see that car outside the front door? The one with the flashers on? I’m in that car, in the back seat, playing Nintendo. That’s the bagman’s car. The guy I rode with while he shook down people for money—the man with the gun in the video, the shooter—he’s my father. The mob bagman was my father, damn it…”
All the air left the room. The chief, the detective, Douglas Logan, and Philo—they all retreated for a moment, assessing Patrick’s realization. Patrick leaned onto his knees and buried his tearful face in his hands.
“Detective,” Chief Koo said. “What other info do you have?”
The detective flipped through some pages. “The shooter was Denholm ʻŌpūnui. Awarded nine years. Involuntary manslaughter. Served the entire sentence because, you know, he was Ka Hui. When he was paroled he left the radar because he moved to the mainland, apparently buried his Ka Hui roots. The fight was over ʻŌpūnui’s wife. The Japanese customer had been stalking her.”
“Do you have her name, Detective?” the chief asked.
“Haneen ʻŌpūnui. It says here she’s Japanese-American. Went by Jenny.”
“Kids?”
“One. Interesting.” Detective Ujikawa paused, a sympathetic smile crossing his face. “A boy. His name was Patrick.”
Patrick stood. “Get me out of here.”
26
Patrick’s world had changed in one afternoon, his identity solved, something that had confounded him for five, six, seven years or more. An elusive success, but at what cost?
At a minimum, his dignity.
“I wanna get drunk, Philo. Sir.”
They’d left the police station with plenty of answers and one full-blown coincidence: his name was actually Patrick. But the answers left him with
