Prosecutor Slain In Wenatchee
Steve Kellogg Led Fawn Ridge Team
63Mazama
Kawika and Patience both sat stunned. How many bodies, Kawika wondered? It began, he mused, with just one—Fortunato. Just one, that is, assuming no connection to Shark Cliff. The Malos had followed, thanks to Kawika’s mistakes but also, as Dr. Smith had insisted, more fundamentally thanks to Fortunato himself. And now there was an even earlier killing, it seemed, one Kawika could easily guess might be connected to Fortunato’s much earlier time in the Methow, just as the local paper’s headline half hinted.
All of a sudden, “Mainland guys,” as Tanaka had labeled them on the whiteboard, seemed more credible to Kawika as suspects. But in that case, why the Hawaiian spear? Why the olonā fiber cord? Why the mountain naupaka?
Kawika and Patience couldn’t put work aside, not after what she’d found. Patience—who’d skipped wine at dinner, as Kawika had skipped beer—worked all evening on her internet research, promising to report before they went to bed. While she worked, Kawika called Tanaka to report her astounding discovery. He’d have to call Frank Kimaio next.
“Why are we just learning about this now?” Tanaka sounded exasperated, not just with Kawika but with himself as well. “That FBI guy in Seattle never mentioned this to me. You didn’t get it from Frank Kimaio either?”
“No, and that’s my fault,” Kawika admitted. “We just had a first interview. He gave me the background stuff, called it ‘Fortunato 101’ and saved the rest for later. He took me through the fraud investigation, the destruction of the wintering shelter, the failure of the prosecution. Then he left for a doctor’s appointment. Said we could follow up by phone, and I even ran into him at Dr. Smith’s a few days later, but he was just starting a chemo treatment. And that same night I broke Cushing’s nose, I got suspended, and then I got shot. So I never had a chance to follow up.”
“Well, we sure dropped the ball, you and me both,” said Tanaka. “We had ‘Mainland guys’ on the whiteboard from the start.” Kawika expected more blame than that, but all Tanaka added was, “We could have done a Google search, for gosh sakes.”
“Doing it now,” Kawika said, not mentioning Patience.
“Well, consider yourself back on the case, and call Kimaio,” Tanaka instructed. “Better late than never, and all that.”
Kawika tried—he remembered Kimaio’s phone number with no difficulty—but Kimaio didn’t pick up and didn’t seem to have an answering machine. “Damn,” Kawika said.
Filled with adrenaline—and with Frank Kimaio, Bruno Moku‘ele, and the murdered Steve Kellogg tumbling around in his head—Kawika kept trying to reach Kimaio, without success. He finally gave up. He called Tanaka to tell him.
“Okay, it’s late where you are,” Tanaka said. “I’ll call him myself. Meanwhile, I’ve got an update for you.”
Tanaka had finally spoken with Shimazu directly. Unfortunately, Shimazu already had Japanese lawyers and refused to talk. So Tanaka had asked Hawai‘i prosecutors for options.
“They say we’ve got to go to court, get some papers,” he told Kawika. “Then we can question him under oath in Japan—eventually. We can’t extradite him unless we charge him. That’s down the road, to say the least. Right now, we can’t question him for weeks—maybe months.”
“You make Shimazu for Fortunato, Terry?”
“I didn’t at first. Now I wonder. Cushing thinks it might be Shimazu. He’s helpful now, worried Shimazu might kill him too. The Duct Tape Mummy really got him thinking. He still claims to know zip about that guy. But he thinks he’s figured out the scam Fortunato was running. And he may be right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Fortunato was cheating the company, right? Skimming money and keeping KKL going by hyping the financial projections, making KKL look better than it ever could be.”
“The luxury resort with no beach.”
“Right. But it had to end sometime,” Tanaka said. “Now he’s studied the real financials, Cushing says the whole thing would have come crashing down, no matter what, if KKL ever got its final permits. Because then KKL would have to go out for construction loans and permanent financing—and the lenders would probably be some sharp Americans with their own due diligence teams. Not sitting in Japan, believing whatever information Fortunato and Shimazu fed them.”
“So Fortunato needed to kill the resort?” Kawika asked, recalling Tanaka’s comment: “Old dog, old trick.”
“Actually, he needed a third party to kill it,” Tanaka replied. “And at just the right moment, before final permits. That’s the point Cushing keeps making.”
Tanaka explained what Cushing had told him. Fortunato wouldn’t want his hyped financial projections to be what killed the resort. The investors would come after him. So maybe, Cushing reasoned, Fortunato had decided to provoke HHH into challenging the permits. Or let the tenants do it, those hunters. Or find an heir to the old chief to challenge KKL’s title in court. Anything to string things out and keep the construction financing stage from being reached.
“It explains a lot,” Tanaka told Kawika. “Shimazu might’ve figured out what Fortunato was up to. So he might’ve wanted Fortunato dead and for people to think Hawaiians did it. He knew about the HHH guys, Cushing says. Knew they were furious with Fortunato.”
When Kawika hung up, the message light glowed red. The Freestone operator said Madeline John had left him a message: “Meet at shop at nine AM. Come alone.” Hard to interpret that. Kawika hoped it meant good news.
Kawika looked over at Patience. “Ready yet, P?” he asked.
“Almost. This connection is slower than The Virginian’s,” she confessed, smiling. “I was wrong about that—but you’ve got to admit, the bed is better.” She had pages of handwritten notes beside
