“No prints on the casings? The shooter wore gloves when he loaded up?”
“Odd, I know. Maybe he wiped ’em, in case they got left behind.”
“But why would anyone leave them behind?” Kawika asked. “And where’s the third one?”
“Probably still in the chamber when he peeled out of there. The rifle’s bolt action.”
“But the other two? Careless to leave ’em.”
“Maybe he thought one shot would do it, panicked when it didn’t.”
“Maybe. Or else, like we discussed, someone—”
But Tanaka had other news to impart, and the faltering rural cell signal, going in and out, made it hard to interrupt him. Tanaka said the suddenly cooperative Michael Cushing had offered theories for why Fortunato gave Bruno the gun. Maybe Bruno was Ralph’s spy inside the hunters’ group. Or maybe the hunters’ group was actually Ralph’s idea—another way for a third party to stop KKL. Maybe Fortunato gave Bruno the gun so he could pass as a hunter.
“Though it’s a heck of a big gun,” Tanaka noted.
Kawika switched topics. “Anyone found Peter Pukui yet? Melanie? Jason Hare?”
“Nope. Still looking. No one’s seen any of them.”
“That’s bad.”
“Yeah. Peter and Melanie haven’t shown up in Kawaihae. And wherever Jason is these days, he’s not walking along the Queen K.”
“Anything useful from the Murphys then?”
“I hammered them. They’re talking with their lawyers now. But there’s news on Shimazu. Turns out he’s got other South Pacific resorts in development. Probably couldn’t let KKL fail; might drag ’em all down. And if he discovered what Ralph was up to, who knows? Cushing says he should have thought of that. Might explain Shimazu acting a little—”
The cell phone connection failed.
“Damn,” said Kawika. Patience looked at him, but he was staring straight ahead. “Damn,” he repeated.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “The cell—?”
“No, not that. Bruno Moku‘ele, the guy they arrested?”
“Yes—the shooter?”
“He wasn’t the shooter. Someone’s trying to frame him. That’s why the shell casings were left behind.”
“Wait, who would want to frame him?”
“Whoever tried to shoot me.”
She was frightened now, thinking about Kawika’s shooter still being out there, still being unknown. “What are you thinking, Kawika?”
“Something I can’t tell you.”
“Kawika—”
“Honestly, P, I’m thinking something I can’t tell you. I’m really sorry. Damn.”
Despite her efforts, Kawika fell silent, concentrating with the look he’d had when staring at her ceiling fan, only more intensely. And this time he wouldn’t talk.
“You’re upset,” she said, stating the obvious. “Because someone else, someone other than Bruno, must be your shooter? Someone who’s not Hawaiian, you’re thinking?”
Kawika grimaced. And for the first time in his relationship with Patience, he didn’t even respond. Just nodded and kept staring at the road ahead.
PART SIX
WENATCHEE AND THE METHOW VALLEY
He had been a stanch servant of the law. And now he was invited to defend that which, at first sight, nay, even at second and third sight, must always seem a defiance of law more injurious than crime itself.
—Owen Wister, The Virginian (1902)
66Wenatchee
Kawika sat across the table from United States Attorney Ernesto Gonzales and FBI Special Agent Harold Billings in Wenatchee. The setting—an interrogation room—felt familiar.
Gonzales was speaking. He sounded caring and gentle, like a favorite uncle with a slight Spanish accent. “You have to understand,” he said. “Folks in the Methow take the thing personally. They’re still grieving for Steve Kellogg, even years later. He grew up there. High school football star, local boy made good. He had a cabin, always got back there for weekends. Always had a project or two for improving life in the valley.”
“Sounds like quite a guy,” Kawika said.
“That’s part of it. But there’s another part. You’ve heard the saying, all politics is local? Well, all crime is local too. Local people really feel it.”
“I understand,” Kawika said. “Believe me.”
“Then you know a murderer is like a terrorist on a local scale. An intimate terrorist, you might say. Imagine how you’re going to feel when you hear Osama bin Laden is dead. That’s how folks in the Methow felt—heck, it’s how folks in the whole Federal law enforcement community felt—when we heard Fortunato was dead. We didn’t throw a party or break out the booze. But we felt—what would you say, Harold?—gratified.”
Special Agent Billings nodded. “Grimly gratified,” he said. “But gratified all the same.” Billings looked tall and fit in his short-sleeved shirt, like he belonged in the NFL.
“I get it,” Kawika said. “I’ve learned enough about Fortunato. But still, someone murdered him. I’m thinking it might have been someone from Fortunato’s time up in the Methow. Someone avenging Kellogg.”
Gonzales shrugged and looked at Agent Billings. Billings shrugged too.
“Could’ve been, I guess, although Kellogg was killed some years ago,” said Billings. “But Fortunato’s death—it sounded pretty Hawaiian, at least over here. You could check travel records, I suppose. Big job, though. A lot of folks get out of the Methow in the winter, and then there’s Wenatchee, more folks—”
“Anyway, how can we help?” Gonzales asked, moving things along.
“You can tell me what really happened up in the Methow,” Kawika replied.
“Sure,” replied Gonzales. “Let’s start with the basics.” He explained there’d been two investigations of Fortunato. One for real estate fraud, with desecrating a Native American heritage site thrown in. Then a second, for murder, after Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Kellogg had been shot in Wenatchee, with Fortunato as the main suspect. Kellogg had been the prosecutor for the fraud and desecration case, the unsuccessful one that nonetheless led to bankruptcy for Fawn Ridge; he’d definitely incurred Fortunato’s wrath. Gonzales himself had led the second case, the Kellogg murder investigation, with Billings as his lead FBI agent.
Gonzales told a familiar story about the first case: Fortunato’s suspected real estate fraud, his destruction of the wintering shelter, Jimmy Jack’s refusal to testify, and the intense frustration, in the end, of having to drop the charges. One difference: Frank Kimaio had never mentioned the name Steve Kellogg—the murdered federal prosecutor Kimaio had worked with.
Gonzales, on the other hand, didn’t mention Bill
