“Did the wiretaps get you anything at all?”
“Well, one thing,” Gonzales replied. “In one call, Fortunato’s wife said he’d flat out threatened to kill her if she cooperated with us.”
“Who was she talking to?” Kawika asked.
“J.J.”
“J.J.?”
“Jimmy Jack,” said Gonzales. “You met him, right?”
“Oh,” said Kawika. “Jimmy. Yeah, I met him.” Odd, their knowing that, he thought. And why would she be talking with Jimmy about that?
“That told us a lot,” Billings continued. “We knew we were on the right track.”
“Did Fortunato’s wife cooperate?” Kawika asked.
“Nope,” replied Billings. “She took that death threat seriously. She knew Ralph would kill her if she helped us.”
“But we may as well tell you: that conversation did help us in another way,” Gonzales added cautiously. “We used it to get a court order letting us wiretap Fortunato after he moved to Hawaii.”
“What?” Kawika said sharply. “You wiretapped Fortunato in Hawaii?”
“Just one year,” Gonzales replied. “That’s all we were allowed, 1999 to 2000. We hoped he’d slip up and make a mistake once he got there.”
“Jesus,” Kawika said. “Were you planning to tell us about this?” You’re like Jason Hare, he thought. We have to drag information out of you.
“Detective,” Gonzales replied apologetically, “the judge imposed a specific condition that we could not reveal to non-federal authorities in Hawaii the existence of the tap or any information obtained from it. Technically, I’m violating the judge’s order right now, although it really doesn’t matter at this point, Fortunato being dead and all.” He smiled, then added laughingly, “But just the same, please don’t report me.”
“As you know, the law won’t allow fishing expeditions,” Billings added. “The judge said, ‘This man Fortunato is a crook, he’ll commit crimes wherever he goes, but you’re tapping his phone only for the Kellogg murder case. Kellogg’s murder isn’t within the purview of the Hawaiian authorities. So you can’t tell them about any of this.’”
Kawika shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Detective,” Gonzales said. “There are lots of restrictions on Federal wiretaps. I hope you understand.”
“Sure,” Kawika said. “But why don’t we ask the judge to modify the order now, in light of new developments. Then you could tell us about the Hawaii wiretaps.”
“I’ll save you the trouble, Detective.” Gonzales looked at him gravely. “We didn’t learn anything from the Hawaii wiretaps.”
Billings nodded. “That’s what brought the Kellogg murder investigation to an end,” he said. “We didn’t learn shit.”
“Not one darned thing,” Gonzales emphasized. “Then the wiretaps had to stop, once that year ended. And we never learned anything more about Ralph Fortunato until we heard he’d been killed.”
Kawika frowned. Gonzales and Billings exchanged looks; Billings motioned slightly with his head, toward the door.
“Well, I guess that’s it,” Gonzales said, getting to his feet. “Time for another meeting. Sorry we couldn’t be more help. But I doubt you’ll find your killer in the Methow, Detective. Or here in Wenatchee, for that matter. And frankly, I hope you never find him—or her. I know you have to try. But don’t try too hard.” He smiled again, making a joke of it.
Kawika still had questions, but as they shook hands, he asked only one. “Mr. Gonzales,” he said, “I assume if you’d convicted Fortunato of murdering an Assistant United States Attorney, you would have sought the death penalty?”
“Fuckin’ right we would have,” replied Gonzales, with unexpected heat. “That puta deserved to die. I’m really glad he’s dead.”
Kawika felt grimly gratified himself. Thanks, Ernesto, he thought. For a while there I couldn’t imagine anyone calling you Ernesto Che.
67Winthrop
Kawika found a Cirrus pilot to fly him to the tiny airstrip outside Winthrop. Melissa Jane Harding waited by her car. He’d gotten her number from Directory Assistance and hadn’t worried that the operator, probably sitting in Alabama, might tip off Marshal Hanson.
“You’re taking a big risk, coming back,” Fortunato’s ex-wife said. “People don’t want you here.”
“Gotta pick up my car,” Kawika replied, smiling.
“Let’s sit in mine,” she said. “It’ll be dark soon. Then I’ll take you to yours.”
Melissa Harding tried to persuade Kawika he was making a mistake, not just taking a risk. “I know it’s your job to catch Ralph’s killer,” she said, “but not every murder gets solved. In this case, that might be a blessing.”
“Why?” Kawika asked. “Because he was such a bad man?”
“More than that,” she said. “For killing my brother, he might have gotten life in prison. But he also killed a federal prosecutor. And for that, he would have been executed anyway—no matter what, and no matter what the governor said, because it’s a federal crime with a federal death sentence. The U.S. Attorney made that very clear.”
“Generally, though, we don’t execute people we haven’t convicted,” Kawika said. “If he’d been convicted, I’d agree: He’d probably be dead by now. But they never even indicted him.”
“That’s because I didn’t give them the evidence,” she said. “I was afraid—a coward, actually. But trust me, Detective, the evidence did exist.”
“Then why not give it to them now? Why not give it to me? Ralph can’t hurt you.”
“Because I want all this to end. I don’t want you to catch Ralph’s killer. Whoever did it performed a good deed. Terrible, but good. I wish I’d had the courage to do it myself. And that should be the end of the matter.”
Kawika sighed. “Well, there’s a problem with that,” he said. “Whoever killed your ex-husband didn’t stop there. He murdered a second man too.” Here Kawika was venturing much further than anything the evidence yet supported. But by now he was confident he knew the killer of Fortunato and the Duct Tape Mummy. It was his own shooting that he couldn’t figure out—along with what had become of Peter Pukui, Melanie Munu, and Jason Hare, why they’d disappear.
“How do you know those murders are linked?” Melissa Harding asked skeptically. “People get murdered every day.”
“Well, there’s a Hawaiian legend that links two plants. One is rare, and a
