“Oh,” she said. She seemed to understand Occam’s Razor intuitively.
“Ms. Harding,” asked Kawika, “you think your ex-husband killed both your brother and Steve Kellogg, right?”
“I know it.”
“Did you know that Ralph killed someone else too?”
“No—who?”
“A man in Hawaii. A man he bought property from so he could develop a resort. Supposedly his friend. A man named Thomas Gray, who drowned while fishing. Does that sound familiar?”
“Oh God.”
“My point is, once people start killing, they often keep killing. We’re not just trying to catch a killer. We’re trying to stop more killing.” Including mine, he wanted to add, but it would have invited questions, become a time-wasting digression.
She stared straight ahead, then finally turned to him, eyes brimming.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you this much, but no more. Ralph and Bill went fishing the day Bill drowned. Ralph came home early, said he wasn’t feeling well, told me Bill stayed out there. Bill’s body was found the next day. Ralph made me promise not to tell anyone about the fishing trip. He said it would complicate his life unnecessarily, maybe harm Fawn Ridge.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, for one thing, I stopped sleeping with him,” she said. “I didn’t trust him anymore. Then he started sleeping with Corazon. Or maybe he was sleeping with her before; I don’t know.”
“Corazon, his widow?” Kawika asked, surprised. “Corazon was here?”
“She ran the Fawn Ridge office in Mazama.”
“But she’s Filipina. Isn’t she from Hawaii?”
Melissa Harding looked puzzled. “Filipinos live here too,” she said. “Ralph took her to Hawaii and married her there. Anyway, after all that—” She wiped her face with her hand, composing herself. “After all that, I knew he’d killed Bill. He’d killed Bill because they’d done something crooked together, something involving Bill selling him Rattlesnake Ranch. He killed Bill just as a precaution, because Bill became a risk once the grand jury investigation of Fawn Ridge started. Nothing more than that.”
“I’m sorry,” Kawika said, “but I believe you’re right. I think he did the same thing in Hawaii, just as a precaution.”
She took a deep breath. “He came back to the house sometimes. He didn’t have a place for his stuff yet. A few days before Steve Kellogg was murdered, Ralph came and got one of his handguns. He went straight to the shop, where he kept his guns, and left without saying a word—and not carrying a rifle, so it had to be a handgun. Then Kellogg was killed. The next day Ralph came back and said he’d kill me if I talked to the cops. He said I’d never be safe. Told me not to talk about it on the phone. They’d be tapped, he said.”
“Well, he was right about that,” Kawika said. “Did he admit he’d killed Kellogg?”
“No, but I found out. The FBI talked to me—an Agent Billings. I was too scared to tell them anything. They asked if Ralph owned a nine-millimeter handgun. They’d searched our house and the shop but couldn’t find one. I told them I had no idea. But that was a lie.”
“He did own a nine-millimeter?”
“He did. He bought it just a few months earlier at a gun show in Monroe. I was with him; one of the last times we were together. He bought ammunition for it too. So the FBI asking about it, that’s when I knew for sure. But I kept silent. I was afraid he’d kill me.”
And there it was. The last piece Kawika needed. The piece Gonzales and Agent Billings never had. He knew it might not be enough for a jury. But it was enough for him. Now Kawika knew beyond doubt—his own doubt—that Fortunato had killed Kellogg. And that he’d created the motive for his own killing, his own appointment with the Big Island equivalent of Poe’s catacombs of Venice.
Melissa Harding had paused and looked away. Kawika regarded her closely.
“Let me ask,” he resumed, “did Ralph also—”
“Stop.” She turned and held up her hand, fending off further questions. “That’s enough; that’s all I’m going say. Ralph owned the gun we both know killed Steve Kellogg. Satisfied?”
Kawika started to say something, but she turned the key in the ignition. It had gotten dark. “I’ll drive you to your car. We should be able to avoid the marshal now.”
There, however, she was wrong. They didn’t even make it to the highway. Marshal Hanson came driving in at high speed, bouncing over the gravel potholes and skidding to a dusty stop, blocking their path.
“Uh-oh,” she said.
Her concern was misplaced. Smiling in her headlights—this time in an easygoing manner—Hanson strode casually to Kawika’s door. Kawika rolled his window down, but only part way.
“Relax, Detective,” Hanson said. “I’ve got good news for you. Your boss called—Captain Tanaka? He’s trying to find you. They caught the killer you’ve been looking for. The guy who iced Ralph.”
Melissa looked shocked. “Who is it?”
Hanson smiled broadly. “No one we know, Melissa—no one. Some guy in Hawaii hired a hit man, a contract killer. Captain Tanaka says the hit man confessed. And weirdly enough, it turns out that back in the day, Ralph himself hired that same hit man to kill Steve Kellogg.”
Melissa and Kawika sat speechless, astonished.
“There’s more, Detective,” Hanson added. “The same hit man also tried to kill you.”
68Winthrop
Tanaka spoke with unusual excitement as Kawika and Marshal Hanson listened on the speaker phone in Hanson’s storefront office. It was as Hanson had said: Tanaka had arrested Michael Cushing for hiring the contract killer of Fortunato and Melanie Munu—yes, Tanaka said, Melanie was dead—and for the attempted contract killing of Kawika. The Duct Tape Mummy turned out to be a California hit man named Roger Preston, who called himself Rocco.
“Wait,” Kawika said. “Back up. How’d this all come together?”
Tanaka laughed—a laugh of relief, it seemed. “A package came to the station yesterday. A lumpy padded envelope addressed to you, Kawika.
