“So what are you saying? He just died? Kids that age don’t have heart attacks, do they?”
“Actually, it’s not impossible, but in this case there wasn’t any evidence of it. The only thing that looked even slightly abnormal was his lungs, but until I get some results back from the lab, I won’t even know if that’s what killed him.” She spread her hands helplessly. “I wish I could be more specific, but I can’t tell you much right now. It could have been a virus — one of these new bugs that have been cropping up lately — tout he doesn’t seem to have manifested any symptoms of illness prior to death. His mother says he was fine.”
“But you can’t be sure of that, either.” Olani sighed, knowing the caveat the doctor was certain to add.
Hatcher nodded her agreement. “Sorry. I wish I could be more help.” She glanced down at her notes. “Do the names Rick Pieper, Josh Malani, and Jeff Kina mean anything to you?”
“There’ve been a couple problems with the Kina kid. He’s big, and has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to haoles. And Josh Malani tries to act tough, but it’s mostly for show. Why?”
“According to Alice Santoya, her son was out with those three boys last night. He left a message saying he was going to a movie with them. Depending on what comes back from the lab, someone might want to talk to them.”
Cal Olani wrote the three names in his notebook. Maybe he’d just drop by the school and have a talk with those boys.
Ten minutes after Cal Olani finished his conversation with Laura Hatcher, a man stepped into the small room that served as the hospital’s morgue. Making certain no one had seen him come in, he locked the door, then opened the drawer containing the remains of Kioki Santoya. Having to deal with dead people was the worst part of being an orderly. Elvis Dinkins had never really minded the rest of the job — emptying bedpans and changing linen didn’t bother him.
Even sick people didn’t bother him.
But dead people …
Despite his revulsion at having to deal with the corpse — or maybe because of it — Elvis Dinkins’s eyes fixed on Kioki Santoya’s face. The boy’s eyes were open, and his face looked bloated. His mouth was open, too, and it looked to Elvis like the kid’s tongue was all swollen up. His stomach churned as he saw the place where Dr. Hatcher had cut away a slice of it to send to the lab.
As he pulled on the surgical gloves he’d swiped from the scrub room, Elvis wondered if maybe he should take a slice of the tongue, too. But that would mean actually reaching into the dead boy’s mouth, and Elvis wasn’t sure he could do that.
It was going to be bad enough just taking pieces of tissue from the wound that Dr. Hatcher had cut when she’d opened the kid up to do the autopsy. Elvis shuddered. The sight of blood did tend to make him feel sick.
In fact, it made him feel sick enough that he was thinking about looking around for another job.
Maybe one working for Takeo Yoshihara, who he’d heard paid a lot better than anyone else on Maui.
And that, at least indirectly, was why he was in the morgue today.
A few days after he started working at the hospital, he’d been cleaning up one of the rooms when a doctor came in. Although Elvis Dinkins had been at the hospital less than a week, he’d already known who this doctor was.
Stephen Jameson. Personal physician to Takeo Yoshihara.
Someone to pay attention to.
Therefore, Elvis Dinkins had listened carefully when Dr. Jameson suggested that if he ever came across anything in the hospital that seemed unusual, he would appreciate it if Elvis would let him know.
At the time, of course, Elvis hadn’t really known what might be considered unusual in a hospital. He’d waited, keeping a sharp lookout, but nothing “unusual” had come his way. Until now.
A teenage kid who’d died for some reason that even Dr. Hatcher hadn’t been able to figure out — now that was something else again! It was just lucky for him he’d been in the emergency room a few minutes ago when Sergeant Olani came in.
He’d hung around in the hall while the cop talked to Hatcher, and then clocked out at the end of the shift, right after Jo-Nell Sims. Except instead of leaving, he’d waited until Dr. Hatcher left, then printed out a copy of the autopsy report she’d done. For a minute he’d thought maybe that was all he would give Dr. Jameson, but then he remembered the doctor talking about how the lungs looked funny. That was when he’d decided to collect a sample of the kid’s lungs, too.
Now, though, as he stared at the loose stitches Dr. Hatcher had used to close the huge Y-shaped cut she’d made to gain access to the interior of Kioki Santoya’s body, he wondered if he could actually do it. His hands were starting to shake, and he hadn’t even cut the thread.
Gripping the handle of the scalpel he’d picked up in the operating room, Elvis Dinkins steeled himself and bent closer.
One by one he sliced through the stitches, until the corpse’s torso was gaping open.
Elvis Dinkins gazed down at the jumbled organs that had been packed back into the body after the autopsy was completed. His stomach churned again, and he had to struggle to keep from throwing up right there. But as he sank the scalpel deep into the tissue of the left lung, he told himself it wasn’t much different from cutting up the liver his mother used to fry with onions.
His nausea eased a little.
A few seconds later he had hacked a piece of the lung out and dropped it into one of the plastic specimen jars he’d found in the same cabinet as the scalpel. Of course, he had no idea what Jameson might find in the sample, but he thought it might be important.
Really important.
And if it was …
As he slipped out of the hospital, Elvis Dinkins was already dreaming about the future. Maybe after he got a job working for Takeo Yoshihara, he’d find a new apartment.
Hell, if he was lucky, the contents of the plastic bag might change his whole life!
The thought that they might also end his life never entered Elvis Dinkins’s mind.
CHAPTER 13
Jack Peters wished he knew what to say to the dozen teenage boys clustered around him. There was none of the laughter and playful jostling that ordinarily preceded track practice; this afternoon they all seemed lost in their own thoughts, and as the coach’s eyes moved from one face to another, he saw one common element.
Fear.
None of them knew why Kioki Santoya had died last night, and because they didn’t know, they were frightened.
He could almost hear what they were thinking:
What if Kioki had one of those new diseases, like ebola, where if you got it, you were dead in a few hours, puking your brains out, and bleeding everywhere?
What if someone killed Kioki?
What if …?
But there were so many “what ifs” that Jack Peters knew there was no way to answer all of them; indeed, until they knew what had happened to Kioki, there was no way to answer any of them. “I guess none of us feels like practice today,” he finally said. “I know I don’t. And I know a lot of people say that when something like this happens, the best thing is to stay busy, to do anything just to keep from thinking about it. But I miss Kioki, and …” His voice trailed off while he tried to clear the lump that had formed in his throat. “I just want to remember him, I guess. So I’m canceling track practice today. Any of you who want to hang around and just talk, I’ll be here. If you don’t want to, that’s fine, too.” Once again his eyes roamed over the team. “I guess that’s all I have to say,” he finished.
For a few seconds no one moved; it was as if each of them was waiting for someone else to act. But finally Rick Pieper, shoulders slumped, hands in pockets, started back toward the locker room. Kioki, Peters knew, had
