Mahu Blood Read online

  “With pleasure.” Harry and I grew up on reruns of the original Hawaii Five-O, and he’s always fancied himself a slim version of Chin Ho. I had a crush on Danny, but I don’t think that’s what led me to the police academy. Well, maybe that was one of the things. I used to have a thing for men in uniform, until I had to wear one myself.

  “See if you can connect either of them to a woman named Edith Kapana,” I added.

  “That the woman who was killed at the rally? Think one of them killed her?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “We’re chasing our tails right now.”

  It was frustrating to have so many dead ends and loose ends in a case. Most of the time, homicides are committed by people with clear motives, means and opportunity. Investigating the crime is a matter of putting the pieces together in a way that will hold up in court and convince a judge or a jury.

  This case, though, was anything but ordinary. We still hadn’t figured out why anyone would kill Edith, though we had some ideas. And until we knew that, it was going to be tough to identify the means—the particular rifle that had been used—and the opportunity—putting our suspect on that rooftop at the time Edith was shot.

  Sampson passed by our desks just before the end of our shift.

  “I’ve got a meeting at the substation in Wahiawa,” he said. “We’ll talk about your case tomorrow.”

  96 Neil S. Plakcy

  “You got it,” I said.

  I looked at Ray as Sampson walked away, and he grinned.

  “Anything else we can do today?” Ray asked me.

  “We have no suspects,” I said. “Nobody left to interview. We’re still waiting for your friend to come up with some information on Brian Parker and for Harry to see what he can find that connects Jun Tanaka and Ezekiel Kapuāiwa to Edith. I say we call it quits and hope tomorrow’s a better day.”

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Edith as I drove home. How she had been dressed like my mother at the rally; how only a block or so had separated them; how devastated my whole family would have been if anything had happened to her.

  My eyes were moistening a little as I dialed my parents’ house.

  “Howzit, mom? You guys doing okay?”

  “I’m glad you called, Kimo,” she said. “I was right about those bowls. The curator at the Bishop Museum is very excited.

  She wants to talk to Leelee and find out how long they’ve been in the family.”

  “Leelee won’t know anything. Remember, those bowls belonged to Edith, and Leelee had no idea they were anything special.”

  “That’s right. That poor woman. Have you found out who killed her yet?”

  “Working on it.” We talked for a couple of minutes, about my father’s new pills, a cute card one of my nephews had sent.

  By the time I hung up I had made a resolution to make sure I talked to both my parents as often as I could, while I still had the chance to.

  Mike’s truck was in the driveway when I got home. I opened the door of the house, ready to call out to him, when a big golden dog barreled into me, barking like crazy. For a minute I thought I was under attack, until the dog stood up on his back paws, resting the front ones on my groin, and sniffed me.

  I stepped back into the yard as Mike rushed forward and MAhu BLood 97

  grabbed the dog by the collar. “Roby! Down, boy!”

  Roby hopped to the ground and started dancing around us.

  Mike couldn’t hang on to him, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I said, “Roby. Sit,” in my most commanding cop voice, and the dog obediently plopped his butt on the grass and looked up at us, his long pink tongue lolling out of the right side of his mouth.

  “Damn. I’ve been trying to get that dog to sit since I brought him home.”

  “And what’s he doing here?”

  Mike looked sheepish as he snapped a leash on and led the dog back inside. In the kitchen, I saw a wooden stand with two metal bowls in it on the floor and a big bag of dog chow on the counter. Mike unhooked Roby and handed him a rawhide bone.

  The dog dropped to the floor, gnawing happily, one end of the bone in his mouth, the other immobilized by a big golden paw.

  “We talked about getting a dog,” Mike said. “You said we could someday.”

  “Someday.” I leaned up against the kitchen counter and folded my arms across my chest.

  “You remember the fire I told you about yesterday? In Waipahu?”

  “This is the dog that saved the family?”

  He nodded. “The only place they found to live won’t let them keep the dog. He was going to have to go to the pound.”

  “Where people go when they want to adopt dogs.”

  “He’s such a good boy,” Mike said, reaching down to scratch behind the dog’s ears. “I mean, what a great dog for a fireman, right? A dog that saved his family from a fire.”

  “I thought firemen liked Dalmatians.”

  “Come on, Kimo. Give him a chance. He’s a sweetheart.”

  A line of drool had dripped from Roby’s mouth and stretched across his jaw and down the side of his mouth. He stopped chewing the rawhide for a moment and looked up at me.

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  We had a dog for a while when I was a kid, but he bonded with my mother, who fed and walked him. When he ran away I didn’t miss him. Most of the dogs I had run across on the job were either small and angry or big and sloppy. This one looked like the latter.

  “Who’s going to walk him and pick up after him?”

  “We could both do it,” Mike said. “Think about it. The three of us out in the morning, walking together, enjoying nature and each other’s company.”

  “Yeah. Do we know if he’s housebroken?”

  “Mr. Gresham swears he is. He’s had all his shots. He’s a little wild sometimes, I admit, but between the two of us we can tame him.”

  I laughed. “We haven’t been able to tame each other yet. What makes you think the dog will be any different?”

  Mike grilled a couple of steaks for us in the backyard, Roby sitting at attention next to the barbecue. Then he followed Mike inside with the meat, resting on his haunches next to the table.

  “No people food,” I said to Mike, as I saw him cutting a piece of steak I was sure was intended for the dog. “He’s got his chow.

  Otherwise he’ll always be pestering us.”

  I glared at the dog, and he sunk down on all four paws, his head resting mournfully on the floor. As we were cleaning up, Mike said, “I’ve got to go see my dad. You want to come with me? My mom might have dessert.”

  “I’d better stay here with the dog. Make sure he doesn’t get into any mischief.”

  “You can’t keep avoiding them. I know you think my dad hates you, but he doesn’t. He’s just trying to protect me.”

  “Don’t eat too much dessert,” I said.

  Mike scratched the dog’s ears and then walked out the back door.

  Despite his outward acceptance of Mike’s sexuality, I worried MAhu BLood 99

  that Dr. Riccardi really wanted his son to be straight—and that I was a reminder of how many ways Mike hadn’t lived up to his father’s ambitions for him. He hadn’t married a sweet girl and provided grandchildren. He hadn’t gone to medical school or picked what his father thought of as a grown-up profession.

  Mike was a terrific guy, the kind of son any parent should be proud of. He was handsome, sweet, smart and caring. He had moved up in the fire department hierarchy, and he was respected by his peers. But his father treated him like some kind of teenaged fuckup, and I resented that, on Mike’s behalf, and on my own.

  Mike came back an hour later, as I was reading a gay mystery by Joseph Hansen, and we didn’t talk about his parents at all.

  When we went to bed, the dog turned around a couple of times and then settled on the floor next to my side.

  In the morning, I woke before Mike, and as soon as I was stirring in bed, the dog popped up and stuck his big furry head in my face. �
�Get away from me, you big moose,” I said, pushing him aside.

  I went into the bathroom, and when I finished, the dog was sitting by the bedroom door looking expectant. Mike was snoring, so I shrugged into a T-shirt and shorts, found the dog’s leash on the counter and grabbed a plastic Foodland bag in case the dog had any business to do.

  He did. Lots of business. I picked it up like a good citizen, sealed the bag and stashed it in the trash can by the garage. “I suppose you want to eat now,” I said to the dog, as we walked inside. “Now that you’ve pooped.”

  I figured out how much of the dog chow to give him, and he ate noisily as I sat down at the kitchen table with the morning Star-Advertiser and a bowl of cereal. Though I wasn’t yet sold on the idea of dog ownership, I have to admit it was nice and domestic. Mike and I had been a couple for a while, and now we were expanding to become a family. It wasn’t what I’d envisioned for myself, growing up, but it was turning out just fine.

  the A teAM

  Sampson was in a meeting Friday morning when Ray and I got to headquarters. The fingerprint report from the break-in at Edith Kapana’s room was waiting for us. There were three sets of matches: to Edith herself, to Leelee and to Dexter Trale. A bunch of tiny smudges probably belonged to the baby. There were no unidentified prints.

  “Remember the woman at the community center who said Edith was making trouble for some pakalolo dealers?” I asked Ray. “Suppose one of those dealers was her niece’s boyfriend?”

  “And Dex broke into her room to take any evidence she had against him,” Ray said.

  “That’s one explanation.”

  While I looked over the report one more time, Ray checked his e-mail and found a message from his friend. He couldn’t send us Brian Parker’s records without a subpoena, but he did point us toward an article in an old base newsletter online, which indicated that Brian had been his squad’s designated marksman.

  “I think this moves Brian up on our list of suspects in Edith’s murder,” Ray said. “He can shoot a rifle, and he might have killed Edith as a way to sabotage KOH.”

  “KOH competes with his father’s group,” I said. “If Ka Leo eventually gets chosen for a leadership role in a sovereign Hawai’i or if Ka Leo ends up in control of reparations money, Brian could really make out.”

  “Where can we look for him?” Ray asked. “He doesn’t have a job, at least not one Social Security knows about.”

  “We have to go back and see Bunchy.” It was a gorgeous day, temperatures in the low seventies and mauka trade winds. We wound our way along Tantalus Drive, where arching kukui trees framed the occasional view of downtown and Waikīkī. A mottled brown cat streaked past the Highlander as we climbed, and we 102 Neil S. Plakcy

  surprised a flock of monk parakeets into flight. It was a different world up on the mountain.

  Bunchy met us on his doorstep. “I told you, brah, Brian left couple days ago. I don’t know where he go. He come back bumbye.”

  Bumbye was pidgin for later on, like saying “whenever.” The Dodge pickup registered to Brian wasn’t in the driveway, but we asked to take a look in the house. “Hele on, brah,” Bunchy said, stepping out of the doorway and encouraging us to get moving.

  He showed us Brian’s room, which looked untouched from his time as a Kamehameha High football star. I saw a Nintendo Wii with a stack of games and a closet full of jeans and T-shirts.

  Wherever he’d gone, he hadn’t gone for long.

  The walls were hung with photos of him at his graduation, draped in leis, and of him as a soldier, his rifle casually slung over his shoulder. “He still shoot?” I asked Bunchy.

  “He go down to the range in Waikīkī sometimes,” Bunchy said. “Why you care? You trying to lock him up for killing Aunty Edith?”

  “Not trying to lock anybody up unless they’re guilty,” I said.

  “Right now we just want to talk to Brian.”

  “My boy’s a good boy.” Bunchy glared at me, his hands on his hips.

  “Loves his father?” I asked. “Wants to protect him, make sure his group gets a share of the reparation money?”

  He shook his index finger at me. “You got no cause to go accusing my boy.”

  “You know any place we can look for Brian?” I asked.

  “Friends? Other family he might be staying with?”

  “You talk to my attorney.” Bunchy walked to the front door and stood aside as we walked out. He remained in his doorway, watching to make sure we drove away.

  “That went well,” Ray said.

  MAhu BLood 103

  “Let’s go down to that gun range. You have a picture of Brian Parker on you?” I couldn’t remember if we’d ever found one.

  “Think so.” He handed me the binder we had been carrying around which had the records of this investigation, and I found a photo we’d downloaded from a veterans’ website. We had a good mug shot of Dexter Trale, too, so I suggested we show both pictures around.

  The range was on the second floor of a building on Kalākaua, a few blocks from Fort DeRussy. They catered to tourists, locals and the occasional member of the military; I’d been there a few times, though for the most part I did my shooting at the police range. The guy on duty was busy fitting out a group of British tourists with protective headgear, ammunition and rental guns.

  “This is awesome, mate,” one of them said, in a broad accent.

  “Can’t do nothing like this back home.”

  I thought about pointing out the lower rate of homicides involving guns in his country but held back. When they were gone, Ray introduced us.

  “Can we show you a couple of pictures, brah?” he asked, sounding almost like a local.

  “These guys criminals?” the clerk asked.

  “Right now we’re just doing some preliminary checking,” Ray said. “Want to see if any of these guys are qualified with rifles.”

  He showed Brian Parker’s picture, and the clerk recognized him right away. “He’s ex-military. Brings his own weapons. Nice guy.”

  “Rifles?” Ray asked.

  “Rifles, handguns. He’s got a really awesome Colt Python.”

  I knew that was a pretty high-end collectible gun, which pegged Brian Parker as someone who knew his weapons.

  Ray showed the clerk Dex’s picture next. “Not sure,” the clerk said. “Maybe. But he looks like a lot of guys, you know?”

  We couldn’t get anything more definite from him. Ray needed some gun oil, so while he picked some up, I browsed. There was 104 Neil S. Plakcy

  a sweet leather holster for my Glock that I might like to find under the Christmas tree. I made a note to tell Mike. That was a nice feeling, knowing I had someone special to shop for come the holidays, someone who’d be shopping for me, too.

  We picked up some takeout for lunch and went back to headquarters, where I put out a BOLO—be on the lookout—for Brian’s pickup. I felt comfortable doing that based on his record as a sharpshooter and the fact that he seemed to have gone to ground. Why was he hiding, if he wasn’t responsible for Edith’s death?

  “We need to find this guy,” Ray said. “Ideas?”

  I thought back to Brian’s room. “Maybe he’s in touch with his old teammates,” I said. “Or people he used to work with. I’ll find the Kamehameha High team roster and start calling those guys.

  You start with the last place he worked then go backwards.”

  We spent a couple of fruitless hours tracking down men and women who had lost touch with Brian Parker. The most information came from the Kamehameha quarterback, whom I managed to get hold of by phone via a friend who had gone to U.H. with him. “He changed when he come back from Iraq,” the guy said. “Used to be one fun guy. Now he stay on his own.”

  I hung up and said, “This is useless. Suppose we go talk to Dex again, ask him about his fingerprints in Aunty Edith’s room?”

  Even though we thought we had a good suspect for Edith’s death in Brian Parker, we both felt obliged to follow an
y leads.

  Until you have a suspect in custody and an iron-clad case against him, you can’t let any loose threads go uninvestigated.

  We drove down to the Kope Bean warehouse. When we walked inside and smelled the pungent aroma of the bags of coffee beans, I remembered the crazy guy from the Ohana who babysat coffee. I wondered if he worked at the warehouse.

  But I didn’t see how that could connect to Edith’s murder, so I pushed the thought aside and focused on Dexter Trale. “Tell us about Tuesday morning,” I said, when we had him outside again.

  “What were you looking for in Edith’s room?”

  MAhu BLood 105

  “Shit, you guys still messing around with Aunty Edith?”

  “Yeah, Dex, that’s what we do. We found your fingerprints in Edith’s room.”

  He looked at us. “I live in the fucking house. You gonna find my prints all over the fucking place.”

  “So you didn’t go in and toss her room?” Ray asked.

  Dex laughed. “You think dat old kupuna had any money? All she had was the Social Security, and she gave Leelee that check every month, exchange for room and board.”

  He lit a cigarette, and I noticed that his hands weren’t shaking the way they had the last time we spoke to him. “That all you smoke, Dex? How about a little pakalolo?”

  He looked at us suspiciously. “I don’t do nothing to violate my parole.”

  Dex was on parole for something. Interesting. That’s probably why he liked to avoid pilikia with the cops, as Leelee had said.

  “But you’d know where to buy some stuff, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “You know the Campbell brothers?”

  He laughed. “Man, Aunty Edith had a bug up her ass about them. You think maybe they broke into her room?” He laughed so hard he started to choke. “Leroy and Larry couldn’t break into their own house if they lost the key.”

  I noticed again how fit Dex was and wondered if he knew how to shoot a rifle. He might have had a beef with Edith over dope or money or some domestic drama and used the cover of the rally to get her out of the way.

  That made me start thinking about Leelee’s uncle Amos. He’d been missing for a year, and they hadn’t reported he was gone because they were afraid of getting kicked off homestead land.