Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series) Page 12

“We try to manage the invasives, like all this kahili ginger, which really came from India.” Ferreira made an arm gesture encompassing the vast stand of six-foot-tall, showy plants. “Ginger’s really hard to kill because it spreads via rhizome. If even one little root is left in after you dig it out, it’ll come back.”

  “Why is it important to get rid of?” Lei asked, her heart pumping as the trail narrowed and the incline increased. Hundreds of the gingers had been hacked down beside the trail, but new sprouts were already growing.

  “Well, it chokes everything else out. It’s pretty, though,” Ferreira said. Lei thought the air had a velvety texture to it from the acres of rich orange, yellow, and white ginger blossoms.

  Suddenly, Blue bayed again and turned off the path into a hacked-down stand of ginger plants, dragging Lee over to a patch of turned-over soil.

  “Uh-oh,” Lei said.

  “Seems like a pretty good spot for a body dump. If we hadn’t used the dog, we’d never have found this,” Pono said.

  Lei took her backpack off, removing her crime kit and putting on gloves. Blue continued to circle the mound of disturbed earth, whining.

  Lei and Pono used their hands to dig, and it wasn’t long before the coppery tang of blood rose through the earth, causing Blue to put his head back and howl. The dog was still agitated when Lei uncovered a portion of torso clad in a camouflage T-shirt. They had enough confirmation for Pono to call for the medical examiner.

  “I wonder who it is,” Lei said, hanging her soil-covered, gloved hands off the ends of her bent knees.

  “Seems that there must be more than one perp involved in this situation,” Pono said, frowning. “Dr. Gregory said he’s about forty-five minutes out. Henry, can you drive back and open the gates for him?”

  “Sure.” The young man, looking green, trotted off quickly.

  Blue had begun casting around on the ground again, and he gave an assertive bark. “He’s picked up a scent,” his handler said. “Do you want to follow it?”

  “Can you tell if it’s Jacobsen or someone else he’s wanting to follow?” Lei asked, straightening up and stripping off her gloves.

  “Can’t tell, but the scent will be related to Jacobsen in some way,” the dog’s handler said.

  “Then we should follow it. If we have anything to follow, we should get it while we can,” Lei said to Pono. “But someone needs to stay and secure the body.”

  “We should go,” Freddie said, gesturing to his partner. “We can run down whoever it is.”

  “It’s our case,” Pono said. “One of us should go. Lei, you stay with the body. It’s my turn to fall into a gulch.”

  “No. You know I’m faster,” Lei said. “Besides, I outrank you. Stay with the body, Pono.” She winked at her glowering partner. “Put up the tape around it. Probably won’t get the perp, since whoever buried the body has had several hours’ head start—but I need a workout.”

  Pono folded his arms and scowled as she and the K-9 unit set off up the trail.

  Blue really seemed to have the scent, towing his handler up the path, which grew increasingly narrow and steep. The trail finally dead-ended at a tall fence with a built-in step to climb over it. The hound, stopped by this obstacle, trotted back and forth.

  “This must be the edge of the fenced conservation lands,” Lei said. “The fence is to keep the goats, deer, and pigs out.”

  “Seems pretty effective,” Kahakauwila said. “The scent seems to continue on the other side.”

  The two helped the dog over the barrier, and Lei followed them.

  The trail, hardly more than a track now, wound back and forth through a thick jungle of maile vine and ohia and koa trees. Ferns and olapa plants, their slender leaves shimmering, moved in an almost imperceptible breeze. As before, Lei felt her jangled nerves settling in the forest, even with the deadly discovery they’d just made and the possibility of danger ever-present. Sounds reduced to the clink of the dog’s chain, the panting of their breath as they wound their way through the overgrown jungle, the padding of their feet, the sweet calls of the native birds as coins of golden light fell through the canopy around them.

  Lei wondered who was in that shallow grave. If it was Jacobsen, it meant he had an unknown partner, or had somehow been involved with the shootings. If it wasn’t, then Jacobsen was the one Blue was so earnestly seeking. She’d been so wrong in her estimation of the young ranger as to be embarrassing.

  Blue suddenly tugged off the trail, and now the going was really rough. Lei clambered over rotting fallen logs covered with moss and lichen, through tight clumps of ferns, around trees leaning in all directions, until they came to the steep edge of another gulch.

  Blue sat back on his haunches, panting, as Kahakauwila and Lee looked around. “What do you think?” Lee whispered to Lei.

  Lei could hear the tinkle of a stream, hidden by ferns, at the bottom of the gulch. “If he’s camping out here, he’s going to be by water. If he comes this way, or came this way in the past, there must be a way down.” She kept her voice low.

  “I think there would be more signs that he’s climbed down,” Lee said. “I don’t see a trail, any broken growth, nothing.”

  “What is Blue telling you?” They all looked at the dog, who was lying down, tongue hanging out in apparent exhaustion.

  “He’s lost the scent here,” Lee whispered.

  “Well, I think there’s some reason he led us here. I’ll find a way down, look around.” Lei took off her backpack, chugged down half a bottle of water. She then scouted along the edge, finding a spot where the grade was not quite as steep. Holding on to clumps of fern, she lowered herself over the side and picked her way to the bottom of the gulch. It was so covered with ferns at the bottom that she couldn’t see back up to the edge. Instead the ferns created a tunnel of green, lit with sunshine from above, as the stream chuckled over slippery dark stones.

  Lei squatted beside the stream, letting her eyes drift in “see mode” over everything around her. The water followed the gentle slope of the canyon down toward the sea. Taller ferns arched over the steep dirt-and-rock banks with tender, trembling maidenhair and bright green mosses growing closer to the water.

  It was an enchanted grotto—except for the straight line of a bowstring, foreign in the natural setting. A bow, painted in camouflage colors, was caught among the rocks, almost blending with the broken branches it was mixed with. Lei stood and made her way to the weapon, which had lodged between some stones. She put gloves on to pick it up, but there were no further clues to be had from the weapon itself, at least that she could determine at that moment. She searched thoroughly for any arrows, finding none.

  Back at the top of the gulch, sweaty and disheveled, Lei held up the bow. “Found what he was ditching here. Let’s see if Blue can pick anything else up.”

  Blue didn’t find anything new, and he ended up leading them back down to the body site, where Dr. Gregory and his assistant, Tanaka, were already hunched over the mound of soil.

  Lei held up the bow for Pono to see. “Pretty sure this is significant.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  “The perp pitched it into a gulch. Nothing else down there, but I definitely got that workout.”

  “Do you guys need us any longer? We have to do a missing person search down the hill,” Kahakauwila said.

  “No, but thanks for all your help. I hope we don’t need you any more on this case,” Lei said. “Can I pet Blue?”

  “We don’t like to distract him when he’s working, but since we’re done, it’s okay.” Lee had Blue sit, and Lei squatted to rub behind Blue’s long, floppy ears. The hound blinked long-lashed, soulful brown eyes and shut them in bliss.

  “Good boy,” she said. “Great work today.”

  Blue wagged his tail so hard it seemed like he might sprain it, and Lee tweaked his leash to lead him away. The dog glanced back at the shallow grave and what was being uncovered and gave another low, sorrowful howl.

 
; Chapter 18

  Lei slipped another pair of gloves on and knelt beside Dr. Gregory. He and his assistant, Tanaka, wore masks and long rubber gloves. They used trowels and wide paintbrushes to uncover the body as if it were a specimen at an archeological dig.

  “Anything I can do?” Lei asked.

  “Yeah. Why don’t you and Pono move the dirt we take out farther away and do another check through it for any useful trace?” Gregory swiped his arm across his forehead, leaving a muddy streak. Under the rubber coveralls, he was wearing a bright aloha shirt decorated with hula dancers.

  Pono turned back, his phone to his ear, holding up a finger. “I’m updating the captain,” he said.

  Lei moved the dirt away from the grave and sifted it through her hands, piling it a couple of feet away from the body.

  Gregory glanced up and around. “Beautiful out here. What’s with all the chopped-down ginger?” Lei told him what Ferreira had shared earlier. Pono rejoined them just as they got to the victim’s face.

  Tanaka used her paintbrush to gently dislodge the dirt from familiar features. “Six-foot white male, late twenties or early thirties,” Gregory said. “Brown hair. Anyone recognize him?” Gregory turned to look at Lei and Pono.

  “It’s Mark Jacobsen,” Lei said. She rocked back on her heels and looked at Pono. “He was our suspect, but it turns out he’s a victim. I don’t know what this means.”

  A long pause. No one else had anything to say. Lei was sickened by sorrow and anger, looking at the young ranger’s gentle face, dirt filling his mouth and nostrils. Someone had murdered him and dumped him here. She wondered if he’d been the one to shoot at her—or if he’d been dead, lying in the back of his own truck, when she’d pulled up to his house.

  “I already checked the pockets for ID—nothing. I’ll take prints,” Dr. Gregory said.

  “I don’t think he’ll be in the system unless he has a record,” Pono said. “Visual ID on the body by us should be enough, and I confirm this is Jacobsen, the ranger we’d worked with.”

  “Cause of death appears to be an arrow wound.” Gregory pointed to the nub of black fletching protruding from the man’s chest. “Looks like the killer got him right through the heart. Whoever is taking these shots is damn good with a bow.”

  “I know how hard it is to hit something,” Lei said. “I took a shot at the tires of Jacobsen’s truck and it was a total fail.”

  “In all these cases, the shooter hasn’t removed the arrow,” Pono said. “The arrow’s a lead. It can be matched to others. It might carry trace. It’s interesting that the killer left them.”

  “Be pretty messy to take them out,” Lei said. “That could cause other trace, a cascade effect with wound bleed and transfer.”

  “Or the killer could be squeamish about what he—or she—is doing,” Pono said.

  “Well, since I’ve handled all the arrows, including the one recovered from your Chinese poacher who lived, I can tell you that these are very common, cheap arrows. Anyone could grab these down at Sports Authority in Kahului. That said, they are each a different brand,” Dr. Gregory said.

  “Maybe it means there is more than one shooter. Or maybe it means the perp likes variety,” Pono said.

  “Since this is Jacobsen, it really changes our assumptions. Maybe he wasn’t the one who shot at me in his house.” Lei glanced at Pono. “I’m thinking he was already bleeding and possibly dead in the back of his truck when I pulled up at his house, and the real murderer was the one to shoot at me.”

  “So who could it be?”

  “Anyone. The biologists, another bird lover—whoever shot the poachers. We got no direction here.” Lei paced back and forth a bit as Dr. Gregory and Tanaka continued to work quietly. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want to go back to Jacobsen’s house. After we pulled the bows off the wall this afternoon, we didn’t thoroughly search the place. I want to go back over it. I have a feeling we missed something there.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Pono said. “Dr. Gregory, if you don’t mind, I’ll go back down the trail to process Jacobsen’s truck. Then, Lei, I’ll meet you at his house if you still need me. If not, I’ll see you at the conference room back at the station when we brief the captain.”

  “And I’ll call you if anything more definitive turns up on the body,” Dr. Gregory said. “With any luck at all, this young man’s body will tell us something.”

  “Yeah, this case has been terrible that way—no trace anywhere. Okay to take your truck, Pono?” Lei asked.

  In reply, Pono tossed her his keys. “I’ll get a ride with the transport vehicle.”

  Lei rose to her feet, filled with a sudden urgency. She lifted a hand to Pono, who was helping get the body into the black plastic bag. She trotted back down the trail, carrying the bow she’d recovered from the gulch. At Pono’s truck, she stowed the bow in a large paper evidence bag and labeled it, setting it on the seat beside her. Henry Ferreira, who’d been leaning on his vehicle, came to her window.

  “Need me to let you out?”

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

  She followed the young man’s battered Haleakala Ranch Ford pickup and they drove along the one-lane dirt road through the pasturelands. Lei gazed at the rolling fields, which disappeared into a distance of lavender ocean punctuated by scoops of vanilla-ice-cream-cloud floating over the sea as sunset approached.

  Everything about Maui seemed expansive and filled with light—until she came across its hidden and secret grottoes. Lei smiled at her fanciful thoughts and waved to Henry as she passed him holding the last gate and got on the steep, winding road back down the mountain toward Wailuku.

  She turned on her phone with one hand, ignoring the flashing light of multiple messages. She called Stevens’s speed dial, hoping to leave a message. But her heart went into overdrive when he actually picked up.

  “I just needed to hear your voice,” she said when he answered.

  “Jesus, Lei.” His voice sounded strangled. “Might have known you’d pull something like this. Got a lot of people upset with you. We’re all boozing it up and eating the reception food at the vacation rental.”

  “It’s okay. The case is so hot right now, I just had to push it back. Twenty-four hours. That’s all I get, Captain says. We’re on for same time tomorrow. I promise.”

  A long staticky silence filled her ear, then a sigh. “You better show up tomorrow,” Stevens said, and Lei’s breath whooshed out. It was the job. He understood that. Thank God.

  “I miss you so much,” Lei said. Her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t wait to marry you tomorrow.”

  “I love you,” he whispered. She could tell his hand was cupping the receiver. She heard the rumble of voices in the background.

  “I love you, too.” She bit her lips on all she wanted to tell him about the case: how she’d been shot at and where it had led. But it would just freak him out more. Time for all that later. “I miss you. I’m so sorry about the hassle.”

  “I know. You always are.” He clicked off.

  She set the phone on the seat and turned in to the nice Wailuku Heights neighborhood where Jacobsen lived, feeling the steel band of fear squeezing her heart loosen.

  She knew Stevens wouldn’t like her going to the house alone—but what could be wrong with that? No one was going to be there.

  Chapter 19

  Lei pulled her truck into the short concrete driveway before the closed garage door. She wasn’t sure whether the house would be locked; if it was, she was going to need to get the landlord’s help unlocking it, and all that could take more time—time she didn’t have.

  Lei checked her weapon, tightened down the Kevlar vest she still wore from hiking on the mountain, and snapped on gloves. Checking that she had plenty of evidence bags in her back pocket, she walked up to the front door. Knocked. Called out, “Police business! Open up!”

  She thought she heard something inside, but it was too faint to be sure. Maybe Jacobsen had a cat or
something. She knocked again, called again. No sounds this time. She tried the handle. The door was locked.

  This was usually where things went wrong with her investigation process, Lei considered. Knowing Jacobsen was dead and she was fully within her rights to search it for evidence related to his murder felt reassuring—but waiting for someone to come help her unlock it was another delay. She wondered if the side window she’d kicked in was still open.

  Instead of giving in to that impulse, she went back to the truck and got on the radio to Dispatch. Got who owned the address and called the landlady. While the woman was on her way to unlock the house, Lei called Dispatch again for backup in searching the house. They told her a patrol officer in her area was on his way. Lei waited, feeling impatience coil in her belly. Her eyes wandered to the window above the yard. She could see it was closed.

  The landlady arrived, pulling up in a lime-green Prius. “What is this about?” the woman asked, tight-mouthed, straightening a sacklike woven dress and winding dreadlocks into a pile on top of her head. She stabbed the mound of hair with a chopstick.

  “Police business.” Lei held up her badge.

  “Is something illegal going on in there? Mark has always been a good tenant.”

  “We’re concerned about Jacobsen,” Lei said. “Have you seen him, or anyone else around the house?”

  “Come to think of it, I haven’t. But rent isn’t due until next week, so…I have the keys. Shall I unlock it for you?”

  Lei took a breath, looking down the road. No cruiser in sight. “I’m waiting for another officer. He’ll be along shortly. Why don’t you just unlock the door for me and stay outside.”

  “I’ll let you in and then go back to my car and wait. I was meditating when you called me.” She sniffed.

  “Well, I’d like for this driveway to stay open. Can you move your car?” Lei wanted to make sure the squad car would have room to come up close to the house.

  The woman frowned but complied, getting into her Prius and backing it out onto the street. Lei found the silence of the vehicle’s engine unnerving.