Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series) Page 15

  “Well, it’s not a cure or anything. But what I’ve discovered is that some birds are already manufacturing the antibodies for malaria. I’ve isolated the antibodies and made an injectable inoculation, and what’s really exciting is that birds who’ve been inoculated then pass on their immunity to offspring. What I was going to propose was a captive breeding program to increase the malaria-resistant birds in the population. Birds with the antibodies could be released into the wild and keep breeding with the nonprotected birds—help nature along by speeding up evolution.” Kingston waxed enthusiastic as they walked. “I thought we could inoculate breeding pairs of the birds with the antibodies, put them on an accelerated breeding schedule, and eventually they would outnumber the unprotected birds in the population.”

  Lei and Cantorna looked at each other. This was not something they could speak to intelligently, but Takama chimed in. “Do you know how expensive that would be? And all the challenges of breeding these nectar feeders in captivity?”

  “Yes. That’s why I thought we could just mist-net a section of forest heavy with nectar-bearing trees and concentrate the protected birds in that section to increase their population. As they had chicks, we’d release them back into the regular population. It wouldn’t be that bad.”

  “But what about the territoriality of the Kiwikiu and Akohekohe?” Takama asked, and the two continued with discussion points too heavy with birder knowledge for Lei to keep up with. Still, the hike passed quickly until Kingston gestured to an ohia tree on the side of the road.

  “This is the way to my lab.”

  There was no trail, but now, having become more attuned to the native forest, Lei could see Kingston had subtly marked his path with hemp strings he’d tied to branches. As they got deeper into the forest, birdsong filled the air, and Lei smiled as a red `apapane landed near them, cocking its head, black dewdrop eyes bright, as if curious about these interlopers.

  The lab appeared suddenly as they came around a large, full koa tree. Dark green camouflage netting draped the entire structure built between four tall ohia trees forming a rough square. Kingston must have looked for a grove that would lend itself to supporting a structure.

  “Keeping the moisture out has been challenging,” Kingston said. He and Cantorna did an awkward dance around the cuffs and chain until Kingston could open the low door, nothing more than a square of plastic Velcroed onto the plastic wall. “I’m not a carpenter, and I knew anything I built I’d have to take out. Just getting the materials up here and to this site was really challenging. I couldn’t have done it without Rinker’s help.”

  Lei squirreled this bit of intel away as they ducked to enter the crude shelter. The room inside was cool and dim as an underwater cave. Light falling through leaves above combined with the netting to throw patterns onto the dirt floor of the interior. Kingston walked straight to a plywood workbench nailed to the trees. His microscope stood upright in an extra-large Ziploc bag along with various other items swathed in plastic. “Looks watertight,” Kingston said.

  “Takama, can you wait outside?” Lei asked. “And, Cantorna, we’ll cuff the prisoner to one of these supports while we search. I basically want to take in everything we can carry. Don’t know what will have trace on it, and we need to be in the lab to test it.”

  “You won’t find anything,” Kingston said as Takama stepped out and resealed the door. Cantorna uncuffed the young man, clipping the chain onto a bracket nailed into one of the trees. Kingston moved back, standing near the bench and a box of tools.

  Lei ignored his comment. She took a pile of evidence bags out of her backpack and handed them, along with a pair of gloves, to Cantorna. “Bag everything you can.”

  Lei flicked on her ultraviolet flashlight, looking for blood trace. The bench lit up immediately.

  “That’s bird blood,” Kingston said. “I take blood samples from the birds, looking for antibodies.”

  Lei bent close with the light. The trace did look like small fingerprint smears. She took several swab samples anyway.

  Kingston showed her where he kept his lab books in a sealed plastic bin, and she bagged those. It didn’t take her and Cantorna long to loot the tiny space of anything that looked like it might be remotely related to their case.

  “Will you send those materials on to Dr. Snelling?” Kingston asked again, his forehead scrunched anxiously as they filled their backpacks, including ones for him and Takama to carry.

  “We’ll see,” Lei said. “Now, where did you hide the bow and arrows?”

  “A ways out, maybe half a mile,” Kingston said. Lei sighed. Now they had to carry everything, including the heavy microscope she’d given to Cantorna.

  “Let’s leave these packs here,” she told them. “We’ll travel lighter and come back to pick them up.”

  Takama was waiting when they came out. “I’ll take down this structure with some volunteers,” he said to Lei.

  “Wait until we give the word,” she said. “We have to see what we’ve collected first.”

  Kingston, reconnected to Cantorna by the chain, led them deeper into the forest. Suddenly, he stopped, turning to look around. In front of them, Lei could see one of the deep gulches that bisected the whole area, almost concealed by a stand of head-high ferns.

  “I’m not sure,” Kingston muttered. “I thought it was here, but I tied one of my twine markers somewhere, and I don’t see it.”

  With a clinking of the chain, he knelt by a dense bush—and suddenly motion erupted, a crunching and crashing. A huge black boar exploded out of the vegetation.

  Kingston leaped out of its way with a cry as the boar slashed curving tushes back and forth. Menacing black bristles covered a body that seemed the size of a sofa—nothing like the pink domestic pigs Lei was familiar with. She jumped behind a nearby sapling, drawing her weapon, and tried to get a bead on the boar. She couldn’t with Kingston and Cantorna directly behind it and in the line of fire. The two men were scrambling backward through the ferns, tangled with each other.

  Takama stood steady and even. He took a step toward the beast as it swung its huge head, tiny black eyes aglitter. His compound bow was fully drawn, an arrow nocked. The boar grunted, a deep and menacing sound, and lunged forward. The beast was amazingly fast for its size, flying past downed Cantorna, who’d tripped in the scramble. Kingston, behind him, frantically wrestled with the chain and cuffs.

  Takama let fly his arrow as the animal passed him, and Lei fired her weapon after it, the report deafening.

  A high, terrible sound, like a human scream, made the hairs all over Lei’s body rise on end. It stumbled on, and suddenly, pitched forward onto its chest and, in slow motion, crashed onto its side. Takama’s arrow protruded, deep below its shoulder, and a gunshot hole on its side welled blood. The animal’s small, cloven hooves spasmed, tossing leaf litter, and the pig’s screams subsided in a drowning gurgle.

  “Holy crap.” Lei took a deep breath.

  Cantorna pulled himself to his feet, the chain clinking as it swung free. “Damn thing almost got me,” he said. He turned to look behind him. “Hey! Where’s Kingston?”

  “Dammit!” Lei cried. The man was gone. She could hear a crashing in the underbrush down the side of the gulch. “He’s getting away!” She bolted after him, followed by Takama and Cantorna.

  The ground fell away in a cliff right behind where Cantorna and Kingston had been, which had prevented the boar fleeing in that direction. Lei parted the ferns and spotted Kingston at the bottom of the gulch, rock hopping away.

  “Stop! Kingston, stop!” Lei yelled, pulling her weapon by force of habit—but she jerked back in horror as Kingston screamed suddenly. He pitched forward, arms outflung, into the stream. An arrow protruded from his back.

  Lei spun, mouth open, to grab Takama. Cantorna yanked the bow away from the ranger.

  “Takama! What the hell!” Lei exclaimed. She wrenched the ranger’s unresisting arms behind his back and snapped cuffs on him, venting her shock
and dismay in a series of expletives.

  “He killed Jacobsen,” Takama said, his voice stony. “He can’t be allowed to get away.”

  “You don’t know that!” Lei exclaimed. “No one elected you judge and jury!”

  “I know he did it,” Takama stated, unbowed.

  “I’ll deal with you later. Now I’ve got to see if another murder’s just been committed. Cantorna, control this prisoner.” Lei got the satellite phone out of one of the cargo pockets in her pants. “Dispatch, we need a medical transport.” She checked that the GPS on the phone was enabled so they could be found in the wild forest as she described the situation, moving to the edge of the gulch.

  Lei climbed down the precipitous cliff by hanging on to roots and bushes as handholds, wondering how the helicopter was going to land and how she’d misjudged Takama so badly. She should never have let him carry his bow along at all, but she couldn’t deny he’d dealt handily with the wild pig. Lei was pretty sure his arrow had been the kill shot on the boar. Hopefully his marksmanship wouldn’t have been as effective on Kingston.

  “Help me,” Kingston whispered as Lei squatted beside the scientist. He was facedown in the shallow water, sprawled among the rocks. The arrow protruded from just below his shoulder blade, and Lei could see bubbles forming around the hole—the man had a pierced lung. It brought back the terrible memory of when one of her partners had suffered a similar injury, also in a remote area.

  “Help is on the way.” Lei reached under his armpits. “This is going to hurt, but I have to get you out of the water. It’s cold, and that will make your shock worse.”

  Carefully, painfully, she dragged the moaning Kingston out of the water and up onto a flat rock. Once she had him resting, she took out the phone and called again. “How soon is the transport? This man is bad.”

  “Fifteen minutes. Bird’s just leaving.”

  Lei leaned down close to Kingston’s pale face. “Fifteen minutes. Hang on.”

  Kingston closed his eyes and groaned. “I don’t know if I have that long. Why did you let him shoot me?”

  “I didn’t know he was going to do that. Takama seems pretty sure you shot Jacobsen,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me what really happened—in case you don’t make it.”

  Kingston’s eyelashes fluttered, and she saw the whites of his eyes as they rolled back. Blood stained the corner of his mouth. She splashed some water on his face, patted his pale cheeks.

  “Stay with me, Edward.” His name sounded awkward in her mouth, but she wanted to ease his distress. He seemed to be suffering as much as the Chinese poacher, and if that was so, he really might not make it.

  “I did it,” Kingston whispered. Lei’s thumping heart sped up even more. The man thought he was dying and seemed ready to confess.

  “Tell me more,” Lei said, leaning close to his ear. “This might be your last chance to die with a clean conscience.” She thumbed the Record feature on the phone, already thinking of Shimoda and how he’d try to exclude this confession as coerced—but she’d worry about that later.

  “I shot Jacobsen. It was an accident.” Kingston kept his eyes shut, but his voice got a little stronger—he really wanted to tell her. “I didn’t get a good look at him and he was in camo gear. I feel really bad about it. I should never have gone back to his place a second time, when you caught me. I wouldn’t really have shot you at the house—I just needed to get away.”

  “You’re talking about Jacobsen. So did Rinker have anything to do with any of this?”

  “He helped me move the body and bury it. I…” Kingston coughed, and blood bubbled from the side of his mouth. His eyes opened, and Lei saw the terror in them as he struggled to breathe. Lei stroked sweaty hair off his brow and chafed one of his hands.

  “Relax. You have to relax. You’re making things right by telling me what happened. I understand why you did it. It was all for the birds, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded, the faintest movement of his head, and his eyes closed. He seemed a little calmer.

  “What about the poachers?” Lei whispered in Kingston’s ear.

  “I don’t…” Kingston’s body suddenly relaxed, loosening like a puppet with cut strings, and she saw he’d lost consciousness.

  The thrum of a helicopter approaching brought Lei to her feet. She took off the parka shell she wore and waved it back and forth until she was sure they’d seen her. There was nowhere to land, but a yellow metal-framed body basket was tucked close under the helicopter’s runners. It trundled down out of the sky with a med-tech sitting in it.

  They worked quickly to get an IV going and load Kingston, and only minutes later, Lei watched the helicopter whisk away into the deep blue Maui sky, with its innocent white clouds. She rinsed the young man’s blood off her hands in the crystal-clear, cold stream and climbed back up the cliff to deal with what remained.

  Chapter 23

  Pono leaned forward, narrowing his eyes as he pushed a Styrofoam cup of the station’s thick coffee to Lei. She munched down a granola bar to quiet her churning stomach. “I’m waiting for the full story after this afternoon’s drama. How do you get all the action? My search was totally boring.”

  “Fill us in, Texeira.” Captain Omura had left a big meeting with the Maui County Council to come back and debrief with Lei on the evidence retrieval in Waikamoi gone wrong. Her displeasure was evident as she tapped a well-shod toe on the leg of the table.

  Lei picked up the coffee, took a sip, winced. “I should never have let Takama bring his bow. I know that now. But as a ranger, he’s got certain privileges, and he seemed trustworthy.”

  “That oversight is going in your file,” Omura said, olive eyes narrowed, crimson mouth a line.

  Lei sighed, a deep release of breath, her shoulders rising and falling. She was bone-weary from her exertions on the mountain, covered with ground-in mud, spattered pig, and human blood. The emotional drain of the day was taking its toll, and she glanced at the clock. Two hours until her wedding. “I expect no less.”

  “We may also be facing a lawsuit from Kingston’s family. They are on their way to his bedside from Canada.”

  “Well, when I called you to give an overview of the situation, I didn’t include this.” Lei took her phone out of her pocket and thumbed on the voice recording. She played the recording of Kingston confessing. “I’m hoping you can get him to sign a printout of this conversation before Shimoda gets wind of it, Pono.”

  “Good stuff, Lei, but too late. Shimoda has already sent us over a cease-and-desist from talking to his client without him,” Pono said. “He was beside himself when he heard you’d used Kingston to show you to the location of the lab and the bow’s burial site, so it’s good you got Kingston to sign that waiver. Speaking of Kingston, how did he get out of the cuffs? I thought he was chained to Cantorna.”

  “He was. But in the lab, while we were occupied and searching, he picked up a pair of wire cutters. He concealed them until we were distracted with the boar, then used them to cut the chain. He was still cuffed when he escaped.”

  A long silence followed this. Lei remembered clambering to the top of the cliff and Cantorna, his young face downcast, holding up wire cutters he’d found on the ground behind their scuffle. Cantorna and Takama had also found the concealed bow, buried shallowly under the bush where the boar had been napping.

  Lei was hopeful the bow would link somehow to the poachers. They were still short on physical evidence tying anyone to any of the murders.

  “So how’s Kingston doing?” Lei asked.

  “Hanging on,” Pono said.

  “If he dies, Takama will be charged with homicide. I worry the DA may want to bring charges against Texeira, too,” Omura said. “As it is, we’ve got Takama booked on attempted murder.”

  “It should be assault with a deadly weapon,” Lei said. “And if he dies, manslaughter. Takama was grieving for his dead protégée, Jacobsen.”

  “Well, it’s not up to you, is it?” Omura snapped
. “I’m in talks with the DA, believe me. In the meantime, you might have that religious father of yours pray that Kingston survives.”

  “Speaking of Kingston’s confession, can we bring in Rinker to corroborate what Kingston admitted? Even if we have to exclude the confession, if we can get Rinker to talk, we won’t need it,” Lei said. “Maybe Rinker knows something about the poachers, too.”

  “I was already working on that,” Pono said, looking up from his phone. “An officer is bringing him in.”

  “And on that note, Lei, you’re on administrative leave pending an investigation into the shooting of a prisoner in your custody,” Captain Omura said. “Your gun and badge, please.”

  Lei felt her stomach plummet. It seemed like she was always doing something wrong, always under investigation, even when she solved her cases. She took her weapon out of the shoulder holster and unclipped her badge, slid them, crunching grittily, across the table to the captain. Both were still speckled with forest mud.

  “Now go get ready for your wedding. We’ll be in touch,” Omura said, picking up the items and standing.

  “Can I just watch your interview with Rinker?” Lei begged.

  The captain shook her head. Lei stood, gave Pono a little half wave, and walked out ahead of the others. Her feet dragged, and she’d never felt so tired and discouraged. She’d solved the case—but as often happened, it hadn’t been by the book.

  Her phone dinged with a text as she got into her truck. She slid it out of her pocket to check. It was Pono. I’ll forward you the recording of the interview on e-mail if you still want to see it after the wedding.

  Thanks, partner, Lei texted back. Pono knew how much she hated missing the denouement of the case.

  Lei got on the road, her heart a little lighter. If only Kingston’s research was worth all the blood that had been shed for it—and if it was, would it be tainted by its author’s record? Would it ever be published?