Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series) Read online

  Lei called down to the lab that was processing some of the trash she and Pono had picked up yesterday on the ‘Bow Hunter’ case, as they’d nicknamed the Waikamoi murder.

  “Get anything off that cup and those wrappers we submitted yesterday?” Lei asked Roger Ciman, the island’s top trace analysis expert. She’d pulled him off other work to get something off the trash on the camper before she left on the honeymoon.

  “Yeah. Got a fingerprint. It was a little degraded, but enough. Ran it already. No matches in the standard databases.”

  “Damn,” Lei said. The case had just gotten even more challenging. “Thanks for the quick work. Send it to me, will you?”

  “No problem, sir.” Lei opened her mouth to protest the unfamiliar salutation but remembered that she was a lieutenant now, and the MPD called all officers “sir” regardless of gender.

  She checked her e-mail. E-mail lists of names of volunteers and grad students who’d worked with the different environmental agencies had arrived in her in-box. She printed them out just as her e-mail dinged with the arrival of a blown-up, enhanced copy of the camper’s fingerprint.

  Lei printed the reference photo and put it in the case file, staring at the black-and-white whorls on the paper.

  Now what? How to match the unknown print with an unknown name? She was certain that the camper was someone who’d been involved in conservation work. But if he wasn’t in the system, how did they find out who he was? Calling in that many people for fingerprinting, from potentially all over the country, just wasn’t practical or even justifiable—at this point the camper was technically just a person of interest.

  Lei sipped coffee, considering as she leafed through the file. Finally, she made a list of all the agency heads and their contact numbers. Maybe someone from one of the agencies would have a suspicion about one of their students or volunteers that could lead to something.

  Pono arrived, setting a plastic-wrapped musubi next to her elbow. “Tiare forbids you from getting injured before the wedding and sends you something to eat.”

  “Thanks!” Lei unwrapped the compacted rice topped with fried Spam wrapped in thin, pounded nori seaweed, making a tidy snack. She took a bite, chewed. “Delicious, as always.”

  “How’re the ribs?” Pono asked, booting up his computer.

  “Not so good. I’m thinking a day working the phones isn’t a bad idea. What do you think of this?” She told Pono her plan to call the various conservation nonprofits on Maui, including the Park Service, to fish for leads on the camper.

  “Sounds like a plan. I’m going to call Interpol about our vic’s prints. I’m off to get some coffee.” Pono left.

  Pono’s mention of coffee reminded her of how she’d started the pot that morning and then returned to the bedroom. Stevens had spent the night at her place to “keep an eye on her” after her fall into the gulch. Lei smiled at the memory of his long muscled body in her bed, his shadowed, sleeping eyes, the way he looked waking up—and reaching for her.

  “Daydreaming of the honeymoon?” Captain Omura’s dry voice at the doorway of her cubicle made Lei start, spilling coffee on herself. Lei felt a blush burn her cheekbones—even now that she knew Omura valued her on the Maui team, the captain’s almost unnatural ability to read her mind made Lei edgy.

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve got some things to catch you up on,” Lei said, dabbing her shirt with a napkin. She filled the captain in on the chase yesterday, the camper’s fingerprint, and her plan for today as Pono returned with a chipped mug of black brew.

  “Glad I stopped in, then. You might have updated me sooner,” Omura said, with a glance shared between Lei and Pono.

  Lei shut her mouth on protests that they hadn’t had time as Pono ducked his head. “I’ve got something to check on in the lab,” he said, and disappeared again.

  Omura stepped inside the cubicle and sat on Pono’s chair. “I also wanted to give you something.” The captain crossed her legs, sleek in a tailored blue pencil skirt and black sling-backs. She handed Lei a box. “I bought you a gift. Thought I’d give it to you personally.”

  “Oh.” Lei held the precisely wrapped package, tied with gold cord and trimmed with two origami cranes. “Thanks. It’s too pretty to open!”

  “I like to do a little tsutsumi now and again.” Lei was aware of the Japanese art of present wrapping, where the presentation was as important as the gift. “Go ahead and open it. It’s just a little something.”

  Lei tugged on the cord and carefully unwrapped the gift, preserving the paper and decorative cranes. She opened the box, and took out a gold-painted dowel about three inches long with fishing line tied to it. Pierced through their white parchment bodies, a series of folded origami cranes fluttered from the line. Lei stood up to be able to hold the fragile mobile above the ground, and the ivory paper birds lifted and spun.

  “A little good luck for you both,” Omura said, referring to the Japanese custom of giving origami cranes at weddings. “I couldn’t do a thousand, but there are a hundred to get you started.”

  “Captain, I don’t know what to say.” Lei watched the graceful little birds move in the draft coming down the hall. She set the mobile carefully on her desk and embraced Omura, smelling a hint of the other woman’s delicate perfume, feeling a tightness in her throat as she thought of the captain folding each tiny bird. “We’ll treasure it.”

  “That’s more than enough. So glad you came to join my team.”

  “I’ve decided Maui’s home. Thank you for bringing me home.”

  “Well, then, since you’re home”—Omura gave Lei’s shoulder a pat—“keep me updated on the case more closely next time.”

  It didn’t take long for Lei to work her way through calls to the five agencies that did conservation work on Maui—but she didn’t get anything of interest until talking to Jud Snelling at Hawaiian Bird Conservatory.

  “Our team had already been discussing who the camper could be and whether we had any ideas about volunteers and interns. We had a Canadian grad student, Edward Kingston, about three months ago who was kind of paranoid—was working on his own side research project, which he had trouble letting go of. He had some behaviors that concerned his field supervisor,” Dr. Snelling said.

  “Can I get the supervisor’s name?” Lei hastily jotted down the name “Edward Kingston.”

  “Dr. Lana Biswandi. She’s with University of Hawaii, but we coordinate our location with some of their biology programs. She was concerned about his outlook, but he completed his internship successfully, as far as I know.” He rattled off the professor’s phone number.

  “Did Kingston go back to Canada?”

  “We assumed so, but maybe Dr. Biswandi will know.”

  Lei dialed the professor’s number.

  “Dr. Biswandi here.” The professor had a low alto voice and an Indian accent.

  Lei identified herself and described what they were looking for and why.

  “Yes, Kingston was under my supervision on a field project involving habit patterns of the native birds—do you need to know what we were studying?”

  “No, just the behaviors that concerned you about Kingston.”

  “Well, then. He was secretive. Always making notes in a little journal, hiding samples from the field, et cetera. I confronted him, and he admitted he had his own research project going. I forbade him to work on it at the same time as our formal project, and he seemed to comply—at least, I never caught him working on it again.”

  “What was he like personality wise?” Lei leaned back in her office chair, forgetting about her ribs and almost groaning aloud as pain lanced across her sternum.

  “He was a loner. Quiet.”

  “Okay. And where did he go after his internship ended? Back to Canada?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lei’s pen stopped as she waited. She blew a curl out of her eye. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I mean, I assumed he went back to Canada. We ha
d a goodbye lunch with all the interns. But it’s possible he stayed on Maui in violation of his visa. He did say he had his own project he was working on. It makes sense that he might be your unknown camper because he was good at survival camping. We learned from him in the field—to make fire, other skills.”

  “That sounds like the man we’re looking for. This person knows how to live out in the wilderness and leave little trace.”

  “What are you investigating him for, exactly?”

  Lei considered her options, decided that Dr. Biswandi might be helpful in this too. “We want to question him regarding the murder of an unidentified Asian man who was capturing native birds.”

  A long pause.

  “Interesting,” was all Dr. Biswandi said. Lei was disappointed. “I’ll call our other interns and ask if anyone knows where he is.”

  “It would be great if they didn’t know why we’re looking for him.”

  “Of course.” Dr. Biswandi cut the connection with crisp decisiveness.

  Lei put the phone handset down slowly. It looked like she’d found a strong candidate for the mysterious camper—but catching him was another thing entirely.

  Chapter 10

  Dawn crested Haleakala in a blaze of salmon-pink glory, filling the chilly, shadowed eucalyptus grove they’d parked in with powdery golden light reflected off nearby clouds. Lei and Pono got out of the purple truck as the SUV with the K-9 unit pulled up and parked next to them for the manhunt. Takama, his lips a line and hands on his hips, frowned at them in front of the gate into the preserve. Jacobsen, beside him, looked no less worried about what the search would do to the delicate forest.

  “You sure this is necessary?” Takama said, indicating the dog, a flop-eared hound called Blue, with a flick of his fingers. Blue’s handler, a young, fit officer named Freddie Lee, was still unloading and prepping the dog.

  “Yes. We need to capture and interview this man,” Lei said. “Our captain spoke to Dr. Snelling; everyone’s on board. We’ll try not to damage the plants.”

  “The understory,” Takama corrected.

  “Right.”

  Lei had spent the rest of yesterday tracking Kingston. She discovered that he’d never used his passport to leave the island, and his classmates from the research project hadn’t seen or heard from him since the goodbye luncheon. Dr. Snelling had been able to bring an abandoned ball cap Kingston had worn down to the station.

  Lei restrained herself from going over to pet Blue’s sleek head—the dog was in “work mode,” but it was hard for her to resist any dog. Pono handed Lei her Kevlar vest. “Mandatory.”

  “I can’t handle the Velcro with my ribs the way they are.”

  “Guess I have to leave you here, then.” Pono put his hands on his hips and eyed her until she put the vest on, leaving it loose.

  “I’ve always hated these things,” she muttered.

  “I know. You’ve also seen what a compound bow and arrow can do—and the perp might be otherwise armed.”

  They set off at a good clip down the dirt track into the forest. Lei breathed shallowly to ease her ribs. The dog was silent, trotting beside his handler. They made good time all the way to the boardwalk. Finally, under the cathedral of arching koa and ohia branches, with birdsong sweet in the air, Lee gave Kingston’s hat to Blue to sniff.

  Almost immediately, the dog began casting about in the ferns. Takama’s lips were tight as the animal nosed the ground, making tiny whining sounds. Suddenly, the hound lifted its head and charged into the understory. Freddie Lee followed at a run, Lei and Pono bringing up the rear. The ferns took a beating as the dog bolted through the brush, the rest of them close behind.

  Lei, slowed by her injury, jogged up just as the dog leaped on a bundled shape in a camouflage sleeping bag. The man gave a cry of surprise. Lee restrained the dog, and Kingston sat up, the sleeping bag still around his waist.

  Lei recognized him from his passport photo, though he was bearded, with the bushy hair of months outdoors.

  “I hope you’ve come to get the poacher,” Kingston said, dark eyes worried as he looked around at the ring of faces gazing down at him. “He has a gun.”

  “Someone got him, all right,” Pono said, hauling the biologist up by the arm. “And we want to talk with you about it.”

  “I know about the man who was shot with a bow. There’s another Asian guy out here,” Kingston said. Kingston asked to call his lawyer on a satellite cell phone the biologist produced from his waterproof backpack.

  “Doesn’t look good, you calling him when we haven’t asked a single question.” Lei gave Kingston her best intimidating stare. The biologist pushed his hair out of his eyes and stared back calmly.

  “I know my rights in the United States,” he said.

  “Getting deported is one of them,” she said, but Kingston just pushed a speed-dial number and held the phone to his ear.

  Back at the station, Lei swallowed an Advil with coffee. She and Pono had left Kingston in the interview room while they waited for his lawyer to arrive, and they’d just come from informing the captain that they had their person of interest in custody. Lei was weary from the early morning, the vigorous hike both ways, and the hour-long drive up and down Haleakala.

  “Do you think Kingston was bullshitting us about another poacher?” Lei felt the tightness of anxiety drawing her brows together.

  “Don’t know. But without finding a bow in his camping gear, it doesn’t look good for us to hold him any length of time.”

  “I want to wait to call Immigration and Naturalization Service about his visa violation until after we question him. It might give us a carrot to get him to talk if we offer to let him stay long enough to finish his research project.”

  “Good idea,” Pono said. The partners gazed at Edward Kingston through the mirrored wall of the interview room. The biologist had settled down in a corner, folded his legs into lotus position, set hands with finger and thumb together on his knees, and shut his eyes. He looked utterly peaceful. “So much for leaving him to sweat—he seems pretty mellow.”

  Kingston’s lawyer arrived, a man with the bullet head and the thick neck of a pugilist.

  “Shawn Shimoda,” he said, handing Lei a card. He and Pono had already exchanged a chin lift of acknowledgment. “What are you holding my man on?”

  “We’re not ‘holding’ him on anything. We just want to question him as a possible witness on the homicide of an unknown man up in Waikamoi Preserve,” Lei said. “Don’t know why he needed you called before we even got started.”

  “And I’d like to know how a Canadian national who ditched his research group and violated his visa has ended up having one of the best lawyers on Maui already on retainer,” Pono said, with narrowed eyes. “Makes me wonder if he didn’t know he was going to need one.”

  “Where’s my client?” Shimoda’s face was carefully blank.

  Lei led them to the interrogation room.

  “I’d like a moment alone with him,” Shimoda said. Lei and Pono exited and watched through the safety glass of the door as Kingston scrambled up from his yoga pose and shook hands with Shimoda. Their heads were close as they whispered, but there was a constraint between them that spoke of unfamiliarity.

  “I don’t think Shimoda’s met him before,” Lei said. “Wish I could read lips.”

  “Shimoda’s not cheap. Kingston must have called him some time ago and put him on retainer—he only works with a down payment against services before they’re needed.” Pono always seemed to know the backstory on people they interacted with.

  Shimoda looked up and gestured for them to come in. Both of the men sat down on molded plastic chairs across the table from Lei and Pono. Lei turned on the recording equipment with a switch on the wall and addressed Kingston, who, in spite of his meditation and counsel present, looked pale.

  “We aren’t charging you with anything at this time. We just want to interview you, to see if you know anything about the death of a man shot
in Waikamoi Preserve.”

  “I know there was a dead man. I smelled something bad, and the odor led me to check it out. I thought it was a deer or something. I was surprised to see it was a human body.”

  “So you didn’t think it was appropriate to report an obvious murder?” Pono asked, frowning.

  “I didn’t want to get involved.” Kingston looked down at his hands. “I thought this might happen—this right here. I didn’t need the interruption to my research project.”

  “Research you were conducting illegally,” Lei said. “Were you aware the murdered man had native birds on his body in a canvas bag? Birds that ended up dying of dehydration?”

  Kingston winced visibly and kept his eyes down. “No, I was not aware.”

  They let a pause go by to see if Kingston would volunteer anything more. He didn’t.

  “So, when we picked you up in Waikamoi this morning, you said you hoped we were there for the poacher. What did you mean by that?”

  Kingston looked up, and this time there was some animation in his pale, bewhiskered face. “I want to help with this investigation. I just don’t want you suspecting me. There’s another poacher up there now, catching birds like the first one was.”

  “Tell us more,” Pono said.

  “I was watching the birds, you know—for my project.” Kingston swallowed. “I’m up there for a research project—an important one.”

  “We know you’re trespassing illegally in violation of your visa,” Lei said.

  “That is not for you to determine,” Shimoda snapped. “If you want my client’s cooperation, I suggest you refrain from prejudicial comments.” Shimoda’s first contribution was a heavy one.

  Lei folded her lips together, and Kingston continued. “I have some places where I watch the birds, and I saw this other man in camouflage gear using a mist net to catch them.”