It was getting to be more and more important that she manage the weird memory loss and blackout moments she’d struggled with since she was nine. She thought back over the conversation with Stevens, and decided the moment that had triggered her was when he said “she’d been a happy, normal kid.”
She saw Kelly’s bloated, empty face again in her mind’s eye and felt her heart squeeze.
At one time Lei had been a happy, normal kid too-but she’d already been messed up by her dad’s arrest and her mother’s lifestyle by the time Charlie Kwon got his hands on her.
These thoughts weren’t helping her relax. She closed her eyes, but as soon as she did, she smelled the Stetson cologne Charlie always wore. She took another relaxation breath, blowing out the remembered scent. The next second Charlie was there, leaning over her, the soap in his hand.
“Let me wash you,” he said. The pupils of his eyes were wide and black, swallowing her with their need.
Lei reared up, the water sloshing. Keiki, who’d been napping on the bath mat, lunged to her feet. Dripping suds, Lei reached out a trembling arm to pet the dog’s wide chest.
“My guardian. It’s okay, girl, I’m safe now.”
Keiki subsided with a whuff, her ears still swiveling for possible danger. Lei’s heart was still thudding, and she dried a shaking hand on a towel and thumbed open her phone, speed dialing Aunty Rosario at her restaurant in California.
“Baby girl!”
“Hey Aunty. How’s the rat race treating you?’
“Not bad. Been getting some new customers from the ads my busboy put in the mailboxes.”
“Still serving the lilikoi pie?”
“Of course. My regulars would mob me if I didn’t. ’Sides, how else can I say I serve Hawaiian food?”
“What about those poi rolls you were doing?”
“Turns off the truck drivers. They won’t eat anything purple. So what’s new in Hilo?”
They chatted and when they hung up Lei was waterlogged and ready to get out, the flashback gone but not forgotten.
She wondered if she’d ever be able to take a bath without his appearance. Charlie’d had a way of getting to her, twisting everything he did to her into something she’d wanted. Most of her childhood memories remained mercifully elusive but she knew the bath had been bad.
The only thing she remembered for sure were his eyes.
That night she hung her holster from the bedstead and fell asleep with the matte black, boxy shape of the Glock only inches away.
Chapter 9
Lei took extra time in the mirror the next morning, whisking on a little mascara. She mashed in one last handful of CurlTamer, trying to get her hair to lie flat. It refused, as it usually did. When she realized what she was doing, she gave up and went to the station. She didn’t care what she looked like, she told herself, and felt the lie stick like a chicken bone in her throat.
“Hey.” Stevens met her at the coffeepot in the break room, dark hair damp and spiky and cheeks red with razor burn. He smelled like soap. “Ready to get started?”
“Of course.” The station was quieter than normal-Sunday mornings being more about church and hangovers in Hilo, and staffing allocated accordingly. Lei plunked down her coffee and booted up a workstation in the computer lab. Stevens sat next to her on another machine.
“So what’re you looking for?” she asked.
“I’m rolling through Haunani’s cell phone calls. I want to see if I can find any connection with Kelly’s stepdad or anyone else interesting. I think we’re going to have to track down and interview everyone she has in her contacts.”
“Oh.” Lei keyed in her password and logged on to the server. She began searching under “black Toyota truck.” The page loaded with entries. She opened each one and began screening the DMV information against the early-to-mid thirties male profile.
Stevens printed something, and then hopped up from the workstation.
“Gotta check something out.” He snagged his black leather jacket off the back of the chair. She envied that as a detective he didn’t have to wear a uniform. “Call me on my cell if you see anything likely.”
“Like what?” She swiveled the chair around. “‘Sugadady’ on a license plate? How the hell are we going to investigate all these dudes anyway?”
“I have a witness from the high school who says she saw the guy in the black Toyota. If we can show her the license pictures, she might be able to pick him out.”
“Nice. Thanks for sharing.”
“Just find the guys who fit the profile, print their pictures and make me a folder.” He shrugged into the jacket.
“For giving up my Sunday I expect to be at the interview,” she said, giving him her best stare. Arrogant asshole, she thought-not for the first time.
“Fine. I’ll check in later.”
She watched him go, enjoying her tiny victory. It was a nice view, and she grinned as she spun her chair back around and got on with the boredom. A thought occurred-she opened another window and tapped in Kelly’s stepdad’s name and a second later, stared in astonishment.
James Reynolds drove a 2007 charcoal Toyota Tacoma. She hit P RINT and pulled the page out of the laser. Heavy brows and a receding hairline bracketed a square jaw; dark eyes looked truculently at her. She threw the page into the growing pile, then fished the dog-eared card out of her pocket and punched in the number.
“Stevens.”
“Stevens, the stepdad drives a dark Tacoma!”
“I know. We’re looking at him pretty hard. Alibi’s holding up though.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? He doesn’t fit the profile, too old.”
“Sorry, I meant to. I’ve been pretty damn busy,” Stevens said. “That’s what I have you for now. Thanks for checking.”
“I’m putting him in the pile with the others.”
“Why don’t you expand the search, add navy blue, charcoal? Maybe our witness was confused on the color. We’ll be bringing Reynolds in again.”
“What’s the alibi?”
“Tell you later,” he said, and rang off.
She snapped her phone shut, rubbed her chest briskly.
That’s what I have you for now. The butterflies or bubbles or whatever they were that had flown up at those words were still there. They were enough to fuel the long day of poring over records, and at the end of it she had a folder of fifty-seven printed license photos, one of whom was James Reynolds. She set it on Stevens’s desk, leaving a note on the front:
Looking forward to the interview.
Monday came too soon. She had Criminology class that night, and hadn’t studied. She let Pono drive and she read factoids aloud to him from her textbook, one ear tuned for a call from Stevens to help with the case.
“Did you know seventy-nine percent of long-term prisoners have at least one diagnosed mental health disorder?”
“Maybe we should be spending a little more on treatment and less on punishment,” Pono said.
“Now you’re sounding like a Democrat. I don’t give a shit why they do what they do-dysfunctional childhoods, economic challenges-whatever. Criminals should be locked up where they can’t hurt anybody.” The words came out more heated than she meant them to as she thought of her father, incarcerated for dealing. She hated him for what he’d done: first for being taken from her, and then for forgetting about her after he was gone.
“C’mon, you know better. Mostly victimless crime like drugs around here.”
Even in Hawaii where they tried for a more rehabilitative approach with innovations like Drug Court where a defendant completed incarcerated rehab in lieu of a sentence, the jails were overflowing.
“You do the crime, you do the time.” Lei flipped the page.
“I just wish the stats were better for Hawaiians,” Pono said. “There’s got to be a reason so many of our people end up in prison.”