Broken Ferns (Lei Crime ) (22 page)

He loves that stuff, really eats it up. Probably from having nobody care about him. So I’m not just doing it for me. I’m doing it for him and for all the people we’ll help—the Oompa-Loompa army of have-nots that really run our islands.

He watched Fight Club with me again because I said we had to. Smiley Mafia is all in there—it’s our Project Mayhem.

This time he seemed to get it, and he said, “We need someone to tell our story. We need people to get behind us, to try the one percent in the court of public opinion.”

The reporter was his idea.

I’m not sure about her. She’s got a sharp nose, and I can tell she doesn’t care beyond the story. But the Boyfriend insists she can be useful and will help us in the end if we get caught. We’re juveniles, at least, he says. He has a whole plan he’s talking about—he calls it Plan B.

Plan B. That’s the thing. I don’t have one.

There’s only Smiley Mafia.

*smiley face*

Lei set aside the last page of Consuelo’s journal. She got up, paced around the apartment holding Angel. She wondered what Consuelo had been thinking, leaving the diary in such an easy place to find—maybe it was a sort of extended suicide note, because it was clear from the pages that she’d never planned to survive her stint as the Smiley Bandit.

The pages filled with round, precise, girlish handwriting drew Lei back. She picked up the camera. It was all here—the inspiration for the Smiley Mafia, the direction Consuelo’s anger had taken and how it had morphed into a bold, suicidal series of burglaries. There was anger there, there was revenge—but there wasn’t
murder.

Someone had taken things in a different direction after Consuelo’s capture. One of her conspirators, maybe the Boyfriend, was using Consuelo as a martyr, a figurehead.

Lei had to talk to the girl again, with the journal pages and pictures of the Smileys’ bodies on the floor of the shell of their house in her hand.

That ought to jar the Smiley Bandit out of her catatonic state.

Chapter 25

Lei e-mailed the photos of the journal to all the team members and called to leave a message on Ken’s voice mail on the way in to Tripler Hospital, relieved he hadn’t picked up and insisted she attend some departmental briefing where they all rehashed what they knew and got assignments—she knew the drill by now, and it continued to annoy. The grilling Waxman had given her at the Smiley bomb site still smarted—she really didn’t think there was more she could have done to stop the unsub’s escape, and she considered herself lucky to just be walking with a limp.

Lei showed her badge and was admitted to Consuelo’s room.

The girl was looking better, sitting upright and reading a celebrity magazine in the sunlight coming from the window. Lei glanced at the small, high aperture above the bed—wire threaded the glass, and there was no latch to open. In the closed space of the room, a smell of socks competed with burger cooking somewhere not far away. Lei thought this setting would drive her insane in less than a week.

“Hi, Consuelo.” The girl looked up but didn’t return the greeting. Lei set her phone, on Video Record, on a chair she dragged in from outside. She pointed the phone’s recording eye at Consuelo and stated the date, time, and location. She remembered from the journal that many of Consuelo’s deepest feelings were associated with movies, with the themes and stories they explored.

“So, is this feeling like a scene from
Girl, Interrupted
?” Lei asked, as she sat on the edge of the built-in bed, the journal in its evidence bag resting on her lap. “Glad to see you looking better.”

Consuelo’s eyes narrowed and flicked to the bag. “What’s that?”

“You know what it is.” Lei took the marbled school notebook out of the brown paper bag. “Found it under your bed at your aunty’s.”

“That’s private,” Consuelo said.

Lei shook her head. “You know this has gone well beyond that. I’ve got to tell you some stuff and show you some pictures.”

Lei took crime-scene photos of out of where she’d tucked them in the marble notebook, quashing a momentary qualm about whether she was doing the right thing. She hadn’t checked with Dr. Wilson, who’d very nicely asked her to, or her partner or Waxman—but if Lei could get Consuelo to talk, she might be able to get out of the hot water Waxman had her bubbling in. Something had to snap the girl out of her stubborn silence on the subject of the Smiley Mafia and the whereabouts of Rezents and Blackman.

“Some things have happened since you went in here.” Lei started with the photos of the Kahala estate, spreading them in a fan in front of Consuelo. “We knew right away, looking at these, that someone with a totally different and much more destructive style was taking the movement you’d started in a new direction.”

Consuelo looked at the photos of the home destruction without responding. Her long hair hid her face—but Lei saw her full mouth twitch, and she picked up of the photos of the spray-painted slogans and smiley-face logos with a slight grimace, quickly smoothed away.

“Smiley Mafia is meant to be a virus, to spread.”

“Well, it has. And it’s gone deadly.” Lei laid a picture of the burnt, mutilated bodies of the Smileys, their clawed hands reaching for each other in a nest of ashes, on the bed in front of the girl.

Consuelo gasped, and her hand covered her mouth as her big, long-lashed eyes looked up from the horrific scene. “What—who is this?” she asked.

“Max Smiley and his wife, Emmeline. A bomb was planted in their house and went off only hours after I was there and returned Angel to them.”

“Oh my God. Angel.” Tears welled, spilled. The girl looked back down at the grisly photo.

Lei had already decided not to say anything about Angel being safely ensconced in her apartment until she’d gotten all the information she could out of the girl. After all, this case had crossed into the realm of a terrorist investigation, and Lei’s interview was likely to be the kindliest the girl was in for. Ken had let her know that Homeland Security was going to be interviewing Consuelo, and Lei was glad to have beaten them to the hospital.

“It’s bad, Consuelo. Please tell me where Rezents and Blackman are, what their roles are. Trust me. You’d rather talk to me about this than the guys from Homeland Security. They could come anytime, and I’m pretty sure Dr. Wilson won’t be able to keep you protected in here—they’re all about stopping domestic terrorism, which your case has become. If you tell me what you know and we are able to intervene, we can probably end this thing before it gets any worse for you—and for your friends.”

Consuelo looked up at Lei. Inner conflict was revealed in the drawn line of her brows, the scrunched set of her mouth, the shine of tears in her dark eyes. “I never meant for anyone to die but me.”

“I know.” Lei reached out, clasped one of the girl’s small, cold hands as it covered the gruesome photo. “I get it. I always did.”

Consuelo told her all she knew, and Lei left the room working her phone.

Chapter 26

Lei was the last in line, hunched over in the dim light of evening, behind the Homeland Security and SWAT teams. Perspiration beaded up on her lip as her heart thundered inside the tightness of the boldly marked FBI vest. She wore a helmet with a face guard, too, and her FBI teammates, ahead of her, were anonymous in their gear. They were primed to move on the intel she’d brought in from Consuelo.

She hoped like hell the girl hadn’t hung her out to dry.

They crouched in the alley of a run-down downtown building, the heat of the day’s sunshine radiating from the stucco-covered cement beside Lei and increasing the sweat she felt collecting between her breasts. She held her Glock in the “down” position. Marcella’s shapely backside was directly ahead of her, recognizable even in the anonymity of their navy uniforms. She scanned the area, eyes checking for movement, but the alley was empty except for their crouched forms. At the front of the abandoned building, another team was poised to breach the other door.

She focused on her breathing and lowering her heart rate:
In through the mouth, out through the nose. In through the mouth, out through the nose.

Just when she didn’t think she could stand the suspense another minute, the team leader gave the signal and two of the agents swung the door cannon. The metal-reinforced door smashed inward with a boom.

The SWAT team poured in, well-coordinated as a martial-arts drill, and Lei followed Marcella, Rogers, and Ken as they trailed the team, checking through the empty, abandoned warehouse for the door that led to a downstairs cellar—a room Rezents, Blackman, and Consuelo had used as their recording studio for the videos and as a secure headquarters.

Lei waited at the top of the stairs as the rattle of gunfire broke out going down. This was the protocol—Homeland was in charge and the FBI were just there to observe and support.

Another rattle of gunfire; then she heard a laconic, “Proceed.”

She sidled down bare, run-down wooden stairs behind Marcella, the Glock a welcome and familiar weight that gave her eyes and hands a focus as her heart thundered in her ears, amplified by her helmet.

The floor of the cellar area looked like a frat house in a bad movie. Futons decorated the floors, and the video area was a chair in front of a black curtain tacked against the wall with a camera on a tripod pointed at it.

Tom Blackman lay sprawled on the ground, blood pooling beneath him, turned away from her with his arm extended and a pistol still in his hand. Lei recognized him from his photo, even with a beard shrouding his face. His dirty blond hair was longer, and his eyes were closed.

One of the Homeland agents kicked the pistol away while another knelt and felt for a pulse at his neck. He turned back to them, shaking his head.

“Damn.” Marcella’s voice came through the comm in the helmet. Lei could tell by the flatness of her tone that the agent’s comment wasn’t out of sympathy. The fact was, now they’d have no way to get any more information on the Smiley Mafia from Blackman.

Lei holstered her weapon. “Rezents?” she asked.

“No sign,” the Homeland agent said.

One of the agents had been hit, and a few of his fellow officers were administering first aid. It looked like a shoulder wound, not serious. She could hear the cry of emergency response sirens, muffled but penetrating even to this underground bunker, scented with the tang of blood and an overnote of unwashed bodies and mildew.

Lei looked around at three futons in a row against the wall. There was one rumpled sleeping bag on one of them. Accumulated trash from packaged food overflowed a plastic bag, and a stack of pizza boxes towered against one wall, adding a twist of rotting food to the smells she was already battling.

Against another wall was a table littered with the detritus of bomb making—sticks of dynamite. A can of gunpowder. A jug of ammonia. Duct tape, sections of pipe, bags of nails.

Nothing good could come of such things.

Her heart sank for Consuelo—had she known this was where the Smiley Mafia movement was headed? Or had Blackman and Rezents been the ones to take it there? There was only one of them left to bring in, and hopefully the “virus” would be contained.

But even with Blackman dead at her feet, Lei had a bad feeling about it.

Chapter 27

Lei drove her Tacoma home along busy Ala Moana Boulevard through the cooling blue light of evening two days later. She realized she hadn’t seen the ocean in days—in fact, ever since they’d chased down the Hummel, time seemed to have both speeded up to a blur and slowed down to a series of snapshots that was all her memory seemed able to maintain.

On impulse, she turned off onto the little side road that led to Waikiki Yacht Harbor.

Lei parked the truck near the breakwall, pulling up against the decrepit cement parapet. This public parking area was a holdout for locals, even in downtown Waikiki, and she watched surfers as the sun set behind the turquoise-blue waves peeling near the harbor jetty.

She hadn’t slept well the last few days, those snatched dark hours between endless briefings, conference calls, and scrounging through the crime scenes for any prints or DNA that would tie their three suspects to the crime sites in Kahala and Kaneohe. Other than the comfort of Angel sleeping in her air mattress with her, curled up against the back of her neck, there wasn’t anything in her life she was enjoying right now.

Lei actually missed the time in her career when a good day in law enforcement had been breaking up a bar scuffle, chasing down a purse snatcher, or ambushing a cockfight. The last few days, filled with interagency meetings and all the detail work of piecing together the case, had rendered the back of her neck stiff. A headache lingered at the base of her skull, and she hadn’t had time to run since the Smiley Mafia debacle began.

On impulse she got out of the truck, stripped off her gun, badge, and shoes, rolled up her pant legs to the knee. She beeped the truck locked and walked down to the water, the sand massaging delightfully between her toes, the last of the setting sun gilding the coconut trees and rigging of the moored boats with ochre light. Dramatic cumulous clouds massed along the horizon, separating rays of sunset into bars of gold.

This was the Hawaii tourists came to experience—and it felt like another world entirely to Lei, shut up in a series of boxy air-conditioned rooms and crime scenes with nothing to look at but ugliness and bad smells.

The scent of the ocean, green and fresh, felt as good as a shower to her, the simple shush of the waves on the sand, a lullaby.

She sat in the sand, rubbing the coral and bits of shell back and forth against her feet, and propped her hands on her knees as she watched the sunset.

The Smiley Mafia movement continued, but seemed to be losing steam. The latest incursions had taken the form of graffiti and vandalism, and recent burglary attempts on several houses had been unsuccessful due to increased security.