Mahu Blood (11 page)

“She knew him back on the Big Island. Suppose he was crazy back then, and she knew it. If she started telling people that he MAhu BLood
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was nuts, that he’d been hospitalized, it could destroy KOH’s chances to run Hawai’i.”

“You keep assuming that this is a real possibility,” Ray said, leaning against the back of the Jeep. “You think any of these groups have a chance at seceding from the US?”

“I don’t think Hawai’i will ever secede. But I do think there will be a financial settlement someday. Reparations. Whoever’s on top has the chance to control that money.”

“How about those papers that were stolen from her room?”

Ray asked. “You think any of them could have been from the Hawai’i State Hospital? His records?”

“I wish I had looked closer. I suppose. Edith was his hanai grandmother, after all; she might have been the person who had him committed.”

“Maybe she didn’t have the paperwork herself,” Ray suggested, and I turned back to look at him. “So she came up here to get some proof, but Currie wouldn’t give it to her.”

“We should call the hospital. See if they can confirm Ezekiel was a patient there without a subpoena.”

“Good luck with that.”

Across the street, I saw a middle-aged haole waiting for the bus. He was wearing a faded blue baseball cap and a cheap windbreaker, smoking a cigarette. “See that guy over there,” I said to Ray. “You think maybe he’s a client here?”

The guy was nodding his head to an unseen beat, and his right leg shook. “Looks crazy to me. But I think that about half the population of Honolulu.”

“I’ll meet you back here. I want to see what I can find out.”

I waited until there was a break in traffic, and then walked over to the bus stop. The bus route sign had been painted over with graffiti, so I asked the guy, “Bus go into Honolulu from here?”

“Yeah, the bus goes from here,” he said. “But the bus doesn’t go that often. When the bus goes, it goes. But it doesn’t always go when you want it to.”

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Okay, so the guy probably was a client at the Ohana Ola Kino.

I watched as he lit another cigarette with the butt of the first one, and said, “They want me to go live across the street. So I gotta know that I can get the bus here.”

“I live there,” he said. “And I take the bus every day. Every day, I wait here for the bus. The bus goes to my job.”

“Really? What kind of job?”

“I sit with the coffee,” he said. “At night. In case anybody comes for it. I take the bus every day, to sit with the coffee.”

“You know a guy at the Ohana named Ezekiel?”

He shook his head violently. “They’re all crazy there,” he said.

“I don’t talk to nobody if I can help it.”

“How about this woman?” I asked, pulling out a picture of Edith. “You ever see her around?”

“You ask a lot of questions.” He rocked back and forth, puffing on his cigarette. “Is this some kind of test? I don’t like it when they make me take tests. I never know the answers.”

I went back to pretending I was going to live at the Ohana and wanted to know about it. We talked for a couple of more minutes, but it was all variations on the same theme. He sat around with coffee, babysitting it somehow, and he took the bus to get to work.

“I guess I have to get a job,” I said. “They fix you up with this coffee job back there?” I nodded toward the Ohana.

He nodded. “Lotta people work with the coffee. But not like me.”

Then the bus pulled up. “Mahalo,” he said, even though there wasn’t anything to thank me for, other than for keeping him company while he waited. I stayed on the bench, and as the bus drove away, he pushed his face against the window and watched me.

I admired people who devoted themselves to taking care of others. People like David Currie, who protected the clients at the Ohana. And Terri, who used her position and her family’s money MAhu BLood
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to better the community. Sometimes, as a cop, you get the sense that you are doing good—protecting the people, putting away the bad guys. Most of the time, though, you feel like you’re butting your head against a wall, that nothing you do will ever lead to change. I was having one of those kind of days.

I looked across the street and saw Ray leaning against the side of the Jeep. “You waiting for a ride?” he called. “Or you just going to sit there?”

the goLdeN Boy

Riding back to headquarters, I told Ray what the crazy guy had said. “Coffee?” he asked. “You ask him where?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where he babysits the coffee,” Ray said, real slow, like I was a child or a client at the Ohana. “You think he works at the Kope Bean?”

“Shit. I was so focused on asking about Ezekiel and Edith and the Ohana I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Just seems like there’s a lot of coffee floating around in this case,” Ray said. “And it all circles back to the Kope Bean.”

“He said a lot of people from the Ohana work with the coffee.

Edith knew both Dex and Ezekiel. And both of them worked for the Kope Bean. But Ezekiel was a barista, and Dex works in the warehouse.” I flipped through our notes. “But look here.

Ezekiel stopped working at the Kope Bean in 2005.” I turned to a different page. “According to Leelee, Dex didn’t move in with her and her uncle and Edith until 2007.”

“So it’s not like Ezekiel got Dex the job,” Ray said. “And Currie said the clients move in and out, so it’s not even likely that the crazy guy and Ezekiel lived in the Ohana at the same time or worked at the Kope Bean at the same time. It’s probably just some kind of placement deal. The Kope Bean has a bunch of minimum wage jobs, and they hire clients from the Ohana. May even get tax credits for it, you know, hiring the disabled. I know a place in Philly used to work that way.”

When we got back to our desks, Ray called the Hawai’i State Hospital to ask about Ezekiel. I went back to our notes looking for loose threads and found that we hadn’t followed up on Bunchy Parker’s son Brian, the Iraq veteran who might have some sharpshooting skills.

I called Bunchy, who said Brian was out. “I’m not his secretary,
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brah,” Bunchy said. “He don’t tell me where he go.”

“Has he been home at all since we talked to you two days ago?”

“No.”

“He usually stay away from home that long?”

“He’s a grown man,” Bunchy grumbled. “He don’t care about his father no more.”

“Tell him to call us when you do see him.” I hung up, wondering what Brian Parker was hiding from or running away from.

Ray had about as much luck with the hospital. They wouldn’t confirm or deny anything about a patient without a subpoena for records. Though we felt there had to be a tie to Edith’s death, because of their history together and her death at the rally, I didn’t see a judge considering our argument strong enough to violate Ezekiel’s right to privacy. And we didn’t know for sure that his mental health was connected to her death, at least not yet.

Jun Tanaka’s name was on the incorporation papers for the non-profit and in an annual report we found filed with the state.

But he was never quoted in any of the newspaper articles on KOH, and doing an online search for “Kingdom of Hawai” and

“Tanaka” together gave us no results.

There were a couple of Jun Tanakas in the system, but none of them matched the few details we had. Since that exhausted my computer skills, I called my best friend since high school, Harry Ho.

At Punahou, Terri Clark, Harry and I were an invincible trio.

Terri provided emotional insights that escaped testosterone-based life forms like Harry and me, and Harry was able to use his computer skills to find information that would defeat lesser brains. I was never quite sure what I brought to the equation, other than determination and loyalty.

“Howzit, brah?” I asked. “Think you could pull yourself away for a few minutes to do some searching for me?”

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Harry and his girlfriend, Arleen, had gotten married a couple of months before. Terri was the maid of honor, and I was the best man. After a long honeymoon in Japan and China, they had settled into a cute little house in Aiea, a couple of blocks from Mike and me.

“I could use a break,” he said. “What do you need?”

I told him about Jun Tanaka and Ezekiel Kapuāiwa, about their connection to KOH and our suspicions. “Can you see what you can find about them both?”

“With pleasure.” Harry and I grew up on reruns of the original
Hawaii Five-O
, and he’s always fancied himself a slim version of Chin Ho. I had a crush on Danny, but I don’t think that’s what led me to the police academy. Well, maybe that was one of the things. I used to have a thing for men in uniform, until I had to wear one myself.

“See if you can connect either of them to a woman named Edith Kapana,” I added.

“That the woman who was killed at the rally? Think one of them killed her?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “We’re chasing our tails right now.”

It was frustrating to have so many dead ends and loose ends in a case. Most of the time, homicides are committed by people with clear motives, means and opportunity. Investigating the crime is a matter of putting the pieces together in a way that will hold up in court and convince a judge or a jury.

This case, though, was anything but ordinary. We still hadn’t figured out why anyone would kill Edith, though we had some ideas. And until we knew that, it was going to be tough to identify the means—the particular rifle that had been used—and the opportunity—putting our suspect on that rooftop at the time Edith was shot.

Sampson passed by our desks just before the end of our shift.

“I’ve got a meeting at the substation in Wahiawa,” he said. “We’ll talk about your case tomorrow.”

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“You got it,” I said.

I looked at Ray as Sampson walked away, and he grinned.

“Anything else we can do today?” Ray asked me.

“We have no suspects,” I said. “Nobody left to interview. We’re still waiting for your friend to come up with some information on Brian Parker and for Harry to see what he can find that connects Jun Tanaka and Ezekiel Kapuāiwa to Edith. I say we call it quits and hope tomorrow’s a better day.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about Edith as I drove home. How she had been dressed like my mother at the rally; how only a block or so had separated them; how devastated my whole family would have been if anything had happened to her.

My eyes were moistening a little as I dialed my parents’ house.

“Howzit, mom? You guys doing okay?”

“I’m glad you called, Kimo,” she said. “I was right about those bowls. The curator at the Bishop Museum is very excited.

She wants to talk to Leelee and find out how long they’ve been in the family.”

“Leelee won’t know anything. Remember, those bowls belonged to Edith, and Leelee had no idea they were anything special.”

“That’s right. That poor woman. Have you found out who killed her yet?”

“Working on it.” We talked for a couple of minutes, about my father’s new pills, a cute card one of my nephews had sent.

By the time I hung up I had made a resolution to make sure I talked to both my parents as often as I could, while I still had the chance to.

Mike’s truck was in the driveway when I got home. I opened the door of the house, ready to call out to him, when a big golden dog barreled into me, barking like crazy. For a minute I thought I was under attack, until the dog stood up on his back paws, resting the front ones on my groin, and sniffed me.

I stepped back into the yard as Mike rushed forward and MAhu BLood
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grabbed the dog by the collar. “Roby! Down, boy!”

Roby hopped to the ground and started dancing around us.

Mike couldn’t hang on to him, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I said, “Roby. Sit,” in my most commanding cop voice, and the dog obediently plopped his butt on the grass and looked up at us, his long pink tongue lolling out of the right side of his mouth.

“Damn. I’ve been trying to get that dog to sit since I brought him home.”

“And what’s he doing here?”

Mike looked sheepish as he snapped a leash on and led the dog back inside. In the kitchen, I saw a wooden stand with two metal bowls in it on the floor and a big bag of dog chow on the counter. Mike unhooked Roby and handed him a rawhide bone.

The dog dropped to the floor, gnawing happily, one end of the bone in his mouth, the other immobilized by a big golden paw.

“We talked about getting a dog,” Mike said. “You said we could someday.”

“Someday.” I leaned up against the kitchen counter and folded my arms across my chest.

“You remember the fire I told you about yesterday? In Waipahu?”

“This is the dog that saved the family?”

He nodded. “The only place they found to live won’t let them keep the dog. He was going to have to go to the pound.”

“Where people go when they want to adopt dogs.”

“He’s such a good boy,” Mike said, reaching down to scratch behind the dog’s ears. “I mean, what a great dog for a fireman, right? A dog that saved his family from a fire.”

“I thought firemen liked Dalmatians.”

“Come on, Kimo. Give him a chance. He’s a sweetheart.”

A line of drool had dripped from Roby’s mouth and stretched across his jaw and down the side of his mouth. He stopped chewing the rawhide for a moment and looked up at me.

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We had a dog for a while when I was a kid, but he bonded with my mother, who fed and walked him. When he ran away I didn’t miss him. Most of the dogs I had run across on the job were either small and angry or big and sloppy. This one looked like the latter.

“Who’s going to walk him and pick up after him?”

“We could both do it,” Mike said. “Think about it. The three of us out in the morning, walking together, enjoying nature and each other’s company.”

“Yeah. Do we know if he’s housebroken?”

“Mr. Gresham swears he is. He’s had all his shots. He’s a little wild sometimes, I admit, but between the two of us we can tame him.”