Mahu Blood (25 page)

he said. “How can I help you?”

I introduced myself and Ray and showed her our badges. “We need to ask some questions about Adam O’Malley.”

“Mr. O’Malley isn’t in today. Would you like to speak with his
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paralegal?”

“Sure.”

He picked up the phone and punched in a couple of numbers.

“Sarah, it’s Akamu, out at the front desk. There are a couple of police officers who need to speak to someone about Mr.

O’Malley.”

He listened for a moment, then hung up. “She’ll be right out.”

“I’m surprised to see the office open on a Saturday,” I said, as we waited.

“We’re not officially open. Just a few of the attorneys and paralegals are here. I’m a student at U.H., and I’m interning here for the summer. I go back to school right after Labor Day, and I figured I would get a few more hours in while I can.”

He was a cheerful kid in a light blue chambray shirt, and we chatted for a couple minutes until a stocky woman in an open-necked blouse, navy skirt and matching pumps came out to the lobby. I thought the bright red streak in her dark hair was an interesting touch in such a conservative environment.

“I’m Sarah Byrne,” she said. “You have some questions for Mr. O’Malley? If it’s important, I can call him.” She had a crisp Australian accent.

I shook my head. “We need to speak to someone about him, and the cases he worked on here. Is there a place we can talk?”

She led us to a small conference room off the lobby. Floor to ceiling windows looked out at the port, where despite the holiday a crane was offloading containers from a big ship.

“I’m afraid we have some bad news for you,” I said. “Mr.

O’Malley was found dead in his apartment yesterday morning.”

She reached out to one of the plush armchairs to steady herself. “Oh, my,” she said, and she began to cry.

Ray poured her a glass of water from a pitcher on a side table, and I helped her sit in the big captain’s chair.

“Do you know what happened?” she asked, once she’d MAhu BLood
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dabbed at her eyes and taken a sip of water. “Was it a heart attack or—was he killed?” Her eyes widened.

“We’re still working on the details,” I said. “That’s why we’re here.”

She began to stand up. “I think you should speak to one of the associates.”

“We will, soon. For now we just want to get some background on Mr. O’Malley.”

“Where there any clients that you know of who were unhappy with his work?” Ray asked. “Anyone who might have threatened him?”

Sarah sat back down, clutching the tissue in her right hand.

“We focus on corporate litigation,” she said, shaking her head.

“We don’t handle criminal work at all. And Mr. O’Malley was a very quiet sort of a man—not the type to get into arguments, certainly not with clients.”

“Was he upset about anything?” I asked. “Or did he seem worried, or unusually agitated?”

“Not at all. He had just come back from a business trip, and he said he was glad to be home.”

“I understand he was in Washington, DC last week,” I said.

“Do you know what kind of case that was?”

“I can’t give you any information about our clients or ongoing litigation,” she said. “But I
can
tell you the case involved copyright infringement and both parties are large, well-known multi-national corporations. Mr. O’Malley was in touch with various members of their in-house counsel, so there wasn’t a specific individual who was involved in the case.”

“Was it usual for him to take a Friday off?” I asked.

“Mr. O’Malley worked very hard,” Sarah said. “I know he put in long hours when he was in Washington, because of the time difference. But when he did take a day off it was usually a Friday.

I don’t know why, because most of the time he’d be back in the office that weekend.”

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“How about his personal life?” Ray asked. “Can you tell us about any friends or activities?”

“He started at the same time I did, about five years ago,” she said. “He went to college and law school in San Francisco and then worked for a firm there for a few years. I don’t know very much about his private life.” She paused. “He wasn’t the kind of boss to get personal. I knew he wasn’t married, because he didn’t wear a wedding ring or have any pictures on his desk. But I don’t even know if he had a girlfriend.”

“Is there anyone here that he was friendly with?” I asked.

“Any other attorney he might have confided in?”

She thought for a moment. “I know who you could talk to. I’ll be right back.” She hurried out of the room.

“She didn’t even know if he had a girlfriend,” Ray said, when she was gone.

“That’s life in the closet.”

While we waited for Sarah to return, we went back over what she had said, looking for anything we might have missed. Ray was facing the door, and said, “Here she comes.”

I turned around. The first person through the door, though, wasn’t O’Malley’s paralegal—it was Peggy Kaneahe.

Peggy’s dark hair, always down to her shoulders in the past, was now cut in a severe, yet fashionable bob. She was nearly 100% Hawaiian, and her skin had always been a rich olive-cocoa, a few shades darker than mine. Now, though, she appeared pale, as if she hadn’t been out in the sun in months. There were a few more lines around her eyes than I’d seen before, and she had the attenuated, rail-thin aspect of a single woman who exercised too much.

She and I had a long history. Because of our last names, Kanapa’aka and Kaneahe, we always sat next to each other at Punahou. When we were sixteen I took her to our junior prom, and she was the first girl I ever kissed. She was the first I had sex with, too, one Saturday afternoon when her parents were at a christening on the North Shore. I broke up with her right after MAhu BLood
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coming home from my first year in Santa Cruz, after I’d had my first sexual experience with another guy.

We dated again, briefly, when she returned to Honolulu after law school and was working in the DA’s office. Since I’d come out of the closet, though, I’d been careful to avoid running into her.

She looked as surprised as I was. “Kimo,” she said.

“Hi, Peggy. I didn’t realize you’d left the DA’s office.”

“Two years ago.”

She turned to Sarah Byrne. “I can take it from here, Sarah.

Thanks.” She looked at us. “Assuming you’re done with Sarah?”

I nodded. “If we have any more questions, we’ll get back to you.”

Sarah left, and I introduced Peggy to Ray. “Peggy and I went to high school together,” I said, leaving out the gory details.

We sat at the round table. Ray and I faced the water and the brilliant sun, while Peggy sat with her back to the light. I was sure it was some kind of attorney trick to put us at a disadvantage.

“You’re working on Labor Day weekend,” I said, to get the conversation started.

“I’m trying to make partner.” She paused. “Sarah said this is about Adam O’Malley? I have to say, I’m not surprised that he’s dead.”

AdAM’s cAseLoAd

I sat back in my chair and looked at Peggy. “That’s a pretty strong statement.”

“Adam had a low self-image,” she said. “I know it’s a cliché, but he worked twice as hard because he didn’t think he was smart enough, or a good enough lawyer, to become a partner here. But at the same time he desperately wanted the prestige that comes with that title, not to mention the money.”

She sighed, and the corners of her mouth turned down. I wondered if she was talking about herself as well. She had always been a driven student in high school, not content with anything less than an A in every class. She was on a full scholarship at Punahou, always feeling inferior to our rich haole classmates despite her grades.

“From what I could tell, Adam’s inferiority complex carried over to his personal life,” Peggy said. “He never said so, but I knew he was gay. We were friends, and we were each other’s date sometimes when we had to go to business dinners.” She pursed her lips together and looked directly at me. “I seem to have a knack for attracting gay men.”

I felt the sting of that dart but avoided acknowledging it.

Fortunately Ray stepped in and asked, “He talked to you about his personal life?”

“Not in much detail. But I knew enough not to ask him who he went out with on the weekend or why some lucky girl hadn’t snatched him up yet.” She paused. “I had the feeling he was attracted to the wrong kind of guy. Once he told me that he’d been mugged and had his wallet stolen, and from how cagey he was about the details I thought it was a hook up. And another time I saw a bruise on his arm, and his explanation was lame.”

I made a couple of notes, then looked back up at Peggy. “From what we’ve discovered, Mr. O’Malley went to a bar on Thursday night, where he met a man he took back to his apartment. That
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man is certainly someone we want to talk to, but we’re trying to cover all our bases. Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill him?”

“I used to get death threats in the DA’s office,” Peggy said, picking unconsciously at one fingernail with another. “That’s one of the reasons I left. I just got tired of the personal hassle. But here, we don’t deal with real human beings and their problems. I like that. Nobody comes rampaging in, yelling at the receptionist.

Nobody waves weapons at us or stalks us outside our houses.”

She looked up at us. “Adam was a very quiet guy, and this is a low-key practice.”

“Ray and I had an appointment with O’Malley on Friday afternoon, to discuss some suspicions he had about one of his clients, which relate to two other murders we’re investigating. He was threatened enough that he didn’t want to discuss things in the office.”

“Which client?” Peggy asked.

“Kingdom of Hawai’i. I understand he was the attorney of record for the group?”

“If there’s any client who could have gotten Adam in trouble, they’re the one. I encouraged him to get rid of them, but he didn’t listen.” Her voice cracked at the end of the sentence, and I could see her struggling to maintain control.

When we were in high school, our mothers were close friends, and her mother in particular was very proud of their Hawaiian lineage. I doubted Peggy would have let her mother volunteer for KOH. Even though my mother hadn’t been hurt at the rally, I wished I’d been more aware of what was going on and tried to keep her away from what was turning out to be a very questionable group.

“What was it that you found suspicious?” I asked Peggy.

“Adam mentioned they took in a lot of cash donations,”

she said. “The man behind the group said that they had a lot of grassroots support among native Hawaiians, who didn’t trust banks. But I knew that was bullshit. Most of my family is MAhu BLood
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Hawaiian, and we’ve all got Bankoh accounts.”

“So you didn’t believe him,” I said. “But did Adam?”

“He believed what he wanted to. The non-profit and some allied corporations generated a lot of billable hours because of some kind of complicated corporate structure and interconnected transactions between companies. Adam was up for partner at the end of the year. He thought if he could hold on to them until then, the partners would see him as a rainmaker and make him an offer.”

She bit her lower lip, and I remembered how she used to do that when she was uncomfortable. “How did he die?” she asked.

“He was killed in his apartment,” I said. “It’s possible that there was sexual activity involved or that the killer wanted to create a false impression. We just don’t know yet.”

“I was an ADA for years, Kimo. You don’t need to sugarcoat for me.”

“He was naked, tied to the bedposts, with a dildo stuck up his ass. His throat was slit.”

As soon as I said it I felt bad, letting my anger and frustration and my discomfort at seeing Peggy again get the better of me.

She didn’t even flinch, though. “And despite that situation you think there’s a possibility that his death is connected to his work?”

“As I said, when I spoke to him on Thursday, he told me that he felt there were dangerous people connected with KOH and that he was frightened by them.” I thought about what I wanted to say next. “You can see we don’t have enough to show a judge.

But we have a hunch that his death was more than just a hook up gone bad.”

“And you want me to open up our confidential files to you,”

she said. “Without a warrant. On the strength of your hunch?”

I looked at Ray, then back at her. “That’s about it.”

Looking at Peggy’s face, I figured she was running through her whole history with me. How many times had I dumped her
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for the chance to go surfing with Harry Ho? How many times had I disappointed her or hurt her? She had gotten in hot water at the DA’s office over her attitude toward me. And here I was, asking her for a favor that could potentially damage her standing with Fields and Yamato.

Ray stepped in to rescue me. “We have more than just a hunch,” he said. “Our investigation keeps leading us to a guy named Jun Tanaka, who runs the Kope Bean chain, and who’s a big backer, through his various corporations, of Kingdom of Hawai’i. The FBI picked him up last night on suspicion of money laundering.”

“The FBI?”

Ray continued, “Yup. They’re probably filing subpoenas right now. They’re not going to care about our murder victims, though.

They’ll get your files, they’ll hold them up for a couple of years while they build their case.” He paused. “You know how that works. We’ll never get a conviction on any of these murders.”

I watched Peggy’s body language. Her back stiffened, and she stopped biting her lip. Ray had played her perfectly, without anything more than a gut instinct. He thought she would care about seeing Adam’s killer brought to justice. And he was right.

She sighed. “I can’t open up our files on my own. I’ll have to talk to one of the partners.”

“We can wait,” I said.

Peggy led us to O’Malley’s office. “Before you go, you guys must have some kind of program where you track billable hours, don’t you?” I asked her.