Mahu Blood (28 page)

I looked at Mike, my eyebrows raised. He gave his shoulders a slight shrug. I guessed that Mike had been working on his parents to be warmer to me. I appreciated the effort, and knew I’d have to meet it.

“I’d like that. Dominic. Soon-O.”

Their names sounded strange on my tongue, but I figured I’d get accustomed to it. And I was pleased that we were able to move on from all the drama of the past to a new, warmer relationship. We climbed into the car, Soon-O and Dominic in the front, me and Mike in the back like a pair of high schoolers being chauffeured.

Soon-O turned around to face us and said, “I’ve been trying to convince Mike that he needs to take that dog in for obedience training. He’s a little wild.”

I resisted the urge to say that Mike could use some training, too. Instead I said, “He has a good heart. He just needs a firm hand on the leash.”

“Does he obey you?”

I wasn’t sure by then if we were talking about Roby or Mike, but I said, “He knows the basic commands: sit, down and so on. He’s housebroken, and though he likes to chew on socks he hasn’t caused any major damage yet. But if it looks like he needs it, I don’t mind taking him in for lessons.”

We talked all the way to the Pearlridge multiplex, and for the first time since I met Mike I felt relaxed around his parents, like I was part of their family. We saw a romantic comedy that made us all laugh, and that good feeling carried over through dinner at a barbecue joint where we sat at a big wooden picnic table and shared big platters of ribs, chicken, biscuits and fries.

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“We used to come here all the time when Mike was a boy,”

Dominic said. “You should have seen him attack a platter of ribs.”

“And you complain about the way I eat,” I said to Mike, elbowing him.

I remembered something that my brother Haoa had told me, years before, soon after he married Tatiana and met her parents and her many brothers and sisters.

“You don’t just marry the person, you marry their whole family,” he’d said.

Mike was an only child, and his parents’ relatives spanned the globe, from Long Island to Seoul. I’d always focused mostly on integrating him into my family, and I was glad it seemed like I was becoming a part of his, too.

By the time we got home we were stuffed and tired, but we motivated ourselves to take Roby for a long walk around the neighborhood, savoring the last moments of our time off together. We spent the evening slumped together on the sofa, watching mindless TV with Roby sleeping on the carpet, his spine curled so his head met his back feet.

≈≈≈

Tuesday morning I drove to work so eager to tell Ray what I’d learned over the weekend that I felt like Roby, a big eager puppy with a bone to share. As soon as he came in, I explained about meeting Simi and getting him to identify Dex’s picture.

“But if the bartender can’t say for sure it was Dex who left with O’Malley we don’t have a connection,” Ray said. “And the concierge at the Honolulu Sunset didn’t see the guy who came in with O’Malley.”

“We can run Dex’s prints. See if they show up at O’Malley’s.”

Thanh Nguyen, the fingerprint tech, was backed up because of the holiday weekend, as was the ME’s office. I wanted to go out and shake somebody, because I felt like we were so close to understanding. “I think you’ve been drinking too much coffee
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on this case,” Ray said. “Calm down. We’ll get everything figured out.”

Sampson called us in to his office as I was pacing around Ray’s desk.

“Where are you with the lawyer’s murder?” he asked, as we sat down across from him. He’d gotten the haircut he needed over the weekend and a little sun, too. There were red patches on his cheeks and forehead, and his nose was peeling. I thought that his maroon polo shirt was a good choice that morning, because of the sunburn, but instead of commenting on it I plunged into a status update.

“I found a guy who picked up a trick at The Garage who mugged him. The victim pulled Dexter Trale’s photo out of an array and fingered Dex as his attacker. Dex lived with Edith Kapana and worked with Stuart McKinney, so we think that now we can connect him to all three murders. We’re waiting on a fingerprint comparison with the prints we found in O’Malley’s apartment. And we’re waiting for the autopsy results. Both offices are backed up because of the Labor Day holiday.”

“Death doesn’t take a day off,” Sampson said. “What’s your plan?”

“If we get something from either the prints or the autopsy that implicates Trale, we’ll pick him up,” Ray said. “Otherwise we’ll just keep looking for evidence.”

“Not exactly the kind of plan I was hoping you’d have. But it’ll have to do. Let me know what you find. And remember, Donne, you’re responsible for keeping Kanapa’aka from breaking too many laws.”

Ray gave Sampson a two-fingered salute and said, “Will do, chief.”

“Let’s call Salinas,” I said to Ray as we left Sampson’s office.

“I want to know what he pulled out of that game on Friday night.

See if we can figure out how Dex and Tanaka work together.”

Salinas’s secretary said that he was in court but would be back by two. I asked her to leave him a message that my partner and I MAhu BLood
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would be there then to see him. Then I called Peggy, and she said that the partners were meeting to discuss our request.

“We’ll come over,” I told her, knowing it’s always harder to refuse a cop something to his face than it is over the phone.

fAded docuMeNts

“You think Peggy will come through with those documents?”

Ray asked, as I scooted through a traffic light that started out yellow. “And that was a red light, you know.”

“You’re taking the job of being my conscience seriously, aren’t you?” I said. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if they’re relevant to our case.”

Peggy met us in the reception area and said, “The partners have agreed to let you have the copies. Sarah is putting them together now.” She led us back into the conference room and sat down across from us. “The partners are going to want to know if these files are related to Adam’s death. You know lawyers.

They’re worried about liability.”

“Right now we’re just developing our case.” I sketched in our thoughts about Tanaka as Sarah Byrne brought in the copies of the hospitalization records and the originals of the other sheets we had found in the folder.

“These old pages are too old and faded to get decent copies,”

she said, showing them to me.

“Can we take the originals?” I asked Peggy. “We’ll get them back to you, I promise.”

“I’ll ask Mr. Yamato.” She walked out, and Sarah stayed behind.

“Did you have something else you wanted to tell us?” I asked her.

She pursed her lips, deliberating. “I saw that these materials relate to the Kingdom of Hawai’i, and I wondered if you spoke to Akamu when you were here on Saturday.”

“Akamu?”

“Our student intern. I know he’s a volunteer with KOH.”

I looked at Ray, my eyebrows raised. “No, we didn’t speak to
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him,” he said. “Is he here now?”

“It’s his last day. I think he’s in the law library.”

Peggy came back in then. “Who’s in the library?” she asked.

“You have a student intern here who’s also a volunteer with KOH?” I asked.

She looked from me to Sarah. “Yes. Akamu Hastings. But he doesn’t have access to any case files.”

“Even so,” I said. “We’d like to talk to him.”

Peggy nodded toward Sarah. “Can you ask him to come in here? But don’t tell him why.”

Sarah left. “You think Akamu is connected to Adam’s death?”

Peggy asked.

“I don’t know, Peggy. But it’s certainly an interesting coincidence, don’t you think? O’Malley agrees to meet me and talk about KOH, and then he’s killed. And you have somebody in your office who volunteers for KOH.”

Peggy was about to argue when Akamu came to the door. I could tell from his eyes that he recognized us as the cops from Saturday.

“You wanted to speak to me, Miss Kaneahe?”

“Come in and sit down,” she said, pulling out a chair for him.

I could only imagine what she was thinking then. Adam O’Malley had been her friend, and he was dead, and it was possible that this kid was involved somehow. I wondered whether she’d revert to her prosecutor stance or be the kid’s advocate, as a representative of Fields and Yamato.

She introduced Ray and me. “The detectives have some questions for you about your involvement with Kingdom of Hawai’i,” she said. “I want you to be honest with them, okay?”

He nodded. I could see his right hand shaking a little on the big wooden table.

“It’s okay, Akamu,” I said. “Nobody’s in trouble here. We just want to ask you a couple of questions, all right? Peggy said MAhu BLood
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you’ve been volunteering with KOH. What kind of stuff have you done?”

“Nothing major,” he said. “Mostly I’m like a gofer, kind of like I am here. I run errands, I help out at rallies and stuff.”

“That’s good. It’s important. My mom volunteers for KOH

sometimes too.”

“Oh, yeah, Mrs. Kanapa’aka. I know her. She’s really smart.”

“Thanks. I’ll tell her you said so. So is that how you got the internship here? Through KOH?”

“Sorta. A couple of times I drove around Mr. Kapuāiwa, and through him I met Mr. Tanaka. I told him I wanted to be a lawyer, and he said maybe he could help me out.”

I looked at Ray and Peggy. Ray kept a poker face, but I could see Peggy’s mouth setting into a grim line.

“Mr. Tanaka, huh?” I asked. “Jun Tanaka? From the Kope Bean?”

“Yeah. He’s super nice. He’s taken a real interest in me. He’s always calling me up and asking how things are going. A couple of times he even took me out to dinner.”

“I guess you heard about what happened to Mr. O’Malley,” I said. “How he was murdered last week.”

“Oh, man, I felt so bad. He was a nice guy. I was talking about him to Mr. Tanaka just the other day, how Mr. O seemed really committed to helping out KOH.”

Suddenly his mouth dropped open. “Oh my God,” he said.

“What?”

“Oh my God, oh my God.” He started shaking. “It was his meeting. The meeting he was talking about.”

Peggy reached over and took the kid’s right hand and squeezed.

“It’s going to be okay. But you have to tell us what you know.”

He took a deep breath, his teeth chattering a little. “It was Thursday afternoon. Right after lunch. I was walking past Mr.

O’Malley’s office, and I heard him on the phone. He was talking
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about meeting someone the next day to talk about KOH stuff. I thought that was so amazing of him, you know? I mean, he just got back from this big case on the mainland, and he was going to have some meeting about KOH on his day off.”

He looked from me to Ray. “That must have been who killed him, right? That person he was meeting with.”

I shook my head. “He was supposed to meet with us, Akamu.

But when we got to his apartment he was dead.”

“With you? With cops? But that’s not what… oh my God.”

“What?”

“Mr. Tanaka called me Thursday afternoon, just kind of to say that he had heard I did a really good job this summer, and he wanted to keep in touch with me in the fall. I think I… I mean, I didn’t even think about it, you know?”

“You think you what?”

“I told Mr. Tanaka that Mr. O was having a meeting the next day about KOH stuff.” He looked from me to Ray and back again. “I didn’t know he was meeting with you or that there was anything strange going on. I just thought it was great of him to do it on his day off, you know?”

The pieces clicked in place. Tanaka knew that Adam O’Malley was meeting with someone on his day off, to discuss KOH

business. Even if Tanaka didn’t know Adam was meeting with the cops, he’d have been right to be suspicious. And maybe even to have ordered his attorney’s death.

We got Akamu’s contact information, and he left the conference room. “Tanaka has to be connected to Adam’s death,” Peggy said.

“Looks like it,” I said.

“If you find out anything that compromises Fields and Yamato, will you give me a heads up? As a favor to an old friend?”

“Of course.”

I signed a receipt for the old faded documents Sarah had been MAhu BLood
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unable to photocopy, and we left the law firm.

“Harry might be able to do something with these,” I said to Ray. “Mind if we swing by his place?”

“No prob.” As the elevator doors closed, he said, “So how long did you date her?”

“What?”

“The attorney. Peggy. You did date her, didn’t you?”

“How did you know?”

“I’m a detective, dude. I look at the way people interact with each other. And you two have failed booty call all over you.”

“I guess you could call it that.”

We reached the ground floor, and I called Harry and said we were on our way over. We walked back to my Jeep, and I told Ray the whole sad story, from those make-out sessions in Peggy’s bedroom to the way she had tried to screw me after I came out of the closet.

“And all that time, you didn’t know?” Ray asked. “My cousin Joey, he couldn’t even talk about sex with girls. He’d get this weirded-out look on his face and squinch up his nose like he smelled something bad.”

“I was clueless, what can I tell you?” We got in the Jeep, and I backed out of the parking space and turned onto the street. “I look back at it now and wonder what I was thinking, but at the time, I thought everybody felt the way I did. That everybody was, you know, bi to some extent. I figured once I met the right girl I’d stop thinking about guys.”

“Do you still think about girls?” he asked. “Seeing Peggy again, that do anything for you?”

I thought about it as we waited at a red light. “I look at her now, and there’s so many things going on, you know? I remember high school and stuff we did. But it doesn’t make me want to get in her panties again. Not at all.”

“Other women?”

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