Twisted Vine Part 17

Lei looked toward the door, but Ken and the young man had gone to the front of the house with the rest of the gangsters the team had rounded up. They were alone.

"That your grandson? The kid I picked up for tagging?" Lei distinctly remembered running the boy down as a teen, tackling him four years ago.

"Yes. He's a good boy. Went to college. Not in the game."

"He's not in the drug game; he's in a different game. Do you know what he does on those computers?"

"He has an online business. Brings in plenty of money that way. Legit." Healani's ragged voice had gotten stronger. "You leave him out of this."

"Mrs. Chang. We aren't here for you. We're here for him." Lei measured each word and bit it off. The fight drained out of Healani Chang's eyes, and the life with it.

"Can't believe none of them got you," Healani said. "I should have killed you myself." Her voice was so low Lei had to lean in to hear it. Lei could tell the news about her grandson was a crushing blow by the leeching of color from her puffy face. Lei frowned, but before she could say another word, she found herself looking into the black bore of a weapon the woman had brought up out of the bedding.

Lei dove, banging her head on the steel bed and her chin on the stand of the IV rack. She was stunned, flat on the floor and seeing stars. She heard the boom of a pistol report in the enclosed s.p.a.ce, then a second one.

She was too dazed to get up and was unsure where Healani was aiming next. She stayed down, waiting for the spinning stars in her vision to subside. She cursed herself for not searching Healani's bed. The woman was deadly no matter her age or disability.

She heard the rushing thunder of boots, heard them stop in the doorway, heard her partner yell, "Lei! You okay?"

"Gun!" Lei yelled back. "She's armed!"

"Not anymore." Ken came forward to stand in front of her. "What happened?" Lei could see him looking around, his brows drawn down in concern.

One of the squad appeared in the door. "Oh s.h.i.t."

Ken reached down and helped Lei up. Her head spun, and she clung to him, turning to look at the bed-and wished she hadn't. Most of Healani's head was gone, and gore covered the wall behind her body.

"Oh G.o.d," Lei said. "Oh. G.o.d."

She felt visceral horror rise up and squeeze the breath out of her lungs. There was a hole in the side of the mattress where Healani had taken a shot at Lei.

"Where's your weapon?" Ken's voice was sharp.

"Holstered. I never saw it coming."

"Give your weapons to me." She was barely aware of handing him her Glock and her backup weapon, she was so dizzy. She needed Ken's help to walk back out of the house. Her legs had gone rubbery, vision doubling in and out. He supported her outside, and she dropped to the ground. "Are you injured?" he asked.

"I hit my head. I don't feel well." She rolled to the side and vomited, narrowly missing his boot. He cursed.

"Medic! First aid over here!"

Lei closed her eyes, feeling the roughness of the uneven gra.s.s of the Chang front yard against her cheek and utterly lacking the wherewithal to do anything more than lie there. She must have a concussion. She felt something damp wiping her hands.

"Just rest. You're going to be okay." Ken's rea.s.suring voice. An ambulance pulled up, and Lei opened her eyes. Lying facedown on the gra.s.s, cuffed a few feet away with the other suspects, the Chang grandson stared at her, and she recognized the implacable hatred in his narrowed eyes.

She closed hers to shut it out.

Hours later, they descended off the helicopter, and Lei and Ken accompanied Terence Chang III, aka Lightbody, off the helicopter and into the Prince Kuhio Federal Building. He'd been formally charged with multiple counts of third-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Through all the proceedings, he had never asked for a lawyer.

Lei's head hurt, thumping with pain along with every breath. The EMTs had diagnosed her with a minor concussion, but once she told them about her head injury on Maui, they wanted to put her in the hospital for observation.

She'd declined and followed Ken and the prisoner toward Conference Room B, where they conducted hostile interrogations. Waxman walked up to her, accompanied by Sophie. The tech agent looked tense.

Ang frowned as Ken guided Chang into the interview room. "I thought he'd be older," she said.

"Texeira." Waxman stopped Lei with a hand. "I heard you were supposed to be in the hospital. You have a head injury on an old head injury."

"I'm okay, Chief. I want to be in on the interview."

"I want you to go home. Call for someone to keep you company and put compresses on it."

"No, sir." Lei pulled herself fully upright, looked him in the eye. "I need to see this through."

He stared back for a moment, then sighed. "Okay. You can join me in the observation room. But I want Sophie in the interview with Ken. She'll know what kinds of questions to ask Chang related to the website."

"Okay." Lei exchanged a glance with Ang. She trusted the tech agent-Sophie'd know what to ask Chang even more than Lei did, and that old history wouldn't distract from the interview. "It might be good to sit down for a while."

Lei followed Waxman into the dim cave of the observation room as Sophie followed Ken into Conference Room B.

Chapter 28.

Sophie felt all her senses sharpen as she stepped into the bare room behind Ken, who had attached the prisoner's handcuffs to a ring on the steel table. The room smelled musty and closed up, and she realized how seldom she'd been in it-her job was usually behind the reflective mirror on the other side.

Overly bright fluorescent lighting bleached out Lightbody's black undershirt and bent head. He was midtwenties, medium-height, slender-built, with the olive-tan skin of mixed Asian and Hawaiian heritage.

Sophie'd brought her handheld tablet to make notes, and she had an Internet connection open to her computers so she could ask him site-related questions. She sat down beside Ken, who'd turned on the recording equipment at the door. They were both piped in to monitors and clearly visible to Lei and Waxman on the other side of the mirror.

Ken stated the date, time, and names of all present and started in. "Tell us about the philosophy behind DyingFriends and how it got started."

The young man, Terence Chang III, rubbed the skin of one wrist. Sophie could see it was red and abraded from the cuffs.

"Agent Yamada, I wonder if Mr. Chang needs to be cuffed. He doesn't seem like an ordinary criminal," Sophie said.

Ken glanced at her, one brow raised, but went with it. He reached over with his key and undid the cuffs. They dropped free with a metallic clang.

"All right, Mr. Chang." Sophie placed the tablet on the table, touching it with her long fingers as she gazed at the young man. "I am an admirer of your work. The DyingFriends site is an extraordinary accomplishment."

Terence Chang looked up, eyes widening slightly. She flattered him some more.

"I'm a technology specialist for the FBI, and I routinely crack into databases and track their source within hours. It took me an extraordinarily long time to penetrate your site and track you down, and in the course of the investigation, I came to admire both your skills and your pa.s.sion for your cause. This is your moment to share your vision with us. Help us understand what you were trying to accomplish."

"I did accomplish it." Terence sat back with a return of what looked like a natural arrogance in his demeanor. "I wanted to help people who were mentally or physically dying adjust to their circ.u.mstances, make it easier. Help them by having some control and say over the process."

"What got you interested in something so different from your family's usual business?" Sophie chose her words carefully.

"My grandmother. Her situation." He folded his lips tight.

"Your grandmother," Ken said. "According to Agent Texeira, who was with her when she died, she didn't know about the operation that was going on literally under her nose."

"f.u.c.king Texeiras. Tutu always said they'd be the death of her, and they were." Chang almost spit the words. Sophie started and glanced at Ken, seeing in his narrowed eyes this wasn't an avenue they wanted to pursue. Terence went on. "Tutu inspired the site. I'm glad she's free of her body now." Chang looked down, rubbed the red mark on his wrist. "She was sick with diabetes first. Then the lung cancer. She was a powerful woman. She wanted me to go legit. So I did."

"And yet here you are, under arrest," Ken said. "I wouldn't call that legit."

"It's a matter of perception. Society just hasn't caught up with us. Someday everything DyingFriends stands for will be legal."

Sophie felt a shiver of anxiety at the utter conviction Terence Chang conveyed through his words. "I don't know about that, Mr. Chang. Sometimes mistakes are made. For instance, I got a call from the ME's office, and Betsy Brown? Remember her?" She held up the tablet, displayed Betsy's photo arrayed in the bridal nightgown. She saw by the slight pinch of his nostrils that he did recognize her. "She thought she was dying of ALS. She was misdiagnosed. She had Guillain-Barre syndrome, a viral paralysis that is nonfatal. She would have recovered."

This time, Terence Chang's face blanched. Sophie went on. "Someone a.s.sisted her suicide, and that person is a murderer."

Ken leaned forward. "Who was it? Help yourself. Give us something."

"Was it KevorkianFan?" Sophie asked.

Chang shook his head. "It doesn't matter. People should have a right to die when they want to. It's a basic human right and covered under *freedom to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' Sometimes pursuing life, liberty, and happiness means pursuing death."

"But not everyone should die when DyingFriends promotes them to. Corby Alexander Hale III. He was nineteen. Yes, he had AIDS-but he could have lived almost a normal life span with proper medications and treatment, possibly even long enough to see a cure. Your organization took that choice from him."

Chang shook his head again. "It's about freedom. He chose his path. I merely helped him achieve his own goal."

"So you're admitting to that you a.s.sisted Corby Hale at his suicide?" Ken zeroed in on Chang.

A long pause before Chang answered. "I believe I'll call for my lawyer now."

d.a.m.n, Sophie thought. They'd pushed him too hard, too soon. Her earbud crackled with Waxman's voice. "Offer him a phone, and see who he calls. We'll get back to this later after the lawyer meets with him."

Ken took out his phone. "Who can we call for you?"

"Bennie Fernandez," Chang said. "He represents our family."

Sophie heard Lei's voice groan aloud in her ear. Fernandez was the premier defense lawyer in the state and had been a thorn in their side on many cases. Ken looked up Fernandez's number for Chang and dialed it. Sophie looked back at the young man from the doorway as he sat on hold with the firm.

"I get what you were trying to do. You are a true pioneer." Sophie wanted to leave him with the feeling of having an ally. She closed the door gently and followed Ken into the observation room, where Waxman and Lei waited.

"Good job, right until the part where you tried to get him to take the rap for murdering a senator's son," Waxman said dryly.

Ken shrugged. "He was going to lawyer up eventually. We'll keep building the case against him-verify when he's traveled and alibis for the deaths, et cetera. We've got this guy. We don't need a confession."

"I don't think so." Waxman shook his head. "I think you're going to have to prove this case, and that's going to be tough. And what the h.e.l.l was that about the Texeiras?" Even in the dim light, Sophie could see the paleness of the other agent's skin, freckles across her nose standing out like blots of paint and the bruises on her face darkening. "Lei, are you feeling okay?" Waxman asked.

"No. And, sir, I have a history with that family. Long, sad story."

"Do I need to know it right now?"

"No, but you should know it eventually. Actually has nothing to do with this case."

Waxman gave an abrupt nod. "Texeira, go home immediately. In fact, Ken, why don't you run her home? It'll take at least that long for Fernandez to get here and confer with his client."

Lei rubbed her eyes. "Yeah, I think I need an ice pack or two. I can always review the tapes." They left, and Sophie looked at Waxman. They both looked over at Chang, head bent over the phone.

"I'm glad you didn't let Texeira go into the interview," Sophie said. "We'll get more out of him without her there."

"Do you know any of this *long story' she alluded to?" Sophie asked. Waxman's pale brows had come together, and she felt her throat constrict with worry. She knew Lei had been under scrutiny since she joined the Honolulu office, but her chief needed all the facts to best handle the case.

"What history?" Waxman snapped.

"I know this from Marcella. You know she and Lei are close." Sophie sketched in what Marcella had told her about Lei's background in Hilo and the multistranded web connecting her and the Changs. "I wonder if that's why Healani Chang took her own life-being defeated by Lei might have pushed her over the edge."

"Texeira's off the case," Waxman said flatly. "And I'm going to want her interviewed separately about the showdown. If Terence Chang tells this to Bennie Fernandez-and he will-it could compromise our whole prosecution. I'll see if Dr. LaSota can make a house call. She's in town." He got out and worked his phone, and Sophie stared through the gla.s.s at Terence Chang, who was still rubbing his wrists.

"Sophie, you can shut the site down, right?" Waxman had finished his calls.

"I can, yes, but we need an order to do it."

"I'll work on that, get a judge to issue an injunction so no more suicides go on while we're investigating."

"It's too bad for the legit part of the site. A lot of people are helped by it. It doesn't get weird until the deeper layers."

"Can you disable just the deeper layers?"

"Not without Lightbody's cooperation, if he's even the site administrator. We're still missing KevorkianFan, the author of all the op-ed pieces. I need to get into the operating system and make modifications. I'm not backdoored into all that."

"Well. I want you to go back in alone and try to get that cooperation from him. If you can't, I want you to shut the whole site down," Waxman said.

"That I would be happy to do." They both watched the next-generation crime boss of the Chang family, sitting arrogantly relaxed in the interview room. Sophie had a bad feeling she couldn't put into words.

Chapter 29.

Lei woke up from a Vicodin-a.s.sisted nap to the barking of the dogs warning her there was a visitor. She pushed a handful of curly hair off her forehead and encountered the knot where she'd hit the rail of the bed there. Her jaw, where she'd landed, still hurt too. Both had left nasty bruises. Considering the bullets flying around that morning, she thought they'd all gotten off light. Shot-up vehicles, two of the Changs in the hospital but expected to fully recover, and one suicide-all in all, not bad.

Lei walked to the door and was surprised to see Dr. LaSota, FBI psychologist, accompanied by an unknown agent, standing outside the gate. She hurried across the yard, shushing the dogs. "Come in, Dr. LaSota. This is a surprise. I expected a debrief but not so soon or at my home."

"Yes, I'll explain inside." The diminutive brunette psychologist, pressed and perfect in her FBI gray, gestured to her companion. "This is Special Agent Pillman."