Twisted Vine Part 3

Lei grabbed it. "Special Agent Texeira."

"Caught a new case, Lei." Ken's voice was crisp. "Suspicious death. We're called in because Corby Hale's prints were found at the scene."

"What the h.e.l.l?" Lei tossed the blanket aside. She walked in her thin tank top and boxers to the preloaded coffeemaker in the kitchen, punched it on. She'd learned it was best to make the coffee the night before or she was liable to have to do without-and the blast of caffeine was really necessary this morning after her heavy exercise and late night.

"I know. It's weird." He rattled off the address. "Meet me there."

Lei hopped under the brisk flow of the shower, reordering her wayward curls with a few handfuls of water. She dried off and dressed in her version of the FBI uniform in less than five minutes-white short-sleeved shirt, black chinos, black athletic shoes. Her badge clipped to her belt, shoulder holster strapped on, Glock loaded up. In the kitchen she made sure the dogs' water bowl was full, threw a couple of handfuls of food in their bowls to tide them over, and unlocked the dog door.

Keiki looked at Lei plaintively as she filled a lidded travel mug with coffee, and Angel did a few experimental whines to see if Lei would pick her up. Lei succ.u.mbed, picking the tiny dog up and stroking her head.

"Be good. Keep an eye out for bad guys." She put Angel down and gave Keiki an ear rub. "See you girls later."

They followed her out into the dewy yard, a few stars fading from the sky with the morning blooming in the east-another gorgeous Honolulu day. Lei took in the sounds of morning as she unlocked her truck: a few cars, a rooster crowing, the chatter of mynahs and the rustle of a tiny wind in the nearby palm tree.

Lei drove her truck through streets too early to be choked with the commuter traffic that would come later. She'd plugged the address into the on-board GPS, and her navigator guided her across town to an older neighborhood near Punchbowl. She pulled the silver Tacoma up behind a couple of HPD cruisers parked in front of a ranch-style home with an orchid-bordered walkway.

Lei slipped a pair of latex gloves on from a box under her seat and picked up her crime kit. She made sure her badge was clearly visible and identified herself to the uniformed officer guarding the yellow tape across the garage, signing the log and entering the time: 6:27 a.m.

The retractable garage door was still down, but the side door was ajar, and she pushed it open with a finger, poking her head in to see what she was getting into. She'd walked too fast into a few crime scenes in her time and had learned to go slow and let herself take in all the details before she zeroed in on the body-and Ken's message had been devoid of detail.

Her partner had his back to her, looking into a parked beige Toyota Highlander. The garage and interior lights were on, and he was looking around the motionless driver with a penlight. Detective Ching, Marcus Kamuela's partner, gave her a little salute from the wall. "You're getting another of our cases," he said. "Alfred Shimaoka, aged fifty-nine."

Ken had the door ajar, and he pushed it all the way open and moved back so Lei could see into the vehicle. "Looks like a suicide."

Lei could smell auto exhaust and a whiff of decomposition. "Asphyxiation, then?"

Ken nodded. Ching was still looking surly, doing something on his phone.

Lei approached, her eyes scanning across the tidy cement floor in "see mode." The walls of the garage were lined with some sort of craft supplies: bundles of bamboo, clippers, cutters, saws, and bottles of glue, stacks of what looked like paper. Against the wall that faced the house was a washer, dryer, sink, and workbench. She spotted what Shimaoka did in his spare time: a tidy row of small square paper lanterns stood in a row.

She walked around the SUV, past Ching, to look into the driver's side, but without opening the door all she could see was a man's profile, his head tilted back, and the yellow interior lights of the vehicle gleaming on salt-and-pepper hair.

Ching pointed. "Your boy's prints were on the tape connecting the hose to the exhaust pipe."

Lei saw that the tape had been removed. The hose was detached and lay on the floor beside the SUV. "I'll bag that." She took a large paper evidence bag out of her kit, snapped it open, then coiled the hose carefully and inserted it into the bag, sealing it with paper tape and initialing it with the date and time. "Where's the tape with the prints on it?"

Ching pointed. The evidence bag was already sealed, so Lei set hers next to it and rejoined Ken at the door of the car. Her partner was scanning the interior of the SUV with a forensic light. "Can I open the door on the other side?" Lei asked.

"Long as he doesn't fall out," Ken said.

Lei walked back around. The window was up almost all the way, and traces of duct tape still clung to the edge of the window and the doorframe.

"Thanks for securing the scene." Lei addressed Ching. "I think we've got it covered."

Ken spoke up from the other side of the vehicle. "Your commanding officer called us himself when you identified Corby Hale's print. Quick work on that, by the way."

"I scanned it in and it came right up-not much to it. We're not in the Dark Ages, you know."

"Well, do you think you could get started gathering some statements from the neighbors? We'd really appreciate it." Lei tried a smile, wishing her dimple worked as well as Marcella's.

Ching pushed off the wall abruptly. "Might as well air this place out."

He punched the b.u.t.ton on the wall and the garage door rumbled up. Lei opened her mouth to protest but spotted f.u.kushima's van pulling up at the end of the driveway, breaking up the cl.u.s.ter of lookie-loos craning their necks at the end of the driveway.

She turned away. The air did feel a lot fresher with the door open, and what did she care if there were a few gawking neighbors?

Ching stomped off.

Lei looked at the driver's side door. An ashy-looking drift of fingerprint dust decorated the ground beneath the door, but there was nothing on the handle. Odd. The dead person should have left a lot of prints. "Ken, do you know anything about the victim?"

"Alfred Shimaoka. Aged fifty-nine, an architect. This is his house. He's j.a.panese and single."

"Who found the body?"

"Neighbor. Heard Shimaoka's dog barking inside, and he's religious about walking it, according to what the neighbor told Ching. She peeked through the gla.s.s in the garage door and saw him. The SUV had run out of gas and turned off, so she thought he'd pa.s.sed out or something until she approached the car."

"That must have been a shock." Lei heard a far-off yapping. "Did anyone deal with the dog?"

"Couldn't. House is locked."

Lei sighed. That would be next, as soon as they were able to leave the body to the medical examiner. She finally really looked at what was left of Alfred Shimaoka.

Shimaoka's skin was pale but patched with red in the lips and extremities, an effect of the carbon-monoxide poisoning. His head was tilted back, mouth ajar, and most interesting, his hands were resting upright on his thighs, the thumb and forefinger close to touching, in a Buddhist meditation pose. The slender j.a.panese man, beginning to swell as decomposition began, was dressed neatly in a muted aloha shirt and chinos. Other than the strange coloration of his skin, he looked peaceful.

Ken pointed his penlight at a square of white paper propped up against the gearshift. "Can you bag that?"

"Sure." Lei took out another evidence bag and picked up the paper carefully, leaning past the dead man to retrieve it. The fruity smell of decomp, faint but powerful, rose from the corpse. "If Corby's prints are on that tape, he's got to be dead at least two days."

Ken had his camera out and shot the scene. "Just what I was thinking."

f.u.kushima appeared, the gurney's clattering wheels, pushed by her a.s.sistant, announcing their arrival. "What have we got?"

Ken told her, while Lei read the suicide note. It was written in beautiful calligraphic script on a translucent square of the paper used to make lanterns.

Dear friends. I have no family to shame with this choice to avoid my last months of suffering. I have pancreatic cancer, as many of you know, and I'm ready to go now-not in another three months when the doctors say I will. Please accept that I chose not to burden anyone with my end-of-life care and recognize my right to choose how to die.

And to my friend Soga, I finished my lanterns. Please light one for me at the Floating Lantern Ceremony.

Alfred Shimaoka Lei felt her heart do a little flip as she looked back at the row of lanterns. Chances were very good the Soga he referred to was her grandfather Soga Matsumoto, whose home was mere blocks away. Her grandfather also volunteered at the Shinnyo temple, helping to build and repair the beautiful lanterns lit annually and floated out to sea in Waikiki on Memorial Day.

She slid the paper into the evidence bag without comment, sealing and marking it, as Ken and f.u.kushima continued their conferring and Ken took more pictures, circling around to her side and shooting the body from every possible angle.

"We're going to want to go over this vehicle inch by inch," Ken said. "If there's anything else Corby left, we need to find it."

Lei nodded, setting the bag with the others next to her kit. "I want to deal with that dog."

"Poor dog," f.u.kushima said. As usual, the fastidious ME was swathed in sterile wear and even wore a particle mask. Ken gestured to the keys, still in the ignition. "Chances are the door key is there."

Lei lifted them out carefully, holding the side of the main key. She'd fingerprint that later-but for now, she walked across the garage to the back door and inserted a silver Schlage into the lock.

The dog that charged the door, yapping fiercely, was a wire-haired Jack Russell terrier, white with brown spots and a good deal of att.i.tude.

Lei squatted down, lowering her voice and extending her closed fist for him to sniff. "Hey, boy. You hungry?"

The dog tentatively sniffed at her hand, and his tail wagged. She slowly stood up and advanced into the kitchen, spotting his bowls (both empty) against the wall. She picked up the water bowl first, turning on the sink and letting her eyes roam around the room, looking for anything out of place.

It was spotless and pristine except for a corner near the trash bin where the dog had succ.u.mbed to biology and defecated. She refilled the bowl and located a lidded trash bin filled with dry food. She refilled that too as the dog frantically lapped water.

Ken came up into the doorway. "We should search the house."

"I know. Got a lot of detail work ahead, but I want to figure out something for this little guy."

"Strange that Shimaoka didn't give him away before he died. People planning their suicide usually do that. Another oddity."

"Maybe he didn't have time. Maybe it came up suddenly," Lei said, frowning thoughtfully as she set the dog's bowl down. The little terrier chomped down the food as fast as he could. "Did Ching find out the dog's name from the neighbor?"

"Ask me yourself." Ching approached across the garage with his clipboard.

"Hey, Detective. Did the lady who found the body say what the dog was called?" Lei ignored his att.i.tude.

"His name's Sam." They all looked at the little dog with his nose in the bowl. "She said Shimaoka usually took good care of the dog."

"I wonder if she'd be willing to take care of him until a relative or something can be located."

Ching leafed through the papers on his clipboard, removed one and handed it to her. "Here's her contact information." He was clearly not volunteering for dog care duty. "She seemed attached to Shimaoka. Cried a lot over the discovery. Said she knew about the cancer."

Sam finished eating and darted out the open doorway and through the garage, past the open door of the SUV, where his master's body was being awkwardly wrestled into a body bag by Dr. f.u.kushima and her a.s.sistant. Ching and Ken hurried to help while Lei ran after the dog. Sam trotted into the immaculate little front yard and did his business. Lei scanned the neighbors still cl.u.s.tered on the other side of the tape Ching had put up at the end of the driveway.

One woman, dressed in purple sweats and a T-shirt with a lei hand painted across the front, was crying into a dish towel. Lei approached her, glancing at the paper Ching had handed her. "Hi there. You wouldn't be Sherry Thompson, would you?"

"Yes." The woman looked up, brown eyes streaming. She had the kind of complexion that didn't age well in Hawaii, tissue-like freckled skin patched with red. "I was a good friend of Alfred. I can't believe he did this to himself."

"Tell me what happened, please."

She listened to a recap of what Ching had already told them, with embellishments of shock and grief. Finally, when Sherry was winding down, Lei gestured to the little dog doing a patrol lap of the front yard. "Any chance you could take care of Sam? I'd hate to see Animal Control have to come take him to the Humane Society."

Sherry squatted and opened her arms in reply. "Sam! Come here, boy! I'm happy to take him and at least try to find a home for him." The terrier ran to her, and she scooped him up. "Can I get his leash and food?"

"Just a moment," Lei said, trying to physically turn the woman away from the sight of f.u.kushima and her a.s.sistant loading the black body bag and gurney into the ME van, but she was unsuccessful. Sherry watched with her mouth ajar, color draining from her highly colored face. As if sensing her distress, Sam licked her chin until she looked back down at him.

"I can't believe he didn't do something for Sam," Sherry said. "He loved this dog. Took such good care of him."

"You seem like you're surprised Mr. Shimaoka took his own life, but Detective Ching said you knew he had cancer."

"I knew he had cancer, but not what kind. He was in pain, and he didn't like to take medication. We'd talked about that several times. I guess if I'd known it was pancreatic cancer-which is painful and terminal-I wouldn't have been so shocked." She stroked the little dog's fur. "I better get his things."

Lei led Sherry and another helpful neighbor into the kitchen to pick up the dog's food, leash, bed, and toys. "Thank you, Agent Texeira. You're very kind," Sherry Thompson said.

"Just want to find him a good home." Lei couldn't remember anyone calling her kind before-she must be mellowing with age. She kept the women from going any farther into the house and rejoined Ken at the SUV as the ladies walked off with the dog and his accoutrements.

"Whew. Got that taken care of. Got a little more information on our victim too."

"Good." Ken handed her the handheld vacuum with its special trap for fibers. "Back to work. Let's get this car done."

Evening bloomed a salmon glow over clouds above Punchbowl when Lei was finally able to drive out from the Bureau headquarters into her grandfather's neighborhood near where Alfred Shimaoka had lived. She'd told Ken about the likely connection to the name in the note, but it had taken hours to go over Shimaoka's car inch by inch and then to search his house. They'd then taken samples, fibers, prints, and photos back to headquarters and spent more hours processing the evidence in Workroom One. Finally Ken had dismissed her, saying, "I want you to interview your grandfather. He's the only person mentioned by name in the note."

Lei drove through the quiet neighborhood with its neat lawns and monkeypod shade trees, pa.s.sing Shimaoka's house and going on to Soga Matsumoto's. She'd made a photocopy of the suicide note after they'd a.n.a.lyzed it-no prints but Shimaoka's were on it.

Lei continued to wonder how Corby's prints could be on the duct tape off the tailpipe, indicating an a.s.sist with the suicide apparatus. Yet important areas where other fingerprints would have been, like the suicide note and the keys, were marked by none but Shimaoka, indicating the death was by his own hand.

How could two such different people ever even meet, let alone join in executing Shimaoka's death? And then someone had a.s.sisted in Corby's too.

There were still too many missing pieces in both cases.

Lei pulled her silver Tacoma up to the curb in front of her grandfather's low, modest ranch home. The gra.s.s of the front yard was a beautiful, putting-green quality Bermuda, decorated with a small cement temple and a single, clipped bonsai juniper.

Lei usually met her grandfather for lunch at his favorite noodle house. She'd been over to his home only one other time, at the holidays, when her grandfather had invited her and her visiting aunt and father over for tea. It had been a tense hour for Lei, full of awkward pauses, but an important gesture on Soga's part as her parents' marriage hadn't been supported by the Matsumotos. They'd never tried to find or contact Lei after their daughter Maylene died, and without her aunty Rosario's intervention, Lei would have ended up in foster care.

Aunty Rosario had brought her famous poi rolls, a Tupperware of the Portuguese bean soup her restaurant was known for, and a mouth tight with disapproval-until she'd had several cups of warm sake and Soga had patted Lei's hand. "Having Lei in my life has made me so happy. I wasn't able to see her before my wife died."

The delicate inflection confirmed what Wayne Texeira had told Lei and Rosario-Yumi Matsumoto, Lei's grandmother, was the author of the separation between the Matsumotos and the Texeiras. Now she was gone, dead of a heart attack more than a year ago.

Lei had witnessed the visible relaxation of adults affected by a powerful presence she had never been able to know. The tension was also eased for Lei. The remaining members of her family were willing to find common ground with one another for her sake.

Lei walked up the cement path to the shiny black-lacquered front door with its geometric knocker. She had to knock hard, several times, before she heard her grandfather's footsteps-deliberate but not shuffling. He opened the door and smiled at the sight of her, his stern face lighting up. "Lei!"

"Hi, Grandfather." She'd decided on that slightly formal appellation a while ago-it suited him best. "Can I come in? I have to talk with you about something."

"Of course. Let me put on some tea." The door opened into a dining area, with a sunken table flush with the floor, preserving the j.a.panese seating tradition. The colors of the room were quiet grays, muted in dim lighting. A black leather couch against the far wall set off a framed watercolor of Mount Fuji.

Lei followed him through the room into the kitchen, an immaculate s.p.a.ce filled with golden evening and shiny surfaces. She seated herself at the round table for two beneath the window while he filled an electric kettle with water. She took a moment to look into the backyard with its tiered rows of orchid shelves and open workshop, a dangling bulb lighting a workbench covered with materials for making lanterns.

The Floating Lantern Ceremony was a huge event organized annually by the Shinnyo Buddhist Temple to honor the fallen and lost on Memorial Day. Her grandfather had invited her to partic.i.p.ate last year, and they'd lit three lanterns at the ceremony: one for her mother, one for her grandmother Yumi, and one for her friend from the Big Island, Mary Gomes. Lei would never forget the sight of the lanterns in the Ca.n.a.l in Waikiki, the magical way the yellow candles had glowed by the thousands reflected in the water.

Her grandfather and Alfred Shimaoka were among the many volunteers who retrieved, repaired, and built new lanterns each year for the event. She reached into the backpack that doubled as her purse and took out the photocopied suicide note, placing it facedown on the table as her grandfather returned with a bamboo tray set with small ceramic cups and a teapot.

"It is good to see you." The evening light shone on his silver hair as he set the tea tray on the table. "The water will be a few more minutes."

"Okay. I see you've got a lot going in the workshop." Lei pointed out the window to his lit workbench.

"I have many lanterns to get ready by the end of May." It was mid-March. He opened a canister of loose tea leaves and scooped some into an empty hand-thrown ceramic pot.

"Well, that's in part what I'm here about. Did you know Alfred Shimaoka?"

"I know him, yes." Soga looked at her. Dark eyes, shadowed by the fold of his eyelids, revealed worry in the creases. "He is my friend."

"I'm very sorry to tell you-but he's died."