Twisted Vine Part 4

The teakettle began a high-pitched squall, and Soga got up. She saw his shoulders draw up tightly and then drop, a deliberate loosening. As he returned to the table, his face had smoothed into neutral. He poured the boiling water into the teapot.

"I knew he was sick."

"Yes, he was. But he didn't die of cancer. He committed suicide." She slid the letter in its plastic sleeve over to him. "He mentioned you."

Soga ignored the note lying in front of them like an accusation. He stirred the tea with a bamboo whisk, placed the lid on. "It must sit for a few minutes."

Her grandfather was deliberate in everything he did, especially tea. She wasn't surprised at his lack of reaction to Shimaoka's note-he always took time to adjust to things. He'd read it when he was ready.

Soga got up. "I have something for you too. I was waiting for the right time to give it to you." He walked out.

Lei took the simple handleless cups, with their translucent green glaze, off the tray and placed one in front of each of their places. She'd heard of the j.a.panese tea ceremony but didn't know anything about it, a.s.sumed her grandfather did.

He returned, carrying a large wooden box with a slanted top and handed it to her. "This was your grandmother's writing desk. She kept some keepsakes of your mother's and photos in here. I thought you should have it."

Lei felt her stomach clench. She might as well be holding Pandora's box. Her voice was pitched high as she replied. "Wow. This is special. Thank you, Grandfather."

"You're welcome."

Soga set a strainer over Lei's small cup and, using both hands, carefully poured the tea into the cup. "I would like to take you to j.a.pan sometime. Show you a real tea ceremony."

"That would be wonderful." Lei inhaled the delicate fragrance of the tea, scented with jasmine, and watched as he transferred the strainer to his own cup, poured, then set the teapot down on its trivet. Each movement was precise and economical.

She set the box of memories down by her feet and turned to face her grandfather, copying his movements as he folded his hands and made a slight bow to her; then they both picked up the cups and sipped.

The tea was hot and tasted like toasted flowers. "Delicious."

Her grandfather got up and fetched a small box of rice crackers. "A little taste of something. We always try to balance the taste of the tea."

"Thank you." Lei took a cracker. It burst with the salty flavor of nori seaweed on her tongue. "These sort of melt in your mouth."

"Yes." They ate and drank for a moment as Lei felt the stress of the day drain away in this peaceful setting. What did it matter whether the meeting took five or thirty minutes? She was with her grandfather in his world. Finally, when his tea was gone, Soga reached over and drew the note to him, turned it over. His face was stoic as he read.

"What can you tell me about Alfred Shimaoka?" Lei asked at last. "Why do you think he mentions you in the note?"

"I knew Alfred for many years." Soga poured himself another cup of tea, refreshed Lei's. "He was a good man. A man of his word. He had an obligation to fix the lanterns, and he fulfilled it. He mentions me only because he wanted to be remembered that way, and it doesn't surprise me. He has no family, no children."

"I know he was an architect. Tell me about his work."

"He was a good architect. He worked for a big firm, Matsei and Company, for many years. He was very good at his designs. He retired when he got sick." Soga ate a cracker. "I will go to his house and bring the lanterns back here."

"Not yet, Grandfather. It's still a crime scene for a little longer."

"What do you mean? He died by his own hand."

"Anytime there's a strange death, we investigate it. And there are oddities about his death."

Soga looked up at her with eyes so dark they were almost black. "Oddities?"

"I can't say more than that, and really there's nothing more to add. But did you know of anything in Alfred's life that . . . didn't fit? That would lead him to suicide?"

"No, other than he was sick with cancer and became withdrawn. He was in pain, but he disliked medicines. This does not surprise me, his choice." Soga looked down at the note, but his hands remained in his lap. "He would not talk about it. But he did not like medication."

"Did you know his little dog, Sam?"

Soga smiled, a fan of creases folding from the corners of his eyes. "Yes. So energetic, his dog."

"Well, one of the oddities is that he just left the dog in the house. Did not give him away or have anyone care for it. It seems inconsistent."

"Yes." Soga picked up his cup with two hands, his gnarled fingers delicate on the rim. "I think that's strange too. He loved that dog."

"A neighbor is taking care of Sam right now, but she already has a dog. What do you think of adopting him?" Lei asked impulsively.

Her grandfather set down the cup. "I have a quiet house. I don't have time."

Lei looked around the spotless kitchen. "He seems like a good, sweet dog. He'd shake things up around here a little, that's for sure. But I love my dogs. They keep me company, and I never feel alone with them around. Speaking of, I have to get home to them before they chew the house down. Is there anything else you can tell me about Alfred?"

"He had a computer. He spent a lot of time on that when he was home."

Lei thought of the sleek black Mac they'd carried into IT and left in the lineup for Ang to look at. "That's good to know. Did you know what he was doing on there? Did he ever say?"

"No. Only that he knew people through the computer. That he wasn't as alone as he seemed. Sometimes I would tell him he should find a wife; he was still young enough. That was before the cancer."

Lei blinked, surprised at the sight of a tear making its way down Soga's impa.s.sive face. She fussed with her tea things to give him time to compose himself, and when she looked up the tear was gone. "Well, thank you. For the tea, for grandmother's lap desk." She picked up the wooden box. "I'm a little afraid to look inside."

"I hope it brings some happy memories and thoughts," Soga said, rising to follow her as she walked to the front door. "And that it helps you know your mother a little more."

"I hope so too." She leaned over and impulsively kissed his leathery cheek at the front door. "I'll call you when Alfred's house is okay to enter. Do you know who his next of kin was, by the way?"

"A nephew. Saiki Shimaoka. He lives in Honolulu."

"Thank you." She carried the box out to the truck and set it as gently as a bomb on the pa.s.senger seat. In a way, that's just what it was. She turned the key, waved goodbye to her grandfather still standing in the doorway, and pulled away for home.

With herself and the dogs exercised, fed, and showered, Lei was finally ready to have a look at the contents of her grandmother's lap desk. Sitting at her little round Formica table with the orchid plant on it and a fortifying local-brewed Longboard Ale at her elbow, Lei lifted the glossy lid.

The smell of sandalwood wafted up from a pile of photos and letters lying in wait for her. The contents of the desk had probably been neatly stacked at one point, but they had become jumbled in transport. Lei took out some j.a.panese writing implements: a set of sumi paintbrushes with bamboo handles, bound with a fraying rubber band; a green jade stone with a well in it for mixing the ink stick she found in a little plastic bag.

A stack of thick, deckle-edged writing paper filled with j.a.panese characters and tied with string was next. Lei couldn't read j.a.panese. She felt cheated as she lifted her grandmother's correspondence and set it aside.

A pile of photographs greeted her next, and in them she recognized her mother's pale lily of a face, black hair long and straight, her clothing simple and immaculate. In the series of photos of Maylene that progressed from babyhood into high school, her mother's face was always serious, her posture demure.

A good little j.a.panese girl until she met Wayne Texeira, the wild paniolo cowboy, at that fateful long-ago rodeo.

Lei found a picture of Maylene wearing what Wayne had described meeting her in-a white eyelet sundress, flounced to the knee, her slender torso and legs set off by the full skirt and red cowboy boots she wore with a cautious smile. She'd been married in that dress, at age eighteen, holding an armful of wild orchids. Lei still remembered the rain-swept night on Kaua'i when her father had told her the story of her parents' whirlwind romance.

The next picture was of a baby. A baby with big tilted brown eyes, a full rosebud mouth, and a tuft of curling brown hair.

Lei turned the photo over. Written on the back, in her mother's round precise writing, was Leilani Rosario Matsumoto Texeira, b. Nov. 27, 1985.

Was this really the only photo her grandparents had ever had of her? The photo was yellowing, its edges curled as if it had been handled a lot.

At the very bottom of the box was a letter. Lei opened it, and a slip of paper from a fortune cookie fell out. Shape your destiny, the fortune said. On the back was written a phone number in her grandmother's calligraphic handwriting. She picked the letter up and read it.

Dear mother and father, I wanted you to have this picture of our beautiful daughter, Lei. She is healthy and happy, and I am too. I know you said I was not in the family since I married Wayne, but I wanted you to know that the family will go on anyway. Our name is a part of my daughter's name and heritage. I hope you will consider being in her life. She is a gift to us and will be to you too.

Sincerely, Maylene Lei folded the paper, feeling bittersweet emotion tighten her chest. Her mom had tried to connect her with her grandparents, but they had chosen to keep them cut off, and in the end, Wayne had been a bad influence on Maylene. He'd been dealing, and she'd become addicted.

Thank G.o.d for Aunty Rosario. Being adopted by her at age nine, after Maylene's death, had been best thing that could have happened, given the situation. Still, Lei wished that she'd at least met her grandmother, wished she'd had her grandfather in her life even longer. She picked up the slip of fortune thoughtfully and slipped it into her wallet, a reminder.

"Shape your destiny," Lei said aloud. Keiki and Angel, snuggled on the rag rug at the back door, both lifted their heads to look at Lei. "We're doing that. Aren't we, girls?"

She folded the letter, stacked the photos, repacked the writing items. At the bottom of the box, she spotted a slender silvery chain decorated with a tiny child-sized cross. She'd bet it had been her mother's, and it was just right for that other important pendant she'd been needing a chain for.

Lei walked to her room and picked up the little black jewelry box from her bedside table. Inside, nested on the white cotton, was a disc about the size of a nickel. A hole with a loop had been drilled through it. Polishing had removed the last traces of black and char on white gold embedded with a roughness of diamonds.

Melted in the fire they'd been through, Stevens's grandmother's wedding ring had been pounded down and given to Lei by Stevens when she left for the FBI-a talisman for rubbing when she was anxious.

Lei no longer needed that comforting habit and had cleaned the piece up to wear as a pendant. She slid the disc onto the chain and fastened it around her neck. It felt satisfyingly solid resting there, the tiny silver cross dangling over the white-gold circle. She'd wear it always, she decided. Against her throat, resting on her pulse, reminding her of what really mattered.

Chapter 7.

Sophie arrived at her workstation dressed in her usual easy-movement clothes and carrying a thermos cup of strong tea. She glanced over at the row of computers beside her computer bay: A sleek black Mac had been added to the lineup, with an evidence tag attached identifying it as coming from the recent suicide site of Alfred Shimaoka.

The suicides needed to slow down. She barely had time to keep up with all the tech stuff as it was.

She took a sip of tea and opened a window in the DAVID database. Her fingers flying, she inputted all the new information on the most recent case, including the fingerprint from Corby Alexander Hale III, mysteriously captured on duct tape from the tailpipe of Alfred Shimaoka's SUV.

DAVID agreed this was an anomaly, along with the fingerprint-free door handle and the existence of a small beloved dog left to starve in the house. Confidence interval of 78 percent that Shimaoka's death was an a.s.sisted suicide, or murder.

The answer to how these two disparate victims were connected lay in the computers stacked up on her desk. She was sure of it.

Sophie saved and closed DAVID. She hooked up two small, square black write-blocking units to Corby's and Shimaoka's computers. The devices cloned and saved a complete record of the computers' hard drives, and even Internet use patterns, allowing her to virtually access the computers without disturbing the data and time stamps. Defense attorneys had successfully argued that computers were tampered with by forensic technicians, but with the data imaging systems they currently used, nothing on the original computer was marred by a single keystroke.

The write blockers needed several hours to copy everything, so she turned her focus to finishing the work for Marcella's embezzlement case.

Some hours later, that work done, Sophie rose and went through her stretching routine. She did some push-ups and sit-ups, finished her tea, and unplugged the completed write blocker copy of Corby's computer. She had three computers she'd nicknamed Amara, Janjai, and Ying, and Ying had the most powerful processor. She plugged the write blocker into Ying's back port and dove into the virtual clone of Corby Alexander Hale III's computer.

A lot of what Sophie was looking for would be found in his online searches, and sure enough, the boy hadn't deleted his cookies. She was able to trace his online activity, and using the handy set of pa.s.swords on the Post-it, access his most-frequented websites. The kid had been active on several gay sites, done some dabbling in World of Warcraft, been a regular on Reddit. He'd had a fair amount of gay p.o.r.n highlighted. She wondered if the Hales had had any idea about their son's s.e.xual orientation. She'd heard Senator Hale was targeting the White House, and this would have been an interesting but not insurmountable situation to winning the election.

A pie chart generated by her FBI-issued software a.n.a.lyzed online site visitation time. It showed that the majority of time he spent logged in was on a site called DyingFriends. Sophie had developed a template to categorize users' online usage, and she developed his profile as she went, including links to his most-visited sites, his profiles and access codes. His main e-mail was cluttered with spam, indicating he didn't use it much.

She began backtracking through his online activity and logged into DyingFriends.

A portal screen opened. "About Us: We are a community of people who are wrestling with the knowledge that our lives are ending. We offer an agenda-free supportive atmosphere to explore issues we are facing." A series of exterior links on the front page led to various resource websites. Accessing the actual site with its interactive forums required a pa.s.sword.

Sophie tried various username variations on Corby's name to no avail. Finally, she hit "Lost Username" and asked for a new one to be sent to e-mail. "Username sent to e-mail" appeared, but when she went back to his e-mail, nothing had arrived.

Little b.a.s.t.a.r.d had a secret e-mail. She hated when that happened, but fortunately she had another program for that. Sophie dragged and dropped that program from another monitor, and it began tracing companies with storage containing Corby Hale's IP address. After some minutes, it dredged up Yahoo, Bing, and Gmail.

"You sneaky boy," she muttered, entertained by this mild challenge.

On the three major search engines, she was able to identify and hack into Corby's various ident.i.ties and retrieve the username for DyingFriends on his Gmail account,

Once she had that, it was easy to reset the pa.s.sword and log back into his account on DyingFriends-only to find herself at a dead end: "Account deleted by admin" flashed at her from a blank screen.

Sophie sat back from the desk, automatically beginning to exercise as she regrouped. She lifted her knees to touch her chest for forty core-strengthening exercises, stretched backward and cracked her long golden-brown fingers. Realized she was hungry and it was almost ten a.m. She stood, did a sun salutation, and ended folded over with her forehead against her knees, thinking.

"Deleted by admin" implied that the site administrator had removed the account, something that hadn't happened with any of Corby's other accounts. All of them were still active, and the boy's body was barely cold.

So it was quite possible the admin of DyingFriends had known he was dead.

She stayed jackknifed over and unzipped her backpack on the floor, removing a fortified protein drink and a hard-boiled egg. She walked across the felted carpet to stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling tinted windows.

Something wasn't right about the DyingFriends site-why would his account, which had been used the day Corby died, be deleted already? She didn't need DAVID to tell her that was unlikely. She hoped the write blocker on Alfred Shimaoka's computer would be done soon; DyingFriends could be the link between the two men. In any case, it was time to bring Waxman up to speed.

She drank the protein drink, ate the egg mechanically, refilled her plastic cup at the water dispenser, and tapped the Bluetooth headset at her ear. "Chief? Can we hold a team meeting on the suicide cases? I have some information and ideas I need to discuss."

Chapter 8.

Lei brought her coffee into the spare conference room, with its window overlooking the ocean, wraparound white boards, and large FBI plaque over the head of the table. Special Agent in Charge Waxman was already seated. He had a way of always being there first; Marcella said it was so he could a.s.sert dominance over the pack.

Marcella had a theory that his leadership style was to "copy the wolves" and had told her he'd let it slip that he was a sociology major in his undergrad program. Lei sat one seat down on the left from the SAC. In the eighteen months she'd been with the Bureau. Waxman seemed to have turned his critical attention to working over the NAT, Gupta, instead of her and Marcella.

"Good morning, Chief." He was even letting them get away with such loosenings of protocol as a nickname t.i.tle.

"Good morning, Agent Texeira." Waxman, immaculate in a light gray gabardine suit, adjusted his laptop microscopically to the right and pushed a b.u.t.ton. A screen trundled down over the FBI plaque against the wall behind his head. "Where's the rest of the team?"

Ken slid into the seat beside Lei, a faint scent of lemony aftershave in his wake. "Good morning."

Sophie Ang, moving with the grace that had always reminded Lei of a cat, sat down with her laptop at his right side. "Can I start, sir?"

"You may. You asked for this meeting. But first I want to tell you that we need to give our full attention and effort to solving what happened to Corby Hale. The senator and Mrs. Hale have powerful friends, and either they or their connections been calling the office daily and demanding updates. I just got off the phone with the mayor, and that's no way to start the day."