Broken Ferns (Lei Crime ) (2 page)

Lei thought about the scribbled symbol. “Let me look at the photos.” She reached back and picked up the Canon, scrolled through the photos of the scene and magnified the one of the graffiti. “The mouth isn’t actually smiling. It’s kind of got a hook at the end.”

“We’ll go over everything at the station and I can take a good look again. I remember that, though. It’s not exactly a smile. What about the
haole
tagline?”

“Either he’s a local or trying to seem like one. Could actually be Caucasian and trying to throw us off.”

They pulled up at the downtown Prince Kuhio Federal Building, entering the underground garage. Ken ran their keycard across the scanner, which allowed them to pass a guard box. A few minutes later, they rose in the elevator to the tenth floor, where the Bureau had its offices.

Lei had spent her first four months in the Bureau at Quantico, Virginia, doing intensive training and the last six months on New Agent Trainee probation. During that time, she’d run background checks and done interviews of applicants to the Bureau, interspersed with grunt work at various field offices around the country before this posting, the one Marcella had set her up for.

She was finally feeling a little more comfortable in the relatively posh building after years as a police officer in a variety of well-worn headquarters. The FBI office’s glossy setting, with marble floors, leather seating, a coffee table, and a receptionist in a bulletproof booth, still felt way too slick. She and Ken lifted a hand to the receptionist—actually a NAT, as she had recently been. They ran keycards across another scanner, and the interior doors, stainless steel behind faux wood paneling, whooshed open.

Lei’s black athletic shoes squeaked as they walked down the hall, the sound a marked contrast to the
tippety-tap
of Marcella’s heels as her friend hurried out of her office.

“Lei! I hear you guys pulled the Smiley burglary—I wanted that one!”

“She’s got to cut her teeth on something, and it looks like an easy one,” Ken said.

“I’m still not over running into you every day,” Marcella said to Lei, a smile lighting her face as she fisted hands on hips. The senior agent always looked as if she’d stepped off the cover of
Vogue
—the severe FBI “uniform” somehow enhancing a curvy figure, golden tan, and tiny waist. The only nonregulation thing Marcella always wore were glamour shoes—today’s were pointy-toed slingbacks.

Lei pushed her curly, frizzing hair back, a marked contrast to Marcella’s smooth, dark updo. Ken went on to their office with the crime kits and camera.

“It’s great being in the same building, at least—and this case is interesting. It’s nice to get away from all those applicant screenings they had me doing during probation.”

“Ken’s a good partner for you. He’ll keep you honest, show you the ropes.” Marcella gave Lei’s arm a little tug, pulling her into the spare little cubicle she shared with her partner, Matt Rogers. “Got a minute?’

“Just a minute. Ken’s going to want to go over all the evidence we collected, get our casework started.”

“Okay. So—have you heard from Stevens?”

Lei blushed for the second time that day, a crimson wave. Even though Marcella knew all there was to know about her bumpy love life with Detective Michael Stevens on Maui, she couldn’t suppress the reaction to his name. Her hand slid into her pocket, rubbing the white-gold disc.

“No. I told you we broke up when I left. We haven’t stayed in touch. He told me he wasn’t waiting for me when I left for the Academy. It’s been a year now, and I’ve been waiting for the right time to…look him up.”

Stevens was her first love, and they’d been living together on Maui when she left him to join the FBI, a move that had seemed a fatal parting of the ways—but things had worked out as she’d hoped, and postprobation, she’d been posted in Honolulu. She’d been procrastinating, hoping for a good excuse to call him.

“Maybe you shouldn’t bother.” Something in Marcella’s voice made Lei snap her head up to look at her friend. Marcella’s strong-boned face was set, her full mouth a tight line and arched brows pulled together in a frown. “He’s married.”

“What?” Lei felt the blood drain out of her face. Her vision telescoped, black encroaching around a circle that centered on one of Marcella’s concerned brown eyes.
It’s the PTSD—breathe,
she told herself. Her fingers curled, pinching her thigh through the light fabric of her slacks, hard, and pain grounded her. She sucked in a breath. “What did you say?”

“He’s married.” Marcella reached into the small refrigerator beside her desk, splashed water from a filtration carafe into a wax-paper cup, handed it to Lei. Lei brought it to numb lips, sipped. “He married that Thai girl you guys rescued from the cruise ship. Anchara.”

“No.” Lei shook her head. “No. He wouldn’t.” She sipped again. She couldn’t feel anything. Anywhere. Her mind refused to process the words her friend was saying.

Marcella
click-clacked
over to close the door of the office behind Lei, rolling down the blind over the glass window. “I heard it from the Kahului detectives. You remember Gerry Bunuelos, right? Anyway, I had to call over, and he told me this morning. It wasn’t recent either—they got married six months ago. Apparently, the woman was going to be deported. Her political asylum application was denied. He told Gerry that he did it to get her a green card, but they’ve tightened up on that so much the INS has to be convinced it’s a real marriage. And they seem convinced.”

Lei took another sip of water. Her hand trembled, and the water spilled out onto her shoes, down her slacks. She’d known the chance she was taking when she left for the Academy. She vividly remembered the morning she’d left, when she handed the leash of her beloved Rottweiler, Keiki, to Michael Stevens and got on a plane for Quantico.

She’d struck him a heart-blow that day. It had looked to be a near-mortal one, reflected in the pale granitelike set of his jaw, the arctic blue of his shadowed eyes. He’d accepted the leash she handed him in the parking lot of the airport. Keiki had sat on muscular haunches and leaned her bulk against Stevens’s leg. Her triangle ears twitched, worried eyes tracking Lei, sensing Lei’s distress. A whimper rumbled in her wide chest.

Lei heard him say the words: “I won’t wait for you. I can’t wait for you and keep hoping we’ll want the same thing.”

The same thing. Marriage. Kids.

Lei had heard the words. But that didn’t mean she’d believed them. She’d walked away, confident that no matter what he said, he’d wait for her. The hardest thing to leave at that moment had been Keiki, who’d let out an anguished bark as Lei walked into the airport building.

The next thing Lei knew, she was sitting on a hard plastic chair next to Marcella’s desk, her head between her knees, Marcella’s hand on the back of her neck and her friend’s voice in her ear. “Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.”

A knock came at the door. “Just a minute!” Marcella snarled. Lei sucked another breath, straightened up.

She’d deal with this later. Much later. Preferably never.

“I’m okay. I just need to get back to work.” Lei stood, walked over, and opened the door. Ken Yamada stood there, a crease between his brows.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. Her ex married someone else,” Marcella said to Ken.

“I’ll be fine. Thanks for the update, Marcella,” Lei tossed over her shoulder as she hurried down the shiny hall.

A bright halogen lamp was already on, bathing the workroom table in harsh brilliance. Lei snapped on latex gloves. She took a fresh evidence box out from a folded stack under the table and wrote the newly assigned case number on the label.

Lei took each letter from the stack Max Smiley had given them, carefully unfolded it, and photographed each with its matching envelope and a small numbered tag she set beside the letter so it would show in the photograph.

The room was equipped with two workstations, a long table, a whiteboard against one wall, and a huge window that looked at the ocean—the Federal Building fronted the water on one side. The bulletproof reflective coating on the glass cast a bluish shade to everything in a room already toned in gray.

Ken came in. She glanced up at his frowning face. “Sure you’re okay?”

“I will be,” Lei said. “I just need to keep working.”

“Okay. I’m here if you want to talk about it.”

“No thanks.” She blinked and blurriness receded; the letter in front of her came clear again. “Thanks for asking, though.”

From behind her she could hear the
tappety-tap
of the keyboard as Ken uploaded the photos from the scene and began the ongoing log that would be part of the investigation at every stage. When they had their report well underway, they would e-mail it on the secure internal server to their special agent in charge, Ben Waxman.

Lei watched her hands move through the mechanics of organizing the letters, battening down her pain and racing thoughts, the series of images of Anchara and Stevens together that her mind had begun playing. She had a job to do. She needed to focus on the task at hand. She placed each letter with its envelope on the table and left them spread out. When she had them cataloged, she sat down to read and study them.

“I don’t see many postmarks on these,” she commented. Most of the letters were typed on cheap computer paper, and most of the envelopes simply read “Smiley” or “Mad Max.” A few of them had been mailed to the airline mogul care of general delivery—from nearby areas.

None of the letters were addressed specifically to the estate they’d visited.

“There’s a mail slot for each employee at the airline headquarters. Remember what he said? Most of his hate mail came via the suggestion box in the lounge, or in his mail slot. Some were mailed, but he’s done a good job of concealing his home address,” Ken said.

“Which makes the unsub’s ability to find the house even more interesting. Probably narrows the pool of possibilities quite a bit.” Lei sorted the letters into different piles: possible threat, simple complaints, definite threat, workplace suggestions. “He doesn’t appear to be beloved with the employees.”

“Yeah. I see interviewing down at the headquarters as a priority.”

“Looks like he’s been manipulating people’s hours so they don’t qualify for health insurance, and he cut health care benefits to the bone.” Lei frowned as she made a separate pile for the health care complaints. “We’re one of the few states with mandatory health benefits for anyone who works more than twenty hours a week—but Smiley is finding a way around it. You ready to come look at these with me?”

“Almost there. Uploading all the fingerprints from the scene now. I’ll start the program scanning for matches, then come take a look.”

Lei picked up the Definite Threat pile. “So here are three letters threatening bodily harm to Smiley if they ever get him alone. These aren’t signed.”

Ken hit a couple more keys, then came to sit on one of the chairs beside her. “Interesting. Even the ones just protesting company policy aren’t signed. That tells me no one feels safe speaking up.”

“This seems like the kind of workplace that could generate an employee shooting or something.”

“I’ll see if our NAT at the front office can work up a financial report on the company. Smiley’s airline is doing well financially in a tough market. Looks as if he’s cut corners in the personnel area. Be right back.” Ken left.

A handwritten letter caught her eye.

“You stole from me, and I’m going to find a way to take from you.” The letter was signed with a hook-mouthed smiley face.

“I think I found you,” Lei whispered as she sprayed the plain lined binder paper with ninhydrin, but nothing fluoresced. Damn. She set the incriminating letter aside and went on to the rest of them.

Ken strode back in with his quick grace. He snapped on a pair of gloves and pulled a rolling stool over. “Greg is working on the employee records. The airline keeps most of that in hard copy though, so he has them photocopying the records for us and they’ll be ready for pickup in an hour or so. I was thinking maybe you could pick them up on your way home, get started reading this evening.”

“Sounds good.” Lei slid the suspicious letter over to him. “Check this out.”

“This looks like a real candidate.” Ken studied the letter. “You get the prints off this?”

“There weren’t any. Got some others, though.”

“Okay. I’ll get the database looking for a match.” He hopped up, got the computer working, and rejoined her at the table. “People are so used to seeing CSI crank out the matches on these things, they don’t realize it’s usually at least an hour for every set of prints.”

He slid a square of matte-finished glass over the paper on the next one they photographed. “Try this when you’re shooting from now on. It should help you with the crinkles in the paper.”

“Okay.” Lei watched him photograph the next one, and together they worked through the remaining stack, uploading the prints and setting the search protocol to go. The desk phone rang and Lei answered it.

“Agent Texeira here.” Saying her title still felt a little awkward.

“Agent Texeira, the Paradise Air office called. The employee records are ready for pickup.”

“Sounds good. Thanks, Greg.” Greg, the NAT, had a nicer phone manner than she remembered having. Lei put the phone down and realized her stomach was rumbling. The digital clock on the wall read 4:00 p.m., and she’d never had lunch. Or breakfast either, come to think of it.

“Done.” Ken set down the camera.

“The records are ready for pickup. I think I’ll go by and get them, pick up something to eat, and work on reading them at home, like you said.”

“Sounds good. I’ll call you as soon as we have anything on the prints.”

Lei headed down the hall. Through the glass insert in her friend’s door, she could see Marcella hunched over her phone at her desk. Spotting Marcella brought back the painful memory of her friend’s news. She gave a quick wave, hoping not to have to talk about it again, and headed for the elevator.

“Have a good evening, Agent Texeira.” Greg, square-jawed and friendly behind the bulletproof glass, insisted on smiling at her. “I’m making some progress on these online files.”