Authors: Charles Knief

Diamond Head (6 page)

BOOK: Diamond Head

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The door opened out. A musty emanation, the lingering scent of a protective ghost, came out to greet me along with a blast of superheated air. I stepped inside and looked around in the gloom. Curtains were drawn on every window. A tiny kitchen, little more than an extension of the entry, was to the right of the door, a bedroom and a bath on the left. The living room was directly in front of me. I flicked a switch. No light came on.

I left the door open for both light and air and started across the room. I banged my knee painfully on a file drawer that was pulled out of a metal cabinet against the wall. I closed the drawer and started across the room again, this time with greater caution. Piles of manila file folders and reports were tossed carelessly on the furniture and the floor. I opened the sliding glass door that led to a tiny lanai and pulled the curtains back. Now I could see. In a little while I hoped to be able to breathe.

It didn't take long to see that whoever encouraged the late Robert Souza to shuffle off this mortal coil had also gone through everything the same way they did in his office. My guess was that they came here first, then took his keys to his office and ransacked that place. The police wouldn't have made this kind of a mess. It was as if someone had intentionally done this. It was like spitting on a grave.

It began to look as though Souza had found something he should not have found. If he had anything solid about Mary
MacGruder's murder, someone had beaten me to it. By about a month. I didn't expect to find anything now. The trail was cold. Souza wouldn't have expected any trouble resulting from that case. It was pretty straightforward. If he had, would he have hidden whatever it was that he found out? Would he have understood its value? And would they have found whatever it was they were looking for? Whoever
they
were.

There wasn't any reason to look through the files on the floor. Everything that could be learned had already left this sad place.

I closed the sliding glass door and the curtains and locked the entry door again. I returned the keys to the little
kapuna
downstairs and walked back to my Jeep. On impulse I called Katherine Alapai, the lead investigator on the case, and got lucky. She agreed to meet me in twenty minutes.

D
etective Alapai suggested we meet at Kelly's, a localsonly, twenty-four-hour coffee shop on Nimitz Highway near the airport. Kelly's is fluorescent bright, always open and anonymous. Visibility is high. I gathered she wanted to meet there because it was safe.

She'd demanded that I describe myself, including what I was wearing and what I was driving, so when I parked the Jeep in Kelly's lot I understood that my movements would be watched. No one accosted me as I entered the restaurant, looking for the detective. She had not described herself.

“Mr. Caine?”

A big hand gripped me and a beefy, middle-aged local crowded me from behind, violating my space. He pinioned my shoulder with one hand and expertly frisked me with the other. Satisfied, he backed away and smiled.

“I'm Lieutenant Kahanamoku, Honolulu PD. What's in the pack, bruddah?”

“Take a look.” I shrugged it off my shoulder and handed it to him.

“Why not?” He unzipped the compartments and looked through them, finding my bandanna and a copy of Michael Crichton's latest paperback and not much else. The cop sniffed
at my cellular telephone and my knife, a Buck Folding Hunter, and tossed them back. “No firearms?”

“Now why would I do that?”

He smiled and handed the bag back. “Some people just don't have da good sense God geeve 'em, Mr. Caine. Come on. She's in here.”

He led me past the counter to the last booth against the back wall. A small woman with lustrous black hair and pale skin watched me. She would have been beautiful but for a hard shell around her that she wore like armor, visible to anyone who cared to look deep enough. She nodded, acknowledging my presence. The big cop took up residence at a table out of earshot, but continued watching me like a pit bull on point.

“Detective Alapai?”

“Have a seat, Mr. Caine. I ordered you coffee, courtesy of the City and County of Honolulu. You want anything else you'll have to pay for it yourself.”

“Coffee's fine.”

“Do you have some identification?” I handed over my Hawaii driver's license. She glanced at it and tossed it back. She already knew who I was. That's why I was frisked coming into the restaurant. “Okay, you're a citizen. You called me. What do you want?”

“I'm looking into the death of Mary MacGruder. I understand you are the detective in charge of the investigation.”

Detective Alapai stared at me through fathomless black eyes. She seemed to say, So what? She continued to look at me, waiting for my next statement.

“There is no suspect in the case?”

“No.” A flat statement, unembellished by facial movements or other body language.

“There is some information you may not have. I wanted to share it with you.”

“Who are you working for, Mr. Caine?”

“Her father, Vice Admiral Winston MacGruder III, is my former
commanding officer. It is his interests I'm most concerned with.”

“You are a licensed private investigator?”

“I've got a license.”

“Who's your client here?”

“I'm a friend of the family.”

She frowned. She knew she couldn't go further than that. Licensed private investigators have nearly the same privacy privileges as attorneys in this state.

“You seem to have turned up in our files before. The last time was about three months ago.”

“The Greek dope thing, you mean?”

She nodded. “You were shot during that 'Greek dope thing.' What was it? Bounty hunting?”

“Nothing so glamorous, Detective. I got in their way and they got in mine. DEA's got a file.”

“I've read it,” she said. “And I read your life history, according to what they faxed over. I found it fascinating how a federal agency could get tied up with someone like you. But you didn't answer my question. What exactly do you do for a living?”

“I'm a licensed private eye, but mostly I do protective services. I'm also a diving instructor. That's on my tax return. Mainly I do favors for friends. Think of me as a retriever.”

“It makes you sound like a big dog, Mr. Caine, which you are not. Dogs are friendly. Dogs are helpful. Dogs are obedient. Why do I get the feeling you are none of the above? And what are you doing messing around in my homicide investigation?”

“Same thing you are. Trying to find the killers.”

She flinched. “What makes you think there was more than one?”

“At least two. And I'd bet on a van. I looked at the Shark Cave yesterday. That's pretty deserted country up there, but cars pass by at decent intervals. Dumping a body looks like
dumping a body, nothing else. If the person didn't want to be caught he'd need help.”

“You've read the file.” It was an accusation.

“I have.” I didn't want to be caught in a lie with this woman.

“The complete file? Photos? Field notes? Everything?”

I nodded.

“Shit.”

The consequences of a police file copied and sold to a civilian were immense. I would not have volunteered that I had seen the file, but she'd asked. She got it out into the open like a dog going for a bone. This detective was good. And she was dangerous.

“Where did you get the idea about the van?”

I explained my hypothesis, postulated while walking the site.

“If you've seen the file, then you have everything we do.”

“Maybe something you don't.” And I told her about the private investigator who had died in Makiki, and how it looked like a related homicide. “He was working on this case, following up your own investigation, and he crossed the wrong path. Someone canceled him out.”

“What else do you have?”

“Souza's apartment was thoroughly searched. So was his office. They even kicked holes in the walls and cut a hole in the ceiling a man could crawl through. I'm willing to bet both events took place on the same night. I'd also give you odds that the keys to his office were not among the items inventoried on his person.”

She nodded, thinking. “Okay, I'll buy that. Anything else?”

For some reason the name of Mary's landlord popped into my mind and a little voice told me to keep it to myself. If Chawlie had a reason to find Thompson interesting, and if Thompson was involved in this case in even a small way, it might be counterproductive to even hint to the police about
him. The information I'd gleaned from the waitress was mere gossip and it was unflattering to Mary's memory and therefore dangerous to the admiral.

“Not much. I've just been on this for a few days.”

“Do you want to tell me where you got the file now, or should I arrest you and have you explain it to my captain?”

“I'll take my chances with the captain, Detective.”

Anger smoldered behind anthracite eyes. I could see the steel in them. It was not something I wanted to challenge lightly. “You have no right to a police file, Mr. Caine. Your status won't protect you. Right now you have admitted at least two felonies to a sworn police officer, and further incriminated yourself by admitting you have read the file. I could get a warrant for your arrest based on that information. So why don't you make it easier on everyone and tell me where you got it.”

“Okay. Two nights ago a young woman, whose name I don't know except as Jasmine, came to my boat and gave me the file. I suspect Jasmine is not her real name and I had never seen her before nor do I expect to see her again.” I left out the fact that I'd seen her since, hoping Alapai would not ask that question.

“You expect me to believe that?”

“It's the truth.”

“Jasmine. I can assume that's her
nom de whore?”

“I have no idea.”

She nodded. “And I suppose you'll tell me that you no longer have that file in your possession, that if we get a warrant we won't find it no matter how hard we look, so if you keep quiet we won't have grounds to hold you. Is that right?”

“That's about it, Detective.”

“You're cute, all right. And you're probably right. Okay. Suppose we buy your story about the investigator. How did you come to that conclusion?”

I told her about my footwork, working through the cocktail
waitresses in Waikiki, learning that both the police and the other private investigator had contacted Human Resources and did not bother talking with the current employees as Mary had not been employed there for over a year.

“We'll interview the manager again. You've got some good moves, Mr. Caine.” She looked at me, appraising me as if for the first time. “Maybe you're not the clown I thought you were. Maybe DEA was right.”

“What did they say about me?”

“Only that you could be trusted to do the right thing unless your personal interests conflicted with ours. Is that what you're going to do on this? Are you going to screw up my investigation?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“But you might.”

“If I can't help it.”

She smiled, and I saw the beautiful woman behind the hard, professional mask. “We might be able to work together on this, but I won't give you anything. You come to me and tell me what you've got. You want to cooperate with me it's going to be all one-sided. I've got stuff nobody else does and I'm not sharing it with anybody, especially an outsider. If you give me what you find, I'll confirm it. But I won't feed you what I already have. Do you understand?”

I nodded, sensing an offer coming. The conditions were not unexpected.

“It has to be this way. You've already given me several things to think about. The file was lifted and copied and sold and Jasmine or whoever gave it to you. That can't happen; there are procedures in place that make that impossible. But you say it happened, okay, it happened. I'm going to sit on that right now. I like your idea about the van. It makes sense and it ties into something else I already know.

“And you're going to ruin one detective's day when I suggest
that he look into a closed suicide case that might be a homicide connected to one I'm working. I'll keep your name out of that, too. Otherwise you'll have an enemy you don't need.

“So I like the idea of you being out there, working this. You might uncover something I can't.”

“I go blindly floundering about, stirring up the dust. If I get in trouble I'm on my own, but if I get lucky you get the credit.”

She grinned, showing perfect white teeth. It lowered the armor momentarily, making her look like a little girl. “You've got the picture.”

“Aren't you going to give me a place to start?”

I could almost hear wheels and gears whirring inside her head while she considered it. I sipped my coffee and kept my mouth shut. I'd known her all of ten minutes and already I knew that any appeal would result in a negative.

“A father naturally wants to believe the best of his daughter. You want to know what really happened? Does the admiral?”

I nodded.

“It's pretty brutal stuff.”

“The world's a pretty brutal place,” I told her. “It could break your heart.”

“Spare me the sarcasm,” she said. “It doesn't add anything to this conversation and if you shut up you might learn something.”

I shut up. There's a time to argue and there's a time to keep your mouth closed.

“The file isn't everything we have, you know that. The daughter was connected to some players that scare me shitless.”

“Drugs?”

“I only wish it were that simple.”

This woman was not the kind of person to admit fear of anything or anyone. Of the two cops in the restaurant, she was the most dangerous.

“For the last year of her life she lived with a man in Haleiwa,” she said. “Too bad you no longer have the file. His name's in there. If you had it and were good you'd see what I saw. Be cautious. He's connected to some really bad people. I want you to form your own conclusions and then filter them through me. It'll be a check system. I'll be your only contact. I know you know others on HPD, but this one's mine. Only mine. Understand?”

I nodded.

“Say it, Mr. Caine.”

“I understand.”

“Oh, by the way. You said you were out at the Shark Cave yesterday. You didn't run into a couple of local boys out there, did you?”

BOOK: Diamond Head

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