Fire Beach: Lei Crime Book 8 (Lei Crime Series)
Read Fire Beach: Lei Crime Book 8 (Lei Crime Series) Online
Authors: Toby Neal
Table of Contents
Fire Beach
Copyright © 2014 by Toby Neal. All rights reserved.
Kindle Edition: October 2014
Electronic ISBN: 978-0-9896883-1-4
Print ISBN: 978-0-9896883-2-1
Cover photo © Mike Neal at
NealStudios.net
Cover design by
Julie Metz Ltd.
Formatting by
Blue Valley Author Services
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Proverbs 14:11
A wise woman builds her house;
a foolish woman tears hers down with her own hands.
Chapter 1
“F
ire is poetry. Flame is destiny
.
”
The Fireman smiled to himself as he said the words out loud, tasting the way they sounded.
Heading for an ignition site brought that poetic side out in him. Next to him, on the floor of the battered old truck, a rusty gas can rattled as he drove down the deserted sugarcane-hauling road. Harsh red dust rose from the potholed dirt as Maui’s strong trade winds kicked up.
He’d chosen a cane field they’d be burning in a week or two, yellowing since the company’d stopped watering it, fifteen-foot flowering tassels of mature sugarcane waving like mares’ tails.
But if he burned it first, the cane company would lose their harvest, two years of work, and thousands of dollars.
The Fireman pulled the dust-covered truck over at one of the points of origin he’d chosen. He splashed the area with a mix of diesel to cling to the sugarcane, plus gas for ignitability, and tossed a match. He jumped back into the truck, feeling that kick of adrenaline, and floored it to the next ignition site, where he repeated the process. And a third time.
The Fireman looked back down the road into the wall of rising flames. It was catching faster than he’d planned. Maybe this one would jump the highway, really put a thrill into the Road to Hana for the tourists.
He stood there and savored a feeling of power as crackling energy released all around him. The sweet-smelling, burnt-sugar smoke soared into the higher elevations and hit colder air, coalescing into mushroom-cloud shapes. White cattle egrets flew in, landing in the road to feast on fleeing insects. A familiar roaring filled his ears as the heat fanned his cheeks.
The fire was a creature of beauty. He extended a hand to the fire, enjoying the multisensory experience he’d unleashed—and a back swirl of wind blew a tongue of flame to sear that hand like the lash of a whip. He howled in pain and hurled the gas can he was still holding into the oncoming inferno before it could blow up in his hand.
He leaped into the truck, threw it into gear, and peeled away. He couldn’t help ducking as the gas can exploded behind him with a
boom!
He floored it and pulled away, bouncing crazily down the potholed dirt road toward the highway. He lifted his hand, seared across the back in a stripe that looked like raw steak.
He licked the burn, tasting ash and blood. “Bitch. How I love you.”
Behind his racing truck, the wall of flame swept forward into the field with a crackling scream like a thousand demons in chorus. Insects, birds, mongooses, and more fled in futile terror before it.
Lieutenant Michael Stevens picked up a call at his office in Haiku. “Bro, it’s Jared.” His little brother’s voice sounded amped up and hoarse. “I thought I’d better call you. You know that cane fire this morning?”
Jared was a firefighter at Kahului Station, recently transferred to Maui to get away from the holocaust of summer fires in LA—but from what Stevens could tell, Maui hadn’t been the mellow posting Jared was hoping for.
“Yeah, I saw the smoke. Smelled it, too. Thought they were just doing a scheduled burn.” Maui was one of the last places in the United States still growing and harvesting sugar. The plantation operated at an annual loss, in part because of the vast amount of water and resources it took to produce even a single pound of “white gold.” The harvesting process was also pollution-heavy. It began with burning fields to get rid of excess leaves, leaving the stalks behind, heavy with syrup, to be processed.
“No. We think it’s another arson case.” Jared coughed. “We’ve almost got it contained. Remember, I told you there have been at least three of these arson cane fires in the last month. Anyway, there’s a fatality. Tourists found a guy on the side of the road, crispy as a chicken wing.”
Stevens winced inwardly, trying not to imagine what “crispy as a chicken wing” looked like in human form. Likely he’d get to see firsthand. He stood, reaching for the shoulder holster hung on the wall to strap into. “So if it was arson, it’s a homicide.”
“Right. I thought I’d give you a heads-up since it’s in your district.”
As if on cue, his radio crackled with the call to respond. “Thanks, Jared. If I don’t see you at the scene, I’ll see you at dinner tonight. Still coming, right?”
“Right. I’ll bring dessert.” Jared had begun making weekly visits to have dinner with Stevens, his pregnant wife, Lei Texeira, their son, Kiet, and Lei’s dad, Wayne, who lived with them and provided child care.
Stevens hung up and stuck his head outside his office to holler to his veteran detective. “Ferreira! Ten-fifty on Hana Highway!”
They got on the road in Stevens’s brown Bronco, cop light strobing on the dash. Ferreira, a middle-aged man of portly build and grizzled visage, worked the radio, getting as much information as he could. “Ambulance is there. Too late, but at least they can keep the lookie-loos away.”
“How far is the vic from the fire?”
“On the edge of the highway. Fire burned up to the road, like they usually do. Fire department is working on keeping it from spreading.”
“This will add more tension to the whole no-burn movement,” Stevens said thoughtfully, rubbing the tiny purple heart tattoo in the crook of his elbow with a thumb as he drove. A vocal faction on the island had begun protesting the traditional method of harvest, citing asthma and a host of environmental concerns.
“I don’t see how this has anything to do with that,” Ferreira said, frowning. “These burns are just some misguided kids making trouble. Don’t see how arson that’s just killed a man has anything to do with the burns the cane company does for harvest—something they’ve been doing for a hundred years.”
“Okay. I hope you’re right.” Stevens knew Ferreira was from a big family that had come over to Hawaii in one of the original immigration waves, working their way up from the “cane camp” shantytowns to powerful positions in local government and solid occupation of the middle class. He’d heard Ferreira lament the demise of sugarcane agriculture in Maui often enough not to argue with the man. He also knew proponents of the change to machine harvesters would make the argument that drying the fields in preparation for controlled burning provided tempting targets for arson.
They sped down the winding two-lane highway that followed the windswept coastline. Even responding to a call and driving at top speed, Stevens sneaked a few looks out his window at the ocean, a tapestry of blues from cobalt to the palest turquoise at the foam-flecked shore. Surfers, windsurfers, and kiteboarders all played along this coastline, and the colorful sails leaping over the waves reminded him of darting butterflies.
The fire was still smoldering in the charred field as they came around a corner to where barricades had been set up, diverting traffic along an old road that connected above the beach town of Paia. Stevens pulled up and parked the Bronco, snapping on gloves and picking up his crime kit. Ferreira did the same.
“Booties would be good,” Ferreira said, slipping on a pair of blue elastic-edged, fabric shoe covers.
“Good idea. Though I’m not sure how well these are going to hold up on this ground,” Stevens said, looking at the still-smoking rubble that lined the road.
Just as Jared had told him, the fire had burned up to the highway, eating everything in its path down to the black ribbon of road. The fire zone was very close to the oceanfront community of Kuau, a cluster of residences along the coast. Stevens had spent the last year before his marriage to Lei at a little apartment in Kuau and had an affection for the ragtag collection of older plantation-style homes interspersed with oceanfront mansions.
They walked down the road and approached the body, draped in a white cloth that was staining in patches from body fluids.
The medical examiner, Dr. Gregory, had beaten them to the scene. Squatted beside the body, he was wearing an aloha shirt decorated with cartoon menehunes, attention fixed on the grisly sight before him.
There was an unpleasant, oily quality to the smoked-barbecue odor of the body as Stevens inadvertently sniffed the air. He was glad Lei hadn’t had to go out on this call. At four months pregnant, his wife’s worst symptom seemed to be an oversensitivity to smells. This stench would definitely have had her running for the nearest toilet.
“Ah, Lieutenant,” Dr. Gregory said, looking up. Magnifying glasses made him look like a bug until he pushed the optics up onto his reddened forehead. “Got a few interesting things about this body.”