Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series) (16 page)

“
What! What the hell are you up to now?”

“
Need a warrant to search Jacobsen’s house and subpoenas for all his bows and equipment for hunting. He seems to have a lot.” She swiveled, glancing around. “He took several very close shots at me and fled. I think we just had a major break in the case. I’m calling Tiare to put the wedding off.”

“No way! You have too many people coming, too many people who have spent money to get here for your special day. Listen to your oldest friend—you’re replaceable on the job. Gerry Bunuelos will be filling in for you, and I think now is a great time to break him in.”

“No.” Lei sucked a breath, blew it out. Squeezed the pendant at her throat so hard it dug painfully into her hand. “I’m the bride. I’m making this call. And I need another twenty-four to forty-eight hours to solve this case.”

“
Are you in the house?”

“Yes. I had to get out of firing range and try to get him, but he tore up my truck pulling out instead.”

“I’m on my way. I’ve got the subpoenas, but anything you find in there without a warrant will be fruit of the poisoned tree, so get out of there now. I’ll talk sense into you when I get there.” Pono hung up just as the wail of sirens announced backup.

Lei set the bow she
’d used down on the top step and sighed. There was no point in rehanging it on the wall; she already had to explain how she was inside and had come to be using it. Explaining the situation and completing all the reports was definitely going to make her late, anyway.

Lei
trotted down the steps to her truck, moaning over the mangled paint job and dangling side mirror. Her door was dented in, but she was able to open it to verify that the dress still draped in lovely splendor over the seat. She sat in the front seat and made several very difficult phone calls, postponing the wedding. Tiare, her aunt and father, and Marcella all started out outraged and ended resigned when she wouldn’t be swayed. When she was done with that and still sweating from the conflict, she called Stevens.

He still didn’t pick up. “Listen. We’ve had a major break in the case. I am postponing the wedding until tomorrow. It’s a drag, I know, but I can’t leave until we wrap it up further. Hope you understand
. This is nothing about you and me. But please call—I need to hear your voice.” She turned the phone off completely and opened the door to go deal with the aftermath.

Pono handed Lei a Styrofoam cup of coffee swimming with little white creamer chunks as they sat in the conference room of Kahului Police Department, waiting for Captain Omura to join them for their case update.

“I can’t believe you.” Pono narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “You’ve got me in serious trouble at home, Lei. Tiare’s pissed, and when Mama’s not happy, ain’t no one happy.”

“Can’t be helped,” Lei said, and set her jaw. She glanced at the clock on the wall.
Four p.m. She should be walking down an aisle of flowers right about now, but she wasn’t, and that was just the way it was. The job came first. Always would.

To her credit, Captain Omura, when she joined them,
said nothing about the change in wedding plans. Gerry Bunuelos, a short, wiry Filipino, followed her.

“Gerry’s joining the case.
Jacobsen still hasn’t been located, but we had a call from Haleakala Ranch. They found the truck abandoned on ranch land near some bird habitat. Not only that. The ranch employee who found the vehicle reports blood in the back of the truck.”

“So he was injured
while fleeing?” Lei frowned. She hadn’t actually seen the young man shoot at her, but he’d certainly been moving fast—not moving like someone who was injured.

“Did you see anything in the truck bed when the
vehicle was leaving the scene?” Pono asked her.

“
I—dammit. I don’t think so. That’s weird about the blood. Did he nick his hand and smear it on the back or something?”

“No. The
ranch employee reports the amount of blood in the truck bed is significant, more like a puddle. Could be he was injured and went to lie down in the truck bed. We don’t know. Either way, I already called for the K-9 unit to meet you where the truck is so you can track Jacobsen in the forest. ETA is sixty minutes from now.”

Pono’s thick brows had drawn together
as he looked at Lei. “Can you remember anything about the truck, anything in the back?”

Lei closed her eyes, trying to remember. She’d pulled up behind Jacobsen’s black Tacoma. The garage door had been down. She’d been distracted, fussing with her dress lying on the seat. She tried to remember the back of the truck. “There might have been a tarp or something in the back. I’m sorry
. I just wasn’t paying attention. I never should have stopped by.”

“No argument there,” Omura said, inspecting her manicure. “But since you did, it knocked some interesting things loose
. We might as well make the best of it. Gerry, stay here and study the file. I want you to be prepared to take over for Texeira. I’m only allowing her twenty-four more hours before mandatory leave for her wedding.”

“Yes
, sir,” Gerry said, taking the file she pushed over to him. Lei opened her mouth, and Omura narrowed her eyes and leveled a shiny red nail at Lei.

“Twenty-four hours. Tomorrow at
four we are all going to a wedding, and Gerry can carry on your duties. Period.”

“Yes, sir,” Lei said. No other response was possible. She followed Pono’s stiff back to the weapons locker for Kevlar vests and extra weapons.

As they got on the road for the Haleakala Ranch entrance outside of Makawao in Pono’s truck, Lei broke the tense silence. “I wonder if Sophie Ang ever tracked down anything on the Internet looking for the birds.”

“Haven’t heard from her,” Pono said.
“You were the one who spent the evening with her last night.”

“Didn’t come up in conversation. And I don’t want to call her right now.” Lei’s phone was still off in her pocket. For just a little while, she could shut out all the clamoring voices, even those closest to her, and stay focused on the objective.
“What’s going on with Kingston? Does anyone know where he’s at?”

“Deported to Canada. His visa was canceled
. Just heard the news on my way over to Jacobsen’s.”

“
You sure he got on the plane?”

“
Heard an officer accompanied him to the airport.”

“Hmm.” Lei frowned. “Kingston seemed so fanatical. I’m actually having a hard time seeing Jacobsen as someone so bird
crazy he’d commit murder, but not Kingston.”

“We have to follow the evidence, and right now the e
vidence is pointing to Jacobsen.”

Lei and Pono bounced along the rutted dirt road, following an employee from Haleakala Ranch
, who drove ahead, unlocking the gates for them. The fields were rich and lush, dotted with volcanic rocks and a few clusters of runaway prickly gorse and stands of eucalyptus. The SUV carrying the tracking dog, Blue, his handler, Freddie Lee, and a partner, followed them. Lei’s heart rate was up, excitement to catch Jacobsen finally banishing the angst brought on by postponing her wedding.

They reached
a clearing with a final fence and pulled up beside Jacobsen’s black Tacoma. Wild green forest beyond beckoned Lei as she jumped down from Pono’s truck. She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and looked into the bed of the truck. Sure enough, there was a significant bloodstain pooled in the metal channels.

“That could be deer or pig blood,” Pono said. “That’s kind of how my truck looks after hunting.”

“We have to test it.” Lei got out her crime kit and took several swabs. She turned on her high-powered light and shone it over the truck. Smears and blots lit up here and there. “We might have some prints here.”

Blue barked, a deep, eager sound, as Freddie Lee unloaded him from the SUV they’d pulled up in.

“We’ll have to come back and work the truck over. Let’s mark it and leave it for later.” She and Pono draped crime scene tape over the black Tacoma, and as she did so, Lei couldn’t help remembering another black Tacoma and the part it had played in her life.

“This brings up the question—with this restricted access, how would Jacobsen have got through these locked gates?”
Lei took her Kevlar vest out from behind her seat and slipped it on over her head.

“
I thought of that. The rangers are issued keys, in case they need to go retrieve something or respond to a park-related emergency on shared land. Jacobsen had apparently checked the keys out two weeks ago, and they hadn’t been returned.”

Lei bundled her hair into a ponytail and pulled a dark green-billed hat down over her curls.

“
I called and spoke to Takama about Jacobsen,” Pono said. “He was pretty shocked Jacobsen was being looked at as a suspect. Said the guy was hardworking and dedicated, but didn’t show a lot of—what did he call it—‘outside the box thinking.’ He also, according to Takama, was fairly new to Maui and had gained his tracking experience working in other parks.”

“Hmm,” Lei said, frowning as she checked her Glock, expelling the clip to check it was full, ramming it home inside the cool pebbled grip. She patted the cargo pants pockets, checking that she’d brought a spare clip and had packed
Taser, pepper spray, and handcuffs. She slung on a light backpack loaded with crime kit and water bottle.

Lee and his partner
, Kahakauwila, also checked their gear. Blue was already questing about on the ground after being given Jacobsen’s hat to sniff. Lei lifted her feet to look at the soles of her shoes for trapped seeds—she didn’t want to bring anything new into the forest.

Blue flung up his head and gave a single bark, tugging on his leash to go through the gate in front of a trail that led into the forest.
“Dog’s ready to work,” Lee said.

They all moved at a fast walk, single file behind the dog. Blue trotted confidently up the path.

The Haleakala Ranch employee who’d unlocked the gates
brought up the rear.

“Sure seems to know where he’s going,” the young man said. He’d introduced himself as Henry Ferreira, and they’d brought him along to answer any questions about the ranch or flora and fauna they encountered.

“This dog helped us catch our last perp within an hour,” Pono said. “So tell us more about this forest while we’re going through here. Pretty big path here. Where does it go?”

“This is a shared sanctu
ary area called the Maile Trail,” Ferreira said. They’d begun to climb, and the trail had gotten narrower. Blue showed no signs of slowing down. Lei spotted the shiny, dark green leaves of the sacred maile vine twining around the trunks of guava, ohia, and old-growth koa trees, interspersed with thick clumps of kahili ginger, whose stems grew long, glossy sword-shaped leaves forming fernlike patterns. Tall spires of sweet-smelling blossoms thickened the air with scent.

“We try to manage the invasives, like all this kahili ginger, which really came from India.” Ferreira made an arm gesture encompassing the vast stand of six-foot-tall, showy plants. “Ginger’s really hard to kill because it spreads via
rhizome. If even one little root is left in after you dig it out, it’ll come back.”

“Why is it important to get rid of?” Lei asked, her heart pumping as the trail narrowed and the incline increased. Hundreds of the gingers had been hacked down beside the trail, but new sprouts were already growing.

“Well, it chokes everything else out. It’s pretty, though,” Ferreira said. Lei thought the air had a velvety texture to it from the acres of rich orange, yellow, and white ginger blossoms.

Suddenly
, Blue bayed again and turned off the path into a hacked-down stand of ginger plants, dragging Lee over to a patch of turned-over soil.

“Uh
-oh,” Lei said.

“Seems like a pretty good spot for a body dump. If we hadn’t used the dog
, we’d never have found this,” Pono said.

Lei took her backpack off, removing her crime kit and putting on gloves. Blue continued to circle the mound of disturbed earth, whining.

Lei and Pono used their hands to dig, and it wasn’t long before the coppery tang of blood rose through the earth, causing Blue to put his head back and howl. The dog was still agitated when Lei uncovered a portion of torso clad in a camouflage T-shirt. They had enough confirmation for Pono to call for the medical examiner.

“I wonder who it is,” Lei said, hanging her soil-covered, gloved hands off the ends of her bent knees.

“Seems that there must be more than one perp involved in this situation,” Pono said, frowning. “Dr. Gregory said he’s about forty-five minutes out. Henry, can you drive back and open the gates for him?”

“Sure.” The young m
an, looking green, trotted off quickly.

Blue had begun casting around on the ground again, and he gave an assertive bark. “He’s picked up a scent,” his handler said. “Do you want to follow it?”