Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series) (8 page)

“
No wonder you wanted to leave so early,” Lei said, hopping down to the ground and slamming the door of the truck. “The helicopter was faster.”

“
I asked to get flown up here. Captain said too expensive,” Pono replied. “Hope you wore your hiking boots.”

Lei looked down at her feet, clad in running shoes.
“All I got. It’ll have to do.”

Takama
and Jacobsen met them at a padlocked gate leading into the preserve, and Jacobsen handed them a plastic scrub brush. “Brush off your shoes. You might be carrying seeds into the preserve.”

Pono snorted but complied
, bending over to scrub at the rugged soles of hiking boots as Takama went on. “We pack in and out anything we bring. No seeds or fruit pits, nothing that could grow in this environment.”

Takama unlocked the gate
, and once all their soles had been scrubbed, they climbed over a barrier into the conservation area. Conifers of various types towered around them. The air was chill, and rosy gray morning light misted through the leaves. Lei could hear the birds singing in the distance, high, sweet notes like drifting petals.

“
These don’t look indigenous,” Lei said, gesturing to the trees as they started down a rugged red-dirt road into a dense, diverse forest.

“
No, they’re not. These are an experimental grove of trees planted by Ralph Hosmer, a territorial forester, around the turn of the century. He was trying to find types of trees that could be harvested for lumber in Hawaii,” Takama said. The two rangers strode rapidly, and Lei jogged a bit to keep up, turning her head to take everything in.

“
Seems like he found some lumber that liked it here.” Lei pointed to a towering tree she kept noticing, shedding bark in colored ribbons.

“
Eucalyptus. They grow well here and were used to create erosion breaks all over Haleakala. But they also have spread out of control and they have highly acidic footing that keeps other vegetation from growing. Also, the lumber is too splintery to use.”

“
What a waste.”

“
A lot of our early attempts to figure out land use and crops in Hawaii were.”

They
walked on. Lei’s running shoes raised little puffs of fine red dirt. The trees rustled and squeaked in a cool morning wind high above them. Far off, she could hear the native birds. Her heart rate settled and her mind stilled as she breathed the pine-scented air.

“
Tell us more about what you know about the camper,” Pono said.

“I didn’t know about him,” Takama said.

“Some of us who patrol through the forest began spotting things that looked like more than just a hunter passing through. Evidence of fire covered up. A forest latrine. Things like that,” Jacobsen said. “I mentioned it to the Hawaii Bird Conservatory people.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this
before?” Lei asked.

“I’m sorry
. I was so distracted I didn’t think of it.”

“Do you think a hunter built the blinds?”

Takama shrugged. “The one we found already seems more like a bird observation post than a hunting blind.”

“Yes,” Jacobsen agreed. “I’ve found a couple
of others. They are usually located in good bird observation areas rather than the areas ungulates typically go once they get inside the fence.”

Lei glanced at
Jacobsen. “Ungulates?”

“
Hoofed invasive animals. Goat, pig, axis deer. Easier to say than have to list the types every time.” Jacobsen held a branch aside for her. “They typically forage along paths because it’s easier access for them. They also have stream areas where they like to drink. These places would make more sense for a hunter to build a blind.” He paused, then blew out a breath. “I have a theory. This camper is someone who has worked with one of the conservation agencies and come back to the forest for his or her own reasons. Seems to have a degree of forest survival skills and to know where to observe birds, not something a total stranger to the forest would know.”

“
That’s a good lead,” Lei said. “I’ll contact the agencies for a list of people who’ve worked with them when we get back.”

They
’d continued descending gently toward the cloud forest area and now were leaving the varied pines of Hosmer’s forestry experiment behind. “Not long until we get to the helicopter landing area,” Jacobsen said. “I thought we could start at the crime scene and backtrack to some of the sites we think the hunter has visited. See if we can pick up any evidence of him.”

“
I like your theory as much as Lei does,” Pono said to Jacobsen. “If we can get a fingerprint, something from the camper, we might be able to identify this guy.”

“
I don’t know,” Lei said, pulling Pono aside to whisper so the rangers wouldn’t hear. “Just because we identify the camper doesn’t mean he killed the bird hunter. And have you thought that the bird hunter might be the camper?”

They each considered this quietly while they walked on
. “No,” Pono finally whispered back. “The guy was staying at the Maui Beach Hotel, short term, paying cash. He wasn’t camping out here longer than it took to catch the birds he was after.”

They exited the trees and walked into the wide-open clearing above the path leading into the cloud fore
st. “Anyone feel nature calling? We do all human elimination in this area before we go into the sanctuary area,” Takama said.

Pono headed into the underbrush along with
Jacobsen, leaving Lei with Takama. She eyed the leathery, fit ranger. “You seem to love your job.”

“
It’s important work. It suits me.”

“
I like it out here, in the forest,” Lei said. “I didn’t expect to like it so much. I haven’t spent much time out in the wild.”

“
The forest really hits some people,” Takama said. “And when it does, you want to protect it.”

Lei tipped her head back, looking at the trees and sky
, listening to the wind and the birds. “I guess so.”

Pono
and Jacobsen reappeared. “Lead on,” Pono said.

They turned down
the path into the cloud forest, winding along a switchback trail through graceful ferns. Birdsong rose around Lei like auditory fragrance as they made their way through lush, flowering ohia trees. Takama led them back to the first blind, from which the poacher had been shot, and Lei gazed over to where the body had been found.

T
he ferns had recovered, the leaf mold settled. The spot looked as wild and untouched as the rest of their surroundings. Jacobsen checked a compass reading.

“
I have headings for the blinds we’ve found. Follow me, and try not to break or trample the understory.”

He
led them through waist-high ferns, delicate
olapa
plants, and
akala
berry bushes heavy with large native raspberries. Lei followed Pono, letting the big Hawaiian forge a careful way behind the ranger for both of them. Progress was slow, and they didn’t talk in case they alerted the camper to their presence.

The
next blind was in an old-growth ohia tree, split by lightning and bowed into two separate arches that had continued growing, branches coming up from the downed halves in a mini-grove effect. Without speaking, Takama pointed out the handholds leading to a perch in the middle of one of the arches.

“
You go. You’re smaller. Look for trace,” Pono whispered. Lei nodded, pulling on rubber gloves and beginning her climb. She was glad she wore relatively flexible shoes as she shimmied up into the tree, easily locating the blind’s sweet spot about fifteen feet up off the forest floor.

It was ideal for
bird watching, with the crown of a nearby ohia flowering within twenty-five feet. Even as she settled onto the bench made of a nailed branch, she spotted one of the bright red, curved-billed birds on the nearby tree. “I`iwi,” she murmured, having taken some time to memorize the birds’ Hawaiian names.

The showy
scarlet nectar feeder hopped from one bright red blossom to the next. Its coloration made sense in its habitat, as it virtually disappeared among identically colored flowers.

“
See anything?” Pono hissed from below. Lei was startled into activity, taking out her high-wattage penlight and shining it over the bench, the bark of the tree, and the branches that surrounded her.

She descended, shook her head.
Jacobsen took a reading and struck off in another direction. This time he led them to a small clearing. He gestured to the ground, artificially swept clean. “I think he was here.”

Lei and Pono both w
ent to work, scanning the earth. Lei spotted something white under a fern. She dug gently with her hands and uncovered a white cardboard Starbucks cup, holding it up triumphantly.

“
Prints,” she mouthed to Takama and Jacobsen, bagging the discarded cup. She dug some more and unearthed more discarded trash, packaging up each of the items.

“
What’s your most recent camp site?” Pono whispered to Jacobsen. “Now that we have something with trace on it, let’s go right there and maybe we can pick up his trail.”

Jacobsen
nodded, brown eyes gleaming, and set off, his compass out in front.

“
Dogs would really speed this up,” Pono said.

“
No dogs allowed in the preserve,” Takama said from behind.

“
This is a murder suspect,” Pono hissed.

“
Never mind. Let’s just go. If we don’t find anything more today, we can try to borrow the K-9 unit,” Lei whispered.

They filed after Jacobsen
, hiking for a good length of time through increasingly dense underbrush. A light, misting rain began cooling Lei’s hot cheeks, and she could feel her hair corkscrewing even tighter in the moisture. They reached an open spot in the brush, and this time Lei could see a crushed pattern where the camper had slept and a scorch mark where he’d had some sort of camp stove in use.

Jacobsen
left them checking for trace and began casting about, carefully bending and searching, and he gestured. They followed him as silently as they could.

An eruption of movement ahead of them was so startling Lei found herself whipping out her weapon and dropping into a shooting stance—only to see an
axis buck leaping through the ferns. Originally from Indonesia and smaller than Mainland deer, the buck was the red of Hawaii earth and dappled with white. Lei jumped as Pono, just ahead of her, took a shot with his pistol. The buck leaped in response and disappeared into the brush.

“
Not what we were after, but some venison stew can’t be a bad thing,” Pono said, his eyes alight. They ran through the ferns, but the deer was gone.

“You
not only alerted the camper to our presence; now you have to file a report because you discharged your weapon,” Lei said. “Oh my God, my partner fires his weapon on the job and takes down a deer.” They all laughed except Takama, a discharge of nervous energy, and continued tracking the animal through the ferns.

Jacobsen
bent a fern to show Pono a smear of blood. “You got him.” A few yards farther, Jacobsen bent over. “There’s a faint trail here.”

A
camouflage-clothed man burst out of the brush in front of them—and Lei was so startled she had to restrain herself from pulling her weapon to fire at him.

“
Halt! Police!” Pono bellowed, leaping after the fleeing man. Between the surprise of flushing the camper and the deer they were tracking and prepared to shoot, both she and Pono were a little trigger-happy. Pono was mowing down ferns and underbrush like a linebacker, Lei in his wake. Their progress was slowed by the dense growth, but Lei was smaller and faster. She managed to edge past Pono to charge after the camper as he bolted along some memorized pathway she couldn’t see.

“
Stop! Police!” she yelled. The suspect poured on more speed, if anything, running like his life depended on it and pulling ahead. Lei could hear Pono swearing as he fell behind, tangled in a clump of low-growing maile vine.

Lei
tried to register as many details as possible even as she ran—approximately six feet tall, male, camo gear clothing, a satchel, a compound bow and arrows slung across his back, a field hat in camouflage. He disappeared suddenly, and Lei, running full tilt, realized why as the ground, concealed by ferns, dropped out from beneath her.

Lei
cried out as she fell through space and hit the ground, rolling down the steep side of a canyon to fetch up with a bone-jarring crunch against a boulder. She lifted her head to see the camper, leaping gracefully and rock hopping down the stream, then disappearing from view through overhanging trees and underbrush.

“
Dammit,” Lei said when she had enough oxygen back in her lungs to verbalize. The suspect was probably young and certainly physically fit, and appeared to know the forest like the back of his hand. Pono peered down at her from about fifteen feet above, his brows drawn down in a thunderous scowl.