Torch Ginger (5 page)

“I’m working on it now—and I’m sorry no one listened to you.”

“It’s been going on for at least five years.” Jazz stood up, paced. “But I’m the wrong color to be heard here; the hippies are ‘undesirables’ in the community, and they came here to escape so it takes a long time for anyone to miss them—sometimes no one ever does.”

He got a binder off the shelf and handed it to her.

She opened it. It was filled with clippings about missing people from the island. She closed it again, overwhelmed. “Can I take this? Look it over?”

“Sure, if it will help. I think he’s doing something careful with the bodies so they’re never found.”

“Where are you getting this? How do you know they didn’t just leave Kaua`i?”

“Too many stories to tell.” Haddock continued to pace. He seemed ambivalent about how much to tell her. Lei’s stomach churned and the odd smells of the store were making her light-headed. She found her hand slipping into her pocket to rub the black worry stone.

“You say ‘he.’ What makes you think it’s not . . . a group? Or related to drugs or something?”

“I think I might have heard something about that,” he said with a degree of confidence she found chilling. “I’ve been involved with TruthWay since we got here, and we keep an ear out for what all the groups are doing. It’s mostly adult males that are taken—young and fairly fit. They’re heavy and strong. Takes some muscle to deal with them, I would think.”

“What’s TruthWay?”

“We’re a religious group. We’ve been called a cult before, but only by the unenlightened.”

Lei wrote TRUTHWAY hard in the notebook, underlining it. “What about a possible drug connection?”

“Lots of people smoke a little grass—myself excepted, of course.” His chambray eyes dared a twinkle. “Jay looked like a guy who liked to burn a little now and again, but I didn’t know him well enough to say. That’s not the kind of thing that gets you disappeared around here.”

“Then what is?”

He threw his hands up. “No fucking idea. All I know is, it keeps happening.”

“What do you know about burglaries in the area?”

“There’s always some. Break-ins on rich people’s houses or tourist cars mostly. Meth or heroin addicts trying to support a habit. But this is Kaua`i. It’s a small island. Anything goes on, somebody knows something.”

“You’ve put so much thought and care into this.” She tapped the binder.

“Just don’t ever make me have to speak to that prick Fernandez again,” Jazz spat. “Bastard busted me for possession a while back, and he’s never listened to anything I said since. Go ahead and look at the binder, and call me after you do.”

“Thanks so much.”

He held the beaded curtain aside. “Need anything from the store? I’ve got a lot of great fresh tomatoes right now. Organic.”

“Sure. Show me where things are in this place. I’ve never shopped in a health food store before.”

Lei left with a couple of string bags filled with fresh produce, pasta, and a chicken, and the binder filled with missing people. She called Jenkins as she pulled out.

“J-Boy, meet me for lunch at the usual place. Got a lot to bring you up to speed on.”

“Sure you want to do that? We could eat here.”

“We need privacy. And bring the printouts on the missing persons.”

A long pause as Jenkins digested this.

“Okay. See you there.”

Lei parked in front of the little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that was their favorite lunch place. She brushed through the swinging half doors and strode across the worn plank floor to her favorite table, in the corner facing the door.

“Hey, Ginger.” Anuhea, the petite Filipino waitress, set the slightly greasy laminated menu in front of her with a smile. “Jack coming?”

“Sure is—he’s going by J-Boy now. Ice tea, please, and we don’t need menus.”

“Coming right up.” Anu sashayed off.

Lei took out the thick binder. Suspect number one in this whole thing needed to be the enigmatic Jazz Haddock, a man who called himself the Guardian and seemed to know way more than he should about what was going on. She took out her notebook, flipped to a new page, and began jotting down everything she could remember about Haddock.

The doors creaked open and Jenkins slipped into the plastic chair across from her, a manila folder in his hands.

“Hey. I struck gold at the health food store.” Lei tapped the binder.

Jenkins laughed. Lei saw Anu’s appreciative eye on him from across the room.

“That’s gotta be a first. Lei in a health food store, let alone ‘striking gold.’ What did you do, find a clue in the bag of bean sprouts?”

She filled him in on her meeting with Jazz Haddock.

He gave a low whistle. “Interesting.”

“I want to see those missing persons reports.”

Jenkins slid a stack of photocopied papers out of a manila envelope. “It’s kind of scary actually. There are a lot more than I would have expected on an island this size. I went back as far as 2000 and there are sixteen. Seems more frequent from 2005 to now.”

Jenkins looked through the binder as Lei organized the reports chronologically.

Next she sorted them according to age, race, and gender, looking for trends. There did not appear to be too many commonalities other than the majority were Caucasian and of no fixed address. The easiest people to ‘disappear’ would be those like Jay Bennett—young, transitory, perhaps ending up on Kaua`i as part of a larger picture of leaving home far behind.

There were some notable exceptions: a few women apparently fleeing abusive husbands, some wandering Alzheimer patients, a lost hiker in Kokee whose body was later found. She removed those and set them aside.

Their lunch arrived and she ate automatically, still scanning, as Jenkins flirted with Anuhea.

“Most of the disappearances seem to be in May and October once I took out the ‘outliers.’” She laid the May/October sheets together by year, and the hairs rose all over her body as she looked at the faces lying across the table, stretching in an unbroken line of pairs back to 2005. “Something’s definitely going on with this.”

Jenkins peered over. “Wow. I didn’t put that together last night. I was pretty tired. Plus you have those ones that don’t fit the pattern.” He gestured to the outlier pile.

“Yeah, but once you account for those as more naturally occurring situations, it begins to look like someone might be preying on the transient community.”

The timing sparked something in her memory—something about October and May/June.

“I gotta get my laptop.” Lei jumped up and went to the truck, fetching her laptop and turning it on.

“We should be back at the station for this. Wouldn’t want anyone to pick up on it.” Jenkins gave a worried glance at Anu, who was wiping down a nearby table.

“I know, but I don’t want anyone there to pick up on this either and snake us out of our case before we talk to Captain Fernandez. Just make sure no one sees anything.” Jenkins restacked the sorted printouts, slid them into the envelope, and set the binder on them. Lei’s computer sang a “done waking up” song to her, and she logged onto the wireless hotspot that made the restaurant a favorite haunt, hit Google, and did a general search: “Celebrations in October.”

There were harvests, Halloween, Homecoming Football Games, Octoberfest, and the ancient celebration of Samhain.

She searched under the same phrase for May and came up with May Day, maypoles, Cinco de Mayo, and the spring celebration of Beltane.

She’d known there was something significant about May and October—the ancient rituals in Europe of planting and harvest. But what did that have to do with Hawaii, which had never had to follow that seasonal calendar, let alone those old fertility rituals? Hawaii had its own calendar, its own lore. She dumped the photocopied pages back out, looking at the pairs, analyzing the demographics.

“I want to see if there are any trends. Got a highlighter?” Jenkins procured one from Anu, and Lei made hash marks under headings on her notebook as she had Jenkins sort the sheets: Male, Female, Caucasian, Other Race, Under 30, 30–50, 50–70. Most of the victims in her impromptu Venn diagram ended up in the Male Caucasian Under 30 category.

She sat back, highlighter in hand.

“So who is Male Caucasian Under Thirty? Transient hippie guys like Jay Bennett. Or young surfers camping on the beach.”

“There are only three females, one under thirty, two thirty to fifty. Why not more females?”

“I don’t know, but it could be because women seldom travel and camp alone.”

“So what’s the connection between these missing people and May and October, and why?” Jenkins had the line between his brows that meant he was worried, and Lei was wide-awake now, nerves jangled by the implications.

“Let’s check the binder Jazz gave me, see how many of our missing persons are in here.” She pulled the binder over and flipped it open. “Haddock is the owner of the health food store. Calls himself the ‘Guardian of the alternative lifestyle community.’”

“Let’s do background on him as soon as we get back. Always suspect anyone volunteering information.” Jenkins repeated the lesson drilled into them both by Sergeant Furukawa.

“I know.” Lei slapped the binder shut as Anu came by and refilled their water glasses. She didn’t have to imagine the extra swing Anu put into her hips as she walked by Jenkins. “Whatever else he is, Jazz Haddock has it in for the captain. He said the cap had busted him and that he wouldn’t listen all the times Jazz has tried to get a case open on the missing persons.”

Jenkins whistled again.

“Maybe this isn’t the best place for us to talk, but I don’t want it getting around the station either. And who knows? It could be the captain has been turning a blind eye. I don’t know him well enough to tell.” Lei checked off all the names Jenkins had printed up against the binder; they matched.

“I can’t see him being that blind or that bought off. Still, when you look at the pattern, it makes you wonder.”

Anu dropped the check at Jenkins’s elbow.

“Thanks.” Jenkins winked at her. “You’re the best.”

“I sure am,” she purred, and trailed smooth oval fingernails across his shoulder as she walked away. Jenkins’s neck flushed.

“Let’s get back to the station. You can get your heart rate back down running background on Haddock while I talk to Captain Fernandez.”

“Think you’re putting me on desk duty that easy?” Jenkins threw a couple of bills on the table and followed Lei through the swinging doors. “Think again, partner.”

* * *

The Timekeeper padded across the cave to check on the Chosen, the headlight-style flashlight barely piercing the smothering dark of the cave. The man was sitting up, the padlocked collar around his neck securely attached to the tie-out cable, his legs drawn up tight against nakedness and chill.

“Why am I here?” His voice jarred the Timekeeper. He never liked it when they talked to him. “What are you doing with me?”

The Timekeeper carried two buckets. One was covered with a lid for bathroom use; the other held an assortment of food and a gallon jug of water. He set them within reach and walked away.

“Why am I here?” the Chosen called after him. “For God’s sake, leave me a light at least!”

The Timekeeper went back out to the quarter horse he’d ridden to the cave and dug the duct tape out of the saddlebag. Chances were slight the man’s calls for help would attract anyone in this remote area, and the entrance of the cave was all but invisible. Still, it wasn’t good to take chances, and the Timekeeper didn’t like to hear anyone in his special place but the Voices. He carried the tape back into the cave and silenced the Chosen with it.

He didn’t leave a light, either.

Chapter 6

The captain waved Lei and Jenkins in, then shut the door of his office. Fernandez cut an immaculate figure, hawklike features framed in well-tended silver hair. Lei stifled her apprehension. She’d been in his office only once, for her transfer interview a few months before.

“What’s so urgent?” The captain gestured to the supplicant chairs in front of his desk.

“Something big.” Lei placed the file on his desk as they sat.

He pulled the folder over and leafed through it. “What’s all this?’

“I stumbled onto this missing persons pattern with the disappearance of a guy named Jay Bennett, who was beaching it at Pine Trees. Got a visit yesterday morning from his girlfriend from California that he hadn’t called in when scheduled, and she’d found his wallet and some other stuff it’s unlikely he’d voluntarily leave behind. I went out that afternoon to check the area and canvass and found more of the guy’s possessions in a trash barrel. The girl who reported him missing also turned in these.” She took the stones out, set them on the desk. “They were left on one of his shoes in a triangle pattern. Someone threw away all Jay Bennett’s possessions. Either he was snatched or it was a suicide, but after I examined some of what he left behind, I don’t think it was suicide. So I had Jenkins do an MP search. These are what came up, back to 2005, when a regular pattern of disappearances emerges.”

She paused. The captain was looking at the pairs, held together with paper clips. All the outliers were clipped together in another pile.

“Hmm, this is interesting.” The captain stroked the neat goatee on his chin. “I remember a lot of these cases. The ones you’ve set aside in pairs did stand out in that they were transient and traveling alone. Seemed unrelated at the time.”

“Any bodies ever recovered?” she asked.

“When we find a John Doe we try to match them to Missing Persons as much as possible. That automatically takes them out of the MP database, so no.”

“So . . . don’t you think that’s odd? So many disappearances without a trace, at the same time of year, going back so far?” Lei could feel Jenkins vibrating with excitement beside her.

A long pause, then Fernandez nodded. “It’s strange when put together this way, but given the demographic of the missing, not a definitive pattern. In other words, there could be a lot of explanations.”