Aloha from Hawaii (Part III)

Rob Kanahele pulled into the gravel driveway of his bungalow home and killed the ignition. Up the cement steps, pushing open the door and flicking on the lights, hallway, kitchen, living room, tree. He poured himself a very large White Russian and let his body fall into the recliner.

The search of room 114 had lasted over an hour and yielded nothing. Lots of expensive clothes, watch, cufflinks, patent leather shoes. Wakamoto kept his boy in good threads. No computer, no cellphone, nothing. A magazine swiped from the airplane. Wallet in the drawer held no obvious secrets or clues. No planner. No notebook or diary.

No crime scene.

In the garbage can, three scraps of paper that might be useful. One with a phone number, a local one. Two with the kind of doodles people do while talking on the phone. No obvious hints or symbolism in there either, but it was all Kanahele had for now, the only harvest that room had yielded. Meagre indeed.

He pulled them out of his pocket and stared at them now, one by one, in the twinkling light of the artificial Christmas tree.

He sighed. They didn’t mean anything more to him now than they had before. Probably a long conversation, probably something that upset him. There were a lot of dark scratches. Or that might just have reflected his overall mood.

Not much to go on…

“Ah, shit,” Rob groaned, cursing himself. “No phone activity from the hotel room. Of course you’d forget that.” Even if he’d just been told it the same day… Hn. The phone in 114 hadn’t been used. So if Ueshiba called anyone, it must have been from a cell phone. Which meant he had a cell phone, which might have held important information. Well, great, but where was it now?

Rob sat up a bit straighter. He’d ask Wakamoto for the phone number, get it traced by GPS. Tomorrow. Now, he looked at the paper with the Hawaii phone number. Who had that kid been calling, the night he died? Someone he didn’t want tied to the hotel room records. But who he didn’t already have in his cell’s phonebook. A local? Someone he already knew, or someone he had just met in the last days? Probably the second of the two – if he knew the person already, he wouldn’t have needed to take down the number that night.

He narrowed his eyes at the number. Tomorrow, he’d have it traced. Tomorrow.
He took a heavy slug of his drink.

After a minute, he stood, and went to pack an overnight bag for the hotel. His answering machine was flashing. He ignored it – anyone work-related would call him on his cell, and he didn’t have the patience for anything else right now.

He sat thoughtfully by the tree for another few hours, going over the facts of the case. He made himself some Kraft dinner and sat some more. Meticulously recopied his notes on fresh paper, at the dinner table, while the mac and cheese got cold. Then he tucked all his notes, old and new, into his briefcase, the old ones folded into an envelope so as not to get confused with the new ones.

Gnawed at by guilt, before leaving he listened to the message on his machine – his mother, as he feared, asking him when he’d be back for the holidays – and made a note to call her tomorrow, if he ever got the time.

A little after midnight, he pulled back out of his driveway and headed back to the Grotto Beach Hotel.

***

Anne was tired, but starting to feel normal again. Dinner had been a huge lobster and most of a bottle of white wine, and then she had braved the outside for the first time since that fateful afternoon, two days and half a lifetime ago, to stroll under the Pacific stars. She had stretched out in a chaise longue and breathed in the ocean air, and listened to the quiet. The noise of the hotel was behind her and pleasantly dulled by the crisp, soothing sounds of waves.

She must have napped, because by the time she returned to her hotel room her wristwatch informed her that it was almost 1:00. Her head was pounding from too much wine, but at least she was more relaxed than before. And Buxley and Melvina had totally had a happy ending together.

She tried the keycard for a third time before realizing she was holding it the wrong way up. Now the lock beeped green and she pushed the door open with a relieved sigh.

The door met some resistance and she kicked at the obstacle to move it while she fumbled for the light switch. The object felt unfamiliar, and when she finally got the lights, she saw why.

***

Anne sat crosslegged on the bed, chin in her hand.

“When did you find him?” Kanahele said, frowning down at the corpse.
“Just before I called you,” Anne replied. She was drunk and exhausted and maybe that was why this time around, it was almost funny. She wondered if she’d be finding dead people every few days for the rest of her life. Or maybe just this trip. She had a bit of a smile. It didn’t reach her eyes.

“Did you touch anything?”
“Just the phone,” Anne looked at him. She didn’t even bother to fix her half-untied ponytail.
“Do you know who he is?”
“Nnnnnope,” Anne smiled.
Rob bent over again to inspect the head wound that had finished this poor kid.
“At least this one’s not all bloaty and wet,” Anne said, lying down flat on the bed. She closed her eyes. “Does this happen a lot on your island? I mean, no one I ever talked to who had vacationed in Hawaii had ever found two dead bodies before. Or even one, actually.”

Kanahele looked at the boy’s face. There was something familiar under the trickles of blood. He’d seen it before… “He’s one of the cleaning staff,” he muttered.
“Hm?”
“Ah, nothing,” Rob stood. “– And, no. Your experience here has been pretty… um, unusual, I think.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him.
He looked back.
She made a coo, and rolled onto her side. “I’m happy you’re staying in the hotel now. That’s handy. That means if I find a dead person, I can just ring you up and you’ll come. Did you know that room-to-room calls are free?”
“So’s 911,” Kanahele said, sternly.
Anne made a sleepy sound.

Rob sighed.

***

“What’s with her?” One of the uniformed officers asked, dusting the room for fingerprints.

Kanahele looked up. He was pointing to Anne, curled into the fetal position on the bed, deep asleep.
“She found the body. This is her room.”
“And she can sleep through this?”

Another flash went off as the body was photographed from a closer angle.

“Looks like it,” Rob said.

The uniform shook his head and went back to work.

Rob stifled a yawn. It was three in the morning. He’d had 20 minutes of sleep.

He looked at the body of Carlos Villenza and tried to remember what he had said during the interview with the cleaning staff. To his recollection, it had been almost nothing.

The Ueshiba investigation had never struck him as the kind that would garner a repeat performance. Whether Kunitz or Wakamoto had done it, alone or together, it was almost certainly one of them, and seemed pretty cut-and-dried. But now this. Why was the houseboy dead? Kanahele didn’t want to believe it was unrelated to Kazuma’s murder. Same hotel was one thing, but the M.O. was the same too – back of the head bashed in by something heavy and sharp – and missing.

So why was he dead? Villenza must have witnessed something, something important enough that he didn’t want to say it in front of his coworkers and important enough to get him killed.

Killed in Anne Reynolds’ room.

Rob looked at her. Was there more to her involvement in this than he had been assuming? What she had said earlier rang true. You don’t discover dead bodies by accident twice. Villenza had been killed in her room for a reason. Reynolds was part of this somehow.

He watched her sleep, bony and mussy and tense, and found himself hoping she wasn’t as in the thick of this as the dead body in her room suggested. Regardless, he made a mental note to look for anything linking her with Kazuma Ueshiba. If the two deaths were connected, Anne would have to be involved in the first one as well.

“We’re done here,” an officer said.
Kanahele nodded. “Get the body out of here. And someone find the girl another room.”

***

“Miss Reynolds, I have to ask you some questions. Do you understand why?”

Anne sat, bleary-eyed, in the oversized armchair in suite 1112, across from Kanahele and Cindy. All three had room-service breakfast trays laid out on the coffee table between them. A uniformed policeman stood guard at the door, quiet as furniture. It was 7:30 AM.

Anne slowly sipped her orange juice.
“Probably.” She put the glass down, and put her hands on her knees.

“Could you recount to the best of your ability what you did from 11 PM onwards, yesterday?”

Anne nodded. “Sure. At 11 I was on the beach. I went there after dinner, which I ate late, 9:30 maybe. Stayed there for a long time. I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up I went back to my room, it was almost 1:00, and found a dead body. Then I called you.” Her muddy grey eyes looked at him.

He pursed his lips. “On the beach, were you alone? Did anyone see you?”
“I don’t know,” Anne shook her head. “I mean, yes, I was alone. But I don’t know if anyone saw me. I saw almost nobody,” she said. “I looked for a quiet spot…”

Kanahele nodded. “Can you go over again the exact circumstances of how you found the body?”
“Can I have a hash brown? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be hungry after all this and I’m sort of not but it smells really good,” she made an apologetic pout.
Cindy looked up from the Spanish omelet she had been eating with vigor, and a look of guilt crossed her face.

Kanahele nodded. “Yes, of course. It’s early, and we’ve all had long nights.” He extended a tanned hand.

Anne thanked him and took her tray onto her knees, protectively, like a security blanket. She bit down on a piece of potato. “So, okay. I unlocked the door, it took me a few tries but I was holding the keycard the wrong way because I’d had quite a bit of wine, I guess. I got it right eventually though, and pushed the door open most of the way before it hit something. I turned on the light and saw that the something it had hit was another dead body. It was horrible and unreal and I really feel bad about this, but it was almost a little funny, last night. You know? Not only do I find another one, but it’s in my room. Inspector, why was it in my room?”

She looked pale and her eyes were wide with incomprehension. Rob shook his head. “I don’t think we know that yet.”

She looked down, and nodded.
“Well, I walked right over to the bed, over the dead body, and picked up the phone and dialed the front desk and asked for the number at the room you were staying at. And woke you up I bet,” she looked apologetic.

“Hm. Don’t apologize, it was the right thing to do.”

Cindy polished off her omelet and sausage links, and sipped her coffee.

“Did you know the deceased, Miss Reynolds?” Kanahele continued.
“Not in the least. Do you know who he was?”
The inspector nodded. “Part of the cleaning staff here. He probably did your room in the morning.”

Anne shook her head. “No, that was some Japanese boy. I mean, I assume he’s Japanese, sine there are so many Japanese here. Maybe he was Chinese or something. I’m not very good at telling them apart,” she admitted, even if it embarrassed her a bit.

She drank her juice.

“Have you ever been to Japan?” Rob asked.
She looked at him. “No. I’m not a big traveler. This is actually my first time outside the continental US except for a trip to Paris with a boyfriend in my 20s.”
“Sounds romantic,” Cindy smiled over the rim of her coffee cup.
“Eh,” Anne shrugged.

Kanahele looked down at his untouched bowl of oatmeal and dried fruits, and eventually took a bite or two. He was thinking.

“Did anyone else have a key to your room?”

She shook her head. “No.”
“And when you left, are you sure you closed the door fully behind you?”
“I think so. I mean, they lock automatically, right? I didn’t do anything different than usual.”
“Has anyone else visited that room since you’ve been staying here?”

Anne raised an eyebrow. “Is that as private a question as it sounds like, inspector?”
“I don’t care about your private life. Has anyone else been in the room.”

Anne retreated into her chair, pulling her tray with her.
“Yeah. My friend Stacy.”
“No one else?”
“No one else.”

Kanahele said nothing. After a while, Fujita asked, “How are you liking your new room?”
Anne shrugged.

Cindy looked at the inspector.

He shook his head. “We’ll want to talk to you again. Later today, okay?”
Anne nodded.

“Don’t leave the hotel. We’ll call you.”

***

Rob’s thumb and forefinger were pressing into his eyeballs, soft, slow, pressing at the ache gathering there. Fujita looked at him, not knowing what to say. The room was quiet.
“…You’ve barely touched your breakfast.”

He sighed, and removed his hand, leaning back in the chair. “I don’t like where this is going, Cindy.”

The sergeant nodded, leaning her chin in her hand.
“Think the same person committed both murders?”
“Probably. God, I hope so. The last thing I want is two homicide investigations to deal with at the same time. We should probably tell Oosterhout to put the hotel on lockdown. Nobody leaves until we’ve figured this out.”
“No one likes that.”
“I know, I know,” Kanahele groaned, and reached for his coffee. “But we’re in a tight spot. I’ll make the call.”
He sipped, slow.

Cindy sat, made a little uncomfortable by her superior’s thoughtfulness.
“So what do we do for now?”
Rob looked at her.
“…Nothing new. Continue the Ueshiba investigation until we hear from Wayne. We’re only three days into this. There’s a lot left to do.”

Fujita nodded. “Checklist?”
“In my briefcase. But maybe things will have changed. Pass it over,” he said, sitting up straighter.

***

Stacy was getting frantic. Anne and she were supposed to go shopping in town today, and things were going from bad to worse. Not only did Anne not answer her phone, but when Stacy went to find her in her room she found police tape instead. The infuriating officer wouldn’t tell her anything, except that Anne wasn’t in the room, but that he didn’t know where she was.

She tried to breathe calmly through her nose as she harassed the hotel desk clerk, but he seemed more occupied with gossiping with his friends than answering her questions.
“Anne Reynolds. She’s in the room crawling with cops.”
“There’s like, three rooms like that,” the bright-eyed boy with skin like melted chocolate giggled.
“Omigawd I know!” Squealed a dimply redhead.
“No, guys, guys, hey, you think there’s been another murder?” a bottle-blonde with a pieced lip pawed at them.
The redhead shrieked, and smacked him. “Don’t say it!”
“Woooo, there’s a serial killer on the loose,” the first boy spooked.
“Stoppit, okay!” the redhead said, still laughing.
“CHILDREN.” Stacy smacked her hand on the service bell. The boys barely batted an eye, and she did it again, and again and again and again, until finally they went quiet and three pairs of wide eyes looked at her.

“…What?” said the melted-chocolate boy.

“My friend was in that room. The one with the second murder or whatever it is. The cops aren’t telling me anything and I just want to know if she’s okay and where she is. Anne Reynolds. Please,” she huffed.

The blonde nibbled his lip ring.
“Oh, they moved her last night, I think.” He went to the ledger. “Tyler told me, he was on duty then, god, he was so ruffled by it,” he explained to his two friends. “See? Here it is. Room 612.” He smiled to Stacy.
“Thank you,” Stacy sighed, and ran to the elevator.

***

“Item one, call the daughter in Japan.”

“I got her number from Wakamoto,” Cindy said. “Want to do that now?”
Rob nodded. “Sure. It’s probably as good a time as any to catch her at home.” He pulled out his cell, and started dialing the long string of numbers. “Any progress on getting those private numbers tracked down, by the way? The ones dialed in Wakamoto’s room?”
“Tim down at the station said he’d try to get that by this afternoon.”

Rob nodded. It was ringing.

It rang three, four, five times, then went to voicemail. He clapped his phone shut.
“Nobody home?” Cindy asked.

“Let’s try again later.”
“What’s next on the list?”

“Boat,” he said, glancing at the legal pad. “Look for records of boats taken out or missing on the 14th, in the area.”
“I could look into that. The hotel keeps records of all rentals.”

“Item three is, canvas for places where a body could have been hidden between Ueshiba’s death and his burial at sea. Which,” Kanahele sighed, scratching it off the list with a flourish, “is garbage, and should read, ‘Look for crime scene’,” he amended the list while talking, “since both Wakamoto’s and the boyfriend’s room came out clean.” He sighed.

“What if he was killed on the beach or something?”
“It’s looking more like it all the time.” Rob steepled his fingers, looking introspective. “… More and more, I’m thinking we won’t know anything until we know what the victim did between locking himself into his room that night, and meeting his fate a few hours later.”
“Security cameras?” Cindy suggested.

Rob smiled. “That’s item four.”
Cindy smiled too, and that’s when the inspector’s cell phone rang.

“Kanahele.” He pressed it to his ear.
“Inspector? It’s Wayne. I have something I think you should see.”

***

Wayne Heller was Maui County’s top forensic pathologist, and its coroner. There weren’t a lot of suspicious deaths in Maui, not enough to require a big team, but enough to keep Wayne in a full-time job with a handful of part-time assistants scattered around the five islands that made up the county. Rob rapped on the glass door to the Wailuku morgue before entering.

“You wanted to see me?”

Wayne turned, grinning behind his spectacles. “Uh-uhn. I wanted you to see Exhibit A here. How you been?”
Kanahele shrugged. “Been better. You’re working fast today, Wayne. Autopsy finished already?”
“Not a chance, barely started,” he admitted. “Corpse isn’t what I want you to see. C’mere.”

He walked behind a stand where tools and stainless steel bins were lined up. Carlos Villenza’s pallid and naked corpse lay on the table between them, made decent by a white plastic sheet.

“Behold,” Wayne said, hoisting a tropical-colored thong with forceps.

Rob frowned.
“Underwear? You want me to see the victim’s underwear?”

“Definitely. Check this out.”

He laid the thong out in a metal plate, turning it inside out. Kanahele walked over to take a closer look.
Along the rim of the waistband, blocky letters in blue ballpoint read: anne renolds killed kazuma.

Kanahele raised an eyebrow. “Well. That’s original.”
“Maybe he was worried something would happen to him, you know?”
“Backup plan?” Kanahele pointed to the thong.
“Right. If he knew who the killer was, and wanted to tell the police, this is as good a way as any. If you’re dead.”

Inspector Kanahele crossed his arms. Anne Reynolds? He frowned. This certainly put a new twist on things.

He stood for a while, rereasing the inscription. Then he sighed and glanced at the coroner.
“Okay. So if he thought she did it, why would he go to Anne’s room to get killed? That name in his underwear? It’s the person who found him.”

Wayne pushed his glasses up with a wrist.
“Weird. But hey, that part’s your job, inspector,” he grinned.

***

Kanahele passed by home after leaving the morgue. He called his mother in Kauai, admitted he had not gotten the package she sent – a notice from the post office poked up from the pile of mail, and he grabbed it, phone tucked between ear and shoulder – and even admitted that he was working on two murder cases in one of the big hotels, and didn’t know when he’d be done with them. She wasn’t happy, of course, but he’d realized decades ago that lying to her just made him feel horrible, even though it usually made his life easier. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, but it usually did hurt him.

He swung by the post office on the way back to the hotel.

***

Anne unlatched the door and blinked sleepily at her friend, who threw herself into the room and around Anne’s neck.
“Jesus Christ, Anne, you had me freaked out. Jesus. What the hell happened to your room. There’s cops all over the place. Is this about that body you found?”

Anne reluctantly let Stacy into the room, and crawled back into bed.
“Nope. Other body.”
“Other body? What?” Stacy sat next to her friend, staring. “What do you mean, other body? There’s another body?”
“Yup.” Anne slid down under the covers, and closed her eyes.
“Who? Where?”
“Dunno. And in my room. Old room.”

Stacy felt shock drain the warmth from her face.
“Annie, they found a body in your room?”
Anne shook her head. “No, I did. And not so loud please, I’m kinda hungover,” she said.

Stacy crawled into bed too, then, suddenly cold.
“…Are you telling me you found a second dead body?” she tried not to be too loud.
“Yeah,” Anne mumbled.
“…Are you okay?” Stacy was in shock – she couldn’t even imagine what Anne must have been feeling.
Anne shrugged, a tiny movement.
“I guess so. I’m tired. And hungover.”

Stacy took Anne’s face in her hands, turning her carefully to look at her. Anne squinted painfully.
“What?”
“You’re totally traumatized by this, aren’t you.”
Anne looked at her.
“Probably,” she admitted. “I really want to sleep, Stace… Wake me up after Christmas, all right?”

For once, Stacy was completely at a loss on what to do.

***

“I want to see that Kunitz guy again.”

Cindy Fujita looked up from her legal pad as Rob entered the room, and made a gesture for just a minute, as she jotted down a few more things from her conversation on the phone.
Rob let himself fall into a chair, pulling out his notes from his briefcase. She hung up the phone and looked at him.

“What’s up? What did Wayne have for you?”

“Underwear,” Rob said.
“What?”
“Never mind. Evidence linking the two murders.”
“Oh! Convenient?” Cindy crossed her legs.
“And suggesting that the killer’s Anne Reynolds.”

Cindy looked at him, uncrossing and recrossing her legs.

“Well, that’s unexpected,” she said, finally. “Conclusive evidence?”
Rob shook his head. “I don’t… Let’s get Kunitz in here.”
“The evidence involve him too?”
“No. Get him in here.”

***

“Aww, inspector. Miss me already?”

Adam grinned, tossing his mop of red hair.

“Cut the cute stuff, Kunitz. What does the name Carlos Villenza mean to you?”
“Hmm. Isn’t he a guitarist?”
“That’s Carlos Santana,” Fujita said helpfully.
Adam chuckled. “Oh. Right,” he winked at her.

Rob huffed.
“I told you to can it, Kunitz. Villenza’s dead, know anything about that?”

Adam looked at the inspector, more soberly.
“You think I did it?”
“You’re not answering my questions.”
“Neither are you,” Adam pointed out.
“I’m allowed. What have your interactions with the cleaning staff been, since your arrival here?”

Adam quirked an eyebrow. “Either that’s a nonsequitur, inspector, or this Carlos is – was – one of them.” He smiled. “Got a dead houseboy on your hands?”

Rob succumbed to an angered growl. “Just answer my question,” he said, forcing himself to calmness.

Adam sighed. “Fine. Interactions almost nil. See them around, like anyone else, smacked their bottoms once or twice, but who’s counting? And no, I didn’t know any of their names, and I never talked to one or was around one for more than a few seconds, so you can’t pin this one on me, boss.” He had a defiant little smile.  “You really want me to be the culprit, don’t you. Do I make you that uncomfortable?”

Kanahele looked at him evenly.

Maybe, just maybe, he was right.

“Did you meet or hear of Ken Wakamoto before you met him the day of his fight with Ueshiba?”
Adam, for a moment, looked a little taken aback.
“…No. I mean,” he pushed hair out of his face, “I had seen him around.”
“Where?”
“Here, at the hotel. In the days before. His boyfriend was fond of making quite a show of spending his money,” Adam explained. “It was easy to see what was going on there.”
“And what was going on there?”
Adam’s eyes sparkled. “A very rich man, a very sexy boyfriend, a very strenuous relationship, except for the sex, I’m sure. People will put up with a lot in order to keep getting laid.” He smiled.
“I bet you know all about that. Did you help make the relationship more strained?”
“Little ol’ me?” Adam brought a hand to his chest. “Why I’d never. I know when a man’s been baited and hooked. That Ueshiba kid had his claws way into him. I’m not unscrupulous enough to try and swipe a sugar daddy off somebody else.”
“I bet you’re not,” Rob said, unconvinced. “Anne Reynolds. Do you know her?”
“Was she after Ken too?” Adam raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.
“My question, please.”

Adam crossed his arms. “She found that Ueshiba guy, didn’t she? We talked once or twice.”
“Do you know what she’s doing here?”
“No fucking clue, inspector. As far as I know, not a lot of straight girls hit the Grotto.” He sparkled a smile. He turned his glance from Kanahele to Sgt. Fujita. “You suspect her, don’t you.” Back to Kanahele. “Am I allowed to ask why, boss?”

Rob scratched his cheek.
“I’m watching you, Kunitz.”
“Mm, you’re watching everybody. Hotel’s in lockdown mode, and the boys at the front desk are talking about serial killers to anyone who’ll hear. If you really thought I was guilty, you’d have made a move by now. What happened with Carlos Whatever?”
“Why don’t you ask the boys at the front desk?” Rob scowled.
Adam smiled. “Thanks. I think I will. Will that be all, inspector?”

Kanahele sighed.

***
“Too smart for his own damn good.”

“Well, I think it’s starting to fit together nicely,” Cindy said.

Rob stirred peppermint hot chocolate powder into his boiling water.
“I don’t. And I think we won’t get this solved before Christmas has come and gone,” he brooded.
Cindy smiled. “We’re allowed to take the 25th off,” she reminded.
Rob grunted.

She put her hands on her knees. “Preoccupied by the holidays, sir?”
He eyed her, taking his seat with his cup. “…I got a call from my mom.”
“Oh,” Cindy smiled, a little knowingly. “How is Mrs. Kanahele?”
“Apart from the fact that she seems to think it’s my personal fault that I’m stuck in a murder investigation at Christmastime?”
“She thinks you did it on purpose?”
He had a small grunt.
“Sent me this hot chocolate powder and the cookies. You can have one if you want,” he nodded to the tin. “They’re not homemade though. Not as good as when she made them herself.” Mrs. Kanahele’s arthritis made it difficult to stir.

“Thanks,” Cindy said. She took one, gingerly.

Rob sipped.

“I got the information you wanted about the boat, by the way,” Cindy nibbled.
“Oh?”
“One of the hotel’s inflatable dinghies is missing, has been since the 14th.”
Rob nodded. “We’ll call the station, put a couple guys on beach patrol, see if anything turns up.  Have ‘em keep their eyes peeled for a murder weapon, too.”

Cindy nodded, taking note.

Rob sighed, drinking his watery hot chocolate.
“So you really think Anne Reynolds killed Carlos Villenza.”

“Both of them,” Cindy said, sprightly. She bit into a second cookie. “Ueshiba too.”
“The underwear?”
“Is one clue, yes,” Cindy nodded.
“There’s more?”
She nodded again.

Rob looked up at the grey sky blowing by the window. “How do you think it happened, then?”

Cindy stood up and went to look out the window herself. The hotel had such views…

“Remember how Wakamoto told us Kazuma had started acting strange a day after they arrived? That’s been bugging me since the beginning. I think I know why. Anne Reynolds arrived here that same day. The guy was acting strange because he saw her. It’s her that got him spooked. I don’t know why – maybe she knew about him and Wakamoto’s daughter, maybe she threatened blackmail. Maybe she’s an ex-girfriend or a long-lost sister or whatever. It doesn’t matter. But something about her really got to Kazuma. Something bad enough to make him get self-destructive over it.” She leaned against the windowsill, looking at her superior. “Good so far?”
Kanahele watched her attentively. He nodded.”Go on.”
“So after his scene in the dining room,” she continued, encouraged, “maybe that was just to show her he’s not afraid, I don’t know, anyway, she arranges to meet him somewhere, late at night. I don’t know where, but that’s where she kills him. Takes him out in the dinghy, consigns his body to the waves, comes back, goes to bed. Few days later, she goes for a long walk thinking that if she’s the one to find the body, that will make her less of a suspect.”
“Deterring attention by attracting attention?”
“Something like that, yes,” Fujita said, eyes glimmering at the inspector. “She gets to act innocent and we treat her like a victim in this, instead of what she is, a cold-blooded killer.”

“Nh,” Rob shook his head. “She should have expected we’d look into her story if she was the one to find him. Why bother? she could have sailed through this invisible. I don’t buy it.”
“Maybe she’s that confident in her coverup. It’s certainly unconventional.”

Rob shrugged. “Fair enough. And Villenza?”
“Witness,” Cindy said. “That one’s easy. Just like what was written in his underwear. When he comes in to clean, she offs him.”

“No dice,” Rob shook his head. “Villenza wan’t in charge of cleaning on that floor. And even so, they do the rooms in the morning, not at night. Villenza wasn’t killed that morning, he was still warm when I got there.”
“Then she invited him over,” Cindy said. “Under some premise.”

Rob scrached the underside of his chin thoughtfully. He put down his cup, and leaned his cheek in his hand.

“…” he shook his head. “Too many holes. I don’t buy it.”

Cindy leaned against the window, suppressing a sigh. She’d worked with Kanahele long enough to know that her job was to be a fountain of ideas, good and bad and crazy. It was still always a little disappointing when the inspector wasn’t hooked, especially if she felt her theory was consistent.

“Who then?”
“Wakamoto. Kunitz.” He shook his head again. “Gotta be one of them.”
“Their alibis check out. And I know you don’t like Kunitz, sir, but you admit he doesn’t act like a man who’s just committed two murders.”
“He’s cocky,” Kanahele grumbled.
“Unless he’s a total psychopath, a murderer under investigation wouldn’t usually act that cocky.”
“So he’s a total psychopath.”

Cindy giggled.

“Well, Wakamoto then,” Rob said, regaining his calm. “We should get him in here again.”
Fujita nodded.
“Sir?” she inquired, politely. “How would Wakamoto have gotten into Anne Reynolds’ room?”
Kanahele frowned. “… The victim could have let him in. The cleaning staff all have universal keycards.”
“Why let him in? And why there?”

Rob leaned back and stretched. He closed his eyes, thoughtfully.

“There’s too many facts, Sergeant. Let’s take the time to tie them together.” He opened his eyes, following the distant path of a seabird in the wind. “Maybe something will turn up in the Villenza investigation to make the Ueshiba one click. I know we’re missing pieces to the puzzle, Sergeant,” he said. “We just have to look harder.”

- I WAS TOTALLY WRONG GUYS, AND THIS IS GOING TO BE A FOUR-PARTER, NOT A THREE-PARTER! STORY GOT CARRIED AWAY :D SO, THIS IS THE INSTALLMENT THAT IS TO BE CONCLUDED …NEXT TIME! -

ahhhhh

Thanks to the kind, prompt, and knowledgeable folks at WordPress support for de-noobing me about the ‘Post Revisions’ tab at the bottom of the page, and giving me back some holiday cheer. Previously lost 5000 word conclusion to Aloha has been restored. Might not manage to put it up before Christmas, sadly, what with this and that, but soon!!

Aloha from Hawaii (Part II)

Ken Wakamoto had an open, concerned expression when he first saw the policemen, but his expression closed up completely as soon as he heard the news. He accompanied them to the station stiffly, saying almost nothing. He identified Kazuma’s body with a nod, anguish hinting in his eyes but nowhere else as he stared fixedly at the dead face of the man he had loved. When Inspector Kanahele requested to ask him a few questions, Wakamoto shook his head, and asked for some time.

Realizing he was unlikely to get more than monosyllables from him at this time anyway, Kanahele accepted.

“Somebody accompany him back to the hotel. Make sure he doesn’t leave,” he told a uniformed officer. “We’ll give him a few hours to deal with his grief. Question people in the morning, when Wayne’s gotten all he needs to know from the autopsy. And Sergeant?” he turned to Fujita. “Go with them. See who else might know something about this. Let’s meet there at eight tomorrow and start talking to people. I’m going to see what I can arrange with our Mr. Oosterhout.”

***

The autopsy of Kazuma Ueshiba was brief and straightforward. Death had been caused by multiple blows to the back of the head with a blunt object between the hours of one and three AM on Tuesday, December 15th. The body had then been taken out to sea and dropped overboard, probably without being weighted first. Ocean waves had brought the body back to shore at around 2:20 PM on Thursday, December 17th, but not before scavenger fish had made off with small nibbles.

***

“Morning, Inspector,” Cindy waved. She was in a palm-tree-and-hibiscus print shirt and a modestly short linen skirt.
“Sergeant,” Rob eyed her. “What are you wearing?”
“Blending in with the tourists, sir,” she smiled, freckled nose crinkling.

Kanahele grunted, but didn’t argue. There was just no arguing with some people.

They went up the stairs and straight to Oosterhout’s office, where the manager was waiting for them, crisply dressed.

“Mr. Oosterhout.”
“Inspector,” Oosterhout nodded. “Er, miss. Please, sit down.”
“Thank you,” Kanahele did. Cindy followed suit. “You’ve prepared everything I mentioned yesterday?”

The manager smiled thinly. “It advantages no one for me to stand in the way of law enforcement in my hotel.” He made it sound like he expected not standing in their way would be to his advantage. “Cooperating fully strikes me as the simplest way to get this tied up quickly, and quietly.”
“Hm. So where should we set up?”
“I’ve put a suite at your disposal. Room 1112, it’s on the top floor,” he passed them both keycards. “It’s yours for as long as you need it, Inspector.”
“Thank you,” Kanahele nodded. “We’re also going to want to search some of the rooms.” He pulled the search warrant out of his briefcase, handed it to Oosterhout who looked it over.
“Fair enough,” the manager said tightly. “… You really think it was murder? And that one of our guests is responsible?”

Kanahele looked at Cindy, then at him. “It’s too early to say anything for sure, Mr. Oosterhout. But the coroner’s verdict was homicide, and when you look for a motive, you can’t get much further than this hotel for suspects.”

Oosterhout nodded. “I understand. Well, if you can keep it subtle that would be much appreciated,” he said. “We’ve had one journalist here already, who I managed to shoo away. But as tragic as this event has been for some of our guests, I don’t want it to sour the stays of other vacationers. You understand?”
“Of course,” Kanahele smiled a bit. “We’ll do our best.”
Oosterhout’s pale eyes showed relief.

***

Room 1112 was one of the smaller suites, but ample for the police’s needs. Kanahele and Fujita set up camp in the bedroom, laying out their notes on the spacious desk. The living area would be used to question relevant individuals, starting with Wakamoto himself, in half an hour. Kanahele eyed the bed warily, then opened the blinds wide and sat on the chair.

“Hey, you think Oosterhout’s gay?”
“What?” Cindy asked. “Probably, if he runs this place. I hadn’t thought about it. Why?”
“No reason. Do you have the files he gave you?”

Cindy handed him the packet. “Right here, sir.”
Rob pulled out the papers, and flipped through them. Ueshiba and Wakamoto had checked in on December 10th, in room 802. Scuba or surf equipment was rented on Wakamoto’s credit card every day until the 14th, and room service was called in every morning and sometimes at night. There were six phone calls to private numbers in Japan, each lasting at least ten minutes, four before the 14th and two since. No outsiders to the hotel had registered to visit the occupants of room 802. On December 14th, Ueshiba checked in to a separate room, 114, paid for by Wakamoto’s credit card. There had been no phone calls from that room or activity of any kind.
“Sergeant, can you go see if there’s a Do Not Disturb sign on the door of room 114?” he tossed her a roll of yellow tape. “Stick some of this over the door if there is. Or even if there isn’t. Might be a crime scene in there. We’ll go check after these interviews.”
Fujita nodded.

After she left, Rob stood and put some coffee on to brew. Swank hotel, he noted. They have good java.
He put the coffee pot on the windowsill to free up desk space, and looked out the window as the water boiled.

Phone calls. It was annoying that the numbers were blocked. He wondered if there was a way to get them, even if the hotel had no record of them. He’d get someone at the station to contact the phone company.

The suite had a view of the Pacific, and Rob watched the waves crest and break on the beach. It was good surfing weather out there. Getting better every day…
He thought again about the body being found a mile down the shore. If he could find out the strength of the current that night… maybe there was a way to estimate where the body had been dropped into the sea. But would that help them at all? They hadn’t even found the murder weapon or the scene of the crime yet. What use would finding the place the body had been thrown overboard be?

When Cindy returned, the pot was full of coffee but Kanahele hadn’t poured himself a cup yet.

“All done,” she smiled. “Do Not Disturb sign’s been there since Monday as far as the cleaning staff remembers, and it’s locked from the inside. Bolted.” She looked accomplished.
“Boats,” Rob said.
“What?”
“Make a note to find out who took out a boat on the night of the 14th. Someone braved the waves to throw Mr. Ueshiba into the deep blue. If it was someone from the hotel, they would have had to use a hotel boat, or else steal one somewhere. Let’s make sure to look into that.”

She nodded. “Good idea.”
Rob poured them both some coffee.
“For now, though, let’s start getting people in here. The bereaved boyfriend first.”

***

“You were lovers?”

Ken looked haggard. “This can’t get into the papers. Can you promise me this won’t get into the papers?” He pulled his hand over his ashen face. “We were supposed to be taking a quiet trip together incognito. This can’t become public. I’m an accomplished man of business. Rumors of me taking a vacation with my gay lover, I could have dealt with. Rumors that my gay lover was murdered while on vacation with me, it’s not so easy. Do you understand?” He frowned up at the detective. “This can’t get back to the people at home.”
“You seem awful concerned about your reputation, Mr. Wakamoto.” Rob looked at him.
“I have to be. Business is a careful game, Mr. inspector.”
“And is murder a careful game to you too, Mr. Wakamoto?”
Rob suppressed a cringe at Cindy’s flair for the dramatic.
Ken looked at her with hard eyes. “I didn’t kill Kazuma. I loved him.”

“That’s not what we gathered from other guests at the hotel,” Cindy pointed out, making a show of looking at her notes. “There were witnesses to a very public fight you had…? The evening before Mr. Ueshiba died.” She gave him a telling look.

He huffed out a frustrated sigh. “I didn’t kill him!” He scuffed his chair back.

“Why don’t you tell us exactly what did transpire between you two, then.” Kanahele looked at him. “Neither of us are journalists. We have no reason to leak anything to the papers.” We’re not going to protect you if you’re guilty, though, Rob thought to himself. Then, all bets are off.

“Where were you between the hours of one and three AM, on the evening from Monday to Tuesday?”
“I was in my room.”
“Alone?”
“No.”
“Who was with you?”
“Adam. I don’t know his last name.”

“You got over your little boyfriend pretty fast,” Kanahele pointed out.
Ken glared at him. “I believe there is a term, ‘rebound’?” he narrowed his eyes. “I am a free man to do what I chose. With who I chose.”

The inspector shrugged. “Sure. Just sayin’.” He looked at the big Japanese man. “Ever been to Hawaii before?”
“No,” Ken frowned. “Why?”
“No reason,” Kanahele said. “What made you pick Hawaii this time?”

Ken looked at his hands.
“Kazuma wanted it. He wanted to scuba dive and learn to surf. He wanted something more tropical and lush than Australia, which was what I had suggested in the first place, by the way. He…” Ken shook his head.
“I know this is hard to talk about,” Sgt. Fujita said, “but we’ve heard that Mr. Ueshiba’s behaviour in the day preceding his disappearance was strange. Do you support this observation?”
“Oh, definitely,” Wakamoto nodded, with vigor. “I’d never seen him like that. Sure, he acted self-destructively sometimes, but never like this. He was saying all sorts of bad things about himself, about how … how low and shameless and unclean he was, things like that. About how he was corrupting me. Which is nonsense,” Ken frowned with a shake of his head. “The kind of nonsense my daughter spews. But then again,” Ken’s voice became a low growl, “I shouldn’t be surprised about that anymore.”
“Why is that?”

Wakamoto looked at the inspector.
“Kazuma was having an affair with my daughter, Misato. That’s what our fight was about. It seems it was weighing on his conscience or something and he chose the most inopportune moment to tell me. In the buffet line early in our first vacation together.”

The police officers showed their surprise.

“I take it you had no suspicion of this?” Kanahele asked.

“None,” Ken scowled. “She hated him. At least, that’s what I thought,” he grumbled. “She either changed her mind or was lying from the start.”
“Or Kazuma was lying,” Cindy mentioned.
Wakamoto gave her a sharp look. “What would make you say that?”
She shrugged, and looked at Kanahele sheepishly. The inspector considered.
“He could have been trying to anger you.”
“Well, anger me he did. I broke up with him on the spot.” He narrowed his eyes at the inspector. “I don’t know what you’re trying to imply, but he seemed quite sincere. He was very drunk. Like it was something that he needed a lot of alcoholic help in letting off his chest. And he was never the type to make up stories, anyway.”

“Do you think we could have a phone number at which to reach your daughter? Have you been in contact with her since Mr. Ueshiba’s revelation to you?”
Wakamoto sobered. “Oh. No, I haven’t… I … was so upset with Kazuma… I didn’t think to call her. Perhaps,” he ran a hand over his forehead, “I didn’t want confirmation that it was true. I don’t know how I’ll face her next.”
“Does she live with you?”
He shook his head. “No. She lives alone. She’s 20 and studying at Keio University, she took an apartment closer to campus not to have to handle crowded transit times. She often comes home on the weekends, though.”
“Do you have a wife?” Kanahele asked.
Wakamoto smiled a little. “No, inspector. She died when Misato was seven. Car accident,” he pulled down his collar, revealing a gashlike scar on his clavicle.
“So you raised your daughter alone?” This was Cindy.
“Yes,” Wakamoto nodded.
“When did Kazuma Ueshiba enter your life?”

Ken’s expression clouded again. “We met a little over a year ago. We’ve – we’d been seeing each other since Christmas last year.”
“And your daughter, she didn’t like him?”
Ken sighed, grudgingly. “Inspector, I’ve had a number of lovers since my wife’s death 13 years ago. I usually hid it from Misato, but in time I thought she should understand that I had a personal life. I thought she would understand. She became terribly upset when she found out. This was with the man I had been seeing before Kazuma. Misato was about seventeen, I’d say. I thought she would be mature enough. She has always been a terribly serious girl, very no-nonsense, very good at her studies, very rational about boys. A model daughter, if a little too straight-laced, perhaps. I can’t believe she’d –” Ken frowned, and shook his head.
“But you didn’t think to check with her yourself that what Mr. Ueshiba had said was correct, rather you chose to believe your drunken lover.”

Ken had a sad chuckle. “When you put it that way…”
He sighed.
“Should I call her?”
Fujita shook her head. “If you haven’t contacted her yet, perhaps you should leave it up to us.”

Wakamoto nodded, looking exhausted.
“Thank you. I’d rather not have to cross that bridge yet, myself.” He shook his head slowly, with a dark expression.

“One more question, Mr. Wakamoto,” Rob leaned back in his chair, eyeing his notes. “Several phone calls were placed from your hotel room, all to private numbers in Japan. One on the 11th, two on the 12th, one on the 14th, one on the 15th, and one yesterday.” He looked at him. “Who were you calling?”

Ken shook his head. “Business,” he said, looking introspective, trying to recall. “I’m not sure about all of them, some might have been Kazuma. But I got two important emails while I was here, one the day I arrived and one a few days later. I needed to make some calls to my office or my colleagues to resolve things.” He looked at Cindy. “And yesterday, I called my lawyer,” he had a sincere expression. “As you surely understand.”

“We may need to confiscate your computer,” Kanahele mentioned.
“Am I being charged with anything?” Wakamoto looked at him levelly, sitting straight.
“Not yet.”
“But I am a suspect.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure you understand why, Mr. Wakamoto,” Cindy said.
Wakamoto sighed. “Of course. I would suspect myself as well. I need my laptop to continue work. Just because a tragedy has befallen here does not stop life from moving on back home. And I believe you will need a special warrant to claim my belongings -”
“We have it,” Kanahele said. He pulled it from the desk.
Wakamoto huffed. “Then there’s nothing I can do, obviously. I do not wish to let my laptop out of my sight. There are certain documents on there that contain proprietary information for my business. Is this truly necessary?”

“We’ll hold on to your laptop for you, Mr. Wakamoto,” Rob said. “You’ll get it back, don’t worry.”

Wakamoto sighed.

***

“So, Ueshiba was cheating on him with his daughter, huh? That must sting.”
“Enough for murder?”
“A lot of things that would surprise you have been reason enough for murder,” Kanahele mused. “One time, early in my career, this woman killed her neighbour because she had stolen her kalua pig for the July 4th luau. Heck, my ex-wife once threatened to kill the girl at the pet salon who mixed up two customer jobs and ended up shaving my wife’s damn Yorkie.”

Cindy smiled. The inspector almost never spoke of his ex-wife.
She stirred some coffee whitener into her cup.

“He’s right, though. We do need a special warrant to search his computer.”
“Yeah, but we can grab the machine under this one. We’re just not allowed to turn it on. But he doesn’t have to know that.”
“Trying to make his life difficult?”
“Trying to protect possible evidence from deletion, Sergeant,” Kanahele said sternly.
“Right. Sorry, sir,” Cindy sipped her coffee sheepishly.

Kanahele grunted. “Who’s up next?”
“Cleaning staff. The five who cover the floors where events we’ve deemed important in this investigation took place. Should we interview them separately?”
“Nah,” Rob said. “Just bring ‘em up all at once. This should be quick.”

***

Five young men were ushered into the room. Most were quite pretty, and the only notable exception had an equally notable musculature. Kanahele pursed his lips as he looked up at him.

“All right. Who’ve we got here. Sigmund? Villenza? Sawada? Del Vecchio? Yamamoto.” The boys either raised their hands or mumbled when their names were called. He could tell this would not be a talkative bunch. “Right. The night of December 14th. Where were you? What do you remember? You first, Sigmund.”

Jon Sigmund, the one with the physique, fidgeted. “I… I was vacuuming the hallways,” he said.
“Where would you have been between 1:00 and 3:00?”
“Uhh… I start at the top floor and make my way down, and my shift starts at midnight, soo….” He shuffled in his seat. “I guess I was… on the 9th and 8th and 7th,” he said. “It takes me about 40, 45 minutes to do a floor.”
“Do you know when you would have been on the 8th floor? Exactly?”
Sigmund shrugged. “Not exactly. I don’t remember. But probably, uhh,” he did some math in his head. It took a minute. “Well, like approximately 2 to 3, I guess. Bit after, I dunno.”

Kanahele nodded. That would have to do. “And, did you see any activity at all? people going in or out of rooms?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sigmund said. “A few times.”
“What about room 802?”
The tall boy frowned, thoughtfully.
“….That’s the one at the end of the hall. No,” he shoook his head.
“You sure?”
Sigmund nodded decisively. “Yeah. No one went in or out that I saw.”
“The door was always in your line of sight?”
“Oh, no,” the tall boy blinked. “Half of the time I’m doing the other wing.”
Kanahele had an internal sigh. “Can you tell me as exactly as possible the time you would have been able to see the door to room 802?”

Sigmund thought for a minute. “Probably 2:15 to 2:45. Give or take a little.”
The inspector jotted this down. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” the boy said.
“Sawada,” Kanahele said next. “You were also on duty that night. Correct?”

The small cleaner nodded.
“Where were you between 1:00 and 3:00?”
Sawada nibbled his bottom lip, and when he finally spoke Kanahele could see the hesitation was probably not due to shyness, but rather because English was not his mother tongue.
“I was cleaning, in the dining room, after all the dining was finished. Washing the carpet, with the machine.”
The inspector nodded. “This would have been the main dining room? The one with the carrot soup incident?”
Sawada smiled a bit, lips squeezing together, and he nodded.
“And then?”
“At 2:30 I put away the machine in the storage cabinet at the end of the first floor hallway. And then I went to bed.”
“Did you see any activity at room 114?”
Sawada nibbled his girlish lip. “Mmm….. No.”

“Anyone else?” Kanahele asked. “Anyone was around the 8th floor or the 1st floor on Dec. 14th?”
“I was there earlier,” bleach-blond Del Vecchio said. “Like, around supper time. I totally saw that guy who died? I saw him move into that room. Like, at like, 8 or whatever.”
“Did you,” the inspector said. “Did he seem upset?”
“Ohhhhhhh yeah,” Del Vecchio nodded. “Really a lot. He put on the Do Not Disturb sign like, right away, and that was that.”
“What time did you say this was?”

The boy scratched a pimple on his neck. “I dunno, like, 8 maybe? Sorry, I’m not sure.”

“Anyone else saw anything going on around room 114 or room 802? That night or since then?”

There was some silence.
Yamamoto shook his head. “Uh. I clean the rooms on the first floor,” he said. “In the mornings. Never been in 114 since that guy took it. I knock, no answer. Always the sign.” He shook his head, frowning. “You know, when the sign is up, you just don’t go in. How should I have known he was dead, you know!”
Kanahele nodded. “No one’s blaming you.” He looked across their assorted little faces. “Anything else?”

Silence, fidgeting.
“Well, if anyone remembers anything new, me or one of my colleagues will reachable at this room at all times. If you want to say something anonymously, that’s okay too. All right? Just call. I’ll be staying overnight, too.” He looked across them again, and was met by some nods.

“All right. Thanks for your time.”

***

“Hnh, well, no smoking gun there.” Kanahele stood and walked to the window.
“You’re staying overnight, inspector?”
“I might as well,” he said. “I’ll go pick up a couple shirts and stuff at home, later. We’ve got a hotel room, might as well use it. Sure saves travel time.”
Cindy smiled. “And me?”
“Oh, you go home,” Rob said, encouragingly. “You’ve got those cats to feed and all that, right? There’s no need for you to stick around once we’re done for the day, if you’re back early tomorrow.”
“Early like seven?”
“Mm.” Kanahele sat back down.”So, who have we got next?”

“The guy Wakamoto replaced his boyfriend with. Mister rebound.” Fujita opened a thin file. “And I’ve got to say, he’s an interesting one.”

***

“Adam Kunitz?”
“That’s me.” Adam stretched out his legs under the table.
“Quite the little arrest record you have here, Adam. Five counts of petty larceny. Twelve of public indecency. One of urinating in public–”
“I was extremely drunk,” Adam was compelled to point out.
“– and two of assault.” Cindy pushed her glasses up her nose, and eyed him.

“Never convicted,” Adam objected.

Cindy continued her wilting librarian gaze. Adam found it disconcertingly sexy.

“No convictions,” he repeated. “Give me a break. Officially, I did nothing wrong.”

Kanahele took the helm. “Mr. Kunitz, what do you do for a living?”
Adam turned his quirky blue stare to the Inspector. “Oh, this and that.”

“You were sleeping with Ken Wakamoto. Correct?”
“Correct,” Adam smiled. “That’s not a crime, is it?”
“Not in this state,” Rob replied deadpan.

“Where were you on the night of the 14th to the 15th, between one and three AM?”
Adam chuckled. “You don’t mince words, do you. Fine. I was in bed.”
“Alone?”
“With Ken Wakamoto.” he looked at the two detectives, daringly. “And we weren’t sleeping, in case that was your next question.”

“Did you know Kazuma Ueshiba?” Cindy asked.
Adam shook his head. “I saw the fight. That’s all. Never talked to him.”
“How did you meet Mr. Wakamoto?”
“Happened to be sitting next to him at the bar, after the fight,” Adam laced his hands behind his head. “Guy had been having a rough day, so I offered to cheer him up.”
“By killing his ex-boyfriend?”

Adam laughed.
“Ha! Good one, Inspector. You really aren’t subtle at all, and I like that,” his blue eyes caught and pinned Kanahele’s. “Anyway, the answer’s no. I offered to suck his dick, Inspector,” Adam said, playful eyes searching to see – and finding, with catlike satisfaction – that he could make the big detective flinch, even if just a little.

“You’re not afraid of the police, are you, Mr. Kunitz.”
Adam smiled. “Should I be?” he quirked an eyebrow.

Kanahele suppressed the urge to – to sock him, or walk out the door, or say something deeply inappropriate or something. But he was not by nature an angry man, and even if Kunitz rubbed him exactly the wrong way he wasn’t going to let it get to him.

“Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened between the fight and the next morning – excluding,” the inspector winced, interrupting Adam who was eagerly piping up – “excluding the intimate details. They have no bearing on this case.”

Adam smiled, and crossed his legs. “Okay, Inspector,” he smiled coyly. He rolled his shoulders, and began.

***

The fight had been very public indeed. Adam had been about to leave the dining room, having eaten early, but was intrigued by the hullabaloo. He had slipped out when Kazuma broke the tureen on the floor, and gone to the bar next door. This was maybe 8:30.
He stayed in the bar drinking Amaretto Sours until Wakamoto showed up. This would have been a little before 9:00. He was on his second one.
No, he hadn’t seen Wakamoto or Kazuma leave the dining room. But Wakamoto had presumably returned to his room to change his shirt in the interval, since Kazuma had poured soup on it before, and when he entered the bar it was clean.

Adam had mentioned seeing the quarrel, Wakamoto said something noncommittal, Adam offered to buy him a drink. Wakamoto declined, then asked if Adam was making a pass at him, to which Adam answered yes. This second offer was not declined, and after a quick drink they went back to Wakamoto’s room. There was no one else in the room, and Kazuma’s things were no longer in it. This would have been 9:20, 9:30 maybe. Wakamoto had told Adam that he had not had to tell Kazuma to get his things out, but that he had done it apparently by himself. He said he had left Kazuma enough money to get a room of his own, if he wanted, or take a plane back to Japan, and that he really didn’t care which of these he chose to do, so long as he never saw him again.

For the next forty minutes they were occupied together.

At 10:14 precisely – he had glanced at the clock – Adam went into the bathroom and took a shower. He remained in the bathroom for fifteen to twenty minutes. He heard nothing from the bedroom, but over the running water there wouldn’t have been much to hear anyway. When he exited the bathroom, Wakamoto appeared to be asleep. Adam looked around the room at his leisure and made a sound that woke Wakamoto approximately five minutes later.

Sometime between 11:00 and 11:30 (the time would have to be checked with hotel records) they ordered room service. Wakamoto had skipped dinner, angered at Kazuma’s behaviour, and was hungry. He ate liver and caramelized onions. Adam had a lobster tail with melted butter. They also ordered a bottle of champagne.

Sometime after midnight Wakamoto went into the bathroom and took a shower as well. Adam did not check the clock then. Yes, it could have been as late as 1:00, but that was unlikely. Anyway, the bathroom had no windows or anything, no way for Wakamoto to exit without being seen by Adam. He was in there for about 20 minutes, maybe a little more. Adam watched TV during that time, and drank champagne. It was a program on birds-of-paradise, and another channel had wrestling, and the others were completely unmemorable and he couldn’t remember details if he tried.

The next precise time Adam is sure about is 1:20, when he and Wakamoto finished the champagne. The subsequent hour and a half, to Adam’s estimation, was occupied with pleasant activities of a nature which have no bearing on this investigation. Afterward Adam visited the bathroom again, and was in there for approximately ten minutes. He again returned to find Wakamoto napping. To his recollection, he himself closed his eyes to sleep at 3:40. The time Wakamoto was out of his sight was probably from 2:50 to 3:00, or something like that.

Adam woke up at around 11:00 AM and Wakamoto was still sleeping. No, he doesn’t know if Wakamoto left during the night. Unlikely, because his heavy arm was squashing him for part of the night at least. But it was possible. Adam tended to have trouble falling asleep, but once he was out he was a very heavy sleeper.

In the morning they ordered room service again and didn’t leave the hotel room until dinner, which they went to together, in the same large dining room where Kazuma had made a scene because, according to Wakamoto, the hotel had presumably banned Kazuma from ever eating there again, and since he wanted to avoid the boy at all costs he would make sure not to eat elsewhere for the remainder of his stay.

There was nothing more to tell.

***

“I don’t like that Kunitz guy.”
“You think he did it?”

Cindy poured them both a cup of cofee from the pot on the windowsill.
“Not a big motive,” Kanahele admitted. He would have liked to have been able to pin this on Kunitz. The guy had no respect.
Cindy brought the inspector his coffee.
“He wants to keep being the big guy’s boyfriend to keep his supply of cash, our victim comes to try and make up with the boyfriend, Kunitz panics and kills him.”
“But Kunitz wasn’t Wakamoto’s boyfriend. Thanks,” Rob took the cup. “At least, not in any significant way. From what I gather Wakamoto was just acting out, as a response to Ueshiba’s betrayal.” He sipped and winced. Too hot. “He can’t have assumed he’d keep getting Wakamoto’s money once this had blown over.”
“After all this, though,” Cindy mused, leaning against the bed. “The tragedy with Ueshiba. I mean, Kunitz could comfort the big guy and worm his way into his heart, maybe even go back to Japan with him,” she pointed out. “He seemed pretty reckless. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Rob looked thoughtfully at nothing. Then he shook his head.
“Wakamoto’s too protective of his reputation. He’d never bring back some foreign hustler to replace his murdered lover. He’d never do it. Maybe if Kunitz was a woman – I don’t know.”
He sipped.
“Couple of intriguing windows of time for Wakamoto to sneak out and off the boyfriend, though. And for Kunitz, too.”
“But never more than ten or twenty minutes, you heard him,” Cindy sipped her coffee… “Not enough to take the body out to sea and dump it and be back in time to not get caught.”
“Unless one of them kills him while the other’s in the shower, stashes the corpse somewhere, then takes him out while the other guy’s sleeping, later in the night. Could still fit with Wayne’s report.”

Cindy nibbled her lip. “Ueshiba comes into the room, finds one of them, something occurs that leads to him bashing Ueshiba’s head in?”
“Something like that,” Ken frowned. It still didn’t quite feel right.
“And then they have sex while one of them knows there’s a dead body in the room? That’s pretty gross, inspector.” She made a face.

Kanahele chuckled. “Who knows, some people might get off on that. Might have stashed it under the bed even,” he laughed, with distaste.
“Ewwwwww.”

Cindy sipped her coffee. Ew.
“–Well, there’d certainly be evidence of that in Wakamoto’s hotel room.”
“Yep,” Rob sipped. He stood up. “It’s warrant time.”

***

Anna just couldn’t find the wherewithal to leave the hotel. At first, even leaving her room was too much – but when the images of the boy’s dead face started appearing behind her eyes every time she closed them, she knew she had to follow Stacy’s advice and do something to distract herself. She had nothing to do with the crime, anyway. She was just unlucky. She’d have to put it behind her. It wasn’t her problem.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the hotel. She tried once to step onto the beach, and started hyperventilating. So that was out.
She went to the hotel giftshop and spent an hour browsing. In the end, she bought a trashy faux-Victorian romance novel – the most brainless thing she could find – as well as four candy bars and a novelty snow globe of a beach scene with little penis-shaped confetti instead of snow. It was ludicrous enough to make her smile.

She found an armchair hidden behind a potted plant near a window in a top-floor hallway, and huddled into it, tucking her feet under her. She unwrapped a candy bar and shook her little penis globe. Pleased, she put it down on the windowsill, and started reading.

Buxley Van Velmont was just beginning to press burning kisses of passion at Melvina’s heaving bosom when Anna noticed a shadow fall over her pages.

She looked up, with a breath.
The man smiled, and cocked a hip, standing casually.

“You’re the girl who found him, aren’t you,” Adam observed.

Anne’s face darkened, and she closed her book, keeping a finger at the page.
“Yeah.”
“Must have been awful.”

Anna sighed.
“Do you want something?” She glanced up.

Adam rocked back on his heels.
“I’m curious, that’s all.”
“Well go be curious somewhere else, please.” Her eyes were tired. “I don’t want to talk to you. In fact, I don’t want to talk to anyone. So unless you have something specific you want, I’d appreciate being left alone.”

Adam leaned against the windowsill.
“Fair enough,” he admitted. He shuffled a fashionably-sneakered foot on the carpeting, lost in reflection.

Anne stared at him. When it seemed he was just going to stand there, she rolled her eyes and resumed reading.

She was barely a few lines back into the heaving bosoms when she noticed Adam pick up her snow globe. He giggled.
“May I?”
She sighed and nodded. He turned it upside down, then righted it and watched all the tiny flat penises float down to the sand and sea.

Anna put down her book and looked at him, flatly.
“Okay, so what do you want?”

Adam fidgeted, shaking the snow globe.
“Well. I think I want to know what you told the police. I get the feeling I’m their main suspect. You wouldn’t happen to know why?”
“I think that should be obvious,” Anna raised an eyebrow. “But I didn’t tell them anything about you, I don’t even know anything about you. You’re that guy the dead guy’s boyfriend is, uh, seeing, aren’t you?”
Adam pursed his lips. “Uh-huh. Is, or was, I mean, murder throws a hell of a damper on a relationship.”

Anne regarded him. He seemed nice enough. From a completely different planet than she was, but probably a decent guy in his own way.
She sighed. “Listen, you seem like a nice guy and all, but I really don’t have the energy to talk right now. You weren’t out there. You don’t know what it was like to find that corpse washed up on the beach.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I… appreciate that you’ve got valid concerns or whatever, that you’re not just a nosy bastard like some people. But I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know you or that guy you’re with. I just told the police about the fight I’d seen. With the soup. If you ask me,” Anne looked up at him, “the boyfriend’s a bigger suspect than you are.” She crossed her arms. “Unless, I guess, you’ve got something to hide.”

Adam blinked coyly. “Me?” he quirked a smile. “Not in a million years.”

***

“Ah, Inspector!” Wakamoto stood tall, glaring at the policeman. “They won’t let me into my own room. Is there something I should know?”
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to do a search of the room,” Sgt. Fujita said.

“I see,” Wakamoto stepped back. He huffed. Eyed the two detectives, and the other two officers, one of them in uniform, that stood outside his room. “Well. I’ll be out of your hair then. Let me know when you’re done.”
He turned, and stalked off.

Sgt. Fujita watched him leave, and sighed.
“Funny guy, isn’t he, Inspector?”
“We’re about to find out just how funny he is,” Rob fished out the universal keycard Oosterhout had given him, and slotted it into the lock. “Sgt. Henderson, thanks for joining us.”

The officer not in uniform smiled. “My pleasure, Inspector. How about I get the lowdown on what we’re looking at here?”

***

Forensic squad work was almost always one of two things: digusting and really really hard, or disgusting and really really boring. Sometimes it managed to be both at once. But Tommy Henderson didn’t care. He’d never had a problem with gore and could handle smells better than most people, and when his enthusiasm and skills had snagged him one of Maui County’s few forensic science jobs, he’d jumped at the chance, and never looked back. With the help of the two detectives, he made short work of Wakamoto’s room.

“Well, so this place is clean,” Fujita pronounced, crossing her rubber-gloved arms.
“Manner of speaking,” Tommy quipped, hoisting a rubbery dildo and dropping it gingerly back in the drawer beside the Gideons’.
“Fairly inappropriate, Henderson,” Rob said impassibly, without looking up from Wakamoto’s day-planner.
“Sorry, Inspector.” Tommy rolled his eyes at Cindy, behind Rob’s back. She smiled a little.

“Well, what’s important is that this isn’t a crime scene, anyway,” Cindy said. She peeled off her gloves and tossed them in the garbage that she had just looked through. “No blood or other fluids anywhere except those you usually find in a hotel room. Right, Tommy?”
Tommy smiled. “That’s it,” he said. “And yeah, hotel rooms are nasty. Did you know most hotel comforters have like twelve different DNA splashes on ‘em?”
“DNA splashes?” Cindy asked.
“Semen,” Rob sighed. He looked up. “I saw that on TV, CSI was it?”

Tommy grinned and shook his head. Kanahele could be such a spoilsport.

“Well, it’s probably more than twelve in this place, anyway,” Tommy said. “But Cindy’s right. No blood, no murder weapon, no signs of struggle, nothing. If your guy killed his boyfriend, it’s not here that he did it.”

Kanahele sighed, and snapped Wakamoto’s planner shut.
“Nothing telling in any of his stuff, either.” He wasn’t expecting to find an entry like 2:25 AM – bludgeon Kazuma, but still.

“Well, we can check 114 next,” Cindy said, cheerfully. “You’ve got nowhere to be, right, Tommy?”

“Me? Nah,” Tommy removed his gloves. “Not like it’s the season for Christmas shopping or anything like that. Who’s in room 114?”
“It’s the one Wakamoto got for the victim after their breakup. It’s been locked since his death, by all accounts.”
“Should we check that redhead’s room too?” Cindy inquired.
“Kunitz? Yeah, might as well.”
“Who’s Kunitz?”
“Wakamoto’s new playmate,” Kanahele scratched his cheek. “Took up with him just after the fight.”
“Suspect?” Tommy packed his equipment into his duffel bag.
“Kinda. One or the other of them probably did it. They’re each other’s alibis, though,” Rob admitted. “Were in here doing God knows what while the murder was committed.”
“So? they couldn’t be in it together?” Tommy asked. He looked at the two detectives.

Cindy leaned against the door. “They’d sort of have to be, if everything happened the way Kunitz said. If we’ve determined that the murder wasn’t committed in this room, then if Kunitz’ timing holds there’s a problem. There’s just not enough time for either of them to do it in those short windows where one was out of the other’s sight. Not anywhere but here.”
“Hn. They did have a few minutes. We should canvas any place that’s within 5 minutes walk of this room that Wakamoto or Kunitz could have had access to,” Kanahele stated. “Somewhere one could have done the deed or at least stashed a body while waiting for the other guy to fall asleep, and then get it from there to bring it outside.”
“That’s a lot of carrying a dead body,” Henderson stated. “You’d leave some kind of trail. And what, down the elevators? Stairs? From the 8th floor?”
Kanahele had a long grunt. “Not the greatest idea, I know.”

“I mean,” Henderson mused, “maybe if they had worked together…” He gave a rakish smile, championing his idea.
Rob shook his head. “Why would they? They barely knew each other.”
“Maybe Wakamoto’s lying,” Cindy suggested, getting on Tommy’s bandwagon. “You know, just acting the all offended, respectable type. Or, hey, maybe they’re both lying – maybe they’ve been lovers for longer than they’re letting on, and arranged this trip to get rid of the boyfriend, so they could be together. What do you think?”

Kanahele carefully picked up the metal case in which he had stored Wakamoto’s laptop.
“It’s possible, I guess,” he shrugged. “Unlikely, though. Kunitz is a crook. What it looks like to me is that he makes his livelihood sucking impressionable tourist sugar daddies dry.” He winced. Pun not intended. “No, I don’t think they knew each other before coming here. But,” he admitted, “it’s an interesting idea. Keep it in mind,” he nodded appreciatively to Cindy. “Snoop around, see if you can back it up with anything. But,” he shook his head, “unless your theory’s right, them working together doesn’t ring true to me. It makes sense, to you, to conspire to kill your ex-boyfriend with someone who’s fleecing you of your money?”

Cindy looked at him.
“Who says Wakamoto knows he’s being fleeced?”

***

“You knew?”
“I didn’t rise to where I am in business by not noticing where my money goes.”

Wakamoto slowly swirled the ice cubes in his scotch, slouched in the armchair in Adam’s hotel room. The redhead fidgeted nearby.

Wakamoto sipped.
“I don’t care whether or not you have feelings for me, Adam.”
“But I do,” Adam sat down on the bed near Ken, and looked up, blue eyes troubled.
Ken chuckled. “Sexual feelings do not count.”
“They do, though,” Adam frowned. “I mean -” he looked away. “…I’ll give you back what I took, if you ask me to.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Adam looked at him again. “Because – I don’t know why, Ken. I like you. You’re… different.”

Wakamoto had a hearty laugh.
“Oh!” He exclaimed. “I’m different. Oh Adam,” Ken smiled and tapped Adam’s cheek with an open palm, softly. “You’re hustling me, you young charmer. I know a confidence artist when I see one. Do you have formal theatrical training, or is it all improvised?”
“Dammit!” Adam wrenched himself away from him, stalking across the carpet angrily. “I’m not conning you! Not any more. I really do like you. Fuck,” Adam’s hands raked through his red hair, “I’ve done this to myself, haven’t I. I’m the boy who fucking cried wolf. No one’s ever gonna believe me about anything anymore.” He glanced at Wakamoto, flushed.

“Quite a performance,” Ken smiled. It was a warm smile. “Adam…”
He stood, and put down his drink. He walked over to him softly, and put his hands on his shoulders. “I don’t care, Adam. Do you understand that? I don’t believe a word that comes out of your talented little mouth, but it makes no difference to me. So you use me for my money. You think that’s something new to me? At least you’re more open about it than Kazuma was. He would have flown into a rage if anyone had implied he was a confidence man, of course,” he mused… “But he was no different than you.”

Wakamoto looked down into Adam’s eyes, searchingly.
“You’re more honest with yourself than he ever was, even if you lie to everyone else. Kazuma… Kazuma lied to himself while spewing uncareful truths to anyone who would listen.”

Adam returned Ken’s gaze, for a long time. Then, he sighed.
“You really loved him,” he said.

Ken nodded, turning away and going back to his armchair. “Yes.” He picked up his drink.
“Did you kill him?”

Adam looked at him evenly.
Ken met his eyes.

After half a minute, Ken looked away.

“No. I didn’t kill him.”
He heaved a sigh.
“Did you?”

Adam had a weak smile, and walked over to sit on the bed again.
“No.”

Ken nodded, once.

“Well someone did.” He looked up, introspectively. “And I want to know who. And why.”

- TO BE CONCLUDED -

Aloha from Hawaii (Part I)

Anne never knew you could sing ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ in Hawaiian. But that’s unambiguously what it was, being performed live by the band in the bar of the Maui Grotto Beach Hotel and Resort. She sipped her daiquiri through a shocking-pink straw and sighed. Luscious, gorgeous men everywhere, and nary a one for her.

“I hate you,” she told her friend Stacy, for perhaps the twentieth time. Stacy worked with Anne as a legal assistant at Cromway, Hellerman and Wu in Indianapolis.
“Drink your daiquiri,” Stacy said, tossing her short hair. “You’ll hate me less.”
“Nope,” Anne sipped noisily. “I really don’t think I will. In fact,” Anne shifted on her stool, looking Stacy in the eye. “I’m gonna hate you more, because I’ll be drunk and easy and want to get laid with some hot vacationing hunk, and because of you, I won’t be able to. Argh,” Anne exclaimed, and sipped her drink with a vengeance.

Stacy sighed. “I told you, it was a mistake.”
“It was not a mistake. I know you. You booked us at a goddamned gay resort because you like to gawk.”
“Can’t say there isn’t a lot of eye candy,” Stacy admitted with a catlike grin, green eyes following the barely-clad buttocks of a tanned beauty.

“My eyes aren’t the ones wanting a freewheeling holiday. Where’s the candy for my vagina, Stacy.”

The band stopped in time for her words to carry loudly. Two men sitting near her at the bar shifted uncomfortably and left. Anne gave an exasperated sigh, hunched possessively over her daiquiri, and proceeded to ignore everything.

***

For Ken Wakamoto, the holidays were shaping up quite differently. The sexiest boy he’d ever met was hanging on his arm and on his every word, laughing and grinning and looking at him with eyes that just begged to do the things they did in their room when the parties and buffets were over. Kazuma had been his lover for just a year this Christmas – he had taken him to Hawaii to celebrate in lavish style, far from the restrictions of their usual lives. Taken him where his daughter Misato, barely younger than Kazuma, couldn’t give them disapproving glares whenever she was in the room. Taken him where no one would know or care that he was regional manager for a chain of high-end clothing stores. Just taken him somewhere romantic and tropical and free.

Well. Far from free, really. Ken had a lot of money, and Kazuma certainly enjoyed spending it.

Ken watched his lover slip into the skin-tight scuba gear, and decided he had no problems with letting Kazuma waste his hard-earned fortune.
“Aren’t you going to scuba with me?” Kazuma pleaded, grinning.
“I don’t know. I’m too old for that.”
“Oh, don’t say that! You’re not. Cap’n, tell him he’s not.”

The man referred to, a quiet-faced Hawaiian scuba instructor, looked at Wakamoto.
“Don’t think so. How old are you?”
“48,” Ken replied.
“I’m 41 myself. You should be fine. want to join your friend? The reefs are beautiful.”
“Come on, the reefs,” Kazuma tugged on Ken’s arm, smiling coyly. “You won’t regret it~…”
“Well, all right then,” Ken quirked a smile.
The scuba instructor picked out a large wetsuit for Ken. Kazuma pulled him into the changing booth to help him fit into his gear, and indeed, Ken did not regret it.

***

The Maui Grotto Beach Hotel and Resort took up thirty acres of prime real estate stretching out to the Pacific ocean. These included swaths of pristine private beaches (one of them nudist) and snorkeling and diving areas for the exclusive use of resort patrons. Originally built in 1994, it had catered to golfers and their families before being bought out by Pride Resorts International in 2006; now completely renovated, with extra swimming pools, cutting-edge decor, and an all-night disco, it had quickly become the number one destination for gay and lesbian vacationers on the island. The Grotto Beach Hotel prided itself on its accommodating nature, offering a variety of adventure and leisure activities, both exotic and urban, as well as both pub-style fare and four-star fine cuisine between its three dining rooms and two bars. It was a sizable venture: the hotel and its affiliated services provided employment for over two hundred staff, which were picked mostly from locals, albeit with an unspoken but obvious aesthetic bias. If no such criterion existed for those operating behind the scenes – chefs and sous-chefs and dishwashers, office managers and web designers – or those in positions requiring special qualifications – chief of security, scuba instructor, nurse – the vast majority of employees of the Maui Grotto Hotel and Resort were clearly picked for their charms as well as their skills. Rather than making their desk clerks, wait staff and cleaning staff unremarkable, the Grotto Hotel had chosen to make them part of the attraction.

One such attraction refilled the champagne flutes of the two Japanese men waiting in line at the lavish dinner buffet. Kazuma gave him a rakish leer, which warranted a light elbow to the ribs from his lover.
“You’re always making eyes at people. One would think you’re single. Stop that.”
“I do what I want,” Kazuma challenged.
“Sure, but I don’t want people getting ideas.”

Kazuma downed his champagne.
“They can get whatever ideas they want.”
“You’re drunk,” Ken mentioned in an undertone, eyes fixing the younger man’s eyes.
“I do what I want,” Kazuma repeated.

Ken sighed. Kazuma had been acting strangely ever since their second evening here.
He shuffled forward as the line moved. Butter and rolls were almost in reach.

“You’re ignoring me,” Kazuma said, poking Ken in the back.
“I have to, sometimes,” Ken replied evenly.
“Why? Do you hate me that much?”
Ken turned, and faced him again.
“You’re stupid sometimes. Of course I don’t hate you. Would I take someone I hated on vacation to Hawaii? Answer me that.”
Kazuma lifted his chin, trying to compete with Ken’s height. But he gave no answer.

Ken sighed again, and shuffled with the line.

He piled two rolls onto his plate, and took some butter. He moved to let his lover get to the buffet as well.

“You should hate me,” Kazuma said then, taking a rye roll. “I’m careless and selfish.”
Ken sighed for a third time. “You’re just spoiled,” he said. “I spoil you, I know it. It’s my own fault, so I can’t complain.”
“I’m ruining you,” Kazuma insisted. “Financially and morally.”
“Now you just sound like my daughter,” Ken chuckled, moving ahead. “I’ve got enough money, and I was morally ruined long before you were even born, darling. You shouldn’t listen to Misato.”

Kazuma fidgeted with his glass. He gestured to a champagne waiter impatiently, who came trotting over.
“Seriously, what does it take to get service here?” The waiter apologized as he poured. “Yeah whatever. Just be faster next time.”
“You’ve had enough, Kazuma.”
“Don’t act like you’re my father!” some of Kazuma’s champagne splashed over.
“If you stopped being so childish, I wouldn’t have to.” Ken quietly served himself a bowl of cream of carrot soup. “You’re older than Misato, start acting your age.”
“Her again!” Kazuma laughed, moving forward with the line. He drank champagne. “You don’t even know, do you?” Kazuma grabbed the soup ladle. “Your innocent prudish little angel. That’s what she is to you, isn’t she? The balancing opposite of your philandering, lascivious self.”

Ken drew himself up to his full height and stared Kazuma down. His voice was quiet and commanding, if fraying a little on the edges.
“Quit it, Kazuma. I don’t know what you’re up to but you’re being very loud about it. If there’s something you need to talk about then let’s do it later, when we get back to the room. There’s no need to make a scene like this. Have some shame.” He turned aside, sternly, and moved up the line.

“Scene?” Kazuma scoffed, loudly. “That wasn’t a scene. This is a scene.”
He took the ladle out of the soup tureen, and emptied it onto the floor in an exaggerated gesture.

***

“There’s a guy emptying soup onto the floor,” Anne pointed out boredly.
“Mm-hm, and all of them buck-naked —what?”
“Soup,” Anne repeated. “Floor.” She pointed to the kerfuffle by the buffet table, where a puddle of orange was rapidly spreading near Kazuma’s feet.

Stacy turned. “Well would you look at that. Lover’s tiff, you think?”
Anne shrugged. “Probably.”
“Can you hear what they’re saying?” Stacy was clearly relishing this.
Anne shook her head.
“Nah, me neither,” Stacy said. She stood up to join the small group of people staring, to listen up close.

“–lunatic!”
“More than once, too,” Kazuma taunted. “We’ve been having an affair for months. She moans just like her old man in the sack,” he remarked.
“You son of a bitch,” Ken snarled. He moved as if to hit the younger man, but was met with a broad arc of cream of carrot soup. The splash across his white dress shirt startled him enough to cut his action short.
“Haha,” Kazuma laughed. “Ha. You were gonna find out sooner or later. I guess it was time. Oops,” he shrugged, grinning.
Ken fumed, speechless, livid.

“………I can’t believe I loved you.” He forced a breath. “Get your things out of my room. This is over.” He turned and left.

Kazuma laughed more, with increasing hysteria. In a paroxysm of spite, he grabbed the soup tureen and sent it shattering to the floor.
“See if I need you, old man!” he laughed, almost sobbing, but Ken was already out the door.

Stacy returned to the table.
“Yep. Lover’s tiff.” She dipped a piece of bread into her bowl. “Glad I got some of that soup before it was all gone,” she said.
“Yeah,” Anne agreed, “it’s pretty good.”

***

Adam Kunitz had seen the fight. He smiled to himself now, nursing an Amaretto Sour at the hotel’s second bar, the one where you needed evening wear to get through the door. His white tux contrasted sharply with his deep red hair. His eyes, Pacific blue, followed Wakamoto’s broad frame as he came fuming through the door. He had changed his shirt, but his mood hadn’t changed with it.

Some people came to the Grotto Beach Hotel as a couple. Some came simply for the getaway. Adam, however, came to cruise, and ultimately to steal. The average single gay men coming to the hotel – especially the older ones – had more money than they knew what to do with, and Adam was devoted to the cause of freeing them of some of that burden.

Adam had picked up the whiff of money around the Japanese businessman long before his little boyfriend had started spending it lavishly around the hotel. The rich had a way about them – Adam had a kind of sixth sense for it, and one that had rarely led him astray. Ken Wakamoto was a fantastic target – vain, older, and loaded. And with the boyfriend out of the way, Adam’s plan was forming to perfection. He’d have him wrapped around his little finger by morning.

Ken sat two stools away from Adam and ordered a triple scotch and ginger ale. Adam crossed his legs.

“Quite a hubbub your friend made back there with the tureen,” Adam said, with a calculated smile.

Ken glanced his way.
“Yes. Well.”

Adam smiled. “Lemme pay for that drink.”
Ken shook his head, dismissing, preoccupied. After a moment he glanced at Adam again, only really noticing him this time around.
“…Are you making a pass at me?”

Adam chuckled, looking down into his glass, a little coyly.
“Was it that obvious….?”

“You certainly waste no time,” Ken remarked, while taking his drink from the bartender.
“Thought you could use a little cheering up.”
“Hmm.” Ken knocked back a slug of scotch. “I just found out my boyfriend has been cheating on me with my daughter. Cheering up might not cut it.”
“Ouch,” Adam chuckled. “Well… If it’s a distraction you’ll be wanting, I’m pretty good at those,” he looked at him through his lashes, rakish grin firmly in place.

Ken looked at him for a long time, measuring his options.

“Well.” Ken downed the rest of his drink, and rolled his shoulders. “Why the hell not.”

***

Things got worse for Anne before they got better. The presence of other female guests – notably few – had at first calmed her anger at Stacy, but then quickly riled it up again with closer observation. Given the demographics she was seeing around her, Anne was convinced that everyone now thought that she and Stacy were lesbians.

Her hatred of Stacy bubbled for a few days, but eventually the sea breeze and white sand and fresh fish and plentiful booze mellowed her spirits. She was in Hawaii, for fuck’s sake, chilling out at a lavish hotel with nothing but the sea and great food and long mornings to sleep in a cushy bed that she didn’t even have to make herself. Paradise. Paradise without a hunk to share it with, but she’d manage.

She got up one morning with the mission to explore the coastline as far as her feet would take her, bring a picnic, and call a taxi when she wanted to go back. Yes.

She cobbled together a cold lunch from the breakfast buffet and put it in a couple ziplocs in a plastic bag with some ice. Bought a wine cooler to go with it, put on her most no-nonsense bathing suit and slathered sunscreen all over. Tried on a couple of hats before finally deciding on just a pony tail and sunglasses, and tied on a pareo around her hips.

Beach time.

The beach was crowded right near the hotel, but as she distanced herself from it she encountered less and less people. The ocean was a brilliant azure blue under the cloud-dotted sky,waves just the right kind of noisy, and the sand was already hot between her toes even at not-quite-ten AM. Anne realized that before all the hotels and resorts and restaurants and clubs would have been built, Maui must have been incredible. She wondered if there were still places in the world where you could enjoy tropical glory without hearing highways in the distance over the crash of waves.

She decided on investigating about other parts of Hawaii for next Christmas.

There wasn’t much in the way of unclaimed beachfront property in Maui. Anne noted that there were, however, unused beaches that surely belonged to individuals richer than she’d ever imagine becoming. Stern No Trespassing signs didn’t much bother Anne on her excursion; she sidestepped the fences and continued her journey heedless of whose property she might be trespassing on, until she found a large flat rock perfect for sprawling.

She pulled her ziplocs from her dribbling bag of cold water – bad idea, the ice, after all – and pulled out a clammy egg-salad sandwich and some cold cuts. She cracked open her wine cooler and sighed her contentment. Now this was more like it. The crashing surf, the warm sun toasting her skin, a packed lunch and a nice drink, and no one around…
She untied her pareo and laid it on the rock, and, after glancing around, peeled off her bathing suit. A little nudie sunbathing never hurt anyone.

The only thing missing, she mused as she nibbled a cold cut, was a sexy male body to cuddle up with after… She sipped cooler and finished her sandwich. She’d never had sex on a beach, in the sun like this… or at night even… She imagined it was probably pretty sandy, all things considered. But it was such a cliché, it must be good, right? She rolled onto her stomach and wondered if she should try hitting one of the clubs in town to find a guy. But ugh, that was such a cheap thing to do… She was horny, but not a tramp. And picking up a dude at a hotel bar is better how, exactly?

She sighed. Maybe her sister was right – maybe she was trying too hard. Maybe she should just give up entirely and let love come to her, instead of looking for it. Sexy male bodies would just have to wait. They’d turn up on their own time.

She sat up again and was pulling her suit back on when she spotted something at the water line. She frowned. It hadn’t been there before. It looked big and dark and waterlogged. She tied on her pareo and trotted over, every step deepening her fear of what she was about to discover, until there was no question left, and she almost revisited her lunch.

It was a male body, all right. But this one was far from sexy.

***

“Looks like he’s been dead two, three days, we’ll have to take him in to make sure. Got good and waterlogged, too. At least 24 hours. And nibbled at by this and that, too,” the coroner pointed out.

Inspector Rob Kanahele rubbed the crease between his eyebrows. “Drowned?”

The coroner shook his head. “Can’t say for sure, but I’d bet the cause of death was this big smashed-in part of his head, here,” he pointed. Photographs flashed.

Insp. Kanahele gazed down at the mangled body. Must have been a good-looking man, before the sea and blunt instruments got him. He glanced back up. “A tourist found the body?”
The coroner nodded. “She’s over there somewhere. Someone’s taking her testimony down, I suppose.”
Kanahele nodded. With a parting glance at the corpse, he walked over to talk to Anne.

***

“I still can’t believe this is real,” Anne said, hugging her knees to herself. She was still sitting on her rock; she felt like she’d been there for hours, and the hot sunlight was strangely cold, and she shivered. “I’m on vacation. I’ve only been here five days. I can’t believe I let Stacy drag me here. I should have stayed in Indianapolis… rather deal with snow than corpses, oh God.” She rubbed her face with her hands.

“Why don’t you tell us again what happened, as exactly as possible,” Kanahele said.
She looked up. “Who’re you?”

“Inspector Robert Kanahele. I’m in charge of this investigation.”
Anne’s face pinched up. “It – it was murder, wasn’t it,” she looked queasy. “I come here for a break over the holidays and get involved in a murder investigation. Oh God, am I a suspect?” Her eyes opened wide with fear.

Insp. Kanahele had a small, but honest, smile. “Not yet. And you probably won’t become one. Why don’t you tell me how you found the body? What’s your name, miss?”

Anne swallowed. “I already told your, your friend here,” she indicated the uniformed policeman.
“Tell me again.” Rob said.
She nodded.

“My name is Anne Reynolds. I’m a legal assistant at the firm of Cromway, Hellerman and Wu in Indianapolis. I’m here on vacation with my friend Stacy Lynch,” she said, just as she had said before. “We’re staying at the Maui Grotto Beach Hotel and Resort. We’ve been there since December 12th.”

“The gay place?” Kanahele raised his eyebrows.
Anne sighed. “Stacy booked it. She made a mistake. Not my ideal vacation,” Anne managed a broken smile, “but I’ll take what I get. You have a beautiful island, detective. Were you born here?”

“Inspector. And no, I’m from Kauai. But I grew up in Honolulu.”

Anne nodded. She wrapped her arms tighter around her knees.
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t want to be demanding, but do you think we could go anywhere but here right now?”

Kanahele glanced over his shoulder at what they were starting to lift into a bodybag.

“Sure thing, miss.”

***

“I’m pretty sure I know who the – who the um, corpse is, by the way,” Anne said, wrapping herself in the blanket provided at the station, and warming her hands on a cup of coffee.
“Oh?” Kanahele opened the door to his office and let her in ahead of him. “That’s interesting. Who was he?”

Anne looked around, sheepishly, feeling underdressed and nervous. A fly buzzed in the open window, and out again.
“I don’t know his name,” she said. “But he was a guest at the hotel where I’m staying. He and his boyfriend had a big fight a few days ago. He poured carrot soup all over the floor.”
“Why?” Kanahele frowned.
Anne shrugged. “Dunno. Making a fuss I guess.”

A blond policewoman with short curly hair and Eurasian features came into the room, and smiled.
“Don’t mind me,” she said cheerily. “I’m just gonna take a seat over here.”

“Miss Reynolds, this is Sgt. Cindy Fujita. She works with me.”

Cindy gave a little wave at Anne. Her nose crinkled when she smiled, and Anne noticed that her face was spattered with freckles. She wondered vaguely what Sergeant Fujita’s ancestry was.
“Hi,” Anne said. “Uh. I’m Anne Reynolds. I found the, uh.”
Cindy nodded. “I’ve been briefed. Go on, I’m just a fly on the wall,” she assured.

Anne looked at Insp. Kanahele again.
“Please,” he said, extending a broad hand. “Have a seat.”
Anne nodded, and did.
“You were saying.”

Anne sipped her coffee.

“Well. I guess it was… day before yesterday, no, the day before that – Monday?” she frowned. Time gets so fluid, on holiday… “Stacy and I went to the buffet table early, because that’s when you get the best stuff, right. So we already had a table when the fight broke out.”
“Between our John Doe and…” Cindy piped in. So much for fly on the wall.
Anne nodded. “They were both Asian guys. Him, and an older man, big, tall guy. I’m not sure what they were arguing about but the guy – the – the one I found – he made quite a show of it. Started ladling soup onto the floor. Ended up bashing the tureen itself.”

“That’s some theatricality,” Kanahele frowned. “How did the hotel react to this?”
“I dunno,” Anne shook her head. She breathed in the warm aroma of coffee.
“And you said you had no idea what the fight was about?” said the fly.
“Nope,” Anne shook her head again. “Although Stacy went up to listen. Maybe she knows. She said it was a lover’s tiff. But that’s what she would have said even if they were arguing about cheese or something,” Anne sipped.

“What do you mean?” the Inspector said.
Anne shrugged. “She’s always imagining intrigues. Illicit ones and stuff like that. I dunno. It’s not important.”

“That’s up to us to decide,” Insp. Kanahele said, as gently as he could, which wasn’t too gently at all.

Anne looked at him, and nodded, a little scared.

“Do you remember anything else about the victim?” Sgt. Fujita asked.

Anne considered. “…Not really. I saw him once or twice before that, always with his boyfriend or whatever. Didn’t see him after though. After the fight, I mean.”
“And the boyfriend?” Kanahele asked. “Did you see him again?”
“Oh, sure,” Anne said. “He found somebody else real quick. Sharp-dressed redhead. Kinda cute,” Anne tried to suppress a girlish smile, but failed.

Rob Kanahele made a sound.
“Well.” He shuffled some papers on his desk. “Officer Cobrero has your statement on how you found the body,” he says. “One last thing though, and then we’ll let you leave. The property the body was found on belongs to a Mr Howard Jeffrey Monteith. Friend of yours?”

Anne fidgeted. “No sir.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I guess I was trespassing. But no one was there and the beach was so beautiful, and I wanted to get away from all the people… you understand?” She nibbled her lip, looking up at him imploringly.

Kanahele looked at her for a solid few seconds, and then sighed, with a nod.
“We’ll let it go this time, no harm done. Just remember that those signs aren’t up because they’re pretty – private property is private. Some people get mighty upset if you sneak onto their beach. Of course,” the inspector mused, “Monteith will probably be more upset that his beach became a crime scene. Oh well.” He shuffled papers again, which Anne realized was a sign that she should probably be leaving.

She looked around, not wanting to stand without being told or something. She sipped her coffee.

“Come on,” Sgt. Fujita smiled. “Someone will take you back to the hotel.”
Anne stood with relief, and made to follow.

“Oh, and miss Reynolds?” Kanahele called out.
She turned, at the door.

“Sorry you had to get dragged into all this,” he said.

She smiled.

***

“Nice girl,” Rob Kanahele mused. He and Cindy were alone in his office, with the door closed.

“Think she’s involved?” Cindy asked.
“In the murder?” Rob raised an eyebrow. “No. Why, do you?”

Cindy looked at her nails. “She sure painted that big guy, the victim’s lover, as a prime suspect. Maybe she has something to hide.”
“Far as I can tell,” Rob leaned back in his creaking chair, “bigdude is the prime suspect. Public fight three nights ago, young lover isn’t seen since, body washes up three days dead. Seems almost cut-and-dried.”

“Too cut and dried,” Cindy Fujita narrowed her grey eyes.
The inspector smiled. “Not everything is a red herring, Sergeant.”
“Some things can be,” Cindy insisted.
Rob slipped on his light jacket. “Well, you know this is why I like you working with me. I’ve got the imagination of a mole crab.” He stood. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got a hotel to question.”

***

When Stacy saw Anne step out of the police cruiser, she was both sincerely concerned and excited like a kid at Christmas. There would definitely be an interesting story to this.

She trotted over in short skirt and heels, carrying her booze-in-a-coconut.

“Jesus, what happened, Annie?” she reached out her hands.
Anne grudgingly took them, but looked upset and embarrassed. “Let’s get away from where everyone can see us, huh?”
Stacy nodded, and escorted Anne back to her room.

She sat on the chair, letting Anne huddle up on the bed.

“So what the fuck happened, Anne? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Anne made a choked sound. “Sort of.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Corpse,” Anne shuddered. “Found a corpse. On the beach. All dead and bloated.”

Stacy stared.

“That,” she said after a while, “is heinous. Oh my God. Are you okay?”
Anne shook her head. “I don’t know. It was really gross, Stace… and … then I went to the police department to give a statement…” She looks up. “It was that guy, Stacy. That guy who poured soup all over the floor.”

Stacy squeaked in agony! “Oh no!” She put her hands to her mouth, face pale. “Oh no, no Annie but he was so hot!”
Her face showed despair.
Anne nodded, and sighed. “Yep. Not anymore.”

Stacy took a few moments to let all the news sink in.
“… Do they know… who did it? I mean – I mean was it an accident, or, or …”

Anne shook her head. “I don’t know. I think they think it was murder or something.”
“Oh God, Annie, murder?” Stacy frowned, and shook her head. “We could be stuck here for a while, you know that, right? They might not want us to leave until it’s solved. If we’re witnesses or something.”

Anne had a wan smile. “Well. I guess that means an extended Hawaii vacation for us,” she said. But her heart wasn’t in it.
“Now if you don’t mind,” she said, slipping under the covers, “I think I need a nap.”

***

“I hate going in here,” Rob Kanahele frowned as he padded up the steps to the Grotto hotel lobby. “Always makes me nervous. The way everyone looks at me.” He grunted.

Sgt. Cindy Fujita smiled to herself. The inspector was a good-looking man, stocky and solid with tawny skin and a short ponytail of sleek black hair. Many of the women in the department looked at him in much the same way as these men he was lamenting. At 44, he was already in the top brass of county law-enforcement, and although he’d been divorced for six years, there was no whiff of current romance about him, at least as far as the department girls could tell. He’d confessed to Cindy once that after the disaster that was his first marriage, he had no interest in repeating his mistakes. Cindy sometimes wondered if courting the inspector herself mightn’t be a good idea, you know, if they didn’t work together and all that. But he was close to twice her age, and although she didn’t mind that per se she knew it tended to make relationships difficult sometimes. Sgt. Fujita may have had a fondness for detective fiction that sometimes spilled out into how she did her job, but she was also a pragmatist.

“Are you homophobic, inspector?” Cindy smiled a little.
Kanahele frowned. “Of course not. Wouldn’t be appropriate of me. I’m just a little worried about what they want from me, that’s all.”

Cindy suppressed further commentary, and they stepped into the Maui Grotto Beach Hotel and Resort.
The lobby was lavish, and tourists of all ages and races – mostly men – smilingly wandered through, paths crisscrossed by comely houseboys and bellhops. Burly security guards imposed their sexy yet discreet presence. Cindy could easily see why this resort had gained the kind of popularity it had.

They walked up to the front desk. A young clerk with short blond hair greeted them, a little warily.

“Inspector Robert Kanahele, Maui County Police Department,” Rob showed the pretty desk clerk his badge. “We’d like to speak to the manager. One of your guests has been found dead under suspicious circumstances.”

The clerk blanched, but nodded. He told them to wait a moment, and went to inform the manager.

***

The manager was a tall, bony man named Hendrik Oosterhout. He greeted them grimly, in his sober office.
“Please, come in, sit down,” he said. “I hear there’s been a tragedy at my hotel.”

“Not sure where tragedy struck exactly, yet,” Inspector Kanahele noted. “The body was found quite a ways away from here. But the young lady who found the body was a guest here, and she says that she recognized the man she found as being another guest. He was a Japanese man, early to mid twenties. Ring any bells?”

Oosterhout steepled his fingers. “We get a lot of Japanese visitors. There are at least a dozen guests currently staying at the hotel who would fit that description.” He had a short smile. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“The woman who found the body, miss, ah, Anne Reynolds, she said she had seen the deceased in company of an older man, also Japanese, quite tall and large I believe. She said they had a very public falling-out in the dining room, involving carrot soup.”

The manager’s face drained of what little colour it normally had.
“You’re talking about Kazuma Ueshiba,” he said. “The… yes. Are you sure?”

“We’ll have to get someone who knew him to positively I.D. the body,” Kanahele said. “But according to miss Reynolds, that’s who it is.”

Hendrik Oosterhout stood and paced a little. “Well. It’s Ken Wakamoto you’ll want to talk to. To identify the body, I mean.”
Kanahele nodded. “You know where I can find him?”
“I’ll have him called,” Oosterhout fidgeted.
“Thank you. And, Mr. Oosterhout, I trust we’ll have your full cooperation in conducting our investigation in this hotel?”

The manager looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Investigation…?”

“Yes,” Sgt. Fujita said. “Mr. Oosterhout, we’re afraid this looks quite a bit like murder.”

- TO BE CONTINUED -

season’s greetings ~

Three-part holiday-themed mystery on the way! I had tons of fun writing this one. Part I will be up in the next hours and the other parts will join it before the 25th.

Enjoy, and have a happy holiday season!

(Disclaimer time for the upcoming story: I’ve never been to Hawaii, nor am I an expert on how hotels or homicide investigations are run. So although I did do lots of research, there could well be things that don’t ring true, if you yourself happen to be in Hawaii/running a hotel/a homicide detective. Apologies about that. Feel free to leave feedback.)

why we drink

when we’re kids, it’s a sip, a taste,
illicit droplets of adulthood trickling down our gullets
then we flee or try to act worldly

as years advance unsupervised we
try to act worldly
riding the buzz, claiming our mistakes
in the name of righteous immaturity,
we flee into the unraveling party
seeking a sovereign land

when we’re in our twenties, we drink
to dodge the tumbling chunks of our dreams, cracked ceilings
we drink to take the edge of the innocence
we once mistook for hope

in our thirties, it’s a habit
social, solitary, a nice merlot
our pastimes have boiled down to this,
comfortable and good enough, like a marriage

the flavors matter less when we lose our jobs
when our kids slam doors
the flavors matter less when she leaves
or when she comes back, and you tell yourself you weren’t crying

when we’re fifty, it’s a comfort
something classic, a familiar warmth
old leather and old vinyl, and old friends
we go out for a beer with the new guys
they laugh and try to act worldly

the falling snow, the fragrant tree, time passes
you wipe your glasses, share a brandy, a comfort,
something familiar
dodging the falling husks
of dead dreams, collecting soft and final like leaves
or old photographs, mingling with memories

your grandchildren make tracks in them like snow
and you tell yourself you’re not crying

Little-Known Origins of Everyday Things

Diesel engine. Rubik’s cube. Dr. Pepper. The history and origin of the objects we see and use in our everyday lives are often hidden in their name. For example, the French-German engineer Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine, and the Hungarian sculptor Ernő Rubik the puzzle toy that bears his name. And nearly everyone today knows the origin of that most ubiquitous of things, the sandwich: John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who in 1762 famously decided to start putting meat between pieces of bread. But how well do you know the people behind the name of other common objects of the modern age? Read on and find out.

Hiram Webster Shot (1856-1897) was a Kansas cowboy who turned eccentric when he nearly died trampled by a spooked herd. Legend has it that, suffering from chronic pain in his badly-mended bones, down-on-his-luck Shot would visit saloons demanding medicine from the barkeepers there. They would usually oblige, pouring whiskey or gin into the carefully-measured, cylindrical glass apothecary jar Shot carried around for that purpose – the original shot glass.

Sir John Dildo would probably be speechless about the fact that the name he gave his patented apparatus for stimulating anestrous heifers would be in such wide use today for a fundamentally different purpose. Regardless, the true story is that the dildo that many people worldwide know and love was named after the similarly-used invention thought up by a 17th-century peer with a farm that wasn’t yielding enough calves! (Fun Fact: the town of Dildo, Newfoundland, was named after the grandson of this British lord, Sir Michael Dildo, who sailed to Canada and eventually became a community leader there.)

Slovenian-American designer Miloš Ipod worked for Apple from 1997-2001, during which time he gave his name to what would be their defining gadget, the iPod. Responsible for the media player’s distinctive look, he was rewarded by his name entering the vocabulary of a generation (not to mention a presumably hefty paycheck!).

iPods too newfangled for you? Their entertainment precursor, the radio, also has an eponymous origin. Italian Giancarle Raddio didn’t invent the radio, but in 1908 he reinvented his late father’s jewelery store as a one-stop shop for the growing market of aficionados of the wireless mechanism. His venture was successful, and his name became bound to the products he carried across the nation and beyond, quickly spreading to America with waves of Italian immigration.

And finally, the rss feed, familiar to bloggers everywhere, also carries its history in its name. This web syndication tool builds on the work of computer scientist Hal Roberts, but its key features as we know it now were put in place by the team of Makoto Shizugawa and Stanley Sheridan, who also chose to name it after the three seminal figures in its creation – R, S, and S.

From sex toy to software, clues to history are everywhere in the names of things. Which begs the question – what object will history remember your name by?

(Except for a dash of truth, this, like everything else on this blog, is pure fiction, kittens – sorry to disappoint :p)

The Rotting Dead

Children, remember well this name: Jonathan Michelsky. Remember him as the reason all your little heads are stuck good on your shoulders, and not being split open by the unnaturally sharp chompers of the rotting dead.

You know your history, right? You know how the plague spread out of the Everglades, taking first Florida, then advancing into Alabama and Georgia? You know how the brave men and women in those states under siege stayed their ground with shotguns and axes and sticks when even the National Guard decided there was nothing to do but build a wall? Our country’s soldiers tried to get them out, every last one, brave men and women them too, but some of ‘em just wouldn’t budge from their land. Ted and Angela Burton, who had enough ammo in their cellar to take out weeks worth of rotters, and then themselves when they knew there was no way out, rather than become one. Dick Horrace, who hunkered down on shortwave radio and kept people connected so they’d fight a better fight, and so the rest of the country would know what was going on behind the blackout, behind the wall. His broadcasts lasted three months before they, too, went dead.

You kids know, of course, about how horrible the silence was, before the bombing, and especially after it, when the President ordered the rest of Alabama and Georgia and some of Mississippi evacuated, and the area behind the wall pulverized. You don’t remember how we waited for news, but I do, I was just a bit older than you then. Teams in hazmat suits were sent in to the desolation behind the wall, to check for signs of the scourge. The nation watched. Everything was whitewashed by the bombing… everything alive was dead, and everything dead was dead, or so it seemed. They didn’t find much trace of the rotters. Everything had melted, and that was good.

You don’t expect a zombie to be smart. I still don’t think they were. I still think it was dumb chance that some of them were in the bomb shelters and the subways and the caves.
Still, it wouldn’t have made a difference. The Guard could have taken ‘em out. Florida wasn’t the battleground anymore. Or it wouldn’t be for long.

To this day they’re not sure if the Louisiana strain arose independently, or if some rotter somehow got from point A to point B, while no one was looking. They burned all the corpses, keeping only tiny little bits for science, which if you ask me was a hell of a bad idea, but there haven’t been problems yet, and they’re right that understanding the plague will help us fight it better next time, if ever, you know, God forbid. I mean, it’s science that got rid of them in the first place, after all. Science and Jonathan Michelsky.

Who was Jonathan Michelsky, you ask? Medical Technology senior at Louisiana Tech. He lost his parents in the Georgia advance, and he was watching live on TV when his girlfriend Ruth got attacked, bitten, and then headshot by a well-meaning soldier in the first of the Baton Rouge outbreaks. Jonathan lost everything that mattered to him, at the hands of the zombies. That’s where he got his determination, his will, to do something almost no one would dare try. That’s why he’s the hero we all have the responsibility of remembering. One day it’ll be you telling this story, won’t it, children?

Since Louisiana Tech is up in the northern part of the state, they weren’t hit by the first waves of the plague that seemed to come out of the bayous in the south. But the Louisiana strain was advancing fast – too fast to build a wall, traveling by land and by water, hitting the least populated areas first. Like it was smarter. The army sent in marksmen but there were too many of them, and too spread out. They headshot a lot of them but more kept coming.

The army’s efforts, although ultimately futile, did buy the civilians time to evacuate ahead of the wave. And also gave Jonathan Michelsky time to think. See, Jonathan knew he wasn’t going to leave with everybody else. The zombies had taken all he cared for. He wasn’t afraid of death. And he was going to try to take as many as he could of them down with him.

He stashed food into the lab where he had a part-time job, and when the sirens wailed in Ruston and the cops came to take everyone out of there, Jonathan hid. He hid while they shut the city down and placed electric fences to slow the wave of dead that was advancing, advancing and growing, snarling and hungry and relentless.

Alone in the infectious diseases lab of a ghost college town, Jonathan Michelsky broke into the most hazardous part of the facilities and grabbed some samples. He did what he had to, and then recorded a message on his webcam. He burned ten copies of the message, left some in the lab, kept the others on himself in weatherproof, fireproof envelopes, grabbed a heavy-duty staple gun, and waited.

The inevitable came.

Jonathan didn’t fight them.

I bet that the prospect of just letting the thing he hated the most in the world win, as the last act of his life, was worse for him than even being eaten alive. But his drive to save the rest of humanity was stronger than his hatred. Hatred is a selfish feeling, and Jonathan Michelsky was heroically unselfish.

The story breaks here, for a little bit. The Louisiana strain traveled silently, stealthily, giving off no sound, no heat. Traveled by water, traveled through the wilderness. Town after town fled or stood its ground, and town after town fell, and the ranks of the undead swelled.

You’ve all heard about the Battle of Springhill. Bet there’s not a child in America who hasn’t. Only about 7000 people in that town, and a lot of them ran, but some didn’t. Troops showed up and made a stand, because the helicopters saw them coming, the dripping, rotting dead. The helicopters tried to shoot them, but they moved through the pines, thick and dry. Someone called in an order, name’s lost to time now, to firebomb the advancing wave. Zombies burned and didn’t care. Pines burned and the forest fire spread even faster than the cadaverous menace.

Springhill was a disaster. Closed off on all sides by walls of fire, the soldiers and civilians in that town fought bravely, picking off the zombies one by one. Lots of men and women died in Springhill. Lots of rotters got dispatched, but lots of new ones got made, too. But most importantly, it was in Springhill that Jonathan Michelsky’s message got out.

A private named Anna Larkin noticed a rotter acting differently from the others. This was late in the battle; many on both sides were dead; she was holed up in the school cafeteria alone, hearing them outside, feeling the heat from the fires. One rotter came in acting strangely – twitching, shaking, hardly able to stand. Crawling towards her, driven by its unnatural hunger. Gnashing and spasming.

She watched it, jerking incoherently on the linoleum floor.
She shot it in the face.

She had time to bend over the body, intrigued, and find a fireproof, weatherproof envelope, before more rotters spilled through the door. She relayed the message to her superiors: A zombie behaving strangely had had a package stapled to it, that was now in her possession. A package that read ‘ATTENTION AUTHORITIES, OR ANYONE, PLEASE WATCH THIS’.

She didn’t have more time to be surprised. dozens were coming in, some still on fire. She shot them until she was out of ammo, then hit them with cleavers and hammers and knives, then died.

Reinforcements arrived too late, and Private Larkin’s colleagues ended up taking the package from her corpse, after wiping out the rest of the cafeteria zombies. They took it with them when they were airlifted out, the retreating living, decimated. Springhill had been lost to the undead. America watched it burn.

But Jonathan Michelsky’s video got to Washington. By then, there had been other isolated reports, just a sparse handful of them but all from north of Ruston, of zombies acting wrong. One elderly lady, sure she was about to die, was surprised to see the lone rotter crawling towards her drop flat to the ground, spasm a few times, claw helplessly, and then go still. She got out safe and sound, but didn’t think to check if the zombie had had an envelope stapled to it.

They played Michelsky’s video to the ground forces commander, who played it to the Secretary of Defense, who played it to the Commander in Chief. The Commander in Chief had it played to the Surgeon General and the head of the Center for Disease Control. Here’s what it said, word for word, exactly as Jonathan said it, really.

My name is Jonathan Michelsky. I’m a medtech senior here at Louisiana Tech, I work part time in the infectious diseases lab. They evacuated the campus a while ago, but I hid, I’m staying put. Zombies killed my parents and my girl. It’s retarded that I’ve had the revelation I’ve had, there’s no reason for it to be me, but then again, I mean, I guess there is. I’ve got nothing to live for except to try and save other people from the agony I’ve gone though. I’m gonna die here in Ruston, sorry to anyone else I might be leaving behind. I hope you’ll understand what I had to do.

I just infected myself with a virulent strain of CJD. Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease. If the zombies don’t get me, well, I’ll be dead in a couple weeks I guess. If I was better at science, some kind of genius like in a movie, I’d concentrate the disease and put it in bullets or something, or a bomb, I don’t know. But even though my brain’s not super-smart, it is edible. So I’m gonna let them eat it. Ruth, Mom, Dad, I’m sorry. I’m gonna… I’m gonna let them eat my brains and get sick too. I hope the disease infects them good. I hope it progresses even faster in them. I know I can’t take out many of them – I’m not sure how they do their brain-eating thing, but there won’t be more than two or three divvying up my grey matter, I guess. But I can hope that they spread the sickness among themselves. I wish I had access to a zombie-specific strain. Or an antidote to give all the living people, and then sweep the nation with CJD. But life’s not like sci-fi, and so maybe I’ll have done nothing, or just made matters worse. But I wanted someone to know about my idea. I wanted you to know, Mr. President, if ever you hear this. Maybe it’ll help. Maybe I won’t be … be doing this in vain.

God bless America.

And that’s how he ended it.

The medical experts quickly agreed that the oddly-behaving zombies had been displaying symptoms of CJD, which people used to call Mad Cow Disease. So Michelsky had managed to infect them. He’d also managed to staple his message onto all of his attackers – more envelopes had turned up – and they unknowingly had carried the harbinger of their own doom with them as they’d advanced.

The President, the Secretary of Defense, the Surgeon General and the head of the Center for Disease Control deliberated for 37 hours. The risk of infecting innocent civilians with an incurable terminal disease made dropping a CJD prion bomb impossible. Even if they evacuated everyone before, like in Florida, the zombies were too spread out now, too good at moving and at hiding. The Surgeon General pointed out that a prion bomb would infect not only rotters, but everything, making one-fifth of the country inescapably lethal for years. They called in experts on prion-based diseases and determined that yes, making a quick-acting strain for biological warfare was possible, but an unspeakably dangerous thing to create. The President argued that if it was the only way of saving America from goddamned zombies, it would have to be done, and they’d deal with the consequences later. Even the Surgeon General couldn’t downplay the threat of the undead on public health and safety.

They called in the ground forces commander, who said that developing prion bullets was a useless waste of time and money and manpower, because they’d still need to shoot them at the rotters and that was the same thing as they were doing now, which was obviously not efficient enough a means of eradication. He said that the only way he could see to use Michelsky’s tactic was to do it like Michelsky had done: infect yourself, and kill off the two or three or four zombies that feasted on you. The president laughed, and said he thought America would not go for that.

He was wrong. There were volunteers in the very room, among the soldiers and assistants present.

The Secretary of Defense, who rarely spoke, spoke then, ponderously. It was estimated that there were 20 000 zombies in Louisiana, and that was the most conservative figure. Others claimed it was more than double that. Regardless, assuming the best tactical deployment of infected volunteers, that still meant a very bare minimum of five thousand martyrs to stop the Louisiana advance. Dark eyes looked calmly at the president, and a cold voice said that that was an unlikely figure.

That’s when one of the soldiers lining the walls, one who had not volunteered for martyrdom, spoke up. Given permission to speak freely, he said: With all due respect, General, Mr. Secretary, Mr. President sir, the problem isn’t having to shoot the sons of bitches, it’s having to headshot them, sir. If we could machine-gun them like living things we’d wipe them out in no time.

The President asked: What’s your name, soldier?

Sergeant Mark Caveway, he said, standing at attention. I fought at Springhill, sir.

That’s another name to remember, kids. And that a good idea can come from anywhere.

So in the end they okayed it. A hypervirulent strain of CJD for use in biological warfare was created, with the proviso that it would be used only against zombies, and that once the zombie threat was over the strain would be destroyed or neutralized. Thorough safety measures were put in place to prevent transmission to wildlife or people or human food or water sources. As they worked, and days painfully stretched into weeks, skilled marksmen both enlisted and civilian kept picking off zombies one by one, but villages kept being overrun. On the same day that the prion bullets were announced ready, news came of a California outbreak. Troops were dispatched to L.A. immediately, Sgt. Caveway among them. He had insisted to be on the front lines. And he was.

Soldiers trained machine guns laden with CJD on the lumbering advance of their rotting enemies. Bullets hit and pierced dead flesh, spreading infection into their bodies, curdling their brains. They sagged as they continued to advance, and some dropped in spasms as the disease made holes in their brain matter from the inside out, turning it spongy and useless, destroying them. Some lasted a little longer than others, but all fell.

Jonathan Michelsky’s crazy idea had worked.

The L.A. outbreak was stopped cold within days of the first sighting, and with minimal innocent casualties. Louisiana followed suit. Soldiers scoured the country looking in every hidey-hole, every stream of water, every pile of leaves. It took a long time, but the menace was quelled. All the corpses were destroyed, burned completely, every last scrap of zombie flesh was wiped from this earth except for deep-frozen cell cultures in high-security labs, to study so that we’d know more if ever this happened again, God forbid. The Secretary of Defense quietly made a proposal to the President, to genetically encode dormant CJD into the next generation of Americans, as a preventive measure, a timebomb to be triggered only upon being bitten by a zombie – so that anyone could follow in Jonathan Michelsky’s heroic footsteps, and they’d never have to worry about recruiting volunteers if there was another uprising. And our nation built itself up again, like it always does, and soon all of you were born, children. And that’s why we remember Jonathan Michelsky, without whom none of you would be here, and without whom everyone on the continent would be dead, or worse.

cab ride

“Take care, all right?” Mel kissed me on the cheeks, mwah mwah, and I waved to Aaron, stepping clumsily into the cab.

“Friday, right?” I tugged at my skirt, straightening it, thighs sticking to the old leather seat.
“Yeah, like 7 or 8.”
“Kay. Well, see you,” I smiled. Aaron closed the door for me, always a gentleman.

I leaned back. Stomach and head both swimming with mojitos.

“Where to, miss?”
“120 East 90th, between Lexington and Park,” I said, toeing off my pumps. He drove off and I closed my eyes.
“Well it depends on your priorities,” he said.

I opened an eye. “Sorry?”
“I know. It’s the same for me.”

I rubbed my eyes, frowning. The air freshener tapped the window with every swing as the cab stopped at a light.
“So long as we know we’re making the right decision, you know?”

Oh. He was on the phone.
I closed my eyes again, leaning my head back.

“It’s not that I don’t want to get involved. You know commitment isn’t the issue.”

Hard to ignore. Awkwaaard… Didn’t the guy care if his fare was eavesdropping?

“No, you know I wouldn’t hide something like that.” He turned a corner. “I’ve been in it as much as you from the start – yes – yes. I know. Well almost. You know I care as much as you do.” He stopped at a light. “We just have to make the right decision now,” he repeated.

I so wasn’t used to the headset thing yet. Wasn’t it kind of rude, for cab drivers to hold a conversation while driving someone? I thought would stop when they banned cell phones while driving. Obviously not. I sighed and shifted, letting my eyes open a bit and the bright world stream by them, unwatched.

He was silent for a few moments. We drove.

“I’ve been having that worry again. The nihilistic one.” He stopped at another light. “That nothing exists…”
Weird.
“It preoccupies me,” he said. “I mean, sometimes when I’m talking to you – yes – yeah I know you exist. But I don’t really know, you know?” Some silence. “Of course, that throws all of this into question, you know, if I’m right.”

We drove off.
“No, I’m not backing out – no, it’s nothing like that, come on. Get outta the way, asshole!” He shouted out the window, honking loudly at a pedestrian who had strayed into the middle of the street. “No. I’d never abandon this. Not after all we’ve been through getting this far. I’m just sayin’.”

I watched the steam and light of Park Ave. slip by, feeling sleepy in a sleepless city.

I thought about Aaron and Mel again, and how nice they were to have me over. I figured I’d have to invite them over too, some time when I was out of boxes. I was so sick of living out of boxes. Four months in, still boxes. I’d be living out of boxes forever.

“Yeah, I’m still coming. Tomorrow at eight. No, I already told him… I worked it out with Marty.”

I closed my eyes again, letting myself drift.

“Listen, I’ve got to say it. Even if you hate hearing it. But…” the car slowed. “You know, what if we’re wrong?” Honking… “We can’t really go back. Not once it’s done. And if it’s all for nothing, or we misread the signs, I mean, you know, it’s the future we’re talking about. The rest of our lives.”

The city sounds dimmed as I yawned.

“Yeah yeah. Eight o’clock sharp. And I’ll bring the Enochian sigil.”

The leather of the seat back was cool against my cheek, and it felt good.