Dark Lava: Lei Crime Book 7 (Lei Crime Series) (34 page)

“
Right. I thought you’d better know since it’s in your district.”

As if on cue, his radio crackled with the call to respond. “
Thanks for the heads-up, Jared. If I don’t see you at the scene, I’ll see you at dinner tonight. Still coming, right?”

“
Right. I’ll bring dessert.” Jared had begun making weekly visits to have dinner with Stevens, his wife Lei, their son Kiet, and Lei’s dad Wayne who lived with them and provided child care.

Stevens hung up and stuck his head outside his office to holler to his veteran detective. “
Ferreira! Oh-four on Hana Highway!”

They got on the road in Stevens
’s brown Bronco, cop light strobing on the dash. Ferreira, a middle-aged man of portly build and grizzled visage, worked the radio getting as much information as he could. “Ambulance is there. Too late, but at least they can keep the lookie-loos away.”

“
How far is the vic from the fire?”

“
On the edge of the highway. Fire burned up to the road, like they usually do. Fire department is working on keeping it from spreading.”

“
This will add more tension to the whole no-burn movement,” Stevens said thoughtfully, rubbing the tiny purple heart tattoo in the crook of his elbow with a thumb as he drove. A vocal faction on the island had begun protesting the traditional method of harvest, citing asthma and a host of other environmental concerns.

“
I don’t see how this has anything to do with that,” Ferreira said, frowning. “These burns are just some misguided kids making trouble. Don’t see how arson that’s just killed a man has anything to do with the controlled burns the cane company does for harvest—something they’ve been doing for a hundred years.”

“
Okay. I hope you’re right.” Stevens knew Ferreira was from a big family that had come over to Hawaii in one of the original immigration waves, working their way up from the “cane camp” shantytowns to powerful positions in local government and solid occupation of the middle class. He’d heard Ferreira lament the demise of sugarcane agriculture in Maui often enough not to argue with the man. He also knew proponents of the change to machine harvesters would make the argument that the drying fields in preparation for controlled burning provided tempting targets for arson.

They sped down the winding two lane highway that followed the windswept coastline. Even respond
ing to a call and driving at top speed, Stevens sneaked a few looks out his window at the ocean, a tapestry of blues from cobalt to the palest turquoise at the foam-flecked shore. Surfers, windsurfers, and kiteboarders all played along this coastline, and the colorful sails leaping over the waves reminded him of darting butterflies.

The fire was still burning in the charred field as they came around a corner to where barricades had been set up, diverting traffic along an old road that connected above the be
ach town of Paia. Stevens pulled up and parked the Bronco, snapping on gloves and picking up his crime kit as Ferreira did the same. “Booties would be good,” Ferreira said, slipping on a pair of elastic-edged blue material shoe covers.

“
Good idea. Though I’m not sure how well these are going to hold up on this ground,” Stevens said, looking at the still-smoking rubble that lined the road.

Just as Jared had told him, the fire had burnt up to the highway, eating everything in its path down to the black ribbon
of road. Fortunately it hadn’t jumped the highway. The fire zone was very close to the oceanfront community of Kuau, a cluster of residences along the coast. Stevens had spent the last year at a little apartment in Kuau and had an affection for the ragtag collection of older plantation-style homes interspersed with oceanfront mansions.

They walked on the road and approached the body, draped in a white cloth that was turning red in patches from body fluids.

The medical examiner, Dr. Gregory, had beaten them to the scene. Squatted beside the body, he was wearing an aloha shirt decorated with cartoon menehunes, his attention fixed on the grisly sight before him.

There was an unpleasant, oily quality to the smoked-barbeque odor of the body as Stevens inadverte
ntly sniffed the air. He was glad Lei hadn’t had to go out on this call. Four months pregnant, his wife’s worst symptom seemed to be oversensitivity to smells. This one would definitely have had her running for the nearest toilet.

“
Ah, Lieutenant,” Dr. Gregory said, looking up. Magnifying glasses made him look like a bug until he pushed the optics up onto his reddened forehead. “Got a few interesting things about this body.”

Stevens gave a nod to Ferreira to go find the fire investigator. They
’d be relying heavily on the fire department’s assessment of the evidence found at the burn site. He squatted beside Dr. Gregory as the man uncovered the body further. Bits of clothing and skin clung to the sheet. “I wish they wouldn’t have covered the body with this,” the ME fussed. “Losing trace here.”

“
So this is what human barbeque looks like,” Stevens said. “Not pretty.” He’d seen burn victims before, but not since he moved to Hawaii five years ago. “Jared told me that’s what he looked like.”

“
Not pretty at all. Look at the feet.”

Stevens looked. The toes were burned off, the feet curled as tendons retracted. “
No shoes?”

“
Exactly. I wonder if that’s significant. Maybe that’s why he got so close to the road and yet still couldn’t outrun the fire.”

Stevens looked aro
und the corpse, didn’t see anything beside him, no marks on the ground. “Guess he collapsed here from the smoke and then the fire got him.”

“
I think he was running, and on fire,” Gregory said. “His feet are more burned than his hands, and the back of his clothing is completely gone.”

Stevens tried not to imagine the man
’s terrible death, instead focusing on next steps. “Did you check for ID in his pockets?”

“
I need to go over the whole body at the lab,” Gregory said. “The cloth that’s left is burnt right onto his skin. Anything still on him will be degrees of melted. I need to keep it all clean and preserved. Anything else you need here? Because I’d like to bag him.”

“
Are the fire investigators done?”

“
We should check.” Gregory radioed, and a young man, moving with athletic grace in spite of heavy fire-retardant gear, broke away from a knot of firefighters and came their way.

“
Tim Owen. Fire investigator for the county of Maui.” He introduced himself, and Stevens shook his gauntleted hand.

“
Lieutenant Stevens. You already know Dr. Gregory.”

“
Yes.”

“
I want to bag the body, Tim,” Gregory said. “Need anything more?”

“
No. I’m still determining the point of origin, though the directionality of the char pattern makes me think it started somewhere on the cane haul road. This guy was somewhere in this field when it went up. Maybe a homeless guy, sleeping in the cane. No shoes makes me think so.”

“
So what did the body tell you?” Dr. Gregory, the ME, asked. Stevens thought he might be testing the fire investigator’s assessment.

“
Wasn’t trapped in the flames for an extended period—see, the arms are in fairly good shape.” Owen pointed out the folded, crabbed arms. “His face is even recognizable. The feet are worked over, but they were exposed, maybe he ran across some burning area with bare feet. Beneath the body, he’s got fabric intact. So my take is, the fire woke him up but he was probably dazed from smoke. These cane fires move fast, and he wasn’t moving fast enough. He collapsed, here, and the fire flashed over him. Burned awhile in this spot, enough to cook his feet pretty good.”

Gregory nodded. “
Good.”

“
We don’t get many vagrants or homeless sleeping in the cane.” Stevens said. “Lots of spiders in there.” The cane spiders were famous in Hawaii. Hairy and brown, with long slender legs, they grew six to eight inches in diameter and dominated their home in the sugarcane. “The cane is sharp. Not much camping in there between the spiders and leaves sharp enough to cut you.”

“
Seems like that’s a good thing. I’m new here, so just getting the ‘lay of the land’ so to speak, but I’m already concerned with so many of these arson burns happening. Makes me think someone’s targeting the sugarcane company,” Owen said.

“
Could be,” Stevens said. “Do you have any inspections or interviews set up with them?”

“
Matter of fact, I do. Tomorrow morning, talking with upper management at the Puunene Mill, seeing if they have any idea about who might have it in for them.” Owen wiped his sweating face with a bandanna, and Stevens could see how young he was, and new to the island, he might not get that far talking to the locals without support.

“
Well, now that this is a homicide case, how about Ferreira and I tag along?”

“
That would be great.” Stevens didn’t think he was imagining the note of relief in the young man’s voice. “Can’t understand the pidgin when people get going.”

Ferreira stepped up, stuck out his hand. “
Joshua Ferreira. Know a lot of people at the company. I can help.”

“
Excellent.”

They exchanged details for the next morning
’s meeting while Dr. Gregory and Tanaka, his assistant, got the body bagged with the help of the EMTs who had come out on the call. Stevens was relieved when the body, still reeking even in the bag, was on the way to the morgue.

Human barbeque wasn
’t something he ever wanted to see again. A bad feeling clung to him, along with the smell.

Lei Texeira drove up the winding two-lane road through rural Haiku on Maui’s north shore. Tall eucalyptus trees, giant tree ferns, wandering vines, and bright sprays of ginger and heliconia bordered the road. It was a mellow thirty-minute drive from her workplace, Maui Police Station in downtown Kahului, to the home she and Stevens had bought in the countryside area. Her flagging energy lifted as she turned up the graveled driveway. Coming home always did that for her, especially now that her father, Wayne, had moved to Maui and was taking care of baby Kiet during the day.

Their new house was set back from the road behind an automatic gate. She hit the buttons and retracted it. T
he fence around the property was ten feet high, made of cedar, and provided both protection and privacy. Keiki, her battle-scarred Rottweiler, greeted the truck with happy barks and ran alongside as she drew up to the house.

“
New” wasn’t actually the right word for the house. It was forty years old, surrounded by fruit-bearing trees, and built in the sprawling plantation-style she and Stevens loved. It had been added onto so the original square had multiplied. Still, the size and acreage would have made it an impossible investment for a young couple just starting out if Lei’s Aunty Rosario hadn’t left Lei her bungalow in California as an inheritance. Wayne had helped them sell it after Aunty’s recent death to buy the house, and now they carried a small, manageable mortgage. The property even had a small
“ohana”
cottage, where Wayne lived.

She pulled into the open garage, beeped the truck locked, and went up the steps to the security door. “
Hey Dad,” she called, unlocking the steel-grilled door. Even out here in the country, they weren’t safe. An unknown enemy they’d taken to calling the ‘shroud killer’ was still at large, and until he was found, they needed to take every precaution.

“
Hey, Sweets,” her dad called from the kitchen. “He’s excited to see you.” Lei heard the baby yell, “Ba-ba-ba!”

“
I’m coming!” Lei exclaimed, slipping her shoes off onto the rack beside the front door. “Let me just drop off my weapon.” She padded quickly to the bedroom, draped the shoulder holster over the headboard of the king-sized bed, emptying her badge and accouterments into a basket on the side table. She and Stevens were going to have to start locking up their weapons soon, but they had a few months more until Kiet began crawling around and getting into everything.

Lei was ea
ger to get a shower, but Kiet was waiting. She hurried across the polished wood floor of the living room to the kitchen, and broke into a smile at the sight of her stepson in his chair seat on the table, waving his hands, one tooth shining like a pearl in the big grin he gave her.

“
Who’s my handsome boy?” She smiled into Kiet’s jade-dark, smoky green eyes. His shock of black hair always stood on end, and it quivered like a rooster’s tail as she unstrapped him from the bouncy chair. The baby immediately grabbed her curls with both hands, giggling as she lifted him, blowing on his tummy. He kicked his legs and giggled some more, and she hugged him close, turning to her father. “He’s in a good mood, Dad.”

Wayne was checking something on the stove. By the smell,
she guessed it was teriyaki chicken. “He’s had a great day. Now that tooth is out, he’s back to being our happy boy.”