Dark Lava: Lei Crime Book 7 (Lei Crime Series) (9 page)

Stevens looked down at his hands
—they were soaked. So were his shirt, his pants, and his shoes. A violent wave of nausea overcame him, and he turned to the side to vomit over the railing. Bunuelos patted his shoulder. “I need to get your statement. Let’s go to the station for that.”

Stevens wiped his mouth on the shoulder of his shirt, hoping it was clean. “
Yeah.”

“
Let’s go.”

Stevens barely registered that Gerry put him in the back of the police cruiser for the short ride to the station, but he began to come out of the fog of shock when the crime-scene tech wouldn
’t let him wash. Instead, eyes flat and expression concealed behind a paper mask like he was diseased, she swabbed samples of blood off of the various areas on his body, pulled a hair sample and photographed him from all directions.

He had to stop her to vomit again, into a nearby trash can, and he wasn
’t even surprised by then when she scooped a sample of that unspeakable muck into a plastic container.

“
Change into these clothes,” she said, handing him a neatly folded stack of scrubs marked
Maui Department of Corrections
. “I need your clothing.”

“
I didn’t do anything but try to administer first aid. And it was too late,” he said to the woman. Knowing it was useless. Knowing there was nothing he could say that would shortcut this horror—or end the horror that now lived in his memories. Knowing that this crime tech and her judgment of him was only the beginning.

Finally, somewhat washed and changed, Stevens took his phone out of his pocket, removed his belt, his weapon, creds, wallet, and badge.

“I need to process all of that,” the tech said, and with the numbness that had fallen over him, he watched her bag it all.

He was obviously the prime suspect in his pregnant ex-wife
’s murder.

Of course he was. He
’d think the same, arriving at the bloodbath of that room, seeing a man unresponsive with shock standing there, covered in blood.

Gerry and Pono appeared together in the doorway. “
Do you want to call counsel or your union rep?” Pono asked, his bass voice serious.

“
Yes, I believe I will,” Stevens said. The tech held his bloodstained phone while Stevens scrolled through the contacts and contacted his lawyer. They put him in an interview room to wait, and he sat down on the hard chair, crossed his arms, and lay his head down on them.

He wished he could cry, release even a fraction of the grief and horror that f
elt locked inside his throat. As many crime scenes as he’d seen, as much blood as he’d waded through, both in the army and the LAPD, it still shocked him that so much blood could be contained in such a tiny woman.

The thought made him want to vomit again.

His lawyer, Shawn Shimoda, finally arrived along with his union rep, Cal Bendes. Captain Omura, her lips pale and pinched together, followed them in, a notebook and pen in her hand.

“
I have recused Bunuelos and Kaihale from this case against their wishes,” she said. “They’re too close to you. I’m putting McGregor and Chun on the case going forward.”

Stevens nodded. Looking at his hands, he spotted a rime of blood under his nail. He wondered if it was hers, or from the baby.

“Did the baby live?” he asked.

“
We’re not sure yet.” Omura flicked on the recording equipment. Gone was the easy camaraderie of their working relationship from that morning. When she sat down, her eyes were expressionless, her face almost immobile. “Why don’t you tell us what happened today.”

“
Anchara called me.” Stevens picked at the blood under his nail. He needed to get it off him, every bit of it. “She called me and told me she needed to see me, right before we had our Skype meeting with the Hui leader. She said she was in trouble. I told her I’d call her after the meeting.” He got the bit of blood out, flicked it away, and ran both hands through his hair. He felt a suspicious stickiness. He resisted the urge to rip out his hair in handfuls. Instead, he placed his hands on the table to control them. “Anchara asked me to meet her at the motel. I said no; let’s meet at Marco’s. She said she was injured, I had to meet her there.” He raised his eyes to Omura’s. “I was worried about how meeting her at the motel would look. I knew Lei wouldn’t like it, and that motel doesn’t have a good reputation. I was only two blocks from the place by then, though, and decided to see what was up before I called anyone else. I went to the door, knocked. She didn’t answer. I was alarmed. I pounded and called a second time. I tried the knob—it opened, and she was there, naked. There was blood everywhere.” He stopped. Swallowed. Glanced at the mirrored interview window. He knew Pono and Gerry and half the station would be watching, if they’d been allowed to.

“
Go on,” Omura prompted.

“
I approached the bed. At first I thought she was having the baby and hemorrhaging, but when I approached, I saw she’d been stabbed.” He ran a hand through his hair again, tried to tame the tremble in his voice. “She was bleeding out from wounds to the chest.”

“
Had you known she was pregnant?”

Shimoda stirred beside Stevens. “
You don’t have to answer that,” the lawyer said.

Stevens turned to him. “
I want to answer. The answer’s no. I heard from Lei that Anchara attended our wedding a month ago, but she sat in the far back by herself. She must have slipped out before anyone noticed, to hide the pregnancy. I haven’t seen her since the day she left me.”

“
So how long ago was that?”

“
I’m not sure.” His mind couldn’t compute the months. “I want to tell you what happened next.”

“
Okay then.” Omura’s voice was gentle. He reminded himself to be cautious—today she was neither his friend nor his chief.

“
I approached the bed. She was still alive, trying to speak. ‘The baby. The baby,’ she said.” He swallowed again. “I was calling nine-one-one. I ran to the bathroom and got a stack of towels. The knife she’d been stabbed with was lying beside the bed. I didn’t touch it. I put towels and pressure on the wound to slow down the bleeding. ‘Take the baby,’ she said. ‘Use the knife and take the baby.’” Stevens felt that violent nausea again, and he put his head down until it passed. “I told her no. I said hang on; help was coming. She passed out. I did CPR on her, chest compressions, rotary breathing.” He shut his eyes against the memory of her breasts, unfamiliarly round and full, leaking the thin yellowish milk newborns needed as he’d done the chest compressions. “The paramedics finally got there. They moved her out and took her to the hospital. I heard from Pono that they performed an emergency C-section when they determined she was dead.”

“
Where were you when this went on?”

“
I just stood there, after they left. There wasn’t anything I could do really. I don’t know if the baby was alive. Pono had gotten there by then. He can tell you.”

“
Is it your baby?” Omura’s question was soft but had all the sting of a lash as it sawed across his consciousness.

He shook his head, buried his face in his hands. “
I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t see how.”

“
When was the last time you had relations with Anchara Mookjai? Sexual relations?”

“
The morning she left, like I said.”

“
And when was that?”

“
I don’t know. I can’t think. But if you want to do a paternity test on the baby, I consent.”

“
Stop. You’re not thinking clearly,” Shimoda said, holding up a hand. “You don’t have to agree to this.”

“
I do. She was my wife!” He pounded his chest with each word. “I didn’t love her, but she was my wife, and if that’s my child, I will do right by him as best I can!”

“
If you insist, but it’s against my advice,” Shimoda said. Omura made a note that Stevens consented to the paternity test and pushed it over to him. Stevens signed it.

“
So then what happened?” Omura went on.

“
I tried to call Lei. I tried and tried. She didn’t pick up. I went outside when the crime techs arrived to help process the scene.”

“
All right. Let’s get a timeline of events.” Omura looked down at her pad. “Let’s use your wedding to Lei as a starting point, since we all know that date, and work back from there.” After rehashing various events, they established that there was a physical possibility the child was Stevens’s.

“
Anchara and I only stayed in touch with e-mail. She never called, and I didn’t see her after the day she left. She very clearly wanted to move on from the marriage,” Stevens said.

“
So did you ever abuse her?” Omura slid it in like a knife between his ribs.

“
You’re kidding, right?” He pinned Omura with a hard gaze. “She’d been a sex slave. She’d been abused in ways I can’t imagine. I married her to help her, not hurt her more.”

“
And yet that’s what you did,” Omura said. “You just told us you didn’t love Anchara. You hurt her when you married another woman, the woman you loved all along.”

A long pause. Stevens couldn
’t think of what to say. It was the ugly truth, if not all of it.

“
I advise my client not to respond,” Shimoda said. “I believe this is sufficient for an initial interview.”

Stevens ignored him, still focused on Omura. “
I cared for Anchara. But not the way she wanted to be loved or deserved to be loved.”

A long moment passed, raw and charged with the trifecta of grief, guilt, and regret he thought he
’d carry forever now.

“
Did you kill Anchara?” Omura’s voice was a samurai sword slicing through silk.

“
No. I tried to save her. I tried to save her!” Stevens felt his words coming out hard and tried to soften them. “In every way, I tried to save her. But I couldn’t.” And then, to his humiliation, his eyes welled with tears. He put his hands over his face. The tears burned like acid on his hands.

Lei finally picked up her phone after she’d stripped out of the coverall down to her jog bra and Lycra shorts. She was dismayed to see multiple calls from Stevens, but no voicemail. Pono had left a message. “Something’s happened. Come to the station immediately.”

She looked up after trying to call Stevens back, but his phone was off. Torufu, also stripped down to sweat-soaked swim trunks, had his phone to his ear.
He turned worried brown eyes on her.

“
We have to get back to the station,” she said.

He put the phone down and started the van. “
You got that right.”

“
What is it? Stevens tried to call but didn’t leave a message, and Pono just said to get back to base.”

“
Then we better get back to base.”

That
’s when Lei knew it was really bad.

She and Torufu parked the ordnance retrieval van and jogged to the locker rooms. Lei
’s heart was thundering and she refused to let her frantic mind wonder what had happened—the possibilities were too endless, and terrible, and the list started with Stevens injured or dead.

She
’d stowed the clothes she wore to work that morning in her employee locker, but the sweat had been so bad, she took five minutes to shower before dressing. She took the stairs up from the locker room at a run and met Pono at the top—Torufu must have called him.

“
Come into my office.” He sat her down on Gerry’s empty chair. “I’m going to tell you quickly because they’re interviewing him now, and I know you’ll want to hear.”

“
Who?”

“
Stevens. Anchara was found murdered this afternoon. He was at the scene, covered with blood. Says she was stabbed before he got there and he was trying to save her. And she was nine months pregnant.”

Lei kept her eyes on her ex-partner
’s square, handsome Hawaiian face, hyperfocused on his wide nose and full, finely cut lips. He had new crow’s feet she’d never noticed before beside his dark brown eyes. There were a couple of threads of gray in his thick black hair. These tiny details anchored her while she tried to process what he was saying. “Okay.”

“
They’re looking at him for the murder,” Pono said.

“
Of course they are. She’s his ex. His pregnant ex.” Lei was surprised at how calm her voice was. In fact, she felt nothing right now—nothing but ice around her heart.

“
Did you know Anchara was pregnant?”

“
No.”

“
But Stevens says you saw her at the wedding. He says he never spotted her.”

“
I did. But only her face, and she was way in the back. She was wearing a big hat.” Lei remembered that moment when their eyes had locked across the crowd, and Anchara had nodded, smiled, and given her blessing. “She was wearing something caftan-ish. I couldn’t see anything, if that’s what you’re asking me. She was okay with us getting married.”