Stolen in Paradise (A Lei Crime Companion Novel) (13 page)

“I’m turning my comm back on.” She stomped a bit as she headed down the hall with her coffee and back into the conference room. There was a time and a place for everything, and now wasn’t it for
that
.

Maybe it was time to get her money back from the Club. It had been a bad idea.

“I tried to warn Cindy,” Abed was saying. “I told her he didn’t seem to respect women. He didn’t respect Dr. Pettigrew either.”

Marcella sat back on the love seat, crossed her legs, tried to focus, but the thought that Kamuela was in the next room watching was distracting. “How long were Cindy and Fernandez having a relationship?”

“A couple of months. She broke things off with me and started hanging around with him. I don’t know what she saw in him. All those tics and noises he made were very distracting in the lab.” Abed sniffed fastidiously.

“So it doesn’t sound like it was that serious.”

“I don’t know. I just know I tried to win her back and she said she had ‘feelings’ for him.” Abed blew his nose.

“Let’s switch gears a bit here,” Marcella said. “We reviewed Dr. Pettigrew’s phone records, and she received three calls in the last hour before the phone went into the canal. One of them was from you. Do you remember what you called her for on the evening she was shot?”

Abed rubbed his hands on his thighs, reached up to stroke his shoulder-length hair. He seemed to be soothing himself as one might a pet. “Can’t say. I talked with her several times a day.”

“Well, we’ll be asking you that again, so try to reconstruct the day as best you can. On a positive note, we’ve recovered the research.”

“You’re kidding!” The widened eyes, brightened expression appeared to be genuine. “How?”

“Dr. Pettigrew took daily photographs of the pages of the lab books. We recovered the pictures and printed them. As soon as you all are cleared, you can get back to work in the lab.” Marcella set the hook. “We’ve already put the data back, ready and waiting for you.”

“That’s great news. I hope you consider me cleared?”

“We’ll let you know.”

“Thanks again for coming in,” said Rogers, escorting Abed to the door. Marcella threw back the rest of her coffee in a couple of gulps. Something about that guy—smarmy. Ugh. She got up.

“Way to bag out on the interview, Agent Scott.” She’d almost forgotten that Waxman was listening. “Needed a cup of coffee that bad, did you?”

“Sorry, sir. I—just needed a break.” She knocked on the adjoining door into the surveillance room. Gundersohn let her in. The narrow space, lit by the glow of monitors, was filled by the Waxman, Gundersohn, and the bulk of Kamuela. “Can I see a replay of the part I missed?”

“Nothing of note.” Waxman looked at her. “Your hair is falling down. You might consider cutting it.”

Marcella grabbed a Bic pen out of a nearby holder. She twisted her bundled hair tighter and pushed the pen through the wad. “I wonder if you advise our male agents to cut their hair. Sir.”

“If it touches their collar, yes, I do, Agent Scott. The FBI has a certain professional appearance to maintain, and I want everyone on my team to maintain it.”

Marcella felt her throat close with humiliation, and she withdrew, closing the door with deliberate care. She stomped back to her office, dug in the desk drawer, muttering curse words as she located a handful of bobby pins. Her mouth was filled with a row of them, as she wound her hair into the FBI Twist, when Kamuela appeared at the door.

“Hope you don’t mind me saying your boss is a prick,” he said. His eyes wandered over her, and she could swear she saw something warm and appreciative in them. Did he know? Was he thinking about her like she was about him? God. This charade between them couldn’t go on.

Yet it did. And she wasn’t going to be the one to pull off their masks—at least not yet.

She pushed the bobby pins in, anchoring her hair in the demure roll she hadn’t taken time for that morning. “I happen to agree. He’s got it in for me.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s a bit of a misogynist. Also pissed off about a councilman I wrongly accused of embezzlement a few months ago.”

“We have asshole chiefs in HPD too, but it’s tough to deal with. I thought you set the trap nicely. Only one interview to go, I hear.” Kamuela sat in the guest chair. “With Fernandez.”

“Yeah. We’ve got our surveillance unit set up in the lab next door and ready to go if any of the students tries to get the notes.”

She noticed his curling hair touched his collar—detectives didn’t have quite the restrictions agents did—and she remembered how it felt in her hands, soft and springy. Her palms itched to touch it again. She turned on her computer instead.

“Fernandez is our last interviewee. Unfortunately, he’s not answering any of his numbers.” Rogers walked in and took a seat at his desk.

“Ching was in his residence area and went by to try and bring him in while you were interviewing. He doesn’t seem to be home.”

“Wonder where the guy could be, with the lab shut down.” Marcella kept her eyes on her e-mail.

“Well. When you finish up, want to grab a bite to eat?” Kamuela asked.

“I can’t—I’m going home,” Rogers said. “I always try to see the fam a little each day at least. Yeah, don’t know how it happened, but it’s already six o’clock.”

“Sure.” Kamuela cleared his throat. “Ahem. Agent Scott?”

“What?” She glanced up.

“Want to grab something?”

“No thanks. Too much to do.” No telling what might happen if she was alone with him—avoidance was the only option. She kept her eyes on her monitor as he left. As soon as he was down the hall, she sat back in the chair. “Damn that man!”

“Little Shit, you are going to die a lonely old maid.” Rogers got up, picked up his jacket. “Poor guy likes you. More fool him.”

“He does not. Geez.” She felt her cheeks heat up. She’d rediscovered blushing—that, or it was really early menopause, God forbid.

“I’m telling you—you two got some chemistry going on. But whatever. I’m off for at least ten minutes of family bliss before the kids go to bed. See you.” He left.

“We don’t got something going on,” Marcella muttered, staring blankly at her monitor. Did Kamuela know? Was he looking for a way to let her know he knew? And if by some miracle, they made it past this bizarre hurdle, how could it possibly go anywhere? And did she want it to?

She wished for a moment she could take her mask off with him at the Club. She pictured his dark eyes widening, the recognition, the flame of hunger between them flaring up, his arms wrapping around her, his lips descending on hers…

“Agent Scott?” Waxman stood in the doorway.

“Chief? What can I do for you?” She pasted a “yessir” look on her face.

“I apologize for my remarks earlier. I should have spoken to you privately about something as personal as your hairstyle.” Waxman looked like he was sucking on a penny.

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.” Marcella didn’t have to pretend to be surprised.

“Yes. Well. See you tomorrow.” He withdrew his shellacked head and continued down the hall. She heard his steps, each of them. The swish of the door.

The office was empty.

Marcella kept staring at her monitor. She felt something, and it didn’t feel good. She searched and came up with what it was—the bad side of alone they called lonely.

She could go down to IT. Someone was always there. Or Evidence Collection. They were still working on all the trace they’d collected from Moku’s apartment. She could go get something to eat, but even empty her stomach was too knotted to put anything into it. The worst thing to do would be to sit here and imagine what she could be doing with Kamuela.

In masks. Or not. She was increasingly wishing for not.

Marcella shut down the computer, loaded her weapon into the harness, slipped the creds in her pocket, hooked her jacket off the chair, and headed out.

She’d be fine as long as she never went home and checked her e-mail.

Marcella swiped her ID badge at the door into the Information Technology lab. Low lighting, the better to enhance screen reading, kept the area cavernous. She never spent much time here, but it appeared deserted. She wandered into the various bays where the tech agents worked, each at a U-shaped module ranged with monitors and power strips, veinlike blue Internet cording lining the counters in bundles.

“Agent Scott?” Sophie Ang stood up from a module across the room. “Looking for me?”

“As a matter of fact, but any live body would be nice.” Marcella moved toward her. Unlike the rest of the building, IT’s floors were padded with a sound-deadening felted carpet, and she seemed to glide over it.

Ang rolled a cushy office chair over to her. “I’m still going through the lab computers. Got one more to go.”

Marcella sat. “What are you looking for?”

Ang shrugged. “Anything. I’ve cloned the hard drive. Now I’m mining it for hidden data, searching the Internet activity, and searching for key words related to the investigation in any capacity.”

“Got anything more than you told us about in the meeting?”

“Yeah, a little. I found a cache of e-mail between Kim and a lab in Korea. Appears he was negotiating with them for advance preview of BioGreen. Disappearance of the formula seems to have hung him up.” Ang pulled up the correspondence, all in Korean. “I’ll print it out in English for the next briefing.”

“Good. I can see how maybe he’d off Pettigrew if he thought she was going to give away the research out from under him. But why would he kill Cindy?” Marcella frowned, rubbed her chin.

“I don’t know. Maybe she was onto him? I mean, I heard she tried to speak to you.” Ang switched on another monitor, a stream of data flowing by as her fingers flew over the keys.

“Yeah. I feel really bad about that. I was in my wet suit, about to dive in the Ala Wai Canal, and I was hot and distracted. I wish I’d taken the time to try to get her to talk to me right then.” Marcella felt the lump in her throat that hadn’t really gone away since the young scientist’s death.

“You couldn’t have known.” Ang turned on a third monitor. “We have to sift through so much information all the time, and at any given time any bit of it could be irrelevant—or the turning point of the case.”

“Yeah. Ain’t that a bitch.” Marcella noticed the corded muscles of the tech agent’s forearms as the woman’s blunt fingers flew across the keys. “You work out.”

“Mixed martial arts. I’m in a women’s fight club. Keeps my combat skills up for the Bureau, too.” Ang shot her a sideways glance. “Want to come out sometime?”

“What, to watch or to compete?”

“Either. I’m sure you’ve got something more going on than just looks or you wouldn’t be in the Bureau.”

Marcella’s arched brows shot up. “Gee, thanks.”

A small beep sounded. Ang zeroed back in on the first monitor.

“Looks like we have a suspicious upload to an online site from this computer, Fernandez’s usual workstation. Keywords “Dr. P” and “shot.” Ang opened another window. “It’s a private blog. Let me break in.” She drag-and-dropped another window, typed something into it. They watched an hourglass spin; then the blog popped open.

Both women leaned in and their heads bumped. “Sorry,” they said at the same time, still looking at the blog.

Ang sucked in her breath. “Let me tag this and print the content. We don’t want to lose anything in case he rips the site down.”

The poem on the blog seemed to burn Marcella’s eyes. “Sick son of a bitch. He blames Cindy for making him kill her.”

Ang was preoccupied with her tech tasks. The laser computer spat out pages of the blog’s text. Marcella grabbed them. “This is big. Could be some important intel inside.”

“I’ll say it is. Let’s brief the team ASAP tomorrow morning.” Ang hit another key. “I’m setting up a trace on the blog. Next time he logs in and posts, I’ll be able to trace the computer. I’m running an alert to my computer and my phone, so wherever I am, I’ll know.”

Marcella gathered the pages of the blog out of the printer.

“I’d like to go study these back in my office. Let me know if anything else pops. I’m not planning to go home tonight. Extension 334.”

“Pulling an all-nighter? Me too. I’ll call you if anything more surfaces. And give the Fight Club some thought. You might like it.”

Marcella nodded and left, the pages tucked under her arm. Outside the womb of the IT lab, her hot-pink heels rang on the echoing floors. She stepped into her office and shut the door. Cleared the crap off her desk with a few sweeps of her arm, then turned on the halogen desk light. Sat down with the cleared surface and the stack of pages.

Blog Entry

I don’t like cops. Even ones

That are pretty like

The Fed who stood there all shiny hair and teeth

She’s dangerous. Him too, the other one with

A stupid accent, slow as cold honey

But sharp eyes. Smart blue eyes that see more than they should.

They remind

Me of Dr. P’s eyes. Her blue eyes

Were so surprised when

I shot her.

She never expected it of me.

Everyone underestimates me

But I’ll show them in the end like

I showed her.

Posted 11:24 p.m.

Blog Entry

Black hair soft hands your beautiful eyes.

Cindy.

Your real name was

Cinderella Kealoha Anuhea Moku

A mouthful of singing that

You cut short because you wanted

To break out.

Conquer the
haole world
. Be

A big-shot doctor.

And you would have, too.

I could have loved you, if I

Loved like other people do.

I tried.

I wanted to.

But you figured it out and