The Presence (16 page)

Even sick people didn’t bother him.

But dead people …

Despite his revulsion at having to deal with the corpse—or maybe
because
of it—Elvis Dinkins’s eyes fixed on Kioki Santoya’s face. The boy’s eyes were open, and his face looked bloated. His mouth was open, too, and it looked to Elvis like the kid’s tongue was all swollen up. His stomach churned as he saw the place where Dr. Hatcher had cut away a slice of it to send to the lab.

As he pulled on the surgical gloves he’d swiped from the scrub room, Elvis wondered if maybe he should take a slice of the tongue, too. But that would mean actually reaching into the dead boy’s mouth, and Elvis wasn’t sure he could do that.

It was going to be bad enough just taking pieces of tissue from the wound that Dr. Hatcher had cut when she’d
opened the kid up to do the autopsy. Elvis shuddered. The sight of blood did tend to make him feel sick.

In fact, it made him feel sick enough that he was thinking about looking around for another job.

Maybe one working for Takeo Yoshihara, who he’d heard paid a lot better than anyone else on Maui.

And that, at least indirectly, was why he was in the morgue today.

A few days after he started working at the hospital, he’d been cleaning up one of the rooms when a doctor came in. Although Elvis Dinkins had been at the hospital less than a week, he’d already known who this doctor was.

Stephen Jameson. Personal physician to Takeo Yoshihara.

Someone to pay attention to.

Therefore, Elvis Dinkins had listened carefully when Dr. Jameson suggested that if he ever came across anything in the hospital that seemed unusual, he would appreciate it if Elvis would let him know.

At the time, of course, Elvis hadn’t really known what might be considered unusual in a hospital. He’d waited, keeping a sharp lookout, but nothing “unusual” had come his way. Until now.

A teenage kid who’d died for some reason that even Dr. Hatcher hadn’t been able to figure out—now that was something else again! It was just lucky for him he’d been in the emergency room a few minutes ago when Sergeant Olani came in.

He’d hung around in the hall while the cop talked to Hatcher, and then clocked out at the end of the shift, right after Jo-Nell Sims. Except instead of leaving, he’d waited until Dr. Hatcher left, then printed out a copy of the autopsy report she’d done. For a minute he’d thought maybe
that was all he would give Dr. Jameson, but then he remembered the doctor talking about how the lungs looked funny. That was when he’d decided to collect a sample of the kid’s lungs, too.

Now, though, as he stared at the loose stitches Dr. Hatcher had used to close the huge Y-shaped cut she’d made to gain access to the interior of Kioki Santoya’s body, he wondered if he could actually do it. His hands were starting to shake, and he hadn’t even cut the thread.

Gripping the handle of the scalpel he’d picked up in the operating room, Elvis Dinkins steeled himself and bent closer.

One by one he sliced through the stitches, until the corpse’s torso was gaping open.

Elvis Dinkins gazed down at the jumbled organs that had been packed back into the body after the autopsy was completed. His stomach churned again, and he had to struggle to keep from throwing up right there. But as he sank the scalpel deep into the tissue of the left lung, he told himself it wasn’t much different from cutting up the liver his mother used to fry with onions.

His nausea eased a little.

A few seconds later he had hacked a piece of the lung out and dropped it into one of the plastic specimen jars he’d found in the same cabinet as the scalpel. Of course, he had no idea what Jameson might find in the sample, but he thought it might be important.

Really important.

And if it was …

As he slipped out of the hospital, Elvis Dinkins was already dreaming about the future. Maybe after he got a job working for Takeo Yoshihara, he’d find a new apartment.

Hell, if he was lucky, the contents of the plastic bag might change his whole life!

The thought that they might also end his life never entered Elvis Dinkins’s mind.

Jack Peters wished he knew what to say to the dozen teenage boys clustered around him. There was none of the laughter and playful jostling that ordinarily preceded track practice; this afternoon they all seemed lost in their own thoughts, and as the coach’s eyes moved from one face to another, he saw one common element.

Fear.

None of them knew why Kioki Santoya had died last night, and because they didn’t know, they were frightened.

He could almost hear what they were thinking:

What if Kioki had one of those new diseases, like ebola, where if you got it, you were dead in a few hours, puking your brains out, and bleeding everywhere?

What if someone killed Kioki?

What if …?

But there were so many “what ifs” that Jack Peters knew there was no way to answer all of them; indeed, until they
knew
what had happened to Kioki, there was no way to answer any of them. “I guess none of us feels like practice today,” he finally said. “I know I don’t. And I know a lot of people say that when something like this happens, the best thing is to stay busy, to do anything just to keep from thinking about it. But I miss Kioki, and …”
His voice trailed off while he tried to clear the lump that had formed in his throat. “I just want to remember him, I guess. So I’m canceling track practice today. Any of you who want to hang around and just talk, I’ll be here. If you don’t want to, that’s fine, too.” Once again his eyes roamed over the team. “I guess that’s all I have to say,” he finished.

For a few seconds no one moved; it was as if each of them was waiting for someone else to act. But finally Rick Pieper, shoulders slumped, hands in pockets, started back toward the locker room. Kioki, Peters knew, had been Rick’s best friend. A moment later, Jeff Kina and Michael Sundquist followed Rick. As if taking their lead from the three who had been the last to see Kioki alive, the rest of the team began drifting back toward the locker room. The silence that had hung over the dozen boys on the field stayed with them as they stripped off their gym shorts and began pulling on their street clothes.

Ten minutes later, still together, Michael, Jeff Kina, and Rick Pieper emerged from the gym. Josh Malani was waiting for them.

“You wanta go get something to eat?” Josh asked, and Michael could tell by the uncertainty in his voice that Josh was wondering if any of them blamed him for Kioki’s death.

“I’m not very hungry,” Jeff said.

Josh’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Look, what happened to Kioki wasn’t our fault.”

“No one said it was,” Jeff replied. “I just wish I knew what happened. I mean—” He fell silent as he saw a police car turning into the school parking lot. “Uh-oh.”

The other three boys turned to follow Jeff’s gaze.

“You think they already figured out we broke into
Ken’s Dive Shop?” Rick Pieper asked as the squad car pulled to a stop.

“We didn’t break in,” Josh Malani said quickly. The policeman was out of his car now and coming toward him. “And there’s no way he could know. All we’ll tell him is that we were at the arcade out in Kihei. Okay? Just playing video games.”

A moment later Cal Olani had ambled up to them, and Michael saw a glint of hostility flare up in Josh Malani’s eyes.

Cal Olani saw it, too. “Take it easy, Josh,” he said. “I’m not here to hassle you. Just wanted to ask you and your friends a couple of questions about last night.” He studied each boy’s face in turn, his eyes finally coming to rest on Michael. “Don’t think I know you.” He stuck his right hand out. “I’m Cal Olani.”

“Michael Sundquist,” Michael replied, automatically shaking the officer’s hand.

“So, were you with Kioki Santoya last night, too?”

Michael nodded.

“Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Michael shrugged.

“What’d you guys do?”

Michael felt a knot of fear tightening in his stomach. He was certain the cop would know the moment he told the first lie. But before he could say anything, Josh Malani began talking.

“Come on, man, all we were doin’ was hangin’ at the arcade over in Kihei.”

“That true?” Olani asked Michael.

Michael could feel Josh’s eyes boring into him. Finally, telling himself that if he didn’t actually say anything it wasn’t really a lie, he shrugged noncommittally
and did his best to mimic the slightly sullen look that had come over both Jeff Kina’s and Josh Malani’s faces the moment the cop appeared.

Olani turned to Rick Pieper. “You were the one who dropped the Santoya boy off?”

Rick nodded. “I offered to drive him all the way home, but he didn’t want my car to wake up his mom. So I dropped him off at his road.”

“He seem okay?”

Rick frowned. “You mean like was he sick or something?”

When the cop nodded, Rick shrugged. “I guess he was okay. I mean, he didn’t say he wasn’t, and he didn’t want me to take him all the way home, so I guess he must have been okay, huh?”

Cal Olani’s eyes drifted from one boy to another. “How about you guys? You okay?”

“Since when do you care how we feel?” Josh Malani demanded.

Before Cal Olani could respond, Rick Pieper cut in. “Is that what happened to Kioki? He was sick?”

Olani hesitated, knowing any answer he gave would race through the school—and from there through the whole island—faster than an epidemic of flu. And Laura Hatcher hadn’t actually said what had killed Kioki; she’d only been willing to rule certain things out. “Don’t know yet. But he didn’t seem to have any injuries.” His eyes fixed on Josh again. “Look, Malani, I don’t have any axes to grind. I’m just trying to find out what happened to your friend so it doesn’t happen to anyone else. So just take it easy, okay?”

Josh shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his pants.

“I’m cool,” he said. “We just don’t know anything.”

Once more Cal Olani’s eyes scanned the faces of the four boys. There was something, he was sure, that they weren’t telling him. On the other hand, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to any kid on the island when he hadn’t felt the same thing, to one degree or another. And until he knew exactly what had killed Kioki Santoya, there wasn’t any use in trying to lean on them. Another day, maybe, but not now. “All right,” he said. “Stay out of trouble, okay? I don’t come back on shift until tomorrow.”

“What do you think?” Jeff Kina asked as Olani drove out of the parking lot. “Does he know we borrowed Ken’s stuff?”

“ ’Course he doesn’t,” Josh insisted. “If he did, he wouldn’t have left.” He turned to Michael. “Want a ride home?”

Michael hesitated, still not sure they shouldn’t have told the officer exactly what had happened last night. And when the guy had asked them if they were feeling okay, he’d instantly remembered gym class, when—

But he’d gotten over that!

Except he hadn’t. At least not quite. Even now he could still feel something in his chest—nothing bad, really, but just not quite right. And if the other guys felt okay, he wasn’t going to be the whiner. “Sure,” he said, finally answering Josh’s question. “Let’s go.”

But five minutes later, as they were coming into Makawao, he knew Josh had felt his hesitation. “You pissed at me?”

Michael shrugged. “I don’t know. I just—”

“You never had the cops hassle you, did you?” Josh asked. Michael looked over at his friend, but Josh was staring straight ahead. “You never had them want to
know what you were doin’ on the beach in the middle of the night, and not want to tell them ’cause you didn’t want to admit your dad was drunk and you just didn’t want to go home.”

Michael bit his lip.

“You never had to sit in the police station all night because your folks wouldn’t come and get you, did you?”

Michael shook his head, but still said nothing.

“Okay, so maybe we should have told him,” Josh finally admitted. “But I just get tired of being hassled, you know? So don’t be pissed off at me, okay?” He paused, then: “Come on, Mike, let’s just go do something!”

“Like what?” Michael asked warily.

Josh hesitated. When he spoke, his voice sounded almost shy and he continued to stare straight ahead out the windshield. “ ‘Spose your mom would mind if you showed me what she’s digging up?”

Michael turned to stare at his friend. “You’re kidding.
You
want to see an archaeological site?”

Josh Malani reddened. “Why wouldn’t I?” he demanded. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

Michael started laughing. “Well, sometimes you sure act stupid,” he said. Then he spotted a pay phone outside one of the buildings in Makawao. “Pull over there.”

Josh pulled over. “So are we still friends, or what?”

“Of course we’re still friends,” Michael assured him. “I’ve just got to call my mom so she can meet us at the gate.”

“The gate?” Josh echoed. “What gate?”

“Ever hear of some guy named Takeo Yoshihara?”

Josh’s eyes widened. “Is that who your mom works for?”

Michael cocked his head. “Is that some kind of big deal?” he countered.

Josh nodded. “Around here it doesn’t get any bigger. Nobody ever sees him, and nobody really knows what he does. And hardly anybody’s ever seen where he lives.”

“Well, get ready,” Michael said. “ ’Cause we’re about to see it all.”

Not likely, Josh Malani thought as Michael swung out of the truck to call his mother. Not likely at all.

“Holy shit,” Josh whispered as his truck, following Rob Silver’s Explorer, emerged from the rain forest into the vast garden that was Takeo Yoshihara’s estate. “Will you look at this? What do you think it cost?”

Even though his mother had described the estate to him, Michael was no more prepared for the reality of it than Josh. As his eyes darted from a pond to a waterfall to a Zen garden, he found himself unable to really look at anything. “Ten million?” he guessed.

“A lot more’n that,” Josh said. “Look at those buildings. That’s all koa wood, man. Stuff costs a fortune.” He slowed the truck to a crawl, staring first in one direction, then in another. Suddenly an albino peacock appeared from a grove of trees, stopped short, and spread its enormous tail into a huge white fan. “I don’t believe this, man,” Josh breathed. “How many people do you suppose it takes to take care of it?”