Twisted Vine (14 page)

“Shit!” Lei dropped the binoculars and radioed Dispatch with her handheld as she jumped out of the truck. She was at least a hundred yards away from Woo’s location. “Send an ambulance to this address! I need medical assistance!”

Lei sprinted down the long oleander-lined driveway that led into the estate. She’d had to park just outside, positioned so she could see the house’s main entrance, but it wasn’t close enough. Flying down the driveway, once again she was glad she wore athletic shoes to work rather than the girly ones Marcella persisted with.

At the pond, she shed her phone, cred wallet, and radio, jumping in. It was deeper than it had looked when she’d walked over the bridge herself, up to her waist, and she waded forward, startling the huge koi, to Clyde Woo’s body. He was floating facedown. She reached under his narrow torso and flipped him, grabbing the front of the robe and hoisting him up in a lifeguard tow, hauling him as rapidly as she could to the edge. She lifted him under the armpits and hauled him over the cement lip of the pond onto the clipped grass at the edge.

Woo had begun to heave and spasm, and she rolled him onto his side, where he vomited water. She thumped his back, picking up the squawking radio.

“Dispatch, surveillance subject attempted suicide by drowning. Conscious and expelling water. Where’s the ambulance?”

“Five minutes out,” Dispatch replied. “Backup also on the way.”

Lei set the radio down and leaned over to look into Clyde Woo’s face. “Can you speak?”

He just coughed some more, and she realized that at least some of the water on his face was tears. “Why did you stop me?” he gasped. “I don’t want to live anymore. This should be my choice.”

“Mr. Woo. I’m so sorry, but it’s my job and duty to save lives. You might feel differently tomorrow.”

Woo just sobbed, and she drew him into her lap and patted his back, feeling the light fragility of his twisted body, the hollow birdlike quality of his bones, and realizing how far she’d come that she could offer such comfort. She felt a complex regret that she’d saved him only for him to suffer more. That’s how they were when the ambulance pulled up, lights flashing, followed by a familiar unmarked SUV.

Lei surrendered the old man to the EMTs and stood up, aware her shirt had gone transparent with water. She unbuckled her damp shoulder harness—she’d need to clean her weapon, make sure it was dry.

Kamuela stood in front of her, Ching just behind. “Agent Texeira. Don’t know why they called for backup, but I was in the area.”

Lei plucked the shirt away from her bra, glad it was a plain white one. “Yeah, I just called Dispatch for emergency assistance. Seems like they did a general support call.”

“Well, how handy that you were on the scene.” He let the statement roll out into a question.

“I had Mr. Woo under surveillance. Saw him ditch his walker.” She gestured to the tipped-over equipage at the end of the bridge. “He threw himself in.”

“What were you surveilling Woo for?”

“Can I get into some dry clothes?” She wanted to buy time to confer on how much to tell about the investigation the FBI had stolen from him.

“We have to do a walk-through in the house, see what we can see,” Kamuela said.

Ching added, “Marcus, this is probably related to the fishy suicides the Feds have been looking into. I told you about Shimaoka last week, and you had that Hale kid first.”

Marcus turned to look at his partner as Lei picked up her phone and the radio along with her weapon. “Detective Kamuela, why don’t you guys do your walk-through and meet me at my house? I can shower and change, give you a statement. About that other thing too.” This could save her a potentially embarrassing trip to his station. “I have to call in to my partner and HQ. I’ll text you my address.” She walked off before he could detain her further, shoes squishing, pants rubbing, holding the shirt away from her body as best she could.

The EMTs loaded Clyde Woo into the ambulance and pulled out, sirens blaring. Woo must be in some distress for them to be in such a hurry, she thought, jumping into the truck. Woo might die anyway from the stress of the experience, and she felt a stab of sorrow for him.

She wondered fleetingly if he’d left a suicide note and knew she needed to interview him further regarding DyingFriends now that her cover was blown—but Kamuela and Ching were entering the elaborate doors of the house as she turned on the truck. They would take any note they found into evidence, and she’d get it from them.

She called in to Dispatch as she drove, patching through to Ken at his surveillance site.

“Woo tried to off himself,” she told Ken. “Sent the nurse service home and pitched himself into the pond.”

“Damn!” her partner exclaimed. “You had a lot more action than I have—nothing moving over here. Did you get to him in time?”

“Yeah, but Dispatch called for backup and Kamuela and Ching showed up.” She told him what was going on so far. “I’m going home to change. They’re meeting me there to take a statement. I’m wondering if we should bring them on to the case. We’ve already got Reyes and his partner—do we need anyone more?”

“I’d defer to Waxman and their chief on that, but go ahead and brief them on where we are. We need HPD happy with us. Just one big interagency family bringing down the criminals.”

“This case—it’s tough. The criminals aren’t as clear. Woo was crying when I fished him out. Told me he thought it was his right to end his life. It’s hard not to feel bad for him, for the others.” Lei found herself rubbing the pendant at her throat.

“The law is straightforward, and our job is to uphold and represent.” As always, Ken’s certainty grounded her.

“I know. Thank God that much is clear. It’s all shades of gray, except for this system admin who’s promoting suicide and may be killing people. Have you thought of that? So far we have two—Corby and Betsy—that we know had some help going down and no trace we can tie to anyone.” Lei turned off the truck’s air-conditioning—she’d begun to shiver in her wet clothes.

“I had thought of that. He or she is the real criminal. I hope Sophie’s getting somewhere with that today; she seemed to think she was a lot closer.”

Hours after she’d hooked it up, the write blocker finally beeped, letting Sophie know the duplication of Betsy Brown’s hard drive was done. The electronic sound broke the spell of tracking the suicide photos using DAVID. She’d begun to try to match the photos to known victims across the
United States.

She stood, stretched backward, then forward to touch her toes. Unhooked the write blocker, replugged it into Amara. She could hopefully spin through the hard drive and online activity and burrow into Betsy’s deepest level on DyingFriends. She knew there had to be another level beyond the one ShastaM had made it to.

There was too much work to do to leave DAVID on ice, and she’d heard Texeira express it this way: “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”

She smiled, thinking of the way Lei charged her cases. She felt the stiff unlocking of her frozen muscles as she moved and knew that minutes she spent exercising would enable her to work for hours more.

The laptop had a password. She dragged another program over from one of the other screens and set it to cracking the password. While that was working, she carried her water bottle to the cooler, filled it up, and went to a quiet corner of the room. Got out her weighted jump rope and did cardio. She ignored the frequent glances from Bateman, whom she knew wanted to catch her eye and engage her in conversation or, worse yet, give her a compliment. She could see the words bouncing around the little agent’s head like a conversation bubble, and she just didn’t have the mental or emotional space in her head to deal with his crush.

Back at her cubicle, she stowed the rope and checked Betsy’s computer—password was cracked. She sat on the rubber ball and dove in.

She was able to see that Betsy had an account with DyingFriends by her traffic patterns, but Betsy had deleted her cookies. On the site itself, her account came up with a
404 User Not Found.

The system admin had beaten her to it again and deleted Betsy’s account.

“Damn,” Sophie muttered, realizing as she did so that her eyes were sore and gritty from overuse.  She was going to have to keep going with the ShastaM ruse, and she was getting tired of it.

Perhaps Betsy’s e-mail would have something useful. She surfed through the e-mail using keywords “suicide” “death” “ALS” and didn’t find anything of note. Also on the hard drive, and just as sad and devastating typed as it had been in the young woman’s handwriting, was a typed practice copy of her suicide note. It was dated the same day she’d placed the order for the nightgown, two weeks before the day she’d actually taken her life..

Something had prompted her decision on that day.

Frustrated, Sophie stood up and heard the distinctive growl of her stomach.

“You sound hungry,” Bateman said from behind her. “Want to get a bite to eat down at the cafeteria?”

“No, thanks,” Sophie said. “I brought something from home.” She didn’t turn her head, didn’t smile. He took himself off, and she felt guilty relief.

She logged back into her DyingFriends e-mail on the site, and this time there was a new e-mail invitation for ShastaM:  “DyingFriends.com is pleased to invite you to the deepest level of commitment and sharing available on the site. Read and accept Agreements to enter.”

She read on. This security layer was even stricter about not talking about the site, disclosing things you’d seen or “participated in,” and it required a background check. The consent form for the background check was handily provided.

Sophie paused. Fortunately, she had a clean and complete identity and background in place ready for ShastaM’s fake social security number. She’d anticipated that at some point, DyingFriends was going to do its own vetting of prospective members. She uploaded the consent, made sure all her blocker programs that hid her computer’s true identity and location were in place, and hit Accept.

Sophie knew the drill by now. Nothing more would happen until the system admin had reviewed her.

She got out her lunch from home, microwaved it, and while it was in the oven, looked at the clock—it was already five p.m. She took the vegetable curry out, sat back down at her station with the bowl, and opened the gallery of suicide photos again.

It didn’t matter what time it was. The only people she wanted for company were the unnamed dead. Their faces, crying for names, crowded her mind.

Lei took a shower, towel-dried and scrunched her curls, and got into a fresh FBI “uniform.” She was sitting at the dining room table with her Glock taken apart for cleaning when the dogs let her know Kamuela and Ching were there.

Kamuela had come in alone. She looked past him to the car, where his partner was working a computer on the console. “Told him I’d only be a minute,” Kamuela said.

“Thanks for the privacy. Which statement do you want first?” She led him into the cottage. She cued well-mannered Keiki to sit and give him a sniff while Angel bounced around, yapping. She shushed the little dog by picking her up. “Something to drink?”

“No, thanks. I do have to keep an eye on the time. I’ll take the statements on tape, if you don’t mind.” He set a handheld tape recorder on the table between them. Lei sat down and kept her face neutral, stifling anxiety—this was protocol.

“Sure. Which one do you want first?”

“Let’s start with the one about the Bozeman murder.” It was the first time Lei had heard the name of the assassin. She was silent, stroking Angel’s head, as Kamuela stated the date, the time, their location, and their names. He looked up at Lei, gave a nod. “Tell me how you came to dial Bozeman’s disposable cell number.”

Lei told him, including the impulse decision to try to make contact with someone who had known her deceased grandmother and how she’d come to have the number.

“So you did not know whose number you were calling?”

“No. I was affected by nostalgia and the message the number was written on. It was an impulse decision.” It felt odd to be so personal and truthful about something so dangerous.

“And was there any other reason you might have called the number?”

“No.” Was he fishing for the Kwon matter?

“How do you think your grandmother had in her possession the number of a man who has killed at least four people that we know of?”

Lei felt her heart beating with heavy thuds. She looked at Kamuela; his eyes were opaquely brown.

“I have no idea.” She was able to say it with conviction. She really did have no idea.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Special Agent Texeira.” He punched off. Lei exhaled, and Keiki came to lean against her leg, her eyes worried.

“That’s a beautiful dog,” Kamuela said. “Have you had her long?”

“I’ve had Keiki five years. Since I was a patrol officer on the Big Island. This little girl, I’m just dog sitting for an extended period.”

“So you started off in uniform?”

“Yeah. Worked my way to detective, did my degree in criminal justice on the job at UH Hilo. Caught some heavy cases, got some attention for it, and Marcella was the one to recruit me for the FBI.” She’d told Kamuela her darkest secrets but not even her basic background. “I’d like to get the other statement out of the way, the one about Woo. Did you guys find anything in the house? Because I need it, if you did. It’s an active investigation.”

“Into what, exactly?”

“A website and assisted suicide.” Lei told him about DyingFriends and where they were in the investigation. “Did you find a note in the house?”

“No. So either Woo’s decision was a spontaneous one, or maybe he accidentally fell in?”

“Didn’t look like it. He really let that walker go with a push at the top of the bridge, looked down at the water for a minute, then just keeled in headfirst. After I fished him out, he said it should have been his choice to end his life, so it wasn’t an accident.”

“We didn’t find anything about DyingFriends either.”

“You wouldn’t. They’re cagey at the deeper levels on the site. I wonder if Woo just didn’t have anyone to leave a suicide note for. He said he was estranged from his family when we first interviewed him.”

On that sobering thought, Kamuela set up the tape recorder and she made her statement about seeing Woo apparently fall and how she’d come to rescue him. “There is an active investigation ongoing regarding a series of suspicious suicides, and the FBI was keeping an eye on Woo for his safety.”

Kamuela turned off the tape recorder, stood up. “I look forward to putting this whole Bozeman thing behind us. I just want to find his killer. I don’t plan to hunt down all the ‘clients’ he hit targets for unless my chief directs me to, and I don’t know if it’s even possible. Your number was one of the only ones on his phone. How he got his jobs, I haven’t been able to determine. So unless some new evidence turns up, it’s one of those cases where it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

Lei started at the detective’s use of the familiar phrase. “Very true,” she said. “When Stevens and I work out our long-distance issues, we’d love to do something with you and Marcella.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll call you if I need anything more.” The entire Kwon situation lay between them unspoken, and Lei hoped it stayed that way—at least until she found out how her grandmother had had Bozeman’s number in her keepsake box.

She followed Kamuela out, waved to Ching just as her phone rang again. It was Ken.

“How’d that go?”

She filled him in. “I’m going to the hospital to interview Woo. There was no suicide note at the scene. Are you anywhere near Woo’s house? Maybe you can pick up his computer.”

“We need a warrant for that, and at this point I don’t think we have probable cause,” Ken said. “There’s no evidence that he even was truly attempting suicide, and if he was, that DyingFriends had anything to do with it.”

“He was committing suicide.”

“Well, get confirmation at the hospital.”

“Okay.” Lei sighed, grabbing an apple as she locked the house on the mournful dogs and headed for the truck. “I gave my statement to Kamuela about why I called
Bozeman the hit man’s phone. Are you near a computer? Can you look him up? I want to know what his background is like.”

“I’m not, but I will and I’ll get back to you. How did that go?”

“Kamuela was gracious. Stayed with the reason I called Bozeman’s phone—curiosity—and left the Kwon thing out of it. I’m hoping that will be the end of it.”

“Do you know why your grandmother had his number? Really?”

Lei got into the truck, switched to her Bluetooth, clicked it on. “No. But I’m beginning to think she might have been the kind of woman who would hire a hit man. I haven’t heard one good thing about her, even from my grandfather, who won’t say straight up, but I can tell he suspects she did hire Bozeman to kill Kwon. Said she ‘had a lot of anger’ about all that happened to the family but was too proud to reach out to me when I was living with my aunty Rosario. I’m beginning to think I’ll never know. But at least we know who killed Kwon.”

“A lot of unanswered questions,” Ken said. Lei’s phone beeped with a second call, and she looked down—it was Stevens.

“I’ll call you after my interview with Woo,” she said, and rang off, taking Stevens’s call.

“Hi, Sweets.”

“Hi. I need a nickname for you. Lover Boy? Hot Stuff?”

“No, please no. Why’d you hang up on me? The subject of kids?”

Lei remembered where their conversation had ended. Woo’s dive into the koi pond had completely distracted her.

“Don’t blame you for thinking that. I actually had to run off and save a man’s life.” Lei filled him in on Woo’s suicide attempt and her statements to Kamuela regarding
Bozeman the shooter. “I may still need to have you retrieve the disguise I wore to visit Kwon and make a statement as to where you found it.”

“Happy to do it if we need to. Seems like Kamuela decided to believe you.”

“Seems like it, thank God.” Lei navigated the light traffic leading to the Queen’s Medical Center in downtown Honolulu. “But what are we going to do about getting together? Now that I’ve had you, I’m missing you worse than ever. We can’t live like this.”

“I like the sound of that. How about you come over to
Maui next weekend? See my place. We sold the house in Wailuku Heights, and I’ve got a nice little apartment in Kuau—close to my station and right on the ocean.”

Lei’s mind filled with images of Kuau—that aqua-blue stretch of breezy
Maui coastline with its tiny hidden beaches. “God, that sounds amazing.” She navigated around a slow-moving camper and made a left into the parking garage at the Queen’s Medical Center. “The investigation’s heating up. I just don’t know when I can get away.”

A long pause. Lei bit her lip.

“There’s always an investigation heating up. This is how it’s going to be for both of us,” Stevens said. “We both have jobs that take more than your average pound of flesh. I just know I can’t be without you much longer without having some sort of breakdown.” He uttered a mournful-sounding howl.

Lei laughed, relieved he’d decided to be playful. She pulled into a parking slot. “Yeah, here it is
six p.m. and I’m going into a hospital for another interview. This isn’t working, but which of us is going to suck it up, give up their job, and move?”

“I’ll look at the transfer postings if you will.”

“You know there aren’t any Bureau offices on Maui.”

“Maybe it’s time there was a liaison branch over here. C’mon. You know what a hassle it was last year, coordinating everything with that interagency case.”

Lei leaned her head on the steering wheel. “It would never fly. Waxman still thinks I’m a loose cannon. That would be giving me too much rope.”

“I don’t know. Another way to look at it is that you’re an agent who’s a self-starter and knows how to take initiative.”

“That’s not a big value in the Bureau that I can tell.”

“Well, then. There’s always local. Omura still asks about you, and she’s the big cheese now at Kahului Station.”

Lei sighed. “Michael. Let’s just agree to do some homework on it. We don’t have to figure this out right now.”

Saying goodbye felt so awful she almost wished she hadn’t taken his call.

“Mr. Woo is in a coma,” the nurse said, consulting a chart. “He came in with cardiac arrhythmia and some mini strokes complicated by his current diagnosis. His systems are shutting down.”

Lei felt a clench of regret. “So he’s dying. Can I see him?”

“Sure. Just through the window, though. We’ve got him in intensive care.” Lei followed the nurse to the viewing window and looked in at the diminutive figure in the bed. He was propped up, tubes and lines appearing to be what animated the slight rise and fall of his chest. He still looked like Yoda, with his bald, freckled skull with a few antennae-like hairs surrounding it, those wide transparent ears.

“Who’s his doctor?”

The nurse looked at the chart again. “Shimoda. He’s due to see him tomorrow morning.”

“I need to interview him for an investigation. Does he have an emergency contact listed?”

The nurse scanned through her folder, frowned. “No one listed. He was unconscious when he came in, but he had been here before, so we knew who he was and had his insurance on record.”

“So the hospital hasn’t contacted anyone?”

“No one to contact.”

“Okay.” God it was sad—Woo dying alone and no one even to call. Lei knew what she was going to be working on this evening. “He had a home care service. Maybe they know something. Someone must be here for him.”

The nurse shrugged. “Some old people don’t seem to be missed.”

Lei felt a flush of heat blow through her body. “Everyone should be missed.”

She spun on a rubber heel and stomped off, already on the phone with Dispatch, running a deeper background on Clyde Woo. She went to the deserted waiting room. Apparently, he’d been married, but his wife was deceased. Parents deceased. Had been an only child. She was eventually able to get the number of his lawyer.

She dialed it after getting the man’s personal cell, glancing at the clock on the wall that gave the time as seven p.m. “This is Special Agent Lei Texeira with the FBI,” she said briskly when the phone was answered. “Your client, Clyde Woo, is here in the Queen’s
Medical Center in intensive care and is not expected to live.”

“Cyde who?” She could picture the man’s confused face. He sounded as old as Woo.

“Clyde. Woo. Little Asian multimillionaire. Looks like Yoda.”

“Oh,
Clyde.” She heard the head smack the guy gave. “I’m retired, you know. I turned my clients over to my son.” He gave a name and number. “Sorry to hear that Clyde’s gone downhill.”

“It was, apparently, a rapid slide in that direction,” Lei said, jotting the number on her trusty spiral pad. “I’ll give your son a call. I’m looking for who his next of kin is, his heir. Someone to inform of what’s going on with him.”

“Oh, I can tell you that. No one. He’s a bitter old man. Had some cousins, but they’re all estranged and live on the Mainland. My son never met him, but his office has the will. Clyde was leaving everything to the Honolulu Zoo.”

“Oh.” Lei digested that. “Well, thanks.”

She hung up and decided not to call the lawyer son until the next morning. She was passing by the nurse’s station when the young woman waved her over. “Mr. Woo’s vitals are failing. Did you reach anyone?”