CHAPTER 18

It’s nearing noon, Monday, when Jake first reaches for his yellow legal pad. He snatches a pen and with a shaky hand begins jotting down a list of possible witnesses.

Flan slaps his cell phone shut before he reenters the conference room. He takes a seat and opens his file without a word about his daughter Casey.

The Law Offices of Harper & Corvelli are all business this morning. Jake and Flan have even been instructed to wholly ignore the various cuts and bruises on my face. I told them little about Friday’s incident at Kanaloa’s other than that it may be Buffalo wing–related. Neither man seemed terribly surprised, which is fine, because there’s simply no time for further explanation. See, Luke Maddox finally gave up the Simms file through his secretary three hours ago, when I marched over to his office, cell phone in hand, forefinger poised over the speed-dial number for Judge Sonya Maxa’s chambers.

“Ever work an arson case before?” Flan asks Jake.

Jake shrugs, shakes his head no.

Flan turns to me. I glance up, chewing my lower lip, and it’s all the answer he needs. This is a first for us all. Anyone watching us sift through the crime scene photos—trying to make out the floors from the ceilings, the char from the carpets, the corpses from the furniture—would know it.

It’s all so goddamn grotesque.

I push my share of the photos away for the time being, take a hit of Red Bull, and grab the pleadings. Pleadings, at least, feel familiar—ugly white pages declaring war, setting forth the crimes charged and sparing us much of the gory details. But the pleadings aren’t going to be going before the jury; these monstrous photographs are. So I hold myself back from flipping each one over so that they’re face down on the table. There’s no hiding what happened at the Kupulupulu Beach Resort that night. There’s only procrastination.

“Nine counts of murder,” Jake says with a sigh, motioning at the complaint I’m holding.

“Eleven,” I correct him. “Today’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser says two victims died from their injuries late last night, one of them a firefighter. By this afternoon we’ll be looking at an amended complaint.”

“Waiving the prelim?”

“Now? You bet.”

The preliminary hearing to determine whether there existed probable cause for arrest was something I originally thought we might win, considering the state’s rush to arrest and charge Erin Simms. But learning this morning what the state has in the way of evidence has caused me to do a one-eighty. No chance of dismissal at the prelim. In fact, barring some miracle, this case is going all the way to trial.

“Here’s what they have,” I say, flipping through a report prepared by a veteran arson investigator named Inez Rios. “Point of origin is likely the far left-hand corner of the room, opposite the bed.”

“How do they know that?” Flan asks.

“Point of origin is the area where they find the most damage. That’s where the fire burns hottest and longest.”

Jake leans forward. “How about the cause?”

I scan the next page. “Cause is listed as incendiary, simply meaning the fire was intentionally set, as opposed to accidental.”

“How did they determine that?”

“Rios discovered an accelerant, specifically charcoal starter fluid at the point of origin. And there was a trailer leading from the point of origin to the bed.”

Flan asks, “What’s a trailer?”

“A trailer could be any material placed near the accelerant to spread the fire from its point of origin,” I explain. “Could be gasoline-soaked towels or newspapers, even gunpowder. In this case, it was a trail of the accelerant itself.”

“Why not just start the fire on the bed? That’s where the victim’s body was found, right?”

“Right,” I say. “I suppose whoever started the fire didn’t want to watch the victim burn to death. Or smell his burning flesh. This way, she or he could have turned and ran before the fire ever reached the bed.”

“Maddox will use that,” Jake says, “to show that the perpetrator knew the victim, couldn’t just stand there and watch him burn.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Then again it’s likely every suspect we come up with to cast reasonable doubt will have known the victim, too. I don’t know how much further we’ll be able to go than the guest list. Anyone outside the wedding party, we lose motive.”

Jake nods. “Let’s move on to the stuff that really hurts us, then.”

I don’t need to look at Rios’s report to tackle that issue. “Ignition,” I say. “Rios claims with a hundred-percent certainty that the ignition was a Zippo lighter found at the scene.”

“Erin’s Zippo,” Flan says.

“Correct. That’s their smoking gun. The lighter was hers, there’s going to be no getting around that. It has her initials on it and I’ll bet everyone in the wedding party has seen her with it at one time or another.” I don’t mention that I’d seen her with the lighter myself the night of the fire, when she’d been arguing with the victim at Kanaloa’s.

Jake says, “Do we have an out?”

I shrug. “The usual. We can argue her handbag was lost or stolen that night.”

“Weak.”

“I agree. And a little too convenient. But it will also cover another vital piece of evidence.”

“The key card to the hotel suite?”

“Bingo.” Erin’s key card to the honeymoon suite is missing. The key card wasn’t discovered in the fire, and thus far—at least as far as we know—Erin’s little leather Fendi hasn’t been found either. The argument is simple: Erin’s Zippo and passkey were both in her handbag, but someone else gained possession of the handbag between the time it was last seen with Erin and the time when the fire started. We don’t yet know how long that window is; for that we’ll have to hit the pavement. Obviously, the larger the window the better.

I turn to Flan. “We’re going to need to learn everything we can about the victim, Trevor Simms. And not just what we can find out from the wedding party. Book a flight to San Francisco soon as we finish the interviews here on the island.”

Flan nods.

“We’re still waiting on the autopsies,” I add, “but the ME’s report on Trevor Simms is going to be key. I’m particularly interested in the toxicology findings.”

Flan purses his lips. “Think he was so drunk he set himself on fire?”

“Hell of a way to suicide,” Jake says, straight-faced.

I shake my head. “What I want to know is whether Trevor truly passed out from alcohol, as Erin suggests, or whether he was drugged.”

Jake had no luck at the Kupulupulu Beach Resort last Thursday. Everyone from Maintenance on up provided the same response: No interview of any sort without one of the resort’s lawyers being present.

Flan had even less luck at the Kapolei fire station. “You’ll find everything in our reports,” Chief Gary Condon said. “Now if you don’t mind taking yourself someplace else, Mr. Flanagan, my men are understandably upset today, and no one’s in any kind of mood for your questions.”

Fortunately, we now know from discovery that the valve to the water main was indeed turned off, and that when it was dusted for prints the valve came up clean.

“Moving on.” I pull a large manila envelope toward me. “Erin’s memory is cloudy, so we’re going to have to reconstruct her timeline from the moment she and Trevor left Kanaloa’s to the moment she was first seen outside after the fire. No one has come forward with an alibi, so our only hope is that something was captured on camera. The prosecution has turned over hundreds of photos, and I suspect, if we do our jobs right, we can locate hundreds more from that night alone. Then there are the dozens of security cameras at the resort.”

Flan pushes a stack of videotapes toward me.

I sigh, grimace at the daunting task before us. “Let’s start with the photos, shall we?”

“Sure,” Jake says, “but let’s sort through them downstairs, all right? I’m awfully hungry. I could go for some kalua pig and Tater Tots.”

I bow my head yes, knowing all too well that Jake isn’t hungry. He needs a drink.

Damn thing is, so do I.