CHAPTER 21

Flan and I wear neon orange hard hats as we traipse along the ravaged sixteenth floor hallway of the Liholiho Tower of the Kupulupulu Beach Resort. We were cautioned that the crime scene is a dangerous place, yet not the least bit discouraged to go searching. “By all means,” Chief Condon told us with a mirthless smile, after speaking with Chief Attea of the HPD. “Just try not to fall through the floor.”

We start by stepping into the rooms with the least damage, but even in these rooms that were spared the worst of the blaze, nearly everything is a dead, charred black. Flan carries a large Maglite and a lightweight Samsung DVD Cam that records all but the horrific odor. I hold only a list of names—the nine original victims—and a map of where each of them perished. We remain perfectly silent for all of the first twenty minutes, then it’s I who finally feels the need to speak.

“This is the room we were in, Sherry and I.”

The room is a blackened relic of what it was. Only now does it truly hit me how close we came to dying that night. For me, it was a second brush with death, the second in less than a year here in the islands. Maybe it’s time to return to the relative safety of New York City.

Across the hall is the room where the Kenders died—Dean and Marlene, their children Dean Jr. and Missy. An entire family wiped out in a matter of minutes.

Next door is where the Wenecks met their end. Jared and Helen, a retired couple on the ironic mission of completing their list of “50 Places to Visit Before We Die.” According to their daughter Janie, Hawaii was only number three on their list.

On the end, in the corner across from the Simms’s honeymoon suite is the room where Marty Treese and Enis McLaughlin suffocated from the thick black smoke. Both Marty and Enis were married, but not to each other. They worked together, though—he a high school principal, she an American history teacher at his school. Both of their spouses were apparently shocked by the news, not only of their deaths, but of their infidelities.

We step outside Treese and McLaughlin’s room and I can see that Flan is short of breath. I place a hand on his shoulder. “You all right, big guy?”

Flan nods yet appears anything but. Finally he sets down his equipment and bends over. Planting a palm firmly on each knee, he vomits onto the remains of the carpet. With the second violent retch, the hard hat comes tumbling off his head. I look away quick as I can, swallowing back down my own Red Bull and pound cake breakfast. My eyes instantly tear from the stench.

That’s when I notice the pennies Jake pointed out in the photograph taken by the fire investigators. There are maybe twelve of them on the crisped floor in the hall outside Josh and Grandma’s door. As Flan coughs and spits into his hands, I lower myself to my haunches to examine the coins more closely. Just a dozen or so pieces of blackened copper that could have fallen out of anyone’s pocket in their mad dash to escape the hotel.

Leaving Flan to settle himself in the hall, I creep into Josh and Grandma’s room. I realize instantly that the kid, too, would be dead if he hadn’t had a hankering for the twenty-three mysteriously refreshing flavors found in Dr Pepper. It makes me weak in the knees. Never before have I set foot on such a crime scene. Never has the damage been so extensive and touched so many lives. Never have I represented anyone accused of such brutal carnage.

I wonder briefly what I’m doing here. How can I defend the person who most likely committed this abominable act? Yet the conventional answer arises almost immediately:

Where would I draw the line? One victim? Three victims? Eight?

Does the method of murder matter? Is there a “cruel and unusual” standard that can be applied to homicide just as it is to punishment? Should the age and gender of the victims be of concern? Should I only represent the killers of men and not women and children?

Where would I draw the line?

There is no line. In my profession one must never be drawn. Because if I can justify walking away from this homicide case, I can justify walking away from any. I’d be left representing small-time crooks and miscreants charged with misdemeanors and violations like shoplifting and pissing in public. That’s not why I went into Law.

Then why did I?

“Because you’re so fucking good?” Milt’s voice resonates in my head.

But no. Were that the case I would have ended my career in New York, would have walked away from the law the day I received the phone call from the assistant DA on the Glenn case, telling me Brandon was innocent. Innocent but no less dead.

“Kevin,” Milt once said, “some people are just made for this shit.”

Right now I’m not so sure.

I back out of Grandma’s room, coughing finally from the pungent odor of ruin, forearm pressed against my mouth.

“Flan, let’s take a look at Trevor’s room and get the hell out of here,” I say, mid-hack. I’ve already retained a retired fire inspector to examine the crime scene, prepare a report, and testify at trial, if necessary. “Let’s leave this to the experts.”

Trevor’s room is a whole new devastated hell. It’s easy to see now how fire inspectors concluded so quickly where the fire started. In the rear of the room, on the wall facing the bed, I immediately find the infamous V, the burn pattern that indicates the fire’s point of origin.

I look from there to the remains of the bed, the spot where Trevor burned.

Not Trevor, actually. Trevor’s body.

We received the autopsy reports this morning. Toxicology tests turned up nothing surprising. Still the medical examiner Dr. Derek Noonan concluded that Trevor Simms was dead before the fire ever started.

This fire, as in many arson cases, was apparently set to conceal the crime.

This changes everything while changing virtually nothing. Erin Simms, the prosecution will say, killed her unfaithful husband Trevor first by stabbing him with a knife in the stomach. The knife has yet to be recovered, but the weapon is believed to have had a three- to four-inch blade with a serrated edge. The ME’s report suggests that the perpetrator—

Suddenly the dead black room is spinning. A bright white border frames my entire field of vision, and a dull chime sounds incessantly in my ears. Faint here, I realize, and I may very well cause a cave-in on the fifteenth floor, unwittingly burying myself alive in the rubble. I need to get out of here, sure as I did the night of the fire. So I summon Flan and together we walk briskly back toward the stairwell.

Soon as I hit the stairs, I elbow Flan aside and start to run.