CHAPTER 42

Naomi Leffler is dead.

Josh’s great-aunt lost her battle with lung cancer earlier this week and now the kid sits in a client chair in front of my desk waiting for Naomi’s daughter Chelsea to pick him up. Chelsea Leffler—the sole beneficiary to Naomi’s will, which I drew up months ago after recovering from my accident—is young and single and living in Lahaina on Maui and she’s made it abundantly clear that her custody of Josh will be temporary. I glance at my watch. I’ve come to enjoy spending time with the kid over the past six months but playtime for me is over. It’s January 5 and tomorrow begins opening statements in the case of State versus Erin Simms.

“Why are you wearing a suit today?” Josh asks me as I write out a check for this past November’s office rent. Since my accident, cash has been pouring from our accounts like rain from the sky, with very little of it being replenished.

“I finished selecting a jury today,” I tell him.

“For that lady who started the fire?”

I take a deep breath and answer without looking at him. “That hasn’t been proven yet.”

“That fire killed my grandma, you know.”

“I know.”

“Then you must think this lady didn’t do it,” he says.

I speak so softly I barely recognize my own voice. “That’s not something I get to decide, remember?”

“The jury does?”

“That’s right.”

“How do they know who’s wrong and who’s right?”

I lift my head and peer into the boy’s big brown eyes, wondering how they’ve managed to remain so innocent these past six months. “Well, as I told you, the jury listens to the arguments of the lawyers for each side and hears the testimony of whichever witnesses each lawyer calls.”

“What’s test-money?”

“Testimony. We’ve talked about this. Remember, Josh?”

“Tell me again.”

I scribble my name at the bottom of the check, then toss the dry blue pen into the wastebasket. “Testimony is the substance of what each witness says.”

“Like I’m a witness, right?”

“Technically, yes.” Josh was with me when I was preparing the witness list for the defense, and although he’ll never testify I added his name to the witness list to hear him giggle. Fact is, I put half the population of Oahu on the witness list in an effort to divert Maddox’s attention from the witnesses I actually intend to call.

“What is the witness s’posed to say?”

“Each witness is sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

“But what if a witness lies?”

I tear the check from the Harper & Corvelli operating account and stuff it into a cheap self-sealing envelope. “Then the judge gives the witness the spanking of his or her life.”

Josh’s eyes go wide just as the intercom buzzes and Hoshi’s voice fills my office.

“Chelsea Leffler to see you, Kevin.”

“Thanks, Hoshi. Seat her in the conference room. I’ll be right there.”

I stand, wincing in pain. Considering the extensive damage done to the Maserati, my injuries from the accident weren’t all that severe. A concussion, of course. A fractured finger on my left hand. And a dislocated knee cap on my right leg. I had been mending rather swiftly through the fall, through my thirty-third birthday in December, right through Christmas, in fact.

And then it started to rain.

And rain.

And rain.

And rain.

Typically, the island of Oahu doesn’t receive all that much precipitation, at least not on the leeward side. When it does rain, areas like Waikiki and Ko Olina are spared. The mountains and windward side of the island are frequently hit with brief torrential downpours, but the only effect the precipitation has on town is the appearance of thick bright rainbows that seem to stretch from Kahuku to Koko Head. The past week proved one hell of an exception. Normally, you can escape a downpour simply by driving from one part of the island to another. But inexplicably, dark gray storm clouds now seem to hover above me wherever I turn my Jeep. Needless to say, the wet weather is pure hell on my knee.

I tell Josh to wait and proceed slowly down the hall, favoring my right leg. As I pass the local oil painting of the Mokulua Islands, I finally pause to read the signature at the bottom. “Ah, Sandy,” I mumble to myself. “Of course, Sandy.”

Chelsea, a hulk of a woman caked heavily in cheap makeup, wears a brightly colored muumuu and a matching smile. She stands when I enter the conference room and somehow manages to shake my hand without my offering it.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Corvelli.”

“Kevin. Call me Kevin.” I amble around the conference table and pull out a chair.

“Are you injured?” she asks.

I briefly describe for the thirty-ninth time the incident of late July. Five months into the investigation there are still no suspects, no leads. Someone, we know, unscrewed the brake lines so that the brake fluid leaked slowly onto the pavement as I made my way to H-3. The emergency brake was intentionally disengaged. The Maserati was of course dusted for prints and in addition to mine, Josh’s, and Kerry’s, one additional set of unknowns was recovered. Everyone at the car rental agency and King Kam Auto offered samples and were excluded, so whoever owns those prints is most likely the perp, a person who would be arrested and charged with attempted murder if only he or she could be identified.

After being released from the Queen’s Medical Center during the second week of August, Flan and I covertly collected prints from every suspect in the Simms case who remained on the island. We came up blank. The prints didn’t match Isaac Cassel’s or either of Erin’s parents. Tara Holland came up clean. As did Javier Vargas, who, we’ve learned, happens to be a recent transplant to Hawaii and a member of California’s 16th Street gang. The mystery of the Maserati thus remains unsolved.

“Will you be taking Josh to Maui?” I ask Chelsea.

“No, I rented an apartment in Waikele for the time being. I’m going to have a talk with Josh’s father and we’ll take it from there.”

The intercom buzzes again. Hoshi says: “Kevin, you have a call on line three.”

“Take a message, please.”

“Kevin, it’s Turi calling from jail.”

My stomach sinks. Turi’s doing ninety days at Halawa on that last drug bust in July. Ninety days because Heather Raffa wouldn’t extend me an inch of professional courtesy. Not an inch because everyone knows Luke Maddox is an up-and-comer, a future head prosecutor, and Luke Maddox, for some reason, wants my head on a stick.

“Give me just a second,” I say to Chelsea.

I pick up the phone and punch line three. “Turi,” I say, “it’s a bad time right now. Can you call my cell phone around six o’clock?”

“Sure, Mistah C. But I t’ink you wanna hear dis right now.”

I swivel my chair so that I’m no longer facing Chelsea. “What is it, Turi?”

“I finally found you your firebug.”

I press the receiver tight against my right ear and watch the hard rain attempt to smash through the conference room windows. “Seriously?”

“Serious as shit, Mistah C. Your pyro is sitting in the cell right next to me.”