CHAPTER 17

Scott Damiano and I sat on opposite ends of the tattered blue sofa in his twenty-third-floor apartment in Waikiki, watching a twenty-four-inch screen. He lived in the same building I’d vacated a few years ago, a renovated tower on Tusitala a couple blocks from the beach. Sitting there, I experienced a bit of nostalgia laced with envy. It was the first time I realized I missed living in the heart of Waikiki.

I also had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach because, at that moment, Marcy Faith’s bug-eyes were staring back at me from the TV.

“We’re talking this evening about an American hero from our nation’s fiftieth state,” the odious legal-news pundit barked. Cable’s worst commentator had started poisoning my pool of potential jurors weeks ago and wouldn’t relent until well after any verdict was read.

“A hero who was struck down in the call of duty,” Marcy continued. “An officer of the law who was gunned down on the dark streets of Pearl City. His name was Kanoa Bristol, and he was a detective with the Honolulu Police Department. Let’s now go live via satellite to our affiliate in Hawaii. Jim Reynolds of KGSP. What do you have for us, Jim?”

Reynolds and his receding hairline filled the screen, the Honolulu Police Department’s headquarters on South Beretania serving as the backdrop.

“Marcy, Kanoa Bristol was a thirty-eight-year-old detective in the Honolulu PD’s Narcotics Intelligence Unit. He’d been with the department for just over seventeen years. Last month, while off-duty, near his home in Pearl City, Bristol was shot dead, police say, by this man—Turi Ahina, a lifetime Kailua resident with multiple arrests for drug possession and trafficking. Police assert that Detective Bristol caught Turi Ahina in the midst of an unlawful act—in all likelihood a drug transaction—and was attempting to apprehend the suspect when Ahina turned a gun on him and shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the throat. The forty-four-caliber bullet to the chest lodged in the Kevlar vest Bristol was wearing for protection, but the bullet to the throat killed him, police say, almost instantly.”

“Oh, dear,” Marcy said, a hand fluttering to her crimson lips. She shook her head, swinging the locks of her platinum-blond wig. Once she finally pulled herself together, Marcy asked, “What, if anything, did police recover from the suspect, Jim?”

“Police say they recovered an envelope filled with cash, Marcy. Somewhere in the ballpark of five thousand dollars. And a forty-four-caliber Glock was discovered in a sewer near the scene. There were no prints on the gun, but ballistics tests show that this was the weapon used to kill Detective Bristol.”

“Oh, dear. Tell me, Jim. I’ll brace myself. Did our American hero have any children?”

Reynolds bowed his head. “He did, Marcy. A spokeswoman for the Honolulu Police Department advises us that Detective Kanoa Bristol left behind a wife and two young children.”

A familiar ominous tune boomed from the television speakers as Marcy Faith stared solemnly into the camera. “When we return, we’ll bring you Vic Merriweather, a criminal defense attorney from Atlanta, and Anna Crane, a former prosecutor from Denver, to discuss the ongoing criminal case against Turi Ahina, the local thug who shot and killed this American hero in our nation’s so-called paradise.”

Scott snapped off the TV. “Our man still sticking with his story?”

I nodded. In the weeks immediately following the shooting, Turi insisted he didn’t pull the trigger. “Gunshot-residue tests turned up negative.”

Scott shrugged. “Gunshot residue can be completely washed off in a couple minutes. Hell, some guns don’t release any residue at all.”

I knew this through research on cases dating back to my days as a clerk at the Cashman Law Firm in New York. Scott Damiano spoke from personal experience.

I placed my hands behind my head, ran them down my neck and across my shoulders, trying to smooth out some of the tension. A lump the size of a golf ball protruded from the back of my shirt, and the pain was overwhelming.

“Neck still bothering you?” Scott said.

I nodded, flashes of pain accompanying every movement.

Scott leapt off the couch and disappeared behind me. For a moment I thought he was about to offer me a neck rub, and my pulse began to race. A neck rub initiated by anyone associated with the Tagliarini family typically involved a length of piano wire and ended with a whole hell of a lot less breathing in the room.

Instead Scott returned to the sofa with a business card. “Call, make an appointment.”

I read the card. “Massage therapist?”

“Yeah, her name’s Lian. She’s great. Best massage in Chinatown.”

“Chinatown,” I mumbled, stuffing the card in my pocket.

Scott popped the top on a beer. “I still don’t know how that fat bastard got by me.”

“I’m only concerned with why.”

Scott was charged with watching Turi Ahina’s cottage in Kailua the night of the shooting. He and another guard with the private security firm I hired after Turi was bailed out of the FDC. Turi told Scott he was turning in for the night, then somehow slipped out of his cottage, jumped in an old, borrowed black Nissan Pulsar, and drove to Pearl City.

Scott didn’t know Turi had left the cottage until the other guard on duty received a call from his boss, telling him Turi Ahina was on the news—for killing a cop.

Turi told me later that he drove to Pearl City to collect some money that was owed to him—the $5,000 police later found in his possession. But he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell me who had owed him money. “I only know him by face,” Turi insisted.

The gun recovered by police in a nearby sewer was dusted for prints and came up clean. But I was still waiting on most of the prosecution’s discovery. This morning I appeared before Judge Hideki Narita and filed a motion to compel. Donovan Watanabe stood in for the state and promised to have discovery for me later this week.

Experience had taught me that I could expect only one thing once discovery was finally turned over to the defense.

Surprises. None of them pleasant.