CHAPTER 60

Judge Narita read the jury instructions late Friday, meaning the jury wouldn’t begin deliberations until Monday. Which meant I had the entire weekend to think about all the things I’d done wrong during the trial. The third bullet bothered me most. Technically, it wasn’t necessary to the choice-of-evils defense. Legally it didn’t matter whether Kanoa Bristol fired first or fired at all, so long as Turi reasonably felt his life was in imminent danger. But to the jury I knew it did matter, and it could mean the difference between a conviction and an acquittal.

Problem was, so little evidence supported my claim. I based the defense on Turi’s word, and to me, Turi’s version of the events made perfect sense. Especially the details he provided. A navy Honda Civic. A Jesus fish. A sticker in the rear window that read KEIKI ON BOARD. But the jury never got to hear Turi say anything about this, or anything at all for that matter. That would’ve been too risky. Indeed, it could have proved suicidal.

And the ghost bullet allowed me to introduce new depths of police corruption. To villainize the lead detective in the Bristol investigation. By confronting him with accusations of tampering with and removing evidence from the Pearl City crime scene, I put Detective Ray Irvine on the defensive from the beginning. I hoped what the jury would remember most about his appearance at trial was not his investigation, but my cross-examination.

I had never known a lawyer who didn’t second-guess himself between his closing statement and the verdict. If one existed, he was either indifferent or plain stupid.

“With the trial over and less than three weeks until the election, it’s time to focus on all things Omphrey,” I said.

Jake, sitting across from me at the conference table, nodded. “We think now that it was Thomas Duran who hired Oksana Sutin to have an affair with the governor, right?”

“If Iryna Kupchenko is correct in her identification, yes. Then I think it’s safe to assume that Thomas Duran is Orlando Masonet.”

I had sat down with Jansen this morning and together we’d gone through the DEA’s file on Masonet. Jansen was keeping everything close to the vest until he had something more concrete than an undocumented prostitute’s identification of a man on a brochure. Aside from the sketch artist, no one in the Drug Enforcement Administration even knew Jansen suspected Thomas Duran of being Orlando Masonet.

With everything we knew, Masonet had gotten filthy rich—billionaire rich—long before Thomas Duran the land developer arrived on the scene. Ironically, we knew less about Tommy Duran than we did Orlando Masonet. But following some research we decided that Orlando Masonet had laundered his money through hundreds of false businesses spread throughout the Caribbean and Northern and Eastern Europe.

“So, presumably,” Jake said, “Tommy Duran hired Oksana Sutin—who was one of his girls to begin with—to spy on Wade Omphrey and press him for information about some pertinent land-use decisions, including one in Kakaako and several up North Shore.”

“The Waimea Valley project was going to be the most lucrative and therefore the most important,” I said. “In addition to the millions Duran would have made on that project, a decision falling in his favor would have inevitably opened the floodgates to developing the North Shore.”

“But Omphrey was the big-business candidate,” Jake said. “Why the hell kill Oksana Sutin and try to bring the governor down?”

“Multiple reasons, I suspect. One, Oksana Sutin was pregnant with Omphrey’s child. She may have told Duran ‘no more.’ And Duran couldn’t risk her spilling what she’d been doing to the governor or anyone else. Two, I have a feeling Omphrey was going to stand up to Duran on the Waimea Valley project, not because of any sudden crisis of conscience, but because his wife, Pamela, felt strongly enough about preventing further North Shore development to pack up and leave him. If she left him and news of his affair broke, he’d finish out his term as governor, but he’d have to kiss goodbye any chance at running for Senate or being chosen to serve in a cabinet position.”

“So, have you told Omphrey any of this?”

“Not yet,” I said. “The FBI is watching Lok Sun. Jansen is searching for Tommy Duran. And our job for the moment is to sit and wait for Turi’s jury.”