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Saturday morning I woke up early. While Mike was still sleeping I put my longboard in the back of the Jeep and drove down to Makapu’u Point. It’s one of the best breaks on the south shore of O’ahu and one of my favorites. I snagged a parking spot in the lot, put on my rash guard, grabbed the board, and started down toward the water.
The park area is studded with abandoned structures from World War II, and I remembered all the buildings around the Inline Imports warehouse on Lagoon Drive. Was Dakota living in one of them? Was that why he’d been able to see Fields being taken into the warehouse in the middle of the night?
I stepped into the water. It was cool but it felt good, and I got onto my board and paddled out, duck-diving through the breakers. In the distance I saw a whale surface, and then I focused on the waves, the wind, and the position of the other surfers around me.
For years, surfing was my escape from everything I saw as a cop—the myriad ways in which people mistreated each other, committing violence on strangers and loved ones alike. The waves revived and cleansed me, and my whole identity was built around not only being a cop but being a surfer, too.
Then my relationship with Mike grew more and more important, and I moved away from Waikiki, where I was only steps away from a decent surf break, to Aiea Heights, miles inland. Life with him became my safety valve and I didn’t get to surf much anymore. But I still felt that pull of salt water, stirring something deep inside me that went back to my Polynesian ancestors who lived at the ocean’s mercy.
I sat on my board until I felt a wave building beneath me, and as it surged I stepped up, balanced myself, and rode the wave, doing an inside turn, then catching the curl and riding the lip of the wave parallel to the beach.
When the wave died I jumped off into the cold water, then paddled back out and did it all over again. I wiped my brain clear of arson and murder and runaway teenagers and the pressing issue of whether Mike and I would become fathers. I just surfed.
But once I was out of the water and on my way home, everything came back to me and I knew that I had to go see Angelina Gianelli, Dakota’s mother. It was easier to go there on my way home, so I continued along the Kalanaiana’ole Highway, which hugged the windward coast, until I came to the Women’s Community Correctional Center. It’s a low-slung white complex in the shadow of the Ko’olau mountains in Kailua, and I’d been there a few times in the past to talk to suspects and witnesses.
I parked next to an old Kia sedan with a row of round-faced Japanese dolls on the back ledge, wondering if it belonged to someone who worked at the place or someone visiting an inmate. I hoped it was an employee, because that row of dolls looked so sad.
I showed my HPD ID to the guard at the front gate and then again when I got inside. I was directed to a visitation room that overlooked a small playground. Through a window I saw a couple of mothers playing with little children on slides and staircases. It could have been any playground in Honolulu, except for the barbed wire fence and the moms in matching prison uniforms.
Angelina was brought in a few minutes later. Hers was a pretty name for a woman who once had been very attractive. But the ravages of her addiction to smoking crystal meth showed in the paleness of her skin and her gaunt figure.
I introduced myself and we sat down across from each other. “I came up to ask you about your son, Dakota,” I began.
“He ain’t got nothing to do with my situation,” she said. “I have a problem. I know. But I wasn’t selling drugs. That was something the police put up on me. They don’t like white people here in these islands. They call us howlers.”
“Haole,” I said. “And it’s not derogatory. It’s a way of classifying people.”
“As soon as I get out of here I’m getting my boy and going back to New Jersey. I have family there. They’ll take care of us.”
“When is that going to be?”
She frowned. “I got ten to fifteen, but they say I’ll be out of here in five.”
“How old will Dakota be then?”
She closed her lips tight as if she was thinking. “Eighteen or nineteen.”
“What’s going to happen to him in the meantime, Angelina? You know where he is now?”
“He’s in some foster home. That’s what they told me.”
I shook my head. “He ran away from there. I saw him Tuesday night at Ala Moana Park. I bought him dinner, but he slipped out after he ate.”
“How do you know Dakota anyway?”
I wasn’t sure if Angelina knew that Dakota was gay, and if she didn’t I wasn’t going to out him. “He came to a youth group I volunteer with on Waikiki sometimes,” I said. “One of the other kids saw him and heard he’d run away, so she told me.”
I thought by slipping the feminine pronoun in, I might be fooling Angelina, but she was more savvy than I thought. “Not that faggot group?” she asked. “I told him to stay away from that. He’s just confused, is all. I should never have brought him here.”
She leaned close toward me. “You’re not one of them, are you? There’s always these men leering around him.”
“I’m not interested in Dakota for sex,” I said. “I want to make sure he’s living in a safe place and not doing anything stupid. Do you have any idea where he might be staying?”
She shook her head.
“Any friends he had in Wahiawa, who he might have turned to? Neighbors?”
“We kept to ourselves.”
I leaned forward. “You even care about what happens to Dakota? You don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. You didn’t even know he ran away from the foster home.”
She stood up. “I got my own problems. Dakota, he’s almost a grown man. He’s gonna have to take care of himself.”
She walked over to the door of the room, and the guard opened it and took her away. I sat there for a couple of minutes. That was what ice did to you, I thought. You got so all you cared about was the next fix. I hoped Dakota wouldn’t end up the way his mother had. I knew that if I could do anything to help him, I would.
I drove through the mountains back to Aiea Heights, grateful that my parents had cared for me better than Angelina Gianelli had for her boy.
That afternoon, Mike and I drove down to Lagoon Drive. The neighborhood was deserted and all the businesses closed, but we cruised around, looking for any signs of life. If Dakota was holed up in one of the abandoned warehouses, by himself or with others, there had to be some evidence.
We parked and I pulled a flashlight out of my glove compartment. Then we started combing the area on foot, looking for broken windows or doors that had been forced. As we approached a two-story brick building, its windows boarded up, Mike sniffed the air. “Fried chicken,” he said. “I’d know that smell anywhere.”
We followed his nose around the building. “There,” I said, pointing. One of the boards covering a window had come loose. When we examined it, I saw it could be pried open just enough for a person to slip through.
“What do you want to do?” Mike asked. “Call for backup?”
“For what? A kid, or a couple of kids, hiding out? I’m going in.”
“Kimo. You don’t know what’s in there.”
“I can handle teenagers.” Even so, I pulled my gun out of its thumb holster, and kept it in one hand, my flashlight in the other. As Mike held the wood back, I leaned inside and shone the light.
“Anybody in here?” I called.
There was no answer but the smell of fried chicken was a lot stronger. I hoisted one leg over the windowsill, scraping my nuts on it as I tried to slither inside. My entrance was somewhat less than gracious, accompanied by a couple of curse words my parents would be displeased to discover I had first learned on the playing fields at Punahou.
“You all right?” Mike asked from outside.
“Fine. I’m going to look around.”
I shone the light in a slow arc around the inside of the building. The ceiling was two stories up, while ahead of me sat a row of four offices, and a staircase to a level above them. The floor was littered with debris and I walked carefully ahead, shining the light down so I wouldn’t trip.
Each office held one or more sleeping bags, along with piles of clothes and other personal effects. The remains of a bucket of fried chicken were in the last one. There was a tiny bathroom at the far end; the power didn’t work but the water still did.
I turned around and walked back to where Mike waited, climbing carefully out of the window. “Someone’s been staying here,” I said. “At least four or five people. From the clothes I’d say they’re teenagers or young adults.”
“What do we do? Call Child Welfare?”
“I don’t know.” I looked at him. “First of all, we don’t know who’s living here—they could be kids, or they could be over eighteen. They’re trespassing for sure, which is a crime. But for the moment they’re not hurting anyone and they’re not in danger.”
My instincts were warring. As a cop, I should report the squatters and protect the property owners’ rights. If there were underage kids staying there, they should be in the system, so they could be placed in foster care, given regular meals and the chance to get an education.
But if Dakota was staying there, at least he was safe. He had run away from one foster home; chances were good he’d run away from another. And he might end up somewhere much worse than a secure old warehouse with running water.
“I think I should talk to Terri,” I said.
Ever since junior high, I’d depended on the insight of my best female friend, Terri Clark Gonsalves, when it came to emotional questions. She had helped me understand the psychology of victims and villains in other cases, and I trusted her instincts.
We walked back to where I’d parked the Jeep and I called Terri. “Why don’t you come over for dinner?” she asked, when I told her that I needed to talk. “Levi’s barbecuing and Danny’s got a couple of friends coming over.”
She had been dating a divorced guy named Levi Hirsch for a while, and he seemed to get along really well with her son, Danny. I looked over at Mike. “Fine with me,” he said. “We can bring the beer.”
I told Terri we’d be there at six and hung up.
We were driving back up the Nimitz Highway toward home when Mike said, “We could do that kind of thing too, you know, if we had kids.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Barbecue. Have a bunch of keikis running around.”
“We could do that without having kids of our own,” I said. “You want to have a party sometime? Invite everyone?”
“You just don’t get it.” Mike turned toward the door.
I gave up. I was tired of having the same argument and it was clear to me that neither of us was going to change his mind.