CHAPTER TWENTY

I was up before the sun, preempting the inevitable hangover with a pair of Aleve and a bottle of Asahi.

I stood there beside the stove, waiting for the teapot to boil and gazed out the window at the shimmer of the ocean and watched as, one by one, the streetlights that traced the shoreline cycled off.

I dropped the empty bottle in the bin beneath the sink and carried a steaming mug of Mango Ceylon topside to survey the damage from Yosemite’s two-day pa’ina. A cold offshore wind blew down the slope of Hualalai and ruffled the pennant that flew from the mainmast. My eyes swept across the deck. Apart from the stains from a few spilled cocktails on the teak, the only real damage was a nasty cigarette burn along the gunwale. I’d have to strip, sand and refinish it. All in all, not as bad as I had every reason to expect.

I took a seat on the decking, dangled my feet over the side and leaned my head against the brightwork. The chrome railing retained the chill of the night air and sent a brief shiver down my spine. Through the porthole below, I could hear Yosemite snoring and wondered how Rosie ever got any sleep. A few minutes later, I got my answer.

“Dave wake you, too?” Rosie asked as she took up a seat on the deck beside me. She was wearing white shorts and a red halter, her hair pulled back in a loose knot. She set a mug of coffee between us as she tucked a renegade strand of hair back behind her ear.

“I try to get up with the sunrise,” I said.

“First one I’ve seen in a long time,” she said. Her voice was husky from the late night. “What the hell day is it anyway? I’ve lost track.”

“Tuesday.”

She nodded and sipped from her coffee. “You’re a patient host.”

“Not always.”

Rosie turned and looked at me, took in my features like she’d never seen me before, or like she thought she might never again. “Dave really needed this, Mike. I think we both did.”

“I heard about his trouble with the navy.”

“Assholes,” she spat. “I don’t know why the hell they have to chase the goddamned whales anyway. They’re killing them, Mike. They say the tests don’t do any harm, but just look out there.” She waved a hand out toward the horizon, across the expanse of open ocean. “I haven’t seen a normal-sized pod in two years.”

“It’s early in the season yet,” I offered.

Rosie scowled at me. She was nothing if not passionate about environmental issues. Some might call her militant. Many did.

“You heard about the CO2 testing they want to do now?”

I shook my head. “The navy?”

“No,” she said. “Some scientists from an east coast research outfit. They want to release a huge cloud of compressed carbon dioxide into the ocean to see if it will dissipate before it reaches the surface.”

“What’s the point of that?”

“A theory that it might be a method of disposing of unwanted greenhouse gases from the environment.”

“What, are you kidding? They want to take toxic gases from the air, and put them in the ocean instead? What kind of horseshit is that?”

She nodded. “Right?”

“Has it been approved?”

“They’ve been through every agency but one, and so far, they’ve all given it a green light.”

“Where do they want to do the tests?”

“You’ll never believe it.”

“Try me.”

She looked off to the north, toward the mouth of the bay. “Off Keahole Point.”

“Are they fucking nuts?” I said. “There’s living coral out there.”

She nodded slowly.

“Jesus.”

“See what happens when you don’t pay attention?”

Blasting whales with low frequency sonar, taking poisonous gas from the atmosphere and intentionally releasing it next to a live coral reef? Who the hell was running this idiot carnival?

“Whatever I can do,” I said.

Rosie reached over, placed her hand on my knee. We sat there like that for a long while, wordlessly watching Kona stretch, yawn, and stir itself awake for another day.

“You doing okay?” I asked finally.

“The usual threats and name-calling,” she said. “Ignorant assholes writing newspaper editorials about things they know nothing about, that sort of thing.”

“Any more bomb scares?”

“Only the odd unsigned piece of hate mail.”

I started to say something, but she interrupted, me with a wave, dismissed the whole thing.

“Goes with the territory, Mike. I’ve been there before. Some people get alarmed by granola-eating, tree-hugging, whale savers, afraid we’re going to upset the status quo. But the sex? The sex has never been better.”

Two hours later I was working up a sweat sanding spilled-liquor stains out of the teak deck. The earlier breeze had died down to a whisper, the pennant on the masthead hung limp over my head, and the heat of the morning sun was at my back as I moved the belt sander in slow circles. I blew the fine dust from the patch I’d made, and caught the first whiff of the breakfast Rosie was preparing down below. The smell of onions and grilled meat filled the air. It mingled with the sounds of Dave’s gravel voice and Rosie’s playful giggle when he smacked her on the backside.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and pulled a little more slack from the electrical cord, about to start in on a new stain when I heard my cell phone ring. I knew I wouldn’t get to it in time, so I called down to the galley for someone to pick it up. A few moments later, Dave came topside and handed it to me, his face unshaven and unusually humorless.

“Your partner,” he said.

“Hans?”

“Yeah. He sounds pretty grim.”

“He always sounds grim,” I said, and heard Dave mumble something about how goddamned hot it was as he headed back down to the galley.

“Travis here.”

“We’ve got a situation, Mike.” In the background I picked up the sounds of traffic.

“Where’re you calling from?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Alarm bells went off. “Go on.”

“The two guys we visited on Sunday?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What about ’em?”

“How were they when you left the house?”

Some type of large vehicle passed near wherever Hans was calling from, something like a bus. He cursed under his breath and I could almost see the exhaust billowing across the sidewalk and engulfing him.

“What the hell’re you talking about?”

He clearly did not want to be too specific, even on a public phone. He only repeated himself. “How were they when you left? Health-wise.”

I wasn’t liking the direction this was taking. I especially didn’t like the idea that Hans and I were reduced to speaking in euphemisms. But I trusted him like I trusted no one else on earth.

“Shaken, maybe,” I said. “One of them was, uh, encumbered.”

“Encumbered.”

“Yes. Encumbered. Bound. Secured. Trussed.” A rush of anxiety was eroding my patience with this.

“Okay, pard,” he said. “Take it easy.”

“What the fuck is this?”

There was a heavy silence on the other end. “I’m just asking you: were they okay when we left?”

I thought back to that afternoon, pictured it. “A cracked rib, a fat lip, a bruise or two.”

“Roger Gaines phoned me a few minutes ago,” Hans said. “There were two people found dead in that house yesterday afternoon.”

“How?” I said. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Two shots each. To the head. Twenty-five caliber. Execution style.”

“Shit.”

He didn’t speak for several seconds, like he was framing what came next. “They found your prints inside the house.”

At a minimum, I knew they’d be on the baseball bat and the cord I’d used to bind Ken Harrison’s hands. What else had I touched?

“You hearing me?”

His words hit me like a hammer. “I’m a suspect.”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“Roger has it on pretty good authority that there could be photos. You and me in front of that house. He called me with a heads-up.”

Fuck.

“Kemp,” I said. “IAD.”

I could almost hear Hans nodding on the other end.

My knuckles went white as I clutched the phone. I held it away from my ear and stared off toward shore, feeling the blood-heat run up my neck. I kicked the rubber bumper that hung from the railing.

“You still there?”

“Yes, I’m fucking here,” I said. “What about you?”

“I’m all right,” he said. “I was already ass-deep in alligators before any of this came down.”

My mind raced, made a beeline of blame to my brother. A distinct wave of nausea came over me as I thought about how this would probably play out for Hans, and for Mie. Then the ifs. If only I had turned off my cell phone that day at Snyder’s, or just let the fucker ring; if I had simply told Valden that his vagabond penis was his own goddamned problem.

“Are they bringing you in for questioning?” I asked him finally.

“Haven’t come for me yet,” he said. “But they will.”

“I’ll catch the next flight, Hans. I’ll tell them you didn’t even get out of the car.”

“I don’t think so, pard. Bad move.”

“I’m not—”

“Right now, you’re in a lot worse shape than I am. If Kemp wants my job, well fuck him, he can have it. My prints are nowhere near that house. But you?”

He didn’t have to finish. He was right. If Kemp wanted to work out his long simmering hard-on for me and Hans, he might be able to get an indictment for murder. Retribution for his career-long dance with mediocrity. If they could indict a ham sandwich, they could sure as hell indict me given that my prints were all over the place, at the scene of an execution.

It would be a stretch, circumstantial at best, with no murder weapon linked to me. But if they somehow also had photos that could prove I’d been at that house anywhere near the time of death, it wouldn’t be good at all. Even if Kemp’s case ultimately fell apart, he’d have accomplished what he’d wanted to accomplish for a long, long time. He could take Hans down on appearances alone, and might just fuck me up enough that I could lose everything I’d ever built for myself. Setting aside the matter of monetary expense, the personal toll of defending against a capital indictment was astronomical. I knew Kemp, and the depth of his vindictiveness.

“There’s no warrant out on me?” I asked.

“Not yet. And you need to hear me on this: it would make things much more difficult for them if they couldn’t find you for a while.”

“I’ve never run away in my life, Hans.”

“It’s not running. You live on a sailboat. So, sail.”

“This is seriously fucked up.”

“Let me reframe this for you in a language you might find more acceptable: If they can’t find you for a few days, you’ll actually be assisting in the investigation. You give IAD and Kemp nothing to grab hold of while the Homicide cops work the leads. No Travis, no distraction. You need to let Homicide build a case that does not include you. You hearing what I’m saying?”

He had a point. If I weren’t around, Kemp wouldn’t be able to drum up a circus that would obfuscate a useful investigation. They’d have to concentrate on actual cop work. Like ballistics and forensics and physical evidence. Like finding the actual fucking shooter.

“And what about you?”

“They were looking at me before you ever got here. It all has to play out one way or the other. It either goes away or it doesn’t, know what I mean?”

Yes, I did. “You’ve got my e-mail address.”

“Probably be better than phones for the time being,” he agreed. “But let’s keep it to a minimum.”

I was reeling at the prospect of having betrayed my friend in the pursuit of my brother’s interests. My visit to LA had been brief, and I had managed to squeeze in the commission of about ten felonies, but they hadn’t included murder. I had never feared treading close to the line—or crossing it from time to time—but this clusterfuck had the potential to escalate into orders of magnitude I had no desire to contemplate.

“Goddamn, Hans.”

“We’ll push past it.”

“Keep in touch. One word from you and you know I’m there.”

“I know.”

“Hans—”

“Gotta go, bud. Have a nice trip.”

I stopped in at Snyder’s bar to pick up my mail and to let him know I’d be gone for a while. Given that I live on a sailboat, Snyder allowed me to use the bar as my permanent address rather than renting a post-office box. It was a short walk from the pier, and it offered table service.

“Frosty beverage?” Lolly offered as I pushed through the saloon doors. Lolly Spencer was Snyder’s right hand, and looked like she’d just stepped out of a Swedish fashion magazine.

I shook my head and she faked a pout.

Snyder came out from his office in back with a bundle of mail neatly wrapped inside a rolled-up magazine and tied with a rubber band.

“What’s the rush?” he asked.

“A last-minute thing,” I told him. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Just toss my mail in a box.”

I could see the wheels working behind his eyes.

“You look like ten pounds of bad news in a five-pound sack. I’m familiar with the look.”

“No worries.”

He seized my elbow in a grip that could crack macadamia nuts and pulled me into the back room. It was empty of customers at this hour, chairs still stacked on the tabletops. He slid the glass door shut behind us.

“Talk to me.”

“I stepped in a turd on the mainland and tracked it back here.”

“I know what it looks like when a man’s ready to run, Mike. I’ve been that guy so don’t bullshit me. That’s all I’m saying.”

I gave him the digest version, but didn’t bother to sanitize it much. There was nobody I knew who was more closed-mouthed than Snyder, and that included Hans. It was all he needed to hear.

“Well your life just keeps getting more interesting all the time,” he said. “They ought to put a fence around you.”

“They just might.”

“If you’re taking off, I’m going with you.”

“Yosemite’s already aboard. I need to lay in a few groceries and we’re gone. But thanks anyway.”

Snyder pursed his lips and squinted into the glare as he looked out the window toward my mooring.

“I like Dave as much as the next man,” he said. “But you know that guy is a bent arrow.”

“He’s a licensed boat captain.”

He turned his attention back to me as he spoke. “He throws a good party, too, but that’s not exactly a skill set that’s real useful right now. You need somebody on your six, Mike.”

My focus spun inward as I considered his words.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said. “I can still hump my own weight up a hill and back down again, and I can shoot the dick off a lizard with the firearm of your choosing. And by the way, I sailed solo all the way from Baja to Palmyra and on to Rarotonga before I ever met you. I know how a boat operates.”

Sometimes Snyder said things that reminded me how little I really knew about him.

“You know I’m right,” he pressed. “You do not defend the perimeter with a third-string squad. Been there before, too.”

“I’m not defending anything. Only putting some space between me and a potential problem. A precautionary move.”

“A distinction without a difference,” he said, and showed me a lupine smile. “I’ll grab a few things and throw some groceries together. Meet me at the pier in thirty minutes and we’ll go tell Dave he gets to stay home.”