‘The similar descriptions are worth something.’
‘They are and we’ve got agents looking hard for her. That said, we should have stayed with Mathis. He was on his way to Canada to get paid fifty thousand dollars for taking out the Khans. We should have followed him but we didn’t want him to get over the border. He was carrying a throwaway phone and supposed to get a call from her after reaching a rendezvous point in Toronto. The Mounties are there and we have agents with them watching the area but so far no sign of her. I’ll call you if anything changes.’
La Rosa and Raveneau landed late in the night. The plane was quiet before landing then picked up cheerful chatter as it unloaded. Within forty minutes they were headed to their rooms. Before dawn Raveneau made coffee in the room. He talked with Ryan Candel as he waited downstairs outside the lobby for la Rosa. She came off the elevator with a wry smile wearing the lei left on her bed.
‘We’re here,’ she said. ‘Let’s get some of that coffee you’ve been talking about.’
‘Candel says Matt Frank called him last night and that he was agitated and in his words sort of incoherent. He said it weirded him out and that he alluded to things he’s got to get done before he can focus on his business. He said there were problems but didn’t say what they were. He asked Candel about me, whether I’ve questioned him any more and whether his name has come up.’
‘Does Ryan know we’ve got some questions about his new brother?’
‘He’s getting the picture.’ Raveneau paused. ‘Matt Frank is supposed to meet us this morning at Hapuna Beach at nine. The beach is north of here. I know where it is. It’s not going to take us long to get there.’
‘Did Candel say anything else?’
‘Not really, and I’d say he was disturbed by the conversation with Frank and having a little trouble with what we’re asking him to do. He’s conflicted. He’s known his half brother for under a week, but part of him wants to protect him.’
They had an hour to kill and made calls sitting in the sun on a bench in a shopping center half a mile from the main highway. La Rosa got her coffee and looked happy with it. Then they drove north toward Hapuna Beach with Raveneau pointing out the rise of North Kohala Road ahead, and farther north around the curve of the island the steep-falling slope where the ranch was.
‘Can you see the ranch from here?’
‘No.’
‘There’s so much lava. It’s drier than I thought.’
‘This is the dry side.’
Raveneau checked the time as they left the highway and drove slowly through a small town along the water before turning into the Hapuna Beach lot. He spotted Frank’s gray Toyota pickup and parked nearby. They walked through the entrance past rest rooms and down toward the beach.
‘There he is.’
‘Where?’
‘That guy over there with the green and white shorts carrying the surf board.’
Frank waved and leaned the board against a low concrete retaining wall. He picked up a towel and a can of some drink and came toward them, drinking from the can as he walked. Frank belonged on the beach and he and la Rosa probably looked like a pair of missionaries on a recruiting drive in the third world. He watched Frank closely as he approached, and then the three of them sat down on a concrete bench and Raveneau said, ‘A package arrived at our Homicide office.’
‘I sent it to you.’
‘Then I have to ask you what was in it?’
‘A gun, a Glock 17 that came from my uncle’s house.’
‘Is it his gun?’
‘He’s had it forever.’
‘Why did you send it?’
‘Because he used to talk about it like it was a person that went out and did things on its own. He talks some strange shit when he’s drunk. He talked about the gun as if it traveled to places, killed bad people, and then came back home. He thought I sent the complaint letter and a video of me telling how you broke in. When he finds out the gun is gone it’ll freak him out.’
He stared at Raveneau communicating something else.
‘That’s the Glock I learned on. Uncle Casey says it belonged to my dad, but it was always sitting in the bar cabinet of the lanai in Uncle Casey’s house. Uncle Casey told me he’d give it to me when I became a marksman, but he didn’t. He likes owning it. He checks on it regularly, like a habit. If he hasn’t already noticed it’s missing he’s going to real soon and I don’t know what he’ll do.’
‘What do you think he’ll do?’
‘First he’ll ask me where it is.’
‘What are you going to tell him?’
‘That it’s mine and I took it. It was Dad’s gun and he promised it to me.’
‘Do you know about something in particular the gun was used for?’
Frank tipped the can, swallowed more of the coconut water, and Raveneau knew he wasn’t going to answer that directly.
‘Was Alan Krueger’s name ever mentioned in connection with the gun?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just asking.’
‘He was their friend.’
‘Did Krueger ever borrow the gun?’
‘I don’t know. I was pretty young and I knew it got borrowed, but I didn’t really know who took it. I guess he could have borrowed it. Other people did. I didn’t get it at the time but they would joke and say things like the gun is away on a business trip, shit like that.’
He finished the coconut water and crumpled the middle of the can.
‘Our housekeeper cleans it every week or so. It’s like a ritual. They used to call it the wipe down. He’s going to ask me where it is and get seriously angry.’
‘The gun isn’t registered to anyone.’
‘But that’s like the whole trip. They had like this whole story around the gun. It lives in that glass case and then goes out on trips on its own. It goes to do good, that’s what they called it, doing good, my dad, Uncle Casey, Shay, Krueger, and some other dudes that I only kind of barely remember. They all knew about it. Maybe it was never registered. Uncle Casey said Dad used to fly with it. As a pilot they didn’t usually check his bags. He carried other stuff for their friends.’
‘I want to ask you about something else having to do with your dad. Were you there when he died?’
‘Uncle Casey found him and woke me up. We walked up there together before he called the police or Dad’s doctor. We didn’t move him. He’d fallen and hit his head just outside the sliding door in front and it was pretty obvious he was dead.’
He looked away at the ocean remembering it, and Raveneau could see it affected him still. Some closeness there not really recognized in all this.
‘That night Uncle Casey and I sat up there in the chairs like Dad did with his friends. We got drunk together and he told me stories about my dad that I’d never heard. In a way it made me feel better and in a way it made me super sad.’
La Rosa spoke softly now, recounting her father’s long decline and death, Raveneau taking it in and thinking Frank was down here in shorts and carrying his board so if his uncle showed up he’d look like he was doing what he did every morning. He was afraid of him or very good at acting.
‘My dad didn’t shoot. He didn’t like guns. He said he killed enough in the war and supposedly that’s why Uncle Casey kept the gun at his house.’
This was a description of a man different than the one Casey portrayed.
‘I wanted to learn to shoot. I wanted to learn when I was little and visited him and he wouldn’t let me. That’s why my uncle taught me. My dad was pretty messed up by the war.’
‘What about your uncle?’
‘He says they did what they were told to and what they had to, and that you can’t look back.’
‘Is it true he doesn’t leave the island?’
‘No, but that’s his thing. He likes the way it sounds, but really it was my dad who wouldn’t leave the island any more. My uncle makes a trip or two a year to the mainland. He went with me to a coffee thing in San Francisco a few years ago when I was getting the business started. It’s like I said, he just likes to say that. It’s sort of a way he wants to be, you know. Since Dad died he’s sort of taken on these other things that were like Dad’s way.’