My parents stopped at my mother’s Lexus in the driveway, and I said, “Dad, remember those old maps of the park? We’re going to need them.”
He nodded, and my mother said, “Mei-Mei, you and Genevieve come with us. It’s not safe for you to stay here.”
Aunt Mei-Mei shook her head. “No, I stay with Chin. Genevieve, you go.”
Genevieve took her mother-in-law’s hand. “No, Mother. I will stay with you.”
My mother looked at me, and I shrugged. So she and my father got into her car and drove off. Aunt Mei-Mei and Genevieve walked back inside, past the implacable card players, just as Lieutenant Sampson arrived.
“Run down for me what you know so far,” he said.
We walked around the house to the back yard, where we could look into the park, and as we did I organized my thoughts. It was about three in the afternoon then, a hot, dry day with variable winds. Perfect weather for a forest fire.
“This case started when somebody shot that chicken in Makiki,” I said. “I’m only speculating here, but I think both Jeff and Sheila White are wound pretty tight. They must have gotten tired of the rooster crowing every morning, and one of them went out and shot it to shut it up.”
Sampson looked grim. “Go on.”
“The homeless man, Hiroshi Mura, was shot because he saw something. Maybe he saw one of the Whites shoot the rooster. Maybe he knew what they were doing in that shed in the back yard. Either way, the same gun was used in both shootings.”
I paused to think about what to say next. “Ballistics matched the gun to the one used to shoot Charlie Stahl as well. Until we made that connection, we had no idea that the Makiki shootings could be connected to the bombing at the Marriage Project party.”
Sampson’s radio crackled. Akoni and Tony Lee had closed the park and gotten the picnic areas evacuated. No one matching the suspects’ description had been seen, but I knew there was a lot of wild country beyond the public area.
“Kitty said Eli Harding’s family had a cabin somewhere in the park,” I said. “My dad’s bringing over a bunch of old maps which show the trails and locations of cabins. If we can skirt the fire, we can head up some of those trails.”
Akoni said he and Lee were on their way back, and signed off. Sampson turned his attention back to me.
“Mike Riccardi, the fire inspector, was at the rally at Waikiki Gateway Park and he saw the woman who shot Charlie Stahl get away in a dark sedan, and he got a partial license plate,” I said.
“What was the fire inspector doing at a rally?”
I stopped. When I’d first seen Mike, I’d assumed he was there for the rally itself, that my influence was going to gradually move him out of the closet.
But of course, that wasn’t the reason at all. “I think he was worried that there might be another bombing attempt. After all, the rally was organized by the Marriage Project and the Marriage Project had just been bombed. You know that some of the arsons over the last few weeks have been at gay and lesbian businesses?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Mike thinks the arsonists are amateurs, that they’ve been getting more sophisticated with each attack. At the rally, he was keeping an eye out for suspicious behavior. That’s how he spotted our shooter.”
I had to stop and regroup. “Okay, so we had these shootings that matched up. When I was canvassing in Makiki, I talked to both Sheila and Jeff White. A couple of days later, when I was at the Marriage Project party, I saw a sweaty guy who looked familiar to me, and we identified this unknown guy as a chief suspect. Then we pulled a fingerprint off a paper bag that had been tossed at the Marriage Project office a few hours before the bombing, and we traced it to a guy at Pupukea Plantation, where the Church of Adam and Eve holds some services.”
My father and mother returned with the maps, and I set my father to figuring out where the Hardings’ cabin might be. My mother went back into the house to stay with Aunt Mei-Mei and Genevieve Pang. Even the increased smell of smoke in the air didn’t seem to faze the gamblers, though.
“The guy at Pupukea Plantation told us that Jeff White had paid him to throw those shit-filled bags at the Marriage Project office, but White denied it. At that point, you and I were talking about a lineup to try and connect White to the sweaty guy.”
“Which we can still do, if we need to.”
My cell rang, and I could see from the display it was Mike Riccardi. “Yeah, Mike?” I said, answering it.
“I’m on my way over to Wa’ahila State Park, with a couple of engines,” he said. “There’s a big fire brewing there. I remembered your parents live up there and wanted to tell you they might want to get out.”
“Already ahead of you.” I told him where we stood.
He whistled. “You think White started this fire?”
“Don’t know. But I know he’s up there somewhere, with a bunch of innocent people.” I glanced over at Sampson and knew he was thinking of Kitty.
“Listen, I gotta go,” Mike said. “Be careful out there.”
“You too.”
PICNICKERS
I hung up and turned back to Sampson, telling him what Mike had said. Then I continued explaining the situation. “We got our big break when my friend Harry connected the partial plate Mike saw to a dark sedan that the Whites own. That helped us get the search warrant from Judge Yamanaka. At White’s house, we found a bunch of unregistered handguns as well as a makeshift laboratory. Mike is having the materials we found there analyzed at the fire department’s lab.”
“So we have the Whites connected to two shootings and the bombing.”
“That’s right. Kitty and I met the Hardings at the Church of Adam and Eve, and it appears that the Whites went with all of them on their picnic.”
Lui and Haoa returned from the park then, and joined us for the rest of my rundown. I was pretty sure that Sampson didn’t want my TV station manager brother to hear every detail of our case, but we were in a crunch situation and as long as we needed Lui’s knowledge of the park, he had to hear what we knew.
“The Whites aren’t married, as they’ve been presenting themselves; they’re brother and sister. I think that their own incestuous relationship is what’s motivating them to protest against gay marriage.”
Lui asked, “The minister and his wife aren’t married? They’re brother and sister?”
I could see the headlines in his eyes. “About an hour ago, a sightseeing helicopter headed up from Diamond Head spotted a fire at a cabin up on Wa’ahila Ridge and flew up to take a closer look.”
We all turned to look up at the ridge, and for the first time we could see gray smoke rising above the tree line. A breeze blew past us, and the tang of the smoke registered in my nostrils. “He couldn’t get too close, but he said he saw a pickup and a dark sedan parked near the cabin. As he was leaving, he spotted two individuals fleeing the area on foot. Based on his description, I think they were the lieutenant’s daughter Kitty and a boy named Jimmy Ah Wong.”
“Now I start to get lost,” Sampson said. “Who’s this boy? What do you think he was doing there?”
I explained how Jimmy had been helpful in making the case against Wayne Gallagher and Derek Pang, and that subsequent to his interview with the DA, his father had discovered he was gay and kicked him out of the house. Then I stopped.
“So you don’t know where he is now?” Sampson asked.
“Well, not really.” I told him I had signed Jimmy out of custody and left him with Uncle Chin and Aunt Mei-Mei, and then Jimmy had disappeared after Uncle Chin died.
“Let me get this straight. You took responsibility for a teenaged prostitute and then left him in the custody of a known gangster?” He looked incredulous, and then something unhappy passed over his face. “You don’t have any other interest in this boy, do you?”
My brothers both stiffened, and I could tell from their body language they were ready to jump to my defense. We all knew what Sampson meant. I felt the anger bubbling up inside me but I tried to keep it down. We were both worried about Kitty, up there somewhere on the mountain with a fire raging around her, not knowing where the crazy Whites were or how they fit into the picture.