Danny Gonsalves was sitting in the middle of the living room floor crying. There was no sign of Evan anywhere. “I’ve got a screwdriver in the car,” Akoni said, and walked toward the driveway. While he was gone I tried to communicate to Danny, to get him to come to the door, but I couldn’t reach him. Akoni returned a moment later with the screwdriver, which he used to jimmy the lock on the sliding door.
I stepped in first. “Evan!” I called. There was no answer.
Danny didn’t move. He was dead scared, rocking back and forth and crying. I squatted down next to him. “What’s the matter, Danny?” I asked. “You remember me, don’t you? Kimo? I’m a friend of your mom and dad.”
He didn’t talk, but he grabbed onto my shirt with his fists and held on fiercely. “Something’s wrong here,” Akoni said. “I’m gonna take a look.”
Greenberg and Saunders stood outside, waiting, in case Evan came back, and I stayed in the living room with Danny while Akoni explored the house. He was gone a few minutes when he came back, a grim look on his face. “He’s in the study,” he said. “The room just behind here. He’s dead.”
I looked at him, not really believing. “Evan?”
Akoni nodded. “We got a pile of shit here.”
END OF THINGS
I disengaged Danny from my shirt and left him sitting on the sofa, with Akoni watching him. He had stopped crying but he still wasn’t talking. We had Alvy Greenberg radio in for a crime scene team, and I walked into the study to see Evan Gonsalves. He was sitting behind a modern computer desk, and his five-shot Smith and Wesson Undercover. 38 in his right hand. The hand lay on the desk and his body was slumped forward. There was a hole in the side of his head where the bullet had gone in, and a lot of blood around him, on the desk, the chair, his body and the floor.
I didn’t touch him, but I did lean down and see that the powder burns matched what I saw, death at close range. It seemed clearly a suicide, even though there was no note anywhere.
I looked around the room, trying to get some sort of psychic sense of what had happened there. What was Evan doing in his study? Had Danny been napping, maybe, and then walked in to discover his father’s body? I’d seen a lot of bodies during my years on the force, but the first couple had wrenched my stomach and torn at the linings of my heart. I wasn’t surprised Danny was nearly catatonic.
I looked around. The rest of the room was neatly organized-books on the bookshelves along one wall, the stereo and the TV off, Danny’s Nintendo sitting on a shelf with the cords neatly wrapped. I knew Evan had been in trouble, and I hadn’t reached out to him-I had been too careful, waited too long, because I thought I was protecting him and his family. Fat lot of good that had done.
There was something in the room, some kind of negative energy, and finally I had to walk back out to the living room. Akoni was sitting on the floor next to Danny, talking to him gently, but Danny was not responding. I watched Akoni reach out to stroke the boy’s shoulder, and Danny flinched and moved away. I rarely saw Akoni being gentle, and it was always a surprising sight. For such a big man, he was light on his feet, a great dancer, and he had something sweet and kind inside him that he rarely let out, usually only around kids and animals.
It was the same with Danny. Akoni responded to whatever was hurt inside him, and wanted to make it better. I hoped he and Mealoha would have children soon, though Akoni often pooh-poohed the idea. I knew he would make a good father.
I had thought Evan was a good father, too, and I didn’t believe he’d kill himself when Danny was around. He’d been a cop long enough to see what death looked like, and how it hurt those who saw it. What if this wasn’t suicide at all, but just a carefully constructed replica?
Akoni looked up and saw me, and got up from the floor. “You think he knew we were coming for him?”
“Must have,” I said. “Though I didn’t say anything to him. Maybe he knew somebody in the DA’s office, who tipped him off.”
“Damn shame,” Akoni said.
We searched the house until we found a list in the kitchen, places Terri was going to be, and their phone numbers, in case anything happened to Danny and Evan needed to reach her. Her flight from Maui was due in at three, so she was probably on her way home.
The crime scene techs arrived and got to work. We notified District 4 and claimed jurisdiction because of our investigation into Evan, and a couple of the local cops came out to give us a hand. Even though we thought it was a suicide, it was still a crime scene, and Akoni and I took careful notes regarding the condition of the study and the house itself.
Terri arrived as we were finishing up, and Alvy Greenberg held her outside and called for me. “What is it, Kimo?” she asked. “What happened? Is Danny okay? Where’s Evan?”
“Danny’s okay,” I said. “It’s Evan.” I paused. “It looks like he killed himself.”
She crumpled. I put my arms around her and she cried. Then Akoni brought Danny to the front door, and when he saw his mother he ran for her. She cried even more, kneeling on the ground holding her son. It was a beautiful day in Wailupe, high seventies, mauka trades, a light scent of plumeria on the breeze, but there was something hard in my throat, and all I could think of was Terri on our graduation day from Punahou, how pretty she’d looked holding down her cap as the wind lifted the black gown and her brown hair flew back from her face.
It was a scene that happened all too often in the islands, and I was sure, even more often on the mainland. The lives of ordinary people were touched by tragedy, and they would never be the same again. I felt worse than I ever had before. I didn’t kill Evan, and I didn’t make him turn bad, but I had put the events in motion that had led us to this point, from the day I first heard about black tar and made arrangements for the bust.
I spent a while with Terri, holding her, letting her cry. While my brain ran forward at a hundred miles an hour, I said I was sorry, and promised her it would be all right, though I knew I was lying. Police and technicians ebbed and flowed around us, Akoni managing them, coordinating with the local cops.
Terri called her parents and her sister Betsy, and there was more crying. Danny sat nearly catatonic next to his mother, and screamed if anyone tried to move him away. Eventually Akoni and I left and drove back to Waikiki. The black and whites, ours and the local ones, pulled away and were replaced by the cars of Terri Clark Gonsalves’s friends and family. The memory of what he’d seen would stay with Danny Gonsalves for years, no matter how much therapy he had, and those images would probably recur in his dreams and nightmares forever.
We’d done what we were supposed to do. We had closed the case. As we walked into the station, Saunders was standing at the desk talking to the sergeant. “So just be careful,” he said loudly, as we walked past. “If you’re in the shower with him, don’t drop the soap.”
They both laughed, and Saunders gave me a particularly piercing look. I stared him back down, and he looked away.
Akoni and I filled out paperwork for the rest of the afternoon, closing out the case on Tommy Pang. I felt bad about what had happened, but at least the case was closed, and I could get on with my life. I called and left a message for Tim, who was in a meeting. Akoni left and I hung around for a couple of minutes, hoping Tim would call back. While I was waiting Alvy Greenberg came up to my desk.
“Is it true?” he asked.
“I think so. We have witnesses who put Evan together with Tommy Pang.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean is it true you’re a fag?”
I sat up, and looked at him. He looked kind of half angry and half ready to cry. “That’s the rumor going around the station, you know. You’re a cocksucker. I just want to know, is it true?”