“It’s possible. We’d dumped some there about a week ago. It was only a short cruise out this time on maneuvers.”
“So, where did you get the shipment of drugs you were dumping this morning?”
“It was the other half of the shipment from last week. We could only make one run before we went out for the maneuvers.”
Jeremiah believed him. It seemed that whoever had decided Cindy was a risk hadn’t been either of these guys. By the sounds of things, there hadn’t been anyone in Uncle’s when she found the body. So, unless a cop was involved, he needed to keep searching for whoever it was who had targeted her.
He could hear sirens approaching. He glanced over at Kapono. He was still conscious. He nodded at Jeremiah, seeming to understand what he was about to do. Jeremiah turned and jogged away, mind racing. He had gone about a mile when he stripped off the plastic gloves he was still wearing and dumped them in a trash bin behind another restaurant.
He had left no fingerprints on the knife embedded in the dead man’s leg. Even if he had, they would never find a match to them in any of their computers. He went back through Cindy’s schedule in his mind. It was still possible that she had seen the guys who were retrieving the drugs when she had visited Pearl Harbor.
From the receipts he’d found in her room he knew she’d had some sushi at the International Marketplace and then gone to a luau on the north shore. In his mind the boat excursion with the near drowning and the faulty life preserver seemed a much more likely place to find information about her kidnapper, particularly since it was much closer in time to the kidnapping than either of the other events.
What would be really helpful is if they could find the taxi driver who had given Cindy the card to give to Uncle. But Kapono had told him the night before that they hadn’t been able to turn up any leads on the man. Wiki Taxi had no records of any of their drivers doing a pickup at Cindy’s hotel at the time in question. So, he had told Jeremiah there was an officer combing through the list of drivers trying to see who had verified pickups at about that time who could be ruled out as possible suspects. That kind of work could be invaluable, but the clock was ticking and they were running out of time.
Jeremiah made a snap decision to break with following the pattern and skip to the boat trip. He could double back and check out the Marketplace and the luau later if he turned up empty there.
Another mile and he was able to flag down a taxi who was happy to take him to the harbor used by the snorkeling tour. The sun was up and shining brightly, but the boat hadn’t yet left for the morning. He found the man in charge of checking passengers onto the boat.
“Name?” the man in the blue polo shirt asked, pen poised above his clipboard.
“Not important. I’m here to ask questions about one of your passengers from a couple of days ago, Cindy Preston.”
“Cindy Preston. Oh, yeah, I heard on television this morning she’d been kidnapped,” the guy said, eyes widening.
“That’s right,” Jeremiah said.
“Sorry to hear that. Yeah, I recognized her name. She was on one of our cruises on Sunday. Turning out to be a very unlucky cruise that one.”
“Why?” Jeremiah asked.
“A lady almost drowned on that cruise. The life preserver she was using was faulty. Instead of holding her up it started dragging her under. Another passenger heard her screaming, our guys jumped into the water. They had to cut the life preserver off her.”
“It wasn’t Cindy?”
“No. Another lady. They took her to the hospital afterward. From what I heard the whole thing was just bizarre. I’ve never heard of a life preserver malfunctioning like that. It’s the darndest thing.”
It sounded to Jeremiah like someone had been trying to use that life preserver to kill someone. The question was, who was the intended target? Was it the woman who had nearly drowned or was it Cindy? And if the other woman was the target, did Cindy witness something she shouldn’t have?
“Can you tell me the name of the woman who almost drowned?”
“Sure, just give me a couple of minutes.”
“Any of your staff call in sick since then?” Jeremiah asked.
“No one’s called in sick, but Al hasn’t shown up. He was supposed to work the last two days.”
“Do you have contact information for Al?”
“Yeah, sure. Are you with the police or something?” the man asked, finally realizing that something was wrong.
“Private investigator,” Jeremiah lied.
The man turned pale. He was probably wondering if the company was about to be sued for what had happened to the woman who nearly drowned.
“I want to ask him some questions about Cindy. I think he might have been one of the last people to see her before she was kidnapped,” Jeremiah said.
“Oh, well, of course. Give me just a minute.”
The man scurried away and Jeremiah stood, eyes roving around the dock, taking everything in. A couple of minutes later the man returned with two pieces of paper. “That’s Al’s address. The other is the name and hotel for the lady who almost drowned. Just in case you need it. Marge Johnson at the Royal Hawaiian.”
“Thanks,” Jeremiah said, taking the papers.
He grabbed another taxi and had it drop him a couple of blocks away from Al’s house. He didn’t want the man to see him coming if he was home. The houses were a hodge-podge of styles and sizes. A rundown shack with dead cars out front was next door to a three-story mansion. Jeremiah had never seen anything quite like it.
The house he was looking for turned out to be modest, but kept up well. There was no car parked out front, but there was a garage, something half the houses on the street didn’t seem to have. Jeremiah could see a car inside.
Jeremiah walked cautiously around the house, looking and listening for anything out of the ordinary. He could hear no television or talking inside the house. Several windows were open, screens intact. It was completely silent from within.
Jeremiah found a sliding glass door in the back. He cautiously peered through it, but could see no one. He finally tried the door and it slid easily. He slipped inside, closing it silently behind himself. He was standing in a living room. There was a surfing board acting as a coffee table with a scattering of surf magazines on top of it. A large, flat screen television graced one wall and an impressive array of stereo equipment was piled on tables beside it.
Jeremiah crept down the hall to the right and found himself in a bedroom. Clothes were piled in a corner, including a similar blue polo shirt to the one he’d seen the cruise company representative wearing. In the closet he found a black wetsuit and other dive gear. On an island that was not such an unusual discovery, especially given that the guy worked on a snorkeling tour boat. He might at one point have led dives as well.
Jeremiah moved quickly through the rest of the rooms, but there was no one in the house. He then started systematically checking for anything the guy might have hidden like money or drugs. In a foot locker underneath the bed he found a variety of weapons including knives and guns including a spear gun. Again it wasn’t damning evidence, especially for life in the islands. He had once worked with a Hawaiian and he knew that all kids who grew up in the islands were taught how to shoot in high school. Hunting was still a big part of the culture, too.
Jeremiah kept going, searching room by room for anything illegal. By the time he made it to the kitchen he was running out of hope. If Al was involved he wasn’t keeping any of the contraband in his house. He began to wonder if maybe he had the wrong guy.
It was possible that whatever had happened on that cruise had been an accident, or that someone else had intended to hurt Marge or Cindy or even someone else entirely with the life preserver. He was regretting that he hadn’t demanded a list of addresses for all the crew and passengers from that day. If he headed back to the docks he’d have a chance to question any of the crew that had been on the ship that day when the current day’s cruise returned.
You’re moving too fast, getting sloppy
, he muttered to himself.
He had nearly finished searching the kitchen when he stopped to take a deep breath. There was nowhere else inside the house to search. He could try the grounds next, but doubted he’d find anything. The last cupboard he checked had baking supplies, flour, sugar, and the like. He stared at them for a moment. He hadn’t seen a single cake pan or muffin tin anywhere else in the kitchen. It was possible Al was using the ingredients for things like pancakes, but there were very few specialty items in his kitchen. Why would he go to the trouble of making something like that from scratch? Why not just buy a mix and add water?
He pulled the sugar bag out of the cabinet and opened it. He tasted the contents. Definitely sugar. He was about to put it back when on a hunch he plunged his hand down into the bag. His fingers brushed something that felt like plastic. He pulled it out. The object was a small sandwich bag filled with white powder. Drugs. He’d bet his life on it.
He put them back and then grabbed the flour bag. Inside it he could feel another plastic bag. This one contained a wad of hundred dollar bills the size of his fist. Emergency money in case he had to escape quickly.
And it was still here. Meaning, Al hadn’t fled. There were no signs of a struggle so odds were he hadn’t been taken either. So, where was he?
It confirmed his suspicions that Al was involved with the drug smugglers. It was possible he was one of the ones who picked up the drugs once they were dumped in the harbor. It was possible he knew Cindy had seen him there. And when she recognized him on the tour boat he tried to kill her and somehow Marge got in the way.
He knew he was jumping to conclusions, but they fit with what he knew. The more time he wasted the less chance he had of saving Cindy.
Jeremiah closed the cupboard and turned toward the kitchen table. A gun case was on the table, opened. Jeremiah examined it. It was meant to house a smaller handgun, easily concealable on someone’s person. There was an open box of bullets beside it. Given that the gun was missing and that these things weren’t with the other weapons in the foot locker, Jeremiah guessed that wherever Al was he had the loaded gun on him.
What are you doing with the gun, Al
? Jeremiah wondered. His stomach tightened into knots as he thought of Cindy. Was Al going to finish the job and kill her? His car was in the garage. Did he have another one or had he walked to wherever he was going?
A thousand questions raced through Jeremiah’s mind as he struggled to regain his composure. He thought of the guns in the other room and it was all he could do to keep himself from going and getting one of them. He couldn’t be caught with it, though, no matter what.
His eyes fell on the other items on the kitchen table. There was a half drunk glass of milk. He stared at it a moment and then realized there was condensation on the outside of the glass. Wherever Al had gone, he must have left shortly before Jeremiah got there. Which meant there might be time to catch him if only he knew where he was going.
A notepad was sitting out next to the glass, a pen beside it. Jeremiah picked it up. The top piece of paper bore the imprints from what had been written on the one above it.
Marge Johnson. Royal Hawaiian Hotel room 634. The woman who almost drowned.
Jeremiah closed his fist around it. He now knew where Al was. He had gone to kill Marge Johnson.
13
Cindy’s vision was swimming. She desperately wished she could rest, but with the television blaring there was no real sleep to be had. The thirst and exhaustion and the sheer pain of jolting the metal chair across the floor made her sob, but no tears came, further proof of her dehydration. But, she couldn’t rest, she had to press on because she had no idea how long before one of her captors would return. Plus, she had a horrible, creeping feeling that if she did manage to fall asleep she would never wake up again.
Every second felt like it might be her last as she wondered if she’d even be able to hear a door close or any other sign that someone was coming back to question her further. She could see the logic in their methods. Given how badly she was shaking and how much the deprivations were crushing her she would have gladly told them anything. Unfortunately the one thing they wanted to know seemed to be the one thing she knew nothing about. The irony was not lost on her.