Fire Prayer (7 page)

Luke's 911 came in at 5:11 a.m., and the responding officer, rookie Nettie Ching, called the station with a report of a suspicious death eight minutes later. The dispatcher immediately phoned Niwa as supervising officer. He got to Jenny's and Luke's residence at 5:25, heavy-hearted and showered but unshaven.

He helped secure the site as a possible crime scene, and couldn't help noticing that except for wear and tear, the place looked pretty much as it had eight or nine years ago when he and his wife spent evenings with Tanner, Jenny, and little Luke. Niwa took a deep breath and sought his reservoir of professional detachment.

It looked like Jenny had died of a severe head injury. That was bad, but for Niwa it was even worse that her son had to be the one to find her. Niwa wanted to ask the boy some questions, but the kid was too shaken up. He couldn't even remember whether he'd moved her, maybe in an attempt to revive her. It often happened.

The eleven-year-old was beside himself, and Niwa was devastated on Luke's behalf. A couple minutes after he arrived, Niwa made a flurry of phone calls. The first one was to his partner, Sgt. Steve Nishijima, then the morgue, the ID tech, his commanding officer, and his wife, Caroline. Officer Nettie Ching worked to comfort the boy, but Luke continued to tremble with what Niwa assumed to be shock. Between phone calls, Niwa popped into the bedroom to give Luke hugs and reassurance, but the lad looked pale and pitiful. He needed to be with people he knew and loved. His dad was Niwa's first choice, but no one knew where he was. Haley and the Niwa family would do in a pinch.

Caroline said she'd roust Haley from bed and be there inside a half hour. Meanwhile, Luke's shaking grew worse despite the blanket Niwa and Officer Ching wrapped around his shoulders. His skin was taking on a waxy look and he felt clammy to the touch. Niwa speed-dialed his house, but no one answered the phone. This was good. Caroline was on her way.

Normally, he'd have waited for the ID tech's assessment to call the morgue, but Niwa wanted a jump on having Jenny's body examined. He knew all too well the logistical problems unique to his home island. Molokaâi was part of Maui County, and Dave Niwa and his Molokaâi colleagues were part of the Maui Police Department. The central office for the Maui police department was in Wailuku, Maui. So was Maui Memorial Hospital, where the very busy coroner did the bulk of his work. Therefore, suspicious deaths were flown over to Maui for forensic examination.

Niwa knew this could take a week, sometimes longer, and he had a bad feeling about Jenny's death. Her head injury looked worse than what he'd expect in an accidental fall, and whatever she'd hit it on wasn't immediately apparent. Nor could he see an obvious weapon. They'd find the answers to these questions, but he wanted a time of death, or as close as a couple of pros could come to it.

Meanwhile, Nishijima would scrutinize the house for what left the fatal dent in Jenny's skull as soon as Luke and the body left the premises. He was already unpacking the Luminal kit and putting up black-out drapes.

Niwa's mind kept returning to the boy in the bedroom, wondering how much Luke had seen of his mother's bashed head, and whether the carpet had wet the boy's feet as much as it oozed around his own. No kid should see his mom like that.

Niwa had gently questioned the boy about when he'd last seen his mother alive, and would do so again once the boy had settled down a bit. Right then, all Luke could say was that she'd been fine when he'd gone to bed at ten. He thought he'd heard voices later, but she often had friends over when they got off the late shift at the hospital.

The ID tech arrived at the Williams' house not long after Niwa, Nishijima, and Officer Ching. He underscored his examination of the body with lots of muttering, took pictures, and then backed up the detectives' request to send the body to Maui. The ambulance arrived around 6:00, soon after Caroline pulled in the drive to pack Luke into her car. Niwa was glad he wasn't around to see the EMTs load Jenny into the back of the quietly waiting vehicle. Her body on the gurney looked tiny, diminished by the absence of energy that is life. A testimony to loss, Niwa thought sadly.

After the ambulance left, he told his partner he was headed over to Hawaiâi EcoTours to talk to Skelly. Steve Nishijima gave him a wave as he went out the front door. “I'm gonna go through the house, see what there is to see.”

“I'll talk to her friends before the news hits the coconut wireless,” Niwa said.

“Good idea. You better work fast.” Nishijima nodded at a shadowy form that lingered in the next-door neighbor's side window.

On his way out, Niwa caught the ID tech alone, loading his car. “When do you think she died?”

The ID tech shrugged.

Niwa knew the tech didn't want any off-the-cuff speculations to come back later and bite him in the ass. “Unofficially. Come on, I need it.”

Niwa looked around at the houses in the neighborhood. He was going to have to talk to all of them, too. They already seemed too quiet, with the expectant hush that accompanies someone else's misfortune. The few people that left for work scurried to their cars without looking toward the Williams home.

The ID tech gave him a dirty look. “Between two and four. Not too long ago.” He got in his car and slammed the door. “But don't quote me.”

Niwa cheerfully thanked the departing dust cloud. He then visited the houses on both sides of the Williams home. The shadow Nishijima had seen belonged to a woman about Jenny's age, who was bursting to know what had happened, but hadn't seen or heard anything unusual during the night. She told Niwa Jenny wasn't all that friendly, didn't go to neighborhood potlucks or visit with anyone. The woman figured Jenny worked a lot. Niwa visited the home on the other side of the Williams house, but no one answered his knock. Maybe they weren't up yet.

After that, he decided he'd return later to talk to other neighbors, and lowered himself on aching knees into his patrol car. When Niwa got to Hawaiâi EcoTours, he took in the dark windows and realized Skelly probably didn't come to the office this early, especially if he didn't have any morning tours.

Niwa heaved himself out of the car and stretched in the cool morning air while he thought about Jenny's death. Telling people about it wasn't going to be easy, and he took a deep breath and looked out at the calm bay to gather his thoughts. Only a few minutes passed before the crunching of wheels on gravel distracted him from his ponderings.

Skelly looked hung over. He tried to give a friendly nod of greeting, but the effort fell flat, especially when without preamble, Niwa told him about Jenny's death and asked him where he'd been. Shock crossed Skelly's tired features, followed by a ripple of indignation. Niwa was glad to see it, and he was even happier when Skelly resisted calling him on it, recognizing that Niwa had an unpleasant job to do. Skelly was cooperative, though he couldn't raise Tanner on his two-way radio.

Niwa pointed to the radio. “Keep trying to raise him, okay? If you get him, tell him I'm on the way and call me.”

Back in his car, Niwa called into the station and told the dispatcher he'd be cruising along East Kamehameha Highway. With any luck, he'd find Tanner on the side of the road with his thumb out. He hoped it would be that easy.

Niwa reflected that if he hadn't driven Tanner to Skelly's office late yesterday afternoon, he'd have been hunting a lot harder for the man. Even as he knew and liked Tanner, he never underestimated the ire of a jilted spouse. Especially one with documented mental illness, though Tanner didn't have a history of violence. Niwa had checked, just to make sure.

He did, however, have episodes of hallucinations and agitated behavior. The last time, a little less than a year ago, he'd stood on Ala Malama Street, in downtown Kaunakakai, shouting and shaking his fist at an invisible adversary. When Niwa arrived in response to a 911 call, Luke was dragging on one of Tanner's arms, trying to pull him away from gathering citizens. Niwa's heart had ached for the boy.

Negotiating a turn in the road, Niwa wondered if Skelly's tale of Tanner's research lab was true. Everyone knew Tanner had been brilliant at one time, but it was Niwa's impression that Tanner's illness had disorganized his thoughts to the point that he had trouble living within society's framework, let alone dealing with the burden of employment, meetings, and other hi-tech demands. This was a guy who refused to own a cell phone.

Skelly might believe Tanner's ravings, though. He probably wasn't very sophisticated when it came to Tanner's condition or the science behind his work. Skelly hadn't finished high school, and he had always idolized Tanner and his abilities. Niwa had the impression Tanner was expected to bring his friends glory by association. Particularly in Jenny's eyes.

Niwa dialed his home phone, but no one answered. That was normal; Haley would be in school and Caroline at the office. Had Luke been in shape to go to school, though? He doubted it, and wanted to get hold of Caroline at the pharmacy where she worked, but he was losing range on his cell phone and there was another call he wanted to make. He pulled to the side of the road, got out of the car, and faced toward Maui, then Kaunakakai, watching the reception bars on his phone. The Maui direction gave him two barsâintermittently. But he got through to a crackly Maui forensic pathologist's lab. The pathologist wasn't in, but the tech listened carefully to Niwa's description of the arriving body and his request for a time of death as soon as possible.

Niwa got back in his car and pondered a couple of rumors about Jenny that had been floating around. He would never have confronted Tanner with them before, but now he might have to. When he'd picked Tanner up yesterday, Tanner had alluded to Jenny seeing someone, and that tied in with recent gossip about an affair Jenny allegedly had. Still, Jenny and Tanner were separated, and no one in this insular and judgmental community should throw the first stone. Not that someone wouldn't.

The buzz he worried most about happened over a year ago. It involved Skelly, and Niwa dreaded implicating the one guy that Tanner seemed to confide in. Tanner was isolated enough. Especially since the story was pretty vague, and the outcome depended on who told it. It involved some water cooler gossip that Skelly and Helene had a big fight one night, and Skelly stormed out of the house and went to Jenny's. They were long-time friends and confidants, after all. Helene, the story went, gave him about an hour and a half head start, then threw open Jenny's front door and found the two of them groping each other on the couch. Or maybe they were talkingâor Jenny was sobbing in his arms. This was where the story got fuzzy. One person asserted that Helene went over to apologize to Skelly for being bitchy and ended up staying for an impromptu beer party. A different raconteur said that Helene threw her handbag at the two and split Skelly's lip. Niwa navigated a curve in the road and sighed. Whatever happened, he hoped Luke had slept through it.

He drove all the way to where the road ended at Halawa Valley. It took him nearly two hours, partly because he stopped when Pete Oshiro and his son waved him down from the side of the road where they were changing a tire on a pickup truck that belonged in a Ford museum. The new tire's tread was almost as smooth as the old one's, but the beater couldn't go more than twenty miles an hour, and Niwa had bigger problems on his mind.

At the park near the end of the road, Niwa got out and went inside the restroom to use the facilities. It was a good hitchhiking spot, too, but Tanner was nowhere in sight.

On the way back to Kaunakakai, Niwa dropped by the Hawaiâi EcoTours office once again. Skelly wasn't there; he'd gone home to get a few hours of sleep. Connor was as belligerent as usual and he had no idea where Tanner was. He wasn't that freak's keeper. He also had a list of places he'd been last night, and a phone call to his girlfriend supported his story for the later part of the evening. Niwa was inclined to believe her because she didn't sound happy about the visit.

By this time it was two and Niwa was ravenous. He was so hungry his legs felt shaky as he dropped into a chair at Kanemitsu's. He felt like he'd been working for nine days instead of nine hours.

He had a tuna salad sandwich for protein, and then he treated himself to a slab of the restaurant's special Molokaâi breadâwarm, soft, and gooey with strawberry cream cheese filling. With a small sense of virtue, he refrained from eating a second helping. Last week, he'd shifted his belt buckle to a bigger size and his doctor, whose office was three doors down from the police station, was going to give him hell about his cholesterol levels. This guy would actually stop his patients (practically every adult in town) in the street. Niwa reckoned he'd better park his car at the other end of the block until this Jenny Williams crisis passed.

After eating, Niwa lowered himself back into his car with a groan, and dialed Hawaiâi EcoTours again. To his relief, Skelly answered the phone.

“Did you reach Tanner?”

“He never did answer the radio call. But he left a message on the answering machine.”

“What did he say?”

“He's in town, I think. Wondered if I would meet him at Luke's game.”

“Did he leave a number?”

“No, and it sounded like he borrowed someone's cell phone. The number was blocked.”

“You know what time that was?”

“Uh, I forgot to check. But I got in the office around one.”

“You still have the message?”

“No, I erased it.”

“I may drop by later.” Niwa hung up.