Primitive Secrets (25 page)

“I imagine the patient considers ending it,” Storm whispered. She reached across and touched his hand.

“We talked about it, once.” Hamlin looked out the side window, his voice very soft. “I told him I couldn't, that he'd beaten infections before. And he pulled out of that one, came home for a couple of months.”

Storm didn't know what to say. She doubted that she would be able to give a final injection, especially if the tiniest shred of hope remained.

“My mother tried to kill herself twice before she succeeded. When she finally did it, I was furious with her.” Storm's eyes burned with a surge of familiar emotion. She kept her gaze locked on the sinuous solid yellow line of the road and thought about the complexity of the feelings she had for her mother. For the first time in her life, she was able to sort through and separate some of them. One of them was guilt.

“Want to hear something crazy?” she asked. She could feel, rather than see, that Hamlin had turned his head to watch her. “I felt I had failed her because I couldn't make her happy, and at the same time, I felt rotten because I kept her from her version of relief, which was death.”

“I know. I would be devastated one day, angry at Neil the next.” Hamlin spoke softly. “Dealing with your mother would be even worse. She gave you life. She was your teacher and defender. And you were a child. You still needed her.”

Storm nodded, her throat so tight that she couldn't speak. Yet some of the burden she had carried for fifteen years lifted just a little. Though she'd never stop missing her mother, she was beginning to forgive herself.

Chapter 35

Storm used her after-hours pass to get into the underground garage and parked next to Hamlin's Porsche. Going back to the office was the last thing she wanted to do and she could tell by looking at Hamlin that he felt the same way. He appeared to be gazing with longing at his car. His face was muddy and scratched; leaves clung in his hair. Bless him for coming along with her.

She felt like the day had lasted a week. If any of the security guards saw their muddy sneakers, torn shorts, and bedraggled tee-shirts, they would probably think it had been that long since the two of them changed clothes. With luck, they could avoid running into any of them. She was going to do this as fast as she could. Just find the private files tonight. She could save moving the rest of the stuff for later.

The elevator whirred them to the eleventh floor and softly ka-chunked to a stop. “Hey, Joe,” Hamlin greeted the guard who was strolling down the corridor.

“Hey, boss.” He looked them over. “Where you guys been?”

“In a taro field,” Hamlin answered.

Joe laughed loudly. “Right. Have a nice evening.” He wandered down the hall.

Hamlin raised his eyebrows at her. “See? Tell the truth and no one believes you.”

“Right.” Storm shook her head.

“You're just feeling vulnerable this evening,” Hamlin replied.

“Wonder why.”

Storm used her keys to open the elegant koa door of the office suite and shook her head in dismay when she caught sight of her reflection. Mirrored in the shining brass that proclaimed Hamasaki, Cunningham, Wang, & Wo, Attorneys at Law, was a mud-splattered face, frizzy hair, and eyes circled by fatigue.

She avoided looking at Hamlin, who followed closely, and marched through the dimly lit reception area to her office. She unlocked the door, flicked on the lights, and left Hamlin standing in the doorway. He watched her open her desk drawer. Sure enough, there was a lumpy envelope that made a key-jingle noise and had her name on the outside. Hamlin's eyebrows shot up.

Storm said defensively, “Meredith changed the locks already.”

“You have a friend here in the firm, don't you?”

“Not everyone thinks Meredith walks on water.”

“Right. I guess I'll do some paperwork, too, while you work.” He turned away.

Storm heard him unlock his own office door and saw the lights of his office illuminate his end of the corridor. She sighed loudly, then left her own office, closing the door behind her. What was his problem now?

She locked her door and stomped down the hallway, unlocked Hamasaki's office, and turned on the lights. The custom recessed lamps set the room aglow with soft, warm light. Storm stood for a moment and looked around. The tall mahogany cabinets that held his case files were still along one wall, too heavy to be moved until they were emptied. She also noted with relief that Hamasaki's antiquarian books were still undisturbed.

She jingled her old key ring in her shorts pocket. Hamasaki had given her keys to his files when she started to clerk for the firm. What she was not accustomed to was the stacks of folders on the floor, cardboard cartons spilling over with papers, frames, and doo-dads. Meredith's junk. All over the place, making dusty rectangular impressions in the thick carpet.

Storm frowned and moved over to the mahogany cabinet. She tugged on a drawer. Good, it was still locked. She wondered if Meredith planned to make the Hamasaki family an offer on the furniture or just figured that possession was the better part of ownership.

Storm unlocked the cabinet at the top, which released the four vertical drawers. She started at the highest drawer and worked her way down. Each file was labeled, usually typed, but occasionally printed in a tidy hand that Storm recognized as Lorraine's. Many of the cases were familiar to her. In fact, there was a file on Ray Tam that would probably help her in getting background on some of his projects. She ruffled through the thick stack of papers. It went back to 195. The file behind it was labeled 1975194. This was great. Storm took them out and piled them in a corner. She'd take them with her when she left.

She sat down on the floor to look through the bottom drawer. It was jammed with cases that were older than the files in the top drawer. Nothing of a personal nature, though. She didn't even recognize most of the names on the folders.

Storm wiped a dusty hand across her forehead and sighed. Meredith's boxes surrounded her like tree stumps in a clear-cut forest. They made her about as sad.

Storm couldn't resist poking into the closest box. Stuff was spilling out, anyway. There was a law school diploma, a chipped porcelain cat, a bunch of desk clutter, and hundreds of spilled and rusting paper clips. Under all this was jammed a stack of stained and ruffled files. Hamasaki would shudder.

Storm snorted with disgust and turned around to look at the room. She got to her feet, grimacing at her aches. She was so damned tired. Walking over to Hamasaki's desk, she sank into the comfortable leather chair, then stood up abruptly. That was where she had found him.

A click and the thrumming sound of the air conditioner coming on brought Storm back to her present imperative, the search for Hamasaki's personal files. She shivered in the draft of chilly air and loosened the fists she had unconsciously clenched. Her fingernails had made deep crescents in the palms of her hands. She sat down on the carpet to think.

If someone had been sitting in the office chair, she had just assumed the posture of a fawning dog at its master's feet. With her legs crossed in a yoga position, she squared her shoulders and took several deep breaths. She didn't have time for distracting emotion. Maybe later, after she got things out of Meredith's new domain.

She got to her knees and tugged on the wide, shallow desk drawer right below the desktop. It was locked. She settled back down on the carpet and frowned. From where she sat, the drawer was slightly above her eye level. And there was a metallic glint of a slightly different brass than the bottom of the drawer runners. Storm reached up and felt around, then unhooked a small key.

L.T. was etched onto the key. She'd found Lorraine Tanabe's private key, which she left where she needed it. Hamasaki probably carried his in his pocket.

She fit one key into the pencil drawer and opened it. Inside were Hamasaki's good pens, including an elaborate gold number that had been a gift from a grateful and wealthy client. The drawer was arranged neatly and held Hamasaki's personal stationery, a checkbook, small office items like a stapler, a staple remover, a bottle of white-out, and personal odds and ends: a little bottle of mouthwash, nail clippers, and a pair of reading glasses. Nothing outstanding, though the reading glasses flooded Storm with nostalgia. He'd worn them whenever they went over papers and contracts together. Everything looked exactly as Hamasaki would have left it.

Storm paused. If he'd been reading when he died, he would have been wearing those glasses. He must have had time to put them away and lock the drawer before the drug took effect. Maybe as he was talking to the person who killed him.

She relocked the drawer and tried the little key in a deep drawer to the side of the desk. It not only didn't fit, the drawer wasn't locked. It slid open with the pressure of her hand on the handle. Inside was a hanging file, neatly arranged with big phone books: Honolulu, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Chicago. Nothing personal.

Storm turned the little key over and over in her fingers. Why did he lock the pencil drawer? Because Ed Wang kept borrowing his Montblanc and forgetting to return it? Maybe, but…She opened the drawer again and started to poke around. She knocked against a box of extra staples and felt an unexpected weight.

Inside were a few staples and a ring with two keys: a tarnished old-fashioned one, three inches long, and a small, modern, stainless steel one.

Storm sat back down and swiveled in the leather chair to survey the room. The antique bookcase looked like it would match a key like the large one. And it did. With a little jiggling of the key in the big hole, she felt the bolt slide. Not much of a security system; she could have opened it with a bobby pin. Storm pulled a couple of legal volumes off the shelf. Dusty old things.

She knelt down to the fiction shelf, where some of Hamasaki's favorites rested. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur‘s Court and Huckleberry Finn were bracketed by a couple of William Faulkner's novels. He had used them often, consulted them for inspiration or humor, depending on his mood. The bottom shelf of the old case held what looked like a complete set of Ogden Nash. Storm smiled; these represented Hamasaki's sense of humor. You Can‘t Get There from Here.

She picked one off the middle of the shelf, and opened it. It was signed by the author. Storm pulled another out. It was a signed first edition, too. Hamasaki had little bookmarks stuck between some of the pages. She could probably find some of his favorite witticisms here. She felt close to him, in a happy way, for the first time since he'd died.

Storm reached for Yoa CanTt et There from Here, set it down, and glanced up because the rest of the books on the shelf started to lean. The shifting line of books left a triangular gap, in which Storm saw a metallic glint. She pulled out Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom. A small, stainless steel inset was concealed at the back of the shelf.

She pulled out a few more books on each side of the gap she'd created and picked up the little key. It fit easily in the hole and turned with the click of modern, well-designed carpentry. The base of the bookshelf glided toward her knees. It was a drawer, its cracks completely hidden in the curved wood of the old case.

The drawer was heavy, stuffed with hanging files labeled only with initials. There was “S.K.” Storm pulled it out.

In the folder was a stack of letters from Hamasaki to Sergeant Mendoza in Waimea. Surprise slammed into Storm's chest. This was the material she'd been searching for. But it was her own history, a chronicle of her own missteps. And now that she'd found it, she was afraid of what she'd see. Chewing a hangnail on one thumb and barely daring to breathe, she began to read.

Hamasaki, in order to keep her from being tried in juvenile court for the alleged cultivation of marijuana for sale, had filed semi-annual reports to Waimea Police Chief Allen Leong and Sergeant Mendoza. The letters, complete with academic records, stopped after her second year of college.

She remembered those days. Hamasaki used to harangue her to make the dean's list. She had bitched and moaned, complained about his nit-picky obsessions, and done it. Now she knew part of the reason he'd bugged her so relentlessly.

Tucked into her college records was a hand-written report signed by an E.L. Benning. Storm had never heard the name before. Dated the fall of Storm's junior year in college, the notes documented an affair Mendoza was having with a twenty-year-old woman he'd arrested for shoplifting at Safeway.

Storm gulped. The woman's name was familiar. She had been a high school classmate. Wow. Hamasaki had gotten dirt from this guy Benning. And used it.

She drew a ragged breath and stuffed the file under the stack she planned to take home. Steadying herself, she peeked back into the drawer. “U.” Who would that be?

Her eyes grew wide when she saw the Unimed logo on the first page. Hamasaki, as a potential investor, had requested an auditor's report of business at the Hawai'i hospital. The letter Storm read referred him to corporate headquarters in Seattle for the annual report to the stockholders.

The next pages revealed that Hamasaki had seen this as a brush-off. Several sheets from a legal pad were covered with his hand-written notes, in his own version of shorthand. Lorraine and Storm were among the few who could decipher it. Lorraine was a lot better at it than Storm, but Storm could make out most of the words.

Hamasaki commented on O'Toole's reaction to Hamasaki's questions about the lack of functioning large diagnostic equipment at the hospital. “O'Toole clammed up when I asked him. After March's incident, he's hanging by a spider web. They only know about the booze. How many more lives, in addition to our long friendship, do I ruin if I blow the whistle on his addiction to codeine analogs? Two young kids. Poor Arlene.” Hamasaki had written the last five words in an anguished longhand.

Storm gaped at the notes. So Hamasaki did know O'Toole was incompetent. Her father had been right. Hamasaki had held on for old time's sake and for O'Toole's family. His first wife and Bitsy were friends. It was a sad story, but not enough of a reason for creating this file.

She turned to the next page. More notes, in different handwriting. Storm flipped to the end. The last page was signed by E.L. Benning, apparently Hamasaki's spook.

The man had written his conclusions in a four-page summary with an invoice attached. According to his report, Unimed filed requisitions two years ago to fund large equipment expenditures. They did it again in January of this year. As before, they requested eight and a half million dollars for an MRI scanner, two CT scanners, and salaries for five technicians. Benning found by checking the diagnostic radiology department and talking to several hospital staff members that the hospital had never received any new machinery.

Over eleven million dollars had been deposited in one of Unimed's accounts in February, after the most recent membership drive for the Hawai'i branch of the health maintenance organization. Corporate headquarters had kicked in another five million, designated for the purchase of hospital equipment. Benning noted that Unimed used several accounts.

He related that of the recent deposit, all but $12,000 had been transferred to Unimed's purchasing department. According to hospital records, the money was then wired to manufacturer's accounts, but when Benning checked with the equipment manufacturers themselves, they claimed to have never received it, neither in February of this year, nor two years ago.

The last page reported that Benning couldn't find the money. His instincts told him that it had been wired out of the country, possibly to Hong Kong, but he had no proof of this having happened.