Stolen in Paradise (A Lei Crime Companion Novel) (23 page)

“You should have had a vest on.” The line between his brows hadn’t softened and neither had the hard set of his mouth.

She flipped her good hand. “It was just supposed to be surveillance. Guess I didn’t really think anything as dramatic as Fernandez ditching the murder weapon would happen.”

“You Feds are supposed to be all high tech and work in teams. Can’t believe they let one of their best agents go out alone, no vest, no backup, after a suspect we knew was mentally disturbed.”

“Hey. That was all on me. And who appointed you my big brother, anyway?” Marcella found her eyelids drooping, but she didn’t want to go back into that red darkness.

“Big brother.” He shook his head, a movement reminiscent of a bear shaking off a mosquito. “No way. Not that.”

“Amen.” She reached out with her good hand. “Come here. Kiss me.” She fumbled, grasped the cotton sleeve of his shirt, tugged. Let her eyes fall shut and turned her mouth up, hungry for his.

Nothing happened. She opened her eyes. He was just looking at her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not going to take advantage of an injured woman addled on drugs.” Kamuela reached over to grasp her good hand in his big warm one. “I want to kiss you. But when I do, it’s going to be because you asked me to. In your right mind, not tanked to the eyeballs on morphine and having a postshoot urge to merge.”

“Playing hard to get. It just might work.” She couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. “Don’t leave me. Please.”

The red room behind her eyes claimed her, but before she fell into it, she thought she heard him say, “Don’t you leave either.”

A dull thumping of pain, a drumbeat in the darkness, dragged Marcella up from the depths. She opened her eyes, felt the cool fingertips of a nurse on her arm, the blood pressure cuff inflating.

“Hurts,” she said, and coughed. Her throat was so dry.

“Here, a couple Percocet. We need to get you off the hard stuff,” the overly cheerful nurse said with a smile as she handed Marcella a paper cup and a couple of tablets. Marcella took the pills, her eyes wandering until she found what she sought—Kamuela’s bulk stretched out on the armchair in the corner that extended into a sleeper. His big feet, clad in athletic socks, hung at least a foot off the short “bed.” A thin cotton blanket was tucked up under his chin.

“Yeah, your boyfriend’s finally sleeping,” the nurse said. “So cute, the way he held your hand for hours.”

“Really?” Marcella felt her dry lips pulling into a smile. A ridiculous smile.

He hadn’t left. He’d spent hours holding her hand.

When she fell asleep again, she was still smiling.

A voice calling her name woke her up this time. Sunshine streamed in the window, insultingly bright, lighting her eyelids.

“Agent Scott.” It was Waxman’s voice calling her. Dammit. She’d been having a very nice dream and Waxman definitely wasn’t in it.

Marcella opened her eyes, gaze going straight to the chair in the corner—empty. Waxman hove into her vision, pressed and neat, Gundersohn behind him like a barge behind a tugboat, and Rogers bringing up the rear, hidden behind an enormous bouquet of yellow roses.

“Hi, Chief,” she said, wishing there were time for a few more pills before what was doubtless coming next.

“We sent your visitor out—need to do your postshooting debrief. What was Detective Kamuela doing here?”

“It’s personal.” Marcella felt her cheeks heat up. “We’re friends.”

“Uh-huh. Friends,” Waxman said. “Anyway, we’ll keep this short for now. So, begin at the beginning—what happened?” He set a small digital recorder on the movable bedside table. Rogers shoved the roses in among the other offerings and took up a chair beside her, lending moral support by aligning his body with hers, facing their superior.

Marcella told her version of events. Gundersohn took notes. Her throat gummed up at the end, the part where she shot Fernandez, and Rogers handed her a plastic cup of water.

“Did Fernandez make it?” He’d looked gone to her, but she wanted confirmation.

“He’s lost a lot of blood, but it looks like he’s going to pull through. The bullet they took out of you is a match for the one that killed Dr. Pettigrew,” Rogers answered. “We can’t interview him until he’s out of intensive care.”

“So it’s over then. Fernandez was the guy.”

“Looks like it,” Waxman said. “We’ll continue this later. I’ve set up your postshooting psych interview with Dr. Wilson. You two seemed to hit it off, and she’s still in town. That’s later today. You’re on administrative leave until the investigation closes.”

“Is that necessary? I’m sure I can do something for the case once I get out of here.”

“You know the drill, Agent Scott.” Waxman smoothed his tie, looking irritable.

“Any chance you could get that nurse in here for some more pain meds?” Marcella’s face must have looked bad because Rogers hotfooted it into the hall. She was left with Waxman staring down his straight nose at her, with Gundersohn standing like a mountain behind him. The SAC clicked off the recorder, tucked it inside his immaculate jacket.

“You were out of bounds on this one.” Waxman’s ice-blue eyes swept over Marcella’s blanched face, tumbled hair, and gapping hospital gown. “I’ve half a mind to write you up.”

“I identified myself. I directed him to drop his weapon. I watched him decide to shoot me, and I wasn’t about to die with him. As to ‘going out of bounds’—I called for backup the minute he left his apartment. Not my fault Ang couldn’t get there in time, and I wasn’t about to let him ditch the weapon right in front of me.”

“That’s where you went wrong, Agent Scott. We could have retrieved the weapon from the canal and you could have taken him into custody safely when your backup arrived.”

Rogers reappeared with the nurse in tow, and Waxman stood up. “We’ll continue this later.”

“Can’t wait,” Marcella said, trying for a little sass but feeling tears well up as the kindly nurse handed her the pills and a cup of water.

Gundersohn hung back for a minute. “He was upset you got shot,” the big Swede said. “He doesn’t like getting upset.”

“I don’t like getting shot either.” The tears decided to spill. She coughed to hide it, reaching for the napkin that had arrived with her lunch.

“Get well soon,” Gundersohn said, making it sound like an order.

Marcella wiped her eyes with the napkin. The chopped hamburger steak swimming in brown liquid the nurse had set on the tray blurred.

“Sorry Waxman’s such an ass,” Rogers said. “Damn, that lunch looks bad.”

“I can’t do anything right for that man.”

A long silence passed while Rogers got up, fussed with the flowers, turning them so they were more visible. “You like yellow roses? Beth picked them out for you, because we’re from Texas and all. She and the girls are coming by later.”

Marcella’s heart sank. She just wanted to pull her blanket up over her head and cry, then sleep for several days—not be brave for Rogers’s family. Kamuela chose that moment to return, followed by her parents. Marcella closed her eyes in misery.

“Marcella, what’s the matter?” Her mother swooped in for a hug of her good shoulder, simultaneously removing the tray from in front of her. “Don’t eat this terrible thing. I brought you some nice pasta.” She opened one of the white cardboard containers she’d carried in and set to stirring and fluffing.

“I’m fine, just waiting for the pain meds to work.” Kamuela moved to sit in one of the side chairs next to her bed with no trace of self-consciousness or explanation. He picked up her cold hand, balancing it gently on his palm because of the IV taped to the back. Rogers grinned at them from across the room, clearly pleased by this development. Papa Gio sat down on the sleeper, which had been refolded into a chair, fussing with the pleats in his pants as Anna fussed with the food, opening more containers.

“Did you guys meet each other? This is my friend Marcus Kamuela. Marcus, Egidio and Anna Scatalina, my parents,” Marcella said.

“We met,” Kamuela said, smiling. He had a dimple in his left cheek. She hadn’t noticed it before. “I heard some pretty interesting stories about when you were a kid.”

“Marcella, she always getting herself into trouble,” Anna said, tucking a napkin into Marcella’s neckline and scooping up some of the pasta mixture with a fork. “Here, open up.”

“I can feed myself,” Marcella grumbled, but submitted. Sometimes it was easier to let her mother have her way. Besides, it felt kind of good to be waited on after her encounter with Waxman.

“So, Mr. Kamuela. How did you meet my daughter?” Papa Gio rumbled from across the room.

“I’m a detective. We met on the job. She’s excellent at her work,” Kamuela said, and then deliberately kissed her fingertips. “It’s one of the many things I like about her.”

The room went still. Marcella’s mouth hung open for the next bite as her mother froze, goggling at Kamuela. Marcella closed her mouth and felt that now-familiar blush prickle across her chest and up her cheeks—she needed to say something. Rogers couldn’t have grinned any wider from across the room.

“We’re dating,” she said to her flabbergasted parents.

“Oh,” Anna said, and shoveled the bite into Marcella’s mouth. “Oh! That’s wonderful!” She set down the box of food. “You must be so special for our Marcella to date you!”

“Marcella, she too busy for a relationship,” Papa Gio rumbled. “She not interested in babies, you know. She interested in guns.”

“Mr. Scatalina, I’m too busy too. And I like guns too. As to babies…There’s plenty of time for that.” Kamuela winked at Marcella. She yanked her hand away, then groaned as that moved her shoulder wound.

“’Nuff already. Mama, no more food right now. I promise I’ll eat more later. My stomach is upset, and I need a nap. Can you all come back in an hour or so? I hope they’ll be letting me out of here soon.”

“That’s my cue,” Rogers said. “I’ll tell the family you’re tuckered out. We’ll come see you when you’re home.” He gave her a thumbs-up as he disappeared around the door.

“We’ll take you home with us,” Anna said, rubbing her hands together in anticipation.

“No, Mama. You know how I have trouble sleeping. I want to go home to my own house.” Kamuela came back to her bedside after helping Anna set the food in the little fridge, fluff the pillows, and retuck Marcella’s blankets—only then would her parents leave. By then the pills had begun to work, and she felt loose and dreamy.

“So we’re dating,” he said.

“Yeah. Because I could hardly tell my parents anything different. I’m in my right mind now, and I think you owe me a kiss.”

He got up and went to close the door and then took the thin green curtain on its clattering rings and encircled the bed with it. Once privacy was ensured, he toed off his shoes. She giggled as he climbed up onto the bed, his thighs straddling hers under the thin blanket. She’d elevated the back of the bed to eat, and now he bracketed her body with his arms, and light bloomed in his golden-brown eyes as his lips descended to touch hers tenderly.

“There.”

“More,” Marcella said, and hooked her good arm around his neck to draw him down into a deep kiss. She felt his hand tunnel behind her back, lifting her into his arms as he knelt above her, and whatever pain it might have caused her shoulder was entirely drowned in the satisfaction of being so thoroughly tasted and touched.

He moved her gently over to one edge of the bed, lowered the raised back, and lay down beside her, one hand on her belly and the other one circling around the pillow at the back of her head.

She fell asleep.

Evening sunset streaked shadows across the gleaming windows of the high-rise across from hers as Marcella gingerly settled into a chair on the little deck of her apartment. The “entourage,” as she called the collection of friends and parents had finally left, and only Dr. Wilson was left, bringing a bowl of the reheated pasta, plates, and a glass of water.

“Thanks for coming over to my place to talk,” Marcella said. “I love my parents, but they wear me out.”

“It was my pleasure.” Dr. Wilson had arrived just as she was being discharged and had come along for the process. Breeze lifted the blond bell of her hair as the psychologist brushed some dust off her deck chair with a napkin and sat. “Finally have a moment to hear about the shoot.”

“Thanks for hanging in there. Thought I’d never get out of that hospital.”

“They’re just making sure you’re okay. No infections, or blood clots, or whatever.”

“So did you hear anything about my shoot? What they’re saying about it, whether it was justified or not?”

“Too early to know. Relax. Let the process do what it does.” Dr. Wilson handed Marcella a glass of water and a plate of pasta.

“I know. I just—keep wondering if I should have handled it differently. Waxman said I should have let Fernandez ditch the weapon and brought him in alive. It just didn’t occur to me. I wanted that gun.”

“I’m interested in why you felt you had to retrieve the weapon right away.”

“I don’t know…I didn’t want it to get lost. I mean, I’d just been diving in the Ala Wai, and I guess I realized how murky, muddy, and difficult it is to see in there…and that weapon is all we have tying him to the murders. The evidence would have been compromised.”

“Sounds plausible, but I’m still not sold.” Dr. Wilson brushed back the smooth bell of her hair with her fingertips. “There’s a reason you confronted him. You wanted to take him down.”

“I guess I did. But I truly didn’t expect him to turn the weapon on me. Obviously, I wasn’t planning for that, without a vest or anything on.” Marcella sipped. “He really had two sides to him—the meek maladjusted scientist with the tics and this bold side that came out only occasionally. I guess it was the bold side that murdered.”

“I’m still not sure why it had to be you who confronted him, you who tracked him even. Who was in charge of the surveillance assignments?”

“Waxman. But I volunteered to watch Fernandez. I’d surveilled him before, and honestly, of the three, he seemed the most guilty to me.”

“So this was partly an intuitive feeling.”

“Isn’t a lot of police work? We have a feeling, we follow up on it. I bet you psychologists could say we are subliminally assessing all the time and know something we don’t know consciously.” Marcella dug into her pasta. Even reheated, it was delicious—she tasted fresh tomatoes and basil, and little pine nuts popped with flavor on her tongue.