Zero Break (18 page)

He took my hand and pulled me up and into a bear hug. I rested my head on his shoulder and sniffled. “Come on,” he said. “You need a long, hot bath.”

He led me inside, parked me at the kitchen table, then pulled a Fire Rock Pale Ale out of the fridge, popped the cap, and handed it to me. “Drink this.”

A minute later I heard the water running in the oversized Roman tub in the bathroom. Mike had remodeled the room a year or so before he met me, and the tub had been his big indulgence. He liked to take baths, and at six-four, he needed a lot of space. Roby sat at my feet on the kitchen tile, resting his big golden head on my thigh, and I stroked his fur as I drank the beer. When Mike returned he said, “Come on. The bath’s ready.”

I was almost catatonic. He gently unbuttoned my shirt and slipped it off, tossing it into the laundry basket. He removed my holster from my pants, and put the gun on top of the bureau. Carefully he took off the rest of my clothes, kissing my cheek and the top of my head now and then. Then he led me into the bathroom.

I stepped into the warm water, then sunk down below the surface, closing my eyes and letting the water wash over me. When I came back up, I saw Mike, naked, ready to step into the water with me. I moved over to make room, and he joined me, careful not to splash the tile floor.

We turned toward each other, and I rested my head on his shoulder. “It’s okay, baby,” he said. “I’m right here.”

Somewhere in there he lathered me up with lavender soap, then bundled me into a fluffy terrycloth robe. He led me into bed, and then brought me dinner on a wooden tray, elbow macaroni with butter and cheese, my comfort food. I remembered being home sick from school, and my mother would make that for me and bring it to me in my favorite bowl, a gray porcelain one with a handle in the shape of an elephant’s head.

I wondered what ever happened to that bowl, if my mother was still using it when she took care of her grandchildren. And then I burst into the tears I had been holding back all day. Mike got into bed next to me, and Roby jumped up with us, and when I stopped crying we lay there together and watched TV for a while.

NUMBERS DON’T

Our phone rang off and on that night. Everybody I knew was shaken up by what had happened at Chinatown Christian Academy. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing the police moving around the school, and the story took up most of the front page of the
Star
-
Advertiser
. My family was horrified, and my sister-in-law Liliha was one of many parents who planned to go to Punahou to demand an audience with the principal about security measures.

Harry and Arleen had considered sending Brandon to Chinatown Christian, and they were filled with relief that they had decided against it. The only person I didn’t hear from was Terri, and that was because she was skiing in Idaho with her son Danny, and with Levi and his daughter.

The mood at headquarters was somber the next morning. Everybody wanted to talk about Randy Tsutsui, about why he had done what he had. Theories abounded. He had been an abused child. He had been bullied. No, he was a bully himself. Why had he been allowed to keep the gun his father committed suicide with? Had there been any warning signs that he was unbalanced?

No one had any answers, but everyone had a theory. We were listening to Gary Saunders bluster about something when my cell rang. “Detective? My name is Ellen Toyama. You called me?”

I explained that we were investigating Zoë Greenfield’s murder, and she said, “Fo’ real? Like on TV?”

“Yeah, we’re for real,” I said. “Can we talk to you?”

“I’m on my way to work?” The way she raised her voice at the end of the sentence made it sound like a question, one I didn’t have an answer for.

“Where do you work?”

“At the Old Navy in Ala Moana Mall?”

“If we come over there, you think you can take a break and talk to us?”

“My boss loves
Hawai’i Five-O
,” she said. “I’m sure she’d let me take break.”

Finally, a sentence that didn’t sound like a question.

I told her we’d be there in a half hour or so. Ray and I were glad to get out of the station and the gloom that pervaded it after the events of the day before.

We parked at the far end of the mall, near Sears, and waited until a tour bus had disgorged a horde of tourists heading for the Hilo Hattie store next door before we could go inside, where Hapa was singing “Lei Pikake” over the sound system. Ellen Toyama was an elf of a girl, only about five feet tall, with short dark hair and a perpetual smile. I wondered if Zoë had known any women who weren’t Asian.

Ellen got permission from her boss to take a break, and we walked out into the center of the mall. We bypassed a convention of moms and strollers to find a quiet corner. “You knew Zoë Greenfield?” I asked.

She nodded. “We met at this girls night out party?” she said. “Like a year ago?” She pulled a package of gum from her pocket and offered us sticks. Ray took one.

“She was quiet, you know? But I was going through this thing, where I was sort of figuring out my own identity? And she was going through this thing, too, because she had met this guy on line?”

“Wyatt Collins,” I said.

She nodded. “At first, she was just like being a friend, you know? And then as she got to know him, she was sort of reconsidering?”

I found Ellen’s habit of making every statement sound like a question irritating, you know? But I kept my mouth shut.

“So we used to talk about it?” Ellen said, chewing her gum. “She was really, like conflicted? At least at first? Because, I mean, she had this girlfriend, and this family? But this guy, it was almost like he was hypnotizing her or something?”

“What do you mean, hypnotizing?” Ray asked. “Like in person?”

Oh, God. He was catching it, too. I’d have to ask for a new partner.

Ellen shook her head. “It wasn’t anything bad like that,” she said, definite for a moment. “But it was like his emails? She said they were like things she could have written herself? Like he could see into her soul?”

Zoë Greenfield didn’t seem like the kind of woman who talked about her soul a lot. But still waters run deep, I guess.

Ellen went back over the same ground again, about the almost mystical connection between Zoë and Wyatt, but that was about all she could say. By the time we finished with her I was ready to bury myself in talk radio, where at least they had definite opinions, even if most of the time they were crazy.

We walked over to the Foodland after we’d finished with Ellen, bought a couple of bottles of cold water, and then strolled through the mall, thinking out loud. I said, “Wyatt has the violent background, and according to Ellen it was like he’d hypnotized her. He could have asked her to do something, and if she refused, he went off on her.”

“Like, if you believe Ellen?” Ray said.

“I have a gun,” I said. “And I’m not afraid to use it if you don’t stop talking like that.”

Ray laughed. “Then there’s Anna Yang. She could still have a thing for Zoë, be the spurned lover, in danger of losing her kids. That’s a big motive.”

“Same for Greg Oshiro,” I said. “He wanted those kids, and he said how much his parents loved them. He could have been protecting his position.”

“And there’s the marriage between him and Anna,” Ray said. “They could have been planning something together.”

We’d just about finished our water, and run through our ideas, when Harry called. “I finally broke into that online storage, brah. You want to come over and see what she had there?”

“Sure. We’re at Ala Moana. Be there in a few.”

“Hey, if you’re at the mall, can you do me a favor? We’re trying to bribe Brandon into going to school without so much complaining, and he loves these little anime toys from Shirokiya. They come out with a new one every month, and he’s about two months behind. Can you stop by and pick up the latest two?”

“Sure. Got any dry cleaning you want me to pick up, too? Prescriptions at the pharmacy?”

He ignored the jibe and told me the two toys he wanted, and hung up the phone. We detoured past the big Japanese department store and then drove up to Aiea Heights.

“Zoë had these spreadsheets,” Harry said, when we were sitting in his office looking at the computer monitor. “I don’t know exactly what they are, but she gave them names that have nothing to do with their content, and had them hidden away in a folder with a weird name, which makes me suspicious.”

I know about as much about spreadsheets as I do about fertilizer or national politics—which come to think of it, are pretty similar. “Weird name?” I asked.

“The names on the files and the folder don’t match the contents. There are rows and rows of statistics there, and she called one file ‘flowergirl’ and another one ‘winnebago.’ And they’re in a folder called ‘plaid.’”

I looked at Ray and he shrugged. “What is it that you said she did for a living?” Harry asked.

“She worked for the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism,” I said. “Monitoring energy statistics or something like that.”

“Well, it looks like she took her work home with her,” Harry said. “I’m just guessing here, but I think we’re looking at two different sets of books being compared.”

“Which means what?” Ray asked.

“Well, let’s say you have a restaurant, and you do a lot of cash business,” Harry said. “You have one set of books that show everything you take in, and everything you spend. Then you have a second set, where you wipe out all the cash receipts, anything that’s not easily traceable. That’s the set you show the tax man.”

“But Zoë worked for a government agency,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

“You said energy statistics?” Harry asked.

I nodded. He turned to the computer, opened up a new browser window, and started typing. “Okay, here’s the department website. Look at all these different initiatives they have. Energy data, energy efficiency, renewable energy. Suppose somebody was fudging data, and Zoë figured it out. Hence the two different sets of books.”

“Who was fudging?” Ray asked.

Harry shook his head. “That’s beyond me. And remember, I’m just guessing here. You need somebody who knows what this data means to tell you what’s going on.”

He copied the data onto a flash drive, then handed it to me. “You can keep that,” he said. “I went to a trade show last week and I picked up a half dozen of them.”

Back at the station, we opened up Excel and looked at the data once again. But it was still impenetrable. “Who do you think we can get to look at this?” I asked. “Nishimura, Zoë’s boss?”

“If there’s something screwy going on at her office, don’t you think he’s part of it? If not, why keep it so secret? Why not have just gone to him?”

“Maybe she did,” I said. “And maybe that’s why she’s dead.”

I switched over to Word and looked through my notes, paging back to the day we’d gone to Zoë’s office. “She had a friend there, remember? Miriam Rose. Maybe we can ask her.”

I called Miriam and asked if we could talk to her. “Sure. I’m at work until five.”

“How about after that,” I said. “Maybe we can buy you a cup of coffee after you get off.”

She was curious, but agreed to meet us at a Kope Bean near her office at five. Sampson gave us a bunch of paperwork to fill out about the school shooting the day before, and that took up most of the rest of the day.

Ray and I were sitting at a table in the corner of the Kope Bean when Miriam walked in. That fabric rose pin was obviously her signature; she was wearing it on her shoulder, with a bamboo-print blouse and a skirt that would have been too short on my teenaged niece Ashley.

I got up and got her a latte while Ray opened up my netbook and showed her the files Harry had copied. They were playing cowboy music through the sound system, Willie Nelson wailing about wide open spaces, and I found myself singing along. I could use some of that cowboy quiet, I thought, just me and the stars and my cayuse, whatever the hell that was.

Miriam alternated between sipping her latte and scrolling through the spreadsheets. “It’s hard to tell which company these belong to.”

“But they’re definitely work data?” I asked.

“Oh, absolutely. See this sheet? It represents kilowatt hours.” She clicked a tab at the bottom of the screen. “And this one? These are dollar figures. State subsidies for alternative energy, I think. But I’d have to compare them to some other figures to see if I can figure out which company they belong to.”

I looked over her shoulder. “Why do you think Zoë had this on her personal backup?”

She looked at me like I was dumb. And when it comes to computers, and statistics, I agreed with her. “Because there are two different versions of everything. She was onto something. Somebody cheating. I just don’t know who.”

She pulled her own flash drive out of her shoulder bag and copied the data from the one Harry had given us. “I’ll try and figure this out tomorrow.”

“Be careful. If this relates to Zoë’s death it could be dangerous.”

“People kill, detective,” she said. “Numbers don’t.”

CRASH