Zero Break (22 page)

“What do you mean?” I looked at him and then I knew. “I’m not interested in doing that anymore.” I grimaced. “Especially not with Sandra. I’m sure we’d do it the civilized way—some kind of clinic.”

Roby squatted, and I pulled a plastic bag from my pocket. “What if we both did?” I asked, not looking at Mike. “Then we wouldn’t know whose sperm it was, and we’d both be the dads.”

“Can they do that?”

“I’m sure.”

“We’d have to think about it,” Mike said. “Even being part-time dads, it’s a huge commitment and it changes your life forever.”

I stood up. “Yeah. I’ve seen that with my brothers.”

“Imagine my parents as grandparents,” Mike said, laughing. “My dad would be giving the kid junior doctor kits before he could read.”

“Well, being a grandparent is a chance for our parents to redo all the things they did wrong with us.”

Roby looked up at Mike and tried to take the stick from him. I reached down and unhooked his leash. “You gonna throw that thing or what?” I asked.

Mike threw it, and Roby went bounding ahead. I wanted to take Mike’s hand, but I had that bag of poop to get rid of. So instead we just chased the dog together.

≈≈≈

Sunday afternoon, Greg Oshiro called my cell. “I heard from Anna,” he said. “She won’t tell me where she is, or why she’s hiding, but at least she’s okay.”

“Did you get a phone number?”

“Nope. She said she was calling from a pay phone. I asked her about her cell but she just said she had it shut off.”

“Okay. Let me know if you hear from her again. See if you can get her to meet you somewhere to see the girls.”

“I don’t want to use the girls as bait,” he said. “Not now. Not ever.”

We went over to Lui’s that afternoon for a barbecue, and surrounded by all my nieces and nephews, I kept thinking about the conversations I’d had with Sandra and with Mike. I could see us bringing Sandra and Cathy into our family circle—what we call
ohana
in Hawaiian. There would be a new baby or two for my parents to fuss over.

But what would it mean for Mike and me? I’d heard my brothers complain about feeling ignored by their wives. What if Mike and I got so caught up in taking care of our kid, or kids, that we lost the connection that we had?

It was just too complicated a question. But no matter how I tried to ignore it, every time one of the kids ran past, with a scrape or an empty plate or a ball to play with, I kept coming back to it. It was a relief when we finally left and returned home, just Mike and me and Roby.

Monday morning, Ray and I got roped into helping round up a guy suspected of robbing one of the downtown branches of the Bank of Hawai’i. He lived in a crappy apartment in Mo’ili’ili, and we were lucky to get out of there just in time to make it to Wave Power Technologies for our eleven o’clock appointment.

It was the first time I’d been to Levi’s office, which was filled with bits and pieces from his past life—framed diplomas, including the one from Harvard Business School; photos of him at conferences and groundbreaking ceremonies; a gold CD that seemed to represent a million copies sold of some software product.

I was happy to see that along with the photos of his daughters, Ilana and Susan, there was a candid shot of him with Terri and Danny. Ray and I sat down across from his desk. “You’ve got some questions about alternative energy?” he asked.

I gave him a quick rundown of the case so far, and what Selena had suggested. He pursed his lips and twined his fingers together while I spoke.

“I hate to hear this kind of thing,” he said. “Not just because two women lost their lives. But because these kind of shenanigans give the industry a bad name. Can I see the spreadsheets?”

I gave him the flash drive, which was certainly getting a lot of use. I’d have to thank Harry again for it.

Levi’s secretary stuck her head in the door and asked if we wanted anything to drink.

“Try the pineapple coconut smoothies with açai berries,” Levi said, still facing his computer. “Another one of my little investments. Lots of antioxidants.”

I looked at Ray and we both shrugged. “Sure,” I said. “Is there anything trendy you don’t have your fingers in?”

“Nope,” he said.

The secretary returned with a pair of round bottles for us. There was a nice sort of berry and chocolate aftertaste once you got past the coconut and pineapple flavors. “Not bad,” I said.

We were about halfway through the smoothies by the time Levi turned back to us. “Your cousin was right,” he said. “These numbers represent about a year’s worth of energy production from a prototype system. And if the bad numbers are correct, the project is tanking.”

He shook his head. “It’s incredibly expensive to put together a prototype and test it. It takes a few years before a company can make money from one of these technologies. That’s where Uncle Sam comes in.” He leaned back in his chair. “The government has all these programs to encourage the development of alternative energy technology. Wave power is just a small part of it. You’ve got wind power, biomass, alternative fuels… the list goes on and on. Eventually the industry’s going to shake out, and there will be a couple of major players. The downstream potential is huge.”

Ray and I finished our smoothies, and Levi took the empty bottles from us and tossed them into a recycle bin next to his desk. “Let’s get to your numbers,” he said. “Every company has to demonstrate that their technology is successful in order to keep getting more money from the government. But not every project is going to be a winner. Sometimes the science just doesn’t work, or it doesn’t work well enough to justify the expense.”

“Somebody’s fudging the numbers,” I said.

“Exactly. Harry was on the right track when he said these looked like two sets of books.”

“Do you know which company we’re looking at?” I asked.

“I can’t tell—but I’ll bet you can.”

“How?”

He flipped to another spreadsheet. “These are the true records of what they spend,” he said. “See this? If I’m not mistaken, that’s a VIN number. It looks like these are lease payments on a car. Track the VIN number, you know who’s using the car. And then you figure out where that person works.”

He read the number out, and I wrote it down. I used my cell to call a friend at the DMV, who checked the number out for me and promised to text it back to me.

While we waited, Levi said, “The Business, Economic Development and Tourism department is responsible for monitoring these projects. The company I invest in sends them quarterly reports. Based on how we’re doing, they disburse additional grant money, and monitor what we’re using the money for.”

My phone buzzed with the incoming text. “What a surprise,” I said. “Néng Yuán.” I explained to Levi who Wyatt was.

“I know a little about Néng Yuán,” he said. “I’ve met Dr. Zenshen a couple of times. She’s even smarter than she is beautiful.”

“What do you know about the company?”

“The company I invest in uses point absorbers.” He clicked a couple of keys and brought up a PowerPoint presentation. “Watch this for a minute.”

We looked at the animation, which showed the way a farm of buoys captured the wave energy and transferred it to a generator.

“Néng Yuán has a different approach,” Levi said, when the presentation was over. “They use what are called attenuators.” He showed us another clip, in which long, worm-like segments moved with the waves, and as they flexed, the energy moved into a hydraulic pump.

“Nobody knows which technology is going to be the best,” Levi continued. “We’re still taking baby steps. Néng Yuán’s approach to attenuators is based on research Dr. Zenshen did in China. She moved here a couple of years ago to take advantage of the offshore waves. She has big plans for an attenuator project on the North Shore. You know what the waves are like there.”

I did. They were among the best in the world for surfing. “What happens to Pipeline or Sunset if something’s offshore catching the waves?” I asked.

“They did a study in England. A company wants to put in this project called the Wave Hub off the Cornwall coast. Some reports say that waves will be cut by up to eleven percent.”

“That could screw a lot of people. Look how much money comes in from surf competitions and surf touring on the North Shore. And if the project does knock down the waves, it could be bad news for a lot of other places, too.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Levi said. “No one has built anything on the scale Néng Yuán is proposing yet, so no one knows what the true effect will be on the waves.”

“Would somebody kill over a surf beach?” Ray asked. “Don’t you think this is all about the money? How can we figure out how much money we’re talking about here?”

“Let me run the numbers. I’ll call you when I’ve had a chance to fiddle around.”

“Remember, whoever is behind this has already killed two women. Don’t tell anyone that you have this data, all right? Don’t call anyone at the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. Don’t call anyone at Néng Yuán, or any other company.”

“I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck,” Levi said. “I’ll be careful.”

HELEN WHEELS

Ray and I grabbed lunch on our way back to headquarters at a Chinese cafeteria around the corner from Levi’s office. “I feel like we’re making progress,” Ray said, pushing his tray through the line, serving himself white rice and honey chicken. “I just hope this doesn’t turn into another dead end.”

“It’s possible that we’re on the wrong track,” I said. “Zoë’s death still could have been a result of a home invasion gone wrong, and Miriam’s just a traffic accident. But I think they’re connected, and that means we’re going in the right direction.”

I used a pair of tongs to grab some barbecue spare ribs, ladled some salad on my plate, and took a bowl full of won ton soup. We paid the cashier, a wizened old woman with missing teeth, and sat at a table by the front window.

As we ate, we watched the passing parade of trucks, tourists and teenagers. “Does it mean that I’m getting old because I want to go out there and pull that kid’s pants up to his waist?” I asked, nodding to a Hawaiian guy who thought he was some kind of rap star, with jeans down to his hips, showing off six inches of plaid boxer shorts.

“Yeah,” Ray said. “Pretty soon you’ll be listening to Don Ho sing “Tiny Bubbles” and calling guys my age, Sonny.”

“You’re a year younger than I am.”

Ray speared a hunk of honey chicken. “Your point is?”

“By the time my dad was my age, he was married with two kids and me on the way. He was a foreman for Amfac, one of the biggest companies in the state, and he was almost ready to start his own business. I can’t imagine what that must have been like, all that pressure, all those people depending on him.”

“Our generation is definitely spoiled,” Ray said. “My dad was like yours. He worked his ass off trying to provide for me and my brothers and sisters. You think two kids was bad; imagine having six.”

We finished eating, and pushed the trays away from us. “So where do we go from here?” I asked. “I guess we start with the people Zoë worked with.”

“But how do we get in there without tipping them off?”

“Gladys Yuu already knows something’s up,” I said. “You saw the way she was looking at us when we checked out Miriam’s cubicle. I say we ask her for a list of employees. She’s the secretary, after all. She’d be the logical choice.”

When we got back to the office, I called Gladys and asked her to put together a list of those who worked with Zoë and Miriam. “Why?” she asked. “I thought Zoë was killed in a break-in and Miriam died in a car crash.”

“Just crossing all the t’s and dotting the i’s,” I said. “You know what bureaucracy is.”

I guess she did, because she faxed us a list a half hour later. We started with Franklin Nishimura, who was a career civil servant, the kind who kept his head down, did his work, and made the wheels of state government move forward. We split up the databases, and about an hour later we compared notes. “Salary eighty-K a year,” I said. “Owns a house in Aiea, wife and two sons, Jeremy and Jonathan. Nothing jumps out at me.”

“Jeremy Nishimura has a record,” Ray said. “Possession, possession with intent to distribute, public intoxication, and so on.”

I made a note. “If we were just looking at Zoë, I could see Jeremy. He meets this single woman who works for his dad, thinks her house could be easy pickings. But Miriam?”

“Jeremy’s been in and out of rehab,” Ray said. “Could be Franklin needs some cash to send him someplace expensive, get him clean.”

“Could be.”

We went down the list. Nishimura had an associate director below him, Maun Li, and then three senior analysts: Zoë Greenfield, Winston Cheng, and Donna Paulson. Maun Li and Donna Paulson raised no red flags, but Winston Cheng made fifty grand a year and lived in Black Point, one of Honolulu’s most expensive neighborhoods.

That in itself was suspicious. Then add to that the BMW 7 series he drove, and you had a guy who looked like he was living above his means. That’s always a red flag when you are researching suspects. We made a note to look into his background more carefully.