Zero Break (29 page)

The air rang with the sound of the gun, and I saw the shark flip backwards with a huge splash that covered Wyatt and me and left us winded again. I backstroked with my free arm, kicking with my legs, until we were close to Levi’s boat.

He and Ray leaned over the transom, and I let Wyatt go when I felt them begin to lift him up. I held onto the dive platform for a minute until they were clear, looking back to where the shark was still thrashing in the water, blood spreading on the gentle waves. I knew I needed to get in the boat before a dozen more like him showed up for the feast.

I hoisted myself up on the dive platform, my legs still in the water, scanning the horizon. I didn’t see the Wave Walker anywhere, but I did see another dorsal fin approaching fast. I swung my legs into the boat.

I picked up a big towel from a pile Levi had left on the deck and as I huddled into it I watched him and Ray wrap Wyatt up, leaving only his wound open. Ray took over with the first aid kit, working to patch him up, as Levi went up to the flying bridge and turned us back toward shore.

As we were going back under the highway bridge, my cell reception returned, and I called for an ambulance to meet us at the marina. “How’s he doing?” I asked Ray.

“Holding a pulse. He’s still pretty cold, and I think he’s in shock.”

By the time we docked, we could hear the ambulance siren approaching. I was dry enough to get back into my clothes, though I had to go commando, balling up my soggy boxers and tossing them into the back of the Jeep.

We arranged for a unit to head over to Néng Yuán’s office and see if the Wave Walker had returned to the dock. As the EMTs were loading Wyatt into the ambulance, the patrol cop called said that the boat had been returned. “We’re on our way over there,” I said.

As I drove, Ray got the license plate for the Lexus registered to Dr. Zenshen, and we had the patrol cop check the parking garage for it.

“No dice,” Ray said, when he hung up. “She must have flown.”

The receptionist was just closing down the office when we arrived. She swore that Dr. Z had not returned after leaving with Wyatt.

Based on what we’d seen, we put out an APB for Dr. Zenshen’s Lexus, and we also stationed a unit near her house in Manoa. “Let’s go over to Gladys’s house,” I said. “With Dr. Z on the run, it may be the time to break her.”

PURSUIT

We drove slowly past Gladys Yuu’s house. The sun was setting, its last rays glinting off the windshield of the champagne-colored Toyota Camry parked in her driveway. “Who owns the car?” I asked Ray.

He called the tag in as I cruised down the street. The houses were mostly single-story fifties style, though occasionally someone had slipped a lot-hugging McMansion in between.

“It’s Gladys’s car,” Ray said, as I slowed to let some kids playing kickball scurry out of the way.

“So where’s the doctor?”

“Maybe we got here before she did,” I said.

We reached the end of the street, and as I was making a U-turn in a rutted driveway, Ray said, “There’s a black Lexus over there on the side street. Go past it slow so I can get the tag.”

The car was empty, but the tag matched Xiao Zenshen’s registration. “Not good,” I said. “Where is she? Why didn’t she park closer to Gladys’s house?”

We called for backup, and parked down the street. Two kids were practicing skateboard tricks in the intervals between traffic, two houses down from Gladys’s. An elderly woman across the street was watering her yard with a hose.

I was just about to get out of the Jeep when Ray grabbed my arm. “Hold up. Look up there, by that yellow house. There’s a woman moving under that big tree.”

She was tall and slim, walking through the shadows and under the trees toward us. We strained forward to see if it was Dr. Zenshen.

And then the world erupted in a blast of heat and light. The flash blinded us both for a moment, and when we got our vision back, the woman had disappeared. Ray jumped out. “I’ll go for the house, you see if you can catch that Lexus.”

I put the Jeep in gear and swung around, fumbling for my cell phone. In the rear view mirror I could see Gladys’s house, engulfed in flames, and Ray running toward it. I dialed 911, identified myself and reported the fire. “You’ll need an ambulance, too,” I said. “I think there were at least two women in the house.”

Ahead of me, the black Lexus pulled away from the curb and accelerated down the street. I used my radio to report that I was in pursuit, giving the dispatcher the tag number, vehicle description, and the direction we were heading.

There were two cars between me and the Lexus as I grabbed my flashing light and stuck it up on my roof. The car in front of me immediately pulled off to the side, but the one in front of him was slowing for a turn and didn’t seem to care that I was coming up fast on his tail.

My pulse was racing, and I tried to remember the advanced driving skills I had learned at the police academy. It had been years since I’d been in a car chase, and the experience felt surreal, like I was an actor in a movie and at any minute the director would call “Cut!”

Advanced driving is the art of controlling the position and speed of a vehicle under any conditions. I felt every sense was heightened, as I had to be sure of everything around me, every car, traffic signal, and pedestrian. That training, which had lain dormant for years, kicked in and I found myself intuitively considering the road around me.

At the same time, I couldn’t help remembering that the Jeep was the first new car I’d ever owned, and that it was only a year and a half old. I was going to be plenty pissed if I wrecked it.

Dr. Z had the advantage, because she lived in the neighborhood and knew the streets, and she had about a block and half head start on me. She swung onto Manoa Road, heading makai, toward where Manoa connected with Punahou Road, and an on-ramp to the H1 expressway.

That was good for me, in a way. First of all, I thought I knew where she was going, and could anticipate her moves. And second, I had learned to drive in the streets around the Punahou School, and even now I could see every corner in my head. I heard on the radio that other cars were responding, aiming to close off her options and force her toward Berwick Field, where she could be shepherded into an area free of homes and businesses.

A Smart car came speeding out of the intersection with Aleo Place, turning onto Manoa Road in front of Dr. Z’s Lexus, but when the driver saw my flasher behind her, she swerved right off into a semi-circular driveway.

Dr. Z ran through the intersection where Manoa Road met up with East Manoa, narrowly avoiding a crash with a minivan, which ran off the road and into somebody’s front yard. I heard on the radio that cops were blocking Manoa where it met up with Ahualani on one side and Piper’s Pali on the other. They hoped to run her into the tennis courts on the makai side.

Dispatch said that the courts were being cleared, and I recognized Kitty Sampson’s car number among those that were being positioned around the courts. I kept up with Dr. Zenshen, trying not to cause any accidents but at least keep her in view. It wasn’t easy; the cars around us didn’t seem to care about getting out of our way. Dr. Z pulled up behind a couple of tourists in a convertible and blasted her horn, then swerved around them.

A late model Nissan pulled right in front of me off of Linohau Way, despite my flashing lights, and I could see the driver on his cell phone, oblivious to the chase going on around him.

Suddenly there were cop cars everywhere, pulling in off the side streets with sirens and flashers, all in pursuit of Dr. Z. The guy in front of me dropped the cell and grabbed his steering wheel with both hands, veering quickly off to the side of the road.

Our shepherding techniques worked, and we forced Dr. Z to turn into the tennis courts behind Berwick Field, where she blasted through the shrubbery in front of the middle court, smashing into the chain link fence. She brought the car to a stop and jumped out, looking right and left.

There were a couple of patrol cars between me and her, and the officers in those cars jumped out and pulled their weapons on her. She looked down at the gun in her hand and realized she had been outmaneuvered. She tossed the gun away from her and put her hands up in the air.

I didn’t wait around for formalities. There were plenty of cops there to cuff Dr. Zenshen and take her downtown. I made a U-turn and headed back up to Gladys Yuu’s house, listening to the radio for any report of damage or injury. All I heard was that there were fire engines on the scene. Well, duh.

Traffic was a mess in the wake of Dr. Z’s chase. I took East Manoa Road, because it would bring me up to Hillside, and even with getting away from Dr. Z’s original route it took a lot longer than it should have to climb back into Manoa. I wove in and out of residential streets until I reached where Gary Saunders and his patrol car were blocking the turn.

He waved me through, but I still had to park a block and a half away from Gladys’s house because of all the fire trucks. As I jogged toward the house I passed Mike’s truck, with its distinctive flames painted down the side. He’d never admit it, but he loved that decoration.

Parents and kids were standing in clusters on the street. I saw the skateboards the kids had been playing with, abandoned beside a mailbox, and a black slash in the grass where some fiery debris must have landed.

Overhead I heard the whirr of one of the news station helicopters. In a gesture of brotherly solidarity, I called Lui as I dodged around another family group, a mom and dad and three kids sharing a big bowl of popcorn, as if they were watching a movie.

“You have somebody out here in Manoa you want me to talk to, brah?” I asked, when Lui picked up.

“You’re a prince, Kimo. My truck is stuck a couple of blocks away but I have Ralph Kim and a cameraman on their way on foot. I’ll tell him to call you.”

Ray was leaning against one of the trucks as I ran up. He was sweating and his face and shirt were streaked with black soot. He shook his head. “I tried to get in there but the place was already an inferno. I heard a woman screaming.”

I grabbed him into a bear hug. “We can’t save them all, brah,” I said. “All we can do is try.”

He hugged me back, and then pulled away. “Your partner’s up there,” he said. “I talked to him for a minute. They found two bodies in the house, both women.”

“Most likely Gladys and her mother.” I told him about the car chase, how I’d turned around once I saw cops taking Dr. Z down. “You okay?”

He nodded. “Still a little shaky, but I’ll manage. Go see what you can find out.”

I walked toward the house. One wall was completely gone, sections of the roof had been destroyed, and there was still smoke coming from the interior.

Mike was in conversation with one of the firemen near the ruined wall. He spotted me, and motioned me over. “I’m not quite sure what we’re looking at here,” he said. “The explosion was localized on the exterior of the house, on this side.”

The fireman walked away, and Mike continued, pointing at the ground. “There are fragments of glass and metal there, and there. I think they might have been part of the electric meter. I looked at a couple of other houses on the block, and they all had exterior meters mounted on this wall.”

“The woman I chased down is some kind of electrical engineer,” I said. “So she probably knows her way around a meter.”

I filled him in on Dr. Zenshen and what we suspected.

“It’s going to take me a while to figure it all out. I’ll get you a copy of my report when I have it done.”

“She’s a smart woman,” I said. “You may be looking at something pretty sophisticated.”

“I can do sophisticated.” He looked over to where Ray was slumped against a kiawe tree, still sweating heavily. “You’d better go look after your other partner.”

INTERROGATION

I snagged a couple of bottles of water from one of the EMTs I knew through Mike and carried them over to Ray. As we were drinking, my cell rang, and a couple of minutes later I was on camera with Ralph Kim, a newscaster I’d had a couple of run-ins with in the past.

He set up the shot with the ruined house in the background, the last fire truck still hosing down the embers. I gave him a quick sound bite on the explosion. “There are at least two potential victims,” I said.

“Any idea what was going on?” Ralph asked.

“Right now, all I can say is that this is connected to an open investigation, as well as to the car chase through Manoa earlier today. But I believe you’ll see a resolution very quickly.”

“As always, Honolulu’s finest are on the job,” Ralph said, turning to the camera. “We’ll have a full report on the late news.”

Ray was feeling better by then, and we drove downtown. I was hyper-careful in traffic, figuring I’d used up all my good driving karma earlier in the chase with Dr. Zenshen.

As we drove, we talked about the interrogation. “There are a lot of parts to this case, so we’re going to have to start in the right place in order to get the information we need,” I said.

“So where do you think that is?” Ray coughed and hacked up something from his throat, then opened the window and spit it out. When he pulled his head back in he said, “Not with Zoë Greenfield’s murder. That came later.”