Zero Break (5 page)

“Well, wash your hands first.”

“Yes, Dad.”

Welcome to life at our household. Mike and I battled frequently, each of us trying to get the upper hand. Maybe it was testosterone, or maybe sheer orneriness. Or maybe I’d picked Mike because I could repeat some power play with my father, try and change some old grievances.

We ate dinner, talked about our days, and watched some TV. But around eleven, when I took Roby out for a quick pee before bed, I remembered Zoë Greenfield’s death as I looked at all the houses without outside lights, at how easy it would be to sneak up on any of us.

The only way to feel better, I knew, was to find the mokes, our homegrown name for tough guys, who had broken into Zoë’s house, ransacked it and killed her. Then, maybe, I’d worry a bit less.

Only a bit, though.

SEARCHING FOR SUSPECTS

The next morning, I retrieved the Honolulu
Star
-
Advertiser
from the driveway when I returned from walking Roby. I paged through, scanning articles with only the slightest interest, until I came to a brief article about a woman’s death in a home invasion robbery. She wasn’t named in the paper; our public information officer regularly withholds that information until given the go-ahead by the investigating officers.

The police blotter stories were compiled by Greg Oshiro, the reporter who covered law enforcement for the
Star
-
Advertiser
. Usually he was all over Ray and me when we had homicide cases, always hoping that there would be something sensational in the crime that would elevate his position at the paper. Like most newsgathering organizations, the
Star
-
Advertiser
was teetering on the brink of economic trouble, always threatening layoffs and cutbacks.

I wondered why Greg hadn’t already called Ray and me about Zoë Greenfield’s murder, looking for something he could make a story out of. A young mother had been cut down in her prime, and if he could get hold of pictures of the little girls then heart strings would be tugged all over the island. He could flesh the story out with statistics, especially the ones I’d seen the day before that showed crime escalating in the area around Lopez Lane, the rates rising on robbery, burglary and homicide.

I pulled up the
Star
-
Advertiser’s
website on the netbook and copied the article into a file for the folder on Zoë Greenfield’s murder.

When I got to headquarters, Ray and I sat down to brainstorm leads. Beyond Ryan Tazo and those two guys we’d eliminated the day before, our search through case histories had come up empty. Every moke with a record for that type of home invasion was either dead or in jail on other charges. I leaned back in my chair. “We must be doing something right. Putting the bad guys behind bars.”

“There are always new ones.” Ray was leaning toward the crime being drug-related; the frenzy of stab wounds in Zoë’s body implied, to him at least, that the assailant had been high, or desperate for a fix. “How about if we expand our search area? Look at Waikiki, for example. Lots of mokes hang out there to prey on tourists.”

“We could do that.” I pulled up a few cases, and Ray did the same, and we started reading. “Hey, here’s a familiar name,” I said, about an hour later. “Judy Evangelista.”

Judy was a tita, a tough girl, a sometime hooker, sometime pickpocket, and could usually be found hanging around Waikiki. We’d picked her up on an assault charge soon after Ray became my partner, and we discovered she was the kind of girl who knew the Honolulu underworld and worked it to her advantage. It was easy to consider that she might know of someone breaking into houses in Zoë’s neighborhood.

We got into my Jeep, opened the flaps, and started cruising. It was sunny, with a scallop of cirrus clouds across the sky, and as we passed Ala Wai Beach Park there was a line of cars waiting to turn in, tourists heading out for sport-fishing or ready to lobster up on the sand. I had the “Island Warriors” CD of Jawaiian music playing, our home grown mix of ukulele and reggae rhythm, and it felt like a day we were going to make some progress.

We crossed the Ala Wai Canal into Waikiki and it felt like coming home. I had lived on Lili’uokalani Street, patrolled the neighborhood as a beat cop, and also, for a brief time, been assigned to the Waikiki station as a detective. I knew where the mokes and titas lurked, in the shadowy places tourists should avoid. Someone had scrawled
help wanted, telepath. you know where to apply
on the side wall of a convenience store.

A couple of blocks later I swung onto Kalakaua Avenue and we started looking for Judy. We spotted her as we were entering the hotel district, near the recently renovated Royal Hawaiian. I was sure they appreciated having her hang around outside the hotel, in her low-riding jeans, midriff-baring white t-shirt, and multiple heavy stainless steel chains around her neck.

She was leaning against a palm tree, smoking a cigarette. “Hey, Judy,” Ray called, leaning out the Jeep’s window.

Her hair was a bottle blonde, and I could see the dark roots starting to show. I thought that the shark tattoo above her belly button was new. “Aren’t you guys out of your native habitat?” she said. “You got nothing to do downtown, you gotta come over to Waikiki and harass innocent people?”

I slid the Jeep up next to a fire hydrant, put on my flashers, and Ray and I got out.

“Now, is that the way to greet a couple of old pals?” Ray asked. “We came all the way over here to see you.”

She took a long drag from her cigarette. “I ain’t been in trouble in ages.”

I leaned back against the Jeep. “We’re not looking to bust you, Judy. We’re looking for information. You know anybody who breaks into houses?”

“What’s in it for me?”

I always kept a few fifty-dollar bills in the back of my wallet for such occasions. I keep a log and periodically put in requests for reimbursement from the department’s petty cash fund. I pulled one out and Judy frowned. “Houses where? Round here?”

“Over around the Kapalama Canal,” I said. “Between there and the H1.”

She took the fifty from my fingers, folded it, and stuck it into the pocket of her jeans. “I’ll ask around. You still got the same cell number?”

“You have me in your favorites?” I asked. “I’m touched.”

“Touch this.” She grabbed her crotch.

“No thanks. You know I don’t go there.”

We got back into the Jeep, and I made a note for the folder of the fifty I’d given Judy.

The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism was housed in one of the high-rise buildings near the Iolani Palace. Ray and I showed our ID to the receptionist, and asked to speak to Zoë’s boss. She had to look Zoë up in a directory, and then work backwards to figure out who she reported to. Her phone kept ringing, though, and so it took her a few minutes. “She was in the energy office,” she said finally. “That would be Mr. Nishimura. I’ll call him.”

Nishimura, a tall, stoop-shouldered Nisei, came out to the reception area a few minutes later. “This is about Zoë Greenfield?” he asked.

“It is. Can we speak with you somewhere private?”

He nodded, and led us back through a series of hallways to a small windowless office where there was just room enough for a pair of metal visitors’ chairs. He sat behind his desk, which was piled with manila file folders and random office supplies, as well as a computer monitor that had to be at least ten years old.

“I read about Zoë’s murder in the paper. Someone broke into her house?”

“On Saturday night,” I said. “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

“It must have been Friday afternoon. She didn’t come to work on Monday, and she didn’t call in. She’s always been a very conscientious employee. But she didn’t return any phone calls and I didn’t know what else to do.” He motioned at the pile of folders on his desk. “We’re running short handed here as it is. I just didn’t have the time to go searching for her.”

“What is it that you do here?” I asked. “Or rather, what did Zoë do?”

“As you saw out front, we’re a division of the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, which collects and analyzes economic development statistics. Our focus here is on energy policy and analysis. Did you know that Hawaii is the most oil-dependent of all the fifty states?”

We both shook our heads.

“Ninety percent of our energy needs are supplied by imported petroleum. Given the current political climate worldwide, it’s important for us to do what we can to reduce that dependency. Zoë worked on alternative energy sources—administering grants, compiling statistics, making recommendations.”

I remembered the boat trip Mike and I had taken on Levi Hirsh’s boat, when Levi had been pointing out his investment in harnessing the ocean’s waves. “Wind power, ocean power, that kind of thing?” I asked.

He nodded. “We have a mandate to supply 70% of Hawaii’s energy demand with renewable resources by 2030. We’re working with researchers at UH, and with private industry, to develop biomass, hydroelectric power, solar power, anything we can. Zoë reviewed budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“Do you know if she received any threats as a part of her work?” I asked.

“Threats?” Nishimura almost laughed. “Detective, we’re accountants. Yes, we work with a lot of money—but there are so many checks and balances, so much bureaucracy, that one person couldn’t do much to favor one group over another. There’s some subtle influence peddling, of course; you’re going to get that in any agency. But threats? No.”

“How about in her personal life? Do you know if she was dating anyone?”

“Zoë worked for me, so we kept our relationship on a professional basis,” he said. “But she might have talked to one of the other analysts, or one of the support staff.” He picked up the phone. “I’ll get my admin to ask around for you.”

I held up my hand. “If you don’t mind, we’d rather ask ourselves.”

He put the receiver back down. “Of course. If there’s anything we can do…”

“We’ll need to look at her office as well.”

Nishimura introduced us to his administrative assistant, a Chinese woman in her mid-fifties, with the kind of no-nonsense attitude that reminded me of Juanita Lum, the admin for Lieutenant Kee in Vice. Though Kee was the guy with the gold braid on his shoulders, she was the one who ran the department.

“Zoë was a quiet girl,” she said. Her name plate read Gladys Yuu. “She kept to herself. But then, most of these accountants are like that. More comfortable with numbers than people.” She pursed her lips for a minute. “There’s a girl in the statistics department. Miriam Rose. They had lunch together sometimes.” Her face softened. “You don’t think it was just a terrible accident—some burglary gone wrong?”

“We’re looking into everything. So anything you know about her, or her life, might help us.”

She thought for a minute. “Well, there is one thing. I didn’t approve, but of course, it’s not my place to say.” She hesitated, then gave in to her impulse. “I’m not a nosy person, you understand, but I like to know what’s going on in the department. It helps Mr. Nishimura to have someone like me around.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “When I was a kid, my mom used to help out in my dad’s business. And she was always the one who kept track of him and the other guys.”

She smiled. “Then you understand. One of Zoë’s jobs was to monitor contracts and grants. Though she wasn’t the friendliest person, she did get to know the people at the various companies.” She lowered her voice. “I understand she got one of them to hire a friend of hers.”

“What company would that be?”

“A Chinese firm. I have a card here.” She opened her desk and pulled out a vinyl storage book for business cards. After flipping through a few pages, she drew one out of its plastic holder. The front of the card was in English, the back in Chinese ideograms.

The company name was Néng Yuán, which didn’t tell me much, though the logo was a stylized wave. The president’s name was Xiao Zenshen. “You know anything about them?” I asked.

Gladys turned to her computer and started typing. “They have a grant from the state to explore wave power,” she said. The boat trip with Levi Hirsch came to my mind again. It looked like I was going to be calling him. That was okay; he was dating Terri Clark Gonsalves, my best gal pal from high school, and Mike and I often double-dated with them.

Gladys looked up. “The rest of this is pretty scientific. I’m afraid I don’t understand much of it. I can print it out for you, though.”

She hit a couple of keys and the printer behind her desk came to life. “Do you know the name of the friend she got hired there?” I asked.

Gladys shook her head. “It was just something I overheard. But Miriam might know more.”

We took the printout from Gladys, and she led us back through the maze of corridors and introduced us to Miriam Rose. She was a young Filipina, probably late twenties, in a white blouse with a floral print wrap skirt. Big round sunglasses were propped on her head, and she had a red silk rose pinned to the right shoulder of her blouse.

Gladys introduced us. I could see she wanted to stick around and hear what Miriam had to say, but I smiled and thanked her for her help, and said we’d be back to her if we needed anything further.