Me? I was pretty much over it and had been searching for a new place to live. Vegas had over a million people, which I wasn’t crazy about living with. But outside of town looked like a viable possibility.

  During my off time, I took a trip to Lake Las Vegas to check it out. You gotta love it, a man-made lake out in the middle of the desert. It had a couple of hotels and a nice golf course. The resort was only seventeen miles from the Las Vegas strip and away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but close enough when I wanted to go out on the town or see a show. I liked it so much I made an offer on a condo. Maybe I’d keep my boat in Kona and hire a captain to charter it out to cover the slip and maintenance overhead. Or I’d sell it. I was undecided and would have to consider the pros and cons.

  All the way back to Kona, I thought about how I was going to break the news to Kathy that I’d bought a condo in Vegas. I was torn between two thoughts. Should I wait until she finished her book, or should I let her know right away, hoping that would motivate her to get her book done sooner rather than later? Those were the thoughts that occupied my brain until I looked out the window and saw snowcapped Mauna Kea in the distance. A snowy mountain in Hawaii always amazed me, no matter how many times I’d seen it before.

  After the plane landed, the team and I escorted the client to her estate at Kukio, where the residence security took over and I was off duty.

  On my way home to the harbor, I decided to keep the condo purchase to myself for the time being. I’d let Kathy finish her book, and then I’d spring it on her.

  It was close to noon when I got back to the Holo-Holo. A shower and a nap were the first order of business. I hadn’t gotten a full night's sleep the whole time I was in Vegas. I was surprised that Kathy wasn’t there writing. Pierre was asleep on the fighting chair and briefly lifted his head to look my direction as I came onboard. There was a note slid under the door of the cabin. It said,

  "I tried calling you, but your voicemail is full. I got bad news Jack, call me, Grady.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “What’s up?” Jack asked when Grady answered his phone. “Kathy Medeiros was abducted early yesterday morning from the parking lot behind The Ugly Omelette. An old man, halfway across the lot, a regular at the restaurant, said he saw a man shove her into a van through an open side door as she walked by on her way to work. He couldn’t provide much of a description. Apart from the assailant was Caucasian, wore all black, and had a ball cap pulled down over his eyes.”

  I listened patiently as Grady relayed the details. The pain in my gut grew more intense with every word he said. I wanted to avoid listening anymore, but had to.

  Grady continued, “The kidnapper dumped Kathy at the end of Ali’i Drive. She was found by a woman out for a walk. The woman, a tourist, was a paramedic from Chicago, staying nearby in a condo next to the golf course. Beaten and stabbed multiple times, Kathy was barely alive. She would’ve bled to death if it wasn’t for the Good Samaritan. The perp probably thought she was dead when he pushed her out of the van.

  I have to warn you, she’s in terrible shape because of the viciousness of the attack. I called her mother, but her number was disconnected. So, I dropped by her house, but she’d already moved off the island.”

  My heart sank the more Grady talked. I’d spent my career investigating violent crimes on military bases. It rarely bothered me because I didn’t know the victim. This was different. First it was Miles, now Kathy. This was personal. The first thought that came to mind was revenge, then Aldrich Cook. “Aldrich Cook is who you need to look at,” I said.

  “I’m right there with you, Jack. I’m on my way to his office. I’ll let you know how it plays out.”

  “Thanks. I’m going up to the hospital to see if they’ll let me see Kathy.”

  “She’s in Honolulu. They stabilized her at the Kona hospital and Life Flight took her to Queen’s yesterday afternoon.”

  As I stared out the window of the Hawaiian Airlines jet on the way to Honolulu, I thought about who would’ve set out to kill Kathy. I knew her ex-boyfriend Larry was in jail, so it wasn’t him.

  Aldrich Cook was the only one I suspected. There weren’t any secrets in a small town like Kona. Everyone knew Kathy was writing a book and using my boat as a place to work on it. Numerous people thought we were dating. We weren’t. She was my hānai daughter, as far as I was concerned. I don’t doubt Cook targeted her to get back at me.

  The forty-minute flight felt like it took forever to get from Kona to Oahu. When I got to the hospital, I hoped Kathy could tell me who had attacked her, but she’d slipped into a coma.

  She was in intensive care, and Grady was right. I didn’t recognize her when I entered her room. Her face was black and blue. Tubes and bandages covered most of her, from her waist up to the top of her head. Her prognosis for a full recovery wasn’t good, according to her doctor.

  I sat at Kathy’s bedside for three days until her mother, Estelle, could fly to Honolulu from Las Vegas, where she’d moved.

  “How is she?” Estelle whispered to me as she walked into the room for the first time. “You don’t have to whisper. She’s in a coma. Nothing's changed. She’s still critical, but she’s a fighter and hanging in there.”

  Estelle stood next to Kathy while she held her hand and nodded. She glanced at me with tear-swollen eyes. “She loves you like a father, Jack. You know that, right?”

  I nodded. I wanted to avoid saying anything because I had to hold it together and not cry in front of Estelle. I was afraid if I said one word, the floodgates of my emotions would break loose and I wouldn’t be able to stop them. I saved my tears for when I was alone in my hotel room.

  To keep my composure, I bit into my bottom lip so hard I could taste the saltiness of blood. I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out a hotel room key. I stood and handed it to Estelle. “This is to a room at the Ala Moana Hotel. It’s about a mile and a half from here. You can stay there as long as you need to. After a few days here it will be good to get out, take a shower and recharge. I want to stay, but I need to go back to Kona and find the man who did this to Kathy.”

  “Do you know who’s responsible?”

  I shook my head. “But I’m going to find out.” I looked at Kathy. “When she wakes up, ask her for a name.”

  Estelle nodded, and I walked out of the room, wondering if I’d ever see Kathy alive again. I said when she wakes up, but I really thought if, but didn’t want to say it out loud.

  On the flight back to Kona, the thought that ran through my mind over and over was that I was responsible because I told Kathy she didn’t have to worry anymore. Larry was in jail, and it wouldn’t be long before Cook was too. I should’ve seen this coming, was the thought in my head that overwhelmed all the others and played over and over like a broken record.

  “Vengeance is mine,” said the Lord, was another thought that I batted back and forth during the forty minute inter-island flight. But Jesus wasn’t there, and I was, and Kathy deserved justice. Not being religious, I went with my plan instead, and who’s to say the Lord wasn’t working through me? Well, maybe the Glock wasn’t his usual tool, but it was my weapon of choice.

  By the time the plane landed, I’d decided that if Kathy died, I’d kill whoever was responsible. The thought of her killer living out their life in prison wasn’t justice. I recalled when the Hawaii State Attorney General said on TV that if someone broke into your house to cause you harm, you should run out the back door. What a bunch of bullshit was the first thought that came to mind when I heard that. That’s why society had become the way it was.

  The criminals in Hawaii faced little, if any, consequences if they were arrested for anything less than murder. An eye for an eye was justice. Whoever had attacked Kathy should’ve prayed she didn’t die.

  When I got back to Kona, I picked up Pierre from the kennel. It was the first time he’d ever been kind of happy to see me. When we got back onboard the Holo-Holo he went straight to his food bowl and ate until it was all gone. At the kennel, they said he ate about two bites of food and that was it. Poor little guy. After he ate, he shadowed me everywhere I went. “Don’t worry buddy, it’s going to be okay.” I grabbed a new chew toy out of the galley and tossed it out the cabin door into the cockpit. He raced out of the cabin and pounced on it, then dragged it into the shade under the fighting chair and went to work on it.

  While Pierre gnawed on his chew toy, I called Grady to see if he had any leads in Miles' case and what Cook had to say when Grady went to his office.

  The first question I had for Grady was, “Where was Cook when Kathy was attacked?”

  “He had an alibi that was corroborated by witnesses.”

  “Then he paid somebody to do it. Kathy has a history with Cook. If you talk to her boss, Jeff, he’ll confirm that she wouldn’t even wait on Cook anymore and that Jeff had to deal with him when he came into the restaurant. Plus, I wouldn’t doubt he’d go after her to get back at me.”

  Grady said, “l hear you, my phone’s beeping, I got to go. I’m expecting a call from the deputy DA handling Cook's case. He left a message earlier and said there was a problem with the evidence. I better take the call.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I couldn’t sit on the boat and do nothing, so I grabbed a beer and Pierre’s leash. We strolled out to the mouth of the harbor, sat on the rocks, and watched the boats come and go. Salt air and the sea had always been therapeutic for me. We sat for about a half hour while I attempted to quiet my mind and think about what the next step should be.

  A few minutes after I took the last sip of beer, my stomach growled. It demanded either food or more alcohol. As much as I wanted to crawl inside a bottle and check out of reality, I resisted the thought and made the correct choice. Pierre and I headed over to the Harbor restaurant to grab something to eat, since it was nearby. It was the first time I’d had an appetite in over a week, so I thought I’d better eat while I felt like it. I had no desire to go to The Ugly Omelette because I didn’t want to talk about what had happened to Kathy, and her co-workers would surely want an update on her condition. I wasn’t ready to face that.

  The Harbor restaurant was open air on three sides, with a bar at one end. As long as Pierre kept a low profile, nobody would say anything. I tucked him in under my arm, and he was barely noticeable as we headed to a table. I took a seat at a table in the corner that had a view of the marina, with my back to the wall.

  The waitress was friendly; she wasn’t very chatty, but that was ok, I wasn’t either, and had no desire to be. I ordered and not long afterward she brought my fish sandwich and a hamburger patty for Pierre. He laid at my feet under the table, and I put his plate beside him.

  I took a bite of my sandwich and stared off aimlessly toward the entrance when two guys walked in. I recognized one of them. They sat a couple of tables away, and I overheard them order a couple of beers. I noticed something right away about the one I didn’t know. He sat facing toward me and wore a fishhook necklace. That wasn’t unusual. What was is that it was made of abalone. The only one I’d ever seen like it belonged to Miles. It was a custom design hand carved by a local craftsman made from an abalone shell. I texted Grady when I saw it. He texted back he was on his way. His ETA was less than five minutes, since the police station was less than a mile away from the harbor.

  The man with his back to me was a local charter captain named Rudy Gutierrez. I didn’t know him well. We’d spoken in passing a couple of times at the annual billfish tournament. After I finished eating and Pierre had licked every morsel of hamburger from his plate, I stopped at their table on the way out the door and said, "Howzit?"

  Rudy nodded, “Hey Jack. What’s up?”

  “I read in the paper your boat won the Wahine’s tournament a few weeks ago.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, those women can fish.”

  I looked at his partner and said, “Nice hook. Where’d you get it?”

  The man swallowed hard. Apparently I’d struck a nerve.

  “A friend gave it to me,” he finally said after he almost choked.

  “Does this friend have a name?”

  “You writing a book?” Rudy said with a hint of annoyance, while his friend remained silent. I glanced at Rudy, “That hook came from a friend of mine too—a dead friend. Now there’s an ongoing murder investigation.” I turned my focus back to the man wearing the hook. “Now–how did you get the hook?”

  “Are you a cop?” he snapped.

  “Nope–but my friend is.”

  "I don't see your friend."

  I looked toward the front entrance with a sigh of relief as Grady made his way past the bar.

  When no-name turned to look, he saw Grady and jumped up to run, but instead got a face full of teeth when Pierre attempted to leap from my arm and rip his face off. Mr. No-name looked like the victim in one of those alien movies where all you saw was the creature on the victim’s face. I thought it was physically impossible to reverse motion that fast, but the man was back in the chair before Pierre got his fangs into him.

  There wasn’t any doubt in my mind the man had Miles’ necklace because it had a little red speck on the very tip of the hook. There was no way there were two hooks carved from an abalone shell that were identical like that. Pierre seemed to confirm it by the way he had gone after the guy.

  When Grady got to the table, it was clear he knew the man when he said, “Hey Louis, you can stand up now and put your hands behind your back.”

  While Grady cuffed him, he said, “Thanks Jack, I’ve been looking for Louis Atkins for a while. He’s got a warrant out for burglary.”

  At the station, Grady allowed me to watch him interview Louis in a small room via closed-circuit TV. Grady sat across the table from him, and after he read Louis his rights, Grady pointed at the hook. “Where’d you get that necklace?”

  “A man traded it for some work I did.”

  "What’s his name?"

  “He’s that realtor that advertises on TV all the time, Aldrich Cook.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Pierre sat nearby while I got dressed. He carefully watched as I adjusted my tie. He probably hoped I’d strangle myself with it. Our relationship had actually improved since I think he realized I seemed to be the one in charge of his eating dinner regularly. At least he’d quit growling at me for sport.

  I dressed for court like I’d done a thousand times before. When I retired, I thought I was done going to court. Miles deserved justice, and I was going to see that he got it because justice mattered.

  It was the first day of Aldrich Cook’s trial, and I looked forward to seeing him go to prison. Cook had hired a top Honolulu lawyer to handle his case. She was a regular on the nightly cable news channels defending the dirtbag of the week. I’d seen her get people off that definitely should’ve been convicted. I was confident that wouldn’t be the case this time since we had the video evidence of Cook attacking me.

  Before I left the boat, I checked myself in the mirror and decided that was as good as it was going to get.

  On my way out the door of the salon, I threw a handful of dog bones into the cockpit.

  Pierre was one step behind me. “Sorry buddy, you have to stay here today. Here are a few extra bones to tide you over until I get back.” I tossed them into the shade under the fighting chair as I stepped off the back of the Holo-Holo onto the dock. He grabbed the nearest bone and got to work. He didn’t even look my way as I left the boat. At least he’d quit giving me stink eye.

  Before court, I was on my way to meet Grady for coffee. We agreed to try a new ocean front coffee place on Ali’i Drive near the old Bubba Gump’s.

  The place was busy, and I grabbed a corner table on the outdoor patio while I waited for Grady to arrive. The table was less than ten feet from the edge of Kailua Bay. I watched as a school of yellow tangs nibbled algae off the rocks in the shallows. They swayed back and forth with the tide like the pendulum of a clock. The water in the middle of the bay was turquoise, and it looked like the perfect day to go for a swim. As much as I’d like to have gotten into the ocean after court, first I had to call Estelle for an update on Kathy.

  My mind wandered about what the future would bring while I waited. Moving off the island, Miles, Kathy, it was almost all too much to think about at one time, and Grady was late. It was unusual for him to be late. Another five minutes passed before he finally walked through the doorway to the patio.

  “Sorry I’m late, Jack. I was on the phone with the deputy DA handling Cook's case. There’s a problem with the evidence.”

  “Problem? The video of Cook attacking me is pretty compelling, don’t you think?

  “That’s not the problem. The video has gone missing from the evidence room at the station.”

  I pounded on the table. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” The early morning chatter of diners having breakfast fell silent as I had clearly interrupted them. People turned their attention toward our table to see what the commotion was about. I didn’t look at them, and neither did Grady. When it was clear, there wasn’t any more to see. The morning chatter continued as if nothing had happened. I’d always been good at stuffing my emotions over the years, but the video that just disappeared was too much to bear.

  Grady shook his head. “I wish I were kidding. There’s no way to prove who took it, just like the fifty grand that disappeared out of there years ago. The DA said, Find the video, and he’ll refile the case.”

  I stood up and screamed, “Fuck!” loud enough to be heard on the other side of the island. I threw a tip down on the table and said, “I’ll be in touch. I have to go.” Grady nodded and took a sip of coffee like nothing happened.

  While I drove back to the harbor, I thought about the chances of recovering the video. But first I needed to find out if Aldrich Cook was responsible for Kathy’s attack too, and if he was, he definitely had to die.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10