Suitable for Framing, Part 3
McGarrett tilted his head back and gently pulled his lower eyelid down. With his other hand, he squeezed the bottle of eye drops. He could only get a couple of drops in before he blinked, reflexively, his eye watering as the drops spread across the cornea. The drops stung, but they also helped relieve the dry burning that went along with the day's fatigue. It seemed to McGarrett he'd spent all afternoon in the car. First, he'd hit the Waikiki coffee shop where Betty worked. Her boss said she was good with the customers—when she bothered to show up for work. Her co-workers, a bottle-blonde and a frowsy brunette, told him that Betty surfed at Waimanolo and Sunset Beach, and that she liked men.
"Did she ever talk about any particular man?" McGarrett asked.
"Oh no," the girls said in unison, then looked at each other and shrugged. "Betty didn't confide in us, Mr. McGarrett," the blonde told him. "I mean, she was always friendly, but she thought we were squares, you know? She lived for the beach." She covered her mouth, eyes filling with tears. "That sounds awful. She died on the beach."
His next drive had been all the way out to Windward Oahu Community College, where he'd gotten a copy of Betty's transcript and talked to some of the teachers. She had taken a few college credit classes. From her grades, it was plain to see that her heart wasn't in her studies. "I would say that Betty was a hedonist," the English teacher told Steve. "Living for the moment. God, she was just a kid. Who knows what she might have been if she'd had the chance to mature."
McGarrett had some ideas. A teacher, a nurse, a beautician, a seamstress, a waitress, a daughter, a wife, a mother. Some of them weren't so pretty. Sometimes pleasure-seeking led to a taste for thrills and danger—a lifetime of pain, or, as in Betty's case, an early death.
He wished there was a quick fix for aching shoulders and tired feet. His stomach growled insistently. He'd gotten by on candy bars and a hot dog all day, and now he was ravenously hungry.
"Hey, McGarrett. Ted Hada to the rescue." Steve looked up to see his diminutive colleague outside his cubicle, brandishing a big bag of Chinese take-out cartons from Wong's. McGarrett smiled gratefully and followed him into Deford's office, where Hada divvied up the hot, greasy boxes. McGarrett loved Chinese food, and the sweet, savory smell of fatty meat and wet noodles almost made him drool.
"Did you send JuJu home?" Hada asked Deford as they dug into their food.
"Not exactly," Deford replied. "I sent him to my house." Hada arched his eyebrows, and Deford laughed. "Well, the governor can't be any more furious with me than he is now, so what the hell. He won't get a minute's peace back at his place, and I've got the room." With a weary shrug, he shoved in a mouthful of meatballs and green beans. "We've been busy this afternoon. I took him back to the apartment with a couple of HPD blues. He swears he can't remember a thing after pulling in to the parking lot last night. We searched his apartment—it was clean." Deford made a wry face. "In a manner of speaking."
McGarrett smiled. He could imagine that the easy-going JuJu didn't set the same standard of household hygiene as the fastidious Deford. "Well, that's good news," he said.
"I thought so," Deford said. "But there's bad news too. What the landlady found in the parking lot when she got up this morning." Deford picked up a paper bag off his desk, and pulled out a small, barrel-shaped handbag, its dusty blue fabric dotted with brown stains. "Betty Akino's purse. No good for prints. Her ID's inside, along with the usual junk—sunglasses, tissues, lipstick, and the like." He tossed the purse down on the desk. "That puts her and JuJu together, though there's no sign she was in the apartment, and JuJu says she didn't have a key. I'm sending it over to the lab tonight."
McGarrett and Hada exchanged worried glances. Every cop knew that a woman never goes anywhere without her purse. That put Betty in trouble at JuJu's apartment. "Still tight as a clam shell about his whereabouts?" Hada asked. Deford nodded, maneuvering a spiral of noodles into his mouth. "What could it be?" Hada wondered. "Married woman, maybe?"
"We could speculate all night," Deford said. "Let me hear something solid, boys."
McGarrett gave a rundown on his afternoon travels. Then it was Hada's turn. "I talked to the parents," Hada reported. "The father's a kotonk, lived here about five years. He said Betty was a good girl, but he couldn't control her."
"Wait a minute," McGarrett said. "What's a kotonk?"
Hada grinned. "An American of Japanese Ancestry from the mainland," he told McGarrett. "Served with a lot of 'em during the war. We called 'em kotonks because that's the sound their heads made when they hit the barracks floor."
With any encouragement, Hada would tell stories all night about his service with the famous 100th Battalion in World War II, made up entirely of Japanese Americans. They usually started out funny, like this one, and ended up bitter. Deford moved to forestall such a story now. "What else, Ted?"
"Not much. The mother was crying her eyes out. The father was mad. Betty was their only child. They met JuJu last year sometime, said that they liked him all right. They said Betty dated lots of guys, nobody special that they knew of." Hada shook his head. "They're scared and defensive. Kept insisting she was a good girl. You want my take, they're one of those families who had a wild child, but didn't want to know about it. Kept their heads in the sand, you know?" Hada dug in his coat pocket and pulled out his notepad, flipping it open. "She had a lot of friends—surfing buddies—but they couldn't name many. Mostly all they knew were nicknames. They said she'd been talking lately of going back to school. I searched her room—lots of makeup, stuffed animals, clothes all over the place."
Hada opened a folder and pulled out a sheaf of photos. "I got these pictures. We can make copies, use 'em when we're asking around to try to pin down who might have seen her last night."
McGarrett picked up the top photo and studied it. A young woman in a cap and gown, just this side of beautiful. She had long black hair and a wide, wild, happy grin. He dropped it back on top of the pile. "What a waste." Suddenly, he didn't feel very hungry anymore.
"I got one good thing, though." Hada set his carton of food down and picked up a big piece of cardboard. It was covered with orange burlap garishly screen-printed with three red and purple cartoon owls. Randomly stuck all over it with thumbtacks were old envelopes, business cards, and tiny scraps of paper. "This, as you might have guessed, hung next to their phone. Mrs. Akino said Betty was on the phone all time. Don't look so sad, McGarrett," Hada said. "You and I are going to have a good time running down all of these phone numbers, and seeing if we can ring up a killer."
"Good work, Ted," Deford said, "I want to know everything about Betty Akino. So far, we only know two people who are connected to Betty's killer. The first one is Betty. The second one," he continued soberly, "is JuJu. Betty and JuJu ended up on the beach together this morning for a reason. If we find out what it is, we've got our killer." He turned the chopsticks in his fingers abstractedly for a moment. "Ted, aren't you good friends with Duke Lukela?"
"Eat lunch with him almost every day," Hada said. "We joined the force at the same time."
"OK, talk with him about JuJu first thing in the morning. I just can't understand why JuJu won't tell us where he was last night. Duke might be able to help us out, or at least talk some sense into the boy." Deford sighed. "And get with the phone company about all those phone numbers. Ask for some help from HPD if you need it."
He turned to McGarrett. "Steve, you take Waimanolo and Sandy Beach. Talk to the surfers. Get copies of Betty's picture and show it around. We need to start putting together a picture of Betty's last days—where she hung out, who she was dating, and what kind of trouble she was in." He paused. "And take JuJu's picture, too—though God knows we already know the trouble he's in. Now go home and get some rest. We're in this for the long haul."
* * *
The normal hustle and bustle that surrounded his job as sergeant served as a tonic for Duke. He'd come to work tired and on edge. Knowing that JuJu was out of jail and safely ensconced at Lloyd Deford's house helped a little. That morning's newspaper headline, "FIVE-O COP CHARGED IN GIRL'S STABBING DEATH," did not help at all.
Duke found himself looking forward to the day's paperwork—shift rotations, schedules for promotion exams, vacation requests, disciplinary reports, all of the one-hundred-and-one little details that made up the administration of a police force. He could immerse himself in that stuff for hours. It would make the morning go by quickly.
Even better, one of his best friends on the force, Detective Chin Ho Kelly, brought him a proposed schedule and roster for field training for new officers. Duke appreciated the fact that Chin didn't bug him about the mess with Julian. A family man himself, Chin probably knew Duke needed to work to get his mind off his troubles.
Pulling up a chair by Duke's desk, Chin lit up his pipe as Duke read over his scribbled notes. Typically, Chin had scheduled several overlapping events. Duke was able to show Chin how to fix the schedule. Then, he and Chin chewed over some ideas for the training. Duke was just about to volunteer to teach a judo class when he noticed that Chin wasn't listening to him anymore.
"Oh boy," Duke heard a cop murmur.
"Here comes trouble, bruddah," Chin said.
Duke looked up to see Ted Hada approaching his desk. A hard knot formed in his stomach. Chin gathered up his charts and got up. "You come find me later, OK?" Chin said. For the first time, his expression showed his concern. Duke nodded briefly and watched as Chin gave Hada a quick hello, then walked away.
"Hi, Duke," Hada said. He sat down on the corner of Duke's desk with deliberate casualness. "Mind if I ask you a few questions?"
Duke wasn't fooled by Hada's easy manner. He and Ted Hada were friends, but Duke knew this was an interrogation, pure and simple. He had been dreading a visit from Five-O since talking to JuJu yesterday at the jail. He kneaded his hands together and mumbled, "I guess not."
Hada said quietly, "Duke, do you know anything about what JuJu was doing night before last?"
"No," Duke said immediately. "I'm sorry, Ted, I really can't tell you anything." It took everything he had to force himself to meet Ted Hada's gaze.
Ted kept his voice low. Still just two old friends talking. "No idea where he might have gone? Who he was with? He didn't mention anything to you?"
"I'm not his keeper, Ted," Duke blurted out, his voice sounding more strident than he'd intended. Panic gripped him; he wanted to tell Ted everything. But he could not. Promise me, makua hanai kane. Duke rubbed his sweaty palms together. Ted regarded him steadily. Duke clenched his jaw and stared at his blotter.
"Come on, Duke!" Ted hissed, sounding a trifle less friendly. "This is goddamn serious. What's with you people? Kala'oka won't give us an alibi, or anything else to go on. He's facing a murder rap. Murder One! Where could he have been that would be worse than being on the beach with Betty Akino?"
"I don't know," Duke choked. He felt acrid sweat run down his armpits. A small crowd of eavesdroppers was hanging around nearby, looking sympathetic. For a minute, he felt angry at Hada for questioning him out in the open like this. Then he realized Hada had done him a favor by not hauling him into one of the interrogation rooms.
"Look, Ted," he repeated, unable to meet Ted's eyes. "I don't know anything about it. I just can't tell you."
"You can't?" Hada demanded. "Or you won't?"
"Both," Duke said. The word fell with an awful finality. It took Duke's breath away. He felt as if he were slamming the jail door shut on his own son.
Hada looked as if he wondered if JuJu might be guilty after all. It made Duke sick. "All right, Lukela," he snapped. "Go ahead. Stonewall a Five-O investigation. We'll find out the truth, with or without your help." Abruptly, he got up from Duke's desk and stalked out.
Ted, Duke thought, I only hope you're right.