The Lava Witch, page 8
She read well into the night, and fell into a restless sleep, dreaming of a naked girl crying out from a dense thicket of trees. The words of the dream girl were indistinct, but their meaning was clear—she was crying for help, and calling for the sun to rise and show her the way home.
* * *
The morning crept toward noon. Before she drove to the station, Kali made a call to the forensics division to find out about progress on the trace on Maya’s car to see if a route had been established, and if a more complete list of the calls on her phone had been compiled.
The car news was frustrating. The car hadn’t been captured on any of the few traffic camera lights on Maui, making it difficult to determine the route the victim had followed on her way to the supermarket parking lot where the car had been left, or to establish whether it had been left there at some time on Friday or Saturday. No one working at the store during those times had noticed it. It had also been impossible to say whether anyone had been a passenger in the car. Prints from inside the vehicle had been identified as Maya’s and Charlie’s, and the only prints on the water bottle belonged to Maya.
A comprehensive phone call history to and from Maya’s phone was still being compiled, but the calls from Jody over the weekend had been verified—as had the exchange between Maya’s phone number and O’Connor’s, which showed not one, but two calls on Friday. The first was from Maya to O’Connor in the morning, as he’d said, but the second call was from O’Connor to Maya in the afternoon . . . a call he’d failed to mention. Not, Kali reminded herself, that there was any reason to assume that Maya had been the person to make or receive either of the calls. If she had been taken at that point, and O’Connor was involved, her captor or captors might have used her phone to help O’Connor establish an alibi.
Kali tried to step beyond her dislike of O’Connor long enough to consider the other people she’d so far encountered. She’d gone over and over the statements that had been collected. No one had anything close to a rock-solid alibi. There was nothing to lock onto—except for the feeling that there was far more to the story than had so far been revealed, and that something sinister and cruel had crept out of the deep sea and along the sandy beaches and found its way up a winding forest path to a clearing where it had fully taken shape.
CHAPTER 13
It was just after lunch. The duty officer poked his head around the doorway, looking into the shared area where Kali, Walter, and Hara sat at their desks.
“You’ve got company, Detective Mhoe,” he said. “A woman by the name of Jody Phillips says she wants to talk to you about the Maya Holmes case.”
Kali looked up from her computer. She’d been scrolling through the details of the report submitted by Stitches, looking for anything that might give her a new direction to pursue, but there was nothing beyond what she’d already learned during the previous evening’s call. She wondered what Jody might want to talk about that couldn’t be covered over the phone, but was relieved she’d come to the station all the same. There was nearly always more to be gleaned from a person’s body language than just from the words they chose to speak.
“Okay. Please bring her through to the waiting room. I’ll be right out.”
Walter looked up from his own computer screen, equally curious. “You want some company?”
Kali shook her head. “No, I’ll handle it. If it’s anything sensitive, she might feel more comfortable talking to another woman. Plus it wouldn’t hurt to go over her statement again.”
“You think she could be part of this?”
“So far, it seems like she might have been the victim’s only friend. She doesn’t have any more of an alibi than anyone else, so at this point I just hope she might know something. Even if it’s something she doesn’t think is connected.”
He chewed on his tongue. “Okay. I’ll be here if you change your mind. We’ve finally got the rest of the call traces. I’m going through them now with forensics.”
She grabbed a notebook and a voice recorder, then made her way to the small room used for visitors. Jody was standing by the window. She had a hip bag strapped to the belt of her jeans, and she held a thick hardcover book in the crook of her left arm.
“Hi, Jody,” said Kali. She smiled reassuringly, hoping her expression didn’t betray her intense interest about the motivation for the visit. “Please—sit down. Would you like something to drink?”
“Oh, no . . . that’s okay. I won’t take up too much of your time.” Jody’s eyes darted nervously around the small room, then focused on Kali. “I feel really weird coming here, but I wanted to talk to you without a lot of other people around.”
“You mean people at the research center?”
Jody nodded. “Yes. Them for sure. And Charlie, too. I don’t want to upset him more than he already is.”
“What do you have to tell me that would upset him?” asked Kali. She moved toward two chairs that faced one another and sat down, gesturing for Jody to join her. The woman stepped hesitantly across the room, then sat down slowly, perched stiffly on the edge of the chair’s worn cushion. She placed the book she’d been holding across her knees, and Kali could see the title: America Before—The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization.
“It’s about Maya,” Jody began slowly. “Well, kind of. First, I want to return this.” She lifted the book slightly, punctuating her words. “I borrowed it from her, and I’m not sure what to do with it. I should give it to Charlie, but he’s having such a hard time, and I don’t want to make it worse by showing up at his door with some of Maya’s belongings.”
“Maybe you should stop by anyway. It might be good for him to have some company.” She reached for the book, and Jody handed it to her. It was quite thick, and Kali assumed it had something to do with mining or geology. She looked at the author’s name. It appeared vaguely familiar. “Graham Hancock,” she said aloud. “Geologist? Marine scientist?”
Jody shook her head. “Neither, actually. He’s an author and journalist with an interest in early civilizations who’s posited some fascinating theories about some of the oldest structures on the planet. The Egyptian pyramids, the ruins of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, and plenty of other places, including North America.”
“Is he an archaeologist?”
Again, Jody shook her head. “He’s not. And even though he’s done more legitimate research than a lot of actual archaeologists working today, his ideas and well-supported theories are derided by the university-trained crowd because he’s a journalist by profession without an advanced degree in the sciences—and because they didn’t bother to do the legwork to come up with these theories before he did. So they ridicule him and dismiss his work, even though some of it has been proven.” She looked disgusted. “It’s just like in so many areas of academia. People love to scorn the work of those they feel to be educationally inferior, or even from people whom they consider to have come from the ‘wrong’ school—but the naysayers are always pretty quick to turn around and claim the ideas as their own once they’ve become indisputable. It makes me sick.”
Kali looked down at the book again, studying the cover art. Jody reached over and tapped the book. “Anyway, that’s a lot like what Maya was facing, and she enjoyed this book so much that I asked her if I could borrow it for a while.”
“What do you mean it was like what Maya was facing?”
Jody hesitated, weighing her response. “Well, she only had a bachelor’s degree, though she was working on her master’s. A lot of the people on our research team are close to having doctorates, already have doctorates, or have multiple degrees. They were always condescending to her, but the truth is she had a brilliant mind that could leap past them in both thought and conversation. They didn’t like that. Instead of listening to her or giving her the respect she deserved as a colleague, they were more inclined to rephrase her theories and present them as their own, especially at meetings that involved other departments at the lab.” Jody let out a labored breath. “It was maddening. O’Connor was the worst. It was as though he felt that because she worked for him, he could claim her work as his own.”
“What about you?” asked Kali. She passed the book back to Jody. “What is your education?”
Jody seemed embarrassed. “Engineering doctorate. I was the peculiar neighborhood kid who wanted to build spaceships and robotic sea serpents instead of playing with dolls.”
“There’s nothing weird about that. Too many girls think they have to conform to how culture has decided they should act, or what they should want to do with their lives. Good for you.”
“Yeah, no argument here. But I still get the occasional patronizing look or flippant remark from some guy who wants to brag about how many car engines he rebuilt in high school.” She smiled. “Maybe you know what I mean. I’ve never actually met a woman detective before.”
Kali could see that Jody was relaxing.
“I nearly went into academia myself,” Kali said. “I’ve also seen that sort of thing happen. My grandmother was a well-known historian who earned a PhD, but because of her gender and the time period when she was in school, she faced a lot of mockery from her male peers. And even from some of her professors. When her research gained a lot of positive attention—and her books were added to teaching curriculums at universities around the world—a lot of those cynics were pretty quick to jump into the spotlight to say how much they admired her, or even to claim that they’d been personally invaluable to her work.”
“That’s awful. It must have been infuriating.”
“Maybe,” said Kali, thinking back to the past. “She never complained about it. She was always gracious and forgiving.”
“So was Maya, at least on the surface. But I think it bugged her. Even though she didn’t have an advanced degree, she’d already received a lot of attention in her field. I’m sure that’s why Dr. O’Connor wanted her to come here to Maui—so he could brag about how his team had all the brightest and best. But enough about that—the other reason I came here was to tell you that one of Maya’s friends who was interning at the research lab—a guy named Trey—seems to have gone missing.”
Kali’s focus immediately sharpened. “So he’s not actually a colleague?”
“No, he’s technically a student working on his degree in robotics and artificial intelligence. In addition to her job, I think Maya had some private project she was working on in her spare time, and I think that Trey was helping her with it. But he’s kind of squirrely—you know, undependable. Doesn’t always show up when he says he will. Now it’s been three days since he’s been to the lab, and with everything that’s happened . . . well, with him being Maya’s friend and all, I thought maybe you might want to know about it.”
Kali was on her feet. “No one’s mentioned him as a friend. What’s his full name? And do you know how close they were?”
“His name is Trey Carter, and they weren’t really close at all. Maya was just trying to be nice to him, I think.”
“Do you know anything about him, like an address or contact information?”
Jody looked uneasy. She reached up and touched her scar, then abruptly pulled her hand away. “He has a university e-mail address, but as far as a living address—well, I kind of suspect he might have been camping out in the lab. I remember Maya saying he’d had a falling-out with his roommate and didn’t want to go back to the place they were sharing. He hasn’t answered my e-mails. And I found a pillow and deflated air mattress in one of the storage rooms at the lab. I didn’t say anything to anyone, but I’ve seen Trey going in and out of there, and just assumed those were his things.” She looked down at the floor. “I don’t want to get anyone into trouble. Trey’s a nice enough guy. But . . .”
“But what?”
“I think he’s into drugs.” She looked at Kali, her eyes pleading. “Honestly, I’m not trying to snitch. I just really want to know that he’s okay. Especially since . . . well, you know.”
“You did the right thing telling me, Jody. We’ll see if we can find him. Let’s go and make a report, and you can give me what information you have.”
CHAPTER 14
Kali sat next to Walter in his patrol car, watching the stream of slow-moving traffic as it made its way along the Hana Highway. It appeared that every third car was a convertible with the top down.
“Where do you think all these convertibles come from?” asked Walter, peering intently at the passing cars. “Statistically, it seems impossible that the rental agencies have that many available.”
“Improbable, not impossible,” Kali said. She watched for a moment. “It also seems like there’s a preponderance of red convertibles.”
“Not my favorite color.”
“Mine, either. Something aggressive about it.” Kali was silent for a moment. “I just saw a study on the color of car least likely to be involved in a crash—the researchers said yellow came in at about twelve percent lower overall, followed closely by white cars, then beige. Maya’s car was yellow.”
Walter looked at her sideways from the driver’s seat. “Are you going to tell me that drivers of yellow cars are less likely to be in a crash, but more likely to be found hanging from a tree branch?”
“I was not. I was thinking more along the lines of how cheerful yellow is, and how everything we’ve learned about Maya suggests a nice person. Liked animals, had a happy-colored car, was tidy and responsible, championed the environment, was dedicated to her work . . . I suppose I’m struggling to come up with any obvious reason that would make her the victim of such a particularly horrific crime.”
There was a break in the line of cars moving past, and Walter eased into the near lane behind a delivery van with a large magnetic sign on the side that was advertising floral displays.
“Nice people often get pushed around, are bullied, or are persecuted by people who feel threatened by them,” he said. “But you know all this. Also, people who seem nice aren’t necessarily nice at all.” He raised an eyebrow. “Seems like it’s you always lecturing me about the yin-yang of the universe, or pointing out how the dynamics of good and evil—or light and dark, or whatever it is you call it—are always in flux.”
“Striving for balance. Yeah, that’s one of my favorite speeches, for sure.” She laughed, the sound low and somehow unhappy. “I guess it’s just that sometimes, being confronted with just the dark part of the equation gets to me.”
“That’s good,” he said. “It’s when it becomes ordinary and you start to grow immune that there’s a problem.” He waited before adding, “But I’m a little worried that you’re letting this case get too far under your skin.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Just don’t lose perspective. Trust me. You get too close, you lose sight of the bigger picture.”
She thought about this as they drove along, heading for the duplex that was listed in the university database as Trey Carter’s current address, one he shared with fellow student Barry Wells. The building was an older duplex divided into two separate apartments, and Trey and Barry’s was the top floor unit. As Walter pulled into the driveway and parked, Kali surveyed the surroundings. The building was shabby but not decrepit, with wood siding and a large wraparound deck on the upper level. She could see a bicycle leaning against the upstairs rail, and laundry hanging over its edge. Sliding glass doors faced the street, and a wide staircase on one side led from the parking area to the top floor apartment.
As they approached the base of the stairs, they both saw movement in the small backyard. A tall boy with short blond hair and glasses looked up from where he was scraping a portable outdoor grill mounted on wheels. He glanced toward them as they appeared near the bottom of the stairs, his hand reaching to push his glasses up. The gesture left a small smudge of blackened soot on the bridge of his nose.
“Aloha,” called Kali. “Are you Barry Wells?”
He nodded, looking with open curiosity at Walter’s uniform. “Whatever it is,” he said, his voice wry, “I didn’t do it, I swear.”
Walter grunted. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
Kali smiled. “We’re actually looking for your roommate, Trey Carter. Have you by any chance seen him?”
“No, and I don’t have any reason to expect that I will,” said Barry. “Unless he plans to show up with his share of the rent—which, for the record, he owes me for the past three months.”
“We were hoping you might have some information on where to find him,” Walter said. “He’s been reported missing. He hasn’t shown up at his job for several days.”
Barry made a small, dismissive sound. “That’s hardly newsworthy. Most likely you’ll find him behind a building somewhere, stoned out of his mind.”
“Oh?” said Kali. “Care to expand on that a bit?”
Barry put down the tool he was holding and placed it on the edge of the grill. Kali and Walter could see that the steel wool on the end of the tool’s handle was frayed and peeling away from the flat piece of plastic to which it had once been securely adhered.
“Well, okay,” said Barry. He walked over to the steps and sat down on the edge of one, looking at them. “Trey’s a tweaker. At least, I guess that’s the name for it. He got mixed up in some stuff at school. Some people fooling around with meth. Crystal meth, you know? It really messed him up. Can’t say I’m surprised he hasn’t been coming in to work. Just a matter of time before he gets banned from campus and has his internship canceled, if you ask me.”
“And you have no idea where he might be staying?” asked Kali, watching him closely.
“Zero idea, zero interest,” said Barry, his voice flat. “And he’d better not come back here.”
“Has he removed his belongings?”
Barry looked away for a second, then turned to them and shrugged. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose. He came back here whacked out of his head and started busting the place up. So I kicked him out. And then I took all his stuff and tossed it over the deck rail down into the parking area in front of the house. Not that he had much to throw. The place came furnished, and the television and speakers are mine. He had a few books and some clothes, and some personal stuff.” His expression was defiant. “I told him not to come back, and he hasn’t.”
