The Lava Witch, page 9
“Sounds like a classic breakup,” said Walter. “What does he drive?”
“He sold his car a few months ago. It wasn’t much of anything—an old beater. Since then he’s been getting around on his bicycle,” said Barry. “That’s how he left—all his things stuffed into his backpack.”
“What color was it? Anything special about it?” asked Walter.
“Nah—not really. It was an older ten-speed. Silver, but the paint was pretty dinged up. It had some rust on it, but it seemed to get him where he needed to go.”
“What about the people he was hanging around? Do you know who was supplying him with drugs?”
“I don’t know a whole lot about that. Not that you’re interested, but I had a family member who got hooked on pain pills, and I just don’t have any room for that kind of thing in my life anymore. I know he never brought anyone here. Not even any girls. Trey and I weren’t the kind of friends who talked to one another about our lives or anything like that. At the beginning of the fall semester, I posted that I was looking for a roommate, and he was the first person who answered the ad who had an actual serious-sounding job. And at the time, if he was using drugs, he must not have been doing it very often, because I didn’t pick up on it at all. He was pretty quiet, gave me a couple of months’ rent in advance, and ate most of his meals somewhere else. Pretty low-key.”
“Was there a clear point when you began to notice his behavior changing?” asked Kali.
Barry wrinkled his nose, thinking about her question. “I guess I’d say he was acting a little weird by the time the holidays rolled around. I thought maybe it was some kind of personal thing that had him out of sorts. You know, like he wanted to go home to be with family but couldn’t afford it. He didn’t volunteer anything, and I didn’t ask. Like I said, we didn’t really know each other very well, and I didn’t feel like it was any of my business.”
“And his conduct got worse after that?”
Barry scowled. “I’ll say. He’d bang doors and swear and shout for no apparent reason. Not at me, not directly. More like he was yelling at himself. And he started to get messy. He’d bring takeout home, and leave food and trash all over the place. Barbecue sauce all over the sofa and carpet that I had to clean up. Filthy bathroom. That kind of stuff. And,” he went on, leaning in, “I can’t prove he did this, or I would have reported it, but some cash disappeared from my desk drawer.”
“How much?” asked Walter.
“Two hundred bucks. My mom sent me a big birthday check. I’d just cashed it and stashed some of it in my desk, underneath some school papers. I went straight to Trey about it as soon as I saw him, but he denied taking it. That was it as far as I was concerned. That’s when I kicked him out.”
“And you’re absolutely positive you don’t know anything at all about the people he was buying drugs from?” asked Kali.
Barry looked thoughtful. “Well, I never saw any of them, or like an actual transaction, but I guess I got the feeling that they were local, or maybe even other students.” He shrugged again. “There was one time, not long before he flipped out, that I said something about how he needed to clean up his life and quit the drug thing, or his life was going to be hard. He got all bent out of shape, and asked me what I knew about things being hard—that he’d always been one step away from losing everything. He didn’t seem to think he had any responsibility about that.”
“You’re certain there’s nothing belonging to him that got left behind?” asked Kali.
Barry shook his head. “No. Like I said, he didn’t have much to start with.” He gestured toward the door at the top of the deck. “Feel free to look around if you like. His room is the one with nothing in it except a bed and a floor lamp.”
Kali left Walter to finish up with any questions he had, and walked up the stairs to the upper apartment. The sliding doors were open, and she stepped through into a single main space where a short peninsula extended from wall cabinets that separated the kitchen space from a living room. That side of the space was fitted with a worn beige sectional sofa and a wall-mounted television. There was a low coffee table with books stacked on its surface. A short hall led between the kitchen and living room area to the door of a single bathroom. The door was open, and she could see a combination bathtub-shower on the back wall. A shower curtain covered with a sailboat pattern hung from a rod. The curtain was pulled back all the way, exposing white wall tiles separated by gray grout.
Just before the bathroom, bedrooms opened off either side of the hall. One of the two rooms was clearly well lived-in. She could see clothes strewn across a rumpled bed, and a long desk against one wall with a lamp on one side. The closet door was open, revealing a row of shirts and a stack of shoes on the floor. The wall beside the bed had a chest of drawers, and a jumble of personal items on its surface.
Kali turned toward the second bedroom. It was identically furnished, but barren of any belongings. The bed had been stripped, and there were no personal items or clothing in sight. She went into the room and pulled out the dresser drawers and the single drawer in the desk, but they were empty. She pulled the dresser and nightstand away from the wall, then checked beneath them and under the bed. She pulled the mattress up on its side to look beneath it, but found nothing.
In the closet, a row of empty plastic hangers hung from a metal bar. Several of them had fallen to the floor, as though the hangers had been discarded when whatever clothing they had once held had been pulled off. There were a few coins lying on the carpet on the closet floor, and a small piece of paper. She picked it up, curious. It was a store receipt for a milkshake, burger, and fries from a local fast food restaurant. On the back, the words Wela Wela Cave had been scrawled, followed by the words Call first. There was no phone number.
Kali looked around the room once more, but could find nothing else that might be linked to its former occupant. She pulled a plastic evidence bag from her back pocket and dropped the receipt into it. Holding the bag, she walked back down the stairs to where Barry was still seated. He stood up as she approached, looking at her expectantly.
“Well?” he asked. “I don’t suppose you found my missing cash?”
“No,” she said. “Sorry about that.” She glanced at the receipt, then held it out so he could see it. “Is this yours?”
He took it and looked carefully at the name of the restaurant, then shook his head, mildly disgusted. “Definitely not mine,” he said, handing it back to her without turning it over. “I never eat the crap from those places. It’s all filled with chemicals and made out of animals that died some horrible death in a factory warehouse.”
“What about Trey? Does he eat at this kind of place?” Kali asked.
“Yeah, all the time. Why?”
“Do you know what the Wela Wela Cave is, or where it’s located?”
He looked confused. “The what cave?”
“Wela Wela,” she repeated.
“Sorry, never heard of it. Some kind of halfway house for druggies?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at him. Her instincts said he was telling her the truth, and she nodded to Walter, satisfied.
He straightened up, looking down at Barry. “Guess we’ll let you get back to your grill scraping,” he said. “But make sure you let us know if you hear anything from Trey, or about him. This is officially a missing persons case.”
Barry stood up and nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Sorry I can’t be more helpful, but I’m happy to do whatever. As long as I don’t have to take him back in.”
“You don’t,” said Kali. She handed him her card. “It’s best if you just give me a call. I’ll deal with it. I’m pretty used to drug addicts.”
As she and Walter walked back to the car, Walter turned to her. “I think I know that place. The Hot Hot Cave, right?”
“That’s what wela means. Hot.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure it’s a fairly new strip club on O‘ahu.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Something you want to bribe me from not telling your wife?”
He grunted. “Hardly. I’ll check with the Vice division to see if they’ve got it under surveillance, or if they’ve heard of any possible drug trafficking.”
Kali felt herself tense up. “Okay. In the meantime, I’ll check to see if any of the shelters have taken in anyone matching Trey Carter’s description. Probably a good idea to check the homeless areas, too. I doubt this kid went all the way to O‘ahu just to get a fix.”
CHAPTER 15
By the next morning, no one that fit the description of Trey Carter had been seen at any of Maui’s shelters, nor was there any record of him having been arrested, admitted to a hospital or clinic, or discovered dead or incapacitated.
Armed with a photograph of Trey taken from his driver’s license, Kali left her house early. She drove toward the larger homeless encampments near the southeast and eastern central beaches, working outward in an ever-widening radius from the area closest to the lab. By noon, her inquiries had met with nothing more than shrugs of disinterest, occasional hostility, and multiple requests for money.
Dressed in her habitual jeans and a particularly worn T-shirt splashed with bleach stains, which she’d chosen in the hope of not being immediately identifiable as a police officer, she’d walked among the micro units that had recently been erected by a community project, designed to provide a greater degree of shelter than the makeshift blanket tents and large boxes that served as the majority of temporary homes among the displaced. By one-thirty, she estimated she’d talked to several hundred people, and she was both tired and hungry.
Heightened by a sense of frustration, she felt her mood take a dark turn. She stood on the edge of the coastal road, gazing out across the sea of tents, wondering about the multitude of paths that had led these particular people to be here, now, in this place, without any apparent options. She knew that there were at least as many stories as there were people, and that many of those she’d spoken with today, or could see now as she looked at the encampment, had found themselves in an escalating downward spiral of financial hardship or mental health issues, or had been fleeing from something even less palatable than living in the open without a permanent address. Whatever the reason, the sight of the bedlam made her uncomfortably aware of how easily circumstances could change.
She shook her head to clear it. Turning away from the water, she walked through the groups of people sitting in the shade of the palms or beneath the many awnings that had been created from blankets and tarpaulins, and found her way back to the place where she’d left her Jeep. She wanted some privacy while she checked in with Walter.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed his number. He answered on the second ring.
“Please tell me you’ve got some good news,” he said. “Or that you’re bringing me a fish sandwich.”
“No, sorry. Neither one. And you need to stop obsessing about food. I’m just touching base. I haven’t had any luck—seems like no one’s seen this kid . . . or if they have, they aren’t saying.”
“Well, so far today at least, his body hasn’t shown up. Of course, it’s still pretty early.”
“You’re such an optimist.”
There was a moment of foreboding silence before Walter responded. “I have to say, Kali, that this kid’s disappearance so close to the girl’s murder suggests that A, he was involved or knows something, or B, that he’s also become a victim. The link of them both working at the lab and being on friendly terms with one another is too much of a coincidence.”
“I agree—but I’m leaning toward him hiding out because he knows about Maya and is scared. Something tells me he’s still alive and breathing.”
“That’s because you want him to be.”
“Maybe,” she said, her voice trailing off. “Anyway, I’m going to make one more pass through this area and then head back to the station. If he’s hiding, it’s because he’s got information. What’s Hara doing later today? Any chance I can borrow him to help me this afternoon?”
“I’ve got him on traffic right now. And don’t knock yourself out. Someone will have seen Trey Carter. We’ve got his photo going out on the news and on social media today.” He hesitated. “But if you do find him, and he doesn’t volunteer to come in, bring him in anyway. Let me know if he looks like trouble.”
She ended the call and sat in the Jeep, staring out at the road, until Walter’s mention of a fish sandwich and her own growing hunger got the better of her. She drove back along the coast, stopping at a parking lot where a number of food trucks were gathered. She bought herself a banana and mango smoothie and went back to sit in the Jeep, going over in her mind all of the places where someone without a car might be camped within reasonable distance of fresh water. If Trey was trying to score drugs, he’d most likely be in one of the larger encampments. If, on the other hand, he was trying to avoid being found, he’d likely choose a more remote location with fewer people around.
There was a map in her glove box, and she marked the location of the research lab. There was a stretch of beach about three miles from there, and Kali knew that the area was less frequented by tourists because of the steepness of the access path and the amount of lava rock protruding from the sand. There were cleared stretches, however, and she’d seen people camping there in the past. The area that seemed most attractive was on the opposite side of the road from the sea, where thick vegetation gave way to several small meadows a short distance off the main path. More importantly, it was within walking distance of a natural spring. The area wasn’t regularly patrolled, and though camping wasn’t allowed, that fact hadn’t stopped it from being occasionally used.
Kali drove there and parked off the road where the Jeep wouldn’t be immediately obvious to anyone in the wooded area. She snapped the holster for her stun gun onto her belt, and made her way along the moist ground of the footpath, which climbed gradually toward a line of low hills. The first clearing was empty, but the amount of litter on the ground indicated that others had recently been there.
She stayed on the main path, which began to narrow as it climbed. About sixty yards in, she caught a glimpse of something artificially blue peeking through the underbrush to her left. She could tell from the faint sound of moving water and the scent of damp earth that the spring head wasn’t far away. As the path made a wide turn, taking a course that ran along the base of the slope, she saw a deep glade where a small, beat-up blue tent had been erected toward the back of a grassy patch of ground. The front end of a silver bicycle was visible, leaning on a tree behind the tent.
There was no reaction to her approach, and no one in sight. She moved slowly toward the tent for a better view, and could see the edge of a small plastic cooler set beside the entrance. The tent’s front flap was pulled back, and two feet protruded from the interior. The feet were large, bony, and bare. She noted that they were rough and calloused, with ragged nails. They looked to her like a man’s feet. One foot twitched as she drew closer, flicking away a buzzing insect. Whomever the foot belonged to appeared to be conscious.
Kali stopped where she was and called out. “Anybody home? Maui Police Department here.” She placed one hand on her belt, not knowing what to expect.
In response to her voice, both feet jerked in surprise, then withdrew as the person inside prepared to crawl out. A second later, a man’s head appeared. Kali mentally compared it to the photograph she’d been showing all morning. It was definitely the same face, but she was startled by how much older it appeared than the twenty-three-year-old missing man’s photo.
“Trey Carter?” she asked, despite immediately recognizing him. “My name is Detective Kali Mhoe. I need to speak with you. Please come all the way out of the tent. Slowly. Let me see your hands.”
The man’s face fell. Reluctantly, he extracted himself completely from the inside of the tent and stood in front of her, his bare arms hanging by his sides. He wore nothing but a pair of baggy swim shorts, which exposed his bony ribcage and spindly arms and legs. Kali saw that despite his shaved head and minimalist clothing, he looked somehow unkempt and disheveled.
“What do you want?” he asked. He sounded scared.
“You’ve been reported missing, Mr. Carter.”
“Missing? I’m right here.”
“Yes, I can see that. However, you haven’t shown up for work for over three days, and a missing persons report has been filed.”
Trey lifted his arms and wrapped them around his torso in a protective gesture. She saw him rocking back and forth, recognizing the arm wrapping and repetitive movement as the familiar self-comforting behaviors often exhibited by habitual methamphetamine users.
“Who made the report?” he asked.
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say. Right now, I need you to gather your belongings and come with me. There are some questions that need to be answered, and this isn’t the place for that.”
He looked at her, sizing her up. “And if I don’t want to come?”
She tapped her stun gun, not bothering to point out that his physical condition made him less of a threat than he might be imagining. He followed the movement with his eyes, recognizing the stun device.
“We can do this the aloha way, or we can do it the other way,” she said calmly. “Your choice.”
He weighed the options, but only briefly. His shoulders drooped. “Am I under arrest?”
“No, you’re not. But I should tell you that one of your colleagues has been found dead, and you are a person of interest.”
His eyes widened, and he shook his head, as if maybe he hadn’t heard her correctly. He stopped rocking and stepped forward slightly, his body tense. “What are you talking about?”
