Mahu Omnibus, page 94
part #92 of Mahu Series
"Yes," I said. "You seen her today?"
The old lady shook her head. "She always bring me coffee first thing. But not today. I worried."
I looked at Ray, then back at the old lady. "You wouldn't happen to have a key to this door, would you?"
She ducked back into her apartment and returned a moment later with a security key on a red ribbon. I took the key from her and opened the door, calling, "Norma? Norma? You here?"
Ray and I walked into the apartment, already dreading what we'd find. Sure enough, Norma Ching was dead in her bed, a single bullet wound to her head. At a glance, it looked like the same caliber that had killed the two women in Makiki.
The neighbor started to cry. She hadn't heard anyone during the night, but she said she took her hearing aid out when she went to sleep. She went back into her apartment, and I called the medical examiner's office and asked Doc to come out himself.
I called the Scientific Investigation Section and asked Larry to come out with Ryan, even though they should have stayed in the lab processing the evidence from Makiki. "If these crimes are related, I figure it's best to have all the evidence in the same hands. And bring those pictures of the door you took, and we'll see if we can match them here."
We looked the place over while we waited. We found a bunch of gold rings, bracelets, and chains in a jewelry box on Norma's dresser and a few thousand dollars in cash in her freezer, so it was unlikely that her killer had broken in with the intent to steal.
While Doc examined Norma's body, and Ryan and Larry went over the apartment, Ray and I canvassed the neighbors. They were all elderly Chinese, and none of them had heard anything the night before.
It did look like the pry marks matched, but Larry wouldn't be able to say for sure without a detailed analysis. "If you're lucky, the crowbar they used left some trace evidence we can match to both doors," he said.
Ray and I were both beat by the time we made it back to the station, as our shift was ending. I yawned and looked at the clock. I was thinking about heading home for a nice nap when I realized that I had to meet Dr. Phil for an early dinner.
"You want to go back and canvass that apartment building in Makiki?" Ray asked. "People might start to come home soon."
"Can you do it? I've got a date." I explained about Dr. Phil's schedule. "It's his only night off this week."
"The things I do for my partner," Ray said. "If you can drop me up there, I'll get Julie to pick me up on her way home."
"You're a prince among men. This makes up for, oh, at least two times I've chauffeured you around."
Before we left, I tried Karen at Social Security, to see if she'd found anything on Treasure, but she'd already left for the day.
"I'm worried about Treasure," I said to Ray, as we walked to the elevator. "If the same person killed the two women and Norma, she may already be dead."
"Or maybe Treasure's our killer. Or maybe she was the one who called 911 about the girls."
"At this point, anything's possible."
I drove Ray up to the apartment building in Makiki. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot, which meant somebody was home. "Good luck. How about I pick you up tomorrow morning on my way in? Save Julie the trip."
"Have fun on your date. I'll try and get the case solved for you."
I realized on walking in to the steak house that I wasn't dressed well enough; an aloha shirt and black jeans are fine for homicide, but the men around me were all wearing business suits. Mel Torme was on the sound system, and even the waiters wore ties. It was like I'd stumbled into my brother Lui's world.
Dr. Phil was waiting for me at the bar with a glass of fizzy water in his hand. "Alcohol doesn't mix well with medicine," he said, apologetically. "But you go ahead and have a drink if you want."
"I think I will," I said, imagining that if I did start dating Mike again this was how our relationship might play out. I ordered a cosmopolitan.
"Not the drink I'd expect of you," Dr. Phil said. "You seem more like a beer-and-a-shot kind of guy."
I wasn't sure how to take that, but I chalked it up to those getting-to-know-you jitters. "I do like a beer now and then. What's the matter, you not masculine enough for a fruity drink?" I wanted it to sound like a joke, but I don't think Dr. Phil thought of it that way. Another date off to a rocky start.
The hostess came over and showed us to a booth of dark wood, with a single spotlight hanging high above us and shining on the glossy table top. The menu and wine list were bound together in a leather-covered book, and the prices were a lot higher than I'd expected. I was cranky with Dr. Phil for picking such an expensive place, and for not telling me about the dress code, either.
But then he said, "Now, this was my invitation, so it's my treat. This is my favorite place and I don't get over here often enough. The food is amazing."
I followed his lead and ordered the filet, with a baked potato and a Caesar salad. The potato was as big as my foot, and the beef was tender enough to cut with a butter knife.
"What's up?" Dr. Phil said, as we were eating our main course. "You've been kind of distracted. Bad case?"
"Three murders in one day." I told him, briefly, about Norma and the two Chinese girls, and their connection to prostitution at the acupuncture clinic.
"I can't tell you how many prostitutes we treat at the ER," he said. "Not just STDs, either. Girls who get beat up, or cut, who don't have medical insurance, so anything that happens to them gets very bad before they come to us. Not just girls — boys, too. A couple of weeks ago, I saw this Chinese boy who somebody had used pretty badly. Rectal bleeding, anal fissures, and a bad infection. He didn't speak a word of English, and he had this older man with him who was supposed to be his translator, but I think he was more like a guard."
"Did you call anyone?"
Dr. Phil shook his head. "Not my job. The older man said that the boy was over eighteen, that he'd been attacked in an alley by some guys who got away."
Immediately I thought of Jingtao. "You remember a name for this boy?"
He shook his head. "And whatever name they gave, I'm sure it wasn't his real one." He drank his fizzy water. "Prostitution's a victimless crime. We ought to decriminalize it, regulate it, make sure the girls — and guys — get regular checkups."
I was tempted to tell him about Jingtao, how he'd escaped from the acupuncture clinic and then died in the fire. But I couldn't find a way to make it sound like I wasn't accusing Dr. Phil in his death, and neither of us said anything else for a while; we just sat listening to Dean Martin and the rest of the Rat Pack singing about the past. I didn't have the energy to court Dr. Phil when my mind was on Mike, and I'm sure he figured out something was up.
I yawned when the waiter asked if we'd like dessert, and Dr. Phil said, "No, I've got to get to work, and I think my friend here needs a nap."
"Sorry. I'm normally more animated on a date."
"It's okay. With schedules like ours, we've got to fit dates in when we can."
He paid the bill and said, "I'll see what my schedule's like for next week and I'll call you." I had a feeling that he wouldn't. He did let me leave the tip — which was more than I'd have spent on dinner with a date at a restaurant of my choice. It made me feel better about the way things were ending — but only a little.
Treasure Hunt
Wednesday morning, as promised, I picked Ray up on my way to work. "Any hope you guys are getting a second car?" I asked, cranky after my failed date with Dr. Phil, and after battling early morning traffic to get over to Ray's place.
"I've got a line on a used SUV. I do a couple more special duty gigs, I can put a down payment on it."
"You learn anything last night?"
He shrugged. "Next door neighbor lady didn't like the girls — they dressed like tramps. Nobody I talked to heard or saw anything."
"We could track down the doctor whose license was used for the clinic," I said. "Maybe he knows something."
When we got back to the station, Dr. Hsing-Wah Hsiao was easy to find, considering he'd been dead for five years. The first hit I got on Google was his obituary. "Another dead end," Ray said. "This case has a million of ‘em."
I e-mailed the obit to Ricky Koele so that he could follow up on the clinics licensed in the good doctor's name.
We put in a couple of hours reviewing arrest reports for prostitution and otherwise trying to track Norma and the two dead women in Makiki. I checked Doc Takayama's report on Jingtao; he cited "reddening of the perianal region, together with multiple linear shallow fissures within the anal canal and moderate edema of the distal 5 cm of the rectum."
"What does that mean, in layman's terms?" Ray asked, looking over my shoulder.
"Somebody butt-fucked him pretty badly." I shuddered, remembering my ER visit after Lucas had left me bleeding.
Ray didn't look too happy either. "A john?"
"Can't say for sure. All it means is that he was sexually active." I thought about the boy Dr. Phil had treated and made a note to show him the picture of Jingtao that Tatiana had drawn. If he could identify the boy, then maybe the records of his hospital visit would give us a lead.
Just after nine, Karen Gold at Social Security called with an address on Treasure in Hawai'i Kai, and we drove out there. It was a nice apartment building with a lobby and a locked front door, and we had to call the management company and ask them to send someone over with a key to Treasure's apartment.
While we waited, we got coffee from the Kope Bean in the Hawai'i Kai Town Center, where the Disney version of Aloha ‘Oe was playing on the sound system, Tia Carrere singing the song Queen Lili'uokalani had written. I couldn't help but think of the lyrics: aloha ‘oe means "farewell to you," and we'd said that to too many people on this case already.
"Gonna have to put the medical examiner on speed dial, this keeps up," Ray said.
"I can't remember the last time we had a case with four dead bodies and almost nothing to go on," I said, looking out the window at the mountains across from the center. Clouds were massing at the tops, casting strange shadows down the valley. "Maybe Treasure knows something. That is, if she's still alive."
We drove back to Treasure's building, where a pleasant-faced haole with flyaway light brown hair met us. "I'm Stephen Viens," he said. "You guys the detectives?"
We introduced ourselves, and he let us in the front and took us up to the second floor. "Miss Chen?" he said, knocking on the door. "Miss Chen, you in there?"
There was no answer — which didn't necessarily mean that Treasure Chen was in the apartment and unable to answer. At least there were no visible pry marks. Viens opened the door and we walked in.
"Not much of a housekeeper, is she?" Ray asked. The living/dining room looked like somebody had gone through it in a hurry — papers, newspapers, cosmetics, and clothes scattered everywhere. The good news was that the place smelled like lilacs, courtesy of one of those plug-in air fresheners, rather than like a dead body.
Treasure's bed was empty, and the bedroom and bathroom bore similar signs of a quick exit. "I'll leave you to your business," Viens said, and Ray and I spent the next hour or so going through what Treasure had left behind, looking for anything that might tell us where she'd gone.
There was precious little. I found the envelope from a greeting card in the bedroom wastebasket. The return address was "E. Chen," with an address in Waikiki. "Maybe a relative?" I asked Ray.
"Could be."
Treasure's wardrobe was a lot like that of the girls in Makiki — slinky dresses and high-heeled shoes — though her underwear was much higher class. "Fancy stuff," Ray said. "You know how much panties like this costs?"
He held up a pair trimmed in lace, with a pattern of roses. "I bet you're going to tell me," I said.
"Hundred bucks, easy. Julie likes this brand, but it's not like she's got a drawer full of it."
"Too much information."
"Hey, you've got your area of expertise, I've got mine. That's why we make such a good partnership."
We swung past E. Chen's address in Waikiki on our way back to the station. It was a nondescript high-rise on Ala Wai Boulevard, just down the street from Harry's. The doorman told us that E stood for Emerald, a very nice Chinese woman who worked in a bank, he thought. "Hold on," he said. "I might have one of her cards here."
He pulled a big book from underneath his desk. "Sometimes I have to get hold of a tenant at work," he said, as he paged through it. "You know, leaky pipe, special delivery, that kind of thing. Yeah, here it is."
He handed me a card. Emerald Chen was an executive vice president with China Trade Bank, with an address a couple of blocks from the Aloha Tower. At the luxurious building, we had to show our badges to a security guard in the marble lobby, who called upstairs and then directed us to the twenty-first floor.
The elevator doors opened to magnificent vista of Honolulu harbor, the autumn sunshine glistening off the water. A barge was navigating the Sand Point Channel, and a jet was landing on the reef runway at Honolulu International. Jake Shimabukuro was playing the ukulele softly over the sound system. A young Chinese man in a business suit approached us. "You're here to see Ms. Chen?"
"That's true," I said. "Is she available?"
"Let me take you to her office." We followed him down a hallway to a corner office with the same expansive view. Emerald Chen was somewhat older than I remembered Treasure, and not nearly as attractive. She was short and a little stocky, but her hair and makeup were immaculate and she wore a woman's Rolex with diamond accents.
"How can I help you, detectives?" she asked, after we sat down across from her massive teak desk.
"Do you recognize this envelope?" I showed her the one I'd picked up in Treasure's apartment.
"I thought you might be here about my sister," she said, sighing. "She's not in trouble again, is she?"
"I think she might be. Four of her business associates have been murdered in the last week, and we're worried Treasure might be in danger."
"What a charming euphemism. Business associates. I know what my sister did for a living, detective."
"And what is that?" Ray asked.
"When Treasure graduated from high school, I offered to pay her tuition at any college, but she declined. She became a lingerie model, and for that you can read ‘high-class prostitute.'" She frowned. "After about six months, she found herself a rich criminal."
"Tommy Pang," I said.
"You knew him?"
I nodded. "I investigated his murder."
"So you met my sister. She's a beautiful woman, and smart enough to know how to use that beauty to get what she wants."
"What happened to Treasure after Tommy Pang died?"
"She tried a few legitimate jobs. She was a restaurant hostess for a while, and she worked behind the makeup counter at Clark's, then at a real estate company, selling time-shares. But she ran into a woman she'd known at the lingerie store and got drawn back into that business."
"Norma Ching," I said.
"You've done your homework, detective."
"Someone shot and killed Norma Monday night. As well as two women who worked at the clinic with her and Treasure. We're worried Treasure is either dead or on the run. Have you heard from her?"
Emerald Chen looked deflated, like she'd always expected the worst from her sister but still hoped for the best. "No, I haven't. As you might guess, we're not close. I've never approved of her lifestyle, and she's rejected my efforts to help her."
"She may not be in a position to reject you anymore," I said. "If she contacts you, will you let us know?"
"Do you think my sister killed these women?"
I shook my head. "I think she discovered the two victims in Makiki, and she called 911. As you said, she's a smart woman. She must have realized she was a target, and she took off. Do you have a current picture of Treasure? We could use one to help us look for her."
She reached around behind her to a photo in a silver frame. "This was taken last year, at my grandfather's birthday," she said, handing it to me.
Treasure truly was a beautiful woman, a head taller than her older sister. There was a faint family resemblance between them — but in the photo they looked like a beauty queen and her chaperone. Treasure had a slim face, rounding to a narrow chin. Her cheeks were flat planes, and her eyebrows were carefully plucked. Her black hair was glossy and curled around her face.
"May we take this with us?" I asked.
Emerald nodded, and I slipped the photo out of its frame. Ray and I stood up. "Be careful, Miss Chen," I said. "If someone wants to kill Treasure, you don't want to be in the way." We gave Emerald our cards and the young guy showed us back to the elevator.
"Can you find that picture my sister-in-law drew of Jingtao in the murder book?" I asked Ray as I pulled out of the office building's garage. "I want to see if Dr. Phil recognizes him."
"Dr. Phil your date?" Ray asked, opening the three-ring binder we kept all the information about the case in.
I told him about the boy who'd come to the ER. "They really ought to have stronger reporting requirements," Ray said. "Here it is."
"I'm with you, brah. But try convincing a bunch of hospital bureaucrats of that."
I pulled up in a loading zone next to the ER and left Ray in the car. The Chinese triage nurse paged Dr. Phil, and I cooled my heals by her desk as she checked in a thirty-something guy bleeding from his forehead, an elderly woman who had broken her arm, and a baby with projectile vomiting. I was glad that I sucked in science so never considered a medical career.
It was about a half hour until Dr. Phil had a moment between patients.
"What's up, Kimo?" he asked.
"You recognize this kid?" I showed him the sketch of Jingtao.
He looked at it and frowned, then motioned me off to the side, out of the nurse's hearing. "Sorry, but a lot of Asians look alike to me. Haven't been here in the islands long enough to start making distinctions."
"You think anyone else might recognize him?"
