Blood Orchids (20 page)

She crawled over to his backpack. His cell phone was in the side pocket and she watched herself, still floating above her body, punch in the number she had memorized.

“Jeremy, what’s up?”

“This isn’t Jeremy,” she said. “It’s Lei.”

“Lei. Why are you on Jeremy’s phone?”

“It’s him,” she said. “He did it.” Her teeth began to chatter.

“Lei! What the hell’s going on? You’re scaring me!”

“I killed him,” she said. “Come get me, please.” Shivers racked her body, and her teeth clattered like castanets. “I’m at the Mohuli`i crime scene.”

“On my way,” Stevens said. “Hold on.”

“Okay,” she said, in a small voice. The phone went silent, and she closed it. The snapping sound sucked her back into her body.

Chapter 39

The dog licking her face brought her up out of a deep well of medication-induced sleep. My girl’s okay, she thought. She put her arms around Keiki’s big, solid body, burrowing her face into her fur, savoring the warmth and safety of her bed. Even the doggy smell was heavenly. Keiki had been found trapped in the steel gardening shed. She’d been Tased but seemed no worse for it.

“I hate to interrupt this love fest.” Stevens’s voice. She opened her eyes. He was at the foot of the bed on the futon, sitting up with the covers around his waist. “How’re you feeling?”

“Glad to be alive,” she said huskily. “Love the pain meds.”

“You should’ve stayed in the hospital.”

“I hate those places. Nothing so wrong with me that a little first aid and some sleep won’t cure.”

“Yeah. That’s what you said last night.” He jumped up with lithe grace. “I’ll go make some coffee.”

She stroked Keiki with her good hand, staring at the ceiling. The previous night was blurry except for a few moments—Stevens and several squad cars arriving. Stevens wrapping her in a clean blanket, taking off her restraints. The flash of crime scene photos being taken even as she was helped to the ambulance. Lying on the gurney, Stevens beside her, holding her hand.

“You should be at the crime scene,” she remembered saying.

“I am,” he’d replied.

The cast on her arm felt stiff and hard. Her wrist had indeed been broken. Pain throbs echoed the struggle from various points on her body. She tried not to remember it, thinking instead about giving her statement to Stevens and the other detectives.

Thank God this whole thing was finally over. She closed her eyes again, feeling tears well up. She didn’t know why she was crying.

“Sit up,” Stevens said, his voice brisk. He was carrying two steaming mugs of coffee. She scooched herself upright, whacking her pillow into shape behind her with her good hand. He handed her the coffee and sat in the folding chair he’d set in the space beside her outsized bed. She took a sip.

“Mmm. Strong.”

“You’re gonna need it,” he said, reaching over to stretch a curl out, watching it spring back into the matted mass around her face. “The Lieutenant wants us to do a press conference at 11:00 AM.”

“Oh my God. I can’t,” Lei said. Keiki stiffened and growled at the terror in her voice.

“You won’t have to say much, just stand there in your dress uniform with a sling on your arm, look heroic. I’ll be making a statement too.”

His voice was grim, and she reached out to touch his arm. “I’m so sorry, Michael. He was your partner, your friend.”

“Obviously not.” He looked down. One of his hands sported bruised, scratched knuckles. “I had to punch the wall because I couldn’t do it to his face. I just keep kicking myself—there were clues if you knew to see them. The photo we found on Reynolds’s hard drive, the ring. He planted both, and if I hadn’t been so eager to close the case, I would have remembered that not only was he computer savvy, his hobby was photography. All along he was trying to point the investigation towards Reynolds.”

She rubbed his arm, little circles. He looked down, traced the bruise on her wrist from the cuffs with the tip of his finger.

“You okay?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know.” The tears she’d been holding back welled, dropped on the cast she held over her stomach. “I’ve never killed anyone before.” She sniffed loudly, wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I’m alive, and that’s what counts. Alive, and not raped.”

“Yeah.” He put his arm around her, pulled her over in a rough hug. His voice was harsh with emotion. “I’m glad you did what you had to do. I just wish I could have done it for you. I figured you were missing when I called and your phone kept going to voicemail. I went to the house and found it in the driveway. I knew he’d just outwaited us then. I was going crazy.”

She shuddered, a flash of memory making her shut her eyes. “God—I hope that was the last time I ever have to kill someone. And it’s not like I got to shoot him. It was gross, so up close and personal, both of us naked . . I didn’t have time or room to think about my plan not working, but it almost didn’t work.”

“You did what you had to do,” he repeated. “And I’m proud of you.” Abruptly he got up, paced back and forth. “Guy was the worst kind of scum, a police officer preying on women. It’s going to take me awhile to stop wishing I could be the one to kill him.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair in that familiar gesture, took a breath. “I’ll be back to pick you up at ten-thirty. Oh, and after the press conference you have an appointment with Dr. Wilson.”

“That was inevitable, but I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it.”

“Lieutenant’s orders,” he said, leaning down to give her a kiss on the forehead. “See you soon. Put your game face on.” He hooked his jacket off the chair and closed the door behind him.

It seemed like only a short time later she was standing in front of the police station behind a lectern, surrounded by bristling microphones, lights shining in her eyes. It wasn’t hard to look pale. She leaned on Pono for support.

“Officer Texeira was abducted two nights ago,” Lieutenant Ohale started off. “She was able to overpower her assailant and he is now deceased. We then searched his home, and have found proof that he not only killed Haunani Pohakoa and Kelly Andrade, but was responsible for a series of kidnap rapes that began on Oahu and ended here with the recent kidnapping and murder of another police officer from Puna. The perpetrator’s name is Jeremy Ito and he was a detective here in Hilo.”

The crowd of reporters exploded with questions, and he raised his hands and outstretched them, Moses calming the Red Sea.

“And now if you’ll settle down, Detective Stevens will take questions.”

Stevens replaced him, taking questions from the crowd. Pono sheltered Lei with his bulk, and then steered her by the elbow through the reporters as the press conference ended. He pushed open the double glass doors of the station and walked her to her cubicle.

She held court for a while in her creaky office chair with the officers that stopped by. It seemed Jeremy had not been well liked, and she nodded and smiled as different staff came up to tell her “something was off about him,” and how glad they were she had survived. Finally Lieutenant Ohale shooed her visitors away.

“So of course you know you’re on admin leave until your investigation wraps up. Take it easy, get better. Now it’s time to go see Dr. Wilson. No arguments,” he said as he hoisted her up gently from her chair, giving her an affectionate pat that pushed her down the hall.

She walked to the office and seemed to fall into Dr. Wilson’s arms as the psychologist opened the door.

“Thank God you’re alive. Come in here and tell me all about it.” And Lei did.

Chapter 40

Lei showered, letting the hot water pummel the hurts on her body, careful with the plastic bag that kept her cast dry. Getting out of the shower, she grimaced at the ragged bite on her collarbone, and swallowed one of the antibiotics the doc had sent home with a swish of water. She daubed the oozing wound with ointment and re-covered it with a big, square band-aid. It looked like it was going to leave a scar.

Her lip was puffy and split where she’d bitten it, and bruises peppered her torso where Ito had punched her during the struggle. She stripped off the plastic bag on her arm and slipped on a silky tee shirt that managed to cover all the bruises.

She wanted to look as nice as she could—Stevens was on his way over for dinner.

She was checking on a pan of reheated, roast
kalua
pork from Aunty’s restaurant when the doorbell rang. She glanced at herself in the mirror next to the front door and was not reassured. After checking the peephole, she opened the door, her heart racing.

“Hi Michael. Thanks for coming.”

He held up a bottle of wine. “Medicinal purposes.”

“Thanks.” She took it, laughed. “I’m really going to enjoy this with my Vicodin.”

“You’ll have a helluva hangover.” He followed her into the kitchen.“Got a present for you.” He set the bulky bundle he had been carrying down on the table. “New gun. Thought you should have a backup.”

“Michael!” She hugged him, hard. “That’s what I like about you—you bring me alcohol and a gun. I can’t think of anything I want more.”

“I can,” he said softly, intent. He raised her arms slowly from his waist and put them around his neck, then pulled her in tight, his hands cupped around her bottom as he lowered his head to hers. She hardly noticed her bruised mouth as their lips met, asking and taking.

She’d wanted him so long, and his touch seemed to erase those other hands that had left invisible prints on her. She pressed into him, her hands filling with the springy texture of his hair, the broad column of his back.

“You’re too short,” he said, bending over, smoothing her body with long strokes. She felt him learning the shape and feel of her.

“You’re too tall,” she said, straining upward to reach his neck with her mouth. He pushed her back and lifted her up onto the counter. She wrapped her legs around his waist, rubbing against his jeans.

Hungry to feel the roughness of his chest against the curves of hers, she unbuttoned his shirt, sliding her hands in around his waist, stroking the contoured muscle. He made a low noise and whispered in her ear, kissing and nipping as he peeled her shirt off over her head, pausing to look at the bandage on her collarbone with a grimace.

He kissed the bruises on her torso gently. His tongue was a balm as he bent her back over one arm, his other hand caressing her. Lei closed her eyes and gave herself over to the waves of sensation pooling in her lower body, need stabbing almost like pain. Everywhere his mouth and hands touched felt like it was being healed, coming alive.

She sat upright again, keeping her legs tight around his waist as she trailed her fingertips and tongue over all she’d longed to touch and explore: the hollow of his throat, winged line of his collarbone, the tender whorl of his ear.

When neither could stand it any longer he carried her to the bed. The last of their clothes came off and passion made him clumsy with the condom, but when he slowly moved into her, cradled in the frame of his arms, she felt something entirely new.

Safe.

It was a long time later when she raised herself on her elbow.

“I didn’t know I could do that,” she said wonderingly. “Or that you could do that. Whichever.”

He lay as though felled, but a rumble of laughter came up from somewhere deep.

“Told you I’d make you scream.” He’d whispered it in her ear in the kitchen.

“I did not.” She smacked his shoulder.

“Ask the neighbors,” he said, his eyes still shut but a little smile on his mouth. She tugged a bit of chest hair but he only rolled over.

“C’mon. Dinner’s ready,” Lei said. The smell of her aunt’s cooking had filled the house.

She washed up and pulled on her old kimono before padding back into the kitchen and dishing up the meal. Stevens appeared in the doorway, clad only in his jeans. He gave a jaw-cracking yawn.

“If I wasn’t so hungry I’d have stayed in bed,” he said, finding a wine key in one of the drawers. He splashed the pale liquid into a pair of jelly glasses as Lei set their full plates on the table—steaming kalua pig slow-roasted in an underground oven, rice, and limp, overcooked green beans. He prodded these with his fork.

“You distracted me,” she said, picking up her glass. “To my aunty’s cooking.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“So.”

With dinner over, he refilled their glasses.

“I love presents,” Lei said. She pushed her dishes aside and pulled the sturdy molded plastic gun case over.

“You were lucky. They only had one left.”

She popped the clasps and opened it. Nestled in the gray foam was the clean, matte black shape of a new Glock .40.

“Oh,” she said, sighing, “so pretty.”

She took it out, checked that the magazine was removed, racked the slide a couple times to make sure the barrel was empty, and dry-fired it, disengaging the slide and setting the grip, slide and firing pin mechanism in a neat row.

Stevens watched, sipping his wine as she got up and brought a small zippered carryall to the table out of one of the drawers. She took a moleskin rag and rubbed each piece of the gun; padded a steel rod with a cloth patch and rammed it back and forth in the barrel; and lightly touched the top four points of the slide track with gun oil, polishing the excess off. She blew the interior of the grip out with compressed air. Her movements quick and economical, she reassembled the gun, racking the slide a couple more times just to hear the smooth snick it made, dry firing and enjoying the fat muffled click of the trigger. Grinning, she turned to him.

“I love this gun. Nothing works for me like a Glock.”

“Works for me too,” he said, hooking her neck to pull her into a kiss that left the Glock dangling, forgotten, from her hand. “That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered.

The crowing of wild roosters heralded the morning. Mynah birds squabbled in a nearby mango tree and wafting plumeria perfume tickled her nose as Lei misted her orchids, savoring being in her little backyard and the well-being that filled her body in spite of its injuries.

The orchids were a little dry and leathery, but they looked like they would recover from the brief stint of neglect when she’d been too distracted to care for them. Keiki sniffed around the edges of the yard, checking the perimeter.

“Good morning.”

She turned, mister in hand, and smiled at the sight of Stevens in the doorway, a mug of coffee in his hand and jeans riding low on his hips. It was a replay of a scene not long ago, one she’d been too distracted by Mary’s death to appreciate.

She didn’t realize she was still staring until he came down the steps, set the coffee on the orchid bench and kissed her thoroughly.

“You can’t look at me like that without paying the price.”

“Okay,” she said meekly, and let herself be led back inside. It was the first time she remembered ever being meek, and it felt damn good.

Later, Stevens got out of the shower, sighing as he toweled his hair.

“I hate to go to work,” he said. Lei watched him from the rumpled bed. He put on his low-key aloha shirt, chinos, a pair of tan running shoes. Threaded his belt through the loops, holstered his weapon, clipped his badge on, pocketed his cell phone and wallet.

“Duty calls,” he said. “Get some rest.”

She continued to watch, fascinated by the brisk, economical movements. He put his hands on his hips.

“You okay?”

“Can’t remember ever watching a man get ready for work before.”

“You telling me this is your first morning-after experience?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn. I got to be sure to do things right then,” he said, and crawled across the bed to kiss her some more. She was still smiling when the door clicked shut behind him.