Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series) (9 page)

“
You okay?”

“
I think so. A few bruises is all.” Lei sat up, feeling her ribs. Taking a deep breath made her gasp. “Maybe a cracked rib.”

“
Tiare is going to kill me if I let you get injured before the wedding,” Pono said.

Takama was already climbing down.
“Don’t get up. Let me check you over.” Jacobsen and Takama helped her climb out of the steep gulch after giving her a quick once-over.

“You okay to walk?” Pono picked a leaf out of her hair
as she was boosted over the lip of the cliff.

“Just a little short of breath. Maybe I should get my ribs checked out,” Lei said, holding a hand against her side and breathing shallowly.

“We should go back, have you get that looked at,” Takama said, his angled brows knit.

“
Another reason we try not to move too quickly out here,” Jacobsen said. “All kinds of invisible hazards.”

“
The unsub really knows his way around,” Lei said, as Pono hoisted her to her feet. “I mean, the suspect.”

“
Yeah, that Fed lingo’s still sneaking in now and again,” Pono said, referring to her stint in the FBI. “Tracking is over for the day. At least we know a little more about the guy and we’ve got some possible trace.”

Jacobsen
spotted another fresh blood mark. “We should still get the deer,” he told Pono.

Lei waved a hand. “Ranger Takama can take me back to the truck.”

Jacobsen and Pono peeled off to find the deer, and Takama walked with Lei back toward the parking area.

Lei
was in pain, hunched over with a hand pressing her ribs, by the time they’d hiked the two miles back to the vehicles. She lay down on the soft grass beside the parking area to wait for Pono.

Takama elevated her feet, gave her water, and, after feeling her ribs, said,
“Probably just a bad bruise. Just take it easy.”

“
Guess I don’t have much of a choice,” Lei said, sipping from her water bottle. “I’d like to be able to bring some tracking dogs up here, try to get this guy. We know he’s a real pro in the forest now, and that’s going to make it challenging.”

“
We’ll keep an eye out, stay in touch about it.” Takama sat beside her, looping arms around his knees in a comfortable, active pose that revealed a man who was used to living without furniture.

“
Not sure if I’m going to be the one to make it back up here, but I can tell Pono will want to.”

Just then
Jacobsen and Pono appeared, walking through the trees. Pono wore the field-dressed, bloody deer carcass over his shoulders, his face split in a ferocious grin.

“
Gross,” Lei said, gesturing to the stains on Pono’s shirt. The big Hawaiian gave a heave and tossed the buck into his truck bed.

“
Worth the report I have to write.” He pulled an impressive-looking bowie knife from a holster on his belt. “You guys want some venison?”

A few minutes later they pulled out. The
buck lay in the back, minus the hind leg Pono had whacked off to leave with the rangers.

“
To the doctor with you,” Pono said, glancing at Lei’s pale face.

Her nose wrinkled.
“Phew. I’ve never liked the smell of blood.”

“
At least it’s not human this time.”

Halfway down the mountain, Lei had to have Pono pull over so she could vomit.

“You don’t look good,” Pono said, as she got back in the cab. “You pregnant?”

“
God no. That would be terrible,” Lei said. “No. It’s carsickness and the fall making me queasy. They don’t tell you how windy this road is in the travel brochures.”

“
What’s so terrible about you getting pregnant? You guys are finally acting like adults and getting married. And don’t start with that ‘I had a bad mother so I’ll be a bad mother’ crap. I’ve seen how you are with dogs. Best indicator of parenting abilities is how people treat their dogs.”

“
I don’t want to talk about it.” Lei leaned her forehead on the cool glass of the window and watched the road, breathing slow to calm her roiling stomach. As they drove down the volcano and headed toward the hospital, Lei considered what he’d said. She couldn’t remember exactly when she’d last had her period, not that she’d ever paid much attention to it. Could she be pregnant? She was on the pill, but lately she’d been distracted and had missed a couple of doses. They’d stopped using condoms once they were exclusive, and somehow, Lei had never imagined the world’s oldest relationship complication could happen to her.

T
he weird way she’d been feeling lately was probably just stress with the case and planning the wedding.

At
the emergency room, she called Stevens. “Sorry, honey. I fell down a cliff. I’m at the ER.”

“
Good God, woman. Can’t you get through the week without ending up in the hospital?”

“
Don’t know. Never tried it,” she said, going for humor. “Nothing serious. I’ll be done by the time you come pick me up, I’m sure. They’re just x-raying my ribs.”

At the radiology lab, the technician handed her a questionnaire, and Lei paused at the question
Are you pregnant
?

Her heart sped up, and the
print of the letters danced in front of her eyes, turning to hieroglyphics. A wave of nausea swept over her, and she dropped the clipboard to reach for a nearby trash can. There wasn’t anything left in her belly, but when the technician came back, she said, “I could be pregnant. I better find out before I get the X-ray.”

“
No problem. We have some pregnancy tests if you’d like one. You really shouldn’t have an X-ray unless you know.”

Oh God. She wasn
’t even going to be able to procrastinate.

Lei wasn
’t sure she could even pee on the little stick, but finally she was able to go. She set the plastic wand on a paper towel and wrapped it up so she didn’t have to look at it before she washed her hands.

She
’d be a terrible mother. Lei felt sick at the thought of the responsibility, at the possibility of hurting a child as her mother had abused her.

Lei
also couldn’t ignore the leap of something like joy at the thought of a baby with Stevens’s eyes, with her curls. She splashed water on her face and hands, wondering if she had the courage to unwrap the plastic wand and look at it. She decided she didn’t. She put the wand, still wrapped in the paper towel, back in its original box and stuck it in her purse.

“
I need to wait on an X-ray,” she told the technician. “Can the doctor check me out some other way?”

Lei was feeling better the next morning. Her ribs, examined by the ER doc by visual and touch exam, were “probably just bruised”—but that didn’t stop them from hurting every time she took a deep breath.

“
No more chasing perps on foot until after the wedding,” Stevens had said when he picked her up, folding her into his arms and kissing the top of her head. “I don’t want you on crutches or something on the big day.”

The pregnancy test felt like a lead weight
in her purse. She still didn’t want to look at it—she’d open it with Stevens on the honeymoon if her period hadn’t started by then. That way, no matter what the test told them, she wasn’t dealing with it alone.

Lei booted up her work compu
ter. She had extra lieutenant duties to fit in, including reviewing a patrol’s scheduling, making sure trainees’ ongoing logs were looking good, and other departmental minutiae Captain Omura had lobbed her way. She slurped down a couple of Advil with her coffee, paused to wonder if that was okay if she was pregnant and decided it had to be; she wasn’t going to cut into more lifestyle choices until she knew for sure. Besides, she was in survival mode with her bruised ribs.

Lei called down to the
lab that was processing some of the trash she and Pono had picked up yesterday on the ‘Bow Hunter’ case, as they’d nicknamed the Waikamoi murder.

“
Get anything off that cup and those wrappers we submitted yesterday?” Lei asked Roger Ciman, the island’s top trace analysis expert. She’d pulled him off other work to get something off the trash on the camper before she left on the honeymoon.

“
Yeah. Got a fingerprint. It was a little degraded, but enough. Ran it already. No matches in the standard databases.”

“
Damn,” Lei said. The case had just gotten even more challenging. “Thanks for the quick work. Send it to me, will you?”

“
No problem, sir.” Lei opened her mouth to protest the unfamiliar salutation but remembered that she was a lieutenant now, and the MPD called all officers “sir” regardless of gender.

She checked her e
-mail. E-mail lists of names of volunteers and grad students who’d worked with the different environmental agencies had arrived in her in-box. She printed them out just as her e-mail dinged with the arrival of a blown-up, enhanced copy of the camper’s fingerprint.

Lei
printed the reference photo and put it in the case file, staring at the black-and-white whorls on the paper.

Now what? How to match the unknown print with a
n unknown name? She was certain that the camper was someone who’d been involved in conservation work. But if he wasn’t in the system, how did they find out who he was? Calling in that many people for fingerprinting, from potentially all over the country, just wasn’t practical or even justifiable—at this point the camper was technically just a person of interest.

Lei sipped coffee, considering as she leafed through the file. Finally
, she made a list of all the agency heads and their contact numbers. Maybe someone from one of the agencies would have a suspicion about one of their students or volunteers that could lead to something.

Pono arrived, setting a plastic-wrapped musubi next to her elbow.
“Tiare forbids you from getting injured before the wedding and sends you something to eat.”

“
Thanks!” Lei unwrapped the compacted rice topped with fried Spam wrapped in thin, pounded nori seaweed, making a tidy snack. She took a bite, chewed. “Delicious, as always.”

“
How’re the ribs?” Pono asked, booting up his computer.

“
Not so good. I’m thinking a day working the phones isn’t a bad idea. What do you think of this?” She told Pono her plan to call the various conservation nonprofits on Maui, including the Park Service, to fish for leads on the camper.

“
Sounds like a plan. I’m going to call Interpol about our vic’s prints. I’m off to get some coffee.” Pono left.

Pono
’s mention of coffee reminded her of how she’d started the pot that morning and then returned to the bedroom. Stevens had spent the night at her place to “keep an eye on her” after her fall into the gulch. Lei smiled at the memory of his long muscled body in her bed, his shadowed, sleeping eyes, the way he looked waking up—and reaching for her.

“
Daydreaming of the honeymoon?” Captain Omura’s dry voice at the doorway of her cubicle made Lei start, spilling coffee on herself. Lei felt a blush burn her cheekbones—even now that she knew Omura valued her on the Maui team, the captain’s almost unnatural ability to read her mind made Lei edgy.

“
As a matter of fact, I’ve got some things to catch you up on,” Lei said, dabbing her shirt with a napkin. She filled the captain in on the chase yesterday, the camper’s fingerprint, and her plan for today as Pono returned with a chipped mug of black brew.

“
Glad I stopped in, then. You might have updated me sooner,” Omura said, with a glance shared between Lei and Pono.

Lei shut her mouth on protests that they hadn’t had time as
Pono ducked his head. “I’ve got something to check on in the lab,” he said, and disappeared again.

Omura
stepped inside the cubicle and sat on Pono’s chair. “I also wanted to give you something.” The captain crossed her legs, sleek in a tailored blue pencil skirt and black sling-backs. She handed Lei a box. “I bought you a gift. Thought I’d give it to you personally.”

“
Oh.” Lei held the precisely wrapped package, tied with gold cord and trimmed with two origami cranes. “Thanks. It’s too pretty to open!”

“
I like to do a little
tsutsumi
now and again.” Lei was aware of the Japanese art of present wrapping, where the presentation was as important as the gift. “Go ahead and open it. It’s just a little something.”

Lei
tugged on the cord and carefully unwrapped the gift, preserving the paper and decorative cranes. She opened the box, and took out a gold-painted dowel about three inches long with fishing line tied to it. Pierced through their white parchment bodies, a series of folded origami cranes fluttered from the line. Lei stood up to be able to hold the fragile mobile above the ground, and the ivory paper birds lifted and spun.