Part 1 (2/2)
”Well.” Mrs. Hale seemed to be pulling herself together, having reached some inner conclusion. She smoothed her blond hair, woven with shades from b.u.t.tercream to platinum, patting it back into some semblance of order, though there was no fix for the spatter of blood on the white blouse from her torn earlobe. She reached over to the expanse of coffee table and tugged another tissue out of the mother-of-pearl dispenser, dabbing mascara out from under her eyes. ”He'd been acting different. Quieter. Withdrawn. I thought he was having a tough semester at school, maybe girl trouble. I didn't pry.”
Lei had taken her little spiral notebook out of her pocket and she jotted this down. ”How long had this been going on?”
”I noticed a change in him around the beginning of the semester. He started locking his door, didn't want to join us for dinner. He was listening to all this angry music. Alternative, you know. I thought it was just a phase.” She suddenly hunched forward, as if from a body blow, and covered her face with her hands. ”Oh G.o.d.”
”Please. Mrs. Hale.” Lei laid a hand on her trembling shoulder. ”Please help me with this. Maybe we can find some answers.” Even as she said the words, she knew answers were not always comforting-sometimes they just led to more questions, or more heartbreak.
”It doesn't matter. He's gone.” Alexis Hale pulled another handful of tissues out of the dispenser, dabbed her whole face. ”Okay. I'll keep it together for a little longer, just to get you people out of my house.”
Lei felt the sting of the words but kept her voice soft. ”Thank you. I can't imagine how difficult this is. What kind of girl trouble did you think he was having?”
She didn't have time to answer as Ken came back in. ”Senator Hale became ill. I helped him to bed. We'll talk another time.”
Lei stood up to block Mrs. Hale's view out the window, where Dr. f.u.kus.h.i.+ma and her a.s.sistant were pus.h.i.+ng the gurney down the walkway, loaded with the strapped-down black body bag. The wheels of the gurney clattered and Alexis Hale looked up, then shot to her feet and ran to the door.
Lei followed her, but Mrs. Hale just stood in the doorway and watched them load the body into the ME's van. The estate was fenced with a monstera-covered coral-stone wall, the giant tropical ivy curling up the ten-foot expanse, and guarded by an electric gate. Kamuela provided some cover from the jostling reporters beyond the gate trying to get the ”money shot” with his bulk and intimidating stare. Mrs. Hale turned away as f.u.kus.h.i.+ma slammed the back door of the van and the a.s.sistant got behind the wheel.
”Okay. I'll see him later,” she muttered to herself, rubbing her arms briskly as she walked back to the living room. Lei trailed her and was grateful when Ken sat beside the grieving woman and picked up the line of questioning.
”So you said *this is all your fault' to your husband. What did you mean by that?”
Alexis Hale straightened her linen slacks, picking at the creases in the fabric. ”This. This life in the fishbowl, where everything we do has to be a certain way and everything we say has to be scripted. This life. It was hard for Corby, and it got harder for him the older he got, but neither of us had a choice. We had an image to maintain. My husband's vision is set high, and we both always knew it.”
”You mean the White House?” Lei asked. She'd heard rumors to that effect. Senator Hale was even rumored to have a chance at the presidential nomination in a mere four years.
”Yes. So we lived under a magnifying gla.s.s. I had the feeling Corby was getting restless.”
”He might have turned to drugs to escape, you mean.”
”Maybe. I wouldn't have believed it, but . . .” She seemed unable to go on.
”Why don't we call someone for you? We still have to search his room,” Ken said.
They called Alexis Hale's sister, and it wasn't long before they left Mrs. Hale tearfully explaining on the phone and were able to exit. Lei put on a hairnet to restrain her springing curls, unruly in the Kailua humidity.
”That was fun.” She grimaced as they put on fresh gloves outside the boy's room.
”You did well with her.” Ken rarely praised her, so Lei felt the words' value even more keenly.
”I'm getting better. I don't say what I'm thinking the moment it occurs to me anymore.”
”Hopefully we'll find something that tells us more about what went on here.” Ken opened the boy's bedroom door and they stepped inside. He locked the door behind them. ”No more interruptions.”
”Right.” Lei had brought a crime kit, and she opened her well-stocked case and clicked on her light. ”I'll take the bed.”
”I'll start at the desk.” Ken headed toward the handsome antique, hidden by a bike propped on its corner.
f.u.kus.h.i.+ma had bagged the sheets and pillowcase, so Lei scanned the mattress, got down on her knees and looked beneath the bed while Ken rooted through the desk. Two minutes later, as she was fis.h.i.+ng a magazine out from under the bed, he said, ”Here it is.” He held up a sheet of paper.
”Yes, here it is,” Lei echoed thoughtfully, her brows pulling together in a frown as she looked at the h.o.m.os.e.xual erotica magazine in her hands. ”Don't think Mama knows Corby's taste runs in another direction. This isn't girl problems I'm looking at.”
”Interesting. Well, there might be some answers here.” Ken cleared his throat as he read from the sheet he pinched by one corner, printed in a bold script Lei guessed was the boy's handwriting.
”Dear Mom and Dad. I'm so sorry for doing this to you, but the pain I'd cause you if you knew the truth, if the world knew the truth about me, is so much worse. This was the best I could do. I love you, and I'm sorry. Love, Corby.”
”So this is a suicide?”
”Looks like it could be.” Ken slid the paper into an evidence bag.
”Because he was gay?” Lei held the magazine up so her partner could see it. ”I don't get it. In this day and age, it's not a big deal for a politician to have a gay son.”
Ken's jaw tightened-Lei knew her partner was gay and still in the closet. ”No one knows what a struggle it is. Maybe there was more to it. He doesn't say exactly what the *truth' is.”
”Maybe his body will tell us more. f.u.kus.h.i.+ma will find anything worth finding. I'm especially interested in the tox panel and blood work.”
They continued on, moving through a room that doc.u.mented the life of a golden young man who'd had hidden depths, and other than a further collection of h.o.m.oerotica stashed in a box in the closet, there was little to show what those had been.
”Mrs. Hale will need to identify his handwriting,” Lei said, waving the bagged suicide note as they were packing up the evidence that they'd collected-the pile of p.o.r.n, the note, the drug paraphernalia. ”Seems like this is one of those suspicious suicides Ang's worried about.”
”More will be revealed.”
”Well, I might have done okay talking to Mrs. Hale, but I dread telling her it looks like it could be suicide.”
”I'll talk to Mrs. Hale.” Ken shouldered the upcoming encounter with his low-key heroism. Lei had come to love that about him-no fanfare or whining; he just did what needed doing whether it was facing down a Mob boss or a grieving mother. In their year and a half of working together, she still learned from him every day.
Lei moved through the living room, carrying the items they were taking back to the Bureau. Alexis Hale spotted her and hung up on her sister, dropping the phone with a clatter into the cradle.
”What did you find?” she cried, eyes wide and fastened on the paper evidence bags Lei carried. Ken intercepted her. ”We do have something to discuss with you, but please let my partner put away our equipment first.”
He sat beside her on the acre or so of creamy leather couch, and Lei walked out to the black Bureau Acura nicknamed the ”bu-car,” securing the evidence in a small, locked box in the back. She stowed the crime kits and beeped the vehicle locked, aware of the long lenses of the photographers trained on her through the bars of the gate, the voice of a reporter on camera behind her. They were probably Googling her, and she was relieved that even though Kamuela had left in his beige department-issued SUV, he'd left a black-and-white HPD cruiser parked at the gate, barring illegal intrusions.
Lei hurried back into the house, carrying the small video camera they used for interviews. Mrs. Hale was sipping a gla.s.s of water, Ken's hand on her shoulder, when she returned.
”Is it okay if we tape this? We need to get a little more information from you, and if we tape we won't have to reinterview you at headquarters.” This usually worked to allow the taping, and today was no exception.
”All right.”
Lei turned on the video, and Ken said to Alexis, ”Do you have any samples of Corby's handwriting we can see?”
”Why?” Her eyes widened and filled with tears as her hand covered her mouth. ”Is there-is there a suicide note?”
”There appears to be.”
”No. No.” She shook her head. ”No.”
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