Part 8 (2/2)
”h.e.l.lo.” A deep voice with a little bite to it. ”Who is this?”
”You first. Who is this?”
”You called me. So you first.”
Lei frowned. He didn't sound very friendly. ”Okay. My name is Lei. I found this number in my grandmother's things. I was calling to see if you knew her. Yumi Matsumoto.”
”Lei? Lei Texeira?”
A frisson of alarm shot through her at being recognized. ”Yes,” she said cautiously.
”This is Marcus Kamuela. Why are you calling this number again?”
”Marcus! Is this your phone?”
”No. Please answer the question.” His voice was all cop.
Her brain raced. The phone must have been picked up somewhere in the course of a crime if Marcella's boyfriend the detective had it. The less she said, the better. She decided to go on the offensive.
”Why do you have the phone if it's not yours?”
”Police business. Answer the question, please.”
”I already did.”
A long pause. He must have decided to back off, because when he next spoke, his voice was conciliatory. ”Lei. Listen, I was just surprised to have this phone ring and have it be someone I knew. So, you said something about the number and your grandmother?”
”You still haven't told me why you have the phone.”
”Well, it's a burner. And it was in the possession of a man who's been murdered. So you can see why I need to find out why you were calling.”
Lei's throat closed. She couldn't think. A long moment went by, hissing in s.p.a.ce, and she saw the ghost of Kwon laughing at her. Anything she said could make things worse.
She hung up on Marcus Kamuela with an abrupt punch of the b.u.t.ton.
Somehow she got through the rest of the interview with Robert Castellejos, which was mostly over by the time she went back in. She accepted the jar of honey he insisted each of them take. ”I've got a month or two to live, and it makes me happy to give this to you. Would you deprive a dying man of feeling happy?”
Throughout, she felt numb and terrified. Her muted phone vibrated repeatedly and angrily in her pocket.
Chapter 13.
Ken drove as they headed back toward Honolulu. Their last interview had ended them up near Sunset Beach on the North Sh.o.r.e, so they'd done a complete circle around the island. The wide-open fields between Haleiwa and the downtown Prince Kuhio Federal Building where their offices were located gave Lei's dry, gritty eyes somewhere to rest. She leaned her head against the doorframe and watched the bowl of sky and sea of green flow by.
”What's going on with you?” Ken asked, darting a glance over at her. ”Something's wrong.”
She'd never told her partner about the debacle with Kwon. ”Nothing. It's just these dying people. So depressing.”
”You got that right. Rich or poor, doesn't seem to matter. Everyone is alone in the end.”
Lei looked over at him, concerned by an odd note in his voice. ”You won't be alone. I would never let that happen.”
”You'll be off with Stevens. Probably raising a family. I'll still be working. Hopefully I'll go down on the job.” His jaw was bunched as his hands squeezed and released the wheel.
”You're thinking you're never going to find someone to love. You will.” Lei didn't know how she knew, but she did. ”You might have to come out of the closet, though.”
”You don't know what's at stake. It would kill my parents.”
”I'm sure that's what Corby thought too, but I think his mother, at least, would have wanted the truth.” She looked over at her partner. Maybe unburdening herself to him, sharing her fears, would lighten his. She was tired of keeping secrets from someone so close. Ken, in spite of his sometimes-rigid adherence to protocol, was someone she knew she could trust. ”Okay. I'm going to tell you something big, and you're going to have to believe me.”
”Lei, you're not a good liar.” His grin was a flash that made his face startlingly handsome. ”I'll be able to tell.”
”Well, this situation began a long time ago. Remember I told you I was abused as a kid? It was s.e.xual abuse. The doer was my mom's boyfriend, a guy named Kwon. She was an addict, and he moved in on us after my father was popped for dealing.”
Ken frowned. ”Wow. I knew you had it rough, but that's quite a story.”
”Yeah. Prepped me for a job in law enforcement. Anyway, Kwon raped and abused me over a period of six months when I was nine. After he left, my mom died of an overdose. I still don't know if she meant to or not.” Old pain made Lei's hand steal up to rub the white-gold pendant hanging around her neck. ”After I became a cop, I found Kwon. He was in prison for pedophilia.”
”At least they got him. So often, they don't.” Ken glanced at her, frowning.
She filled him in on her confrontation with Kwon, his murder. ”It's Kamuela's case. He's getting nowhere with it, but the guy's like a dog with a bone. I'm afraid something will connect me to Kwon and that day.”
”Jesus. And I mean it as a prayer.”
”Yeah. So then I decide I need to find out who murdered him so I can stay ahead of it. Kwon had a lot of people with motive after him. My dad thought maybe my grandfather Soga Matsumoto had something to do with it, so I got over myself and reconnected with him. Which has been good, until he gave me this box of my grandmother's things. And today I called a number I found in the box.”
”Yeah?” he prompted when she wound down into a long silence.
”Today I called the number. No answer. Then my phone rings and it's Kamuela. Says my number came up on a murder victim's phone.”
”s.h.i.+t,” Ken said. They'd entered the maze of freeways that marked the edge of the city. ”You don't know whose phone it was, then.”
”No.”
”So you don't know if there's any connection to Kwon. All you know is you found a number in your grandmother's things, you called it, and it's the phone of a murder vic.”
”Right.”
”Not good,” Ken said. ”But not necessarily anything to do with Kwon.”
”I know. Kamuela's not going to believe I didn't know anything about it. Especially with the source of the number. It's on a fortune that says *shape your destiny.'” She fumbled it out of her wallet, held it up. ”I hung up on him, but I know I have to talk to him, explain.” Lei's stomach knotted. ”I can't be telling Waxman all this. Another skeleton in my closet, like the Changs.”
”What do you mean? The Chang crime family?”
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