Page 10

10

LEI

Lei and Pono parked in the driveway of Goodwin’s house. Shortly after, crime scene tech TG arrived in the department’s van with an officer in a patrol car following. The officer parked crosswise to the driveway and sat there, to keep onlookers away.

Wearing latex gloves, Lei unlocked the front door with the key from Goodwin’s office. “We’ll check the house and make sure it’s clear before you come in, TG.”

She and Pono separated and went through the place quickly, checking for any sign of human presence or obvious disturbance. There were neither; the place was quiet, pristinely tidy.

“Come on in, TG,” Lei told the tech. “Why don’t you start by dusting for prints here in the doorway? Since her car is here, this might be where she was grabbed.”

“Sounds good.” The pale man took out his powder and brushes, beginning his work with the front door.

“I’ll see if there’s an office,” Pono said. “If Goodwin brought any work home, it would probably be there.” He headed upstairs.

Lei walked slowly around the living area on the first floor, snapping pictures with her phone camera. She let her gaze wander in “see mode,” searching without focusing on any one detail, letting anything odd or out of place grab her attention.

The house was tastefully decorated, expensively furnished, but sterile. Dramatic artwork on the walls lent vibrancy to the space, but the pieces had a generic quality, as if an interior designer had picked them out to add color to the beige carpet and neutral furniture.

Lei frowned; so far the place reminded her of an expensive hotel. There were no family pictures, no sign of pets, nothing that helped form a personal statement about the occupant.

The woman who’d lived here had been successful professionally, but she had died in a terrible way, and apparently alone. Who would mourn her?

Lei opened the door to the garage. Goodwin’s SUV was parked there, but there was no space for another car because boxes lined the walls. All were covered in a transparent layer of reddish Maui dust, apparently undisturbed for years.

Lei scanned the labels on the boxes: Christmas. Graduate School. Bar Exam Materials.

She checked the recycling bins and the garbage can; apparently Ms. Goodwin appreciated a nice Cabernet, Diet 7UP, and microwaved Lean Cuisine dinners.

Lei paused before closing the garage door.

Those dusty boxes held the woman’s whole life, and they’d never been unpacked. What had she been waiting for? A move to somewhere else, a partner that never appeared?

Stepping back into the house, she called out, “Hey TG? Can you poke through the garbage carefully before you leave?”

“Of course,” he said, without looking up from dusting.

Lei turned her search to the kitchen. A shopping list, detailing a few items in tidy script, lay on the counter next to a landline phone. TG would snag the phone and check the numbers.

Lei opened drawers and cabinets, finding nothing but cooking and eating implements and some take-out menus. Finished, she stood, hands on her hips, and surveyed the space. Nothing.

She walked through the dining room, living room, and what would have been the family room in some other home, but found nothing of interest. There weren’t even footprints in the neatly vacuumed pile of the plush carpeting.

What was missing? She cast her gaze around, and it hit her: no purse. And no cell phone, unless Pono had found those items upstairs.

Had the killer taken them? Probably . . . Since Goodwin’s license had been with the body, he had to have accessed her wallet.

She walked upstairs to check in with Pono. “Anything?”

Pono looked up from rummaging in the one drawer of a sleek glass and aluminum desk. “Nope.” He shook his head. “This isn’t a place where she did much besides shop online. You?”

“Nothing. But I think he might have snatched her here because the car is in the garage. Though I couldn’t find a purse, car keys or her cell phone.”

“I haven’t seen those either.” Pono straightened up. “Guess I better put up crime scene tape and seal this place.”

“Good. TG is still in the entry. If there are any prints or trace, he’ll find them.”

“We also need to check with the neighbors, see if anyone saw or heard anything, and whether there are any security cameras pointed at the street.”

“She doesn’t have any alarms, but yeah. I’ll get the officer in the driveway to go out and start knocking on doors,” Lei said. “See if we can rustle up any witnesses.” She left the office, walked downstairs, and went outside.

After explaining the assignment to the patrol officer and asking him to call for backup to assist, Lei trudged back up to the second floor again and turned right at the top of the stairs.

She always turned right on a search; it was a habit now and it kept her patterns consistent. She examined two smaller rooms and a hall bathroom. One of the rooms was empty except for a treadmill facing a small flat-screen TV on the wall. The other had a queen-size bed, a dresser with empty drawers, and a closet with an empty clothes rack: an unused guest room.

Lei saved the master suite for last; it was her last hope for finding some personal information in the dwelling. She started with the bathroom.

Towels were folded and hung neatly, all surfaces gleamed, and only a few used tissues cluttered a small trash can. Lei logged and bagged the prescription meds she found behind the mirror: a sleep aid, allergy spray, and birth control pills. “Aha. She was sexually active,” Lei murmured, checking the dates. They were current.

She peeked into the shower stall and spotted some hairs near the drain. She’d have TG collect them.

A massive king-size bed bordered by matching nightstands dominated the bedroom. There was no dresser in the room, but a captain’s chair was placed just outside a large walk-in closet.

Goodwin had installed high-quality closet organizing shelves, racks, and drawers, and Lei was startled by the amount of clothing inside. Walking slowly past outfits on hangers—organized by color—she noted designer labels. She couldn’t afford any of that, nor the racks of name-brand shoes stored in their boxes on tilted shelves.

The drawers at the back of the closet revealed nothing unusual until she got to the very bottom. There, two six-inch deep drawers were full of lacy undergarments, garter belts, stockings, and push-up bras. Lei held up a few pieces, staring at them. “She was a clotheshorse, with a taste for sexy lingerie.” Finally, something personal about the victim.

Lei exited and closed the closet.

The bed was made up without even a ripple in the sleek jewel-toned bedspread. No one had slept there recently, meaning Cheryl had likely been taken before her normal bedtime. The drawers in one of the nightstands held condoms. She bagged the opened box, hoping it might yield fingerprints.

Checking the other nightstand, Lei discovered a drawerful of adult sex toys in a startling array of sizes and styles. The drawer below was full of paperback erotica and skin magazines featuring sexy men.

Lei removed everything from the drawers to check if there were any diaries or red-hot love notes. No such luck, but she photographed it all before putting it back—and as she did, loneliness wafted through the air.

Standing up, Lei walked down the hall to the office and peeked through the door to her partner. “How are you doing?”

“Just about wrapped up here,” Pono said. “I’ve got a calendar and address book, but there’s not a lot in them. I’d bet she has an electronic version in her cell phone.”

“Which seems to be missing,” Lei said. “Did you find a laptop?”

“No, and the desktop computer is password-protected. We’ll have to get Katie to see if she can get into it.”

“Okay,” Lei said. “What else?”

“All the normal stuff. Tax records, bank accounts, bills. A life insurance policy. Looks like her parents are the beneficiaries. Apparently she was involved with some environmental groups on the island. It doesn’t look like she was bringing work home. How about you, Lei? Find anything of interest?”

“An upscale house that’s got the vibe of an Airbnb. She could have rented it out without changing a thing once she moved her nightstand contents to her closet and locked it. All I’ve found out about Goodwin was that she was a fashionista. She was on birth control pills, had condoms, and liked her alone time with a stash of toys and sexy materials.”

Pono’s brows lifted; that caught his attention.

“I bagged the condom box in case we can lift some prints,” Lei said. “I’d be interested in finding out who she was sleeping with, but I get the feeling it wasn’t a regular thing.”

“Huh. Well, unless you can think of something else, we should check in with TG and our guy on the street and then get back to the station.” Pono came out from behind the desk carrying the few evidence bags he’d collected, and they descended to the first floor.

TG glanced up from where he was kneeling on the tile as they reached the foyer. “Look at this.” He pointed to an art print on the wall. “See how it’s out of place?”

“Yeah.” Lei cocked her head at the angle of the displaced frame.

“And when I moved it, I found this.” TG indicated a gouge in the drywall behind the picture. “The print was hit with something that made it dig in.” He then turned on a small flashlight and shone it over the clear acrylic covering the print. “There’s a print here. An elbow mark.”

Lei frowned at the strange triangular mark on the “glass” of the picture. “How do you know what that is?”

“Easier to show you. Do you mind?” TG flexed his hands. “I’ll demonstrate what I think happened here.”

“Want me to be your crash test dummy?” Pono was sensitive to Lei’s issues with touch related to her past, though she’d recovered a lot from that early trauma.

“I need a smaller person. A woman, like Goodwin,” TG said. “Not that you look like Goodwin, Sergeant. But you are of a similar size.”

“Okay,” Lei said, bracing herself for the contact.

“Here’s what I think might have happened. Goodwin opened the door. He shoved it inward and pushed her back with his arm across her throat until she hit the picture. Like this.” TG maneuvered Lei back against the frame, then showed how his elbow hit the acrylic of the picture as he pressed his forearm against Lei’s neck.

“Got it.” Lei ducked under his arm and slipped away; TG badly needed a breath mint. “Seems likely she was taken here, then. With how tidy the rest of this place is, she would have fixed that wall and straightened the picture if she’d been able to.”

“Let’s get back to the office and update the Captain on the little we have so far,” Pono said. “Thanks, TG.”

“And be sure to check that shower drain,” Lei said. “Saw some hairs in there. Never know when a murderer might have taken a shower or washed up.”

“Criminals do the darnedest things,” TG said in his pedantic way. “I’ll keep you posted.”