Page 11

11

LEI

After meeting with Captain Omura and inputting their new information on the case into the computer and physical files, Lei made her way downstairs to the computer lab, leaving Pono continuing the documentation work.

Lei was tired and craved a snack; the fast-food chicken salad had burned off long ago. Hopefully Katie would have a granola bar or something stashed in the computer lab. Lei grinned a little; with that girl it was likely to be something goofy, like a bag of anatomically correct gummy bears.

She came around the corner and stopped, eyes widening. A sign on the lab’s door read ‘Katie’s Cave: Where Perps Get Caught’ in neon pink, puffy letters sprinkled with glitter on a black background.

Lei opened the door without knocking; it was a public computer work area after all, though clearly Katie had taken it over.

The lab was dimly lit but for Katie’s station. That was illuminated by the glow of three monitors and strings of chili pepper-shaped colored lights festooned around the monitors and the rest of the room.

Katie glanced at Lei and smiled. “Howzit, boss!” Her hair was in twin pigtails—one of them blue—and her glasses had oversized bright red plastic frames. She blinked, and feathery fake eyelashes flapped enough to create their own breeze.

“Are you a character from something?” Lei asked, hands on her hips.

“Yep. I’m a character—my best self.” Katie grinned.

Lei shook her head as she stared around the office. A Phalaenopsis orchid’s vibrant white and purple blossoms trailed down from the top of a file cabinet. Arranged on one shelf of a metal bookcase were a herd of My Little Pony figures, a purple Care Bear with a rainbow on its chest, and a tiara. There were a couple of posters on the walls of video game characters. Directly beside Katie’s desk on the wall was a target from the shooting range, with eight bullet holes in the ten circle.

“Right . . . okay. Where did that come from? And what are you doing on it?” Lei asked, pointing at the largest computer monitor she’d ever seen, one of three on Katie’s desk. Lines of meaningless text covered the screen.

“Um, the monitor? I found it lying around. And what am I doing? I’m writing code.”

“What do you mean, you ‘found it’?” Lei decided to start with that inquiry.

“I obtained it in a resourceful and efficient manner.”

“From where?” Lei frowned; her own computer was so old it was an ongoing joke. She’d been told repeatedly that a new one was not in the budget.

“Not important. It’s what I’m doing with it that is. Let me tell you about this code,” Katie said, pointing to the screen with a sparkling nail. “I’m working on generating a statistical analysis of bank transfers. Not interisland, but interstate. There’s only so much money officially here—well, actually, it’s all theoretical anyway, that’s the nature of money—but when money moves around in-state, it’s easy to see.”

“Okay,” Lei said slowly, reaching for a chair. “You lost me. So what?”

“When a big chunk of money moves into or out of the state, that could signify a number of things: sale of a house, investment in development, etcetera, ad infinitum , e pluribus unum . Most of those are legitimate transactions because all legal money goes through distinct channels. Crooks moving dirty money have to avoid those channels, so if we can find unusual transactions moving in or out, it might help us find a pattern involving that kind of cash.”

“I’m aware.” Lei sat heavily. “But riddle me this. The last direction I gave you was to find out more about Cheryl Goodwin’s background, and the Hawaii-type props that were at her crime scene.”

“Well, I didn’t much get to the props part, but it was digging stuff up on Goodwin that brought me to this money tangle. She’s a signer on a shit ton of big real estate deals.” Katie twirled one of her pigtails. “Maybe something went sideways with Goodwin’s role on one of those deals.”

Lei glanced around. She needed fuel for this kind of focus. “Got any food down here?”

“Of course.” Katie reached over to grab a lunch box shaped like a pirate’s treasure chest. She opened it and then held it out. “Pick your poison.”

Lei gazed at Rice Krispies Treats, gold doubloons made of chocolate, baggies of candy corn, Jolly Rancher lollipops in the shape of penises, and snack size peanut butter Snickers.

Lei helped herself to one of each except for the Jolly Ranchers. She peeled the Snickers first. Once she had the wrapper off and the mini bar in her mouth, on its way to providing a much-needed sugar high, she refocused on Katie.

The kid was typing away, eyes on her monitor.

“Still not entirely following how you got to where you are muddling around in those numbers, but you need warrants to get that information, and probable cause for the warrants, and all those other pesky Constitutional requirements,” Lei said through a mouthful of sticky peanut butter and chocolate.

“Yup.” Katie was typing faster than Lei could string together a response. “I guess that’s one way to do it.”

It had already been a long day, and her intern was swinging from Lei’s last nerve like Tarzan on a vine. “I need more than sugar to deal with this.”

Lei got up and went to a water cooler in the corner. Gone were the paper cups that used to furnish it; now a row of mugs with sassy sayings emblazoned on them hung from hooks on the wall.

Lei grabbed one that read Haters Gonna Hate. She filled the mug and chugged the water down. She filled it again and then walked back.

Katie started when she saw Lei. “You still here?”

“Katie. Take your hands off that keyboard and look at me.”

Katie did so, blinking owlishly through her big red specs.

“Listen.” Lei leaned forward. “I’m responsible for supervising your work. If you’re accessing information illegally, your actions are going to come back on me, as well as you. Not only that, any fruit of the poisoned tree that you pluck from online sources is ultimately useless to us. Yes, what you uncover could tell us something, but we can’t use what it tells us. Not only that, it opens the department up to being sued or even prosecuted ourselves.”

Katie pushed back from her workstation. “But what if no one knows how you got a tip to follow?”

“We still have to account for how we came to pursue a lead. Shortcuts are not as useful as you seem to think they are,” Lei said. “I need you to check with me before digging into anything potentially hazardous to the case.”

Katie nodded; her pigtails bobbed. She finally seemed to be getting the message. “Ah, jeez. Okay. I’ll wrap this up then. What do you want me working on?”

“I was hoping you’d made some headway on that Hawaiiana stuff. What I asked you for originally.”

Katie stood up and stretched; her skimpy shirt rode up to reveal a tiny waist and toned abs. “Let me get a drink and I’ll switch gears.”

Lei frowned. “What kind of drink are you talking about?”

Katie bounced over to the water cooler and took down a mug that read I brAKE FOR brEAKS. “Water, of course. Sometimes coffee. What kind of drink did you think I meant?”

Her grin made an answering smile tug up the corners of Lei’s mouth. Katie was a little bit impossible and a whole lot of smart; she didn’t color inside the lines even a little bit. Hopefully Lei could keep her intern on the straight and narrow enough to complete probation. She wasn’t going to hold her breath on that; but if Katie washed out of Maui Police Department, Lei’s private investigator friend Sophie could give her a job doing just what she was doing for the private sector. A whole lot more gray areas existed there where Katie could play without creating legal consequences.

Katie sat back down with her mug. “I know TG was going to work on this too, but I did some research on the leiomano— the murder weapon. That’s all I had time for. I added my notes to the file.”

“Great. Summarize for me, will you?”

Katie pulled up a file of images, facts, and websites featuring replicas. She spattered Lei with rapid-fire information. “In short, this is a fairly rare weapon. Obtaining one, even a replica, wouldn’t be cheap. And its use has to be deliberate. Part of the message the killer was sending.”

“Good. I’ll find time to review that. Keep going on the rest of the items, please.” Lei stifled a yawn.

“Hey, boss? I’ve been meaning to ask . . . why does everyone call our crime scene tech ‘TG’? Unusual initials.”

Lei gathered her thoughts. “It’s a nickname. He got tagged with it years ago,” she said. “His first name is Mitch, last name Gaynor. He’s a great forensic investigator, but he’s a civilian contractor, so he ‘gets no respect.’ He was our police photographer for years, and after completing his degree, he’s become our lead crime scene technician.”

“Like on those CSI shows?” Katie asked.

“Yeah, to an extent. The Department sent him to a lot of training, but we don’t have the resources to buy all the fancy equipment you see on TV. He does a great job with what we have.”

Katie persisted with her original question. “So how did he end up being called TG?”

“It was back when he was the new photographer. When he was at a crime scene, he would spend a lot of time just staring at a body. He’d take very detailed photos, even of the most horrendous crimes. Some of the beat officers got a feeling that he liked his work a little too much, so they started calling him ‘The Ghoul’ behind his back. One day, someone called him ‘TG’ to his face, and the name stuck. No one knows how he feels about it because he never shows any emotion.”

Katie frowned. “That seems kind of mean. Maybe he’s neurodivergent. On the spectrum or something.”

“Maybe,” Lei allowed. “But he’s never complained. He’s still here. And he’s one of us, now, warts and all.” She smiled briefly before continuing. “He fights for every scrap of evidence he can pull from a scene, his analysis is always on the mark, and his reports are precise and understandable. The prosecutors love the guy. You wouldn’t know it from his personality, but he makes a terrific witness: polite, friendly, certain of the truth. He can explain it all in plain English, and he doesn’t rattle on cross-examination.”

“I think we should start calling him Mitch,” Katie twirled her glasses by the stem. “Sounds like he’s earned it.”

“Nice idea,” Lei said. “Maybe you should ask him first. Maybe he likes his handle by now.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Meanwhile, I’m going home. See you tomorrow, bright and early, in Captain Omura’s office at nine a.m. for updates on the case.” Lei finished her mug of water, washed it at the small metal sink, and rehung it on the wall. “And I expect you to wow us.”

“I’ll come bearing gifts of information,” Katie said. “And thanks for the reminder about the legalities. I get a little carried away sometimes.”

Maybe there was hope for the kid after all.