Page 19

19

LEI

At four o’clock that afternoon, as soon as she got to the station from Haleakala’s crime scene, Lei went downstairs to visit her young protégée. Katie’s Cave was a cool, dim relief after all the elements and two rides with an airsick ME on the chopper.

Katie had on a pair of headphones and her eyes were on her monitors. She paid zero attention as Lei walked straight over to the water dispenser and grabbed a mug that said DO IT FOR THE PLOT. She filled the mug, chugged it, filled it again, and held it aloft. “Hey, Katie. What does this one mean?”

Katie glanced over and saw Lei. She tugged her headphones off, blinking owllike through purple specs. “What?”

“These mugs are all internet sayings, but this one seems like it’s about books.” Lei waggled the mug.

“Nope, that means to ‘do something for the story to tell.’ On social media, or at a party.” Katie leaned back in her chair, stretching up her arms and yawning widely. “Books? What’re those?”

“Weird. Okay.” Lei shook her head. “So, how did your first witness interview go up at the park?”

“Awesome.” Katie bounced a little on her fancy chair. “I met someone. He’s super cute—one of the witnesses who spotted the body. A photographer and programmer. Not only did he discover the body in the Crater, but he also got photos of someone on the lava at La Perouse Bay by accident. They might be of the perp! I’m just getting them sorted now.”

Lei frowned. “Back up the bus, sistah . That can’t be a coincidence.” She pulled out a chair to sit beside Katie, noticing for the first time that Katie wore a tight Lycra shirt under her white blouse and a pair of black tights under a flirty plaid skirt; her shiny hair was trying to escape the braid hanging down her back. “I see you modified your outfit to the situation.”

“Yeah, going up a ten thousand foot volcano to interview witnesses in a miniskirt didn’t seem professional,” Katie said. “And as to coincidence, I believe Jeff.”

Lei frowned. “Jeff? Who’s that?”

“The guy I met. The photographer. Jeff Brian is his name. No priors, clean record, new to Maui.” Katie reached for her own mug to swig some water; hers read GOAT: IYKYK. “He had a good reason to be at La Perouse—photography in the early morning, same reason he was on Haleakala. His mentor, Randy Hollister, was the one who drove and chose the destination they went to where they ended up finding the victim. He couldn’t have had anything to do with it.”

Lei would reserve judgement on that. “So are the photos any good?”

“Take a look at this.” Katie clicked her mouse and zoomed in on the image on her monitor. “See, this was taken with a 400-millimeter telephoto. Pretty good lens: crisp, and not a lot of noise or distortion. But the subject is a long distance away. The images are RAW files. I’m hoping to tease more data out of them.”

“Raw files?”

“High-end cameras shoot in a format called RAW. It’s a data file, not an image file, and it has a lot more information to work with. For digital images, it’s as close to an ‘original’ as you’re going to get.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Think evidence, courts of law, chain of custody. Your ‘Three Cs’: Care, Custody, and Control. In the old days, detectives would want the original negatives, because someone could tweak a printed image. Without the negatives, it was hard to prove that the picture hadn’t been altered.”

“Okay, I get that. What’s that have to do with RAW files?”

“Digital images are incredibly easy to manipulate. You hear people saying, ‘Oh, that was photoshopped’ because the name of a software program has become a verb. On a computer, you can add people to scenes or take them out, put a different head on someone else’s body, and make it look real. AI has exploded that even further.”

“It’s a big deal for photojournalists, isn’t it?”

“Yes! And for law enforcement as well. So, like I said, RAW files aren’t image files, like a JPEG or a TIFF is. They’re data files. For us to see the picture, a computer has to generate a preview of what that would look like as a JPEG, for instance. But no matter what you do with that preview, the original RAW file isn’t altered. It can’t be.”

“So, in that way, it’s like the original negative . . .” Lei sipped her water. “But more useful.”

“Better, yes. Digital images have metadata attached to them. Typically that includes the date and time the picture was taken, the type of camera and lens used, and the camera settings for the image. In high-end cameras, the photographer can set the camera to add their name, copyright information, even GPS coordinates.” Katie swung the monitor a bit more toward Lei. “See this? I’m trying to clarify the image. We might be looking right at the killer.”

Lei leaned forward to inspect the photo Katie was working on. “Could be a man or a woman because the clothes are baggy. There’s a long ponytail, though. Dark hair. What more can you do with the image?”

“I’ve got a software program that does digital interpretation and enhancement, so I can try to sharpen and clarify the pictures. Maybe we can generate a good face shot from one of these. Then we can run that through a law enforcement facial recognition program.”

“And the software?”

“Oh, good! I thought you were never going to ask. You’re going to love this,” Katie said. “I now have a free license for some software, including Photoshop and this one, which is called Lightroom. It’s for processing pictures. The name is a play on ‘darkroom.’ And I did say it was free, didn’t I?”

Lei laughed. “You’re catching on. No pirating, hacking, or illegal scraping on my watch. I’ll look forward to what you come up with from the witness’s photos.”

“Speaking of.” Katie folded her hands into a prayer position and batted her eyes. “Jeff Brian, the witness, is a cutie like I said, and he asked if we could get together outside of work. Can I? Pretty please? I’ve been looking for someone, and we’ve got a lot in common.”

Lei gazed at her intern. “I’m not going to answer that. I want you to. Think about it, Katie. Imagine what could go wrong with dating a witness on an active murder investigation.”

“Dang it.” Katie dropped the prayer hands and curled into a picture of dejection. “Just my luck.”

“Maybe when the investigation’s over and your witness is a hundred percent cleared of any involvement.” Lei felt bad for Katie. “Meanwhile, how about that brick we were talking about in the team meeting. I need to know what you know because we found another one with the Haleakala body.” Lei filled Katie in briefly on the discovery. “The MO seems consistent with the Goodwin murder. I want to know what the killer is saying with that brick.”

“Yes. I pulled together some searches right after the meeting.” Katie leaned forward, intent, pulling up the information. “There are several construction projects going up right now with artificial, locally made faux bricks on their supply list.”

“Now that you have the second victim’s name, Jonas Kleftes, can you do a cross-reference for any real estate or construction projects he and Goodwin might have been working on together? I also need a full background on Kleftes. Give me his next of kin, first. Pono and I have to do a death notification.”

“I’m on it.” Katie said, typing rapidly.

Fatigue hit Lei suddenly, and she yawned. “Wow, it’s been a day, and it’s not over yet.” She stood up and walked to the counter, washing her mug at the sink, and rehanging it.

When she turned back, Katie seemed to have disappeared into the blue glow of her screen. Her slim body sat upright, her fingers moved, her eyes flicked back and forth—but otherwise she seemed gone to another world.

Once again Lei was reminded of her friend Sophie Smithson, a virtuoso on computer. Sophie would find a lot to like in Katie.

Katie popped her headphones off abruptly. “Oh good, you’re still here. I found a few connections between our victims.”

“That was fast.” Lei came back to sit down. “Let me get one of these other computers up and input this into the case file.”

“Already done. Got that open there.” Katie pointed to one of her three monitors. “Kleftes did real estate venture capital, she did real estate law. They’ve literally worked on hundreds of projects together. They’re both in Rotary, they both support the arts, and they’re both in the same hiking club on the island.” Katie paused and smacked her forehead with her palm. “Or, I mean, were. And did. You know.”

“Were any of those real estate projects controversial? Angry clients, anything like that?” Lei drummed her fingers on the keyboard in front of her for something to do.

“For sure. Most of them. Development gets people riled up. Everyone is either for it or against it, so any project can turn into a political nightmare. You know, the land rapers versus the tree huggers, the little guy getting squeezed out.”

“Do they share any current projects, or anything that’s in litigation?”

“I’ll have a list for you in the morning. Meanwhile . . .” Katie pushed a button, and Lei’s phone dinged with an incoming message. “That’s the contact info for Jonas Kleftes’s next of kin, and his home address.”

“I’d invite you to come, but I think you can do more to help us find the killer from here,” Lei said, standing up. “One more question: what does that saying on your mug mean?”

“GOAT stands for ‘Greatest Of All Time.’ IYKYK means ‘If You Know You Know.’”

Lei chuckled. “Learn something new every day. Katie’s Cave might just be the brain center of this operation.”

“Yes!” Katie shot her arms up, two fingers out on each hand in a victory sign. “The faster we wrap this up, the faster I can go out with that cute photog programmer.”