Beside Still Waters (19 page)

             
“Designations, nicknames perhaps?” Jeremiah asked.

             
“Could be.  Here’s one that shows up over and over again.  Big boat man.”

             
“Boat.  What kind of boat I wonder?”

             
“Big.  So, not an outrigger or a catamaran.  Maybe more like a yacht,” Kapono ventured.

             
“Got any yacht owners you suspect are involved with the drug trade?”

             
“A couple.”

             
“Here’s another one.  Kama’aina.  It shows up a few times, but it looks like more money was going to whoever that it is than was coming from them.”

             
“Something Uncle was funding perhaps?”

             
“I don’t know.”

             
“What does Kama’aina mean?” Jeremiah asked.

             
“Of the land.  It’s a term for locals.”

             
Kapono flipped through the rest of the pages quickly and then looked up with a frustrated sigh.

             
“What’s wrong?”

             
“I was hoping for account numbers.  But I don’t see any here.”

             
“Maybe they’re encoded too.”

             
“Yeah, maybe.  Or maybe he got those from someone else.”

             
Jeremiah cocked his head.

             
Kapono scowled.  “The card the taxi driver gave Cindy to give to Uncle wasn’t a normal business card.  It had a string of numbers on it.  Maybe he was the one supplying account numbers for Uncle to move the money into or out of.”

             
“Whoever kidnapped Cindy might think she has the account numbers,” Jeremiah said.

             
Kapono shook his head.  “Then let’s hope they don’t figure out she doesn’t.  If they do they have no reason to keep her alive.”

             
Jeremiah set his jaw.  “But if they think she has them, they’ll be torturing her for them.”

             
“I don’t want to think about that,” Kapono said. 

“We need to find that taxi driver.”

             
“He won’t know where she is.”

             
“No, but he’ll know who else is involved who might know what happened to her.”

             
“You’re right.  We should get out of here.  I have to check in with my captain.  This whole thing just got a whole lot bigger than a missing persons case now that we can definitively tie her kidnapping in with the murder.”

             
“First we need to make sure we didn’t miss anything else,” Jeremiah said. 

             
“Okay, where do we look next?”

             
Fifteen minutes later Jeremiah was satisfied that there was nothing left in the restaurant to find.  Kapono had the good sense not to ask how Jeremiah knew to check some of the obscure locations he did.

             
“I think we’re done here,” Jeremiah told Kapono.  The detective nodded and together they headed to the front of the restaurant.  The sun was shining brightly through the windows making the place look that much worse.  As they neared the door Jeremiah slowed, letting Kapono go first.

             
The big detective swung the door open wide and ducked underneath the police tape.  Before he could straighten up a shot rang out.  Jeremiah dropped to the ground and watched as Kapono teetered for a moment before crumbling to the ground in front of him.

12

             
Cindy had managed to make it to the closet by jolting her chair an inch at a time closer.  She was sweating and shaking from the exertion and the thirst had become unbearable.  The closet had a sliding door.  She leaned her head against it and pushed toward the side.  It opened a crack, just enough for her to wiggle a finger into it and push.  It slid open a little more and she kept working at it until she could see the entire inside of the closet.

             
It was empty.

             
She leaned her head against the wall, sobbing in frustration.

             
Keep going, a voice inside her head seemed to say.

             
She turned her head toward the door.  She had to make it out of the room.  Somewhere in the house there had to be something she could use to help free herself.

             
She coiled all her muscles and lurched sideways in the chair.

~

             
Jeremiah could hear Kapono groaning which meant the detective was still alive.  He had no idea how badly he was hit, though.  Jeremiah slid to the side, out of direct line of sight of the door.  Kapono moved, reaching for the gun that was in his waistband. 

             
Jeremiah pulled the dive knife out of his pocket with his right hand and slid it out of its sheath.  He waited, listening, and watching.

             
Outside the door Jeremiah heard boots crunching on the ground. 

             
“We can’t kill him,” someone hissed.

             
“We have to.  He’s seen us,” a second voice answered and Jeremiah recognized it as the diver from the harbor.

             
“We have to get out of here.  The cops found the drop spot.  It’s all over.”  The speaker was definitely the other man from the harbor, the one who had remained in the boat.

             
“Nothing’s over.  There’s nothing to tie it to us.  We just have to keep cool     and take care of business.”

Jeremiah could see the legs of one of the
m at last. He was fairly certain
it was the diver, the one who was insisting that they finish Kapono
off.
Kapono's hand was behind his back, wrapped around the butt of his gun
and Jeremiah wasn't sure if the assailant could see it from where he was.

The man squatted down and took the sheaf of papers from Kapono's
hand. Jeremiah had a clear shot at the man's chest, but hesitated. If he
killed him that would mean a world of headache, paperwork, and questions at
the very least. All these things would slow down his search for Cindy, and
the more questions people asked the more he risked being discovered for who
he had been in his past.

             
No, he couldn’t risk killing the man.  But he could certainly wound him.  He threw the knife and it embedded itself in the man’s leg.  He screamed and as he fell backwards Kapono freed his gun and fired.  Jeremiah could see the body jerk as it fell.

             
“Don’t move,” Kapono warned, training his gun, presumably on the other man.

             
Jeremiah stood and crossed over to the doorway.  The diver was dead, shot through the head.  The second man stood a few feet back, hands in the air, a look of terror on his face.  The clothes of both marked them as being members of the U.S. navy.  Kapono had just shot a military man.  There was going to be hell to pay over that one and Jeremiah was exceedingly glad that it had been Kapono who killed the man and not Jeremiah.

             
“How badly are you hit?” he asked Kapono softly.

             
“Not badly enough that I’ll miss killing this scum if he moves,” Kapono said, voice grim.

             
Jeremiah leaned down and offered Kapono his hand, careful not to take his eyes off of the other man.

             
“I’ll get myself up.  Go check him for weapons,” Kapono said.

             
Jeremiah moved forward and swiftly patted down the man.  The last name embroidered on his uniform was Erickson.  He had a handgun and a Swiss army knife on him which Jeremiah tossed back toward Kapono.

             
He glanced back and saw the detective getting to his feet.  There was blood soaking his left shoulder.  He tossed Jeremiah his handcuffs and Jeremiah cuffed the man, making sure he did it tight.

             
“That’s too tight,” Erickson protested.  “You’re cutting off my circulation.”

             
Jeremiah didn’t say a word.  He had cuffed the man tight enough that it was highly unlikely he would be able to escape even if he did break his thumbs in an attempt to get free.  He pushed Erickson down to a kneeling position, making sure he got a good eyeful of his dead buddy.

             
He glanced over at Kapono.  He was pale and swaying slightly on his feet. 

             
“Better call it in, and then sit down before you fall down,” Jeremiah advised.

             
“Good idea,” Kapono grunted.  He took out his phone, called for an ambulance and back-up.

             
Jeremiah walked quickly over.  He ripped the right sleeve off Kapono’s shirt, wadded it into a ball and pressed it against the wound to help stop the bleeding.

             
“He just winged me,” the detective grunted.

             
“Yeah, but I think it’s more than a scratch.”

             
Kapono took over the job of putting pressure on the wound.

             
“You’re going to be okay until the ambulance gets here?”

             
“Yeah, why you ask?” Kapono asked, his accent slightly thicker.

             
Jeremiah didn’t say anything.  He turned and moved back to Erickson.  The man looked up at him, apprehension in his eyes.  Of the two men he had been the more cautious.  Jeremiah leaned down so he was eye-to-eye with him.

             
“Tell me where Cindy is,” he growled.

             
“Who?”

             
“I don’t have time for this,” Jeremiah, said backhanding the man.

             
The blow wasn’t strong, just enough to really rattle him.

             
“Hey, you can’t do that!” Erickson sputtered.

             
“And who’s going to stop me?  Who
could
stop me?” Jeremiah demanded, lowering his voice.

             
“I don’t know any Cindy.”

             
“Sure you do.  She’s the woman who found Uncle’s body here the other day.  She also spotted you and your buddy dumping drugs into the harbor on Saturday.”

             
“Sat-Saturday.  We weren’t in port on Saturday.  I wasn’t here.”

             
Jeremiah could read truth in the man’s eyes.

             
“Tell me about this drug ring you’ve got going,” Jeremiah said.

             
Blood was trickling at the side of Erickson’s mouth where Jeremiah had struck him.

             
“Look, I know my rights-”

             
“You gave up all your rights when you became involved in all of this, when you came here and when you shot my friend over there.  Now, the police will be here in a few minutes and I’m sure they’d be willing to cut you a deal.  Accessory to attempted murder of an officer won’t make you a popular man.  I’m not interested in any of that, though, and mark my words, if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I will kill you before they get here.”

             
Erickson licked his lips and nodded slowly.  “Look, I don’t know much.  We pick up the drugs, smuggle them back here, and then dump them in the harbor when we’re in port.  Someone else picks them up.  That’s all I know.”

             
“Who is working with you?”

             
He gestured with his head to the dead man.  “Daniels there.  He brought me in.  I never met anyone else.  And he never said any names.  He gave me my cut of the money after the job was done.”

             
Just their luck Kapono had killed the man with the information.  Jeremiah ground his teeth in frustration.  “You don’t have any clue who the guys who bring the drugs up are?”

             
Erickson shook his head.  “They’re not military, that’s all I know.”

             
“Any chance they were bringing up a shipment last Saturday?”