Zero Island (Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners Book 2) Chris Bauer (free reads TXT) 📖

home state? For business and for pleasure. I’m interested in purchasing a local cottage industry.”

“Yes. The Miakamii shell lei business,” the detective said. “Douglas Logan told us. But you want more than the business. You want the island.”

Wally’s attorney leaned forward to interrupt. “What does this line of questioning have to do—”

“It’s okay, Amos. You’re spot on, Detective. The island’s stewardship has suffered of late. But Mr. Logan wants to sell none of it. Does not see the merit of returning the island to indigenous owners. Not the island or the business. With the right pricing, I hope I can change his mind.”

“Or the right intimidation,” the detective said. He shuffled through a pile of photos, set two aside, then slid them across the table in front of Wally. “Mr. Logan’s helicopter, in pieces on the island. Here’s Mr. Logan’s pilot. His throat was cut.”

“So everybody heard.”

“Yes. Big news.” Detective Ujikawa stood, arrived at Wally’s side. “Like these other incidents were, too.”

He placed a crime scene photo atop those of the helicopter carnage. In it a naked woman lay in a bathtub on a bed of dry ice, her chest flayed open, the dry ice surrounding her. The next photo showed the body of a Hawaiian man sliced open stem to stern who, according to bystanders, had been in a rolled-up blanket pushed out of a car onto the asphalt. What followed were more photos of the two respective crime scenes, horrific images with staying power, the detective dropping one after another onto the table, under Wally’s nose.

“The woman was a middle-aged research doctor, lived near the Navy base. The man was a young street performer, his body left in front of a restaurant. All three murders are only days old. And now, a new one. A fresh female body in Pakala Village. From yesterday.”

Another bathtub picture, the young woman gutted, more dry ice in the tub with her. Wally registered the appropriate amount of disgust as he viewed the photos. Honest reactions, maybe even a grimace, considering he’d never been anywhere near these victims or events.

“You seeing a trend here, Mr. Lanakai?”

“All the victims are Hawaiian. Excluding the pilot, someone or thing appears to have been interested in their internal organs. This is pure barbarism. Savage attacks…”

“Planned savage attacks. So here’s what we’re struggling with, and why we have you here. You want to buy Miakamii, take it off the Logan family’s hands. The owner says he’s not interested. Out of the blue, the owner’s tourist copter pilot is murdered in flight, the copter crashes, his tourism business crippled.”

“I had nothing to do with—”

“You return to the islands, and the bodies start piling up—”

“I’m not involved, Detective. Ex-cons might be first in line as suspects, but that’s too convenient a circumstance, don’t you think?”

“… and your borderline unethical business practices on the mainland look like they’ve found their way here, Lanakai, along with you. You know something about all this, damn it!”

The detective’s fist pound rattled the coffee cups and spilled an open water bottle. Wally didn’t flinch; the water and coffee rivered together, running off the table edge.

“Are you finished here, Detective?” Wally said. “Because I am. Like I said, not me. If anything, I’m as interested in whoever is doing this as you are, bad as it’s making me look. If this is all, I think I’ll be going—”

The door to the interrogation room opened. A surprise guest.

Douglas Logan pushed through, a uniformed cop chattering at him from behind, about to try to wrestle him into cuffs for ignoring her.

“They said I could find you all here. I need to clear something up, Chief.”

Chief Koo rose. “Officer.” He eyed the cop. “The cuffs won’t be necessary. Douglas, you can’t be in here. Let’s go, we can speak in my office.”

“It will only take a second. It involves him.” The river of spilled liquid drip-drip-dripped off the table. “Lanakai’s not the problem. There’s someone else.”

Direct eye contact, Douglas Logan to Wally. Still no love lost on Douglas Logan’s face, but there was also no contempt.

“Lord knows how I struggle reconciling his history, Terry, but he told me to my face that he wasn’t involved in Chester’s murder, and that he wants to help find out who was, and I believe him.”

“I appreciate the feedback, Douglas,” Chief Koo said. “Now give me a name. Who?”

“No one person. A group.”

“And that would be…?”

“The Yakuza.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Wally could see the ticket tucked under the limo’s windshield wiper as soon as he exited the police building and was now one pissed-off parallel parker. His attorney matched him stride for stride as they bore down on the car.

“Don’t say a fucking word, Amos.”

Wally was ready to strangle his driver for letting this happen, but the driver was MIA, only now approaching from a few storefronts away, a pack of cigarettes in his hand, exasperated and just as surprised. “Boss, sorry, thought I could step away—”

Wally snarled at him—“You had one fucking job, damn it”—and ripped the paper from under the wiper, was going to shred it. Except it wasn’t a parking ticket, it was a typed note on a small piece of white paper, which he read, but not aloud:

Airport locker #46. Blood type A. You’ll make it work. — Y.

Included were one- and two-digit numbers with dashes in between. The lock’s combination.

Another gift, same anonymous benefactor. His first thought, I’m gonna kill this smug bastard, faded into his second, that the grotesque, savage photos he’d just seen during his precinct visit may well have been of the previous owner of the organs he expected to find in the locker.

He shoved the note into his lawyer’s chest, yelled to his driver. “Get in. We’re going to the airport.”

Inside the limo Wally seethed while on the phone with Magpie. “Another gift arrived from my secret admirer. Drop what you’re doing and get a hold of one of our surgeons to see if we can put it in play. Then here’s what