Beside Still Waters (Psalm 23 Mysteries)

  “I’m sorry again.”

  “So, have you caught the person who killed Uncle yet?”

  “Excuse me?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  She grimaced. “Sorry, it’s just, clearly that’s been on my mind a lot.”

  “No, that’s okay. It’s understandable that you’d be curious and concerned. We don’t have anyone in custody yet, but we are following up on all leads.”

  “It’s just so terrible. Some nice old guy has a little restaurant business and then somebody does that to him.”

  Kapono chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Hearing you describe him as a nice old guy.”

  “I thought he was like an uncle to everyone.”

  “Oh yes, he certainly was. Uncle could always help you with your problems...for a price.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked, leaning forward intently.

  “Nothing,” he said, waving a hand dismissively.

  “It didn’t sound like nothing. Come on, I’m leaving the day after tomorrow and I’m going to have to live with those images the rest of my life.”

  He sobered. “I’m sorry that you’re trip to our island has been so tainted.”

  She took a deep breath, sensing that she could get him to talk if she went slow.

  “I’m sad too. I guess if I understood it more it would help me put it in perspective, not taint my entire image and all my memories of this place.”

  Inwardly Cindy winced. It sounded so contrived. But she deeply wanted to know what had happened to the restaurateur.

  “I’m not sure knowing any more would actually help you feel better,” he said with a sad grimace.

  She reached out and put a hand on his. “I know it would,” she urged.

  “Okay. We have drug problems here, same as anywhere on the mainland. Some small businesses, the occasional restaurant, owe ninety-percent of their business to the fact that they can help launder the money from illegal activities.”

  Cindy felt like her eyes must be bulging out of her head. “Really?”

  He nodded.

  “And Uncle’s was one of those places?”

  “We’ve suspected for some time that it was. He was staying in business somehow and trust me, it had nothing to do with the food. You’re lucky you didn’t get to eat there.”

  “But my taxi driver told me it was some of the best food on the island, insisted that I should go there after I visited Pearl Harbor.

  “What? Are you sure?” he asked, leaning forward abruptly as his eyes quickened with thought.

  “Yes. That’s the only reason I was there, the only way I found it. When he dropped me at Pearl Harbor he even showed me how to walk so I could get there.”

  A pad and a pen appeared as if by magic in Kapono’s hands. “I should have thought to wonder how you ended up there. It wasn’t exactly on the beaten path for tourists. In fact, Uncle was the kind who definitely didn’t encourage tourists to come to his place. More of a ‘locals only’ kind of guy. Do you know the name of the taxi driver?”

  “No, but it was a Wiki Taxi. Maybe they have a record of picking me up at my hotel yesterday morning.”

  “Maybe,” he said, hastily scribbling on his notepad. “Can you describe the driver?”

  Cindy did to the best of her abilities but was afraid from the look on Kapono’s face that she’d just described a third of the native population.

  “If we need to, do you think I could get you to work with a sketch artist tomorrow?”

  “Sure. I take it the driver is important?” she said, eager to know what he was thinking.

  “Could be. Makes no sense that he’d send you there, though. He didn’t say anything else, give you anything?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Cindy said. Her blood was beginning to quicken and she couldn’t help the thrill that flashed through her. Another mystery to solve.

  But, you’re going home, she reminded herself. This has nothing to do with you. Just let it go.

  But with the next breath she realized that she didn’t want to let it go. And then she remembered that she did have something. “Hold on, I forgot, but he gave me a business card.”

  “Great.”

  She fished in her purse and found the card. She handed it to him. He frowned as he studied it, turning it over.

  “This doesn’t look like a Wiki Taxi business card.”

  “He said if I needed anything he could take good care of me. Maybe he freelances on the side and his boss doesn’t know it?” she suggested.

  “Maybe. We’ll check it out.”

  When did I become this girl? she couldn’t help but wonder. Solving crimes was anything but safe. In fact, so far it had turned out to be far more dangerous than all the crazy stunts her brother pulled.

  “Excuse me for just a minute,” Kapono said.

  He stood and moved several yards away so he wouldn’t be overheard. She could see him talking on his phone and wished she knew how to read lips. A couple of minutes later he returned.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I have my partner tracking down your driver. Hopefully it will be the break we need.”

  “I hope so,” she said.

  He hesitated. “I’m sorry. This is awkward. I should never have asked you out. Normally I wouldn’t ask out a witness, but you’re a very attractive woman and given how soon you’re leaving the island I figured it was now or never.”

  She couldn’t help the smile that stretched across her face. He thought she was attractive. “Thank you.”

  “It’s my bad.”

  “No worries,” she said. “Look. We might as well finish dinner. If you want to bounce thoughts off me great. If not, that’s fine too. But apparently I can’t leave the island without trying monchong, so...”

  “Now that would truly be a crime.”

  “So monchong it is,” she said with a grin.

  “And while we wait you can tell me how your day today went,” he said, clearly trying to steer her off the murder.

  “I went on one of those snorkel cruises. It was crazy. A woman almost drowned because something was wrong with her flotation device.”

  His eyes again grew enormous. “I heard about that. You were on that boat?”

  “Yeah, one of the crew kept trying to convince me to go in the water, he even handed me that flotation device, but there was no way I was going in.”

  Kapono raised an eyebrow. “You went on a snorkel cruise not to snorkel.”

  She shrugged. “I wanted to go out on the water. I didn’t necessarily want to go in the water. And I got to see some dolphins, so that was cool.”

  “And had you gone in the water you would have been the one to almost drown.”

  “I guess so,” she said, a shiver running up her spine.

  Kapono wiped a hand across his face. “Do things like this happen to you at home or just here?”

  She hesitated. “Well, maybe a couple of things, but certainly usually not in this high a concentration.”

  He groaned. “So you come to the land of aloha for a nice vacation and instead you’re living a tourist’s nightmare.”

  She shrugged. “At least I got to meet some nice people.”

  “Like me?”

  “Yes, and the lady on the boat, she was quite sweet and a couple at the luau last night.”

  Kapono shook his head. “That’s messed up.”

  Cindy smiled. “Well, hopefully nothing will happen tonight but the eating of some amazing fish.”

  “Amen to that sistah,” he said.

  When the food came Cindy had to admit it was one of the most delicious things she had ever eaten. Kapono didn’t want to talk about the case and she had to grudgingly respect him for his professionalism. He talked about the island and its history instead and she listened, fascinated. She realized she definitely was going to just barely scratch the surface in her few days there and it made her want to come back and spend some real time getting to know the island and its peop
le.

  Her mind kept drifting back to the murder, though, and what he had told her about uncle. That ‘locals only’ comment reminded her of some of the ones she’d heard on the radio. It made her a little sad, but she still wanted to know who killed him. If what Kapono said was true, it was probably a drug dealer, someone Uncle did business with. She thought of the women in the foodcourt at the International Marketplace. They had been saying that Uncle was mixed up with bad people. Apparently they were right.

  At the end of the evening Kapono drove her back to her hotel and said goodnight. She waved as he drove off.

  She headed up the escalator to the lobby and from there got on the elevator. She couldn’t help but think about what she had learned about Uncle as she exited and walked to her room.

  You’re leaving in thirty-six hours. You don’t have time to get involved any more than you already are, she told herself sternly.

  Cindy walked into her room and stopped. Something was very wrong. She spun around and reached for the door. A hand clamped over her mouth, pressing a rag with a foul-smelling liquid to her face.

  The world swam in front of her and then everything went black.

  6

  Mark sighed as he parked in his driveway. It had been a long, frustrating day. The high point had turned out to be his meeting with Jeremiah. Things had just gone downhill from there. He had tried again unsuccessfully to interview some of Paul’s family members and then done a dozen of the errands Traci seemed to have for him to do now that he had more free time on his hands.

  The day had ended with a retirement party for one of his friends on the force. Despite his misgivings he had been talked into attending. Words like “show them you’re not ashamed” and “remind people that you’re around” had been thrown at him to get him to go.

  And fifteen minutes into the party he wished he hadn’t reminded people that he was still around. Cops who screwed up like he had became like lepers. No one wanted to get near them for fear that the bad behavior and subsequent department trouble were catching.

  Still he had sat through the whole thing, gritting his teeth even as he tried to smile at his colleagues as though he hadn’t heard what they were saying about him. They could have at least had the courtesy to gossip out of his earshot. But where would have been the fun in that.

  He walked into the house, not bothering to turn on the lights. He had told Traci not to wait up for him.

  The light in the bedroom was on and he trudged toward it wearily, struggling to find a smile for her sake. From the look on her face when he came into the room he gathered he’d managed to form more of a grimace than a smile.

  “Rough day?” she asked.

  And even those two little words killed him a little. Whenever he’d drug himself home in bad shape before she’d always asked: Rough day at work?

  But now the last two words were gone. There was no more at work because there was no work. They had enough in savings to float them for a couple of more months but that wasn’t what bothered him. What bothered him was the one more tiny reminder that he had screwed up and because of it he had no work to go to.

  He hadn’t expected the department to dangle the carrot of possibly bringing him back into the fold. Frankly, he’d expected to be in jail by now. Nights like this, though, the carrot seemed more taunt than promise.

  “Yeah, rough day,” he said finally as he kicked off his shoes.

  “Did the rabbi agree to do it?” Traci asked.

  Mark nodded.

  “Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it?”

  He sat down on the bed. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, eyes filled with concern.

  “He’s going to make me work for it. And he’s going to push me harder than I want to be pushed.”

  She bit her lip. She always did that when she was debating whether or not to say something.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Maybe it will be good for you.”

  Mark sighed. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  He was hard enough on himself every day without having to talk about it with someone else, feel their judgment and condemnation.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

  He wanted to believe her so badly. He wanted, needed, everything to be okay again.

  She began rubbing his shoulders and he sighed and closed his eyes.

  ~

  The world was spinning, rocking, and Cindy’s stomach clenched. As she started to come awake she could hear a droning noise as well.

  What’s happened to me? she wondered, trying to force her eyes open.

  Total darkness greeted her. She blinked rapidly several times but even though she could feel that her eyes were opening only darkness remained.

  Panic surged through her and she tried to sit up only to realize she couldn’t. She struggled to grasp what was happening. She was blind and she couldn’t move. Had she been in some terrible accident?

  Then the rest of her senses kicked in. She could feel something coarse in her mouth which she couldn’t spit out. Her hands were behind her back and she could feel something hard digging into them. When she touched them together she could hear the clink of metal. Something scratchy was binding her legs together.

  Handcuffed, gagged, blindfolded. With a rush she remembered the rag that had been clamped over her mouth when she’d walked into her hotel room.

  I’ve been kidnapped.

  Fresh terror gripped her. Her stomach churned and she thought she was going to be sick. The motion she had felt earlier was real. She could smell gasoline mixed with the salty smell of the ocean.

  I must be on a boat.

  Which meant that no one would have any idea where to look for her.

  She thrashed about, kicking out at anything and everything. She heard a few dull thuds and then a sharp pain stabbed through her wrists. She stopped moving. Her heart was hammering and she struggled to get as much air as she could. Her lungs were burning from lack of oxygen which sent fresh waves of panic through her.

  Her wrists were throbbing and she prayed she hadn’t broken anything a moment after praying that she would be found and rescued. She lay still, trying to regain her wits as her body calmed down.

  She was on a boat, but where? And who had kidnapped her? Faces flashed through her mind: Al, her taxi driver, Kapono. What could any one of them possibly want from her? She couldn’t help but wonder if her being kidnapped was somehow related to the murder of Uncle.

  She wanted to scream that she didn’t know anything, she was just a tourist. The best she could make out around the gag was a garbled sob. Tears stung her eyes and she fiercely tried to push them away. She had to keep calm if she wanted to survive this.

  That was going to be easier said than done though. Especially since she was gagged and getting seasick. She lay still, trying to listen to see if she could hear anyone talking. There was only the sound of the boat’s engine, though.

  She wondered how long she had been unconscious. Her feet were tingling like they were falling asleep and she struggled to move them.

  After what seemed like forever the sound of the engine changed and the motion of the boat seemed to slow. A moment later it began to rock harder. They had to be stopping.

  Every muscle in her body tensed. Soon she would be face-to-face with her kidnappers. She wished she knew how to escape from her restraints or fight back. Instead she lay there, helpless, waiting for them to come for her.

  The boat stopped moving and the engine powered down. After a moment she heard heavy footsteps and then a shout. Were they in port?

  Then she heard two men speaking. One was very soft spoken and the other louder.

  “...problem...”

  “What did you do about it?”

  The other man answered, but she couldn’t make out his words. She strained to listen, hoping to hear something that could help her.

  “What are you, stupid? Why’d you bring her here?”

&
nbsp; “...think she has...”

  “Then take it from her and get rid of her.”

  She jerked, smacking her head on something and she reeled for a moment, trying to keep herself from blacking out.

  “Get it done.”

  She heard footsteps fading away. A moment later she heard another set and they were coming close to her. The boat creaked and she heard the sound of a door opening.

  Someone was close by. She could hear them moving.

  “Okay, time to get down to business.”

  It was the man with the softer voice.

  A hand wrapped around her arm and she jumped and screamed. The sound was severely muted because of the gag. She thrashed around but his grip tightened and he pulled her along a rough floor, scratching her bare legs.

  He grabbed her other arm and hauled her to her feet. She swayed, still bound and unable to get her balance. He shoved her hard in the chest and she fell backward. She braced herself for the impact but was jarred when it came sooner than expected.

  She had landed in some kind of chair. Her handcuffed hands took the brunt of her weight and were crushed between her body and the chair. She could feel the steel biting into her skin even harder and something warm and sticky started running over her hands. Moments later she smelled the blood. Her stomach clenched harder and she was sure she was going to be sick.

  “Now, where is it?” the man demanded.

  Unable to speak around the gag she shook her head violently side-to-side. Where was what? What could he possibly be looking for?

  “I’m going to take off the gag, but if you try to scream again I’m going to slit your throat. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  Metal touched her cheek and she jerked back.

  Pain exploded across her cheek and she heard the ring of a slap. “Stupid wahine, sit still,” he barked.

  The metal touched her cheek again and slid between her skin and the cloth of the gag. There was the sound of ripping fabric and the gag came free. She spat it out of her mouth.

  “I don’t know what you want, please let me go!” she begged.

  “Don’t play games with me. I know you have it. Now you’re going to tell me where to find it.”