Motive ; One Last Day ; Going Viral Read online

  He opted to let it go. These men were just doing what they were told, summoned from their beds the same as he was. Any moral qualms he felt could be addressed upstairs in a few minutes time.

  “I’m sure there’ll be a lot more for me to see here, but right now I should head upstairs,” Tseng said, already taking a step back toward the corner of the makeshift space.

  Duke nodded, a look bordering on approval on his face. “I unlocked the mauka elevator for you. The front door to the office is open, they’ve been expecting you.”

  “Thank you,” Tseng said, glancing once more at the young girl before retreating back past the cloth and walking to the bank of elevators in the corner. The sounds of the night rushed back in around him as he went, dozens of questions fighting for top position in his mind.

  One at a time he dismissed each of them, focusing on the conversation he suspected waited for him on the fifth floor.

  The last thing he noticed before stepping into the elevator was his SUV still parked at the curb, its flashers almost begging him to climb back in and forget this night had ever happened.

  Using the automatic sensor on his key ring, he locked the doors and turned off the lights.

  Something told him this was not going to be a short conversation.

  Chapter Two

  Danilo Cruz could feel the warmth of the package as it balanced across his thighs. The thin black plastic did little to insulate it as the gelatinous material inside conformed to his legs.

  Every few moments he glanced down at it as he drove, making sure the bundle was still sealed tight. Once before, he had made the mistake of placing a similar package on the seat beside him, when a sudden application of the brakes sent it hurtling down onto the floorboards.

  It was a faux pas that would never be repeated.

  The importance of the project was too great to allow for such careless behavior.

  The late-night streets were almost deserted as he wound through them, the occasional streetlight punctuating the darkness. In the distance, the sounds of the highway could be heard growing faint, most of the island fast asleep.

  Towering palm trees lined the streets as he eased his Chevy Avalanche through the quiet neighborhood. The vehicle was a recent acquisition, a reward for his participation in the project. While not absolutely necessary to his work, he had made no objection when the offer was made, knowing better than to refuse his employer’s benevolence.

  The offer had been extended with little more than the batting of an eyelash, just one more part of the effort by all to see the task through to its completion.

  With 20,000 miles on it, the truck was old enough not to draw attention on the highway, new enough to pass unnoticed through the nicer neighborhoods of Honolulu. Despite the clock easing past 2:00 a.m., he could have just as easily made the trip 12 hours later and received no more attention.

  Not that any of that really mattered. For the son of a Filipino immigrant worker, he himself a gardener not long before, it was more an extreme point of pride.

  Danilo’s journey came to a stop at the darkened end of a cul-de-sac, heavy foliage lining the street on either side. He idled forward to a black wrought iron gate and nosed his truck just inches from it. Leaning out the driver’s side window, he pressed the red call button on the intercom, the box almost hidden among bushes.

  Just after pressing the button, the intercom cackled to life.

  “Yes?” a voice asked. The accent was unmistakably Asian, despite being a bit distorted over the line.

  Danilo glanced up at the cameras recording him and smirked. They knew who it was, but forced him to go through the motions every time anyway.

  “Special delivery for the doc,” Danilo said, sighing to voice his displeasure.

  The intercom cackled once more, but no words came out. Instead, the hum of the gate filtered through Danilo’s open window, the iron bars swinging to the side. He waited until it was no more than a few inches wider than his truck before moving through, eager to make his delivery and get far away.

  There was absolutely nothing on Earth that he was afraid of, but the place still gave him the creeps. His scalp began to itch as the truck rolled forward, his ears tuning in for every sound around him. In the background, the gate slid shut as he maneuvered a winding drive, wrapping his way through palm trees and koi ponds.

  The brick drive ended less than 100 yards from the gate at a building originally constructed to be a home. Mediterranean styled, it was white stucco with a red tile roof, the windows and doorways arched. Hibiscus and red ginger plants surrounded it, giving the air a fragrant hint as Danilo parked and stepped from the truck.

  With the package in his hands, he walked up to a side door and kicked at the base of it before taking a step back. A moment later, the door opened, and a man in his mid-20s appeared, looking Danilo up and down before stepping to the side. Despite the hour, he was dressed in a dark suit and matching shirt, his blue-black hair combed into place.

  “Doctor Saiki is in the basement. I told him you were coming.”

  There was no doubt it was the same voice Danilo had heard over the intercom a moment earlier.

  Without speaking, Danilo lowered his head in acknowledgement and stepped inside. It was not the first delivery he had made, his feet carrying him through the deserted first floor, past the fully furnished rooms that served only as decoys.

  To his knowledge, not once had the couches ever been sat on. He had never seen anybody use the kitchen.

  Down the main hallway, Danilo nudged open a door and took the stairs to the basement. As he descended, the temperature dropped considerably, the drywall and carpeting changing to stainless steel and tile.

  The warm and welcoming home above served as window dressing to a state-of-the-art basement laboratory. The first time Danilo was shown around, his jaw dropped at the sophisticated lab before him.

  Now, it didn’t even register.

  A glass wall separated the stairwell from the rest of the lab, a single door in the middle cased in steel. Danilo walked directly to it and pressed the air release with his elbow, the package still resting in his hands. The sound of air escaping filled his ears as the door popped forward an inch, his foot catching it and dragging it open so he could step through.

  “Mr. Cruz,” a familiar voice said as he entered, “how good of you to stop by.”

  The right corner of Danilo’s mouth turned up in a smirk. “Would you be saying that if I had arrived empty handed?”

  A thin man in a white coat turned from the table he was working at and laughed. “My friend, there’s no point in even considering such a thing. You’ve never once arrived empty handed.”

  He peeled off a pair of latex gloves and dropped them on the table, walking toward Danilo with a hint of a smile on his face.

  Dr. Yuto Saiki was a research scientist brought in specifically from Tokyo for the project several months before. Standing just a few inches over 5’ tall, he wore thick glasses beneath a thatch of black hair. His age was almost undetectable, save a few stray gray hairs, and smile lines developing around his mouth and eyes.

  Upon first meeting one another, a wariness existed between the two men that over time had ebbed away, both given to appreciate the way with which the other performed his tasks.

  While each possessed very different skills, both valued the efficiency his counterpart displayed.

  “What have you got for me tonight?” Saiki asked, rubbing his palms together in anticipation.

  Danilo nodded to an empty steel table to the right and asked, “Same place?”

  Saiki extended a hand and nodded. “Of course, of course.”

  With practiced movements, Danilo laid the makeshift bundle down and slid his hands away. He took a step back and waited as Saiki pulled on a fresh pair of gloves and took up a set of surgical shears.

  Saiki snipped a small cut into the sack and inserted one blade of the shears. In even clips, he extended the opening the length of the bag before peeli
ng back the plastic.

  The pungent aroma of blood and amniotic fluid seeped into the room as Saiki examined the specimen before him.

  Lying flat on its back was the lifeless form of a fetus, somewhere in the third trimester. There was no hair on its head, almost no visible way of determining gender, but there was no mistaking the miniature form as it lay unmoving.

  All four limbs were coated in bodily fluids, splotches of blue visible beneath its translucent skin. Heavy maroon streaks striped the figure, the result of blood starting to settle and pool.

  Lying on its stomach in a coiled heap, like a snake preparing to strike, was the umbilical cord, the entire thing intact.

  Danilo watched with partial detachment as Saiki examined the form, his mouth peeling back into a smile, his tongue running out over his bottom lip in anticipation.

  “Oh, yes,” Saiki muttered. “Yes, this will do nicely.”

  The scientist’s unnatural proclivity for the macabre was one of the few things Danilo genuinely hated about the man.

  Danilo waited another moment, watching the scene with his arms folded across his chest, his face twisted up in disdain. When it became too much to stomach any longer, he cleared his throat and asked, “So, we good here?”

  “Oh, yes,” Saiki said, bobbing his head for emphasis. “Yes, indeed. Thank you so much, Mr. Cruz.”

  The comment drew another eye-roll from Danilo. He dropped his arms to his sides and retreated a step, content to leave the good doctor behind to do his work.

  Despite the recent change in his job description, death and all the various trappings that came with it did nothing to rattle Danilo. Seeing a grown man revel in it like a child on Christmas morning, though, was quite another matter.

  “Alright,” Danilo said. “If you need any more, you know where to find me.”

  “Yes,” Saiki said, absent-mindedly, as Danilo turned for the door. His hand made it as far as the handle before the doctor called out to him, stopping him where he stood.

  “Actually, Mr. Cruz, I was hoping you could get me something a little different the next time,” Saiki said.

  The comment drew Danilo’s brow into a knot as he turned, waiting for the man to continue.

  Saiki pushed himself away from the table, walking a step or two forward, the shears back in his hand. “While this is quite wonderful,” he began, motioning to the fetus behind him, “it can be somewhat limiting.”

  The answer did nothing for Danilo’s look of uncertainty. “Okay?”

  “Teeth,” Saiki said, tossing the word out casually.

  “Teeth?” Danilo repeated.

  “Yes,” Saiki said. “A few dozen or so. No more than a couple children should be sufficient to get me started.”

  The look of confusion grew even more pronounced on Danilo’s face. “Children?”

  “Yes,” Saiki replied, adding a nod. “Somewhere between four and seven-years-old if possible. After they lose their baby teeth, they’re no longer of any use.”

  Unsure of where to even begin asking questions, Danilo shook his head and turned back for the door. It was late, and his body was beginning to come down off the adrenaline surge from earlier. He rubbed his hands over his face and nodded. “When do you need them?”

  “A few days?” Saiki asked.

  “That should be doable,” Danilo said, pushing his way through the air-locked door without waiting for a response.

  Chapter Three

  “This is bullshit! Bullshit!”

  The sound passed through the thick wooden door as if it weren’t even there. It was an angry, hostile voice that rolled out over the fifth floor of the state capitol, followed a moment later by the muffled sound of something being knocked to the ground.

  Walter Tseng paused outside the governor’s office and took a deep breath, letting his shoulders rise and fall with the effort. Already, he could feel the prickly sensation of heat and perspiration rising on his scalp, his body’s natural defense to what waited on the other side.

  With every instinct telling him not to, he raised his fist and rapped his knuckles against the door.

  “Get in here!” the same voice snapped.

  Tseng shook his head in disgust and entered, the floor-to-ceiling door heavy as he pressed his forearm against it. Light spilled out onto the darkened fifth floor as he went, throwing his shadow against the ground.

  Despite being the Chief of Police, it was only the third time Tseng had ever been inside the office. The first was a photo op with the newly-elected governor three years before, the kind of event where everybody smiles through gritted teeth and shakes hands a little harder than necessary.

  The standard round of dick-measuring exercises that politicians felt the need to perform as often as possible.

  The second time was a briefing about an outbreak of food poisoning in the local school system. The governor had handled the situation with as much disdain and boredom as possible, making it quite clear that it was nothing more than checking off a box in case somebody ever asked what he had done to help.

  What he really managed to do was earn the ire of Tseng and every other person in the room who wasn’t paid to kiss his ass. Still an underling at the time, Tseng wasn’t in a position to make his feelings known, but he made no attempt to hide them to anybody who asked.

  The office was exactly the same as Tseng remembered it. The carpet underfoot was thick, cream-colored, not a mark on it. A huge desk sat to the right, so large it resembled a conference table more than a workspace for a single man.

  Across from it was a pair of plush leather sofas, facing each other with a coffee table between them. Glass cases lined the outside of the room, all featuring relics of Native Hawaiian culture, ranging from baskets woven from Ti leaves to handheld weapons from centuries past, their wood polished to a gleam, blades made from razor-sharp shark’s teeth.

  Inside the room were four men, all standing, all staring back at Tseng. In the corner was another of Duke’s security detail, wearing sunglasses, his hands clasped in front of him. Approaching 6’ in height, he was a little thinner than the others downstairs, but no less imposing.

  To the far left stood Tim Hall, the governor’s Chief of Staff who had called Tseng 30 minutes earlier. He too was dressed in an aloha shirt and chinos, his thinning red hair combed straight back. Freckles dotted his thin arms and face, a veneer of sweat visible beneath the overhead lights.

  Despite being just over 40, he seemed to be trembling like a frightened child.

  In the middle of the room was Allen Wong, a man Tseng had met only once before but knew to be the governor’s Senior Policy Advisor. He stood with his hands thrust into the front pockets of his grey slacks, accentuating the stomach that protruded before him. His face was round and puffy, forcing his eyes into slits. Thick dark hair had streaks of gray just starting to show.

  He nodded to Tseng in recognition, the movement devoid of any emotion one way or another.

  Completing his sweep of the room, Tseng settled his gaze on the governor, alone behind his desk.

  Even if they had never met, two things would have immediately made it clear who he was as Tseng entered. The first was that while everybody else was dressed in work attire, the governor looked no more than two minutes removed from bed. A ragged bathrobe hung from his shoulders, swinging free over a pair of blue boxer shorts and a plain white t-shirt.

  The few remaining tufts of white hair he had stuck up in various directions above a pinched face with a pointed nose and chin. His cheeks glowed bright red, taking his usual ruddy complexion and enhancing it with a healthy dose of anger.

  The second indicator that he was The Honorable Governor Dwight Randle were the three portraits proclaiming as much staring down. As Tseng cast a quick glance about the room, he couldn’t help but notice they were in fact the only décor of any kind on the walls.

  Randle stood in silence, his breath coming in heavy pants. His desk chair was upside down on the floor beside him, the source of the
noise Tseng heard just before entering. “What took you so long?”

  The animosity Tseng felt for the man ratcheted up another notch, but he managed to swallow down the retort in his mind. He paused a beat before deciding to ignore the question and pose one of his own. “Who is she?”

  He positioned himself so he could see all three men in his peripheral vision, though it took only a moment to realize that wouldn’t be necessary. Hall’s gaze never left his shoes and while Wong made eye contact, it was apparent he had no intention of speaking.

  This was the governor’s show. They had just been called in to bear witness.

  “How the hell should I know?” Randle snapped. “Forty-five minutes ago, I was asleep. Now I’m standing here at 2:00 in the morning talking to you twits.”

  The itching sensation returned to Tseng’s skin, this time a product of animosity more than trepidation. Once more he forced back the anger fighting its way to the surface. “Why haven’t the police been called?”

  The governor made an exaggerated expression and waved his hand at Tseng. “They have been. Who the hell do you think you work for?”

  Moisture formed along Tseng’s lower back and across his lip. “I mean, why weren’t officers called to secure the area? Why isn’t a crime scene unit going over everything as we speak?”

  The governor looked at Tseng in disbelief before sighing and bending at the waist. With a low wheeze of exertion, he righted his desk chair and flopped himself down into it, his weight forcing it several inches across the floor.

  “Christ, you don’t know anything about politics, do you?”

  Tseng cast a glance to Hall before moving back to Randle. “Apparently I don’t, but I assume I was called here about a murder, not politics.”

  At the mention of the word murder, Randle winced. He extended a finger straight out at Tseng and said, “That’ll be enough of that, in this office or anywhere else. For all we know, that’s a suicide down there.”