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  “I’ll put the money in an escrow account under your name with a provision that says the funds will be released to you on a certain date. If the deed is done by then, the funds get released. If it’s not, I can cancel the release. But the money will be in your name.”

  Tate blew out a puff of smoke into Richard’s face, causing him to cough again.

  “A hundred K, just for her?”

  “Yup.”

  He looked to Hiapo, who didn’t move or speak.

  “All right, little man. You got yourself a deal.”

  Driving home, Richard thought he should have felt some sort of elation, maybe relief that things were in motion. But nothing came to him—nothing but a gray heaviness in his gut, as if he’d just eaten a large meal that didn’t agree with him.

  He thought back to their wedding. Sharon looked so beautiful in her backless dress that he’d kept asking himself how a guy like him could land a girl like her. The first few years had been great. Lots of conversations and trips. Their first and only child. Eliza had been born on a Friday. He remembered that because he’d missed his favorite show at the time, Battlestar Galactica, to be at the hospital.

  When he arrived home, he ambled through the door. “Hello?”

  No one responded. Eliza should have been home, but she’d probably left with her friends. Richard didn’t blame her. He would probably want to be somewhere else if he were a teenage girl.

  After taking the stairs two at a time, he found Sharon sitting at the mirror in their bedroom. She was applying makeup, and her hair was still wet from a shower. He stood by the door, watching her. His heart hurt. When he saw her, he saw the woman in the wedding dress. But when she saw him, she saw something else. And he didn’t know what.

  “Do you want me to pick something up for dinner?” he asked.

  “No, I’m going out.”

  “Where?”

  “With the girls. I won’t be back tonight.”

  He hesitated. “To another swingers’ party?”

  “Swinger is such an antiquated word, Richard. Can you not be such a dork for even a second?”

  He looked down at the floor. For a long time, neither of them spoke. “There was a time when you loved me. I remember it. I remember your face would light up when I walked into a room. What happened to that girl, Shar?”

  She stopped applying her makeup for a moment. A temporary hesitation. “She grew up.”

  “Do you not care how much it hurts me?”

  “So get a divorce. Oh, wait. You won’t do that, will you? Because you’ll lose all of this. All the money and the cars and the houses. That’s all you married me for anyway.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it, damn it. I loved you.”

  “Get over yourself, Richard.”

  “Can you just… I mean, our daughter lives here. Can you not bring those men here like that?”

  “It’s my house. I’ll do whatever I damn well please.”

  She rose, and her robe flapped open. She was wearing nothing underneath. She saw him look at her breasts, and she closed it again.

  “Really?” he said. “You flash your tits to any stranger that gives you a smile, but you close your robe to your husband? Why don’t you just divorce me?”

  “Because for some fucking reason Daddy thinks we need to be a family for his granddaughter. That’s all he ever talks about. His granddaughter. And what Daddy says goes. At least until the old fucker dies.”

  The massive walk-in closet was full of clothing from top to bottom. Richard watched Sharon get dressed. She wore tight leather pants and knee-high boots. Her top accentuated her breasts and exposed her muscular arms.

  Richard sighed. “Do you love us at all anymore? Does your husband or daughter mean anything to you, Sharon?”

  “Make sure she doesn’t miss school tomorrow. She’s going to get kicked out if she gets any more absences.” She brushed past him. And with that, she was gone.

  Richard’s heavy gray feeling was replaced by something else: certainty. And it felt good. For once, in as long as he could remember, he felt certain about something.

  4

  Stanton finished his paperwork early so that he could make his appointment. As he was heading out of the bullpen, Kai ambled out and stopped him.

  “Want you to meet someone,” he said.

  Stanton had met Kai when they both started as uniforms with the San Diego Police Department. A former Chargers linebacker who’d blown out his knee, Kai had been huge even back then. Stanton had felt an instant kinship with him, and Kai was the one who had convinced him to move to Hawaii.

  Stanton tried to show him the formality and respect due his captain, but that was difficult since he and Stanton had come up and learned the streets together. He saw Kai as an equal, and Stanton wondered if he would be in a higher position right now if he’d played the political game better.

  A skinny woman was sitting in front of Kai’s desk. She was native, brown with black, silky hair that came down to her shoulders. Her sleeveless shirt revealed arms covered with tattoos from wrists to shoulders, depicting intricate dragons and native warriors in fierce poses.

  She smiled at Stanton, rose, and shook his hand.

  “This is Laka Alemea. She’s gonna be your new partner.”

  Stanton looked at Kai then back at Laka. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  “You, too. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Stanton grinned. “All good, I hope. Can I talk to you for a sec, Kai?”

  Kai followed him out of the office, leaving Laka staring at the certificates on his walls.

  “You know I don’t work with a partner,” Stanton said.

  “I know. Lone wolf and all. But you need a partner, man. You all alone out there. And I think she’ll be good for you.” Kai glanced at her then turned back to Stanton. “And she’s cute, ain’t she? She’s also my niece.”

  “That’s your niece?”

  “What? She too good-lookin’ to be related to me?”

  “Well… yeah.”

  Kai shook his head. “That’s what I get for doin’ somethin’ nice for you. She’s your partner. I see you here late every night. No one to go home to. You need this, bra. And she needs a good man and to stop dating those assholes she’s been dating.”

  Stanton watched the young woman. She wore almost no makeup. She was quite attractive. “Fine, a partner. Just probationary.”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  Stanton turned and headed out of the building. He looked back at Kai, who was grinning as he walked back to his office. Though Stanton couldn’t quite figure out why, Kai had always had a soft spot in his heart for him. He’d come up with twenty other officers and didn’t have any contact with them. He’d never asked any of them to move to Hawaii or offered them a job under him.

  The sun was hot as Stanton left the precinct and strolled to his Jeep. When he got in, he blared George Michael on his iPhone connected to the stereo and pulled onto the streets of Honolulu. The island felt completely different from San Diego. But it had an underbelly, like anywhere else. At night, the prostitutes came out to the tourist locations and downtown. Prostitution had existed in such a degree for so long because of the proximity of the naval bases that the police largely ignored it. When he drove the streets at night, he saw the girls, some as young as ten, selling themselves to men who came to the islands just for the prostitutes.

  Drugs, of course, were sold on about every corner and hotel bar, day or night. And again, the police largely ignored it when tourists were involved.

  Serial murder, though not as prominent in Oahu as in California, occurred more frequently than it should have, given Oahu’s smaller population. The island was sunshine and smiles during the day, but at night, it became a playground for indulging in darker desires.

  He drove to the medical center and parked in patient parking with a few minutes to spare. He finished the song he was listening to then went inside the building.

  Stanto
n sat in the third-floor waiting room for Dr. Natalia Vaquer, the third psychiatrist he had been to in his life. She had helped him through his failed engagement with Emma and both his sons moving away from him to live with their mother in Boston. Stanton had gone from having his family with him in paradise to being completely alone.

  The double doors leading back to her office opened, and Dr. Vaquer smiled at him.

  “Jon, good to see you. Come back, please.”

  Stanton followed her in and sat on the couch in the center of the room as she took a seat in a recliner. She pulled down her skirt and got out an iPad and a stylus to take notes.

  “They’re giving me a partner,” Stanton said, skipping the chit-chat.

  “Really? It was my understanding that you preferred to work alone.”

  “I did. I do. But my captain thinks it’ll be good for me to have a partner. He thinks I spend too much time alone.”

  “We’ve spoken often about your inclination toward solitude. Now that your sons have moved, do you still feel that inclination?”

  “I don’t know. Mathew, my oldest, is supposed to move out here. But he said that last year, too. I think he has a girlfriend he doesn’t want to leave. But sometimes, I really wish he would come out. Other times, I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “The line of work I’m in. That’s why they moved in the first place. That’s what ruined my marriage and then my engagement. Always the work.”

  “I’ve heard you use a term before that I wanted to speak about, Jon. Blood work. I heard you say that.”

  “Just a term homicide detectives use to describe murder.”

  “Does it ever affect you? Seeing all that blood and gore?”

  Stanton leaned back into the couch, a bit more at ease. “I didn’t think it did, but sometimes, I see parents let their teenagers go to the mall by themselves, and I wonder how they can possibly do it. It’s a perfectly normal thing, but the only thing I can think about when I see that is their body in a ditch or tied up in some basement.”

  “That can’t be very calming, to see only images of violence like that.”

  “I don’t know.” He paused. “I can’t really remember a time I didn’t think this way.”

  “Because of your sister?”

  Just the word sister brought up memories Stanton wanted buried. He’d seen victims bury everything from rape to the death of a loved one. But he couldn’t do it. His fifteen-year-old sister had disappeared from a movie theater in Seattle, where he grew up. No leads, no body—nothing. It had nearly destroyed his parents. For a long time, he’d thought his sister’s disappearance hadn’t affected him. But looking back on his life, his inability to form close relationships, his line of work… everything seemed to point to that single event.

  “Probably,” he said. “My father was distant, and my mother was passive. I didn’t interact much with them. My sister was who basically raised me. When she disappeared, I had no one. I’d see her places for years afterward. At a grocery store or the airport… I thought I was going crazy. It wasn’t until I turned eighteen that it stopped.”

  “What happened at eighteen?”

  “I don’t know. I guess you’d call it a walkabout or something. I was reading a lot of Conrad and Hemingway at the time. That idea of finding yourself and becoming a man. I left my parents and lived in a shack on the beach with twenty other lost kids. I bummed around Mexico for a while, parts of Central America. I thought about going to war, but it was one of the rare times in American history where we happened not to be at war.”

  She grinned. “I don’t see you in combat.”

  “No, I don’t think taking orders would have sat well with me. Neither would killing someone just because I was told to do it. In Vietnam, only about thirty percent of the soldiers actually fired their weapons with the intent to kill the enemy. Most were missing on purpose or closing their eyes. They didn’t want to be there and didn’t believe in the cause.”

  “Jon, I have never really mentioned anything about your doctorate in psychology, but one thing I have seen is a keen insight into everything and everyone, except yourself. You look at a murder scene and see things other people don’t. Events in history, which we’ve spoken about before, are the same way. I learn something just listening to you speak about them. But when it comes to you, Jon Stanton, and your own life, that perception seems to shut down. Why is that?”

  Stanton rubbed the edge of his finger. A bit of eczema, which he’d never had in his life, had appeared there. The dermatologist told him that either an irritant or stress had caused the inflammation.

  “Do you see a psychiatrist, Dr. Vaquer?”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “I know, but my point is that I bet you do. Almost all mental health professionals do. Have you ever asked why that is?”

  She nodded. “We all lack perception into ourselves.”

  “And that’s why we go into the mental health professions. To see if we can find that perception.”

  She shifted in her seat and wrote something on her iPad. “Have you thought any more about our conversation about leaving police work?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t do anything else. I was a mediocre professor, and I’d be an even worse therapist. Police work is the only thing I’m good at.”

  “Police work or blood work?”

  He didn’t say anything. Instead, he laid his head back on the couch and stared at the ceiling.

  When the session was over, Stanton was exhausted. He always was, even though he did nothing more than sit on a couch and answer questions. Stanton believed in different forms of energy, and mental energy was certainly one of the most powerful. The mental energy he expended every time he sat in Dr. Vaquer’s office was enormous. But it came with a reward. After most sessions, he hit the ocean.

  Oahu had some of the best surfing in the world, one of the main selling points for Stanton. Not half an hour from his house was the North Shore, one of the best surfing spots on the island.

  Stanton suited up. Rather than running home to grab his board, he decided to rent one, maybe something other his standard shortboard. The waves were so-so, and he thought a hybrid board would be better suited to catch a decent wave.

  The wetsuit, still damp from the day before, chilled his skin. He zipped it up and lay on the sand, keeping his eyes closed and absorbing the sunlight’s dull-red glow. The sun rejuvenated him, strengthened him. Whenever he felt like collapsing from exhaustion, whether mental or physical, the sunlight and the ocean kept him going. Wherever he was or whatever he was doing, he made time for the ocean.

  As he paddled out, he felt the coolness of the sea. The water tasted salty as it splashed up into his face. He let his fingers dangle a long time before each stroke, absorbing the calmness of the moment.

  When he was far enough out, he turned back to the shore and lightly rode the waves before unleashing a fury of paddling. Right at the cusp of letting the momentum tip him over, he flipped up with both feet then felt the stretch in his legs as he crouched. He cut to the left then spun the board into a vertical position. The wave was forgiving, guiding him through his movements. That was the key to surfing that took some people decades to learn: the surfer isn’t in charge. The ocean is. The surfer has to give in and work in harmony or be swallowed up like a speck of dust.

  Stanton surfed a solid hour before taking a break to get a drink. Tucked underneath his towel on the beach, his cell phone vibrated as he sat in the sand and sipped from a water bottle.

  He had a single text message from dispatch letting him know he’d caught a new homicide. As he rose to shower and dress, he remembered his new partner. Somehow, the burden of catching a new case seemed lighter. Someone else would be there, taking in the horror of the scene and splitting the work. He thought that maybe Kai understood him better than he understood himself.

  5

  The bar was about the shadiest place Richard Miller had ever been to. He stepped through th
e doorway and was immediately overwhelmed by the stench of marijuana, cigarettes, vomit, spilt alcohol, and Lord knew what else. He thought right then and there about turning around and heading home. His marriage wasn’t really so bad after all, was it? He could live with the infidelity… but the cruelty was something else. She wasn’t subtle about anything. He still loved her, but she loathed him.

  Tate Reynolds, Hiapo, and a new fella he hadn’t met before were sitting at a booth away from the other customers. Richard smiled and waved to them. None of them waved back.

  He strolled over, stopping a waitress to ask for a beer. He never drank beer, but he wanted to seem like one of the boys. Just an average Joe out for his nightcap.

  “Hi, guys,” he said.

  Tate sucked on a cigarette, his eyes narrow and rimmed with red as he stared up at Richard. The group was silent, so Richard helped himself to a seat. Tate passed the cigarette over to Hiapo, who took some puffs then gave it to the third man.

  “So,” Tate said, blowing out a puff of smoke into Richard’s face, “what do you got?”

  “Yoga,” Richard said.

  “Yoga?”

  “Yes, yoga. Three evenings a week, she goes to a yoga class. It’s in this, like, strip mall, I guess you’d call it. But not really a strip mall. It’s a little trendy place. There’s a Middle Eastern restaurant next to it. Lebanese. Their kabob is to die for. You really should try it if you’re ever out there. Um, where was I? Oh, and across the street is a gay shop.”

  “What the fuck is a gay shop?”

  “They have, like, gay sex toys and things. Right next to that is a coffee shop. Anyway, the reason I’m telling you all that is because the parking is terrible. All those stores are too close to each other. So you have to go to this back parking lot to access any of them. By the time she gets out of her yoga class, it’s dark. And there aren’t many people back there.”

  “She got mace or a gun or anything?”

  “No, she’s not like that. She grew up rich and doesn’t know what people are capable of. Nothing really bad’s ever happened to her. She won’t see you coming at all.”