Zero Island (Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners Book 2) by Chris Bauer (mobi ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Evan surveyed Miya’s kitchen as if just now remembering where he was. His dark face got puffy again. “I already feel like I don’t belong here anymore…”

“Mr. Logan sure does get around, doesn’t he?” Philo said, opting for redirection. “A pain in the ass during my SEAL training. Him and his rules, his protectionism. No profanity in his presence. Ultra-Christian, always walking the straight and narrow. I can’t see him being nice to any non-Hawaiian without a long courting process. And yet he matched you two up. You passed muster. You need to feel good about that, Evan.”

“He likes me, likes the U.S. Navy. The federal government, not so much. And he most definitely loved Miya. He’s good to people of color; the marginalized. And he loves everyone and everything associated with that pristine island of his.”

“Miakamii? So she was a native?”

“Yes. The clock stopped on Miakamii sometime mid-nineteenth century, Mr. Logan still living up to his family’s end of the bargain from when they bought it generations ago. Miya’s grandparents, parents, brothers, and Miya herself, they all decided to emigrate when she was a teenager, and they all now live here, on Kauai.” He paused, corrected himself. “All of them, but now, one less.”

Philo watched Evan’s jaw tighten, saw a scowl forming, his unblinking eyes glazing over. Evan needed to be relieved of his empty beer bottle before he did something stupid with it. Philo drained his own, put his hand out. “You want another one?” he asked his host.

“Yeah.”

New bottles in hand, long pulls at them followed. Philo continued to probe, Evan answering questions about Miya’s research.

“It took on new emphasis when her husband died, she told me. Her background, her husband’s death from it, somehow made her uniquely qualified to run her team. She and two other research doctors, always on a mission. But you gotta love them—her—for it. I, ah”—a swipe at his eyes—“I adored that woman, Philo.” Another swipe, another deep sigh, then a return to the task at hand. “How do you think your teammate’s doing?”

“Patrick knows where we are. Let’s let him stay on task.” A new redirect. “I appreciate you getting clearance for our island visit. It could mean a lot for him. Life-changing, maybe.”

“Sure.” An auto-response, Evan’s eyes down again, a reflective moment. “The Logan family and the Navy… they go back eighty years. Back to the beginning of dubya-dubya-two before, you know, the siege. But you knew all that.”

Yes, Philo did know. The Miakamii Siege. A great moment in American patriotism, but it was also accepted in part as a catalyst for the U.S.’s abysmal handling of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. A difficult time in U.S. history…

December 7, 1941, in the channel between Miakamii and Kauai.

Tamenani “Tom” Imakila snorkeled for spiny lobsters from his skiff. He heard, didn’t see, the airplane with its failing engine out in the distance, in gray clouds to the east, hanging heavy over the Hanakawii Channel. He’d seen a number of planes overhead over the years, just wasn’t used to hearing any engines buzz this close to his island, and worse yet, this close to him. The clouds finally spat the aircraft out, the engine sputtering with smoke that trailed from underneath the fuselage and one wing. It had to land somewhere or it was going to ditch in the channel…

Whirrr (cough)…

Whirrr, whirrr (cough)…

Still airborne it coasted toward his skiff, moving west but way too low, staying parallel to the surf. It reached the beach before the engine gave out, the plane gliding above the island’s scrub flora lining the dust field behind the sand. It skipped across the treetops, severing one wing, which spun the plane in circles until it crash-landed on its belly tail-first in a clearing.

Tom didn’t know much about airplanes, didn’t know much about anything that went on around the rest of the islands in real time, or elsewhere, but he did know what this aircraft was: a Japanese Zero that had sputtered so close to his head he could have reached up and rubbed its emblem. He rowed ashore and hoofed his way through the break in the tree line, into the clearing.

Three-quarters of the aircraft sat intact and horizontal on its fuselage, one wing missing, smoke rising from underneath, the severed landing gear somewhere in the trees.

Tom picked up a large rock, tucked it into the crook of his arm, and climbed onto the wing. He lumbered up to the glass-enclosed cockpit, got eye-level with the unconscious pilot. The pilot’s head was slumped forward, visible in the smoke-filled cabin.

Tom muscled the rock overhead in both hands.

He brought it down hard, as hard as he did on spider crab shells. Crunch. The first blow sent spindly cracks across the cockpit glass that blurred his view of the pilot, but it didn’t breach the plane’s interior. The second and third blows did, cracking open the compromised glass, the pilot fully visible again and now within arm’s reach—a Japanese man in goggles, leather helmet, jacket, gloves, and a white aviator scarf turning crimson around his neck.

Tom reached in, grabbed the pilot’s handgun loose in his lap, and tossed it out of the cockpit, where it landed in the scrub grass. Smoke now wafted from the interior, was met with smoke rising from under the fuselage. Blood trailed down the pilot’s face from his scalp to meet the blood coming from his nose and mouth, the pilot still slumped while Tom punched out more of the cockpit glass with his bare hands, had to hurry, the smoke getting thicker inside and out. He unclasped the unconscious man’s harness and fit his arms under his shoulders. He lifted and dragged, and a few grunts later Tom lay on the wing, the bleeding pilot draped across his lap. He lowered him to the ground and hopped down. Flames flared from beneath the fuselage, rose quickly into the cockpit, lighting it up like a