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

me, Birdy, I forget. How old is this car again?” The car was the reason Kaipo had found her so easily.

“A ’72. I’m not doing the math. It was my boyfriend’s. He used to race it on the street, and I used to watch. Now the closest I get to drag racing is watching my sanitation buddies race their street sweepers every once in a while. Kaipo, I gotta tell you”—Birdy’s smile was genuine—“it’s so good to see you. I never thought you’d come back from the mainland. At least not alive. How long are you in town?”

“Few days. Too long a story for here. First part of it is, you need to call me Aiata. Where can we talk?”

“We were a mess, weren’t we?” Birdy said.

Birdy’s place, a large camper, was twenty minutes from the landfill in an RV park on a steppe carved out of an inactive volcano’s base. Their fold-down kitchen table talk had commenced over iced tea. A distant horizon that fell away from the volcano shimmered outside the kitchen window like a desert mirage on a hot day. Kaipo’s name change and the reason for it came and went as a topic. Kaipo was now back at the beginning of their friendship.

“We were fresh off the island,” Kaipo said, reminiscing. “Shitty jobs. No friends on Kauai yet. No money. But we always had enough money for drugs, didn’t we? Which put us on our way to moving from one addiction statistic to another.” Kaipo quit the romanticizing, lifted her backpack to her lap. “I need to give you something, Birdy, and you need to pay attention to me on this.” She unzipped a side pocket. Some second-guessing crept in, suddenly freezing her hand inside the backpack.

“What is it?” Birdy asked. “What’s wrong?”

Kaipo tucked away her doubt, exhaled, knew this was necessary. “I need you to take this. I need you to not argue.”

She liberated the handgun. Same gun she’d handed Vena twenty-four hours ago, but hopefully this time it would result in a different outcome. A mini-pang of PTSD wrenched her stomach while she handled the semi-automatic. She placed it on the table between them, a bullet clip next to it.

“What the hell, Kaipo?”

Vena’s words, too.

“Those recent killings,” Kaipo said, struggling, “those mutilated bodies you’ve been hearing about—”

“Yeah. What about them?”

“Add to them one more gruesome murder yesterday, not in the news yet. Vena Akina, from the island.”

“What? Vena? Oh, Kaipo—”

Kaipo took her friend’s hands in hers, Birdy in tears, Kaipo fighting them. “The murders might have something to do with me, Birdy, but then again, they might not. I’m not sure yet. But what they do have in common is the victims are all from Miakamii. Islanders who moved to Kauai. So promise me this, Birdy. Promise me you’ll keep this gun within reach for the foreseeable future, for protection, and—”

Kaipo’s eyes and mouth moistened in anticipation of a good cry, with her nearly losing it relaying this information, this… admonition. Vena, my poor Vena…

“—confirm something for me, that you’re not entertaining undergoing surgery to donate a part of your liver or any other organs for money.”

“Wait, what? How did you know…?”

“Word of mouth, Birdy. Son of a bitch, I knew it. Listen carefully to me…”

Things were worse than she’d thought. Social media: the bane, or the salvation of this generation? Blessing or curse? Regardless, different platforms had picked up on this little get-flush-quick scheme that Ka Hui had going. Kaipo launched into her plea, told horrific tales of mutilated corpses and crime scenes she’d remediated with multiple dead organ donors.

She ended with, “… and selling any of your organs will bring you up close and personal with the people I used to work for. Organized crime, Birdy. Good money, yes, but from bad people. Too risky. If there are problems with the surgery, honey, you don’t get patched up, you don’t get to walk away.”

Two more glasses of iced tea sealed it. Birdy accepted the gun, the bullet clip, and Kaipo’s quick tutorial on how to load it, fire, and release the clip. Plus Kaipo’s advice about not risking her life on the operating table for cash.

A worthwhile visit. It was now sometime after eight p.m. A good time for Kaipo to go.

“When can we expect Aiata to get back to Kauai from wherever she’s been hanging out?” Birdy said from her front door. “So we can maybe have a medication-free girls’ night out?”

“Not anytime soon, Birdy, sorry,” Kaipo said. “And the less you know about my whereabouts, the better, hon. My ride’s here. Always know that I love you, homie. Always.”

Kaipo climbed into the back seat with her belongings, gave her Uber driver a different address than she’d arranged for the ride. “You okay with the change?” she asked him. It was a hotel and spa in Lihue.

“Yes, ma’am. Nice place, if I recall,” the driver said.

“If I recall, too,” she said under her breath. She watched Birdy through the rear window of the SUV, Birdy waving as they pulled away.

The visit to Birdy: overkill? Arming her, telling her what could be in store for her, talking her out of doing something as stupid as maybe walking into the lion’s den for some short-term cash infusion… no, not overkill.

They arrived at the hotel, her Uber parking at the guest drop-off in front of the lobby entrance. The French provincial, with rooms in the main building and elsewhere on the property, housed a massive two-story lobby. Another sugar plantation conversion. She paid the driver in cash, climbed out, and was met by a hotel doorman.

“Take your bag and backpack inside, ma’am?”

“Bag yes, the backpack I’m keeping.” She handed him a tip. “I’ll be inside in a minute.”

Her Uber left. Kaipo wandered to the end of the sidewalk, made a turn at the corner of the building, stopped. She eyed a separate building at the deepest end of the parking lot, one story, a bunkhouse in a former life. Guest VIP digs.