Black Jasmine (2012) by Toby Neal Read Free Book Online

disappearance of a passenger off the cruise ship in Kahului Harbor. The responding officer had almost immediately bumped it to the detectives since the passenger’s home address was Haiku.
    Lei was on the phone with the guest coordinator of the Rainbow Duchess when Pono returned, stone-faced. He didn’t boot up his computer, just picked up his lunch box and jacket and headed for the door. She let him go without comment.
    The passenger, one Robert Simmons, had been taking a honeymoon cruise with his new wife. They’d just returned to Kahului after a “great week at sea,” where they’d apparently been physically affectionate enough to have drawn the attention of other passengers—but when they went to leave the ship, the bride had been unable to locate the groom.
    Lei corroborated the details and made an appointment to see the ship’s staff and the wife first thing in the morning, then closed up the workstation. It was four p.m. by then; she had just enough time to swing by Kahului Station on her way home and question Silva about his hooker comment.
    She called Pono’s phone as she drove into town, but it went to voice mail.
    “Sorry about the black rooster, Pono. She’s a bitch, but the lieutenant had a point about where the birds will end up. Listen, meet me at the Rainbow Duchess dock tomorrow morning at eight; we have a missing passenger to follow up on. I’m interviewing one of the dudes we busted who said something about Jane Doe.”
    She folded the phone shut and slid it into her pocket.
    Lei had Silva brought out of the general holding cell and escorted to an interview room by Gerry Bunuelos, one of the detectives at Kahului Station. Bunuelos had agreed to sit in and assist. He escorted Silva in, clipping the man’s handcuffs to a ring on the bolted-down steel table.
    “Don’t know why I need all this.” Silva spread his hands wide. “I went to a cockfight. So what? I’m not a criminal.”
    Lei sat in the aluminum chair across from him and tried for good cop.
    “Standard procedure. Sorry, buddy.”
    “Well, my wife is on her way, so hurry up with this—whatever it is.”
    Good cop wasn’t a fit, Lei decided.
    “You said this girl was a hooker. Why?” She pushed the eight-by-ten glossy print of the girl’s face over.
    “I just said she looked like the type, with that fake red hair. Girl like that. . .” He shook his head.
    “Girl like that, what? Deserves what she got?” Lei felt heat roar up the back of her neck. “This girl was just that—a girl. She was a teenager. Whatever she was, she didn’t deserve to die like this.” She pushed a full-length, unretouched shot of Jane Doe’s mangled body over to Silva, who recoiled. “Take a good long look—buddy.”
    “Hey, man, I’m sure you didn’t mean any disrespect by that,” Bunuelos chimed in, picking up the good cop thread.
    “I didn’t. I didn’t!” Silva cried, looking ill as his eyes refused to look away from Jane Doe’s hamburgered midsection.
    “Guy like you has needs, right?”
    Silva’s head bobbed. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Then he seemed to realize what he was saying and shook his head. “No, no, I’m married. Happy married man.”
    “So you go to hookers now and again. You ever see her? Lahaina, maybe? She with a massage company or something?” Gerry sounded so sympathetic that Lei narrowed her eyes at him.
    “No. No needs. No hookers.” Silva seemed to be withdrawing into himself, still shaking his head.
    Lei smacked the photo with her open hand. The loud crack made him jump and look her in the eye. She kept his gaze with sheer willpower and meanness. “Tell me. I just want to find out who she is. You won’t be in trouble, I promise.” The velvet of her voice contrasted with an implicit threat.
    Silva rested his head on his cuffed hands, closed his eyes in surrender. “I saw her once. She was in a lineup.”
    “What do you mean, lineup?”
    “Like, when you pick a girl. For the night.” His voice was just