Twisted Vine by Toby Neal Read Free Book Online

smile, wishing her dimple worked as well as Marcella’s.
    Ching pushed off the wall abruptly. “Might as well air this place out.”
    He punched the button on the wall and the garage door rumbled up. Lei opened her mouth to protest but spotted Fukushima’s van pulling up at the end of the driveway, breaking up the cluster of lookie-loos craning their necks at the end of the driveway.
    She turned away. The air did feel a lot fresher with the door open, and what did she care if there were a few gawking neighbors?
    Ching stomped off.
    Lei looked at the driver’s side door. An ashy-looking drift of fingerprint dust decorated the ground beneath the door, but there was nothing on the handle. Odd. The dead person should have left a lot of prints. “Ken, do you know anything about the victim?”
    “Alfred Shimaoka. Aged fifty-nine, an architect. This is his house. He’s Japanese and single.”
    “Who found the body?”
    “Neighbor. Heard Shimaoka’s dog barking inside, and he’s religious about walking it, according to what the neighbor told Ching. She peeked through the glass in the garage door and saw him. The SUV had run out of gas and turned off, so she thought he’d passed out or something until she approached the car.”
    “That must have been a shock.” Lei heard a far-off yapping. “Did anyone deal with the dog?”
    “Couldn’t. House is locked.”
    Lei sighed. That would be next, as soon as they were able to leave the body to the medical examiner. She finally really looked at what was left of Alfred Shimaoka.
    Shimaoka’s skin was pale but patched with red in the lips and extremities, an effect of the carbon-monoxide poisoning. His head was tilted back, mouth ajar, and most interesting, his hands were resting upright on his thighs, the thumb and forefinger close to touching, in a Buddhist meditation pose. The slender Japanese man, beginning to swell as decomposition began, was dressed neatly in a muted aloha shirt and chinos. Other than the strange coloration of his skin, he looked peaceful.
    Ken pointed his penlight at a square of white paper propped up against the gearshift. “Can you bag that?”
    “Sure.” Lei took out another evidence bag and picked up the paper carefully, leaning past the dead man to retrieve it. The fruity smell of decomp, faint but powerful, rose from the corpse. “If Corby’s prints are on that tape, he’s got to be dead at least two days.”
    Ken had his camera out and shot the scene. “Just what I was thinking.”
    Fukushima appeared, the gurney’s clattering wheels, pushed by her assistant, announcing their arrival. “What have we got?”
    Ken told her, while Lei read the suicide note. It was written in beautiful calligraphic script on a translucent square of the paper used to make lanterns.
    Dear friends. I have no family to shame with this choice to avoid my last months of suffering. I have pancreatic cancer, as many of you know, and I’m ready to go now—not in another three months when the doctors say I will. Please accept that I chose not to burden anyone with my end-of-life care and recognize my right to choose how to die. 
    And to my friend Soga, I finished my lanterns. Please light one for me at the Floating Lantern Ceremony.
    Alfred Shimaoka
    Lei felt her heart do a little flip as she looked back at the row of lanterns. Chances were very good the Soga he referred to was her grandfather Soga Matsumoto, whose home was mere blocks away. Her grandfather also volunteered at the Shinnyo temple, helping to build and repair the beautiful lanterns lit annually and floated out to sea in Waikiki on Memorial Day.
    She slid the paper into the evidence bag without comment, sealing and marking it, as Ken and Fukushima continued their conferring and Ken took more pictures, circling around to her side and shooting the body from every possible angle.
    “We’re going to want to go over this vehicle inch by inch,” Ken said. “If there’s anything else Corby left, we need