Chapter 8 #2
“I’ve got a thought.” Keone moved to stand beside the map.
He’d been preoccupied since his brief kiss on my cheek and entry into the shack.
He traced the lines of the old cane road with one finger; I recognized signs that he was processing spatial information.
I’d seen him do that with flight routes, weather patterns, the physical logic of how things moved through space.
“If Chang’s people moved the panels via the old cane road, that means they’ll likely use it again.
” He glanced at Lei. “It stands to reason they’d have some kind of storage where they hold the stones and their extraction equipment.
Maybe Emerson is being held somewhere close to that. ”
“That would make sense,” Lei said, rubbing a small white bone hook between her thumb and fingers.
“If I had kidnapped an archaeologist and was using him to interpret findings—and keep him from completing an important assessment—I’d hold him close to where the work was.
” Keone pointed to an area on the map. “Three structures shown on this 1940s survey are within the cane road access zone. Two are decommissioned plantation outbuildings, likely in teardown condition by now, but one . . .” he tapped a spot on the map .
. . “is marked as an old water catchment facility. Off the main track. Nobody driving the cane road would go near it unless they knew it was there.”
Lei stared down at the map for a moment. Then she glanced around the room, her gaze fastening on Malia. “With your okay, I’m going to make a call to Hana PD,” she said. “Let’s take a team to check out this location. We have enough probable cause.”
Malia stood with enough force to knock over her folding chair. “Let’s do it.”
“I want to come,” I said.
“Me too,” Keone agreed.
Lei cocked her head. “What do you think, Malia? Should we let these two civilians attend and observe?”
“I think they’ve earned it, as long as they get that lawsuit started and that call to Sophie Smithson done,” Malia said.
“Should take us an hour or so to get the go-ahead from my commanding officer and round up our rapid response team.” She narrowed her sharp dark eyes at the two of us.
“Think you two can get that stuff done and be ready to follow us up to the old cane road in an hour?”
“You bet,” we said in unison, and glanced at each other in surprise as the others chuckled.
“Match made in heaven, these two,” Lei said. “Let’s roll out.”
The law enforcement women strode out of the shack; it felt empty without them.
I turned to Dr. Patel, who was typing rapidly, hunched over her laptop. “How’s that archaeology case summary coming along?”
“Almost done.”
“Let me give you an email address. You can send it directly to Edith Pepperwhite, Esq, and cc Malia Peahi and me on it.” I sent the info over to Dr. Patel’s phone once I had her contact added to mine.
“I’ll handle the phone call to Edith, while you reach out to Sophie,” Keone said. I nodded briskly, pulled out my phone, and stepped out onto the tiny porch to make my call to Sophie.
Keone and I did make a good team. If only the romance part of our relationship was as smooth as our K but the background was pixelating her image, as Mr. K and I were both leaning hard on the shack’s limited bandwidth for communication.
“You must be calling about the stone panels.”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” I said. “How did you know? Are you bugging the shack?”
“No, but I could if I wanted to.” She sounded dead serious; Sophie was a very literal person. “Do you want me to?”
I rolled my eyes and snorted in reply.
She shrugged and went on. “I’ve got a flag on some keywords related to your missing petroglyphs, and there’s been movement.
Three weeks ago, an art and antique transport company out of Honolulu filed export documentation for a large-format stone artifact shipment.
Destination was listed as a private collector in Singapore.
The paperwork was impeccable, but the size and shape of the objects made me think they might be yours. ”
“Okay. What can we do about it?” I rubbed the place between my brows where a worry line was trying to form.
“Well, the collector doesn’t exist except on paper, but that doesn’t mean he or she isn’t real.
” She glanced down and the sound of a keyboard came through the phone.
“I did a deeper analysis of the transport company, since they will have the stones in physical possession. It was incorporated four months ago, and the listed origination point for the shipment is a warehouse facility near the Kahului airport. Leased by a company called Pacific Heritage Consultants, LLC, which is registered to . . .”
“Let me guess. Chang Development, or some subsidiary of theirs,” I said.
“Not a bad guess, Kat. It’s the same company associated with the Cook Islands structure I traced before.
” Sophie rubbed the side of her cheek, where a scar pulled the skin tight over the bone.
“The export hasn’t been implemented yet.
They may still be accumulating inventory or waiting for something specific. ”
Waiting for the rest of the petroglyphs to be carved out.
For the land rights challenge to be suppressed.
Waiting for Emerson, Patel, and Pali’s documentation to be discredited—and Pearl’s incriminating stash of documents to be found.
Waiting until the Awawakapu was just an empty, pretty valley ready to be exploited.
“That warehouse in Kahului,” I said. “Can you get me an address? I want to alert MPD.”
“Already sent,” she said, as my phone dinged. “Move fast, Singapore’s private collectors don’t give things back.”
I sat for a moment after the call; the trade winds were finally settling in the palms across the street at the beach, the last of the light bleeding away from a sullen dark sky.
I called Lei.
“Sophie gave me a possible location for the petroglyph panels,” I said. “It’s in Kahului, and we need to move quickly before they ship them out.”
A pause. “We can’t be in both places at once—searching for Emerson and the panels in Kahului, which is a hard two hours’ drive away at night.
Plus, for that I need time to gather probable cause for a warrant.
Sophie’s say-so isn’t enough to send a team over to check it out.
I need documentation on all of her intel, and a judge to sign off.
” She sighed, and it sounded weary. “Malia has pulled together several officers to search for Emerson at this place Keone identified—that has to be priority.
Can you meet us at the turnoff to Sacred Valley in twenty minutes?
“Of course.” Keone was exiting the shack; he raised his brows in question, and I nodded at him. “We still want to come.”
“Okay, but you have to stay well back by the vehicles when we go in. Meanwhile, I’ll call my partner Pono in Kahului and have him get the paperwork started for the warrant—if you can forward me everything Sophie has on where the panels are being stored.”
“Done,” I said; I’d pushed out the file on my phone before calling her. “We’ve got this. Off to rescue a scientist.”
“I sure hope so,” Lei said fervently, and ended the call.
I turned to Keone. “Time to roll out for Sacred Valley. Again.”
“I wonder if Pali found that archive,” Keone said, as we left Dr. Patel in the shack to keep working on her report; she planned to spend the night there in the Murphy bed strapped to the wall.
“I’d feel better if I’d heard something from Pali by now.
” I checked the app on my phone that monitored the cameras I’d installed in the cave.
“No activity from the surveillance equipment, either. At this point, I don’t know if a signal isn’t getting through, or if nothing has tripped the sensors yet. ”
“I’ll text him. Sometimes those get through.” Keone worked his phone as I fired up Sharkey and we got on the road.
Sometimes I wished I was back in the Secret Service; it was mellower than a week as a civilian in Ohia.
Following Malia Peahi’s big police SUV up the old cane road in the dark, rutted with washouts and littered with boulders and rocks as it was, took both hands on the wheel and full concentration.
Vegetation, including sugarcane allowed to grow wild with the frequent rainfall of the area, leaned in from the sides and scraped Sharkey’s paint with squeals like tongs on a barbecue.
I gritted my teeth as we bucked over deep, hardened mud tracks that tore up the red dirt surface.
“Seems like the construction equipment they’ve been taking back into the Valley is doing a number on the road. ”
“You got that right,” Keone said. “We have to find a way to stop these guys.”
“How did your call with Edith about filing a cease and desist order go?”
“She was totally on board.” He slanted me a grin. “No surprise there. I left Edith with Dr. Patel’s number and a plan to talk to Pearl about filing an injunction to halt the development ASAP.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Now if we can find Dr. Emerson alive, and he and Patel can finish their assessment and turn it into NAGPRA, maybe we can get this corrupt desecration stopped.”
Tiki, sitting in the back seat in her carrier, gave a melancholy yowl that perfectly expressed her dismay.
Eventually the rugged old track forked; we knew from Keone’s map that one side of it went toward the construction site, and the other headed to what had been a processing and staging work area in the sugarcane days—and the abandoned warehouse where we suspected Emerson was being held.
We followed the police SUV as they turned to the left and drove a ways further, then pulled up beside the black SUV. The vehicle was already disgorging four armored and helmeted personnel: Lei, Malia, and two officers from Hana PD they’d recruited for this mission.