Read Online Diamond Head by Charles Knief - Free Book Online

wasn’t any reason to look through the files on the floor. Everything that could be learned had already left this sad place.
    I closed the sliding glass door and the curtains and locked the entry door again. I returned the keys to the little kapuna downstairs and walked back to my Jeep. On impulse I called Katherine Alapai, the lead investigator on the case, and got lucky. She agreed to meet me in twenty minutes.

 
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    9
    D etective Alapai suggested we meet at Kelly’s, a localsonly, twenty-four-hour coffee shop on Nimitz Highway near the airport. Kelly’s is fluorescent bright, always open and anonymous. Visibility is high. I gathered she wanted to meet there because it was safe.
    She’d demanded that I describe myself, including what I was wearing and what I was driving, so when I parked the Jeep in Kelly’s lot I understood that my movements would be watched. No one accosted me as I entered the restaurant, looking for the detective. She had not described herself.
    â€œMr. Caine?”
    A big hand gripped me and a beefy, middle-aged local crowded me from behind, violating my space. He pinioned my shoulder with one hand and expertly frisked me with the other. Satisfied, he backed away and smiled.
    â€œI’m Lieutenant Kahanamoku, Honolulu PD. What’s in the pack, bruddah?”
    â€œTake a look.” I shrugged it off my shoulder and handed it to him.
    â€œWhy not?” He unzipped the compartments and looked through them, finding my bandanna and a copy of Michael Crichton’s latest paperback and not much else. The cop sniffed
at my cellular telephone and my knife, a Buck Folding Hunter, and tossed them back. “No firearms?”
    â€œNow why would I do that?”
    He smiled and handed the bag back. “Some people just don’t have da good sense God geeve ’em, Mr. Caine. Come on. She’s in here.”
    He led me past the counter to the last booth against the back wall. A small woman with lustrous black hair and pale skin watched me. She would have been beautiful but for a hard shell around her that she wore like armor, visible to anyone who cared to look deep enough. She nodded, acknowledging my presence. The big cop took up residence at a table out of earshot, but continued watching me like a pit bull on point.
    â€œDetective Alapai?”
    â€œHave a seat, Mr. Caine. I ordered you coffee, courtesy of the City and County of Honolulu. You want anything else you’ll have to pay for it yourself.”
    â€œCoffee’s fine.”
    â€œDo you have some identification?” I handed over my Hawaii driver’s license. She glanced at it and tossed it back. She already knew who I was. That’s why I was frisked coming into the restaurant. “Okay, you’re a citizen. You called me. What do you want?”
    â€œI’m looking into the death of Mary MacGruder. I understand you are the detective in charge of the investigation.”
    Detective Alapai stared at me through fathomless black eyes. She seemed to say, So what? She continued to look at me, waiting for my next statement.
    â€œThere is no suspect in the case?”
    â€œNo.” A flat statement, unembellished by facial movements or other body language.
    â€œThere is some information you may not have. I wanted to share it with you.”
    â€œWho are you working for, Mr. Caine?”
    â€œHer father, Vice Admiral Winston MacGruder III, is my former
commanding officer. It is his interests I’m most concerned with.”
    â€œYou are a licensed private investigator?”
    â€œI’ve got a license.”
    â€œWho’s your client here?”
    â€œI’m a friend of the family.”
    She frowned. She knew she couldn’t go further than that. Licensed private investigators have nearly the same privacy privileges as attorneys in this state.
    â€œYou seem to have turned up in our files before. The last time was about three months