The Bone Field by Debra Bokur (top e book reader txt) 📕

“Coffee fresh?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Just made it up,” said Hara.

Kali smiled as she lifted the coffeepot and filled both mugs. “How do you take it, Hara?”

He smiled, looking slightly shy.

“You don’t have to . . .”

“Nice shelf you built here, by the way. If memory serves, Captain Alaka’i said he was going to put one up, but that was what, five years ago? Six, maybe?” She replaced the coffeepot and opened the refrigerator door, reaching inside for a carton of cream. “I think I’ve noticed you like cream but no sugar, right?”

Hara’s smile grew a little wider.

“Yes, that’s right.” He looked nervously at Walter. “The shelf—that was nothing.”

Kali poured a splash of cream into one of the mugs, then lifted both, leaving the carton of cream open on the table. She walked to Hara’s desk and placed one of the mugs next to his keyboard.

He looked up. “Thank you very much.”

She smiled in acknowledgment, taking the other mug for herself. She walked to a desk in a corner of the room, sitting down with the hot drink held carefully in her right hand. This was officially her desk, though she rarely used it. There was a window behind it that was partially open, and she could feel the warm, outside air making its way into the room. It smelled clean, carrying the aroma of the nearby sea. She took a sip of her coffee, releasing an audible sigh of pleasure.

Walter stood halfway between the door and his desk holding the box with the pineapple, watching the display of coffee distribution. He waited as Kali took another sip.

“I see,” he said to her. “Get my own coffee, is that how it is?”

“Do I look like your secretary?”

“No, right now you look like his secretary.” Walter’s voice was dark. He glanced from Kali to Hara and back to Kali, his gaze slightly defiant.

“You didn’t build a shelf,” she said, shrugging. “Lazy bastard.” She swung her chair around to face Hara, and raised her coffee in salute to him, then turned back to Walter, bearing a wide grin. “I believe I’ve heard you say more than once that enterprise should be rewarded.”

Walter turned toward his own desk and placed the box with the pineapple on its surface. He pulled out the cushioned, wheeled office chair and made himself comfortable.

“Didn’t want any coffee anyway,” he grunted. Looking worried, Hara rose to his feet, moving swiftly toward the table and coffeemaker, but Walter waved his arm lazily in the air. “Don’t bother, Officer, please. I’m going to let Detective Mhoe think she made a point, which will make her overconfident about her next move and thereby give me a slight advantage.”

There was a look of bewilderment on Hara’s face. He ran one hand through his short, dark hair, opened his mouth to say something, then turned back to his computer, his thought left unvoiced.

Kali snorted. She moved her mouse, opening her computer screen, and became suddenly businesslike. “Okay, Hara, the list you compiled—you sent a copy to me, yes?”

“Yes,” he said. “And also to the captain.”

“During our visit to the coroner’s office this morning, Stitches suggested the pineapple may have once been a decoration on top of a fence post, which makes sense as there’s a hole at its base, roughly square and a few inches deep.” She nodded toward the box. “It’s in there; you’ll see as soon as you turn it over. And she found this in the pocket of the dead man’s trousers.” She reached into her bag and removed the anchor encased in protective plastic, tossing it to Hara. “It was sewn into the very bottom corner of one pocket, as though it was too important to risk losing. He may have carried it as a talisman.”

Hara looked at it with a great deal of curiosity. “Okay to remove it?” he asked. As she nodded, he slipped it carefully into the palm of his hand. “It looks sort of like an anchor,” he said.

“That’s also what I thought,” she said. “Let me know if anything occurs to you. Other than that, Stitches says our pineapple man stood between five feet seven and five feet ten.”

“Right,” said Hara. Handing the anchor back to Kali, he swung around to his desk. His keyboard clicked as he performed a search through the information he’d compiled on missing persons. “That means we can probably eliminate five names so far, based solely on height.” He looked at Walter. “Should I do that, Captain?”

“Don’t eliminate them, but flag them as unlikely,” answered Walter.

Hara made the necessary notation, then sent his file to the printer. In a few seconds, the machine began to whir. Then came the sound of printing pages. Hara rose from his desk in time to intercept them as they were expelled by the machine. He stapled the pages together in three separate stacks, then handed a copy to Kali and one to Walter, keeping one for himself.

Each of them scanned the list, in which Hara had included all known information provided to the police about each of the unaccounted-for men at the time they had been reported missing.

“All right,” said Walter, turning to Hara. “Go through our database again and see whose jurisdiction these fall under, then the national database one more time to see if any of these names can be eliminated as deaths occurring elsewhere. Then it’s phone call time, I guess. Do some digging. Find out who was in a messy divorce, who owed someone else a lot of money—including IRS debt—and who had a criminal background. Pay attention to anyone who might have had a reason to disappear of their own accord. All the obvious stuff.”

“Yes, sir.” Hara hesitated, then added, “Shouldn’t we already have that kind of information on file?”

“Not necessarily,” Walter answered. “Depends on who reported someone missing, and how much follow-up there was. Lots of room for things to slip through the cracks.”

“Or not be reported at all,” Kali added.