Unknown Victim by Kay Hadashi (classic books for 11 year olds .TXT) 📕

to go in. In a way, it was charming to see the girl’s superstitious reaction. In another way, Gina just wanted everybody to forget about what had dominated the day before and move on. She also knew that would take a while for herself.

***

When pau hana time came, her crew packed up and left, promising to come back in the morning. While Flor and Florinda waited for Clara to come out from the house to go home with them, a blue sedan drove in.

“There’s trouble,” Flor said.

“Why?” Gina asked. She watched Detective Kona come to a stop at the front of the house.

“Any time a cop shows up when he hasn’t been called, it’s trouble.”

Gina chuckled. As far as she knew, most of her work crew still didn’t know she’d worn a shield in the past. “Maybe.”

Detective Kona came straight for Gina, only nodding to Flor and Florinda. “Miss Santoro, howzit?”

“Pardon?”

“How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. Did someone call you?” she asked.

“No.” He made a show of looking around the area. “Am I in the way?”

“No, not at all. Is there something I can help you with?”

“I have a few questions, and an update in the case, if you have time?”

“Of course. I’d like to hear what you’ve learned since yesterday,” she said.

Instead of answering her, Kona looked off toward the house. Clara was coming from the back, carrying a bag of leftovers from their mid-morning meal. When she noticed the rest of them, she looked at Detective Kona the longest. With a wary eye, she took a wide berth of travel around him to get to where Florinda was waiting next to the truck.

Gina noticed that as much as Clara tried to avoid them, Detective Kona watched her go by. He continued to watch as the trio drove out and were across the little bridge.

“Everything okay?” Gina asked.

“Yeah, fine.”

“You seemed particularly curious about Clara.”

“No more than anyone else in your team. You know her last name?”

“I don’t know any of their last names. I’m still trying to learn some of their first names,” Gina said. “What did you have to ask me?”

“Let’s see…” He flipped from one page to another and back again on his yellow legal pad. “First, I need to take a look at all of your shoes, something the CSI techs neglected to do yesterday.”

“Fine with me.” Gina knew it was to compare her shoe prints with the prints they found in the soft dirt the morning before. In fact, she and her crew had to wait until all the prints had plaster casts taken of them by the techs, and then have their shoes photographed for comparison later. Shoes prints were much like tire tread prints, almost as reliable as fingerprints for identifying people who have entered a crime scene. She led him to the front door, and after stepping into the house, she went back out to take off her shoes. “We’re supposed to leave our shoes on the front porch.”

Kona took a pair of paper shoe covers from a pocket and slipped them over his shoes. “These’ll be good enough.”

He followed her to the bedroom, and after nudging her out of the way, took photos of all of her shoes from several angles, including the soles, and took copious notes for each.

“Do they match any of the print impressions your team got yesterday, Detective?”

“Not even close. Wrong size, different tread patterns.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Find anything else in the weeds?” he asked.

“Like another Rolex?” Gina shook her head. “A couple of rusty tin cans half-buried in the dirt, the blade from an old scythe, a rusty nail.”

“Still got it?”

“Yeah, out on the picnic table. I thought you might want to see them if you ever came back.” She took him outside to the back of the house where the picnic table sat in the shade of a large avocado tree. “You can see how the cans were opened with one of those old-fashioned pointy openers. I guess they were beer cans. The scythe doesn’t even have its handle, and the blade is bent over and covered with rust. When I found it, it was half-buried in the dirt.”

Kona seemed most interested in the nail. “Did you clean this?”

“No, but I think it’s old. See how it was square rather than round? I think that’s how they made nails a long time ago.”

He looked at the length of it with a tiny magnifying glass, one that he clutched to his eye socket by squinting, similar to a jeweler’s loupe. “You haven’t cleaned this?”

“No, why?”

“Where’d you find it exactly?”

“Along one side of the gravel driveway halfway to the bridge.”

Putting the lens away, he got a small kit from his pocket. In the kit were a couple of small squirt bottles of fluid, and several small cards. He scraped some of the rust from the tip of the nail onto a card and dribbled a few drops of fluid on it.

“Hemoglobin test kit?” Gina asked, watching for a reaction.

“Right. Doesn’t always work so well when there’s rust involved.”

Even after waiting a full minute, they didn’t get the reaction they would expect if blood had been present on the nail.

“Nothing,” he said.

“You thought it might’ve had the dead man’s blood on it?” she asked.

“Someone’s blood, anyway.”

“Does that mean you’re classifying the death as a murder?” she asked.

“The medical examiner did the autopsy today. Most of the blood and body fluid test results are still outstanding, but he was able to determine that cause of death was a stab wound to the abdomen.”

“Stab wound?” Gina shook her head. “I was there when the responding officer lifted his shirt to look at his abdomen and back. He had no wounds.”

“Did you notice a Band-Aid on his belly?” Kona asked.

“Yes. The big cop named Iosefa lifted one side and said it looked like a cane spider bite, and stuck it down again.”

“Officer Iosefa is not a coroner, nor a trained CSI tech, and you