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

to what she’d collected from his shoes. That meant the same mower might’ve been used both times. Plus, as far as she could tell, they were the same types of grass, what she was discovering were common lawn grasses in Honolulu parks.

The windbreaker played out the same way. She’d seen one being worn by a homeless man at the same park that Danny had apparently frequented. When she had searched online for Oahu Cable, the name of the company that was stenciled on the windbreaker, she found the company had gone out of business almost twenty years before. Apparently, the jacket that was being handed around the park had been the official article of clothing worn by field reps that worked for the company when installing cable systems. Other than the jackets, there had been baseball caps, and if the things were new, they were considered collectible and fetched prices close to a hundred dollars in online auctions.

Then there was the Rolex watch. The only connection that was even remote between Danny and the wristwatch was that it had been found a few feet from where his body had been found, and not even on the same day. There was no way she could imagine how a homeless man might’ve had a Rolex. Broken pocketknife, empty wallet, and a bottle cap, yes. But not a Rolex. That circle didn’t overlap with the others on the page.

The last circle was for the black cat that had been hanging around each day. It had brought a rat with it on the day of Danny’s death, plus one other time, so the cat couldn’t have had anything to do with his death.

“Unless the cat was Danny’s pet? Is the cat still hanging around, waiting for Danny to come back to it?” She drew a large X through the cat’s circle. “Don’t be absurd. It’s just a stray.”

Gina was just going back to her garden sketches when a sedan came across the bridge and parked at the side of the house. She wasn’t sure if she should smile at Detective Kona, or if he was about to give her a lecture about sticking her nose in his investigation.

“Detective Kona, what brings you to the Tanizawa estate? Do you normally work on weekends?”

“I try not to, but I feel compelled to follow up on a couple of leads in an investigation.” He sat on the top step of the front porch next to her. “You and I need to have a talk.”

“I was half expecting you to drop by sometime.”

“First, let me remind you that you’re no longer a police officer, not back in Ohio, and especially not here in Honolulu.”

“Yes. I…”

He put a hand up to quiet her. “You have no shield, not private investigator’s license, and no reason to run any sort of investigation of your own, other than what to grow in this ten acre plot of dirt. Is that fully understood?”

He had a great way of sounding like a father handing out a lecture to a teenager. She doubted she’d get any further with him than she would’ve with her father fifteen years before. “Yes, Sir. I apologize for interfering in your investigation.”

“It’s less a matter of you interfering, and more a deal of making sure the public doesn’t get hurt, and that includes you.”

“I know. But I’ve been safe whenever I’ve interviewed…asked someone questions.”

“Safe how? Are you carrying a weapon that I don’t know about? Because I’ve checked, and you have no concealed carry permits for either here or in Ohio.”

“I don’t have a gun. I haven’t touched one since, well, I’ve told you about that already.”

“I’d also prefer you didn’t carry a knife with you. Our laws concerning those are just as strict as firearms.”

Gina was getting cornered by him, and felt a little embarrassed by what she had to admit. “I don’t take weapons, knives or anything else, with me when I go out.”

“You were at Bunzo’s alone last night without any sort of protection?”

“I wasn’t planning on getting picked up,” she said.

“Not what I meant, and you know it.”

She set aside her drawings. “I know. Everywhere I’ve gone, I wish I’d had a partner with me watching my back. When you showed up last night, I actually felt a sense of relief, even though I knew I’d get this lecture eventually.”

“You felt safe at Kapalama Park this morning?”

“Mostly. There were only two men awake at the time and neither were armed that I could tell.”

“What about the woman at the park?” he asked.

“Oh, you know about her? Kinda loud and obnoxious, but not terribly threatening.”

“Maybe not to you when she was still waking up, but someone’s in the hospital because of her.”

“Oh no! What happened?” she asked.

“Paramedics were attending to the OD you called me about, when she took it upon herself to try and protect him. The officers that had responded pulled her back. That’s when she pulled a knife on them.”

“That guy OD’d?” she asked.

Kona nodded. “They gave that Narcan stuff while they got him ready to transport.”

“What about the woman? Did she knife one of the officers?” Gina asked.

“Never had the chance. While she aimed her little pinpricker at one of them, the other subdued her.”

“What was the problem then?”

“She bit the officer that subdued her, hard enough to raise blood. That meant he needed to be admitted and is getting antibiotics to fight whatever infection that might start. Human teeth aren’t exactly clean, Miss Santoro.”

“That’s what I’ve heard. What about the OD?”

“He should be fine. Apparently, he walked away from his halfway house where he’d been living for a while and fell into some trouble. Once he’s done in detox, he’ll go back to the halfway house. But thanks to you, he’s alive.”

“There’s that, anyway. I have a question about him, if you don’t mind?”

Kona sighed heavily. “Yes?”

“Did he have an old scabs that might’ve been knife wounds on his body?”

“You’re trying to link him to the dried blood that was found on