Neil Plakcy - Mahu Vice

By the time I got to the burned center, Mike had set up a temporary command post in an Army tent in the parking lot and it was already hot and humid. The night’s strong winds were gone; no breeze came down from the Ko’olau Mountains, and not a single cloud blocked the sun’s rays. I parked on a side street, out of the way, and walked across to the center, waving at an officer I knew named Lidia Portuondo, who was keeping foot and vehicle traffic out of the center while consoling the pharmacist and his wife, who had seen the morning news in disbelief.

The trees my brother Haoa had carefully planted and tended over the years had burned, leaving no shade anywhere except under the tent, and when I met Mike there it was swelteringly hot.

Mike had two firefighters delegated to him, who were already out in the ruins looking for clues. “The ME hasn’t given us a cause of death for the body we found,” he said. “And it was burned so much that he might not be able to tell. Looks like the work of a pro. I want to isolate the ignition point and see if I can identify any accelerants. Every pro has his own signature; if we find the clues we find the guy.”

Mike had a pint bottle of water in his hand, and he unscrewed it, then took a deep gulp. His radio buzzed and he stepped away to take the call, leaving his water bottle on the table. I used the sleeve of my aloha shirt to wipe my sweaty forehead, and grabbed the bottle for a drink.

As soon as the liquid hit my tongue, though, I knew it wasn’t water. Way too much kick for that. I jerked the bottle back, spilling a few drops on the counter, and then sniffed. The liquid was odorless and colorless, but I thought it was vodka.

I capped the bottle, wiped the spilled drops with a tissue, then put the bottle back on the table and went out to the ruins of the shopping center my father had built, in part with his own hands.

As I walked, I yawned, and wondered if I’d have passed the call to another detective if I’d known Mike would be involved. Maybe. But how could I have justified that to my family? They had met Mike a few times before we broke up, and liked him. No one had ever questioned why we’d stopped seeing each other, and until I told Harry when we were surfing, I’d never volunteered an explanation.

And what was up with the vodka bottle, at eight in the morning? When we’d dated, Mike had been a wine drinker, preferably red and Italian. He’d gotten a little loopy sometimes, but I had too. I’d never considered that he had a drinking problem.

In the daylight, the center looked worse than it had at night. Traffic slowed on Waialae Avenue as onlookers gaped, but Lidia kept the cars moving, and prevented foot traffic from getting in our way. The devastation the fire had caused was clear, and the harsh smell of burnt wood and plastic was still everywhere. I stifled another yawn as Mike and I started at the far end of the center, by the acupuncture clinic, looking for anything we could find.

“A fire needs three things,” he said, as we began investigating. “Oxygen, heat, and a fuel source. Last night, I talked to a bunch of the guys about what they found when they started fighting the fire. The flames were light yellow, almost white, and the smoke was black. That means gasoline was part of the fuel source.”

He pointed at a charred piece of wood framing. “This building had a lot of wood. If the wood was the only material burning, the flames would have been more red, and the smoke brown.”

I nodded, writing notes for myself.

“You can see various points throughout the center where the fire seems to have burned hotter and stronger. Those were the places where the gasoline was spread. The rapid progress of the fire indicated that those places were linked with some kind of accelerant.”

He pointed to the ground behind the clinic. “The fire was started on the exterior of the building. So our arsonist either didn’t have access to the clinic, or didn’t want to waste time breaking in. There was an alarm system, yeah?”

“An old one-just a keypad outside each back door, and sensors on the front and rear exits. If you broke down the door, you’d trip the sensor, but that’s about it.”

It was weird working with Mike again. I couldn’t help looking at him when his attention was elsewhere, remembering the wiry feel of his hair against my chest, noticing the curve of his ass in his dark jeans. The ghost of our failed relationship hung between everything we said to each other. He felt the tension, too; I could see it in the set of his shoulders, the awkward way he tried to avoid touching me.

“You said the third thing the fire needs is oxygen,” I said, pushing my attention back to the case. “But isn’t there oxygen everywhere?”

“There is. A fire needs oxygen to keep burning. If the arsonist had set a fire in one store that was airtight, it would have burned itself out. But by setting the fires outside the building, he guaranteed a supply of oxygen. And the narrow alley is perfect; the wind channeled the flames down alongside the building.”

I saw something on the ground behind the hair salon and leaned over to look closely. “Think our arsonist was a potato chip fan?” I said to Mike, pointing at a scrap of a chip bag.

“Not necessarily.” He leaned over next to me, and his head was so close to mine that I could have turned just a bit and kissed him. I could tell he felt something, too, from the quick way he pulled back.

“Potato chips are greasy, yeah?” he said, standing up and stepping a little away from me. “So they’re a good accelerant. You lay a trail of chips away from the ignition, and the fire runs down the trail. Soon you’ve got a wall of flames going up.”

He pulled out an evidence bag, and scooped the fragment of chip bag into it. “Good eye,” he said.

He looked at me, and for a moment I saw a flicker of the old Mike in his eyes, as if he wanted to make a joke but then thought better of it. That connection between us was like an electrical spark in the air, only there wasn’t anything to fuel the combustion.

We walked all the way down the alley to the beauty salon at the far end. “We’re not only looking for things that shouldn’t be here,” Mike said, “but things that should be, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there isn’t much reason for a gasoline can to be in a travel agency, for example,” he said. “But people decorate their workplaces with personal items.” He motioned through the damaged wall to the travel agent’s desk, where we could see the remains of photographs in twisted metal frames. “If she’d cleared her desk, that might mean she knew the fire was going to happen.”

“So I guess we can wipe her out as a suspect.”

“We can’t eliminate anyone as a suspect yet,” he said. “We’re just looking for clues, remember?”

“Yes, boss.”

“Gee, I remember when you used to say that and mean it.”

My eyebrows shot up and I was about to say something when I saw Ray pull in the parking lot. “There’s my partner,” I said. “Let me go fill him in.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mike said.

“I’ve got to pick Julie up at two,” Ray said, when I got over to his car. “If we’re still working, can you follow me down to UH and bring me back up here?”

“Sure. Listen, I need to talk to you before we get started in there.”

There was a hole-in-the-wall malasada shop across the street, and I steered Ray over there. A malasada is a kind of Portuguese donut popular in Hawai’i, and I figured I would tell Ray about my background with Mike over a big dose of sugar. We’d started working together just as I was breaking up with Mike, and I hadn’t felt comfortable enough with Ray then to say anything.