The Presence

CHAPTER 29

There was nothing unusual about the car; it looked like any one of the hundreds of medium-sized, neutrally painted, minimally equipped sedans that make up the majority of the car rental fleets of Maui. Nor was there anything unusual about the two men in the car. Both of them were middle-aged, and both were dressed in the standard tourist uniform — polyester slacks and inexpensive aloha shirts like those sold out of the shops in Lahaina and in the malls along the Kihei strip.

Like tourists, they drove too slowly along South Kihei Road, as if unsure of their destination, or maybe just taking in the sights.

But the car was not a rental, and neither of the men were tourists. Both of them had lived on Maui for years, though neither had been born there.

And they knew exactly where they were going. Their destination was currently one block ahead of them, tucked back in a corner of one of the strip malls where it would be relatively hard to find unless you knew where you were going. Half the shops in the mall had already closed, and most of those that weren’t were clustered around an ice cream shop near the southern end of a long row of storefronts.

Kihei Ken’s Dive Shop was at the opposite end from the ice cream shop, and occupied all of a small freestanding building that appeared to have been set down on the mall’s property almost as an afterthought. The two men parked their car in the middle of the parking lot and started slowly toward the dive shop, pausing to examine the merchandise in a few of the windows along the way.

Just as they’d been told, the CLOSED sign was hanging inside the glass door, but the lights were still on and they could see someone standing behind the counter, apparently filling out some kind of form. As one of the men held the door open, the other walked into the shop. “You Kihei Ken?” the first man asked.

“In person.” The man abandoned the cash sheet he’d been working on and stepped out from behind the counter to extend his hand in welcome. “You must be the guys Mr. Yoshihara’s office called about.”

The second man had now come into the shop, and the door swung closed behind him. “Don’t know anyone by that name.”

The smile on Ken Richter’s face faded to puzzlement as the first man ignored his proffered hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes uncertainly scanning the parking lot in search of the men he’d been told to expect when the man from Takeo Yoshihara’s office had called fifteen minutes ago. “Actually, I’m closed. I was just catching up on some paperwork while I waited for—”

“Us,” the first man said.

Something in the tone of that single word rang an alarm deep in Ken Richter, setting off a jangling of nerves. “Look, I really am closed—” he began again. This time it wasn’t a word that silenced him.

This time it was the gun that appeared in the hand of the second man. Only a moment ago, he’d been no more menacing than a curious tourist. Now there was nothing left of the tourist except the polyester aloha shirt. His eyes had a hard look that told Ken Richter he wouldn’t hesitate to use the ugly black pistol that was held so easily in his right hand that it might have grown there.

“L–Look,” Ken said, instinctively backing away, “if it’s money you want, just take it, okay?”

While the man closest to Ken held the gun on him and said nothing, the other stepped into the back room to make certain it was empty, then locked the front door of the dive shop and snapped off the lights, leaving only the sickly blue glow of a neon sign that portrayed the outline of a diver in mask and fins.

The man with the gun spoke again. “In the back, please.”

They’re not going to kill me, Ken thought. If they were, they wouldn’t be polite. Clinging to the thought, he edged nervously toward the back room. “Look, why don’t you just empty out the cash register and leave? There’s no cash in back — I haven’t even got a safe. I won’t call the cops. I—”

“Sit down, please.” The man with the gun nodded toward a small step stool that served both as a place to perch while trying on fins and as a ladder to the higher storage shelves.

They’re going to tie me up, Ken thought as he dropped onto the hard surface. They’ll tie me up, and maybe clean the place out, but they won’t hurt me.

The second man had now come into the back room. Ken watched as he circled the space.

Inspecting the shelves?

Looking for something?

“Don’t watch him, please,” the first man said. “Watch me.”

Ken was confused. What did they want? If they were going to steal something, why didn’t they just take it?

There was a moment of silence, interrupted twice by what sounded to Ken like the snapping of some kind of rubber.

Then came the distinctive click of metal on metal, as if an animal trap had just been set.

Though he kept his eyes on the man in front of him, as he’d been instructed, he sensed the second man directly behind him, and very close.

The hair on the back of Ken Richter’s neck stood on end. Suddenly he understood.

But it was too late. Even as the flash of understanding came into Ken Richter’s mind, the man behind him squeezed the trigger of the silenced pistol in his hand.

There was a soft — almost gentle — snicking sound as the hammer struck the cartridge and the carefully carved lead slug shot out of the muffled barrel.

Ken Richter felt nothing as the bullet drilled through his skull, then split open, tearing through his brain like the blade of a Cuisinart. He was already slumping to the floor when the bullet exploded out of his forehead, tearing half his face away.

Katharine didn’t want to leave the estate — didn’t want to leave Michael alone even for a minute. But she knew she couldn’t tell Rob about the night dive until she was certain she wouldn’t be overheard. The last thing she wanted was for Takeo Yoshihara to find out just how much she knew. Composing her face into a perfect mask of trust in the doctor and fear for her son, she told Stephen Jameson that she needed to go home and get some things for Michael; she would be back within an hour — no more than two. And would it be all right if she stayed with Michael through the night? He’d spent so much time in hospitals, and he hated them so much, and he was so frightened.… The improvised tale rolled off her tongue with the genuine sincerity of truth, since truth was exactly what most of it was. But as soon as she and Rob were away from the estate, she told him about the messages she and Michael had exchanged. Immediately, he used his cell phone to call Ken’s Dive Shop.

“Something’s not right,” Rob said as he steered Katharine’s Explorer into the parking space next to Ken Richter’s aging Volvo. Though he shut off the engine, neither he nor Katharine got out of the car. Instead, both of them stared at the darkened dive shop. It looked as if it had closed hours ago.

“Maybe he went somewhere,” Katharine suggested, still praying they would find Kihei Ken, and that he would have some reasonable explanation for what had happened to Michael on the dive. “Couldn’t he be having dinner? Maybe he went to a movie?”

Rob shook his head. “The movies are down at Kukui Mall, so he would have taken his car. And the first time we called, he should have been here. I’ve known Ken Richter for years — we’ve dived together dozens of times — and he’s the most reliably scheduled person I ever met. He closes the shop at seven every night, but he’s always here until at least seven-thirty, closing up and getting ready for the morning. And if he has a dive scheduled, he’s often here till nine or ten. I’m going to take a look.”

They got out of the car and approached the building. Despite her suggestion that there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for Ken Richter’s failure to answer his phone, Katharine had the queasy feeling that something was not right. Both of them cupped their hands over their eyes to peer into the shop. The murky darkness within was broken only by a dim blue glow from a neon sign.

Nothing appeared to be amiss until they circled around to the side of the shop and Rob pointed to a counter clearly visible in the blue glow from the sign, on which a number of papers were strewn in disarray.

“Ken never leaves anything undone,” Rob said. “That’s what makes him a great diver. He hates for anything to be out of place.” Moving to the back door and squatting down, he slid his fingers under a big metal drum that sat, slightly elevated from the ground, on four small wooden blocks.

“What are you looking for?” Katharine asked.

“Same thing Michael and his friends were looking for the night they went diving. The key.” A second later he found it, hidden in the same magnetized metal box in which Josh Malani had discovered it a few days ago. Inserting the key into the lock on the back door, Rob twisted it, then pushed the door open. Reaching inside, he groped for the light switch, found it, and flipped it on.

For a second, half blinded by the sudden blaze of light, Rob didn’t realize exactly what he was looking at. But as his eyes focused and he saw the red pool of blood that was spread around Ken Richter’s head, his stomach churned. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, his voice catching as his throat constricted.

“What?” Katharine asked from behind him. “What is …” The question died on her lips as she caught a glimpse of what lay on the floor. The vision of carnage froze them both for a moment that seemed to stretch into an eon. Katharine instinctively put her hand into Rob’s. “It’s him, isn’t it? It’s Ken Richter.”

Rob tried to speak and couldn’t. He made a move toward his friend.

Katharine’s hand tightened on his and she held him back. “No,” she said. “Don’t touch him. Don’t touch anything, Rob. Let’s just call the police.” As the seconds ticked by and Rob neither spoke nor moved, Katharine wondered if he’d heard her. Just as she was about to speak again, he found his voice.

“Go back to the car and call on the cell phone. Then come back here.”

“Come back? We should wait for the police outside.”

Rob shook his head. “Once the police get here, we won’t be allowed to look at anything. They’ll have the whole place taped off, and the first thing they’ll want to know is why we’re here.”

“Can’t we just tell them?”

Rob managed to pull his eyes away from the grisly scene on the floor of the dive shop’s back room. Putting his hands on Katharine’s shoulders, he looked directly into her eyes. “Tell them what, Kath?” he asked. “Tell them the truth? Do you really think we’re going to walk away from here if we tell them we think Takeo Yoshihara had something to do with this? Believe me, they aren’t going to be happy to hear us accuse one of the richest men on Maui of murder. We might as well accuse one of the Baldwins or the Alexanders, for God’s sake! And the minute we make any kind of accusation, Yoshihara’s going to hear about it. If he was willing to have Ken Richter killed to protect whatever he’s up to, do you think he’ll worry about you, or me, or Michael? Michael would be dead within the hour, and I’d be willing to bet you and I would have an accident — a fatal accident — before morning. All we can do is play dumb and find out everything we can. And we can’t waste any time being questioned by the police. One slip and it’ll all be over. Michael won’t have a chance.”

The warm Hawaiian evening seemed suddenly to have taken on a terrible chill. Katharine felt her whole body shiver as she realized the truth of what Rob had just said.

Returning to the car, she punched 911 into the keypad of Rob’s cellular phone and pressed the Send key. As she made the hurried call, hesitating when the operator asked her name, then ending the connection, her whole body was shaking.

All she could think about was Michael — getting back to the estate, getting Michael, and getting him out of there.

But she knew there was no way that Takeo Yoshihara’s security force was simply going to let her pick Michael up and drive him away. Even if they did let her take him, what good would it do? He’d die as soon as she took him out into the clean, fresh air.

For a moment she almost gave in to the sense of utter helplessness that washed over her, but then the thought of Michael in his Plexiglas prison coalesced her frustration and fear into a cold fury.

Michael wasn’t dead yet. So far, Takeo Yoshihara had no idea how much she really knew.

And the night wasn’t over yet, either.

Her body stopped shaking and the terrible cold loosed its grip. Still clutching the phone, she went back to the dive shop. This time, at the sight of Ken Richter’s body, the horror she felt was tempered by something else.

Rage.

“What have you found?” she asked Rob.

“Not much,” he admitted. While she’d been gone, he looked around the back room of the shop, but had neither touched anything nor gone into the front of the store. “There’s not much back here except the rental scuba equipment.”

“What’s that?” Katharine asked, pointing to a large white board on the wall, marked off into a grid filled with names,

“The dive schedule,” Rob said, looking carefully at it for the first time. “He always kept it—” His eyes widened and he moved toward the board, reaching out to it, pulling his fingers back just before he touched it. “Oh, Jesus! That’s it! Look!”

Katharine moved next to him. “Look at what?”

“It’s the board!” Rob said again. He was pointing to a section of the grid. “Look!” he repeated. “He had a VIP dive, the morning after Michael and his friends went on their night dive.”

Katharine frowned. “VIP? What’s that? Movie stars?”

Rob shook his head. “It was his special code. Every now and then Takeo Yoshihara’s office would call and set up dives for the kids of some of his business associates.”

“I still don’t see—”

“It wasn’t just that Yoshihara set up the dives,” Rob went on. “He sent over special equipment, too. Fins, masks, regulators, the whole works.”

“Including air tanks,” Katharine whispered, suddenly understanding.

Rob nodded. “If the boys took the tanks that were already here for the next morning’s dive—” Rob began, but Katharine was ahead of him.

Her notebook was out and she was already copying down the names of the five boys who had been scheduled for the dive that Ken Richter had designated as VIP.

Four of those boys, thanks to Michael and his friends, had undoubtedly escaped the fate Takeo Yoshihara had planned for them.

The fifth one might already be dead.

She had just slipped the notebook back into her purse when the first police siren wailed in the night.