Red Christmas
By
With editing by gm & as
Early November 1969
The doors to the
black Ford LTD slammed simultaneously as Steve McGarrett and Dan Williams
arrived back at the
“Did you notice, Steve, that the number of stab wounds has gone from four in
victim number one to ten in victim number two, and now to sixteen in victim
number three?”
Steve blew out a deep
breath of
Dan wrinkled his
nose. “I have the feeling this isn’t gonna stop until we catch this guy.” The p
“I’m wondering
whether the first one might not be related,” Williams said distantly, as if he
hadn’t completely formed the idea.
McGarrett stopped
walking for a few seconds as Dan continued walking. Dan was almost startled
when Steve’s voice came from behind him.
“You know, now that
you mention it—” the man’s thought was interrupted by another voice behind
him.
“Mr. McGarrett! Is
there ANY way for a law-abiding girl to get your attention?”
Sultry – the
detective could think of no other way to describe the voice that had called his
name. It made him turn to face the tall, striking woman. She was slender and
had an
“Reporters need to
address any inquiries to Detective Williams, Miss—Miss?”
Not bothering to veil
the flirtatious tone, she responded, “Carla – Carla Hayes.”
Amused, he allowed
himself the brief pleasure of the attraction he felt. “Miss Hayes.”
“Danny’s cute, but
too he’s young.” She tipped her head to one side slightly. “Besides, I’d rather
get the lowdown from the top dog. I’m not a reporter – I’m an author.”
“Well, you sound like
a reporter.”
Without investing any
time in the realization, McGarrett, certain the woman must be f
He had a fleeting
thought to indulge in the veiled word game with the reporter, but glanced over
his shoulder, knowing Dan was waiting for him some twenty paces away.
“Be that as it may,
Miss Hayes, Detective Williams is managing the press – and all inquiring
authors – on this case.”
With a smile he
suspected might have been a little regretful, he turned away from the woman and
caught up to his detective.
“She totally digs
you, Steve.” Dan smiled and gave his boss a sideways glance.
“What’s not to ‘dig,’
Danno,” came the response from the detective. He’d
also noticed the body language that accompanied the woman’s subtle innuendo.
“She’s the one I
mentioned, the one that’s writing the book on unsolved cases.”
Steve didn’t respond
out loud, but he admitted to himself that Danno had been right – his detective
had been astute enough very early on in their association to notice what type
of women turned his head.
Dan didn’t let go of
the subject. “What a knockout!”
With that, McGarrett
stopped suddenly and turned to his second-in-command. He paused for a few
moments, studying Williams, and then started to make a teasing comment about
his friend’s libido, but instead another comment slipped out as he considered
the subject.
“You’re right – she
is attractive.” He slapped Dan on the
shoulder and as they arrived at the palace doors, he added, “Too bad she’s a
reporter.”
Late November 1969
Steve McGarrett and
Chin Ho Kelly carefully stepped over the now-congealed, burgundy stream that
wended its way from the bungalow and down its front step into the sand. With a
distasteful grimace exchanged, the two men moved on to the interior of the
small beachfront accommodation. Two uniformed HPD officers were diligently
processing evidence – so far, it looked as though they had two coffee cups, a
blood-stained butcher knife, and three burned-out camera flashbulbs. Doctor
Bergman dropped a white sheet onto a lifeless form by the bed, and stood as the
two detectives approached.
“More of the
same, Doc?” McGarrett asked the
medical examiner.
“More of the
same and more, Steve.” Bergman
didn’t wait to explain. “More stab wounds, more post-mortem hacking – but the
same MO. It appears the victim did very little to defend himself, so I’m
betting that I’ll find evidence of a sedative overdose in this one too.”
McGarrett squatted
enough to lift the sheet and do a quick visual inspection of the body. Having
seen the previous four dead men, he was braced for the gory sight, but that did
nothing to assuage his revulsion. The victim was a man, apparently in his late
thirties or early forties. Blood still oozed slowly from the long slice in his
neck. There were dozens of stab wounds in his back, and the detective noted
that it appeared that the killer had swung his weapon in a chopping fashion
several times as well, leaving several deep lacerations throughout the back of
the body. The brutality of the fatal assault struck even the seasoned
investigator.
“Where’s Danno?” the
detective asked of no one in particular. He was the one that the head of
Hawaii-0 expected to see when he entered the one-room building.
Bergman obliged and
motioned with his head. “He’s out back talking to the guy who found the body.”
McGarrett stood and,
as he headed out the back door, addressed Chin. “Get this evidence processed as
quickly as possible.”
The Oriental
detective nodded and turned to focus on what the HPD men were doing.
As Bergman had
indicated, Dan Williams was there with a man perhaps in his late twenties, in
cut-off jeans and a t-shirt, with light brown, curly h
“We’ll be in touch,
and if you think of anything else, no matter how insignificant you think it
might be, please get in touch with me.” Dan said and with that, the man
wandered off towards the front of the little house.
As soon as Williams
saw his boss, he walked over and stood next to him, but did not speak. Instead,
he shook his head and looked at his notebook.
“You alright?” McGarrett asked touching Dan’s shoulder.
The young man glanced
up at his boss with an unconvincing smile and then made a point of scrutinizing
the notes he’d just written. “Pretty gruesome in there.”
He closed his notebook with a little more force than was necessary suddenly.
“Who is this guy? What could drive a human being to hack up another human being
like that?”
The senior detective
studied his protégé for a few moments. He knew Williams well enough to
recognize that he was affected by the scene inside.
“I can’t answer that
one, my friend, but let’s not bleed too much over it. How’s about we put our
energy into catching this monster?”
Dan looked back up at
McGarrett with admiration. This man always seemed to know what to say. It
suddenly seemed obvious to Williams that the more heinous the crime, the
greater the need for focus and clarity of thought on the part of the
investigators. It would not help any victim for him to dwell on the horror of
the offense.
“Yeah – count me in,
Steve.”
“Good man,” came the
quick snippet of praise as the lead detective moved back to the task at hand. “What’ve we got on this one?”
Now, Williams
reported the facts with clinical neutrality. “Victim number four is one Joseph
Clark, age forty, a bartender at a dive downtown. The grocery delivery guy
found him probably only minutes after he was killed – the blood was
still—oozing.” Another flash of distaste came from Dan before he slid his mask
back on.
“One thing we do have
here – a gloved handprint. Our perpetrator left a bloody stamp of his glove on
the table. Another indication that we’re looking for a f
“Well, it’s more than
we had, but it’s not enough. Four victims, all men, all
different professions, living in different areas. All stabbed to death
by somebody who apparently presented no obvious threat.” McGarrett looked down
at his watch as he continued. “Let’s plan on a status meeting at
“Steve, you do
remember that tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day? That’s a day that people usually
spend at home with their families.”
Williams delicately
mentioned this because he knew that his boss was so wrapped up in solving these
atrocious homicides that he could well have dismissed the holiday as an obstruction
of justice.
“Of course I do – ho
ho ho and all that.” McGarrett smiled slightly as started walking back towards
his car.
“Very funny,”
Williams mumbled as he moved to catch up with his boss.
“Okay, I recall the
date, but more than that, I tell you what I recall -- Every second we’re not
looking for the monster who’s doing this, another human being is a second
closer to becoming a victim.”
*****
“It’s Four-Oh-Five --
I thought Steve and Danny were around the corner ten minutes ago,” Kono mumbled
as he peeled the shell from the hard-boiled egg he’d
found on his boss’s desk blotter.
Jenny, staring
through the blinds, responded distractedly. “They’re here, but they’re having a
little meeting in the parking lot.”
Both Chin and Kono
rose from the ch
“What could they be
fighting about?” Jenny wondered out loud.
“It’s the day before
Thanksgiving, so I have an idea.” Chin responded absentmindedly as he watched
the scene outside.
Kono turned suddenly
to look at Chin, and after a shared glance of remembrance, turned their
attention back to their boss and his second-in-command.
“C’mon, Danny, you
can do it!” Kono encouraged under his breath.
*****
“Steve, we had the
morale talk last year around this time, remember?” Dan stepped into his boss’s
path to face him. Williams, never anxious to butt heads with his boss, picked
his battles carefully, but this was important and he was prepared to go to
battle on this issue.
“Yeah, yeah,
Danno. Esprit de corp,
etcetera, but we’re not talking about white collar crime here. This holiday has
been ruined for a family because somebody spilled blood.” McGarrett replied and
crossed his arms, a subconscious defensive move on his part, Williams thought.
“Nobody’s gonna argue
that this investigation isn’t important. Every single one of the team is on
board with that. But we’re talking about their lives – time with THEIR families
that they’ll never have again – time they NEED to decompress. We’ll solve this
one, and next Thanksgiving, there’ll be some other heinous misdeed to be dealt
with.”
Dan knew he didn’t
have long to convince the man, who was tenaciously focused on solving the
string of violent murders. He too had to admit that he would rather spend the
day following up on any leads that might get them closer to finding the
culprit. But then, he had no family that would be waiting for him at home. That
didn’t mean that he couldn’t understand how important it was for the rest of
the team to be with their families.
It was up to him –
nobody else would risk the wrath of their formidable boss. Dan had decided,
however, that it was part of his job as second-in-command to keep the
brilliant, focused, frequently-distracted man at the top in touch with the rest
of humanity.
“Yeah -- criminals
are many and we are few,” McGarrett stepped around the detective and started to
walk again.
Desperate to keep the
man’s attention, Dan called after his boss. “Steve! Don’t rob them of this time
with their families! We can’t expect ANYBODY to be as dedicated as we are.”
The last words from
his protégé’s mouth stopped the man in his tracks. He studied Dan’s expression.
The implication of that sentence was that Steve McGarrett did not have to stand
alone at the top – that there was someone else who shared his passion for
justice, even in the face of personal sacrifice. The head of Five-0 found
himself deeply touched by Williams’ matter-of-fact statement to this effect.
“Me and thee
against the world, huh, Danno?”
The young man gave a
short brisk nod and replied enthusiastically, “I’m with you, Steve!”
Sensing a crack in
the man’s resolve to have his staff work through the Thanksgiving holiday, Dan
pressed on. Time to cut
the deal. “Look, Steve, if you’ll let them off the
hook for tomorrow, I’ll be here before it gets light and keep going.”
McGarrett knew his
second-in-command was right, but the image of the blood coagulating on the
steps of the beach house crept back into his mind. “Let me think about it,” he
snapped briskly as he started walking toward the Palace steps. “We’re wasting
time out here.”
Dan knew that he’d
said all he could and would just have to await his boss’s decision, so he
dutifully caught up with the other man, and the p
*****
Chin and Kono had re-seated themselves in the two
white cushioned ch
As usual, Kono broke first, “Am I in your seat,
bruddah?” His question was directed at the young man behind him.
Dan leaned around Kono’s ch
Finally, his decision reached, Steve sighed and
said, “Alright, alright. Now stop before you wear a hole in my floor!”
The young officer
bound over to his boss’ desk. “Thanks, Steve!”
The senior detective
didn’t respond with anything more than a long suffering nod. “Can we get on
with this?”
Dan nodded with a
smile, opened his notebook, and sat on the corner of Steve’s desk. It was
telling to the other members of the staff that their boss tolerated his
second-in-command’s encroachment into his space. Nobody sat on Steve McGarrett’s
desk – at least not more than once – except Dan Williams, who seemed quite
comfortable in the spot he knew was his.
The team reviewed the
list of facts about the latest murder and struggled to find a clue that would
point them to the culprit.
“Danno, you brought
this up before, and you’re right -- there are a couple of differences between
the first murder and the next three. The knife was not recovered in the first
case, and Doc did not find any traces of drugs in victim one. The other three
were all probably unconscious – or well on their way – when they were
murdered.”
Dan got up and moved
from his spot to stand near the lanai doors, but did not speak.
“Maybe the murderer
decided it would be easier if his victims couldn’t fight back,” Chin offered as
he lit his pipe.
Kono added, “Yeah,
maybe he’s just workin’ the kinks out of his plan.”
McGarrett stood and
moved around to sit on “Danno’s” corner of his desk. “Maybe,” he mused as he rubbed his chin.
“Another thing – it’s
just an impression, and maybe it’s nothing…” Dan gazed out the lanai windows
and was silent, needing a moment to organize the thought. Nobody spoke as they
watched their youngest member’s expression darken. “The first scene wasn’t like
the other three scenes. There was blood, but it wasn’t – it wasn’t a
distracting focal point. The murderer killed for whatever reason, and then made
his escape.” Williams turned back to look at his audience. “When I stepped into
the other three scenes, the crimson hit me in the face. It was like the
murderer wanted to – to play up the drama of violent death. I uh – I – and then
again, maybe it’s my imagination.” The detective looked down, beginning to
regret that he’d brought up such a subjective, unscientific, un-McGarrett-like
observation.
“THAT,” McGarrett
almost shouted, “is a very astute observation, Danno! I couldn’t quite put my
finger on it until you said it.” The surprise shout of praise from his mentor
filled Williams with relief and pride. Steve didn’t think he was a flake.
Dan smiled slightly.
“I’m not sure how that helps us.”
“It means that –
until we have evidence to the contrary -- we should assume that we’re looking
for two murderers, with two different motives.” McGarrett raised his eyebrows
at his detectives. He moved and began pacing back and forth behind his desk and
snapping his fingers, a habit with which his detectives were well acquainted.
“So, if we go back to
the basics, it wouldn’t surprise me if victim one knew his assailant. I think
we’re going to find that Patrick Ramsey was killed for one of the standard
reasons.”
“Love or money,” Chin
reflected.
“Yeah,” Steve nodded
in his direction. “Love or money. That leaves us with
three murders that are the same in what way?”
Dan spoke up. “All
three were drugged and stabbed to death with knives that were already on the
premises by a man. If it’s the same guy, then we know that he has
larger-than-average hands, he may be taking photographs of his handiwork, and
he’s mentally disturbed.”
McGarrett returned to
his ch
“Anybody have
anything to add?” The boss glanced from face to face.
“A Miss Carla Hayes –
an author, she says, called about getting your perspective on a couple of
unsolved cases, including this one,” Jenny said as she reviewed her notes.
Steve glanced up in
annoyance. “Well, she’s wasting her time looking at this case because we’re
gonna solve this one.”
Dan countered, “Yeah,
but you maybe you should still talk to her.”
“I know the one
you’re talkin’ about!” Kono spoke up enthusiastically.
“Thank God most of
the journalists on this island are men!” McGarrett looked upward to Heaven as
he spoke.
As the team wrapped
up their notes, Chin had an inquiry. “Boss, would it be okay if I came in a
little late tomorrow? Mai was sort of hoping that I would be around tomorrow
for at least a little while.”
Williams smiled, but
let his boss do the talking.
“Actually, Chin –
Kono – Jenny – I, uh know you’re all very dedicated and willing, but I want all
of you to take the day off tomorrow.”
The trio didn’t move
for several seconds. Then they exchanged uncertain glances with each other.
Kono took the brave next step, “Boss, we don’t understand. The case…”
Their confused looks
and body language – Have I been such a
slave-driving ogre that they can’t imagine that I would grant them a little
time off? He felt a little embarrassment creeping into his thoughts. He
pressed on, determined that his staff would accept the gift in the spirit in
which it was intended. “You all certainly deserve more than just Thanksgiving
Day off, but it’s all I can offer right now, so please get out of here and go
spend some time with your families!”
Kono and Chin rose
from their ch
The lead detective
interrupted, “If there’s anything on your desks that won’t wait a day, let
Danno know about it.” He nodded his head in the direction of his
second-in-command, who was suddenly extremely interested in the file he was
holding.
It was Chin’s turn.
“Boss, I can’t think of a nicer surprise than this, but – but I feel kinda bad
kickin’ back all day when you and Danny are gonna be here.”
Williams remained
mute as his boss spoke for both of them. “Don’t worry about us, Chin. I’ll
probably end up stuck with some major dinner bill for both of us though.”
Williams smiled.
“Okay, I’ll pay, but I get to pick the spot!”
McGarrett glanced at
his second-in-command. “I’d rather pay.”
The pleased, even
ecstatic, expressions on their faces gave Steve a deep sense of satisfaction.
Danno had been right. He had to take a moment to ponder why it was that he was
not more in tune with his staff’s personal needs. Not really wanting to spend
too much time on introspection, he quickly decided that this was the reason he
had Danno around. Wasn’t that after all one of the reasons he brought the
officer into the fold – to complement his strengths and augment his weaknesses?
Yes, yes, that’s it. Good job, McGarrett,
he smiled to himself. After an excited round of thanks, everyone scurried to
their desks to tidy up before leaving.
Steve looked back to
see Dan leaning on the wall observing him. The young man gave a slight nod with
his smile.
“Is the wall gonna
fall down if you move?” McGarrett asked gruffly.
“I hope not,”
Williams replied softly, still grinning as he passed his boss on the way back
to his own desk.
The thought passed
through McGarrett’s head that it was a strange reversal of roles to see his
second-in-command pleased, even proud, of what his boss had just done. Usually,
it was the younger detective looking to his mentor for approval and validation,
but today, the pupil had been the teacher. The head of Five-0 would never admit
it to a soul, but it felt good to have Danno’s approval and respect.
“Danny!” Chin said
loudly as he stood in the outer doorway of the Five-0 office space with Jenny
and Kono. Williams poked his head out of his cubicle and smiled at his three
co-workers. From their expressions, Dan could tell they suspected that he’d had
a hand in their boss’s decision. He hoped they realized that Steve truly did
know they deserved the time off – all he had done was to change the man’s focus
long enough for him to recognize it.
“It almost makes
keeping an eye on you worth the trouble!” Kono grinned.
Jenny and Chin
snickered, appreciating the reference to the secret joke they shared. The boss
was impossible to live with when his young protégé was traumatized in any way.
He tended to place responsibility for Danny’s safety squarely on the head of
whoever attended the heir apparent. Frequently, that task was easier said than
done.
Dan frowned even as
he smiled, aware of the staff’s perception – possibly somewhat accurate (maybe)
– of his status with the boss. “Have a good time!”
Jenny blew him a kiss
and the two detectives smiled and did likewise in tandem as they headed out the
door.
*****
Williams maneuvered
his LTD around a large pothole that marked the end of the residential
appearance of the street. On the side of the road for the next few hundred
yards was the standard Hawaiian lush green vegetation run amuck.
McGarrett pointed out
the passenger window to his right. “There it is –
“She said she
collected the package this morning? McGarrett asked as he studied the house.
Dan nodded. “Yeah,
she received a call from the radio station that it had been dropped off. She
couldn’t get a courier to bring it up here on Thanksgiving Day.”
The two detectives
got out of the car, made their way up the front porch steps and knocked. A
curtain moved in a nearby window, and within a few seconds, the door opened
tentatively. Carla Hayes’ demeanor was different than it had been the last time
the two men had seen her a couple of weeks earlier. She
seemed nervous and frightened.
“Is that an unmarked
police car?” She asked as she motioned for the detectives to come in.
“Relatively speaking
-- Worried about the neighbors?” McGarrett replied as he, like his
second-in-command, surveyed the interior of the home. The st
His attention turned
more fully to the woman with her response to his distracted query.
“He told me not to call
the police.”
Both detectives
stepped a little closer to her.
“You spoke with him?”
Williams was amazed. “You didn’t tell me that when you called.”
“I’m sorry – I was
little upset. I try to come off tough, but get a phone call from a vicious
killer and I turn to putty.” The woman’s lower lip quivered as she attempted to
joke about the call.
“Don’t worry – we’re
here now, and we’re not gonna let anybody hurt you.” McGarrett reassured.
A concerned
expression crossed Steve’s face as he glanced around the room, a subtle nod the
signal for Dan to search the premises. Williams cautiously looked around the
two levels and then walked around outside while his boss accompanied Carla into
her kitchen while she made herself some tea.
While his second-in-command
conducted the search, McGarrett heard Carla’s tale. The radio station had
called this morning and let her know that a manila envelope addressed to her
had been dropped off early that morning. It was not unusual for her to receive
packages in that manner from well-wishers and acquaintances, so she didn’t
think anything of it until she returned home and opened it to find it stuffed
with photos of all of the murder scenes. Dan returned, and with a slight shake
of his head, let his boss know that he’d found nothing unusual in his search.
Some of the pictures
looked like they’d been taken perhaps shortly before the murders had been
committed, with everything at each future scene of horror still neatly in
place, and others were grizzly scenes of the dead victims.
“Did you touch any of
these, Miss Hayes?” Dan asked.
She hesitated before
she spoke. “I did touch a few of them before I realized what they were,” Carla, who’d been standing several feet away
from the detectives as they used handkerchiefs and pencils to manipulate the
photos, moved in and sat down next to Steve on one of the love seats. “Before I
could call the police, my phone rang, and it was him.”
“He identified
himself as the killer?” McGarrett asked.
“Well, he didn’t come
right out and say it in so many words. He told me that he’d read my book – and
that he was looking forward to my next one. He wants me to use the pictures and
information in the envelopes as material for my book. He wants everyone to know
how smart he is or something. He said that it was against the rules for me to
help the police – that they would have to figure it
out on their own.”
“How do you think he
knew you were writing a book?” Dan inquired gently.
“I was interviewed a
couple months ago at the radio station, where he left the package. It was just
after I moved here and rented this place. I’d written a book that was published
last year called Unreasonable Doubt. The host of the program and I discussed
both that book and the one I’m working on now about unsolved murder cases.”
“That would do it,”
Steve said almost to himself.
“Do you think he
tried to get into my house?” She slipped her hands into those of the detective
beside her as she asked.
Dan answered. “It
doesn’t look that way – I just walked around back. The ground is pretty damp
and marshy – Kaalaea Stream runs right behind this place, and it’s swollen from
the rain, so there’s no way anyone could’ve been back there and not leave
tracks.”
McGarrett gently
extricated his hands from the woman’s tense grip as he noticed the corner of a
paper sticking from the pile of photographs. He dragged it from the stack with
the eraser end of a pencil. Carla gasped loudly. He felt more than heard Dan
react as he read the note written in what appeared to be blood:
GET READY FOR A RED CHRISTMAS
An alarmed glance
shared quickly with Williams, McGarrett hastily collected the new evidence and
pushed it back into the envelope.
“Miss Hayes, I
suspect that you’re in no danger – it would appear that our man wants you to write
his story, but I don’t want to take a chance. I’m going to assign a plain
clothes officer to stay here with you.”
“Please call me Carla
– I feel like such a spinster when people call me Miss Hayes. But I don’t want
any police floating around. I’ll be fine. You said it yourself – I can’t write
his story if I’m dead.”
McGarrett frowned.
“Point taken, but with your permission, I’d like to arrange to have your phone
tapped. It wouldn’t be intrusive. We would have a mobile monitoring unit set up
within a two-mile radius. Any incoming phone calls would be recorded.”
“Of course,” she
nodded.
He turned immediately
to Williams, but before he could start issuing instructions, the woman spoke
again. “Under one condition.”
Both detectives stood
paralyzed looking at her in wait of the condition. A couple of long seconds
later, she said softly to the lead detective, “That you’ll have dinner with me
this evening.”
Both men blinked. Dan
felt a little awkward. He and his boss had mapped out a busy day of investigating,
which McGarrett insisted would be punctuated with a Thanksgiving Day meal at
some point. This gorgeous woman’s invitation had to be more appealing than
McGarrett’s plan for the bachelor cops. Williams himself was anxious to get the
new evidence back to the office and start reviewing it. The warning that more
deaths would mar the holiday season gave him an intense sense of urgency. He
would not rest until the killer was found. Dan started to suggest that he take
the envelope back with him and leave the couple to enjoy a meal in private.
Steve certainly deserved a real holiday as much as the rest of the Five-0 team.
A familiar, quick
expression from his boss told Dan that he needed to keep his mouth shut though.
Steve recovered quickly from the surprise of the invitation and responded.
“Actually, Miss—Carla, I’ve got a pretty full schedule today. Thank you
though.” He looked at his second-in-command, who could feel Carla’s eyes on
him. She was astute enough to realize that she’d been turned down in the name
of work, but she accepted the rejection in stride.
It was going to be
difficult to get the tap set up that day, but the head of Five-0 let the woman
know that it would be accomplished. The two men left after instructing the
woman to call them at the first sign of trouble.
“Steve, are you sure
you don’t want to—” Dan started, but his boss cut him off, as he turned his car
around.
“Danno, I appreciate
that you’re willing to plunge ahead alone, but I’m not willing to let you do
that. It’s gonna take both our heads to nail this monster before he kills
again, and I’ll tell you right now that we’ll do everything within our power to
prevent his Red Christmas.”
*****
“Shhhh!”
Jenny put her finger to her lips as she addressed the two detectives entering
the office, and pointed at McGarrett’s half open door.
Kono and Chin
immediately ceased their banter and approached quietly. The three poked their
heads around the door to see their boss and his second-in-command sound asleep.
Steve was slightly reclined on one end of the sofa, his head leaning on the
cushioned back. There were papers clutched in one of his hands, which rested on
his stomach. Dan was slouched in one of the white ch
The slight creak of
the door caused McGarrett to awaken. His eyes popped open and he sat up.
Realizing immediately he was in his office, he took a moment to look around and
assess the situation. His eyes rested on the three people standing in his
doorway.
“Good morning,” Jenny
whispered cheerfully.
He rubbed his eyes
with both hands and nodded. “Good morning.”
It was Friday, and he
and Danno had worked until nearly
“You all had a
pleasant day I presume?” McGarrett inquired quietly. All three nodded and
smiled.
“Mai sent leftovers
to you guys,” Chin added.
“And I have a pumpkin
pie for you.” Jenny smiled.
At last, Williams
groaned, wrinkled his nose, and tipped his head back so that when he opened his
eyes, he was looking up into the upside-down face of his boss. In the same
scan, he saw the faces of the other Five-0 men and Jenny.
“Did Santa Claus
come?” Williams asked as he closed his eyes again and stretched his back.
Jenny giggled and
McGarrett looked over at the others. “Remind me to have a talk with him before
Christmas.”
Dan stood and
stretched again.
“Go home and get some
sleep, Danno.” McGarrett commanded as he rolled his head down onto his chest
and back up.
“I’m gonna go shower
and change, but I wanna go back over to the scenes. Something about these
pictures is bothering me.” He collected his suit jacket from McGarrett’s coat
rack, and started out the door, but stopped suddenly. “Did you all have a great
day?”
“Yeah,
bruddah!”
“You know it, Danny!”
“It was a wonderful
day!”
All three of his
friends spoke at the same time. He grinned and nodded. “Great!” The next
comment was to his boss. “Steve, you need a shave!”
“Thanks for
noticing!” McGarrett threw at his detective. “On that observant note, I think
I’ll hit the showers too!”
*****
“No, Jenny, don’t let
her wait in my office,” McGarrett instructed. He threw a glance at Williams and
rolled his eyes. “There’s evidence floating all over the place. Put her in the
interrogation room.”
The car screeched as
it rounded the corner into the parking lot at the Palace. Instead of parking,
McGarrett pulled up to the steps and spoke to his passenger.
“Danno, get in there
and take care of her. Make sure she’s got nothing new for us and pet her fur
the right way. I don’t want her to get upset and go off half-cocked and do what
reporters do best! I’ll be back right after my meeting with Chief Dann.”
“Steve, she wants YOU
to pet her fur – not me!” Dan was amused at his boss’s obvious avoidance of the
woman.
McGarrett took a
moment to glare at his second-in-command before he responded in an ominously
quiet tone. “Humor me, Danno, and whatever you do, don’t say anything that can
be used against us – remember she’s writing a book!”
“Right, Steve!”
Williams got out of the car and headed up the Palace steps.
THAT was it! He had
to admire his boss’s wisdom and discipline. The man was not willing to risk his
reputation or the reputation of Five-0 for a tryst with a writer, no matter how
desirable the woman. He’s certainly
setting the example, Dan mused as he trotted up the steps. It made the
detective realize how much he had to learn from Steve.
*****
Jenny spoke up as
soon as she saw Dan coming through the door. “She didn’t want to wait in the
interrogation room.” The secretary was annoyed. It seemed a very impolite thing
for a visitor to refuse to wait where they were asked to wait. Dan shot the
secretary a don’t-worry-I’ll-handle-it glance as he approached the woman.
“Carla! Is everything
all right?” Williams asked, hoping she hadn’t noticed that he noticed her teal
blue sarong. The detective wondered how she poured herself into it.
She smiled but looked
over Dan’s shoulder as she spoke. “Hello, Danny! Yeah, everything’s fine.
Where’s the boss?”
“He had an
appointment,” Dan said apologetically.
She gave a slight
pout. “Just tell me it wasn’t with a gorgeous blonde.”
Dan shook his head.
“His appointment isn’t with a blonde – he might have been a brunette when he
had h
Carla giggled. “Okay,
I can’t compete with that.” She looked around the office and changed the
subject. “How’s the case going?”
“We’re making
progress and following leads as we uncover them.” Williams’ response had a very
neutral and noncommittal tone.
“Now, you know,
Danny, darling, I think I heard you say that exact same thing on the news last
night.” She folded her arms and stared at him accusingly.
“That’s the official
party line,” Dan said.
She smacked him
gently on the arm. “You mean I don’t get some sort of special dispensation
because the murderer has been in touch with me?”
“You’ll get
everything that it’s ethical for me to tell you. Right now, we’re working an
active investigation, so I can’t say much. What I will promise you is an
exclusive interview with Steve AFTER the case is solved. That brings me to my
next point. You really should not come here. The suspect could very well be
watching you.”
She gave a small
dismissive wave. “It’s perfectly reasonable that I visit the police. I can’t
imagine that the murderer would not see that!”
Dan disagreed.
“Carla, reasonable is NOT a word I would use to describe the sick individual
who is doing this.”
She chose to ignore
the detective’s argument, and changed the subject. “May I take a peek in his
office?” She asked and tried to slip around Williams before he responded. He
quickly moved to block her path.
“I’m sorry, Carla.
It’s a mess in there right now.” He briefly considered offering her a tour of
the other parts of the Palace, but decided that he himself had things to
accomplish on this day as well.
She stepped closer to
him, well inside the politely acceptable distance for acquaintances, and did
not seem to care that they were standing within four feet of Jenny’s desk.
Seeing the surprise
and mild dismay on the detective’s face, the secretary made a point of turning
her ch
“Not even a quick
peek if I say pretty please?”
The act disconcerted
the detective, but no pretty face was worth the wrath of Steve McGarrett.
Williams grew more insistent. “Carla, I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”
She gave up her
attempts to persuade the detective suddenly and cheerfully. “Well, I had to
try! You still think fondly of me, don’t you, Danny?”
He smiled politely
back, “Of course, Carla. Please call me if you have any further communication
with the suspect.”
She’d turned to leave,
but stopped and looked back at Dan. “My phone is tapped now, isn’t it?”
Williams nodded.
“Yes, there’s an audio surveillance team in place listening to any incoming
calls. We’ll be notified if the suspect contacts you by telephone again.”
She took a moment to
absorb the information before she gave a casual wave and strolled from the
office. “Tell Steve he owes me dinner.”
The scent of the
woman’s cologne still hanging in the
“That woman is
dangerous.” Jenny grumbled as she turned and straightened Dan’s tie.
“Yeah,” Williams
agreed absentmindedly. “Steve’s right.”
*****
“Sorry to interrupt,
Steve, but I need Danny for a few minutes.”
Jenny hadn’t stepped
into her boss’s office – she hated to catch even a glimpse of the crime scene
photos. Rather, she’d just pushed the door open to show the second-in-command
the paper she held in her hand. She didn’t want to burst in on the two men, but both were
working with an intensity on this case that left them hard to catch unoccupied.
It took Dan a couple
moments to mentally pull back from whatever document the two detectives were
pouring over on Steve’s desk.
When he looked
confused, she started to remind him. “We need to make a couple of decisions
before it’s too late.”
“Oh, yeah!” He turned to Steve. “I need a few minutes – Christmas party
issues.”
“Again?” McGarrett
sounded mildly exasperated. “Didn’t we just have a Christmas Party?”
“Yeah – just last
year, and you had a good time,” Williams accused. “Didn’t you?”
McGarrett paused,
knowing that his friend was preparing to back him into a corner with an
argument, if necessary, to carry on with his mission.
Williams was
certainly the social glue of the organization. Since he’d recruited the young
man from the HPD ranks, the office had become somehow more – more family-like.
Perhaps it was the fact that everyone was interested in the kid brother of the
group, his social life and troubles, and he didn’t have the ego that would make
him lie to hide failure from the only ohana he had. With no living blood
relatives, Williams always made his work unit his family.
The holidays were
upon them now, and so Jenny and Dan would be planning festivities of some
sort. He knew that Williams took the
holiday merriment very seriously. The detective, probably correctly so,
insisted that social occasions were very important adhesive in the structure of
the work ohana. McGarrett did remember that the Christmas party the previous
year had been one of the most enjoyable evenings he’d spent as part of a group
in many years – possibly in his adult life. He recalled their recent
conversation in the parking lot about morale and esprit de Corp.
He had to admit the
truth though. If he couldn’t win the debate honestly, then the game would go to
Williams. “Yes, I had a great time, but sometimes your idea of a great time and
my idea of a great time are two entirely different things.”
Williams replied
suddenly with animation typical to their arguments when the younger detective
was trying to cajole his boss into seeing things his way. “And SOMETIMES we
have the SAME idea of a great time!”
So different, the two
of them, and yet so committed to the same things, so able to play off of each
other’s strengths.
McGarrett sighed and
nodded as he watched his detective join the secretary at her desk. Williams
assumed oversight of many of the administrative functions in the office when he
became the second-in-command. As distracted as the head of Five-0 was with the
murders, not to mention several other ongoing cases, he was glad to see Danno
not shirking his other duties. Life was definitely easier with a competent
right-hand man.
From the vantage
point of his desk, McGarrett observed with mild interest the scene through his
open door. Dan was standing, resting his elbows on Jenny’s desk. His
second-in-command and his secretary were deeply embroiled in their private
conversation, their heads almost touching as they spoke. Their tone was soft
and almost conspiratorial.
So, Williams and
Sherman would plan the Christmas party while somewhere out there, some demented
soul did his own plotting for how he would spend Christmas.
*****
Kono groaned as a
nearly empty container of lo mein slid from the table in his boss’s office and
slapped against floor. The only one of the four detectives to react to the
spill, he lethargically rose from the nearby ch
McGarrett, who’d been
staring out the blinds of his French doors, sighed. The Hawaiian detective
always seemed to bring home an obvious conclusion from a different perspective.
He looked at his watch. “No, Kono, I do not
have the feeling that we’re making progress. We’re tired. Everybody go home.
We’ll get a fresh start in the morning.”
“Hey!”
Dan jumped from where
he’d been sitting, staring at the photos stuck to the chalk board. The
detective had not moved for the past thirty minutes, and McGarrett thought he
had probably dozed off. Not having the familial commitments of the other two,
both he and Williams had been working nearly eighteen hours a day since
Thanksgiving. If his detective was half as tired as he was, sleep could come
very easily.
The others quickly
moved to the chalk board where Dan stood. “There are
what I would call before and after pictures of each scene, right?”
“Yeah, and there are
none of the Ramsey scene, which tells us that we were right to consider it a
separate investigation.” Chin agreed.
Knowing his
second-in-command had focused on some other feature of the photos, McGarrett
was impatient to know what he’d noticed. “Yeah, yeah, Chin, that’s right. Danno
– keep going! We’ve got before and after photos.”
Williams nodded.
“From the shadows and lighting in all of these, we can tell that the befores
were shot pretty close to the same time as the afters.”
The detectives
studied the photos they’d each reviewed many times.
“Danny, if you’re
wondering why the victims let the killer take the pictures, don’t you think
it’s because the killer had already shot them up with the sleeping medicine?”
Chin asked as he pulled out his pipe.
Williams smiled with
satisfaction and put his hands in his pockets. “No, Chin, I don’t! Bergman’s
report called the agent fast acting, but I asked him what he meant by that this
morning. A full hypodermic injected into the muscle would not have taken full
effect for five to ten minutes depending on the weight of the victim. All three
of our victims were pretty good-sized guys – at least one hundred and ninety
pounds – and Hoyt – heck, he must’ve weighed
The head of Five-0
was on the same track now. “So, our killer had to entertain his victims for five
to fifteen minutes before the drug took effect.”
Kono offered, “Maybe
he held them at gunpoint.”
“Hmm, maybe,”
McGarrett admitted as he rubbed his chin.
Dan pushed his point.
“Maybe, but what if he didn’t have a gun? What if the victims were expecting
somebody to come take pictures?”
“Like who?” Kono
argued.
Williams shrugged,
“Like…like…hmm… like a general contractor who would be giving an estimate on
some rep
It was the lead
detective’s turn to shout. “Danno! That’s it! Look! He
pointed to several of the photos. “Water damage! All
of these are pictures of water damage! An insurance company would have to send
somebody out to take pictures before they would pay for any rep
The detectives’
adrenalin rush pushed all thoughts of going home out
of their heads as McGarrett snapped orders. “Chin – Kono – find
out who the victims used for home owners’ insurance, and I don’t care who you
have to get out of bed!”
*****
Jenny shook her head
in consternation as she saw the state of her boss’s office. She immediately
flung open the lanai doors to rid the room of the scent of stale Chinese food
that hung in the
As she finished
collecting the trash, the outer door popped open, and she could hear the
enthusiastic banter. A good sign, she
thought hopefully.
“We might just stop this
psycho before his Red Christmas!” McGarrett exclaimed to Chin as he reviewed
the papers the Chinese detective had handed him.
Neither man stopped
walking as Chin pointed to something on the
paper. “Different insurance companies – same insurance adjustment contractor!”
“Good job, Chin!”
Kono pushed through
the door next, and was greeted by his almost exuberant boss. “You guys get over
to this place.” He looked down at the paper again. “Express
Estimates. Find out who they sent on these jobs!”
“On it, boss!” Chin
nodded and left with the Hawaiian detective.
McGarrett gave the
secretary a quick hug before he went into his office and closed the door.
Jenny just finished
making the coffee when the next excited detective breezed into the office, humming
a holiday tune.
“Jenny!” Dan strolled
over to her and picked up his coffee cup. She poured a cup and then filled the
one he was holding.
“Did I hear you
humming White Christmas?” She smiled as she handed him the other cup he knew
was for his boss.
“I’ll take any color
as long as it’s not red!”
The detective grinned
and started for the closed door. Before he made it more than a few paces, Carla
Hayes stepped in. The woman was attired in more businesslike attire on this,
the fourth in as many days that she had
visited the Five-0 offices. A sophisticated, summer white business suit that made
her look like Grace Kelly, Williams thought.
“Good morning,
Danny!”
“Hello, Carla,”
Williams replied as he set the two coffee cups down on Jenny’s desk. The detective
mentally braced himself for another round of high-pressure requests from the
woman. She’d obviously been doing her homework about the Five-0 staff. Dan knew
that looks like hers could easily loosen the tongues of unsuspecting HPD
personnel (not to mention Five-0 men!).
“Can I assume from
the perky spring in the steps of Detectives Kelly and Kalakaua that you have a
break in the case?”
“You can’t assume
that just yet,” Dan replied. “But we are making progress.”
As he spoke, he was a
little surprised that Jenny had moved up and was clutching his arm. She frowned
disapprovingly at the woman, who did not acknowledge the presence of the other
female in the room. Amused at the secretary’s somewhat protective posture, he
slipped his arm around her affectionately.
“Yes, yes, and you’re
following leads as you uncover them.” The woman rolled her eyes. “And I gather
that Steve is too busy to see me?”
Dan hesitated. He had
standing orders to manage this relationship, but it was getting tougher with
each conversation.
She spoke before he
could decide on the best answer. Her eyes grew dramatically large. “Am I THAT
repugnant that he forces you to deal with me OR am I that interesting that
you’ve decided that you’re the one who will deal with me?”
“Danny is Steve’s
second-in-command!” Jenny had had enough of this vixen. “And sometimes it’s his
job to decide who needs to see the boss!”
Dan pulled Jenny from
in front of him, where she’d moved to get in the face of the taller woman. The
two women glared at each other and Dan grew a little concerned that he might
have to break up a physical confrontation.
Carla looked back at
the detective. “I’ve heard from more than one source at HPD that you’re
McGarrett’s Golden Child – his heir apparent, they say.”
Her tone was baiting
and Williams knew it, but he couldn’t keep the annoyance from his reply. “Whatever that means,” Dan muttered. He
swallowed his annoyance quickly and physically manhandled Jenny out of his way.
“Look, Carla, I’m not Steve’s social secretary, so if you wanna make a move on
him, that’s your business, but leave me out of it!” Williams was tired of
walking on egg shells around the siren.
Carla’s mouth flew
open. It was difficult for Williams to tell whether she was hurt or angry or
both. He didn’t have much time to mull on it – in a
flash, she pulled her fist back and smacked him in the face. The detective,
caught totally off guard, did not have time to defend himself.
“Ouch! Hey!” Dan
grabbed his nose!
Carla, realizing
she’d lost her temper, held up her hand and looked instantly apologetic.
“You hit him!” Jenny
accused, now completely outraged.
“Jenny—” Carla
started, but the secretary would have none of it.
“That’s assault on a
police officer!” Jenny stepped close to Dan and pulled a tissue from nowhere.
She spoke to the detective as she dabbed at the trickle of blood that ran from
his nose. “You’re bleeding!” Her indignation intensified.
“Jenny, it’s okay—” It was Dan’s turn to be interrupted.
“What’s going on out
here?” McGarrett stood in his doorway as all heads snapped in his direction.
“Everything’s fine,
Steve,” Dan assured quickly as he grabbed the tissue from Jenny’s hand. “I just
– had a bloody nose.” Williams flashed a please-keep-quiet look at the
secretary, who mulled it over for a few moments before her body language looked
less defensive.
“I’ll get you an ice
pack,” she said to Dan instead of saying what she wanted to say to her boss.
“Carla, how are you?
Is everything all right?” He asked politely, but did not step from his doorway.
The woman’s demeanor
returned immediately to her coy, feminine persona. “I heard you might have a
break in the case, and since I haven’t heard from our friend, you’re my only
hope for information right now.”
The detective smiled,
“Yes, we hope to have something for you soon. Danno will be in touch.” The
detective was astute enough to realize that the situation on which he’d opened
his door was a little odd, but he just chose not to direct any mental energy at
the situation. He and his second-in-command had a lot of work to do. He turned
his attention away from the visitor. “Danno, as soon as you can get the blood
under control, do you think you can join me?”
“I’ll be right in,
Steve,” Williams assured. His boss’s door was closed before anything else could
be said.
Carla looked quickly
back at the detective she’d just assaulted and said grudgingly, “I’m sorry – I
– I don’t know what came over me.” She quickly breezed past the secretary, who
glared at her as she returned with ice, and left the office.
“Why didn’t you tell
Steve?” Jenny asked as she handed Williams the ice pack.
“Tell Steve what?
That we almost got into a brawl with a witness?”
Jenny sighed. “When
you put it that way…”
“Yeah, so let’s just
let this drop.”
Dan quickly stemmed
the flow of blood from his noise, and joined his boss. The incident with Carla
had been disturbing, and Dan wondered whether he was the best one to cultivate
that relationship.
McGarrett looked up
as Williams entered the office. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he admitted
sheepishly. He suddenly had the urge to confess to the man, whose penetrating
stare sometimes made Williams feel like his thoughts were written on his
forehead.
Before he responded,
McGarrett continued to study his second-in-command. The young man’s
too-readable face summoned a sense of amusement in the lead detective. What do you want to tell me? He let the
question rest, knowing Williams would come clean if it was anything he really
needed to hear. Instead, he addressed the other issue on his mind.
“She shouldn’t be
haunting the office.” The boss’s tone wasn’t reproving, but the fact that he
felt the need to point the fact out to him made Dan feel like he wasn’t doing a
very good job.
“I tell her that
every time she shows up,” Williams defended. “Steve, maybe you should--”
McGarrett chuckled
and held up his hand. “Danno, Danno, I know she’s a man eater.”
Dan shot back, “AND
she’s a witness in a very important investigation! I don’t think I—”
The head of Five-0
stopped his detective again in mid-sentence. “You don’t think I should trust
you with important stuff?”
Dan did not reply
immediately as he realized the correct answer trapped him.
The detective’s
hesitation made his boss supply the answer. “Well, I DO trust you – with THE
most important stuff, Danno. Don’t let her play you, and you’ll be fine.”
The vote of
confidence from McGarrett bolstered Williams. He felt a little better anyway
about his ability to deal with the temptress reporter. “Yeah,
okay, Steve. I just hope we nail this guy soon, so she can eliminate
this chapter from her book.”
*****
McGarrett slammed his
fist on his desk. “This is him! This is the guy! Edward Todd Slater! Age thirty
– height six feet two inches – weight two hundred twenty pounds – served two
years at Pennsylvania State Prison for assault with a deadly weapon – confined
by court order for three months at Rogers Psychiatric Institute in Philadelphia
for slashing a fellow employee at the car dealership where he’d been employed!”
Chin grinned. “I had
to get a court order to get his records from psychiatric hospital, but it was
worth the trouble. The doctor who evaluated him made some notes about his
fascination with knives.”
“These crimes fit him
like a glove! Now we’ve just got to find him!”
*****
“Well, you certainly
managed to get here quickly enough. I didn’t even have time to storm down to
your office and beg for your attention.” Carla spoke to McGarrett in her usual
come-hither voice as the p
“You should have
called us the second you hung up. We have reason to be concerned for your
safety.” McGarrett’s tone was a little tense with the woman as he felt she was
not taking the threat to herself seriously enough.
She threw a pouty
look at the detective. “Don’t be angry with me. Danny told me that you would be
informed as soon as I received a call from the man.”
McGarrett sighed as
he noticed that his second-in-command was almost ready to begin the playback of
the first fruit born by the tap on Hayes’ phone.
Dan turned up the
volume on the recording equipment as the white noise on the tape ceased,
indicating that a conversation was about to begin.
“Hello?”
”It’s
me – Ed.”
“Ed.
I – I haven’t heard from you.”
”The
cops are getting too close.”
“Why
do think that?”
“They
were at my apartment! You’ve told them too much!”
“No,
no, that’s not true—”
The loud crack on the
recording told everyone listening that the man had hung up the phone angrily. Carla
jumped slightly
“Hmm, interesting –
he’s using his correct name,” McGarrett mused.
“You know who it is?”
Carla was shocked.
“We think so, but he
hasn’t shown up at his residence or work since we figured out who he is a few
days ago.” McGarrett frowned.
“But you’ve got an
APB out on the man, right?”
“Yes, but it may take
awhile before he turns up.” He looked up from the tape recorder at the woman
across the table from him. “He’s clearly angry with you, so we can’t afford to
have you go without police protection until he’s captured. This is NOT open for
discussion. I’ll have an officer assigned to you immediately.”
“I won’t argue with
you, Steve,” she said meekly.
He nodded at Dan, who
understood instantly that he was to put in the call to HPD. Carla Hayes was to
have around-the-clock protection,
*****
“Okay, we may not
have the guy behind bars before our little Christmas party, but I think we can
all attend the festivities knowing that HPD is beating the bushes looking for
Edward Slater, the insurance adjuster with a fascination for knives and a
history of violent behavior.”
McGarrett sat at his
desk, feeling as relaxed as he’d felt in ages. Each member of his team sat in
their usual spots. The head of Five-0 intellectually accepted Williams’
argument that life for his staff must go on around serious investigations, and
to allow anything else would be devastating in the long run
for his unit. But it had been difficult for the
focused leader to give in to thoughts of relaxing while their murderous suspect
still roamed free. In reality though, there was little else his team could do,
but wait for HPD to flush the fiend out of his hiding place.
“Since we’ll have
family members at the festivities this evening, and I don’t want the subject to
come up, I want to tell you now what a
great job each of you has done on this very difficult case. Thank you.” The
rare words of praise from their boss further elevated everyone’s mood.
“Danno, we’ve got
around-the-clock coverage for Miss Hayes, correct?”
Williams spoke with
confidence. “Yeah! Harry Kanunu is on until
Steve held up his
hand. He smiled, but did not look up. “Okay, okay – I get it. You’ve got it
covered.”
Jenny spoke up. “Now
everyone knows where the beach house is, right?”
Everyone nodded, and
McGarrett added, “
“Danny, will you pick
up the—”
He winked before she
could finish the sentence. “I’ll pick up everything on the list on my way back
from HPD!”
“And the rest of us
are going to try to find the bottoms of our IN boxes!” McGarrett commanded with
satisfaction.
“That’s gonna take
days, boss!” Kono groaned.
“All right, let’s try
to make a dent in it anyway. We don’t get funding to solve crimes, my friend!”
Dan laughed as he
strolled out the door. “Yeah, we get funding for turning in paperwork!”
*****
“Patch him through!”
“Danny!”
“Harry, everything
okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,
everything’s fine, but we just pulled up to Miss Hayes’ place and found a
package on her front porch. She wants to talk to you.”
“Yeah, okay, put her
on.” Williams couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the woman. As much as
he had started to dislike her, he knew it had to be difficult to be in the
cross h
“Danny, the package
looks like another set of pictures. I haven’t opened it, but I’m certain that’s
what it is. He was here – at my house.” Even over the radio, he could make out
the tension in her voice.
“Carla, take it easy.
Officer Kanunu’s right there with you.” Dan reassured the woman. “I’ll have
someone come up and collect the package.”
“Danny, could you
come up now?”
Williams looked at
his watch and hesitated. The traffic was already picking up. A trip to Kanaluu
would definitely put him behind the eight ball, time-wise.
“There’s another
reason I want you to come. I have to tell you something.”
“Carla, if it’s about
the other day at the office—” Dan was going to tell her not to worry about it,
but she interjected at the first opportunity.
“No, it’s not that.
I’m sorry about that, but it’s more—more important than that.”
Carla was a
journalist – Dan wondered if she’d been holding back evidence for use in her
book. The thought crossed his mind that it might not be in her personal best
interest to have this series of murders solved. “Okay, I’m on my way.”
“How long do you
think you’ll be?”
“I should be there in
about thirty minutes.”
*****
It’s just not my day,
Williams thought as he saw the line of tail lights in front of him. He slowed
to a stop along with all of the other people heading down the road. After a
minute, when there was still no movement, he realized there was no traffic
coming from the oncoming direction. He picked up his radio microphone.
“Dispatch --
Five-Oh-Two.”
A voice responded,
“Five-Oh-Two, Dispatch.”
“Dispatch, what’s
shakin’ on
“Traffic
accident at Waihee and Ahaolelo, Danny.”
Williams groaned and
then had a thought. “Can I make it through to
“With lights
and siren – sure. I’ll let ‘em know that they need to make way for some ali’i
to pass through!”
Dan chuckled.
“Thanks, Stan! Mele Kalikimaka!”
“You
too, bruddah!”
Williams,
still grinning from the exchange with the dispatcher, set his police light on
the dashboard and turned it on along with the siren. He angled his LTD into the
empty oncoming traffic lane and moved on down the road to his destination.
*****
The police cruiser
was parked in front of the house. Dan assumed the occupants were already in the
house. He climbed the three steps to the front door and knocked. From some
remote part of the house, the detective could hear someone beckoning him to
enter. “The door’s not locked!”
He tried the knob,
and when it turned easily. He stepped on in and called out. “Hello! Harry!
Carla!”
“Upst
Williams turned and
trotted up the st
“Harry!” He shouted,
knowing the man was either dead or near death from the volume of red pooling
around the HPD man’s torso.
While he had the urge
to run to the man, he knew the scene was not yet secure. Every cop instinct he
had told him he’d walked into some sort of setup. Carla! Where was she? She’d
called to him. Was she unaware of what had happened here? Was somebody holding
her prisoner?
Williams pulled his
revolver and cautiously scanned the room for signs that the patrolman’s
attacker was nearby. He slipped to the closet, took a deep breath, and yanked
the door open – nothing but a few hangars on the rod and a short stack of shoe
boxes on the floor. The house wasn’t secure, but he had to confirm Harry’s
status before he left the man. He moved quickly to the prone form, and, willing
the revulsion to a remote spot in his brain, rolled the man over. The dark blue
of the uniform masked the blood that totally soaked it. The man’s eyes were half-open,
leaving the detective with a horrifying memory that he didn’t
think would ever leave his head. Dan started to place his hand on the side of
the bloody neck, but he could see that the man had nearly been decapitated in
addition to the numerous stab wounds in his back. The flow of red had already
ebbed to a near stop.
Stop the bleeding and help the living, Williams!
Dan had to dig deep
to put this out of his head and stand. Carla and a murderous fiend were
somewhere in the house, and he, himself, was in danger of ending up like
Officer Harry Kanunu. His heart pounded as he moved like a cat out of the room,
mindful of his breathing and the now very loud rustle of his pants. He
progressed down the hallway until he heard something coming from the bathroom
directly in front on him. The door was half open, but he could see nothing but
the toilet and a sink. The red smudge on the sink was a dramatic contrast to
the white porcelain it blemished, and Dan knew that the carnage was not
isolated to the bedroom. The soft, high-pitched sound – there it was again!
What was it? A dog whimpering? A five-second eternity
later, the whimpering became a cry, and he knew it was a woman.
Carla!
He made his way to
the edge of the room and peered through the hinge crack to verify there was
nobody hiding behind the door – every nerve in his body told him there was
somebody waiting to spring on him and begin slashing. With his left hand, he
pressed the door all the way open to reveal the shaking woman sitting on the
side of the bathtub. She was scantily clad in a short, loosely-tied pink terry
cloth robe that was now marred with splotches of blood. The tears that rolled
down her cheeks dragged splattered blood down her ivory face. She looked up at him, her terrified expression reinforced the sense that
danger was imminent.
He started towards
her, and she reached toward him, but as she began to stand, she pointed and
screamed, her eyes looking past Williams to the doorway. “Danny! Behind you!”
The detective spun
around to confront an empty doorway where an evil fiend should have been
standing. Torn between confusion and terror, he started to turn back to Carla
but felt her presence against his back. His first thought was that the
terrified woman was clinging to him, but that reflection evaporated as he felt
the violent thump on the side of his neck, just below his jaw line.
Turning in the
direction of the pressure, he saw a different creature than the one he’d last
seen in the bloody, pink bathrobe. There was fright, but also an odd look of
excitement in her face as she raised the sharp kitchen knife over her head to
strike again.
In a single motion,
Dan instinctively punched her wrist with his fist, causing the knife to sail
into the bathtub, and pulled his handcuffs from the back of his belt. She
punched him in the chest with her fists, but he harshly grabbed her wrist and
clicked one end of the cuff in place. As he looked down, he could see the
bright red of oxygenated blood almost spurting into his field of vision.
Carla tried with her
other fist to swing at Dan as he absorbed the knowledge that he’d been struck
with the knife in his neck!
She laughed. “Yes,
I’ve killed you!”
Dizzy already, he
roughly yanked her to the sink and secured the free end of the cuff on the drainpipe.
She fought like a wild cat to prevent it, but Dan had no time -- only adrenaline. He backed away
from her, his hand applying pressure in a vain attempt to stop the flow of
blood.
Shocked and at a
total loss to understand the reason this successful and beautiful reporter
would murder him, he stood there momentarily holding his throat as she flung
the words at him.
“Now die quickly
before you spoil everything!”
With her toe, she
pulled something small on the floor towards her, and her tone suddenly turned
to the candy-sweetness that he’d come to know was false. “Lay down here with
me, sweet Danny, and I’ll stroke your h
Then he recognized it
on the floor by her foot, and, with the cold clarity of impending death, he
knew – what he’d mistaken for a scared woman’s fingernails digging into him had
been a hypodermic needle pressed to its hilt into the back of his shoulder. He
probably had only minutes before he would lose consciousness forever and bleed
out. The cop inside Williams noted that this confirmed why none of the victims
put up much of a struggle.
But the glove print was too big…
He pushed himself out
of the bathroom, knowing Carla’s wish was not far off,
he began the long journey down the steps to the nearest police radio. The
hallway was longer than it had been earlier. By the time he reached the top of
the st
He crawled out of the
pool he’d made, but stood again as soon as he could regain his footing because
there was no way he could crawl and keep any pressure on his small, but deadly
laceration. Dan could feel the moisture soaking his shirt and pants as he
staggered out of the house. He gripped the railing as he cautiously made his
way down the porch steps, sensing that he would not get up from a fall again.
The dead officer’s cruiser was closer than his own, and so he moved unsteadily
in that direction. Despite the gravity of the situation, he found his morbid
sense of humor coming to surface.
And to think Steve told me not too bleed too much…
Suddenly, hovering in
his path was the outline of a man. Help was here! He stumbled toward the man,
but noticed the object in the large shadowy figure’s hand – it popped open and
became suddenly longer. Immediately racked with fear again, Dan knew it was a switch blade.
No…
The new attacker
rapidly grew larger in the officer’s field of vision. Police
training made Williams reach for his revolver, which he miraculously
re-sheathed by force of habit in its holster after Carla had stabbed him.
Not bothering to take aim, he fired as he saw the glint of the sun on the blade
very close to him.
He felt the gun fire,
more than he heard the pop. The man fell in front of him, and Dan did not stop
to see if he was dead – he didn’t get up, and that was all that mattered.
Getting the car door
open took almost of all of the strength he had left. At last he tumbled into
the front seat. Focus…focus… The
radio microphone was hooked in its spot on the dashboard, and he found he had
to let go of his neck to retrieve it.
His voice was raspy,
but at least it was still audible. “Dispatch -- Five-Oh-Two…” He didn’t –
couldn’t wait for the response. “Officer… down.
Request….backup…”
“Five-0h-Two –
Dispatch. Danny! That you man? What’s your location?”
One thing that stood
out about HPD over other police forces was their frequent breaches of radio
protocol. McGarrett, initially objected to the undisciplined practice, but
eventually became resigned to the fact that it was just part of the charm of
Hawaiian culture and its people.
Dan could not
remember the address, but he prayed that Harry had checked in when he and Carla
had stopped. “Kanu…nu…Carla…” As he said her name, a horrifying thought struck
him. What if Carla managed to escape? What if they thought the dead goon had
done Harry and him in?
“Danny! Say again!
Did you say Kanunu?”
“Yeah…Carla…killed…”
He choked…his voice was gone. He didn’t think he’d been able to get his point
across.
It was strange, he
knew he was going to die – after all he hadn’t been able to tell them where he
was. But his thoughts turned to the Christmas party the previous year. What a
great evening it had been. This year would be different though. His ohana –
Steve – would probably be mourning his loss. There would be no laughter, no
jokes, no music, he suspected – all because he had the discourtesy to get
himself brutally murdered on the very day of the Christmas party.
How inconsiderate can a guy get!
I’m sorry Steve…
*****
It took a minute for
the dispatcher on duty to confer with the duty officer and agree that Williams
said he was at Harry Kanunu’s location, but at last
the call went out.
“All available units
– Dispatch. Officer down.
*****
“You and Danno have
put a lot of effort into this shindig tonight,” McGarrett commented as he
signed papers where she pointed.
“It’s going to be
great, boss!” Jenny said, but then another thought came to her. “I hope Danny
remembers to bring the book. Maybe I should call him.”
Before the detective
could question the secretary, his private line rang right when Kono and Chin
trotted into his office.
The officer-down
message was broadcast to all units on patrol. Kono and Chin heard the message
on the police radio in the Chinese detective’s cubicle. McGarrett was receiving
the call from HPD Dispatch because a Five-0 detective was involved.
“Answer that and tell
‘em we’re en route!” He barked to Jenny as he and the other two detectives
sprinted out the door.
McGarrett, gripped
with fear over the news of his second-in-command’s abbreviated call for help,
hopped onto the radio the second they were in his car. No backup had arrived at
the scene and so no news was forthcoming. The next five minutes were
interminable for the three men careening toward Kanaluu. The head detective’s
driving on a good day was fast and usually conducted in a distracted fashion.
Add panic and urgency to the mix, and the drive was downright life threatening.
At last a report that
two marked units were on the scene was broadcast. “Put me through to the
officer in charge of the scene!” McGarrett’s tone was intense and the dispatcher
didn’t waste any time making the connection, but getting someone to come to
their radio took another three minutes. The head of Five-0 was ready to start
shooting by the time a voice responded.
“Dispatch, this is
Fenton.”
McGarrett didn’t wait
for the dispatcher to announce him as it was clear the patch was complete.
“Officer Fenton, this is McGarrett. What’ve you got? Where’s Williams?” Steve
could feel his insides shaking, fearing that something very bad had happened.
Another pause caused
the impatient and tense Five-0 detective to bark. “Fenton!
Put Williams on!”
“Mr. McGarrett, we
have three bodies here. Two of them have been identified. One of them is
Officer Harry Kanunu, and the other one is Detective Williams.” The voice
continued to speak, but Steve’s ears were ringing. He suddenly felt like a
large mousetrap had been sprung on his heart. He clutched the microphone with a
death grip. NO! There had to be a mistake! NO!
“No! There’s a
mistake! A mistake!” he whispered ferociously to himself.
“I’ve called the
medical examiner and he’s on his way, sir.” McGarrett heard the words this
time, but could not find a voice to respond. He wasn’t sure he had the will to
continue breathing.
Chin and Kono
exchanged distressed looks, and Chin, in the front passenger seat, pried the
microphone from his boss’s hand.
“Sir? Do you copy?” The voice queried.
“Fenton, this is Chin
Ho Kelly. We copy. We are en route and will arrive at your location within a
few minutes. Kelly out.”
The Oriental
detective, full of emotion as well, fell back on years of police training, but
could not speak to comfort the man sitting next to him, who kept his eyes on
the road without really seeing what was in his path.
Kono leaned back in
the seat behind the driver and was at a loss for words as well. The thought
that their kakaina was gone was unimaginable. But how could a report like this
be a mistake? After all, what HPD officer didn’t know a dead body when he saw
one?
McGarrett’s face was
a tense statue for the remaining minutes of the silent drive to the
“Where is he?”
His question was
harsh, and he had no thought that the officer would not know to whom he
referred. He pointed at the police
cruiser, and every person within eyeshot grew suddenly silent. McGarrett’s
fondness for his second-in-command was well known.
The Five-0 men were
thirty feet away, but the carnage was already visible. McGarrett felt weak, but
he would not stop. Danno deserved for him to follow through.
A dead man – the
murderer – on his back outside the car barely rated a glance from the
detective. His interest lie in the front seat of the
cruiser. It was like a nightmare from which he could not awaken as his friend’s
body came into view. He caught his breath as he saw the pool of blood on the
floor board. He stopped and circled around to the driver’s side of the vehicle
where he could be closer to Dan’s head. Chin and Kono moved to stand near the
passenger door, close enough to begin their own grieving process, but far
enough away to give their boss the private moment he needed with his protégé.
McGarrett
sank to his knees as he opened the door. Dan was stretched across the length of
the seat on his side, canted towards the dash The
microphone had slipped from Williams’ hand and was now immersed in the pool of
red on the floor. His head had slipped off the seat and was dangling unnaturally
under the steering wheel. No white was visible on his shirt – only the red life
that had drained from his body colored his clothes. Steve took in a sharp
breath again, but could not contain the sob that came out.
“What were
you doing here, my friend?”
A tear
rolled down his face as he gently picked up Williams’ head and irrationally tried
to move him into a more comfortable position, causing him to
gently roll onto his back. The
skin on his blood-splattered cheek was cool but did not feel lifeless to
McGarrett. Grasping at any possibility, willing to make a deal with God or the
devil, he tried to find a pulse on the non-injured side of his friend’s neck,
but could detect nothing.
God I need a Christmas miracle. Do
this for me and I’m in Your pocket. Please…
Steve’s tears dropped
onto Dan’s cheek as he leaned over him to see if he could sense any life. He
lifted one of the nearly closed eyes to reveal the blue cornea. What he saw
startled him, but made his heart leap – Dan’s pupil contracted as the light hit
it!
“DOC!” McGarrett screamed. “He’s not dead!”
It took Kono, Chin,
Bergman, and everyone else within earshot a moment to recover from the shock of
the shout. The other two Five-0 detectives looked at each other, each wondering
whether their boss had lost his mind, but they moved quickly and climbed into
the back seat of the car to get a look for themselves.
Bergman ran around to McGarrett’s position.
“Steve, get back and
let me take a look!” Bergman’s bark was reminiscent of McGarrett’s at that
moment. Steve quickly stepped back
The physician checked
Williams’ pupils with his small pen light, and then pulled out his stethoscope.
Bergman’s startled response was more violent than McGarrett’s as he screamed.
“Get that gurney over here! This man’s alive!” He rubbed his face quickly. “My
God, we’ve been wasting time! Quickly! Help me get him out of here! Steve, get
and maintain firm pressure on his neck – he doesn’t need to lose another ounce
of what blood he’s got left!”
There were plenty of
hands to help lift the limp blood-soaked man out of the car and onto the
gurney. As they removed him, the doctor bristled, “Who decided this man was
dead?”
One of the officers
spoke up uncertainly. “Two of us checked for a pulse in his neck, and there was
so much blood, we didn’t see how he could…” It was clear both of the men felt
horrible.
“For the record, a
carotid pulse is not a reliable indicator of life in the case of an injury to
the neck.” He shook his head at the near-tragedy that he wasn’t certain had
been averted yet.
“I want thirty units
of whole blood – A positive – waiting…” Bergman was snapping orders at the
attendant as they lifted the gurney into the ambulance, and McGarrett
simultaneously barked commands at Chin and Kono.
“I wanna know what
the Hell happened here—” Just before he had to climb into the ambulance, he saw
an HPD officer leading Carla out the front door of the house. The woman was
crying hysterically, but was apparently okay enough to walk under her own
power. She looked down at the dead man in the front yard, and gasped, but
quickly continued scanning the yard as if searching for something. When she saw
the senior detective, she broke away from the man who had her arm and ran
headlong towards the ambulance.
“Steve! Steve! He
killed them!” She was obviously bleeding, but her injuries did not seem to be
critical enough to keep her from sprinting.
The man was too
focused on saving Williams’s life to deal with the distraught female. Not
missing a beat, he continued his progress into his place by Dan’s head in the
vehicle.
“Call another
ambulance! Kono, you ride with her and find out what happened! Chin, you’re in
charge of the scene! I want it locked down!”
The ambulance doors
were slammed before any more words could be exchanged and each man set about
the daunting tasks at hand, holiday festivities now the farthest thing from
anyone’s mind.
*****
As badly as he wanted
to know that Williams was going to be all right, McGarrett’s heart sank when he
saw Doctor Bergman enter the hospital’s waiting room. It had only been an hour
and a half. It hadn’t been long enough for the medical people to mend his
friend – he’d been so—so deathlike. The only possible answer was that Danno had
truly died on the operating room table.
“I’ve had customers
who died from blood loss that had more blood left than he had.” Bergman shook
his head and sat down. “Is there any coffee around?”
Impatient to hear the
prognosis, but feeling a measure more calm in light of Bergman’s tired, but
calm manner, McGarrett handed the man his own cup as he sat down next to the
physician in the hospital’s waiting room.
“Doc, what’s the
deal? Is Danno gonna be okay?”
“Yes, Steve, I think
so. I’ve got him sewn up and transfused. He had quite a slice to the carotid
and a punctured esophagus. They’re taking him up to the ICU right now. He’s in
serious, but stable condition.” He took a swig of the detective’s coffee.
McGarrett leaned back
on the sofa as well. “Thank God. Thank God.” He shot a glance upward and
recalled the deal he’d made earlier. In Your pocket…
Bergman continued.
“He’s got some bumps and bruises as well, but nothing broken.”
“When can I see him?”
“They’ll have him
situated shortly.” The doctor looked over at the man sitting next to him and
opened his mouth to speak, but stopped.
“What is it, Doc?” McGarrett
asked, a measure of concern rising in his gut again.
“Nothing relevant
really – it’s just that if you hadn’t noticed that Danny – if you hadn’t –
well, another few minutes of being treated like a dead guy would’ve turned him
into just that.”
McGarrett had never
seen the man cry, but there were tears in his eyes now. An involuntary shudder
traversed Steve’s spine – he knew it had been close, but couldn’t bring himself
to think about it just now.
“It’s a miracle I
didn’t haul him off in the meat wagon and slip him into one of my
refrigerators.”
“Doc, I – uh, don’t think we can dwell on what might’ve been. Let’s leave that to the poets and philosophers. You brought him back, and that’s what counts, and I’m betting that’s what Danno’s gonna say when he wakes up.”
Both men jumped
slightly when Kono popped the door open. He had the same initial reaction to
the sight of the doctor sitting in the waiting room instead of attending to his
friend that Steve had. He frowned. “How’s the kakaina?”
Bergman smiled at the
brotherly reference to his patient. “He’s holding his own, Kono.”
As soon as he saw the
Hawaiian detective, McGarrett remembered that Carla had also been injured, and
so immediately pressed for the details on her condition.
“She’s a little
bruised, and one little cut on her hand that needed stitches, but other than
that, she’s fine. They’re gonna keep her overnight here just for observation.
She was pretty hysterical for awhile.”
“I can only imagine
what she must’ve gone through. Were you able to get a statement from her?” With
Williams out of immediate danger, McGarrett was able to turn his thoughts back
to the horrible crime scene.
“Nothin’ that made
any sense until after we got here and the doctor took a look at her.” Kono
began. “Then, she settled right down, and became the perfect witness. She says
that she and Harry Kanunu arrived at her place and found a package on the
doorstep. She said it looked like the envelope that the other pictures came in,
so she called Danny. He told her that he’d come over and pick it up. Well, she
gets in the shower, and by the time she’s done, Danny’s knockin’ on the door.
She goes to let him in when she sees Harry’s legs in the bedroom. She starts
screamin’ and Danny busts in. They both go in to check out Harry, but somebody
comes springing out of the closet and attacks them. The guy manages to get a
knife into Danny. Then he grabs Danny’s handcuffs and pushes him down the st
“Oka-aay,” McGarrett
responded slowly. “So, Danno drove over to collect a new package of pictures…”
He frowned. “And walked in on a murder in progress…”
The Hawaiian
detective nodded. “It looks that way. She’s one lucky wahine that Danny managed
to put a bullet in that guy.”
“Hmm, yeah,” the lead
detective responded distractedly. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but
something about the story didn’t add up. Maybe everything would make more sense
after a visit back to the crime scene. “Kono, you head back to Ahilama to help
Chin. I’ll be out after I check in on Miss Hayes.”
“Right, Boss!” He
paused, but then asked, “So Danny’s gonna be okay?”
McGarrett smiled and
threw a nod in Bergman’s direction. “Yeah, bruddah, thanks to the doc here, we
think he’s gonna be fine.”
Kono nodded, relief
registering on his face. Steve slapped Kono on the back as he slipped out the
door. It had been a traumatic and emotional few hours for the Five-0 men, and
they each felt the need to be reassured that this particular emotional roller
coaster ride was coming to an end.
*****
Steve tapped on the
closed door, and then peeked into the darkened hospital room. Carla, propped up
comfortably in the bed, looked in the detective’s direction. Her golden h
He smiled and
approached her bed. “Hey, pretty lady,” he greeted softly. “How are you?”
Her lower lip
quivered, but she smiled as a crocodile tear slid down her cheek. “I’ve had
better days.”
He sat down on the
bed, and took her hand. She sniffed, trying to maintain her composure, but
after a few seconds, couldn’t hold it in any longer. She burst into tears as
she leaned forward to hug him. “Oh, Steve, it was the most terrifying thing
I’ve ever experienced!”
His heart went out to
the woman, and he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. “It’s okay now.
That monster’s not gonna hurt anyone ever again.” He gently pat
her back for a full minute before the sobs that racked her body subsided into
rhythmic sniffs.
She kept her head on
his shoulder for another minute before she gently pulled away to look at him.
“Danny…Danny died trying to save me.”
Steve smiled and took
her face into his hands. “Honey, relax – Danno pulled through surgery. He’s
gonna be fine.” The detective refused to consider the possibility that his
friend would do anything else after making it so far.
The woman looked as
though she did not understand what he’d said. “He made it? He’s not dead?”
“No, thank God. It
was close, but we got him to the hospital in time.” The man’s voice was thick
with emotion again.
“So he’s not
conscious yet?”
“It’ll be a few hours
at least before he wakes up, I imagine. He’s fresh out of surgery.”
“Thank Heaven!” Carla
leaned her head back on the detective’s shoulder for just a few moments before
she sat back up. “I want you to take me to him right now.”
McGarrett dismissed
the request. “Danno’s in no condition for visitors. Maybe
tomorrow.”
“Please, Steve. I
know he’s not awake, but I just want to see for myself that he’s alive.” Her
eyes pleaded with him. “He saved my life.”
McGarrett hesitated
as he considered her request. He had to admit that he always felt better seeing
for himself.
Seeing he was waxing,
she pressed, “Please. I won’t stay long.”
“Are you in any condition
to get out of bed right now?”
“I am if you’ll help
me.”
He relented. “Okay,
but it’s gotta be a short visit. You need to get some rest.”
*****
The heart monitored
beeped rhythmically on side of the bed, and the head of Five-0 found the sound comforting
as the p
Still gray with
shock, the young man had an esophageal tube taped to the side of his mouth. The
usual assortment of tubes and lines emanated from the patient’s bed. Someone
had done a f
“Thank God.” The
words slipped from McGarrett’s lips again as he gently touched his friend’s
hand. He found himself wishing Carla were not here, so he could just sit alone
with Williams for a few minutes and be grateful.
“Yeah,” Carla agreed
softly, and then stepped close to the bed. With her finger, she tried to
dislodge a smudge of dried blood from Dan’s cheekbone. Not looking up from her
activity, she inquired, “When do they think he’ll regain consciousness?”
McGarrett started to
respond that it was hard to say, but stopped as the patient stirred. Startled,
Carla pulled her hand back as Steve stepped closer. Dan moved his head slightly
and moaned softly. A slight grimace came over his face and he tried to bring
his hand up, probably to remove the no-doubt offensive tube that ran down his
throat.
“Easy, Danno. Take it easy,” Steve reassured gently. The man’s voice had
the desired effect on the patient, who let his hand drop back to his side and
slowly opened his eyes.
It took several
moments for him to focus and take in what surroundings he could with the
limited mobility available to him. His eyes finally settled on the figure of
his boss.
Steve smiled. “Back from the dead.” Thank
God.
Dan blinked and
frowned. He had discovered that he could not speak and his hand came up again.
McGarrett gently
grabbed it and pushed it back down. “It’s okay, Danno.
You’ve got a tube down your throat – don’t ask me why, but I’m sure Bergman put
it there for a good reason.”
The patient calmed
down visibly and seemed to accept the explanation. He blinked slowly, still
heavily under the influence of the anesthesia, and tried to focus on the other
person who stood peeking around Steve’s shoulder. As he struggled to sharpen
the image, Doctor Bergman and a nurse entered.
“He’s awake?” The
doctor asked for no good reason since the answer was obvious. He stepped to the
opposite side of the bed from Steve and Carla, and glanced at the patient, but
focused on the heart monitor. The beeps were coming closer together.
The patient’s hand
came up more quickly this time and made it all the way to the tube before
Bergman and McGarrett reached his hand to stop him. Dan wasn’t looking at them.
He was staring at Carla, who stepped back slowly from the bed, unnoticed by the
others in the room. This time, he didn’t just let his hand drop. He struggled
to pull the tube from his mouth.
“Danno! It’s okay!” McGarrett tried to calm his friend, but saw
that now he was trying with both hands to reach the tube.
“Nurse, a
little sedation if you please!”
The doctor, his hands
busy keeping Williams’ head from moving, motioned to the woman with his head.
Within twenty seconds, the nurse had injected Dan’s intravenous line. The
effect was almost immediate as the patient wrestled less fiercely with each
passing second. Soon, McGarrett could feel no resistance in his friend’s arms.
“Rest now, Danno.
We’ll get that tube out of there as soon as Doc says it’s
okay.” McGarrett tried to comfort Williams, but wasn’t certain he’d succeeded.
Dan looked at Steve
until his eye lids finally became too heavy to keep open. He let out one last
soft moan before he succumbed to the darkness again.
Bergman shook his
head and explained. “Some people can’t handle the esophageal tube – it makes
‘em feel like they can’t breathe.”
“I thought he was
settled down about the tube.” The detective glowered.
Carla, all but
forgotten in the excitement, suddenly sank to floor. McGarrett spun quickly and
lifted her head.
“Carla!” McGarrett
almost shouted as he rushed to where she had fallen and lifted her head.
Bergman was there almost as quickly and took her pulse.
“I’m sorry, Steve,”
the woman said weakly. “I think I need to rest.”
Bergman nodded at
Steve and they helped her into the wheelch
“I’ll be back at the
scene if you need to reach me, Doc.” McGarrett hated to leave, thinking it was
possible that his second-in-command would awaken again while he was gone, but
the cop in him told him he needed to go back for a more in-depth look.
“Don’t worry, Steve.
He’ll have to rest now and I’ll probably have to remove that tube by morning or
my patient will remove it for me!” The doctor looked back at Williams sleeping
form, and mumbled as he left, “Definitely a miracle.”
*****
When the head of
Five-0 pulled up, Chin, Kono, and three HPD officers were standing out front.
He recognized only one of the uniformed officers, Sergeant Duke Lukela.
“Well, at least Danny
got the psycho before he went down,” one of the men exclaimed as McGarrett
approached the group.
“Chin, what’ve we
got?”
“Harry Kanunu was
dead in the bedroom upst
McGarrett sighed and
took a few paces. He turned and looked back at his men. “I wanna take it from
the top. I wanna match what we think happened with the evidence.”
“Sure, Boss,” Chin
responded without blinking, and they all waited for detective, renowned for his
ability to analyze crime scenes, to offer guidance as to how there were to
proceed.
“Who was the first
officer on the scene?”
“My partner and I were, sir,” One of the HPD men spoke up and nodded to the
man standing next to him.
McGarrett did not
know the men, but glanced at their name tags. “Okay, Officer Pono and Officer
Richards, you arrived at the scene and found the suspect there on the front
sidewalk?”
Richards nodded,
“Yessir. He was dead from a gunshot wound to the chest.” He hesitated and
glanced at the police cruiser where Williams had been found. “And that’s where
I found Danny.”
His partner
corrected, “That’s where WE found Danny – sir, we both checked for a pulse…”
The distress in both their eyes was evident. They were standing before
The sister of gratitude is charity, McGarrett decided as he stood before the officers. Feeling
more benevolent about the terrifying incident than he had been
earlier—especially knowing that his friend had a good chance of surviving – he
spoke. “Maybe it was a miracle. I don’t know. I am certain of two things
though. Number One – There are many people who would have made the same
mistake. Number Two – I know at least three cops who’ve learned how to tell a
dead guy from one that’s not quite dead. So, let’s just move on and see if we
can piece this together.” Somehow, he knew that’s what Danno would want him to
say.
Both young officers
relaxed visibly as they recognized the absolution being granted to them. The
head of Five-0 had a reputation, often deserved, amongst the HPD rank and file
for being a harsh perfectionist, so the two men had good reason to dread what
was going to befall them. To have the man admit that he understood the horrible
mistake made him rise in their estimation. Lukela, Chin, and Kono all exchanged
subtle looks of approval – they too were more than a little surprised.
“Yessir!” Both men responded in unison.
The subject closed,
McGarrett turned back to the subject at hand. “Okay, so you found the suspect
here on the sidewalk, and Danno in Officer Kanunu’s
cruiser.” He couldn’t help but wince internally at the vivid memory of the
blood covered detective draped across the front seat of the car, but he pressed
on, determined to put to bed whatever was nagging him.
“You went into the
house, and then what?”
Pono picked up the
story as they went inside. “We made sure the main level was clear, and then we
proceeded up the st
They moved up the st
Not lingering long,
the group moved onto the bathroom, doing their best to avoid stepping on the
trail of now darkened blood. McGarrett looked into the bathroom from the
doorway. “You found Miss Hayes handcuffed to the sink?”
Richards nodded.
“Kono, tell me if I
get any facts wrong from Miss Hayes statement.”
“Right, Boss.”
“Miss Hayes and
Officer Kanunu arrive and find a package on the doorstep. She calls Danno to
come get it, and then gets in the shower. Officer Kanunu is presumably
confronted by, and loses a struggle with, the suspect in the bedroom. She gets
out of the shower and starts into the bedroom to get dressed. Danno arrives
right as she discovers Officer Kanunu. She screams. Danno rushes in and comes
to her aid. He enters the bedroom.” McGarrett, with his entourage in tow,
paused long enough to return to the bedroom. “He enters the bedroom – and
forgets to secure the scene before checking on Officer Kanunu.” The detective
stopped again and frowned.
“That doesn’t sound
like Danny.” Chin observed.
Kono agreed, but
added a possible explanation, “Maybe he was distracted with the sight of Harry
and all.”
“Maybe.” McGarrett added noncommittally. He opened the closet door
from whence the killer had sprung. The space was small and immaculate. “The
suspect was certainly neat to have hidden in here and not so much as pushed a
hangar out of place.”
He closed the closet
and went back out onto the landing. “So the struggle takes Danno and the
suspect out into the hallway, where Danno takes a knife hit to the neck.” He
studied the trail of blood that led from the bathroom down the steps.
He looked at Kono.
“It looks to me like the trail leads from the bathroom down the steps. Are you
sure she said that Danno was stabbed out here?”
“That’s what she said, Boss, and then he pushed Danny down the st
McGarrett, completely
focused, was trying to build a picture of what had occurred here those hours
ago. He stepped back over to the bathroom and studied the blood pattern there
for several seconds before he followed it back to the top of the steps.
“Miss Hayes has to be
mistaken. Danno was stabbed in the bathroom.” He made a mental note to follow
up with Carla on that one, and moved on. “So, the suspect stabs Danno and
throws him down the steps.”
Kono injected, “Oh
yeah -- before he pushed Danny down the steps, he took his handcuffs.”
McGarrett frowned in
concentration again. “The guy stabs Danno in the neck and knocks him down this
flight of st
The questions
returned blank stares from the other officers. The lead detective added, “And
what was Carla doing all this time?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Okay,
assume he predicts the need for the cuffs. He sees that Danno isn’t done for
yet, so he runs and grabs Carla and cuffs her to the sink so that he can vault
down the st
“Interesting though –
the suspect was lying on his back with his head towards the car, right?”
“Yes, sir, that’s
correct,” Pono confirmed. “He had a single bullet wound to the chest.”
“So, if he was
chasing Danno out of the house, then Danno would’ve had to turn and fire on
him.” McGarrett frowned and continued to study the sidewalk. “And the guy
would’ve had to spin to end up on his back the way he did.”
Chin stepped up and
said what his boss was thinking. “Kinda looks like the guy was waiting for
Danny when he came out of the house.”
“Hmmm…” McGarrett
made the noise as he moved down to stand by Kanunu’s cruiser. The detective
continued his pondering. “Now that the suspect is no longer a threat, Danno
makes it to the radio, and calls in the officer-down.”
Steve leaned against
the hood of the car and crossed his arms as he thought. Finally, he said out
loud, “Doesn’t play out very smoothly, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Chin agreed. “Miss Hayes was pretty upset though. She might’ve been a little mixed
up about what happened. I mean she was almost murdered.”
“Danny thought the
lady was dead,” Duke mentioned.
“He couldn’t have
been certain of that, Duke. The suspect followed him outside and Danno got him,
so the guy never returned to do Carla in,” McGarrett countered.
Duke shrugged. “I was
standing in the Dispatch Room when the call from Danny came in. I heard him say
that Carla had been killed.”
Steve stood there for
a few moments, puzzled about several nagging little details that would not allow
the story to gel properly. He sighed. “Well, I guess Danno will be able to shed
some light on this soon enough.”
With that segway,
Duke found it appropriate to bring up the subject. “So, Danny’s gonna be fine?”
McGarrett responded,
“Yeah, Duke, he’s resting comfortably now.” I
hope, he added to himself recalling that he’d had to pin his friend’s hands
down earlier. “I’m gonna head back over there now.” He glanced at his watch. It
was too late to be conducting cross-examinations of the patients, but he planned
on hovering f
*****
McGarrett was glad to
have the drive back to the hospital to ponder on the evidence he’d just
reviewed with his team. He conjured up images of the unlikely scenes… the big,
as-yet-unidentified, but now-dead suspect jumping from the miniscule closet and
catching an already-wary Danno off guard… the fight between Danno and the
suspect that left Danno stabbed in the throat, disarmed of his handcuffs – and
NOT his gun -- and shoved down the steps… the suspect catching an
obviously-very-slow-almost-sloth-like Carla, dragging her to the bathroom,
barely touching a h
The image of Williams
struggling to the front seat of the police car… bleeding profusely from his
neck… barely able to speak… knowing he was probably going to die before help
arrived. McGarrett could feel his own pulse quickening as he imagined how
horrifying it must been for his friend. Knowing he was going to die... what
would he have wanted to let investigators know about what happened? What
message did he want to get across? That Carla had been murdered? That would’ve
become obvious very quickly. He would’ve had to be
having difficulty speaking, bleeding profusely from his throat
Carla was murdered… Carla was killed… Carla killed… Carla
killed…
Like a bolt of
lightening struck him, he plunged his car to the side of the road and slammed
on the brakes, ignoring the car horn of some angry tailgater.
The other possible
meaning of the phrase had not come to mind before this moment – In McGarrett’s
mind, Carla had been a victim. Another scenario pushed its way into his mind –
Danno is invited into the house and called up the st
It all made sense!
That scenario was much more compatible with the evidence. And
the memory of Danno thrashing wildly in his hospital bed, after seeing the
woman, struggling with everything he had to warn him of the black widow behind
him. A jolt of panic struck the detective as he realized that he’d casually
given the murderess a personal guided tour to his completely vulnerable and incapacitated
friend!
*****
Carla Hayes had to
wait until her doctor looked in on her. He insisted she take a sedative, which
she easily placed under her tongue until she was free to spit it in the toilet.
It was good, she decided, that the doctor had seen her take the pill – it would
offer up a good alibi in the unlikely event that she required one.
She slipped up the st
“I should’ve put the
nasal tube in right off the bat – he always bounces back sooner than I expect.
For a few moments,
she was concerned that Danny had regained consciousness and had perhaps told
his story to the physician, but the conversation of the p
The hallway now
clear, she slipped quickly into the darkened room. The heart monitor beeped
rhythmically as she approached the young man. His eyes were closed and the tube
that had distressed him earlier had been replaced with a somewhat less annoying
nasal tube.
She pulled the empty
syringe out of her pocket and pulled back on the plunger, filling it with
“How many times do I
have to kill you?” She said softly, almost amused with the statement. As if on
queue, Williams’ eyes opened slowly. She tensed, but recovered quickly, knowing
he was sedated and very weak.
He focused on her,
and she thought he might try to call for help or strike at her, but he did
neither. His heart rate didn’t even go up.
She relaxed a bit and
smiled sweetly at him. “They must have you on some pretty potent stuff,
Sweetie.”
The patient’s mouth
moved, but as close as she was, she couldn’t make out the words. She put her
hear down to his mouth. “What’s that, Sweetie?
“Why?” The detective
could do no more than offer a barely audible whisper.
“Why?” She repeated
the question quietly, but still two orders of magnitude more loudly than it had
first been asked.
“Why did I enlist the
aid of a psychotic freak to copy a gruesome murder OR why did I feel the need
to make you a victim? Both reasonable questions, but I don’t really have time
to go into all of the gory detail – I need my beauty rest. For old time’s sake,
let me answer the second question for you.”
She held the
hypodermic up to the dim light of the monitor to be sure it was properly primed
as she spoke. “It became very clear to me that I would never be able to get
close to Steve with you around. The solution was obvious. If everything had
gone as planned, today, you’d already be dead along with poor Harry, the
innocent bystander here. And little old me – well, I would be in Steve’s loving
protective custody, being the only witness to the horrible murder of his
obviously much-adored second-in-command. You wouldn’t have had to worry though
– I’d have been there to comfort and support him through his mourning. And I’d
have had the inside track on the investigation, which would have ultimately
added a fantastic – maybe even Pulitzer-worthy – angle to my book.”
Her cheerful tone
turned a little more somber as she continued. “As it stands now, I think I did
a f
She reached down and
grabbed the IV line. “All told, I think I’ve been pretty clever.”
The light over the
doorway suddenly illuminated the room with a soft glow, startling the woman to
the degree that she dropped the syringe.
“Beautiful –
cold-hearted – brutal – yes to all of the above,” McGarrett said as he stepped
from the small bathroom and quickly moved to put himself between the murderess
and his friend. Chin, Kono, and Doctor Bergman pushed through the doorway from
the hall.
“But not too clever.
You should’ve let us figure out what happened instead of telling us. You hung
yourself with your own words.”
McGarrett said calmly
as he glanced back to see that the doctor was checking on his patient. Dan’s
eyes were closed again, and Steve looked to Bergman for reassurance. The doctor
breathed a loud sigh of relief that the drama was over, and nodded at the
detective.
“I – I – you don’t
understand, Steve –” Carla trembled and her voice was instantly teary as she
clutched his arm.
“Oh, honey, you’re in
the wrong profession. You should’ve been committing murders in
Kono and Chin left
with their prisoner nestled securely between them. The top detective heard the
door close behind them, and was relieved that she was removed from the presence
of Williams, who was apparently sleeping soundly despite the knowledge that the
woman who tried to kill him was making another attempt.
McGarrett saw the
doctor’s affirmative signal, but he wanted to hear it. “So, Doc, how’s he
doing?”
“He needs to rest,
but he’ll be fine. Between the anesthesia and the post-op sedative I gave him,
he should sleep the rest of the night. I’m amazed we got him to wake up long
enough to let him in on the little setup.” The doctor patted the patient’s hand
gently and commented, “I don’t think I’ve ever met such a conniving, vicious
creature as the one the boys just removed from this room.”
“Wait ‘til you hear
her confession,” McGarrett reached under the bed, pulled the tape recorder from
its hiding spot, and turned it off.
Good definitely
triumphed over evil today, but not without paying a price.
*****
After repeated
assurances from Doctor Bergman that Williams would not awaken anytime soon.
McGarrett returned to Carla Hayes’ home. He searched her office and collected a
few boxes of papers. The case was solved, but the puzzle was incomplete.
*****
The small chapel on
the main level of the hospital was properly adorned for Christmas with several
wreaths, each capped with a different color of bowed ribbon. McGarrett hadn’t set foot in a church for personal reasons in many
years, and so felt a measure of discomfort and not belonging as he hesitantly
made his way to the altar at the front. He looked back at the four rows of
empty pews, relieved that God had no other customers to deal with here.
“Can I help you, my
son?”
The old priest
stepped from a vestibule behind the altar. His presence momentarily startled
the detective, but he recovered quickly. After all, to find a man of the cloth
in a church was not too surprising.
The detective gave a
small shrug, “I just stopped in to pay my respects.”
“And to ask why or
say thank you?” The man had a calm manner born no doubt of many years of
dealing with troubled souls.
“I asked for a
miracle today, Father.” McGarrett sat down in the first pew. “Not just a
run-of-the-mill-don’t-let-him-die miracle, but a full-blown
Lazarus-style-bring-him-back miracle.”
The man, dressed in a
common black frock and white collar, sat down in the same pew. “That’s not an
uncommon request in these parts.” There was a wizened sadness in his voice.
“Had your loved one been ill?”
“No, Father” Steve
looked up at the priest and had to smile. “My—my loved one was stabbed.”
“It’s especially hard
to come to grips with sudden death from violence,” the priest intoned
gently.
McGarrett made eye
contact with the man as he realized they were not on the same wavelength. “You
don’t understand, Father. I stopped in to say thanks.” It was amazingly liberating
to say it out loud, and the detective laughed softly.
The old man arched
his eye brows.
“You don’t believe in
miracles, Father?”
The priest smiled. “Touché’!”
*****
Steve awakened and
had to look at his watch to know whether it was night or day as there were no
windows in the ICU room in which Dan had been placed
after his surgery. From the kink in his neck, he knew he’d slept soundly for at
least a couple of hours, but he’d spent much of the night there in the room
consumed with the tale Carla Hayes’ manuscript painted. Bergman had been
correct. His friend was still sleeping deeply. Leaving instructions that he was
to be called immediately if Williams awakened, he went home, got cleaned up,
and made it to the Palace only a little later than usual.
Jenny rushed from the
filing cabinet to hug him. She couldn’t get the knot in her throat out of the
way to speak at first.
“He’s gonna be fine,
love.”
She nodded and pushed
herself away, not wanting him to see her tears. The thought that their Danny
could be dead today shook her. The office – the Five-0 Ohana – Steve – would
never have been the same. She forced herself to stop thinking about what might
have been and went to get the boss some coffee.
Within minutes,
McGarrett’s office was buzzing with banter from Chin and Kono as well as Walter
Stuart, the attorney general, and his assistant, Neil Sandarski. McGarrett had
agreed to a short meeting with the prosecutor so that he could begin preparing
his voluminous case against Carla Hayes. Just as they
all seated themselves, Jenny opened the door and allowed Governor Jameson to
enter the room.
“Steve! Walter!
Gentlemen! Don’t let me interrupt. This has been such a high profile case that
I had to stop by and see if I could better understand the story,” The governor
said as he shook Steve’s hand and then acknowledged Kono for the ch
McGarrett nodded and
smiled. “Yes, sir, he’s gonna make it.” It was apparent to everyone else in the
room that the man had not slept, but that fact had not diminished his drive.
“Excellent
news! Please pass on my
best wishes to him!” The governor leaned back in the ch
Jenny re-entered the
room with a cup of coffee and handed it to the man. “Just like you like it,
sir!”
He squeezed her hand.
“Are the boys treating you all right?”
“Like gold!” She
winked and left closing the door behind her.
Jenny had worked as
an assistant secretary in the governor’s office until she’d been offered the
executive secretary position with Five-0 earlier that year.
The governor turned
his attention back to McGarrett. “So tell me – we know who did it. Do we know
why?”
Stuart spoke up. “I’m
not sure we have a complete story yet, but we have her confession on tape for
the murder of Officer Kanunu, and for the attempted murder of Williams.”
Seated at his desk,
McGarrett’s voice was patient. “Not to disagree, Walter, but I think I can
paint a pretty complete picture for you. Of course, I reserve the right to
change the story as the evidence presents itself.”
The governor nodded, “By all means, proceed, Steve!”
“Hold on to you hats,
gentlemen!” McGarrett started. “The victim that we initially thought was the
first one in the series was actually not related – except insofar as his murder
was the evil seed upon which the others were built. Patrick Ramsey was murdered
by someone he knew. We will solve that case in due course.”
Steve shot a look at
Chin and Kono, who both nodded with conviction before he continued.
“The mastermind
behind the other murders was Carla Hayes. Violent murder is not the typical
weapon of choice for women. Statistically, a woman will choose poison or a
firearm to kill, if murder is her intention. But Miss Hayes was writing a book,
and in her mind, it wasn’t just any book. This was to be a book that would
propel her into the forefront of the literary world with its drama, made all
the more amazing because her gripping story would’ve been touted as true.”
“She had just moved
here from the mainland to try to get her creative juices flowing when she read
about the stabbing murder of Ramsey. Somehow, she concocted a sick and twisted
plot to make that unfortunate man’s murder into the first of a dramatic set. To
make it more newsworthy, the killings had to be bloody, apparently random. As
we know, nothing can whip the public into a frenzy
like random murder.”
“You can say that
again,” Jameson groaned.
“But Miss Hayes felt
ingredients would still be missing from her production. She needed to find a
way to add a personal touch and then set it against the backdrop of paradise
during the holidays. With her journalistic connections and inarguable beauty,
she did her homework, and learned that Five-0 would take the lead in
investigations of this nature.”
The detective rose
and walked around to sit in Danno’s spot on his desk. “There was an entire file
in her office dedicated to notes on Five-0, me in particular. I was to become
one of the actors in her play.”
“Next, she needed to
find someone demented enough to go along with her plan – someone willing to
commit murder on the scale that she intended.” The detective nodded at Chin,
who picked up the thread.
“She lucked into
Edward Slater, an insurance adjuster with a history of violence and a passion
for knives, when he came to her house to evaluate some flood damage that had
occurred before she rented the place. It’s anybody’s guess as to how the p
“Hayes’ didn’t care
who Slater selected as victims – he had carte blanche to kill whomever he
chose. Her only requirement was that it be bloody, and get more
bloody with each murder. She had the scenario all written down before it
happened. She gave him the medication that he somehow managed to inject into
his prey when he arrived at their homes to document damage they’d each
reported. Each unsuspecting victim slowly slipped into lethargy and was unable
to defend himself as he was stabbed to death. That allowed Slater to take
photos before, during, and after with no interference.”
The governor, disgust
stamped on his face, inquired, “So, where do you and Five-0 fit in?”
“Miss Hayes made
several attempts to gain privileged information on the cases and personal
contact with me. She wasn’t above using her feminine wiles on me and my men, so
that could explain why she knew what she knew. What she didn’t count on was
Danno’s bull dog refusal to allow her special access to me. So, she had to find
a way to make us come to her. That wasn’t too difficult for her -- she had
Slater leave a package of photos along with an especially sinister note –
written in blood. It gave us reason to believe that she would be the conduit
through which we could gain insight into the killer.”
“The initial
assumption yesterday was that Officer Kanunu and Danno just happened to be at
the wrong place at the wrong time. In reality, Danno was the target. Slater
figured out that she was helping the police, and angrily let her know that he
was unhappy. With that phone call on tape, I saw that our witness needed police
protection, whereupon she now had an officer with her twenty four hours a day.
Whatever evil plan she intended would have to include the murder of whoever was
there to watch over her as well. She was
somehow able to get in touch with Slater. She managed to convince him that he
needed to come to her place and kill her body guard and then lie in wait for
another cop that would be along shortly. After he’d done her dirty work, she
would save herself by killing him – in self defense of course. She would tell
the world that Slater came to kill her, and that the two cops died trying to
protect her.”
“It almost worked!”
Kono was appalled and could not keep the fact to himself.
“Yeah,
bruddah.” An involuntary
shudder traversed McGarrett’s spine. “If it hadn’t been for the fact that
Slater was stuck in a traffic jam, everything might have gone off as planned.
But Danno, being a cop in a hurry, wasn’t about to let a traffic accident slow
him down. He buzzed right through on official police business. Slater started
getting nervous, so as soon as he could, he turned off on
Kono injected. “We
found the suspect’s car parked there – it looks like he went cross-country to
make it to Hayes’ house.”
McGarrett nodded and
continued. “Carla got concerned when Slater didn’t show up that Danno would
arrive before Kanunu was dead. And she knew that even Slater might have trouble
subduing two cops. So she decided she’d better pitch in and get her hands
dirty. She sedated Kanunu – a little poke though his shirt would’ve hardly been
noticed. Then, she stepped up behind him and slit his throat. As soon as he
fell, she stabbed him in the back a bunch of times to make his murder look like
the others. She’d barely finished the job when Danno knocked.”
McGarrett stood and
walked around to stand by the French Doors. He could feel his heart beating
faster as he began to describe what were almost his friend’s
last moments.
“She ran into the
bathroom and lured him upst
“Carla thought Danno
was dead right up until I told her that he wasn’t. If Danno had died, she was
expecting that her testimony and the evidence would say that Danno and Kanunu
had been victims that got in the way of Slater’s attempt to kill her.”
The head of Five-0
sighed and had to admit, “Her book would’ve been the stuff best sellers are
made of.”
The governor shook
his head. “Steve, I don’t know how you managed to unravel this mess into a
coherent timeline, but I have to say, I’m impressed.”
The detective turned
to his two detectives. “Incredible dedication on the part of
my team, from my secretary right up to my second-in-command.” Smiles
flickered across the faces of his men, but vanished behind stoic masks in short
order.
“As it stands now,
the evidence is simply a prosecutor’s dream.” Stuart too was astounded at the
case that the detective had just laid at his feet.
*****
The media had
exploded that day with stories of the dramatic finale to the serial killings.
Many put a Christmas spin on the tale by including what details they could of
Williams’ revival from the dead. Tales ran rampant in the HPD ranks of the
drama of the young detective’s supposed death and then subsequent restoration
to life. If Steve McGarrett was a legend before the incident, there was no
doubt now that the legend would include the story that he commanded his
detective to rise – and he did!
McGarrett cautiously
pushed through the door into Williams’ room. He’d arrived a little later than
he’d intended, but the office had been a mad house of phone calls and paperwork
as was frequently the case when high-profile events happened. He was surprised
to see Doctor Bergman standing at the patient’s bedside, and instantly filled
with concern that something was wrong.
Bergman’s smile
reassured him that the visit was routine, but he asked anyway as he approached
the bed. “Everything okay, Doc?”
“See for yourself!”
Bergman stepped aside.
Dan, still looking
incredibly pale and tired, looked up to see his boss. The young man was smiling
slightly and had a placid expression. The nasal tube was still present, but did
not seem to be bothering him at the moment.
In that moment, when
his eyes met his friend’s, the memory of holding his head in what he thought
was death, the frantic ambulance ride, and how the medical personnel had
literally ripped him from Williams’ side when they entered the hospital all
came crushing down on him. He felt his eyes pooling again as he put his hand on
the patient’s curly h
His voice was thick
with feeling as he spoke. “Lazarus Williams.”
The joyful expression
on McGarrett’s face was one Dan hoped he would never forget. “Steve.” He
mouthed the word, but no sound came out.
“He can’t talk, and I
don’t expect that he’ll have his voice back for a few days at least. There’s
too much swelling around his larynx.”
“I guess that means I
won’t have to listen to any lip for a few days.” McGarrett didn’t take his eyes
off Dan as he spoke.
“It’s just
remarkable,” Bergman marveled.
“I suppose you’ve
come up with a scientific explanation for how we made it to the hospital
alive.” McGarrett didn’t really care at that moment whether a logical reason
existed, but it seemed appropriate to ask.
The physician
recognized the detective’s first person plural reference to Dan’s survival as a
clear sign of the incredible bond between these two men. McGarrett consciously
or not decided that if Williams did not survive, he would not survive either.
Bergman smiled. “I’m
trying to make one up before the next medical examiners’ convention. Here’s my
theory so far, Danny!” Williams slowly
focused on Bergman as he spoke. “Your body temperature dropped because you were
soaking wet with your own blood. It slowed your heart. Shock caused all of the
peripheral, non-essential blood vessels to close, thereby reserving what blood
you still had for your vital organs. And the fact that your head dropped off
the seat meant that what blood you had was still making it to your brain. Incredible luck!”
McGarrett looked back
at Williams to gauge his reaction to the doctor’s somewhat graphic depiction of
the physiology. The patient seemed attentive, but unbothered.
Dan moved his hand
toward his boss’s sleeve, and Steve moved closer to listen to the faintest
whisper that was his voice and read his friend’s lips.
“Case closed before
Christmas?”
McGarrett smiled. “As promised. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.”
Dan frowned. “I
missed party.”
“Danno…” The man’s
voice was soft and affectionate. “There could be no Five-0 Christmas party
without you.”
*****
“You just have to get
more creative every year about where we have our Christmas parties, don’t you!”
McGarrett addressed the man in the wheel ch
Jenny and Five-0’s
two clerks spent this particular Christmas morning decorating the room before
they ushered the delighted Williams in. Also in attendance was Chin and his
wife, Mai, their eight children, Kono with his a girlfriend. Duke
Lukela and his wife, Doctor Bergman and his wife, and several other medical
personnel, whom Williams had befriended. Food, punch, and gifts floated
around the room amidst the joking and laughter. Jenny hovered and fussed
continuously over Williams, who patiently endured – enjoyed even – the
coddling.
“Now, Danno, you
promised an entertaining time. Just because you’re hospitalized, don’t think
I’m letting you off the hook.”
Still unable to
speak, Williams smiled and held up his index finger in a hang-on-for-a-minute
motion. He nodded at one of the matronly nurses that were standing with the
Bergmans. She flashed a knowing smile and slipped out the door. Within a
minute, she stuck her head back in the door.
“Ready?” She asked
with a smile at the patient, who gave a slight nod with his mischievous grin.
The woman vanished for a few moments before she returned carrying an
institutional size jar Maraschino cherries and set it on the hospital tray
before Williams.
Completely perplexed,
the group watched with interest as the nurse opened the jar and stepped back.
Dan threw a grateful glance at the woman as he pulled a cherry from the jar and
popped it into his mouth, stem and all. He chewed for a few moments and
swallowed, but then he frowned in concentration for a good twenty seconds,
obviously manipulating something still in his mouth before he leaned forward
and let his project drop out on the tray. Satisfied, he looked up at everybody.
“You tied the cherry
stem into a knot with your tongue,” Jenny observed. She looked up at him with a
skeptical smile. “And just how hard could that possibly be?”
Dan pushed the jar in
her direction and challenged her with his expression. She didn’t take her eyes
off the detective as she reached into the jar and pulled out a cherry. She let
the juice drip back into the jar for a moment before she daintily pulled the
cherry to her lips and pushed it into her mouth. With that Dan looked around at
the faces in the crowd and gave them the same testing expression.
With that, Chin and
Kono stepped up and took their cherries. Everyone else filed up and retrieved a
cherry and began to attempt to the feat that Dan had accomplished. As the
grimaces and contortions gripped the faces of the group, Dan smiled and
casually held his throat. Laughing was not such a good idea either, he decided,
as he could feel it in his injury. Dan picked up the pen and jotted down
something on a page of his notebook. He held it up for all to see:
20 SECONDS!!
“Very impressive time
to beat,” McGarrett intoned with seriously. “You’re just full of hidden
talent.” Dan canted his head as best he
could in acknowledgement of the compliment and pushed the jar in Steve’s
direction. “So, the gauntlet is thrown down.”
He shook his head and
grinned as he reached his hand into the jar and entered the contest with the
rest of his ohana. The team’s laughter and the uncommonly merry disposition of
the Five-0 chief served to make the event an experience that further cemented
the bonds of McGarrett’s ohana.
Williams lasted a
good two hours before McGarrett insisted, without much argument from the
patient, that it was time for Dan to return to bed. The round of Mele Kalikimakas and get-well-soons, complete with pats and
hugs depleted the last of Williams’ reserves. By the time McGarrett helped him
back into bed, he could barely raise his hand.
“Good
party,” He whispered as he closed his eyes.
“It was a
great party,” McGarrett agreed.
“Steve?” Eyes
still closed, he confessed. “Your Christmas gift – there was no time...”
The older detective
was touched at the concern, but knew the truth. “Danno, I don’t remember ever
receiving a better gift than the one I was given this week.”
This was the time of
giving and gratitude, and on this particular tropical Christmas, there was no
doubt in the mind of Steve McGarrett that he’d been granted something special
indeed by the man upst
“Mele Kalikimaka, my friend.”