Even after all their years working together, Lei’s stomach tightened reflexively under the Captain’s laser like gaze. Had her hair escaped its ponytail? Was her polo shirt tucked into her jeans?
“Looks like your daughter shared some of her breakfast with you, Texeira,” Omura said.
Lei glanced down. Sure enough, a large blob of oatmeal clung to Lei’s right breast.
Lei grabbed a paper napkin off the table and scrubbed at her shirt. “Thanks. I’ll have to change at some point.” Lei eyed a platter of beautifully arranged vegetables and cut tropical fruit on bamboo skewers that pierced a small, upside-down watermelon half to make a porcupine shape. “Love the food, Captain.”
Omura rolled her eyes. “You know my mom and her healthy snacks.”
“And I’m grateful. She’s so sweet to do this for us every week.” Lei picked up an artistically cut radish and crunched on it. “The kids got fed and off to school on time, and I reached the station before the meeting. Did I get breakfast? You know the answer to that.”
Omura sniffed. “That’s what you get for being a parent.”
“Abe tells me you guys aren’t having kids.”
Before that thorny topic could go any further, Lei’s partner Pono entered, carrying a mug of coffee and his laptop, talking over his shoulder to Torufu. Other than Torufu’s greater height, the two men could have been cousins with their brown skin, shoulder and arm tats, and thick black hair buzzed into order.
Bunuelos followed them, carrying a pink bakery box. He plopped the box down next to the beautifully arranged platter. “In case anyone needs a sugar dose. I know I do, before we tackle the specifics of this case.”
“All right, everyone. Five-minute break for food, then we need to get moving on this.” CJ Omura might be married to Abe Torufu, but in any given meeting, there was never any question of who the boss was.
Once the team had talked story and filled their paper plates with a combination of tasty upcountry malasadas from Komoda Bakery along with fruit and vegetables, Omura got the meeting underway. “Texeira, why don’t you keep us organized on the whiteboard.”
Lei got up, advancing to the board holding copies of case notes that she had made for convenience. She’d carried in the coordinated case jacket holding paperwork related to the matters at hand; it rested in the middle of the table for all to refer to.
Pono, Torufu and Bunuelos all opened their laptops to look at the online version of the case record, along with Captain Omura, who made a call to the Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) agent helping with the case, putting him on video via her laptop. “Glad you could tune in, Agent Thomas.”
Special Agent Aina Thomas, who had become friends with Lei when assisting on past cases, nodded. “Wish I had some of your snacks, people.”
“Make it down here to our station and you’d be welcome,” Lei said. She cleared her throat, shifting gears. “We have a new disappearance as of yesterday: Stacey Emmitt, age fifteen. She usually walks home from Maui High School, and she never made it to the family house. Not a runaway, according to the parents, and friends who knew her.” Lei wrote the girl’s name on the whiteboard along with her physical statistics: five foot six in height, blonde hair, blue eyes, weight one-twenty. “Stacey has no history of at-risk type behavior, such as drug experimentation or being out past curfew.” Lei turned to face the team. “Up until now, our other victims were runaways or living on the streets, so verifying who their associates were, and when exactly they disappeared, has been more difficult. Stacey Emmitt’s disappearance has a clear timeline.”
Pono tapped the folder. “I’ll talk about the others so we can look for any patterns.”
He reviewed stats on the five other missing Maui girls, all in the age range between fourteen and sixteen years old, gone missing over the last six months. “As we already know, runaways tend to congregate in Lahaina. We shut down a house where a perp was grooming them a couple of years ago, and we hoped we had that operation buttoned up after we busted the pirate ring.”
Omura poured herself fresh coffee from a silver carafe and passed it on to her right. “I’ve checked with our Lahaina detectives to ensure that this is an entirely new situation, and so far, we believe it is.”
Lei nodded. “We think the kids are snatched and held somewhere before being sent, probably on a boat, to Oahu. From there, they are likely shipped overseas. Michelle Ho’opua, the homicide victim found in Kahului Harbor, showed evidence of restraints; as we’ve reviewed before, we believe she was trying to escape and drowned.”
“This is all review,” Captain Omura said. “I thought you were going to talk to Emmitt’s parents yesterday?”
“I did. They’re terrified for Stacey. They’re hoping for a ransom demand, but we don’t think they will be getting one,” Lei said.
“We didn’t want to spook them further by speculating that Stacey could be part of this larger case, since they weren’t aware of it,” Pono rumbled. He rubbed his mustache, a characteristic gesture, and picked up a carrot stick, crunching it loudly. “We let them hold onto hope that their daughter was kidnapped, but the family has little to no financial assets so that’s unlikely.”
Omura shuffled through the pages of the case file, frowning. “We should be coordinating with the FBI on this. They can then take the lead on warning the public.” Omura glanced up at Lei. “Texeira, you’re our FBI liaison. Why don’t you make a call to Waxman on Oahu? We can conference him in right now.”
Lei had been waiting for this, and she was ready. She’d touched base with Omura yesterday about this after their talk with the Emmitt parents. “I’ll get him on the line.”
Everyone waited and refreshed their snacks as Lei used the conference calling phone in the center of the table to reach Special Agent in Charge Ben Waxman, a starchy and well-groomed man whose appearance reminded Lei of Anderson Cooper. Waxman soon came on audio feed. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Sergeant Texeira?”
“Aloha from Maui, SAC Waxman,” Lei said. She pushed the button on the triangular speaker. “You are on speakerphone with a team meeting regarding the kidnap disappearances of five girls from our island.”
“Yes, we’ve been monitoring your cases. We’re working on disappearances here on Oahu and the other outer islands, too. We were waiting for you to loop us in on what’s happening over there,” Waxman said. He rattled off their open case number and the names of the agents that were already working on the disappearances and Lei scribbled notes, trying to keep up. “According to protocol, unless we have evidence that this crime has crossed state or international lines, we wait upon local law enforcement to ask for help.”
“Well, that moment has come, Ben,” Captain Omura said. “Let’s officially proceed. Now that they’ve taken to grabbing girls on their way home from school and we still have no leads, we need all the help we can get.”
“Happy to hear it. Our agents will liaise with you tomorrow. I’ll assign Ken Yamada and Marcella Scott, already working on the disappearances here.”
