One Man's Paradise Read online

  I was greeted by the division chief, a pretty, middle-aged woman wearing glasses. I was prepared for a fight. I was prepared to sit and wait, to be shuffled from division to division while people talked about me behind closed doors. I was prepared to raise hell, to threaten and complain my way to getting the discovery on Joey’s case. I was prepared to throw things, really I was.

  “Aloha, Mr. Corvelli, my name is Barbara Davenport. How can I help you today?”

  “I represent Joseph Gianforte. I have a written request for discovery.”

  She took the paper from me and smiled. “Very good. We are about to transfer this case to the Trials Division, but I’ll have my assistant photocopy everything for you right away. It shouldn’t take much longer than five minutes. Do you mind waiting?”

  “Of course not.”

  She was so pleasant, it angered me. So helpful, I half-expected to get hit from behind and kidnapped. This had to, just had to, be some sort of ploy. Prosecutors aren’t this nice. They are evil robots with badges. Or maybe I was in some sort of Twilight Zone episode. Or maybe I was on Candid Camera.

  She returned four minutes fifty-three seconds later with a manila envelope in her hand. “Here you go, Mr. Corvelli,” she said, handing me the envelope. “I’m sorry about the wait.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I understand you’re new to the islands. Let me be the first from our office to say, ‘E komo mai.’ Welcome. If you need anything else or have any questions, please feel free to call me at any time. And best of luck with your new practice.”

  “Mahalo,” I managed, still befuddled over my first-ever positive experience in a prosecutor’s office.

  This morning I brought the envelope to the office and found Jake already in the conference room, sipping from a steaming cup of store-bought coffee, the aroma suggesting he added ingredients of his own.

  I pored through the contents of the envelope as soon as I got back to my apartment late yesterday afternoon. It consisted primarily of witness statements, photographs, an autopsy report, pleadings, and police affidavits. It also contained three DVDs.

  “Let’s start with the victim’s timeline on the night of the murder,” I say. “It seems the victim started the evening at around eight p.m. with some dinner at Margaritaville on Kuhio Avenue.”

  “So we find the lost shaker of salt and the case is closed,” Jake says between slurps.

  “I went there last night,” I say, leafing through my yellow legal pad scribbled with notes. “The bartender puts Shannon there from eight to eleven, during which time she had a cheeseburger and four Tiki Gods.”

  “Tiki Gods?”

  “It’s the bar’s variation on the mai tai. They’re strong, full of Bacardi 151. I had a couple while I was there.”

  “You’re a very thorough investigator, son.”

  “That I am, Jake. That I am.”

  “Where did she go after that?”

  “After Margaritaville, she went directly to the Bleu Sharq, across from the beach. Two of the bartenders who worked that night don’t remember her. The third had last night off. She’s off tonight, too, but she works tomorrow night. I’ll go see her then.”

  “Any credit card receipts?”

  “No, she paid cash. Either that or someone else bought her drinks.”

  Jake picks up a witness statement and squints so tightly his eyes disappear. “Perhaps this fella here, Palani Kanno.”

  Palani is a local, a doorman at the Waikiki Winds, a moderate-size hotel not far from the Bleu Sharq. On Monday, when the body was first found, Palani quickly became the primary suspect in the case. He was seen leaving with the victim twenty minutes after last call. The police brought him in for questioning, at which time he admitted to having sex with Shannon Douglas on an isolated stretch of Waikiki Beach, a couple blocks from the Bleu Sharq. He also admitted that there had been a physical altercation, but only after Detective John Tatupu informed Palani that his skin had been found under the victim’s fingernails.

  That skin had been found under the victim’s nails was true. Whether it was Palani’s or not, the detective did not know. Although the visible claw marks across the left side of Palani’s face probably gave him some clue. DNA tests would take time, so the detective lied to get from Palani what he wanted. That’s what detectives do, they lie. And it works. Palani folded like a piece of paper. He even admitted that in defending himself, he may have struck Shannon Douglas in the face.

  Judging from the witness statements and police affidavits, Detective Tatupu must have thought he was seconds away from a full confession when a pair of honeymooners arrived at the station. The newlyweds—a Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Knowsley—had spent their first night on the island walking the deserted beach in the dark, drinks in hand, not wanting the magic to end. The next morning, they saw the commotion on the beach and feared they might know something about what happened. After being shown a grim photograph of the victim, they confirmed that, yes, indeed, they had seen the girl alive on Waikiki Beach at approximately threesomething a.m. Although it was pitch-black outside, it was apparent to them she had been crying, and more important, that her face had been badly bruised.

  Palani had told Tatupu that he left Shannon Douglas there on the beach, alive and well, and walked straight to the Waikiki Winds to “pick something up.” After a few tough questions from Tatupu, that “something” turned into pakalolo, the Hawaiian word for marijuana. Luckily for Palani, the friend who sold him the weed—one J. J. Fitzpatrick—was so high himself that he begged Palani to take over his shift. Palani grudgingly accepted it and remained at the hotel the entire night, unwittingly creating for himself an alibi that would keep him from being formally charged in the death of Shannon Douglas.

  After the honeymooners provided sworn witness statements, Tatupu quickly confirmed Palani’s story with the doorman’s supervisor at the Waikiki Winds. Tatupu also secured the hotel surveillance videos, which evidently convinced him to clear Palani as a suspect.

  I had intended to view the videos when I returned to my apartment last night. But after a couple Tiki Gods at Margaritaville and a few margaritas at the Bleu Sharq, that just wasn’t happening.

  “This guy’s useless to us,” Jake says, flinging Palani’s witness statement across the table to me.

  “I’m going to talk to him tomorrow morning. Maybe Shannon said something to him that’ll help us.”

  “Son, I don’t think she could’ve done much talking with his dick in her mouth.”

  “Still,” I say, “maybe he told the detective something that was conveniently left out of the statement.”

  “Okay, son, let’s move on to this Cindy DuFrain, who ratted out our client for taking this impromptu holiday.”

  “According to the police affidavit, she didn’t volunteer the information. Far from it.”

  It seems that once Tatupu cleared Palani as a suspect, he started digging and digging fast. Tatupu contacted his colleagues in New York and asked them to find and interview anyone and everyone connected to Shannon Douglas. They started at Shannon’s apartment, where they found her roommate, Cindy DuFrain. After a good amount of prodding DuFrain admitted to police that she had told Joey of Shannon’s trip, and that after hearing it, Joey left the apartment in a hurry.

  Jake picks up his coffee and moves to the window. “Aside from one hell of a fucking motive, what else do they have on our boy?”

  I leaf through my notes, a summary of the police affidavits and witness statements. “A surveillance camera at the Kapiolani Surf Hotel puts Joey not far from the crime scene at two thirty-five a.m. Then, a surveillance camera at the Hawaiian Sands shows him stumbling back to his room at four forty-five a.m. At least that’s what Detective Tatupu attests to. I haven’t watched the videos yet myself.”

  “Do we have the medical examiner’s report, son?”

  I find the ME’s report and gloss over what I already know. “The cause of death is listed as blunt-force trauma to the head. Her skull w
as fractured. Massive blood loss. The death blow was likely delivered by a right-hander, taller than Shannon’s five feet ten inches, with fairly significant strength.”

  “Sounds like our boy,” Jake says.

  “Sounds like a lot of boys,” I counter.

  “How about the murder weapon, son?”

  “We have a photo of it and an initial lab analysis.”

  I find the photograph of the alleged murder weapon. The ivory-colored reef rock is larger than a baseball, smaller than a softball, peppered with crevices and grooves, lightly smeared with a gruesome rust.

  “Dried blood matches the victim’s,” I say. “No prints. It was found in the surf. Must’ve been on the shore long enough for the blood to dry. Then, the surf came up and rinsed off the prints, if it would’ve held any to begin with.”

  I’m guessing. I’m pretty sure we never studied dried blood and latent prints found on reef rocks in that semester of forensic science I took back in college. We sure as shit didn’t study forensic science in law school. Again, that would have been too practical. But we did have vested remainders subject to complete defeasance shoved down our throats. Whatever the hell they are. The science doesn’t matter this early in the game anyway. Besides, that’s what experts are for.

  “That doesn’t sound like a law student, leaving the murder weapon there in the sand near the body,” Jake says. “The ocean’s right there. Why not throw it in, as far as you can? It would’ve never been found.”

  “The prosecutor will argue that all legal training and logic fly out the window when there’s a body at your feet.”

  “Or perhaps,” Jake says, holding one finger in the air as if he’s just solved a Scooby-Doo mystery, “the killer didn’t know it was a body at his feet. Perhaps the killer struck her once and thought she was gonna wake up in the morning with nothing more than a really bad headache.”

  I get up from my chair and hand him a set of photographs, these of the victim as she appeared within an hour of being found. Jake sees his theory take an arrow through the heart.

  Jake squints at the photos with his aging eyes. Upon seeing the close-up shot depicting where Shannon’s head had caved in, he lets out an eerie gasp. This from a seasoned Texas death-penalty attorney. I shudder to think what sounds of horror will escape from the mouths of jurors who live and breathe on Oahu, a remote island in the Pacific that sees less than twenty homicides a year. He shakes his head slowly. “Jury sees these, it’s all over.”

  “There’s no way to keep them all out,” I say. “We’ll have to put them in context, convince the jurors that it wasn’t Joey who caused this carnage.”

  “Then, who was it, son?”

  “That other guy.”

  “Oh, yeah. Him. That’s not gonna be easy. The victim is a girl thousands of miles away from home with no acquaintances on the island. That eliminates all the usual suspects. Those with motive have no opportunity. Those with opportunity have no motive. She wasn’t raped. She wasn’t robbed. It boils down to a crime of passion. We may be facing a plea situation here, son.”

  I concede that the situation is grim, but I tell him Joey is unlikely to take a plea.

  “What’s your take on him?” he asks.

  Joey is a frightened little boy, locked in a closet, fearing he will never be let out. His parents are helpless to save him, capable of nothing but listening to his screams through the door. I’m the only one both inside and out. I’m the only one capable of finding the key to set him free. I’m the one he’ll blame should that closet become his permanent home.

  What’s my take on him? It doesn’t matter, does it? I promised I would help him. That didn’t mean much before Brandon Glenn. But it sure as shit means something now.

  “Let’s just say I’m withholding judgment, Jake. I don’t know if he did it or not, but I can’t risk thinking him guilty and finding out later I was wrong, after it’s too late.”

  “It’s dangerous ground you’re treading on, son. The law itself, she’s a jealous mistress. Add to that the need to save the world one case at a time, and you wind up growing old too fast. It’s easy to forget it’s his ass on the line, not yours. Hell, the state of Texas executed me more times than I can remember. I’d like to think I’ve done some good over the years, but I can’t argue I’ve done much good for myself. If I had it to do all over again, I’m not so sure I would.”

  Just then, the conference-room door swings open, and Hoshi steps in.

  “Sorry for the interruption,” she says. “But I was just over at the Sand Bar picking up my lunch, and the television was on. There’s something I think you guys should see.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The Sand Bar looks like an Irish tavern that got lost, found itself in downtown Honolulu, and tried too hard to fit in. Look to your left and find a leprechaun on a surfboard. To your right, a statue of a beautiful hula girl wears a T-shirt that reads KISS ME, I’M IRISH. Behind you on the shelves are Polynesian tiki gods covered in four-leaf clovers. And in front of you, behind the bar taking drink orders, stands a man named Seamus adorned in a lei and grass skirt.

  “Aloha, gents,” says Seamus in his thick Irish brogue. “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya. What can I get for you today?”

  I ask Seamus to turn up the volume on the television, and Jake orders us two Jameson Irish whiskeys on the rocks.

  “Isn’t it a little early, Jake?” I ask.

  “Hell, you’re from New York. It’s six hours later over there. You’ve got to take into account the time difference, son.”

  Seamus turns up the volume on one of a half dozen television sets over the bar. Gretchen Hurst fills the screen, touting what is still to come on her national cable news show, All Ears. She began her career on radio, but was later given her own cable news show, on which she demonstrated a knack for shamelessly exploiting the families of victims across the country in return for healthy ratings. She clearly gets her jollies from giving local officials, suspects, and their lawyers a faceful of microphone in front of millions of viewers, who prejudge the issue of guilt in reliance on her slanted views and purported expertise in the field of investigative journalism.

  Today, she says, her guest is Carlie Douglas. Live via satellite from Honolulu.

  Carlie Douglas is Shannon’s mother. A picture of her flashes on the screen. She is attractive, as her daughter was, younger than I would have expected. Early forties, I would guess. She was a single mother, that much I knew. Hurst also tells us that Carlie has traveled to Hawaii from her home in Knoxville, Tennessee, seeking justice for her daughter.

  Gretchen Hurst goes to commercial and I turn my whiskey upside down till the ice hits my teeth. The case of State versus Joseph Gianforte Jr. has just gone national.

  The national news media have been hungry for island murder after a missing-girl fiasco on an island in the Ca ribbe an. This case has all the necessary ingredients: sex and violence involving a beautiful young woman, a tropical-island setting, and a white man accused of murder. Sure, they have the body, which takes away some of the mystery and intrigue, but the Caribbean case is growing stale. Aloha, Waikiki.

  I don’t watch television. I don’t have one in my home. I get my news from newspapers and the Internet. So this is the first I’m seeing of this. All Ears returns with the large words at the bottom of the screen: slain in paradise.

  Hurst gives some background on the case. The body of a beautiful law student was found five days ago on the world-famous Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. She had been bludgeoned to death and left on the sand. Charged with her murder is her ex-boyfriend, a New Jersey man with a history of domestic violence against the victim.

  “I realize this is a very difficult time for you, Carlie, and I thank you for taking the time to talk to me,” says Hurst.

  “Thank you for having me, Gretchen.”

  Carlie Douglas has the moist eyes of a grieving mother, the voice of someone who has spent the past few days crying, the southern accent emphasized by the strain in her
voice. She wears little makeup, and she needs none. She has green eyes and auburn hair, wears a flower behind her right ear and a tiny smile, a likely look for someone’s first time on camera.

  “Carlie, can you tell us why you have gone to Honolulu?”

  “My only child is gone,” she says, her first sentence no doubt as difficult as any she has ever spoken. “After the funeral, I knew I had to come here to Oahu to seek justice for Shannon. She was a law student, she wanted to go into law enforcement. She believed in justice and the American criminal justice system. She would’ve wanted me here.”

  “Are you satisfied with the police investigation into your daughter’s death?”

  “I am satisfied, Gretchen. They have the killer behind bars and they tell me they have all the evidence they need to obtain a conviction. Unfortunately, Hawaii does not have the death penalty, so true justice can never be achieved for my daughter.”

  “The man they have behind bars awaiting trial is Shannon’s ex-boyfriend, Joseph Gianforte Jr., isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, it is, Gretchen.”

  “They were in a relationship for almost two years as I understand it. Did you know Mr. Gianforte, Carlie?”

  “I knew of him. I had never met him. She never brought him home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I only knew about him through my conversations with Shannon.”

  “Had you known he was convicted of domestic violence due to an incident involving your daughter?”

  “Yes, I did, Gretchen. The incident occurred the night I told Shannon something about her boyfriend that she had not known about him. She wouldn’t tell me exactly what happened that night, but I’m sure Shannon told him what I told her, and he struck her.”

  “What is it you discovered about Shannon’s boyfriend? What did you tell her that would cause him to strike your daughter?”