Page 32 of Shark Cove

“Get to class. And tell the bus company next time if that boy gives you a ride.” Harry slid Malia’s phone into her purse.

“Don’t worry. He won’t.” Malia turned and walked down the hall; her shoulders hunched under the burden of her backpack.

Chapter Thirteen

Lei and Stevensentered the parole officer’s small, dingy office on the fourth floor of the Maui County Building in downtown Wailuku the next morning. A worn-looking woman whose desk plaque identified her as Peg Roberts pushed up from behind a battered metal desk to greet them.

Peg had told Stevens on the phone that she would bring Keo Avila in for them to interview, since she needed to do his monthly check-in anyway, and the man was due at any moment.

Roberts came around the corner of the desk, her hand extended toward Lei. “Great to meet you, Sergeant. I’ve heard good things about you over the years. And Stevens, it’s always a treat to lay eyes on you.” The older woman bounced her brows in a teasing way.

Stevens laughed. “I knew I could count on you, Peg. What we’re both surprised by is how quickly this piece of shit psychopath got out of jail. Can you tell us more about that before he gets here?”

“I’m given to understand it was a combination of overcrowding and good behavior on the part of my client.” Roberts returned to her desk to check a thick manila file folder. “Avila has complied with all of his check-ins, and his drug tests have been clean. I haven’t heard any negative reports about him since he got out six months ago.”

Lei sat down in one of three cheap plastic chairs. “Avila was instrumental in luring in runaways for human traffickers. We hear he might be up to his old tricks.”

Roberts’s eyes had a rim of white beneath them like a sad basset hound; her brows rose, increasing the impression. “I’m aware of his record. We will have to have some evidence of wrongdoing before tossing him back into jail.”

“Is there somewhere private where we can interview him?” Stevens asked.

Roberts shook her head. The jowly skin around her neck flapped. “Unfortunately, no. Space is at a premium in this office. I’ll have to sit in on your interview.”

Just then the door opened, and Keo Avila walked in with a wide grin on his face and a bouquet of tropical flowers in his arms. Lei often saw these beautiful homegrown bouquets near her home in Haiku, available in buckets on the side of the roads next to small honor system payment kiosks.

The charming smile died on the young man’s lips as he took in Lei and Stevens. “Oh, excuse me. I’ll come back, Peg, if this is a bad time.”

Roberts made a welcoming gesture and took the flowers, large heliconias, proteas, and torch ginger rubber-banded with a plastic bag around their stems. “Thank you, Keo. These two detectives are here to speak with you. You can have a seat right here.”

“Anything I can do to help the Maui Police Department.” Avila kept his face expressionless, but a slight tightness around his mouth revealed tension as he took a seat between the two.

“I’m Lieutenant Stevens. This is Sergeant Texeira.” Stevens, leaning his long body against the wall, turned languidly. If Lei didn’t know him so well, she’d have sworn her husband was completely relaxed as he chewed a toothpick, looking down his broad chest at the young man seated in the chair.

“We’ve met,” Lei said. “A few years ago.” Lei distinctly remembered meeting Keo Avila’s mother, too; that sweet lady hadn’t a clue how or why her handsome, charismatic son had gone bad.

Avila stayed silent.

Stevens took his chair and spun it around, straddling it. He crossed his arms over the back, gazing at Avila. “We hear you’ve gotten out on good behavior. What have you been up to for work in the last six months?”

“A little of this, a little of that.” Avila leaned back and crossed his arms on his chest; he must have been working out because his arms were ridged with muscle and his pecs were pumped. Lei continued her perusal: the young man’s jeans were new, his shirt was silk, and his pristine white athletic shoes were top-of-the-line.

“Now, Keo. You need to do better than that. Tell them about the job program I got you into.” Roberts tapped the top of Avila’s file.

“About that, Peg.” Avila ducked his head deprecatingly. “I’d been meaning to tell you that it didn’t work out.”

Roberts picked up a pair of reading glasses from her desk and opened the file. She surveyed him through the lenses. “For a young man with no visible means of support, your threads are pretty fancy.” Roberts had a slight southern drawl, and she emphasized that as she looked him over. “If I don’t miss my guess, your tennis shoes alone are worth several hundred dollars.”

“They were a gift. I’ve been working for my uncle,” Avila said. “He has an import/export business.”

“Let me guess.” Lei leaned into Keo’s personal space with a suddenness that made him recoil. “Your uncle’s last name is Chang, and his import/export business deals in human flesh.”

Avila shook his head. “Of course not. I’ve paid my debt to society and I’ve gone straight. My uncle deals in home furnishings, and if you’ve ever tried to buy anything for your house on Maui, you know we don’t have enough furniture or interior design stores on this island.”

“Give us a name.” Stevens took a small spiral notebook with its tied-on stub of pencil out of his back pocket. “We’re going to want to follow up on his business, and this job of yours.”

Avila reluctantly gave the name of the business, Hawaii Interiors, and that of his uncle, a Keith Evenson. “He’s related by marriage on my mother’s side,” the young man said when Roberts asked about the connection.

Roberts tapped the manila folder containing Avila’s records again. “As you know, one of the conditions of your parole is that you submit to monitoring, should anything you’re doing come under investigation. Put your foot up here on my desk. I just happen to have an ankle bracelet on hand.”

---