Page 29 of Hidden Falls

“Dang it.” Marcella reached for the paper file she was keeping on the case to buy a little time. How much could she trust Jenkins with? “What did Lei tell you?”

“Almost nothing. Just that you were here working on something with her and to help if you reached out, because there was a likely drug sales angle.” Jenkins leaned forward. “Spill. I want to know what’s going on.”

“I have a strong lead for us to follow up on in the kidnapping of Detective Harry Clark’s daughter Malia. What do you know about Dr. Gary Paulson?”

Jenkins’s blue eyes narrowed. “I’m familiar with that name. But what’s this about a kidnapping?”

Marcella sighed. “I guess Omura has been keeping it under wraps. I better start at the beginning.” She filled him in on what had happened with Malia and who she was as Harry’s daughter.

“I saw the Amber Alert, yeah. I even was aware Malia Clark was a CI since Lei had registered her officially. But I didn’t put her together with Harry.” Jenkins shook his head. “Man. Harry’s intense. She worked in Vice for a year before switching to Homicide. She’s not the easiest person to get along with, and I wouldn’t wish her on my worst enemy—she’s a bulldog on a case. She must be going nuts looking for Malia.”

“And . . . this is where it gets sticky.” Marcella gave the younger man some good eye contact and her best smile. “Can you keep something under your hat for a while?”

Jenkins sat back and folded his arms over his muscular chest. “Depends.”

“Then I got nothing more to tell you.” Marcella smiled and tapped her file. “What do you know about Dr. Paulson?”

Jenkins threw his head back and addressed the acoustic tile ceiling. “Oh man! I see how it is. This must have to do with where Lei and Harry are and why you’re doing work on a case that shouldn’t be an FBI matter.”

Marcella ducked her head. “I can neither confirm nor deny . . .”

Jenkins laughed. “You know what? I’m better off not knowing. That way, if Omura asks me anything, I have plausible deniability.”

“Smart choice. Let me know if you change your mind.”

“Will do. Now, Dr. Paulson.” Jenkins reached below to a computer resting under the desk and turned it on. “Let me get into my file on him and we’ll go from there.” They waited a few minutes for the computer to boot up, and Jenkins swiveled his chair back around to face Marcella. “Tell me how you got this lead on Paulson.”

“Malia Clark operates an online gossip blog for students called Wallflower Diaries. She’s used it to tease out info as a confidential informant. When Malia was taken, she had some lines in the water trolling for leads on where to get prescription drugs at school. She has a secure email drop where students send in info. I punted that cache to our IT department on Oahu, and Special Agent Bateman ran down all the leads that have collected there. Dr. Paulson’s name kept coming up. Bateman then gave me a business and personal address to follow up on. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.” Marcella raised her hands, palms up. “We’re still looking for Malia, primarily. Of secondary importance is busting the prescription drug racket peddling to students.”

“Okay. I appreciate the priorities.” The computer finally booted up with a beep. Jenkins input his access code, then typed Paulson’s name into the search bar and pressed Enter. He swiveled the monitor toward Marcella to display the man’s information. “He’s officially clean. No priors of any kind, not even a parking ticket.”

Marcella studied a driver’s license photo showing an older white man in his fifties with a bald head, heavy reddish jowls, and small, wire-rimmed glasses that almost hid eyes listed as ‘blue’ on his license. “Doesn’t look like a drug peddler to kids. Looks like a man who’d go golfing with my father on the weekends.”

“All the worst ones blend, and golfing, especially on Maui, is an expensive pastime,” Jenkins said. “We have a small Vice department—just me and two other detectives. I’ve been mostly centering on the harder drugs on Maui. Crystal methamphetamine is our biggest threat as far as harm to users and increase in crime generally, so that’s where we focus our time. But prescription drugs have definitely caught our attention in the last couple of years, especially since they’ve infiltrated the high schools. So far, we haven’t had an ‘in’ as to where they’re coming from.”

“I don’t know how the pills are actually peddled through the schools, just that this man’s name seems to be behind it. He’s probably writing the scripts and bringing in the goods in bulk somehow. Medical doctors also get a ton of free samples they can distribute,” Marcella said. “What say we go on a fishing expedition? Start with the business address and see what we see.”

Jenkins’s fingers flew over his keyboard; the old computer had a hard time keeping up, but finally a Google Earth image came up of the address of the business owned by Paulson.

“Interesting. The address is a warehouse down by the docks in Kahului.” They studied the photo of a large metal structure encircled by a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. “Why does a doctor need to own a highly secure property like that?” Jenkins glanced at Marcella, and his eyes had gone cold as chips of sea ice. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to bust something major wide open. But we can’t get inside that fence without probable cause.”

“Let me pull together documentation from the leads that kids submitted to Malia’s website,” Marcella said. “There should be enough there to go after a search warrant.”

Jenkins rubbed his hands together in almost boyish glee. “I love a good drug raid in the morning. Clears my sinuses. How about you?”

15

Several hours later, Marcella and Jenkins drove toward Paulson’s warehouse in a cruiser he’d checked out of the motor pool. It had taken all that time to get the paperwork authorized for the search of the premises, and Marcella had hung back in the cubicle while Jenkins detailed the planned raid to Captain Omura. At this point, neither Harry nor Lei’s disappearance had been detected by supervisors, and Marcella hoped to keep it that way as long as possible.

They pulled up and parked on the shoulder of the road beside the high, barbed wire-topped fence surrounding the warehouse. Both Marcella and Jenkins wore Kevlar vests emblazoned with their organizations’ names, and Jenkins had packed a heavy pair of bolt cutters as well as the search warrant.

Nervous perspiration sprang up along Marcella’s hairline and under her arms as she got out of the cruiser; the hot afternoon sun overhead and a lack of any sort of shade or breeze didn’t help her apprehension.

“Sure we shouldn’t have the SWAT team with us?” Marcella said.

“Couldn’t get it authorized until we know what we’re dealing with,” Jenkins said. “I called for backup, though.” Another cruiser, containing two uniformed officers, pulled up beside them.

Marcella felt better about the situation as two hefty officers in ballistic vests came to stand with them. Jenkins introduced them to Marcella. Both wore mirrored Oakleys that hid their eyes, and she felt their scrutiny of her FBI-emblazoned vest.

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