Page 16 of Deadly Sacrifice

“Yeah.” Lei cocked her head at the angle of the displaced frame.

“And when I moved it, I found this.” TG indicated a gouge in the drywall behind the picture. “The print was hit with something that made it dig in.” He then turned on a small flashlight and shone it over the clear acrylic covering the print. “There’s a print here. An elbow mark.”

Lei frowned at the strange triangular mark on the “glass” of the picture. “How do you know what that is?”

“Easier to show you. Do you mind?” TG flexed his hands. “I’ll demonstrate what I think happened here.”

“Want me to be your crash test dummy?” Pono was sensitive to Lei’s issues with touch related to her past, though she’d recovered a lot from that early trauma.

“I need a smaller person. A woman, like Goodwin,” TG said. “Not that you look like Goodwin, Sergeant. But you are of a similar size.”

“Okay,” Lei said, bracing herself for the contact.

“Here’s what I think might have happened. Goodwin opened the door. He shoved it inward and pushed her back with his arm across her throat until she hit the picture. Like this.” TG maneuvered Lei back against the frame, then showed how his elbow hit the acrylic of the picture as he pressed his forearm against Lei’s neck.

“Got it.” Lei ducked under his arm and slipped away; TG badly needed a breath mint. “Seems likely she was taken here, then. With how tidy the rest of this place is, she would have fixed that wall and straightened the picture if she’d been able to.”

“Let’s get back to the office and update the Captain on the little we have so far,” Pono said. “Thanks, TG.”

“And be sure to check that shower drain,” Lei said. “Saw some hairs in there. Never know when a murderer might have taken a shower or washed up.”

“Criminals do the darnedest things,” TG said in his pedantic way. “I’ll keep you posted.”

11

LEI

After meetingwith Captain Omura and inputting their new information on the case into the computer and physical files, Lei made her way downstairs to the computer lab, leaving Pono continuing the documentation work.

Lei was tired and craved a snack; the fast-food chicken salad had burned off long ago. Hopefully Katie would have a granola bar or something stashed in the computer lab. Lei grinned a little; with that girl it was likely to be something goofy, like a bag of anatomically correct gummy bears.

She came around the corner and stopped, eyes widening. A sign on the lab’s door read‘Katie’s Cave: Where Perps Get Caught’in neon pink, puffy letters sprinkled with glitter on a black background.

Lei opened the door without knocking; it was a public computer work area after all, though clearly Katie had taken it over.

The lab was dimly lit but for Katie’s station. That was illuminated by the glow of three monitors and strings of chili pepper-shaped colored lights festooned around the monitors and the rest of the room.

Katie glanced at Lei and smiled. “Howzit, boss!” Her hair was in twin pigtails—one of them blue—and her glasses had oversized bright red plastic frames. She blinked, and feathery fake eyelashes flapped enough to create their own breeze.

“Are you a character from something?” Lei asked, hands on her hips.

“Yep. I’m a character—my best self.” Katie grinned.

Lei shook her head as she stared around the office. A Phalaenopsis orchid’s vibrant white and purple blossoms trailed down from the top of a file cabinet. Arranged on one shelf of a metal bookcase were a herd of My Little Pony figures, a purple Care Bear with a rainbow on its chest, and a tiara. There were a couple of posters on the walls of video game characters. Directly beside Katie’s desk on the wall was a target from the shooting range, with eight bullet holes in the ten circle.

“Right . . . okay. Where didthatcome from? And what are you doing on it?” Lei asked, pointing at the largest computer monitor she’d ever seen, one of three on Katie’s desk. Lines of meaningless text covered the screen.

“Um, the monitor? I found it lying around. And what am I doing? I’m writing code.”

“What do you mean, you ‘found it’?” Lei decided to start with that inquiry.

“I obtained it in a resourceful and efficient manner.”

“From where?” Lei frowned; her own computer was so old it was an ongoing joke. She’d been told repeatedly that a new one was not in the budget.

“Not important. It’s what I’m doing with it that is. Let me tell you about this code,” Katie said, pointing to the screen with a sparkling nail. “I’m working on generating a statistical analysis of bank transfers. Not interisland, but interstate. There’s only so much money officially here—well, actually, it’s all theoretical anyway, that’s the nature of money—but when money moves around in-state, it’s easy to see.”

“Okay,” Lei said slowly, reaching for a chair. “You lost me. So what?”

---