My Kind of Town
Don Chapman
>> Pearl City Working the phones
HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes could work the phones with the best of them, and had obtained plenty of useful information that way. Such as his recent phone call from Lily Ah Sun, when she'd played a phone message that came from her friend Shauny Nakamura's cell. A very troubling message. But fruitful as the phone could be, nothing compared to a face-to-face meeting with a cop. Especially when he arrived unannounced. That's why Gomes was on his way to the Pearl Palms, where Shauny lived.
Gomes, in his '71 Barracuda, was taking the Pearl City exit from the H-1 when his cell rang.
"Detective Gomes, Lily Ah Sun again. I hate to bother you, this may or may not be significant, but I thought I'd better let you decide. Just before I called you earlier, I was checking e-mail and when I opened one it released a virus that wiped out everything in my computer."
"Sheesh."
"Fortunately we back up the business records, so it could be worse. The only reason I mention it at all is that the same thing happened to Shauny's twin sister Fawn at her work, the Full Faith Fellowship Gospel Tabernacle."
Gomes actually knew it quite well. One of those Dr. Feelgood churches, low on law, high on gospel. He hated to agree with Lenin, but that kind of religion really was an opiate. It did not agree with Gomes' Latin Mass soul. How could you actually have a real religion without guilt, for cryin' out loud?
"And you see some connection."
"Yes, I think so. When Fawn said the tabernacle techie called around and nobody else was reporting this virus, it got me thinking. You see, Shauny e-mailed both of us a photo of this Victor."
"Do me a favor, you and her sister, call around, see if Shauny sent that photo to anybody else."
Lily said they'd do it right away and let him know what they found. "Oh, and by the way, Fawn called Shauny's cell and the battery is dead."
Gomes reviewed what he knew. Shauny had gone to lunch with a guy she'd known only from the Internet, then seemingly disappeared. From the muffled voices on the recording, she must have been unconscious, maybe drugged. The guy had told her his name was Victor. Shauny thought he was rich or famous. Could he create a computer virus to cover his tracks?
A block from the Pearl Palms, he recalled another case here. He'd busted a high-end -- so to speak -- call girl doing business out of her condo, the daughter of a prominent politician. Gomes was turning into the condo's visitor parking when his cell went off again.
"Yo, Sherlock, Jake Peepers here. You have a minute? I got a cheating husband case that's crossing over into your kuleana."
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com