Witherspoon’s name got under Gommes’s skin. No doubt about it. Koa tried again. “You and Spooner have some kind of falling-out?”
“No!” Gommes replied, and then as if to catch himself, he tried to smooth his harsh tone away. “We just disagreed and drifted apart.”
Something had happened between Gommes and Witherspoon. Koa would have Piki check it out, but in the meantime, he shifted tacks. “Can you tell me how the particular site was chosen for the KonaWili elementary school?”
“Simple. We hired a planning firm, one specializing in laying out communities. They told us we needed an elementary school and recommended its placement.”
The man’s answers were way too facile. It couldn’t be so simple. It defied probabilities that some independent firm had randomly selected the fumarole site out of 3,500 acres on which to build an elementary school. Besides, as Koa had seen on his aerial recon of the KonaWili development, the school was oddly placed. Gommes had buried the KonaWili school at the most remote point in the whole subdivision rendering fire and police access difficult. Koa, tired of playing games, got tough. “When did you learn about the volcanic vent?”
“When the school blew up.”
“You knew before then.”
“You’re out of your mind. You think I’d buy a property if I knew it harbored a volcanic vent?” Gommes’s temper now flared. “Do you know how much money I stand to lose? Ten of millions.” He shouted, “Tens of millions. I’m not an idiot.”
Koa smiled inwardly. He’d broken through Gommes’s reserve and provoked anger. Strong emotion—almost any strong emotion—inhibited thought and made people careless or even reckless. Things came out unfiltered. Koa decided to add more heat. “Maybe you didn’t know about the vent when you bought the property, but you learned about it shortly thereafter.”
Gommes’s face grew red and hostility flared in his eyes. “That’s a damn serious allegation. You have a basis?”
Koa watched Gommes’s eyes. “Yeah, I do. The fumarole emitted steam a bunch of times over the years—”
“Jesus.” Gommes hit the table so hard the iced tea pitcher jumped, crashed to the flagstones, and shattered. The two Rottweilers jumped to their feet and began barking. “Shut up, you damned Metzgerhunds,” Gommes screamed and whacked the nearest dog with his crop. The dog yelped and both retreated. “You mean those Paradise fuckers screwed me?”
Koa hid his disgust at Gommes’s violence toward the dogs and increased the pressure. “Maybe. Months after you bought the property and just before the surveyors showed up, a bulldozer shoved a bunch of dirt and rock into that vent, concealing it from view.”
“What?” he roared. But something in Gommes’s eyes told Koa it was an act, the kind of overwrought performance that so famously marked Gommes’s public persona.
“I ask you again, when did you learn about the fumarole?”
“I told you.” He slammed his fist down on the table, hard, and this time the glass top cracked. “When the goddamn school blew up.” This time both Dante and Virgil cringed and moved well out of range of Gommes’s whip.
Koa left with a new assignment for Piki—a forensic biopsy on the Gommes-Witherspoon relationship. Gommes had probably stiffed Witherspoon on his fees, provoking a disagreement, but there might be more, and Koa wanted to understand it.
He called Piki and explained what he wanted, and then asked about the search for bulldozer records. He’d hoped that Piki had found paperwork linking the dozer to Gommes. It would be sweet to confront the smug developer with evidence he couldn’t refute, but Piki had yet to score. “Get on it,” Koa said, and then softened his rebuke, “as quickly as you can.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AS KOA AND Basa drove north on the Belt Road toward Cheryl Makela’s farm, Basa handed Koa his cell phone. “Take a look at this Tony Pwalú video. I had one of the techs download it from my body cam.”
Koa watched the video twice. On the third pass, he turned the volume up and put the phone close to his ear. Then he turned to Basa. “When we interviewed Pwalú, how’d he describe the woman from Honolulu?”
“He didn’t.”
Koa rewound the recording, turned the volume to max, and pressed the phone to Basa’s ear.
“I’ll be damned,” Basa said. “I never heard him say ‘haole lady.’”
“Neither did I, but you can hear it on the tape. Your souped-up GoPro’s got good ears.”
“Thought you’d be impressed.”
Koa had been thinking about body cams. “You don’t tell people they’re being recorded, do you?”
“Nope. The public can see the camera on my uniform, so people are on notice. Some police departments have put out public notices or press releases about body cams. If anyone asks, I tell ’em it’s on.”
Makela lived in a plantation house, raising horses on a thousand-acre farm outside the tiny town of Pepe‘ekeo on the northern coast of the Big Island. In Hawai‘i, land and political power were intimately interwoven, and Cheryl made her bones weaving that fine fabric. Piki’s research revealed that, while in law school, Makela had hitched her star to the Democratic Party then flexing its muscle throughout the islands. While the party’s rhetoric called for the breakup of the huge, mostly Republican landholdings, the political reality was different. Democratic politicians at all levels of Hawaiian government became partners in huis—syndicates and partnerships. The huis developed Hawai‘i’s resorts, malls, and office complexes during the great postwar building boom.
Nowhere was this symbiotic relationship more finely honed than in the state’s land planning offices. Investigative journalists wrote volumes about land deals where the directors and commissioners of the various planning agencies reaped untold profits. And Cheryl Makela represented the huis and the developers, all the while spinning the “revolving door” in and out of county government positions—always cutting a piece of the cake for herself. A piece heaped with frosting. The woman who attended UH law school on a full scholarship had become rich enough to retire on her thousand-acre horse farm.
Over the years, she greased the way with large campaign contributions and strong political connections with Mayor Tanaka. He’d first named her to the planning commission, then she’d become deputy director, and finally director of the Hawai‘i County planning department. Bribery and conflict of interest allegations swirled like a typhoon around her, but nothing stuck to the Teflon woman.
Makela came out of the stables when Basa pulled up alongside her restored plantation house. Now in her seventies, still with a shapely athletic figure, she wore sleek black riding boots, jodhpurs, and a collared show shirt. A mane of thick white hair tumbled from beneath her traditional black riding hat. She turned to say something to a stable boy before addressing her guests.
“Good afternoon, Detectives. Welcome to Makela Stables.”
Although he’d met her before, Koa introduced himself and Sergeant Basa. “Thank you for agreeing to see us,” he added, taking in the stables, the dressage arena set up for eventing, and the thoroughbred horses in the pastures beyond. It cost a fortune just to maintain the place. County planners, at least those in land development deals, plainly lived better than police detectives.