Chapter 22

The addressfor the remaining girl on the truancy list was in the outskirts of Haiku, a town of about nine thousand residents mauka, or inland "toward the mountains" in Hawaiian, from the Hana Highway.

After getting lost and asking directions at the Hanzawa Store and gas station, which reminded me of Artie and Opal's store in Ohia, we navigated to a small plantation style home painted dark green with white trim.

The house wasn't derelict, but it couldn't be described as tidy, either: the lawn in front was pocked with weeds, and enormous hibiscus bushes surrounding the house obviously hadn't been trimmed in years. The place consisted of the small main house, a freestanding garage, and either a garden shed or a small storage building in back. All the structures could've used a new coat of paint and the windows a bottle of Windex and a squeegee.

We went up onto the porch. The front door was open, but a rusting screen door stood between us and the living room inside. A TV blared with the raucous laugh track and whoop whoop sounds I associate with a daytime game show.

I tapped on the doorframe, then peered through the screen into the gloom and spoke in my loud "official" voice. "Hello, is anyone home?"

A woman who appeared to be at least sixty got up from a recliner and slowly shuffled her bedroom slippers to the door. She squinted through the screen as if pondering whether to slam the door in our faces. Her skin was fair and wrinkled and she wore a faded dress that'd seen better days. Her most distinguishing feature was a long braid of salt-and-pepper hair. She flipped it over her shoulder, and even then it reached nearly to her waist. She'd twisted an elastic band with a yellow plastic plumeria onto the end of the braid. That one bit of effort to "dress up" her everyday attire made me hope she might be more approachable than she first appeared.

"What do you want?" she said. Her voice was muffled as if she was trying to hold a loose upper denture in place with her tongue while she talked.

"We're here about Maile Ortiz," I said. "The school district has reported her absent for more than ten days this quarter."

The woman wound the end of her braid around a finger. "So, they have, have they? What're you wanting from me?"

"Are you Mrs. Ortiz?"

"Not likely. Mrs. Ortiz, as you call her, is up there in the county jail. Drugs, prostitution, you name it."

Rita and I exchanged a glance. She took over. "We're here to make sure Maile is safe. May we come in?"

"I gotta say ‘no' to that. I don't know you two from Adam."

Neither Rita nor I had any kind of ID giving us the authority to get past that screen door, so we hesitated. I had clipped the truancy report onto the clipboard I used to bluff my way out to the hermit's bombed-out home. I tapped the paper. "It says here that Maile goes to Haiku Elementary School. Is that correct?"

"You're the one with all the information. You tell me."

"She does. And she hasn't been in school for some weeks. We're here to check on her."

"Who are you? Show me some ID."

"We are concerned citizens," Rita said. "We're volunteers who help the school by doing home visits for students we're concerned about. My name is Rita, and this is Kat."

"I don't have to say diddly to a ‘concerned citizen.'" The woman made air quotes with her gnarled fingers. "But since you came all the way out here, I'll tell you that she's gone on a trip to visit family in California."

I absorbed that. I was crushed. This was our last lead.

We apologized for the disturbance and walked back to Rita's car. The electric engine made no sound as Rita backed out of the driveway but a little beep-beep-beep of warning.

My window was down, and I heard a thumping noise, as if someone were pounding on the woman's back door.

"Do you hear that?" I asked.

"What?"

"I thought I heard something."

"It's probably that ridiculous TV," said Rita. "She's got the volume turned all the way up."

"Something's off with that woman," I said.

"Everything's off about her," Rita agreed. "The report lists her as Maile's temporary foster parent. Why wouldn't she have called the school to tell them that the girl was off-island?"

I shifted in my seat. My healing ribs itched under the tight bandage. "Do you have time to stop at Haiku School and see if they know anything more?"

"After meeting that woman," Rita said, "I have all the time in the world."

Haiku Elementary School was a low-slung gray building surrounded by green lawns and chain-link fence. It appeared to be like every small-town elementary school from O‘ahu to Omaha. A couple of "portables" were off to the side, likely there to serve as classrooms when they had a temporary increase in student enrollment, but the main buildings looked like they'd been there for a decade or more.

We went into the front office and, once again, Rita asked me to let her take the lead.

"Aloha. I'm Dr. Rita Farnsworth, from the District Office," she said. The words "district office" seemed to instill urgency in the school secretary, who had been sitting at her desk watching something on her phone.

She popped up and ran around to the front counter. "Are you here to see Principal Tanaka? She's not here at the moment, but I can reach her on her cell phone."

It was close to lunchtime. Maybe the principal had stepped out to pick up a bite.

"This is merely an administrative request," said Rita. "We'd like to speak to the teacher who has Maile Ortiz in their class. Is he or she available?"

The secretary hesitated for only a moment, but it was enough to alert me that something was amiss.

"Um, Miss Lokemani is still with her class for another ten minutes. Would you mind waiting until the lunch bell rings? Then she'll be able to talk with you." She offered us a seat where a row of heavy blond wooden chairs lined the wall. I remembered those seats from when I was in elementary school. Did every school in America get issued a set of those intimidating straight-backed chairs?

We were about to sit when a woman of about fifty with short blonde hair came out of an adjoining office.

"Hey there," she said. "I'm Mrs. Miller, the school nurse. I overheard you inquiring about Maile Ortiz. Dr. Farnsworth, can I speak to you in my office for a moment?"

Rita gave me a glance that said, "stay put" and went into the small room, closing the door behind her.

I found myself fighting to control my emotions as I settled on the hard chair. I heard the ordinary sounds of a school in session: the murmur of voices, the squeak of shoes on linoleum, the drone of an adult reading aloud.

My mind went back to the mental picture I had of the girl in the window of the shack that was now a hole in the ground.

I'd been that little girl. Alone in a demolished car on a snowy night, I'd waited for help to arrive as my parents died. Fortunately for me, paramedics showed up and freed me, then took me to Aunt Fae. But no one had showed up for this little girl. She was just gone . . .

I was deep in dark thoughts when the nurse's office door opened and I heard Mrs. Miller say ". . . no trouble at all. So, we're concerned."

Rita nodded and thanked her for the information. She returned to where I was sitting. I waited to ask until she'd settled back on her chair. "What was that about?"

Rita said in a soft voice, "I think we've found our girl. Maile was having emotional problems and often went to the nurse with tummy aches."

"But what about the California thing?" I hissed.

Rita shook her head and pinched her lips together.

The bell rang. The halls filled with young voices and rushing feet. Maile's teacher appeared a few minutes later. "I'm on cafeteria duty today, so I'm afraid I only have a minute," she said. "But if you're concerned about Maile, let me weigh in that I'm extremely worried about her. She's had a horrible year. First her mom gets arrested, and now there's an issue with the foster mom." Miss Lokemani touched her fingertips to her lips and her eyes widened. "This is about the foster parent, correct? I hope I haven't said something I shouldn't have. Are you from Child Welfare Services?"

"No, we're not," said Rita. "We're from the school district following up on an attendance issue. You say Maile's in foster care?"

"Yes, since before winter break. She was struggling with being taken from her home. Really sad and upset—she wasn't making a good adjustment. Now the temporary foster parent appears to be completely negligent in getting her to school. We haven't seen her in almost two weeks."

"The foster parent—at least that's who we think we spoke to—told us Maile went to California to stay with family," Rita said.

The teacher shook her head. "No. There are no family members there, or she would have been sent to them. I was with the CWS people when they met with our team about her placement here at Haiku. We're not her home school. Even that was new for her this year. I'm sorry, I have to go." She hurried off.

Rita turned to the secretary, who was watching open-mouthed. "Please leave a message for the principal that a truant officer should be sent out to Maile's foster parent's address to find out why she isn't in school. CWS should also be notified."

"Of course," the woman stuttered, taking notes.

* * *

On the longdrive from Haiku to Ohia, Rita and I said little. Each of us seemed lost in our personal struggle with the dilemma at hand. As Rita drove to my house to drop me off, she sighed. "I'm feeling guilty," she said.

"Why?"

"Working at the school district, you feel as if these little ones are your responsibility. Discovering something like this has gone unreported is a complete failure of the system."

I thanked her for her help and promised her, as I had Doug Beachum, that I'd let her know what I discovered about how Maile Ortiz might have ended up at the hermit's place.

I called Lei as soon as I got into the house. "Hey Kat," Lei said when she answered. "I heard you've been down for the count. How're you doing?"

"I'm much better, thanks. I'm calling with new information on that explosion we had out here."

"I thought I told you we're not working that anymore. It's gone to the feds."

"Right. But this isn't about the explosion, per se. It's about the little girl that may have been out there."

"Kat, I?—"

I cut her off. "Please, just hear me out. I tracked down the name and address of a local girl who fits the description and who's gone suspiciously missing. I visited the address and it's a foster parent's house. The woman wouldn't let us in and lied about the girl's whereabouts. I went to her school, and they confirmed she's been absent for almost two weeks." I deliberately kept Rita Farnsworth's involvement out of it in case the whole thing blew up in my face.

"Do I want to ask how you obtained this girl's name and place of residence?"

"You don't, and it doesn't matter. The fact is, we now know there's a missing girl who matches the description offered by Beachum. Do you want me to send you what I have on the girl?"

"Yes, please do. I'll follow up within the hour. And Kat?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks. I'm still hoping you're wrong on this, but it's important we check it out."

I ended the call with a warm fuzzy feeling that counteracted the pain in my chest; though Maile was gone, at least we knew the girl in the window was real and had a name.

* * *

An hourand a half later Lei called. "I found Maile Ortiz in the system. Do you want to go with me to Child Welfare Services tomorrow? You've been working this so if you'd like to join me, you're welcome."

"I definitely want to go. I have a doctor's appointment at two, so could we make it a morning meeting?"

"No problem. We'll get there early, before they've had a chance to get their CYA straight." CYA, or Cover Your A**, was a well-known acronym to anyone who'd worked in a government bureaucracy.

I gripped my hands into fists to keep them from shaking. As the little girl in the window became more of a real person and less of an imagined apparition, it was becoming harder to not want to fly into action, guns blazing, to avenge her death—but there was nowhere to go with that energy. The hermit was dead, too.

That night as I was donning my Jessica Rabbit sleep tee and getting into bed, Keone called from Honolulu. I had been so caught up in the missing girl situation I'd forgotten to worry about how his test and interview were going.

Keone sounded hopeful over his performance on the tests and getting the possible promotion. "But I'm still worried about the training time. It sounds like they'll want me here for at least a month."

"Do you want to fly those bigger planes?"

"Of course. Who wouldn't? The pay's better, and I'd have a better schedule—a few days on, several off. It's all good except for having to be away from you. How are you feeling?"

I told him I was doing better.

"You sure? You were pretty upset last time we talked."

"I meant my ribs." I crossed my fingers so the lie wouldn't count as I went on, "I'm accepting the bomb situation. It wasn't my fault, after all."

"There's nothing you could've done."

I still didn't really believe that. "Part of what's making me feel better is that, with Rita's help, I found out who the girl in the window was." I brought him up to speed on recent events. "So even though she's still gone, at least there's a name to go with the face Doug Beachum saw."

Keone was silent a moment, absorbing this. "You didn't let it go, did you?"

"I couldn't. Not until I knew who she was."

"I love that about you, even when it gets you into . . . pardon the use of your nickname—Trouble."

"Good one. I love you, too." I said goodbye, then leaned back into my pillow and patted the bed. Tiki jumped up and came alongside me, purring like a chainsaw in need of an oiling, and that was all I needed to send me right to sleep.