Now wasn’t the time to tell Kim he had spilled everything to Lucy first. Instead he said, “Then she’s a hell of a lot smarter and smoother than I am.”

He made a contrite face.

“But we already knew that, didn’t we? Anyway, I want you to take the lead on this one.”

“So Lucy can work the evidence.”

Not for the first time Coutinho thanked the Hawaiian gods for this partner.

“Right.”

“But you’ll really be in charge.”

Coutinho absorbed the dig, which was for holding out on Kim to begin with.

“No. The lead is the lead.”

Kim nodded and said nothing for a long moment.

“So,” he said finally. “Where do we find him?”

“He was living with Eleanor.”

“Then he cleared out.”

“Really cleared out.”

Detectives and evidence technicians had found no trace of a man in the apartment. Coutinho thought about alternate scenarios. It was possible that Eleanor had kicked Jerry Wyatt out and then exterminated his memory. That would have been her style.

But then what? If she had brought the wrong man home from a bar, wouldn’t he have left evidence?

The stranger scenario was unlikely to begin with. Eleanor had been a serial monogamist who valued intensity over all else. Recreational sex had never interested her. Coutinho wondered whether Wyatt had let something slip to Eleanor about his real identity, or whether this was just housecleaning.

Housecleaning in preparation for what?

“If he’s Trondheim,” said Kim, “we know who’s next on his agenda.”

“Let’s go see what’s left of Morrison?”

At the last possible moment Coutinho remembered to make it a question for the lead investigator. This was going to be hard to pull off.

4

The door stood open like an invitation, or a warning.

“Exigent circumstances?” Coutinho asked.

“Yeah. Could be somebody hurt in there.”

They didn’t expect to find anyone. This typical whitewashed box of a Big Island house belonged to Morrison, and he never left a mess. The biggest pakalolo entrepreneur in the Puna rainforest had survived thirty years in his business by paying attention to the details. But the cops needed to know what was going on, and they needed a pretext to enter.

Morrison wouldn’t object. One of his many talents was knowing when to yield a point to the police.

Coutinho drew his Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter. His partner did the same. It was Kim’s turn to go first. Inside, he went right while Coutinho went left. It helped that they knew the house from previous sit-downs with Morrison. They swept through the first living room on the left, the bedroom-bathroom-bedroom setup on the right, and finally another living room in the rear.

“Clear,” they said in unison.