Payback jack, p.1
Payback Jack, page 1
PAYBACK JACK
A VIGILANTE JUSTICE THRILLER
J.E. TRENT
CONTENTS
Foreword
Bonus
Untitled
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by J.E. Trent
About the Author
Afterword
Boating Glossary
Hawaiian Glossary
Copyright
FOREWORD
PRAISE FOR J.E. TRENT
J.E. Trent spins a riveting, unputdownable tale, that brings a moral dilemma for our hero - how far is he prepared to go, to enact payback on behalf of those who can't defend themselves?
Perfect for fans of David Berens, Luke Richardson and Clive Cussler. –Rosemary Kenny
BONUS
Get ebook Death in Paradise Free. It’s the first book in the Hawaii Adventure series.
Also by J.E. Trent
Hawaii Action Adventure Series
Book 1 Death in Paradise - Free ebook.
Book 2 Death Orchid
Book 3 The Kona Strangler
Book 4 Death Tide
CHAPTER ONE
After I fueled the boat, I put it back inside its slip at the harbor and went into the salon with coffee in one hand and the Sunday paper in the other.
Usually, I liked to sit in the fighting chair in the cockpit and read the paper, but it was windy and sprinkling. The forecast was to drop an inch of rain. From the looks of the dark sky, it wouldn’t be long before it poured. Warm rain was ok, I loved the smell of it, just not when outside trying to read the paper.
I sat on the couch and glanced at the headline. It read, Another homeless man found stabbed to death in the village. I shook my head in disbelief. The crime was so heinous and the act so foreign to my little slice of heaven. One or two murders a year on the Kona side of the island was typical, but this was the fourth one in a month. Someone was out to solve the island’s homeless problem–one murder at a time.
I continued to read the paper and sip my coffee. I don’t know why, but coffee always seemed to taste better on Sunday.
Unfortunately, the news wasn’t better. Story after story of nothing but bad news and bad things that happened to good people. I sighed and muttered to myself, “Something’s got to change.” After a while, I folded the paper and threw it down in disgust.
It’s usually quiet out at the harbor. That’s why I lived there on a boat named the Holo-Holo. It’s the perfect home for a sworn bachelor. And forty-two feet of Cabo fishing yacht nirvana. It used to be named the Hui-Hou. I changed it because I hated saying goodbye and because holo-holo meant cruising or vacation in Hawaiian; it was more in line with how I liked to spend my time.
Most apartments weren’t as nice inside. What I liked most about it was if I got sick of the neighbors, I could untie and move to a different harbor or island if I chose to. I had no desire to, but I enjoyed having options. Living in the same house in the same neighborhood for twenty years was not my idea of living anymore.
Later that afternoon, Kathy dropped by to work on her book while I laid on the couch and studied the weather report from Kona to Honolulu. I had business over there that would take about a month, and I wanted to avoid staying in a hotel for that length of time.
It would’ve been a nice occasion to exercise the Holo-Holo, since it wasn’t good to let 800 horsepower diesel engines sit idle for long periods of time.
Kathy sat at the table across from the couch. Her right hand appeared to be permanently attached to her forehead as she leaned forward with her elbow on the table. She was on the third rewrite of her first novel.
According to her, it’s a love story that happened on the high seas. She said my boat was the only place she could write it because it was on water and she needed to feel a connection to the ocean to make her words authentic–whatever that meant.
When she wasn’t working at the Ugly Omelette, I used her part-time when I had a charter. Fish shivered at the mere mention of her name. That’s how good she was with a fishing pole.
Kathy had a red hibiscus flower in her long black hair. It was tied up into a messy bun with tendrils that streaked down the side of her face. She wore a teal bikini top with white denim shorts that contrasted her golden brown skin. She traded off chewing her hair and a pencil intermittently as she regarded the paper version of her manuscript.
The stack of pages was a sea of red and blue ink over, under, and around the printed words. If there was one thing she’d convinced me of, it was that I never wanted to be a writer; especially not after watching her write and rewrite the same story over a period of months.
I’d never been the type to sit in front of a computer for hours at a time and would definitely have thrown it overboard after the first hour. Never mind the fact that I’d sit in the boat’s fighting chair with a fishing line in the water, drink beer for hours, and stare at the ocean with nothing to show for it. I wish I was a better angler. To each his own, I guess. W. C. Fields once said, “Everyone's got to believe in something, and I believe I'll have another beer.” It worked for him, it worked for me.
I didn’t mind Kathy coming over to write, since her perfume always improved the smell of the place.
“Crap!” she said as she stared at the manuscript.
I looked over and said, “Problem?”
“I have a plot hole big enough to drive a boat through.”
I watched for a moment as she spit her hair out from between her front teeth and started scribbling wildly in the margins on the paper in front of her. The more she wrote, the more unwrinkled her face got. I nodded and went back to reading the weather report, since I wanted to avoid crossing the channel between the Big Island and Maui in twenty-foot seas.
When I saw that three tropical storms had formed off Baja, Mexico, and were headed straight toward Hawaii, it was a straightforward decision to postpone my trip to Honolulu until after hurricane season.
I was about to tell Kathy when a loud woman’s voice out on the dock disrupted the evening silence. It was one of the drawbacks of not having a doorbell.
“Kathy, are you in there?”
Startled, Kathy said, “I’m sorry Jack, I told her not to come here. I’ll get rid of her.”
“No worries, she’s fine. There will come a day when you’ll miss her interrupting you. Trust me.”
Kathy bounced from the table out the salon door toward the dock.
“Mom! I told you not to come here,” she whispered so as not to draw the eyes of any nearby boat dwellers.
“I know honey, I’m sorry and just afraid of what I found in the backyard, and I remembered your friend Jack being in law enforcement, and–”
Kathy interrupted, “He’s retired. What did you find that is so important?”
Her mother looked down the dock and at the two boats on each side of the Holo-Holo and whispered, “Bones.”
Now really annoyed because her mother had interrupted her writing, Kathy said in a low tone of voice, “They’re probably from some animal.”
Her mother shook her head. “That’s what I thought until I found the skull,” she said as she pulled it out of her oversized purse.
“Oh my gosh, put that back and come with me,” Kathy whisper yelled as she checked to see if anyone was looking as she pulled her mother by the arm down from the dock onto the boat.
CHAPTER TWO
Kathy brought her mother inside the cabin of the Holo-Holo, almost as if she were escorting a prisoner, and presented her to me. “This is my mother, Estelle Medeiros.”
My first impression was she could have been Kathy’s older sister. Since Kathy was thirty-five, I’d guess Estelle was near my age. Unlike me, she didn’t look it. Kathy, obviously not a good judge of age, thought I was in my mid-forties, so my ego was living the dream. My body–not so much, after a career in law enforcement and just over five decades of abuse.
I stood and reached for Estelle’s hand before she sat next to Kathy on the couch. I said, “It's a pleasure to meet you. The other day, Kathy told me you’re selling your house and moving back to the mainland.”
Estelle smiled and nodded. “That’s right, I just can’t afford to live here anymore. Well, I could if I continued to work two jobs. When I was younger, it was okay, but now I just want to work less and play more. Working the rest of my life just to make ends meet is what’s on the horizon if I stay here. Besides, nobody stays in Hawaii forever, except the locals. And I’d argue that with a hundred thousand Hawaiians living in Las Vegas, it’s a crap shoot even for them. And don’t get me started on the crime here nowadays. I read in the paper a jogger found another poor man murdered in the village this morning. It's almost like somebody has a vendetta against the homeless. Not to mention the reason I’m here.”
Kathy interrupted, clearly eager to get back to working on her book. “Mom, show him the skull.”
I expected several things Kathy could have said, but show him the skull wasn’t on the list.
Estelle pulled it from her purse and said, “I found it in the backyard while digging up a leaky irrigation line.”
In a nanosecond, I evaluated the pain-in-the-ass factor of the skull in my life and smiled as I said, “You should take it to the police station. I'm sure they would be fascinated as to how it got buried on your property.”
Kathy frowned, “Jack,” she whined. “I was hoping you could take care of this so my mom doesn’t wind up getting thrown in jail.”
Before I could say a word, Estelle blurted, “I don’t want to go to the police because my house is in escrow and this skull could blow up the deal. Isn’t there another way, Jack?”
"I suppose you could put it back where you found it and don’t tell a soul. Besides, there are bones all over this island. It could be an ancient Hawaiian burial for all we know. Or not, let your conscience be your guide."
Estelle half smiled and nodded. She quickly put the skull back in her purse. I sensed she was annoyed that I wasn’t willing to get involved. I viewed the skull as an OPM, which meant, “Other person’s monkey.” And had better things to do than go play twenty questions with the cops about it. Once upon a time, when I was still interested in saving the world, I would have gotten knee-deep in it. But that bus has left the station, and I’m not on it.
As she got up to leave, Estelle leaned over and hugged Kathy. She said to me, “Thanks for your time, Jack.” I nodded and smiled as I waved goodbye. I could feel the burning glare from Kathy. Clearly, she was unhappy with me.
One hour later, my phone rang. I glanced at the name and muttered, “why me?” The Caller ID said it was detective Grady O'Halloran of the Kona PD. I’d known Grady a long time. We worked a few investigations together in Honolulu back in the day.
I was semi-retired, and he wasn’t. There was probably some lingering resentment because I was sitting on my boat drinking beer at my leisure, and he was still working for the man.
In a gruff tone, he said, "What's the story on the skull?" Obviously, he wasn’t happy about having his Sunday evening interrupted since he was the detective on call that night.
"I don't know anything about it. I told her to take it to the police station since I didn’t want to be involved. If I’d known you were the one to catch the case, I would have told her to just bury it in the backyard. Who peed on your Cheerios?"
Grady sighed, "The judge. I went to court on Friday and my ex-wife got her alimony increased. I have to pay that bitch to sit on her fat ass over in Honolulu while I'm practically living in a coffee shack."
I didn’t need to remind him that his stripper girlfriend in Waikiki was what caused the alimony in the first place. So, I thought I’d lighten the subject and said, “From what I’ve read in the paper, it looks like there’s a serial killer working this side of the island.”
“That’s why I’m calling you about the skull. I’m trying to figure out if this is related. Maybe the guy has been at this a long time and now is just too lazy to bury the bodies.”
I changed the subject to fishing and said, “I need to get ready for a charter tomorrow.”
I went fishing the next day, and Grady went to dig up Estelle’s backyard.
CHAPTER THREE
On mornings when I didn’t have an early charter, I liked to drink coffee while I sat out on the rocky point at the mouth of the harbor. More often than not, I had a front-row seat when a pod of dolphins cruised by. Occasionally, my coffee drinking buddy Miles was already there when I showed up.
He was easy to spot with his long reddish-blonde dreadlocks. He never wore a shirt. His skin looked like tanned leather from years of exposure to the Hawaiian sun. Near his left shoulder was a scar from a bullet wound. I knew what it was when I first saw it because I had one similar to it. I asked him about it once. He said he got it in Vietnam on hill 488 just south of Chu Lai, courtesy of the Viet Cong. I lifted my shirt and showed him the one I got in Somalia.
Anyone who had ever met him would’ve never forgotten his piercing blue eyes. If I were to guess, I’d say his heritage was Scandinavian, and at the time he was in his late sixties or early seventies. The lines on his face said life had been tough, but you’d never have known it by talking with him.
From all outward appearances, he had little in the way of material things, but he seemed to be one of the happiest people I knew. I wished I had his guts to just say screw it and go live on the beach like he did.
I’d wear a fishhook necklace like he had and just live off the land. But I couldn’t end my lifelong relationship with hot water and soap. Thus, I was a slave to the man, just like everyone else that lived indoors.
Usually Miles arrived before me when he’d camped out in the Honokohau National Park next to the harbor. He had other places around the island he liked to stay, but he said the park was his favorite. The park rangers and he play a game similar to whack a mole. He was easy to spot because of his rat dog, Pierre. He always barked at the rangers when they were making their rounds, regardless of how many times Miles shushed him to be quiet.
Pierre had short brown fur and was only about eight inches tall and a foot long. He wasn’t prejudiced; he hated everybody except Miles. I suspected he tolerated me only because I brought him treats as a bribe to keep from getting bit. He acted like he was every bit as big and tough as any German Shepherd.
When the rangers found Miles and Pierre sleeping in one spot, they just moved to another campsite the next night. They were the least of the rangers’ problems.
The rangers' number one problem was a Hawaiian Ohana that lived on the beach near the canoe shed. They’d made a federal case out of the right to live in the park. According to statements they’d made to the press, they weren’t moving anytime soon.
As Miles and I watched the fishing boats leave the harbor headed toward the fishing grounds, he took a sip of coffee and said, “The rangers are serious this time, Jack. It’s not like the old days. Pierre and I have to move into town.”
“Well, you guys had a good run. You probably could've stayed a few more years if it weren’t for your little friend’s pleasant personality.” I cut my eyes toward Pierre. He was too busy gnawing on his milk bone to care about my sarcasm. “How long have you lived there, five years?"
Miles nodded. "Something like that."
"Well, I guess we can start having coffee down at The Ugly Omelette."
"You don’t have to do that, Jack."
I smiled and teased, “How else are we going to solve all the world's problems while we have coffee? And besides, canoe racing starts soon. We can watch all the scantily clad wahines practice, and who knows, you might even find yourself a new girlfriend down there.”
Miles grimaced. "No more girlfriends. It’s just me and Pierre from now on."
I nodded. “I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve been married three times, and have no desire for love to lie to me again.”
After a sip of coffee, I added, “You might think about checking into the shelter for a while.”
He shook his head, “No can, they won’t allow Pierre. We’ll just sleep on the beach at Honl’s.”
