Shards Read online

  In the four months since I had returned to Maui, I had wondered who would be my Pete Cordiello here, that guy I couldn’t pin down, that guy I pursued in some sort of crazy quest. Now I understood that it wouldn’t be a criminal this time, a small-time narcotics dealer or big-time drug trafficker. It would be a gorgeous Hawaiian man with a family he loved and a mistress he was obsessed with, and no reason at all to arrange his life any differently.

  7

  In Hawaii, the most prestigious private schools are the Kamehameha Schools. Founded in 1887 by one of the last descendants of King Kamehameha, they have a nine-billion-dollar endowment and are among the richest private schools in the country. Tuition is modest, so families don’t have to be rich to go there, but you can only get in if you’re Hawaiian. You actually have to prove your ancestry when you apply for admission. The schools promote Hawaiian values, and every Hawaiian wants his kids to go there. Keawe was no exception. The Kamehameha Schools, he told me, were the reason he couldn’t leave his wife.

  “The boys are three,” he explained to me one night. “They’ll be old enough to apply in a year, and Sacha the year after. We just have to wait until they’re in, babe, and then we can be together. If they come from a divorced home, more than likely they’re not going to get in.”

  He had been especially attentive since the day at Hanakao’o Beach. He didn’t want to lose me—I got that—but he couldn’t make a commitment either, and I refused to wait for some goddamned school admissions process to determine the outcome of our affair.

  “I can’t wait that long,” I said. “It’s . . . horrible. It’s . . .”

  “I know,” he said, caressing my neck. “You know I want to be with you.”

  “But I picture you with her all the time. How do you, how can you—?” Of course I was talking about sex. I couldn’t bear to think of him cheating on me with his wife.

  “There’s nothing left between us,” Keawe said. “She’s a great person and a really good mom, but I’m just not in love with her anymore. We’ve been married for seven years. It happens.”

  I wanted to believe him, of course, but I hated more than anything the idea of being the other woman. Like my dad’s slutty secretary. I didn’t want to be that person. God, how I didn’t want to be that person.

  I would never have asked Keawe to leave his wife for me. I was the product of divorce, and I couldn’t bear the thought of doing that to someone else’s children. We made an agreement that once the kids got into Kamehameha, he would ask Colleen for a separation.

  I longed to be with him now. I wanted to be able to go out to dinner with him, or go to the movies. I wanted to hold his hand while we walked down the street. I wanted a real boyfriend. I didn’t want to spend all of our time together in my apartment with the drapes closed, lying to everyone.

  But that’s exactly how it was.

  • • •

  It had been eight months since I started my affair with Keawe, and still no one knew about it. Around this time, I learned that another female cop, Dina Johnson, was having an affair with my old recruit school instructor, Sergeant Mankell. I barely knew Dina—she was on Alpha Watch and I was on Bravo—but sometimes we passed each other in the locker room and chatted. She was big on inviting me out to the bars, but I never went. She was my age, African-American, very pretty. Originally from Chicago, she had moved to Maui with her family fresh out of high school and was as in love with the island as I was. We had that in common.

  When I found out Dina was having an affair with Ed Mankell, I thought back to the wonderful letter he had written me when I graduated from recruit school, and it made me a little sad. A little disappointed in Sergeant Mankell. He had young children too, just like Keawe.

  Dina kept pushing a friendship, so one day I took her up on her offer to go out for drinks. I never did anything but work or hang out with Keawe, and it felt strange to sit in a bar with a girl my age. A girl in her twenties should have lots of friends, I thought.

  Dina liked to drink, and I watched her slam down a couple of beers while I had a soda. This was exactly why I didn’t like to socialize with other cops.

  “You know about me and Ed?” she asked, after beer number three.

  “I heard.”

  “It sucks,” she said. “I’m an idiot, I know. It’s just—”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “What? You? The perfect Officer Moore?”

  “Not so perfect,” I said.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  I took a deep breath. I wanted someone to know. “Keawe,” I said.

  She nodded. “I can see it.”

  “I hate it,” I said.

  “I know. You love him, but you hate it.”

  It made me feel slightly better to have shared this with Dina. I made her promise not to tell a soul, but later Keawe found out that she had told Mankell.

  So much for making a girlfriend.

  • • •

  To avoid thinking about Keawe, I threw myself into work. Now that I was back in Maui, there were bigger players, bigger cases. Even though I was still on patrol, I started to build up a base of confidential informants, CIs. I wasn’t technically supposed to be doing that yet, but I found it really useful in my narcotics work. I was gradually discovering that operating by the book wasn’t always the best strategy for me.

  I found that building a strong CI base and keeping my CIs in line was a hard job. Every cop has a different technique. Some like to threaten people into being informants. For others, it’s all money-based. My thing was talking, building a rapport. If I worked a domestic abuse case, I would say, “What’s up with your husband? Why is he trying to fight us when we’re trying to arrest him? This isn’t just alcohol behavior. Is he smoking crack?” I would flat out ask if he was an addict, and to my surprise, a lot of the women would say, “Yes, yes, he is on drugs.” Then I could say to the guy after we arrested him, “Look, this is a problem. Now I know you’re smoking crack and I’m watching you. But you can help me out. Who are you getting your dope from?” Over time, as trust built up, they would lead me to their small-time dealers, who then led me to the major traffickers.

  I treated my CIs as friends, and they told me things that were happening in the drug world, things cops usually wouldn’t know. I found out whose girlfriend was sleeping with someone’s dealer, and I would target the girlfriend and say, “I know you’re sleeping around on this guy to get dope, so why don’t you work for me instead? That way you’re protected. You still get your dope, and I get my target.”

  Some of my CIs were addicts, and others were just people in the community that were scared and fed up with the drug dealers. It’s amazing the kind of people you meet in the drug world. I had one CI from Lahaina, a female, a solid CI. Sharon Benzos was a well-known real estate agent in Maui, forty-five years old, three kids, beautiful home in Keokea, drove a BMW—no one would ever pinpoint her as a meth user. She became a CI because I had arrested her for possession, and she was terrified of going to jail, terrified that her husband was going to find out. When I offered her the CI option, she took it. She understood that ice was bad for the community. She wanted to stop using, but she couldn’t; rehab wasn’t an option for her because then her family would find out. Because she was a user, I had problems keeping her in line. She tended to be erratic, and her information wasn’t right on. But I took care of her, and I paid her well.

  I always paid my CIs well. If they were going to make a buy for me from a target I was interested in, I would pay them at least a hundred bucks. Sometimes two hundred if the department would allow it. When you’re working with addicts, the law says they can’t use. They sign papers when they start working as CIs. We take their photos, and they have numbers that go into the search warrants to protect their identities, but they couldn’t use, and they couldn’t get arrested. The thing is, how are they going to make buys for you if they’re not using? So I always made sure I gave them enough money to keep them in the drug world usi
ng. I would be really open with them and say, “Dude, are you using? If so, just tell me. Let’s hit a target that you’re not buying from, and if you want help, we’ll figure out how to get you into rehab afterward.”

  When I was on patrol, I was really vocal about how passionate I was about narcotics work. I got the message through to my captains that I was a great patrolman but I could also do drug work at the same time.

  One day my sergeant, Sergeant Wilkes, came up to me and said, “How would you like to do a little work with vice, Moore?”

  “I would love it, sir!” I said. Vice was my dream.

  “Patrick needs someone for undercover,” he said, “and I’ll be honest with you. He hasn’t had an easy time getting female officers to do this in the past. But if you’re game . . .”

  “Tell him I’ll do it,” I said impulsively, knowing full well what he was asking me to do. They needed someone to go undercover as a prostitute, and none of the other girls would do it. I was so dedicated to the job that I didn’t care.

  Prostitution was not a huge problem in Maui—generally MPD only arrested one or two prostitutes in a year, and sometimes none at all. But the chief wanted to do a reverse sting and get the johns in order to send the message that prostitution would no longer be tolerated.

  There was a prostitute lane in Happy Valley where guys knew they could go and pick up. Our first undercover operation went down there early in the spring. My job was to wear Daisy Dukes and high heels and get johns to offer me dope or money for sex.

  We got nine guys that weekend. I wasn’t the one who arrested the johns. There was an arrest team, so I never felt unsafe. Officers were on the roof, looking down on me to make sure I didn’t get pulled into a car or anything.

  The undercover was so successful we did a second sting the next weekend, this time in Lahaina. We got three johns, but more than that we sent a message to the community.

  MPD videoed the whole operation to use for training purposes, and it wasn’t long before Keawe saw it.

  He was furious.

  “I don’t want you doing that again,” he said. We were at work, sitting in his patrol car, pretending to talk about a case.

  I just laughed. “It’s my job.” I said. “And you’re not my boss.”

  “None of the other girls do it. You just have to say no. They can’t make you.”

  “It’s really successful,” I said. “It works.”

  “I don’t want my girlfriend dressing up like a whore.”

  When I didn’t say anything, he said, “Don’t you know the vice guys are watching this video of you all miked up and videoed up? Dressed like a slut. You have any idea what kind of comments they’re making about you?”

  “I can guess,” I said. “Guys are going to do that.”

  “It’s fucking embarrassing hearing them talk about my girlfriend like that.”

  “Except they don’t know I’m your girlfriend.”

  “I just want you to stop.”

  “How can you ask me that?” I said tersely.

  Keawe frowned. “You have to understand, this is not a good situation for me.”

  “And this is a good situation for me?” I said. “You’re an asshole. You have a wife, a family, and expect me to act like your girlfriend in private and nothing in public?”

  “Hey, you knew what you were getting into, Alli. We just need a little time and—”

  “Time? I’ll give you time,” I said, opening the car door. “Here’s your time, fucker!” I slammed the door and stormed off. I don’t know if he would have followed me or not, but the sergeant walked up and I had to fall into step with him.

  “You still here, Moore?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Work was the only way I was going to get by without Keawe, I decided. I needed to move on, forget about him.

  I hated that Keawe was interfering with my work, which was the thing I most loved about my life.

  He called later that night, and then came over. Of course we got back together.

  I tried to break up with him a couple of times after that, but it never lasted. We were addicted to each other. A secret addiction. His wife knew nothing. My family knew I had a boyfriend, but they didn’t know he was married. Or a cop. And though Keawe had told one of his friends by now and I had already told Dina and she told Ed, no one else in the department knew about our affair, as far as we knew.

  The more intense our relationship became, the more I worked. I didn’t want to go home alone and think about him being with his wife. I knew I was in a doomed relationship, but I couldn’t make myself end it. On the one hand, I was furious at myself. I was a cop, and here I was at the mercy of a man. Yet all I wanted to do was be with Keawe. He was becoming as important as my work. Maybe more important.

  • • •

  In early May, ten months after my affair with Keawe had begun, I missed a period. We had been careful—I thought we had, anyway—so I didn’t think anything of it at first. I figured it was stress. Working too much, working too hard.

  I forgot about it, actually, but a couple of weeks later, I was driving home from work and suddenly felt nauseous.

  I pulled over and put my head on the steering wheel until the feeling passed. Lifting my head, I slammed my palm on the wheel.

  “Motherfucker!” I yelled. At myself.

  I wanted to stop at the drugstore right away and buy a pregnancy test, but I was still in uniform. I stood out on the island—I couldn’t risk anyone talking about “the blond cop who bought a pregnancy test”—so I drove home and changed into running shorts and a T-shirt, gathered my hair in a ponytail and put on a baseball cap, and then went to Long’s Drugs in Kihei. Filling up a basket with a bunch of shampoo and other toiletries, I headed toward the counter and threw in a pregnancy test at the last moment. I got back in my car but couldn’t wait to get home to take the test. Instead, I stopped at the nearest bar, ordered a Coke, and went into the bathroom. I ripped the packaging open and took the test. Three minutes later, I had my answer.

  I called Keawe immediately.

  “I have something to tell you,” I said. “And I need to tell you in person.”

  “Alli, I can’t,” he said. “I’m on Oahu.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, we’re visiting Colleen’s brother.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? You didn’t tell me you were going.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I forgot.”

  I took in a deep breath.

  “What is it?” he said. “I don’t have a lot of time. Can you just tell me?”

  I heard the frustration in his voice. “Can you tell me what it is?” he asked. “I can’t do a ten-three now.” 10–3: Maui cop code for “meeting with the girlfriend.”

  “I’m pregnant,” I said.

  “Hapai?” he said. “How could it be?”

  I thought about that word, hapai, Hawaiian for pregnant. It sounded almost like “happy,” but there was nothing happy about our situation.

  “Are you sure?” Keawe asked.

  “I’m sure. I just did a test.”

  All I wanted him to say was, It’s okay, we’ll deal with this. I’ll tell Colleen everything and ask her for a divorce.

  But that’s not what he said.

  He said, “We can’t—”

  “I know.”

  Keawe was all about being a father. He was a traditional Hawaiian man and though he would want the baby, he wouldn’t risk losing his kids. Colleen would probably divorce him if she found out about us, and I didn’t want that to happen to him.

  “Hey,” he said, more gently. “You know I want to.”

  I tried to squeeze the tears back into my eyes.

  “We will someday,” he said. “It will be okay. I promise.”

  I sat down on the couch then and turned on the TV, really wanting to call my mom. She was a great listener. She would have understood. I always regretted not going to her when I got
pregnant in high school. Ten years later, I still hadn’t told her about that. I would have talked to her now if I could have avoiding telling her Keawe was married. She knew that I had a boyfriend named Keawe, and she knew about my best friend and beat partner, but she had no idea they were the same person. I used Keawe when I talked about him as my boyfriend and his given name, Charles, when I referred to him as my beat partner.

  I couldn’t tell my mom I was seeing a married man. How could I? Another woman had ruined her marriage, and I didn’t want her to know that I was doing that to someone else.

  It’s not that I even wanted a baby. I was still so young, still in the early days of making a career for myself. It wasn’t the right time for me either. But I was furious at myself. All the emotions I had buried for years came out. This was a repeat of high school. How could I be an adult, a cop, and still find myself pregnant and alone?

  I had sworn I would never get into this situation again and yet here I was, once more terrified by what I was facing. I wasn’t a teenager, I was twenty-six years old. And this was Keawe’s baby. Keawe’s and mine. In my heart I did not want to end the pregnancy, but we had no choice.

  • • •

  I endured horrible morning sickness for three weeks until I could schedule the abortion. In high school, Josh had come to the abortion clinic with me, but Keawe couldn’t even do that. Someone would have seen us together, and our affair would have become public.

  For a second, I thought about asking Dina to come with me. Since she was in a similar situation with Mankell, she would have understood. But I didn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut.

  In the end I had my friend Slim drive me. He didn’t come in with me, but he dropped me off and picked me up when I was done. He had no idea Keawe and I were having an affair. I told him it was some guy I met in a bar.

  In the clinic, when the abortion technician asked me if I wanted to see the ultrasound, I said okay. Big mistake: I turned out to be carrying twins, and she had to ask me if I wanted to terminate both babies or only one.

  Both.

  Dear God. Both.