Shards by Allison Moore Page B

station on Monday.
    â€œI am better,” I said, and the two of us went straight back to dealing with our buddy Cordiello.
    It killed me that we hadn’t been able to pin anything on Cordiello yet. We had finally intercepted one of his packages, but he sent a runner to pick it up, making it impossible for us to connect the dope to him. Walker and I could never figure out what he did to scare people, but Cordiello was widely feared. It was hard to get anyone on Lanai to speak out against Pete Cordiello. He was smart enough to build a family and a lifestyle. He wasn’t a troublemaker, and he didn’t hang out with troublemakers. He was always respectful with police officers. Yet we knew by the numbers of Jet Skis and ATVs he was buying, by the elaborate parties he gave—flyingstrippers in from Oahu and paying for all the beer—that he was a major player.
    Eventually we would catch him, I knew that. These guys weren’t smart enough to not get caught. We do catch them, and then they leave the women and children who love them with the house that gets seized and the vehicles that get seized, and that’s a whole other mess. But for now, his neighbors weren’t talking, and our surveillance hadn’t panned out yet.
    Lieutenant Ruben, still dealing with the MPD chief over the Lea case, saw Walker and me plotting, and specifically said, “Don’t stir up trouble, you two. We need to keep our profile low and exemplary for the next few weeks.”
    We didn’t listen. Desperate to find out where Pete stored his dope, we talked Ruben into letting us do random boat checks. Technically MPD had no jurisdiction on boats, but Ruben okayed it as a proactive measure and told us not to get into trouble.
    We decided to do a boat check that night. Boats were where fifty percent of our dope came from, and I was sure if we did enough of them we’d locate Pete’s.
    At the docks, we saw some Matson shipping containers that were of interest to us.
    â€œWhat do you think?” I asked Walker.
    â€œLet’s go for it,” he said.
    We chose one to inspect but struggled to get it open.
    â€œLet’s try another one,” Walker said.
    â€œNah,” I said. “This one may be extra secure for a reason.” We used all the force we could produce between the two of us and got it open.
    â€œShit!” I yelled.
    â€œLiterally!” Walker said.
    The container was full of manure, now pouring out onto us.
    â€œRuben is going to kill us,” I said. We had to go into the office tracking manure into the station. We left manure in the brand-new patrol car.
    Keawe loved that story when I told him about it on the phone that night. We talked for two hours, and another two hours the next night.
    What the hell was I doing?
    I had never wanted to be messing around with anyone I worked with. Sure, I had gotten hit on left and right in the department. All the female recruits get hit on. But at the beginning of recruit school, Sergeant Kainoa sat me down and told me, “The best way to get through this is to do it without a guy.” He was basically telling me not to sleep around like so many of the girls did. I had consciously avoided being labeled a slut all this time, and now I had slept with Keawe.
    I didn’t see him for another three weeks, but we talked almost every day, and I found myself thinking about him way too much. As my days on Lanai wound to a close, I started to get nervous. There would be no way to avoid Keawe once I was back on Maui full-time. MPD was such a small department, more like a family than an employer. It had its politics and bad apples, but the people that made up the department were like no other. Keawe and I were part of the same family—we were going to see each other all the time.
    Shortly before I left Lanai for good, I was heading out the door to the station one day and called to Mo as usual. He didn’t come. I found him on the couch