Cujo III Reloaded – This Time It's Personal
Chapter 4
Sorry it took so long to get this posted. Seem to have lost my mojo. It's also a shorter chapter than usual but the next should make up for it.
Thank you for your reviews and comments. I dearly love to get your opinions and try to incorporate some of your wonderful ideas into the story. Mistakes are all those of Imaginary Beta. What a nitwit.
Disclaimer: If fame and fortune were my goals; I've failed miserably. Shall have to be content with daydreams of beautiful beaches and the even more beautiful creatures that grace them.
NOTE: A segment was added after this was first posted to correct an error. Thank you to JazzieG for pointing it out.
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Suppositions
Danny watched his daughter walk back and forth thru the office; Cujo dangling compliantly in her arms like a velvety rag doll.
He shook his head in amazement. The cat could be so sweet with certain people, yet do his best to obliterate others. Over time, he'd learned Gracie could do pretty much what she wanted with the feisty feline and the animal would only purr; seemingly happy for the attention. Danny had been terrified to let his daughter even get close to the land dwelling barracuda before realizing Cujo was perfectly content to have Grace drag him around like another of her toys.
His current hypothesis was one of gender. Cujo was well-behaved and even affectionate with Kono, Cath, Gabby, Max's girlfriend Punani and of course Grace but the little asshole only seemed to tolerate males. When he voiced the theory to the team, he made sure to add that Steve only got a free pass with the pint sized puma because the two were from the same home planet. Either that or it was just professional courtesy between two lethal animals.
That supposition had been blown all to hell when Doris showed up. Cujo growled and hissed at her on a regular basis. Well, let's face it, he'd hiss at her too but Steve would kick his ass.
From Danny's observation; Doris was only motherly in a perfunctory sort of way. It was as though she'd read the manual and decided to ignore most of it.
Hmm, now that he thought of it, maybe McGarrett did inherit something from his mom other than height and physical attractiveness.
He'd never had opportunity for much interaction with Steve's dad; the man had been killed shortly after Danny had signed on with HPD but maybe it was John McGarrett who'd passed on the recessive and so carefully hidden 'warm fuzzy' gene. There wasn't much evidence it had come from Doris. The detective had always assumed it was the female who contributed such a trait to their offspring. Though he knew Steve's father was known as a tough sort, the real badassery had to come from Doris. The woman was scary.
…..
There hadn't been another murder for the last several days. They plunged doggedly on in their investigation; the governor breathing down their necks the entire time.
That call to Kiki Kenworthy was still a puzzler. From the timing, it had to have come just before or just after the shootings. Chin had already tracked the pings from the cell towers in the area. As expected, it had come from a burner phone.
"Why would the killer choose to notify the media this time and not the others?" mused Steve as he and Danny sat going over the case for the umpteenth time at a ridiculously late hour to still be at work. Many hours ago, Rachel had flounced in and picked up Gracie to take her home to bed. Though it wasn't something he usually did, Danny had elected to take his daughter to work with him rather than miss her company entirely. Grace was always more than content to spend time at HQ where she received the intermittent attention of her favorite aunts and uncles and played with Cujo, drew or played games on her Hello Kitty laptop. Danny was actually surprised that Step Stan hadn't yet given her a tablet. He actually wouldn't mind if his daughter had one, he just drew the line at ponies.
Stretching and looking at his watch; startled at the hour displayed there, the detective said, "Maybe the murderer got a taste of notoriety and wants to bask in its glow." He held his hands up fingers spread in a sort of jazz-hands gesture to illustrate the word 'glow'.
Steve didn't even seem to notice his partner's physical presentation of the verbal as he downed the last of his cold, sludgy coffee. Not planning on staying this late, the last pot had been made hours ago. Chin and Kono had called it quits and left an hour before. Steve said he'd be right behind them but he and Danny found themselves once again going over what they'd so far discovered – which was pretty much nothing.
"Come on big guy, time to blow this pop stand. The last train is leaving the station and if you're not on it, you are doomed to spend the night with your wolverine. We're in my car; remember?"
"I've had worse company." said McGarrett with a faint smile as he reached to shut off the desk lamp and pick up the coffee cups to take them back to the break room to wash them. "Where is Cujo? I haven't seen him for a couple hours."
"I'm sure he's busy waterboarding a mouse somewhere." said Danny dismissively, "Just leave the damn cups and let's get the hell out of here. I want to get to bed before it's actually time to get up. You can drive your own ass to work tomorrow. I'm going to need that extra ten minutes of sleep that I usually sacrifice to come pick you up in the mornings."
Steve frowned at the coffee mugs he'd picked up off the desk and then sighing; set them back down on its surface. "Let me just make sure Cujo's squared away and then we'll leave."
Danny knew it was going against every grain of his partner's OCD nature to leave dirty cups behind. It only testified to how tired he must be. He reluctantly tagged along on the search for the barracuda. The sooner they found him the sooner they'd get out of here.
They discovered the evil little furball curled contentedly on Chin's desk. Remnants of what had been a large and very unfortunate lizard strewn about him.
"Chin's not gonna be happy about having to clean that up." observed Danny.
"Just leave it. Cujo will probably finish off the rest by the time we get in tomorrow." sighed Steve as he ran his hand through his short hair and made a face at the carnage.
"You really must be tired to leave a mess like that. How can he eat that? That's disgusting." grumbled his partner.
"So's all that greasy stuff you eat."
"At least I don't eat stuff I have to chase down and kill before I rip it to shreds and eat it raw."
"Not so far anyway but I've seen you come pretty close when you haven't had lunch."
"Bite me asshole." responded Danny; too tired to put any real venom into it.
"Got Cujo for that." was the almost automatic reply
With that they shut off the lights and called it a night.
…..
The next couple days yielded nothing more. They'd run down everything they could think of and come up with zilch. It was boringly quiet.
The only excitement had been when Doris called in a panic to say that Cujo had 'mysteriously' gotten out and she couldn't catch him. Steve and Kono had taken a quick run to the McGarrett home and rounded him up to bring him back to the office. For the meantime, until Doris found her own place, Cujo's home was H.Q. while she was there.
The final tally on the paper cups had yielded four repeated names from each location: Jason, Jim, Bob and Sarah. So, other than noting people's lack of originality in naming their children, they still weren't any closer to finding the killer.
They were no nearer to solving the case than they'd been after the first murder. The perpetrator hadn't again contacted anyone in the media but, of course, Kiki Kenworthy was milking the one call for all it was worth.
When you can't find any news to report, just make it about yourself, sourly thought the Five-0 leader as they sat taking a brief lunch break. Danny had flipped the TV on to watch the local station.
Ms. Kenworthy was there in all her overly-groomed glory; looking so very seriously into the lens and speculating on the motive and identity of the murderer. Her hair and makeup, as usual, were flawless. He tried to grab the remote away from Danny to change to another channel but his partner just snatched it away and sat raptly staring at the screen.
"She called me you know." he said to the small group gathered at the table without taking his eyes off the reporter.
"What!" exclaimed Steve in annoyance.
"That reporter called you?" asked Kono in amazement.
"Yeah, what's so surprising about that?" asked Danny in a defensive tone.
"Not that you're not hot or anything Danny. . . but . . ." stammered Kono
"See, even Kono thinks I'm hot." exclaimed the blonde to his partner who only stared at him with a look of irritation.
Snarked her cousin, "Brah, Kono thinks Justin Bieber is hot."
"Do not! He's just a baby. I don't rob cradles." squeaked Kono
"So?" asked Steve, ignoring the sleek Hawaiian woman's indignation.
"So? What?" was Danny's reply, a smug expression on his face.
"You gonna take her up on it? That's playing with fire man."
"Haven't decided yet."
Just then, a grey blur came streaking across the table.
Without even bothering to react to the animal's sudden frantic appearance, Steve calmly said, "Doris must be here."
...
At eight o'clock, Danny became uneasy. At eight-fifteen, he became worried. Picking up his phone, he tapped number one on his speed dial and waited for his tardy partner to pick up the phone. It rang four times then rolled over to voice mail.
"Hey moron! Where the hell are you? You're late! Would be nice to let us know if you're still alive." was the message he left.
Steve, when he drove himself in, was usually here before anyone else but Danny supposed it was still too early to actually be worried. The Neanderthal could have just stopped off somewhere on the way in this morning - you know, for gas or another tattoo or something. Why was he worrying about SuperSEAL? He was certainly someone who could take care of himself. Still, Danny was concerned because he knew that, even with all his craziness, the guy was punctual to a fault. He was pretty much always on time and if he couldn't be, he'd call to let them know.
After dialing Steve's land line and getting no answer, then trying his cell again with the same result, Danny walked up to Chin and Kono who were standing at the smart table and drinking coffee while going over information about the case.
"You guys hear from our fearless leader?"
"Umm no, I thought maybe he'd left word with you that he's going to be late." said Kono who glanced at her cousin on the other side of the table.
"Not a word brah. Should we be worried? It's only like eight-twenty."
"You know how he is, he's never late. When you look in the dictionary under the terms 'punctual' and 'obsessive-compulsive' you're gonna find his picture."
Chin chuckled, "Yeah for someone who can cause such chaos, he's pretty much got it together in his own way. Maybe Cujo got out again and he's tracking him down. That's what made him late last time."
"Yeah, but he still called us, remember? He'd said something about chasing something down. We didn't' find out it was that evil little snake until Steve got here all banged up and we forced it out of him."
"You mean until we noticed he was limping and had grass stains on his ass." laughed Kono
"Well he looked the worse for wear and we weren't on a case or anything. I know he can get into crap all on his own and when you add in his alter ego that fur bearing time bomb . . . !" Danny didn't even have to finish the sentence. The cousins were very aware of the trouble their boss and his 'not my pet' could get into.
"Why don't we wait another half hour and if he doesn't show up or call, we'll go check out his house?" suggested Chin knowing that the haole detective would worry himself into a coronary if they waited any longer than that.
Danny nodded and went back to his office where he did nothing but stare at the clock.
….
It hurt. When he put his hand to the side of his head, he could feel the lump forming and his hand came away wet and sticky.
He opened his eyes to see the ceiling; a familiar one. He lay there a moment trying to remember where he'd seen it before. Suddenly there appeared two yellow eyes staring down at him. They were looking over the edge of something over his head.
What the fuck?
He was too tired to investigate it right now. It seemed like a good idea to sleep a while longer. He'd think about it later.
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Some of you had requested I bring back characters from the first two adventures of the wolverine and his colleagues. A few of them will be making appearances in the upcoming chapters. See – I actually do listen to you guys!
Next update will be longer . . . and sooner. Really sorry it took so long to crank this one out. Will do better with the next.
Reviews and comments are like fertilizer on withered grass . . . wait . . . that didn't come out the right way.