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It Could Always Be Worse (1/1)
"Are you sure this is where we're supposed to be going?" Danny asked skeptically as Steve turned into the dense forest on a barely visible dirt road marked by a faded yellow sign.
"These are the directions Chin gave us," Steve said as he peered out the windshield, not completely sure himself that they were headed in the right direction. He'd been to this part of the island in the past and didn't remember much in the way of people or houses.
A few seconds later they entered a clearing and saw a large, freshly-painted sign that read, 'GLAMPLAND: Oahu's Best Glampground'. He pulled the Camaro to a stop next to the coroner's van and several police cruisers with their lights flashing. He had no idea what was going on. Chin had been at HPD on another matter when the call came in and had offered few details except to say they would have to see what had happened to believe it.
"I can't believe I got dragged out of bed this early and nobody will even say why we're here," Danny grumbled as he made his way around the car.
They crossed the clearing towards where they saw Chin talking to several young uniformed officers. Steve couldn't help but notice they all had their heads down and appeared a little pale.
"I didn't even get to eat any breakfast this morning because you wouldn't spare one minute to run through McDonald's," Danny continued grousing as he watched Chin break away from his conversation and come towards them. "You know I don't operate well on an empty stomach."
"Trust me," Chin said grimly. "You're gonna be glad you didn't eat breakfast once you see this."
What have we got?" Steve asked.
"I can't explain," Chin said. "You'll have to see for yourselves."
Both Steve and Danny took note of the fact that the usually unflappable Chin was clearly rattled and braced themselves for whatever they were about to see.
The three men walked about 100 yards to a large, canvas tent. The entrance was decorated with twinkle lights and several comfortable looking wicker chairs surrounded a fire pit a few feet from the opening. There was a vase of fresh flowers on the small table next to the chairs.
"The body is in here." Chin grabbed shoe coverings from one of the officers standing guard and handed some to Steve and Danny before donning his own. "One of the other campers stopped by this morning to meet the victim for an early morning run and got the scare of her life. She was in such shock the paramedics took her to the hospital to get checked out."
Danny pulled gloves from his pocket and put those on as well. "I don't know why no one ever listens to me. I've said time and time again nothing good ever happens at a campsite."
"Technically this is a glamp site," Chin said.
"I prefer not to use any words invented after 2010," Danny snarked.
Chin took a deep breath and pulled back the tent flap. They stepped inside to see Max and his team carefully taking pictures of multiple body parts scattered around the tent. There was what appeared to be the lower half of a leg on the far side of the bed. A hand on top of the mosquito netting canopy. Something that looked suspiciously like a tongue on the bed's side table.
"What in the world happened here?" Danny asked incredulously.
"Our victim was definitely murdered," Max replied in his typical dry tone.
Danny stepped over a pool of blood on the floor. "What was your first clue?"
"The good news is that the lack of blood spatter on the walls indicates he was dead before he was dismembered," Max continued.
Danny covered his mouth as his stomach rolled violently at the sight of two eyeballs in the tent's small sink. "Nothing about what happened here can be qualified as good news."
"In this particular case 'good' is a relative term," Max conceded. "If one must be dismembered it's probably the best case scenario to be dead before it happens."
A young officer peeked his head through the tent flap, trying hard not to look at his surroundings "The owner is here."
"I'll talk to him," Danny volunteered, happy for an excuse to escape the scene of the carnage.
"Actually it would be very helpful if you could all go," Max said bluntly. "Give my team and I a chance to document the scene. We'll let you know when you can get back in."
Danny headed outside mumbling under his breath, "No hurry."
"I can't believe this happened to me," the site's owner, who had identified himself only as Dario, said as he dropped his head to his hands. "This is a disaster."
Danny stripped off his gloves. "It's probably worse for the guy in there than it is for you."
"Of course," Dario sputtered, clearly flustered by the situation. "I just meant that we opened three years ago and it's been a struggle. This is the first year that we've been fully booked. We even have a waiting list." He tapped nervously on the leather bound book in his hands. "This is probably going to change that. Do you have any idea how fast we might be able to get things cleaned up so my customers can get back to enjoying the peace and quiet?"
"I have no idea," Steve said. "It'll take as long as it takes."
He was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt and assume he was in shock.
Dario nodded. "Anything my staff and I can do to help move things along, just let me know. We can have the entire tent disassembled and replaced with a new one in a matter of hours."
"We're gonna need you and your staff to stay away from the area until further notice," Steve said in a tone that made it clear he meant business. The last thing they needed was people tromping through an already extremely messy crime scene.
"We'll do our best but we have other guests to attend to," Dario said. Suddenly his attention was drawn to a couple hurriedly exiting a tent a short distance away with their luggage in hand. "If we have any guests left after this," he said dejectedly.
"Do you have the name of the man who was staying in that tent?" Chin asked.
"Oh…yes." Dario opened up the registration book he had stopped at the glampground's office to grab on his way in. "Dawson Le'Mere."
Chin scribbled down the name. "Was he staying here alone?"
Dario nodded. "He's been here for about a week. I think he was lonely. He kept following the staff members around all day asking a million questions about their jobs and how we do things around here. It was weird."
"Do you know why he was here?" Danny asked.
"He probably read our reviews," Dario said proudly. "We have more five star reviews than other glampsite on the island. We also have more amenities. In tent plumbing, wifi, even satellite tv. The upgrades cost me a fortune but they were worth it. You really haven't glamped until you've glamped with us. In fact, we'd love to have you and your family come for a stay, Commander. Maybe take a few pictures of you for our website."
"He prefers to sleep on the ground and eat bugs," Danny growled. "Back to the matter at hand, I was asking if you know why he was here on the island. Not why he was here at your campsite."
"We prefer if you call it a glampsite," Dario said.
Danny exhaled heavily and Steve and Chin were impressed with the fact that he managed to keep his composure.
"Was he here on business or was it a vacation?" he ground out.
"I'm not sure," Dario said. "He didn't really say. But he must have known at least one person on the island because he had the same visitor last night and the night before."
"Do you know the visitor's name?" Steve asked.
Dario consulted the register again. "Sure thing. We make everybody sign in." He scanned the page. "Here it is. Gus Wyland."
"Anything you can tell us about him?" Chin asked. "Did you notice what kind of car he was driving?"
"Didn't see his car," Dario replied. "But I did sign him in two nights ago and he was wearing a uniform from the Hilton Hawaiian Village. I remember because I kidded him and told him we were gonna steal all their customers."
This time Danny couldn't keep from rolling his eyes. "Thanks. We'll let you know if we need anything else from you."
"And you'll be sure to let me know when I can get someone in that tent to clean up, right?" Dario asked hopefully.
"You'll be the first to know," Steve assured him. "Chin, you stay here and finish up with Max. Brief Kono when she gets here. She should be through with court before lunch. Danny and I will go over to the Hilton and talk to Gus Wyland."
As they made their way across the beautifully appointed lobby of the Hilton Hawaiian Village Danny commented, "This is the way I prefer to camp. Luxury suites. Pools. Restaurants. Rooftop bar. A spa."
"When was the last time you stayed here?" Steve asked with a smile.
"That's not the point," Danny snapped back. "It's been a few years but the important thing is I know I've always got the option."
"You've camped with us more recently than you stayed here," Steve pointed out. "Real camping with tents and campfires and everything."
"That's because you're a bad influence on me," Danny huffed.
They had made a few calls from the car on their way over to get some preliminary information about Gus Wyland. He and his wife, Beth, had arrived on the island about nine months ago. For the last six of those he had been employed as an assistant manager at the Hilton. He had no record on the island and only a couple of minor busts back on the mainland, mostly for what amounted to drunken stupidity.
They arranged to meet with him in a small office just behind the hotel's front desk.
"We understand you visited a man named Dawson Le'Mere at his glampsite last night," Steve said.
"Can you tell us what you talked about?" Danny asked.
They wanted to ease into things slowly without giving too much away. For all they knew, the man might not even know Le'Mere was dead yet.
Guy Wyland sighed heavily. "I guess you found his body then."
'Or maybe he does,' Danny thought to himself.
"I killed him," Guy blurted out. "I'm not gonna deny it. I'm sure my DNA is all over that tent. It'd only be a matter of time until you found out anyway."
Steve and Danny looked at each other with shocked expressions. Murderers didn't usually confess so easily.
"Did you ever have a friend that was an absolute wrecking ball in your life?" Guy continued unprompted. "Reckless. Acts without thinking. Drags you into one bad situation after another."
Danny looked at Steve with a wry grin. "I know exactly the type you're talking about."
"And you keep telling yourself you're not gonna get dragged in the next time but then something happens and there you are, right by their side." Guy ran his hands through his hair. "Every single time."
Danny sighed. "You're preaching to the choir."
"I've known Dawson since middle school. When we were ten we got arrested for shoplifting a bag of candy. He planned to resell it to our classmates for a profit. In high school we got suspended for sneaking into the chemistry lab in the middle of the night because Dawson wanted to try to make dynamite. We ended up starting a fire and school had to be canceled for two days. We each got a ten-day suspension. Luckily the school decided not to press charges or it might have kept me out of college."
"So what you're saying …" Steve started, but Guy cut him off.
"It wasn't all his fault though. I was right there by his side. No matter how many times we got into a scrape and I said 'never again'."
Now that he had started talking he couldn't seem to stop.
"In college I ended up in more bar fights than I can count because Dawson has … I guess I should say had … a big mouth when he got a couple of beers in him. We got arrested the night before my first real post-college job interview because he hit on the girlfriend of some guy not knowing the whole table full of wrestlers in the corner were his friends. By the time I got released I had a black eye and a missing tooth so there was no way I could go to the interview looking like that."
"So back to last night …" Danny said, but again Guy just kept talking.
"His best man speech at my wedding was so awful my father had to wrestle the microphone away from him. After two years of putting up with him always barging into our house my wife told me either we had to move away or she was gonna divorce me. So we moved here because this was just about as far away from Connecticut as we could get. Then I found my dream job. Back home I worked at a Motel 6 so working here was really moving up in the world."
He sighed heavily.
"Things were going great … until I got a call from Dawson last week. He said he was here on the island. Asked me to meet him at that stupid campsite. Whoever heard of something called glamping? It's a ridiculous idea. You either want to camp or you want to stay in a hotel. Make up your mind."
Danny nodded. "I couldn't agree more."
"I went there to see what he wanted and that's when he hit me with his latest idea. He said he was moving to the island and he wanted us to become partners in a string of those stupid glampsites. He said between his big ideas and my experience in the hospitality industry we couldn't miss. We'd be rich. I told him that it had cost most of our savings to move here and there was no way I was in a financial position to start a business with him even if I wanted to. Which I didn't."
"What did he say to that?" Steve asked.
"He just kept talking about his big plans like he hadn't heard a word I said." Guy exhaled loudly. "Same as always. That's when I knew. He was never gonna change. And I was never gonna stop getting sucked in. He would destroy my life unless I destroyed his first. So I agreed to come back last night."
"And that's when you killed him," Danny said. It was more of a statement than a question.
"He turned his back on me to get something out of his suitcase and I strangled him with a piece of rope I brought from home," Guy said matter of factly. "The minute I knew he was dead I felt … relieved. I know that probably makes me sound like a monster. I loved him but I also knew it was either him or me."
"Why did you cut the body up?" Steve asked.
"Because Dawson was a man that had nine lives," Guy said, his face registering more bewilderment than sadness. "I just wanted to make sure he was good and dead. It was the only way I could be absolutely positive he wouldn't knock on my door ever again."
When the confession was over Steve and Danny called the HPD to transport him to jail while they returned to the crime scene to talk to Chin, Kono, and Max. Even with a confession there were details that would need to be taken care of.
"What are you smirking about?" Danny asked as they drove towards the glampsite.
"Nothing." Steve grinned. "Just that … it could always be worse. At least I've never gotten you arrested."
Danny barked a laugh. "Yet."
"I'm just saying, by comparison I'm a pretty good friend," Steve chuckled.
"Well, if we're using those two as a comparison, so am I," Danny pointed out. "At least you're still in one piece."
THE END
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