Chapter 4

While Danny and Steve worked through Frasier's background, Kono and Chin had been rounding up one of the boys suspected of breaking into her house, Patrick Kahue. Having been through the system before, Kahue asked for a lawyer the second he was put in cuffs and was repeating his request (loudly) in the interview room they had put him in. Grover had gone to pick up the other suspect, Jack Wright, who had a completely clean record. His mom had answered the door to Lou Grover, and the boy was compliant as Lou took him back to the station-eager to go, even, to escape his mother's fury. As Lou was driving with the kid in the back, he decided to have a go. "Jack, right?"

"Yes, sir," The kid said nervously. He wasn't scrawny by any means; he had the body of an endurance athlete rather than a weightlifter, unlike Kahue. Lou had the gut feeling that he was generally a good kid.

"Sorry about your friend," Grover said genuinely. Wright just nodded, making eye contact with Grover in the mirror. "Do you know what happened?" Lou asked gently.

Wright shrugged. "IDK, someone said he got sh-...stabbed? I think." His voice cracked at the end of the phrase, making it into a question.

Lou nodded gamely. This kid was obviously not a natural liar. "He was shot, Jack. He bled out in a stranger's house. Do you know why?"

"No, sir," Jack said quietly.

Lou waited a few seconds. "Are you gonna ask?" Jack shook his head. "Don't you want to know why your friend was shot? See, that's odd to me. If it was me, I would want to know who did it, and why, and I would want to get some revenge." Jack still didn't say anything, but he shifted in the back seat of the car as they pulled into the HPD parking lot. Instead of shutting the engine off and going inside, Grover dug in. "Unless, I guess, I already knew who did it, and why. If I knew that..." He stared down Jack in the back seat. "...I wouldn't say a word."

There was a bit of an internal struggle, but Jack eventually took the bait. "It wasn't my idea. I know you know I was there, you probably have my DNA or something and matched it and you're just waiting for a confession. I swear, it wasn't my idea. They just told me there was money in a house somewhere. I didn't even know they were bringing guns. I needed the money for college! It's not for drugs or anything stupid."

Lou took a deep breath, shaking his head. "There are better ways to get money." He got out of the car, the opened the door for Jack to get out.

"Not for me...not for us. There was supposed to be a million bucks in that house, and we were going to search until we found it."

"What about the woman that lived there?" Grover asked as they walked up to the processing desk.

"Patrick was going to...take care of her."

"What does that mean, Jack? Was he going to assault her? Kill her?"

"I don't know!" He exclaimed. "I didn't think it through. They just said they needed someone else to look through the house, and we trust each other." Shaking his head, Lou left him with the sergeant on duty with instructions to have the kid write down his statement. He continued into the Five-O offices, meeting the rest of the team. His stomach rumbled as he looked at their lunches spread out on their desks.

"Anything from Kahue?" Lou asked the group.

"Nothing. Guy thinks he's the toughest one on the block. Hates cops. Would rather die than give up his friends. The usual." Kono said.

"Well, Jack folded like a paper airplane. He said Vang and Kahue pulled him into the plot with promises of a million bucks..." Lou caught sight of the case on the table. "Is that...?"

Steve whirled the case around to face Grover. "Well, it's a lot less than a million. Confirms Wright's story though."

"I was talking about the loko moko. You done?"

Steve handed the extra loko moko over to Lou and reviewed what they knew so far. "So, Kahue and Vang hear something about a million bucks, maybe from Kahue's friend the Yakuza gangbanger. They figure out where it is, then decide to go rob the place?"

Grover took over. "They didn't know exactly where it was, so they brought in Wright to help search while they held Frasier hostage. But what they didn't count on is Frasier having a gun...and using it."

"Something's still bothering me," Danny said, jumping in. "I'm still not convinced that they were working alone. What do we know about Kahue's friendly neighborhood Yakuza connection?"

Chin frowned. "Asaho Ito, 27, has a rap sheet that goes back a couple of years for petty burglary and menacing. Hasn't been to prison...yet, but most of his cohort has or currently is locked up. Gang unit thinks he's a distributor, a manager of sorts. Keeps track of all the dealers they have on the streets for upper Yakuza management. Used to be a dealer himself but he's been off the streets for a year or two."

Steve nodded. "So he's making his way up the ranks, finding his way into management. Probably hearing some secrets and stories for the first time. So he hears about the Inoshi family and their fortune, but doesn't want to share the money with the Yakuza, so he uses some high schoolers. Ito probably doesn't know the money's not there. He's been laying low, but if he's desperate for money he could come looking himself. We should put some unis outside of Frasier's house."

"Hell, he could be on his way there right now," Grover said worriedly. "We took down the crime scene tape this morning."

"And we have Frasier's gun in evidence." Danny added. He and Steve were on their way out the door in seconds.

As they slid into Danny's car, Steve looked over from the driver's seat. "Let's go, Danny. We took her gun, her door doesn't lock...She's totally defenseless."