"I'm sorry, what did you just say?" Danny was sure he'd heard wrong.
"The person Chin found on the security camera feed at the stadium was my sister." he covered his face with his hand for a moment and took a deep breath in. "I didn't even know she was on the island." he continued. Saying that reminded him that Catherine was waiting for him in his office. Letting out his breath, he turned to his partner. "We need to find her, Danny."
"Alright, go see Catherine, and I'll call Mary's cell," Danny offered, giving his friend a light pat on the back. "We'll get to the bottom of this, okay? Don't go all aneurysm face on me just yet."
Steve nodded but continued talking. "Run Philips' financials too. This guy runs the band, I want to see every transaction he's made, and exactly who he's paying for what. At the very least, we can try using his tax evasion for putting a case together for the DA to keep him here.'
"But, Denning.." Danny said to Steve's back as he headed for his office.
"I'll deal with Denning later." was all he said before opening the door. "Hey, Cath." he said, as she stood up. He slipped his hand around her waist and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek.
"Hey," she gave him a quick smile as he pulled her into a full on hug after he kissed her cheek. "Is everything okay, Steve? I looked over when you answered your phone and it looked like you tensed up," she observed.
He sighed again, still not having fully digested what their latest revelation could mean. "Yeah," he started. "Well, I don't know yet. It's this case we're working, Cath." He rubbed his hands on his face once more. "We only have a couple hours, or our guy might be on a plane back to the mainland. And," he said, putting his head down, "Mary might be involved with them."
It took a split second for Catherine to see the fear and worry in Steve's eyes. He didn't let down his guard and show his emotions very often, but over the years Cath had picked up on the signs. "Wait, are you sure?"
"Chin's on his way back here now with the tapes so I can give the positive I.D." he said before dropping his head and growing silent. "And, we have a suspect but I'm on orders from Denning to release him in less than four hours." He looked away from her. "If Mary's gotten herself mixed up with these guys, I, I just.." he trailed off.
After a few seconds, Cath placed her hand on the small of his back. "Hey, hey," she said softly, touching his chest ever so slightly with the other hand. He tried to act all tough and rigid, but she knew better than anyone that a little human touch went a long way with Steve. "Mary's a smart girl, Steve. If she's really in trouble, she would come to you, right?"
He let out a sigh, and turned to look at her. "You don't know that, Cath. I don't know that, either." He shook his head and rubbed his hands in his face. "You know she's been arrested in L.A. a couple times, and not to mention that diamond smuggling incident last year." he added.
"Which she was cleared of all involvement, thanks to you. Remember?" She encouraged. "And she did come to you when she really needed it, didn't she?" She kept trying to reason with him, even though she already knew it wouldn't help him much.
"She hasn't even tried calling me, okay." he kept pushing the issue. He turned his head to gaze aimlessly out the window. "I don't know what she's doing for work, where she's living.." he trailed off, suddenly thinking about how it had been months since he last talked to her.
"Well, we don't really know anything yet," Cath once again reasoned. "So try to stay calm, okay?" she moved her hand around his back in comfort.
Steve didn't know what to say, since the last thing he felt at that time was calm. He knew Catherine was doing her best to help him though, so he turned back to her, nodded, and gave her a small smile. "Thanks, Cath." he reached his hand around her waist once more and they shared another tight embrace.
As they loosened their grip on each other, Steve realized he still didn't know why Catherine was on the island. "So, are you okay? I thought you weren't supposed to be back on land for another month?"
"I wasn't," Catherine started, looking down. "But, I decided I needed a little early R&R." She didn't elaborate, and very carefully side swiped his asking if she was okay.
She was also doing what she could to avoid eye contact. "Steve, I know this is a really bad time." she motioned towards the rest of Five 0 outside of the office they were standing in. "You need to focus on this case, and helping Mary," she finally looked up at him. "You know I'll help in any way I can," she offered.
"I, don't understand," Steve replied. He held her arm, very aware that she was trying not to look him in the eye. "Cath, are you sure you're okay? You seem tense too, and early R&R? That doesn't sound like you."
"I'm.." she happened to see Danny walking towards Steve's office and saw it as her opportunity to get out. "We'll talk later, okay?" she tried taking a step towards the door, but realized Steve was still holding her arm. She looked at him and quickly turned back to put her arms around his neck as he wrapped his around her waist. "I'll call you for a night cap, or something?" he through the idea out there with very little confidence in his voice. And it didn't help matters when Catherine barely nodded her reply. "Let me know if I can help with anything with Mary, okay?" she almost whispered, as the door behind them opened.
"Hey, hope I'm not interrupting, but Chin's back and you need to see this." Danny said, sticking his head in a little bit.
In one fell swoop Catherine gave Steve a quick peck on the cheek before letting go of him and saying a quick hello and goodbye to Danny as she left the office.
Seeing the bewildered look on his partner's face, Danny stepped the rest of the way into the room. "Is uh, is she okay? She didn't exactly look like she was thrilled to be here. And after being on a boat for the last three months, although yours isn't the first face I'd choose to see, I would've expected a little more out of Catherine." he said in only a way Danny could.
"First, it's an aircraft carrier." Steve corrected. "And second, I have to find Mary, and we now have barely three hours to solve this case." Did you get her on her cell?"
After taking a second to call himself foolish for thinking he'd get a straight answer about something personal out of Steve, Danny replied.
"I could not get Mary on her cell, and her phone doesn't have a built in GPS, so we don't know where she is, yet." He emphasized the 'yet' part, even though he knew Steve would still react strongly to the bad news. "I ran her call history, and nothing seemed out of place. No calls to any area code in Hawaii, either."
Steve looked up to the ceiling, as if it held some sort of answer for him. "Ah, c'mon, Mary!" he slightly raised his voice. "Where are you?"
"Um," Danny continued. "As for Philips' financials, if you look strictly at his bank account, the man could barely afford a dog house in Hawaii."
"What?" Steve stood with his hands on his hips. "How is it that the manager of the world's biggest pop stars does not have any money?"
"Any money left, is the catch." Danny explained. "He has crazy, crazy amounts of money going in, and then the exact same amounts going right back out in very short amounts of time. Very poor financial habits, sure, but it doesn't exactly say grounds to somehow, get the governor to agree to keeping him here." Danny finished.
"I think we have to dig deeper, then." Steve looked at his partner. "There is more there, Danny, I'm sure of it. That money has to be going somewhere; we just need to figure out where."
"Yeah, in three hours, I might add." Danny sighed, as they looked up to see Kono walking towards the office door
"Hey," Kono said as she hung up her phone and poked her head in Steve's office. "I think I've got something."
Without another word, the two men filed out of Steve's office and gathered around the smart table as Kono made a sequence of taps. "That was Fong. He said the set of lights left outside the trailer were definitely tampered with, set up to deliver a pretty serious shock to whoever touched them."
"Was it enough to kill?" Danny asked.
"Charlie wasn't sure, so he sent his findings to a colleague in D.C., I'm just waiting to hear back from him." She explained.
"Sounds good so far, did he get anything else?" Steve asked.
"Yeah." Kono continued. "He also pulled a print off the same set of lights, and we got a hit. It came back to Brian Hall, 21. He's got no known address, but he works for a small construction company on the Big Island, Koga House Builders. He's got a couple misdemeanors, but nothing major." Kono slid her fingers across the table and the info appeared on the monitors in front of them.
"Okay, so he's from a different island, and did a little bit of looting. That doesn't exactly say our murder suspect." Danny stated, forever the realist of the group.
"I agree," Kono replied. "It got me thinking though, if he worked for a construction company, maybe he has some knowledge of electrical work. "
"Sounds plausible," Steve agreed. "Have you reached out to Koga to see if they do any electrical yet?"
"Not yet, but I did check his financials, and found a couple things." She slid another image from the table onto the monitors. "First, Hall was cited by the city of Waikiki for some illegal electrical work done at a Honolulu office building a few weeks ago."
"So he has some working knowledge of electrical current." Danny stated. "That's great, but is he our vic, or our killer?"
"Well, the bad news is, we haven't figured that out yet."
"And the good news?" Chin piped up.
"The good news is, we're getting close. I talked to Max before Fong, and he said Brian Hall was being treated for cancer. And, it looks like it was pretty advanced judging by the amounts of chemotherapy drugs he was prescribed. So that should help us figure out if that's him." she gestured towards the M.E. photo that was still on the screen.
"What was the second thing, Kono?" Steve asked.
"According to this account, Hall was being paid pretty large, even sums of money by Koga, so I'm going to call them and ask about that too."
"Good work." Steve praised her. "What did Max say about COD?" Steve asked.
"He still didn't have anything conclusive," Kono explained. But he did say he was surprised that Hall was alive prior to being killed tonight, if he was actually taking all those drugs his doctor prescribed him. I think this one has stumped even Max a little bit." she bit her lip.
"Okay, we should get his photo out to all the hospitals with cancer wards on Oahu and on the Big Island, someone will be able to give us an I.D., whether that's Hall or not." He too looked at the photo of the distorted man's body on the screen.
"I'm on it." Chin stated, typing on the table. "I went through the flight the entire band and crew came over on, and no one fitting this description was on the plane, but we did find this." he slid his fingers on the table so some video footage appeared on the monitors in front of them. "Look familiar?" he asked.
"Yeah, who is she?" Steve asked, sure he recognized the face on the screen from somewhere.
"Dr. Christina Billings," Chin answered. "She's the wife of City of Waikiki counselor Grant Billings."
"Wait a minute," Steve interjected. "Isn't Billings the one who's trying to cut the budget and spending for The Oahu Intergroup?"
"Yeah," Chin nodded typing some more on the table.
"What's the Oahu Intergroup?" Danny asked, as he noticed the articles popping up on the table as Chin continued to type.
"It's a rehabilitation center for women here in Honolulu." Steve explained. "I remember seeing this a couple months ago." He pointed to the article detailing the councilor's plan to cut half the programs offered by the center.
"Yeah, me too." Kono nodded, reading through the article herself.
"Alright, why is she of interest to us?" Steve asked.
"Because she," Chin said swiping the table so more information appeared on the screens, "is Brian Hall's oncologist."
"So she just happened to be flying to Oahu on the same flight as our band on their way to a show, and her patient's prints turn up on some sketchy electrical equipment outside of said show." Danny commented. "So can we officially rule out an accident then?"
"Yeah."Steve nodded. "And we're gonna go talk to Dr. Billings. Do we know where she is now?" he asked.
"Yeah." Chin sighed, looking at all the frustrated faces around the table. "Councilor and Dr. Billings are a couple hours into a flight to Africa for some Doctors Without Borders volunteer work."