I had him trapped, he was standing in the middle of a pond of kerosene and I had the lighter.
The police had their weapons fixed on me, but they knew that if they took the shot, I'd be dead and so would their fellow officer too be dead. I managed to trace the recent murders of all the hookers in Waikiki to this one cop, Brayden Torres. Every document, every picture, every video that I'd gathered in the past month, I sent in an e-mail to the department. It contained specific instructions to meet me here at this particular time. The ocular proof they needed would be made plain to them, once they arrived. The time was eleven fifty-seven, three minutes before midnight. I can only imagine what they must have thought when they converged on the empty dirt lot and saw one of their own chained by his wrists and ankles to four huge concrete blocks while standing in the middle of a makeshift pond of kerosene. I casually made my way toward officer Torres and stood right next to him with the electric barbecue lighter in my hand. Weapons were drawn, but there was a hesitation to say anything. They were clearly assessing the situation. The high beams from the squad cars were blinding so I couldn't see who was behind the voice that came over the loudspeaker. "Milton?""Yeah," I replied.
"We received your e-mail and we understand your concern, but you have to let us handle it," the voice spoke in its practiced tone. It was a hostage negotiator. "There's no way you'll get out of this if you hurt officer Torres and I don't want to see that happen."
"I wasn't expecting to walk out of this alive," I replied.
"What's your beef in this case?" The voice asked. "Do you know officer Torres personally? Is this some sort of grudge?"
"My sister Trudy was getting out of the life," I replied. "She was trying to get one of the other girls out too, but they were stopped on the way out of the Ka'iulani apartments."
"Trudy Mendonca? She was your sister?"
"Yeah," I nodded.
Who stopped them? Was it her pimp?" The voice asked.
"No, it was officer Torres," I deadpanned. "Trudy's friend got away, but she identified officer Torres as the one who killed my sister."
"According to the autopsy, Trudy was disemboweled. How could officer Torres have done that?"
It was exactly midnight and the full yellow moon was coming out of the clouds and hung suspended over the dirt parking lot. "I'll show you." I lit the electric lighter and dropped it in the pond of kerosene and broke into a dead run. The entire pond went up in flames and immediately the shots rang out. A few bullets whizzed past me at first but eventually, I got shot in the shoulder, my ribs, and my hip. My thigh, my temple, and my cheek. I went down in a heap but the forward momentum carried me past the edge of the pond and I tumbled hard on the red dirt, gasping for air. Buckets of dirt were dumped on the kerosene pond until the fire was finally snuffed out. Officer Torres was gone. There were no signs of a struggle or any evidence that his chains were undone. In fact, the wrist and ankle handcuffs were still locked. Then where did officer Torres go? I would never find out as my last ounce of life was slowly fading into the darkness.
~
The murders continued and they remained unsolved, even though the evidence clearly pointed at officer Torres. However, officer Torres disappeared after the fire, there was no trace of his whereabouts and surprise of surprises. Office Torres had no family locally or anywhere else. It seemed that he only came into existence once he applied to join the police academy. How did he get past that one? There is hope however, I just have to figure out how to get his attention even though I'm dead. His name is Boy Napualawa.
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