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“Kitty’s my second wife’s daughter from her first marriage.”
    I took a minute to process that. I knew Sampson had been married and divorced three times. “Kitty’s mother and I got married when Kitty was six,” he said, nodding toward the picture. “We were only married for three years, but Kitty got attached to me. No matter who her mom was married to, she thought of me as her dad.” He smiled. “Her mom moved back to the mainland when Kitty was thirteen. I think that was husband number four, though maybe it was number five.”
    “I thought Kitty lived with you?”
    “She does. When my ex left she asked if I’d take Kitty, and I said I would, only if I could adopt her. So I did. Kitty goes to visit her mom during the summer, wherever she happens to be living. It’s good for her—gets her off this rock. I see too many of these island kids whose world is bounded by the Pacific Ocean. Kitty’ll never feel that way.” He stopped and sniffed the air. “What do I smell?”
    “Chicken.”
    “Don’t eat at that place again.”
    “I didn’t eat there. You know that homicide in Makiki?”
    “Yeah. What do you know about it?”
    “Doesn’t look like an easy one. Homeless man, nobody in the neighborhood saw anything or heard anything. No clues at the scene, either.”
    He shook his head. “I don’t like these statistics. Unsolved homicides are piling up here like empty dishes at dim sum.”
    “I do have one lead, though. Neighbor’s rooster was shot around the same time. I’ve got ballistics doing a match on the bullets.”
    “The dead chicken,” he said, nodding. “You think that’s a homicide, too?”
    “Don’t even start,” I said, holding up my hand. “I’ve heard the jokes already. I’ll keep you posted.”
    “From a distance,” he said, waving me out. He turned on a little fan on the credenza behind him. “I always knew homicide was a dirty business. Try not to make it a stinky one, too.” He paused. “That’s a residential neighborhood out there, isn’t it? Working class?”
    I nodded. “Tried to canvass this morning, but most people had already left for work.”
    “Why don’t you sign out for a couple of hours. Go home, take a shower. Then hit Makiki after some of the neighbors get home.”
    “You just want to keep me from stinking up your squad room, don’t you?”
    He laughed. “Close a couple of cases for me, will you, detective?” he asked. “This one would be a good start. I don’t need PETA picketing downstairs over cruelty to chickens.”
    “I’ll get right on it, chief,” I said.

MR. AND MRS. WHACK JOB
    I stopped at my desk on my way out, and Steve Hart, a night shift detective who’d come in early to work some cases, pointedly got up and moved away. He was a tall, tanned Texan who had a chip on his shoulder the size of Amarillo. At least I was getting shunned for being smelly, rather than being gay. That was a start.
    I ran Hiroshi Mura through the computer, but didn’t get anything more than I already knew. So I gave up and went home. I took a nice, luxurious shower, then dropped my stinky chicken clothes in the washer on the ground floor of the building. While they ran through rinse and spin, I researched my latest case, using my spiffy wireless laptop.
    The network didn’t have far to reach; I live in a studio, with a galley kitchen, a small bathroom, and a picture window with a view of a narrow slice of Waikiki Beach. I sat at the kitchen table and pulled up the property appraiser’s website, where I saw that Hiroshi Mura was no longer the owner of the property where he’d been shot; it had been transferred a few months earlier to a corporation.
    I made a list of all the homeowners on the streets around where Mura had been killed, and typed up the notes on my interviews with Rosalie Garces and Jerry Bosk. By then it was time to switch the clothes to the dryer. After that, I checked department records for all shootings of homeless men and women over