The Kona Strangler (Hawaii Thriller #3) - J.E. Trent Page 0,2

without drawing attention; unlike a gun would. “Aah, a power cord should do it,” he said to himself, as he reached into the center console to pull one out he used for his laptop computer.

He followed her home. She lived in a small condominium complex on Alii Drive next to Honl’s Beach. He pulled into the complex’s underground parking lot, after she did, and parked his van right next to her car. It was dark and the nearby light on the garage wall was burned out. Until that point he wasn’t sure if he was going to go through with it, but the circumstances were perfect. It was dark and she was alone. And when he scanned the garage, nobody was around.

He drove a Honda van that had an electric door on the passenger side of the vehicle. He flipped the switch to open it as he pulled up next to her car. He came around the back side of the van and met her as she opened her car door. The look on her face was surprise, and then terror, as he wrapped the power cord around her neck and dragged her into his van.

It was one thing to kill a competitor, but strangling Nora Hobbs was a whole different level of satisfaction. It was payback, in its most satisfying form, when he looked into her eyes and said, “I told you you’d pay, bitch,” as he watched the last flicker of life in her eyes go dark and she fell limp.

He drove his van out of the underground parking lot onto Alii Drive and thought about the next step. What was he was going to do with her body? The solution presented itself within a hundred feet of turning right.

He immediately pulled over next to the two foot high rock wall, in front of the beach park, conveniently located next door to the condo complex. He pressed the button to open the sliding door on his van and looked around to make sure nobody was watching. He then crawled between the seats and pushed her body out the door and over the rock wall onto the grass, and drove away.

“She was found by a surfer,” Gabbie said, as she thumbed through the victim’s phone looking for her identity, while Jessica looked at the body lying next to the rock wall.

“Strangled,” Jessica said, as she studied the bruising on the victim’s neck. Gabbie nodded and said, “Nora Hobbs is the name in the settings,” as she continued to look at the victim’s phone. “The selfie photos match our victim. So it’s a safe bet the phone belongs to her.”

Jessica nodded, “Another high profile real estate broker. I recognize her name, but not her. I think she uses a photo from twenty years ago in all of her marketing.”

While Gabbie was putting the phone into an evidence bag she said, “I noticed that was a common trait here when I was looking for a condo. I’d call an agent and meet with them to see the property for sale and half the time they didn’t look anything like their photo online. It always made me wonder about them. You know, if they can’t be honest about how they look today, why should I trust anything they say?”

After Jessica and Gabbie finished processing the crime scene, they walked over to the beach and watched the surfers and boogie boarders for a few minutes.

“Why does the one guy have a helmet on?” Gabbie asked.

“There’s a reef out there just below the surface of the water. It’s broken a lot of surfboards–and heads too, I would imagine,” Jessica answered.

They spent the next couple of hours canvassing the condos, next to the beach and across the street, before meeting back in the park.

“I know I must have knocked on fifty doors and had less than ten people answer. The ones that were home hadn’t seen or heard anything the night before, or this morning,” Gabbie said.

Jessica nodded, “It doesn’t surprise me; most of these are vacation rentals that are usually vacant. I had about the same results, except for one old guy that wanted me to come inside for a cup of coffee. But I don’t think it was coffee he was really offering,” Jessica smirked.

Gabbie glanced over at the second floor of the condos next to the park and saw an old man waving at them from the window–dressed only in his underwear. She grinned and said, “I think the old guy is