My father looks at the roses. "Finish your coffee."
That's not an answer. That's the absence of one, which, with my father, amounts to the same thing.
I drink the coffee. I know it’s very good yet I can’t really taste it.
Detective Raymond Kahaleis from the Hawaii State Police, cold case division, and he looks exactly like a man who has spent twenty years reopening investigations that other people stopped caring about. He’s in his mid-fifties, compact, and dressed in a gray suit that fits well. He sets a legal pad on the desk, then a recorder, positioning it between himself and my father with theease of someone who has done this so many times he doesn't think about where things go anymore.
I sit in the chair to the right of my father's desk. Our lawyer, David Park, sits to the left. The study smells like the coffee nobody is drinking, three cups going cold on the side table.
Kahale opens his legal pad and uncaps his pen and looks at my father with the patience of a man who has learned that silence does more work than questions.
"Mr. Crawford, how long have you lived in the Los Angeles area?"
"Thirty-one years," my father says.
"And before that?"
"Hawaii. Maui, primarily. Seven years."
"What brought you to Hawaii originally?"
"Business opportunities. I was building the early stages of what became the Crawford Group. Hawaii was a good base at the time."
Kahale writes something down.
"During your time in Maui, did you have occasion to interact with the local business community there? Other entrepreneurs, investors, that sort of thing?"
David Park shifts slightly in his chair but says nothing. My father looks at Kahale. "I interacted with a range of people. It was a small business community."
"Did you know a man named Carl Metz?"
There it is. The room goes very still—not visibly, not in any way a camera would catch, but I feel it.
"I knew the name," my father says.
"In what capacity?"
David Park leans forward. "Mr. Crawford had business interests in Hawaii during that period. He's happy to speak in general terms about that context."
Kahale's eyes stay on my father. "General terms are fine for now."
"He ran operations out of Maui," my father says. "I was aware of him. We weren't close."
"Were you acquainted?"
"We met. Once or twice."
"In what context?"
"Business from before I built the Crawford Group. I've been open about that history in previous investigations."
Kahale nods slowly, turning a page on his legal pad. "Mr. Crawford, Carl Metz was found dead in his home in Kihei. The original investigation ruled it a homicide. The case went cold two years later. We've reopened it."
"I saw that in the news," my father says.
"Where were you on March 14th, 2011?"
"I'd need to check my records. David?"
