Poe's First Law: A Murder on Maui Mystery

door. I heard the lock disengage and then let myself into the house.
The layout was as Guy Livingston had described. The front door opened to reveal an open floor plan, which consisted of a small living room and an even smaller kitchen beyond that. There was a sliding glass door at the far end, and I could see a lanai on the other side.
I walked through the living room and proceeded down a short hallway. There was a bathroom on the right side and then a single bedroom after that. The bedroom door was already open. I looked inside and saw a queen-size bed with a nightstand on each side. It was about fifteen feet from the doorway to the nightstand.
If the killer, presumably Guy Livingston, had been standing by the bed, and Mrs. Livingston had been a few paces inside the room, it would have been a shot someone could have made with their eyes closed.
I left the bedroom and walked back to the sliding glass door. The door was locked, and the Livingstons had placed a thick wooden dowel rod between the edge of the door and the wall as a secondary lock. It would have been impossible to get through without breaking the glass. That meant the killer had to have come into the house through a window or the front door. I checked all of the windows next. They were all locked and none looked tampered with.
There were two possibilities. Option one was that Guy Livingston had come home, walked into the bedroom and retrieved his gun. He then shot and killed his wife with it. Possibility number two was that an unknown person came through the front door and headed to the bedroom because they knew a gun was in the nightstand. They then waited for Mrs. Livingston to return so they could kill her.
That also meant the killer knew the code to the keypad. If you’ll recall, Guy Livingston said only he and his wife knew the four-digit number.
I know what you’re thinking. Things were not looking good for Guy Livingston. You would be right.

15


Dog Days
That evening, Alana gave me the name of the man who’d found Eric Ellis while walking his dog. She even got his address for me. The man’s name was Daniel Davis and he lived in an apartment complex off Hana Highway in Paia. I would have thought he lived in Haiku since it was closer to the old pineapple fields where the body was buried. But he could have gone for a short ride down the coast and then decided to stop and take his dog for a stroll. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen that happen. I even did it several times a year with my own dog.
Alana wasn’t able to discover the name of the eyewitness who’d pointed to Mele Akamu and Samson for the murder, but she promised that she’d look into it again in the morning. I figured Mara would also be a good resource for that since she was apparently now on Mele Akamu’s defense team. The defendant had a right to face his or her accuser. The police would have to name the witness at some point.
You may be wondering if there were fireworks when Alana got back to the station after driving me to my car. There weren’t. She said she never came across Detective Parrish since he was busy interrogating his two suspects. Alana did say the office was abuzz with gossip about her argument with her fellow detective over yours truly. I felt a little bad for dragging my wife into my disagreement with Detective Parrish. I made a mental note to reach out to him in a few days and try to broker some kind of peace treaty.
The next morning, I spent about an hour thinking about the nature of eyewitnesses, especially as they pertained to this specific crime. My mental exercise came at the same time as my morning swim and jog. I find those incredibly productive moments to ponder over my investigations.
Most people have heard how eyewitnesses are often unreliable. There have even been university studies done to prove this point. In one particular study I read, ten people witnessed a staged crime and those same ten people gave ten different physical descriptions of the suspect. Some saw him as tall. Others said he was average height. Some saw dark hair while others saw a blonde man. One person even thought that the man was Asian, while the others said he was Caucasian.
There was another problem I had with the idea of an eyewitness to this particular murder. I didn’t see how Mele Akamu would be so reckless as to commit the act where others could potentially see her. That brought up two options in my mind.
Option one was that the eyewitness was someone in her inner circle who knew about the murder and had decided, for whatever reason, to come forward now. The second option was that Mele Akamu was innocent and someone was trying to frame her. Again, a likely suspect could have been an inside person who was making a power grab for her throne.
Either way, I didn’t see how this could be some random person who accidentally saw the murder, but I’ve been known to get things wrong from time to time. The bottom line was that I needed the name of that witness.
After spending the morning performing my mental sleuthing exercise, I climbed into my convertible and made the short drive to Harry’s where I met Foxx in the parking lot. We got into his Lexus SUV and drove to Paia, one of my favorite little towns on the island. I made Foxx stop so we could grab a shave ice. I selected a tasty blend of grape and strawberry, while Foxx stood off to the side and wondered how a grown man could be so addicted to these things. I don’t see how he could question