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Chapter 13 Honeyboy
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237 C H A P T E R 1 3 Honeyboy CONCLUSION: Based on these autopsy findings and investigative and historical information available to me, in my opinion, this 55-year-old man died as a result of sequela of an accidental fall due to documented cardiac arrhythmia, namely drowning and a broken neck. The sand in his upper esophagus and larynx indicates he aspirated at the time of his fall into the water. Differential blood chloride levels, while not diagnostic, are with other data consistent with salt water drowning. There was no injury which could not have been due to the decedent’s striking rocks at the time he was already unresponsive. He could have sustained the neck fracture at the time he collapsed onto rocks in the shallow surf at the onset of his irreversible arrhythmia. Toxicological studies performed on autopsy blood were negative for alcohol and negative for drugs . . . The manner of death is, in my opinion, accidental. —William W. Goodhue Jr., first deputy medical examiner, City and County of Honolulu, July 13, 2004 Keali‘i Meheula’s conviction hadn’t brought Percy back to his family, of course, but it also hadn’t uncovered what had really happened, and why, on May 16. Glenn Kim’s strategy to expose the defendant as a liar had been enough to win. But it hadn’t even tried to explore why Meheula would plunge a knife into Percy’s heart at a time and in a place where he knew absolutely that he would get caught, then rush to the top of the Rodrigues driveway so he could tell everyone in sight what he’d just done. As Meheula’s lawyer had put it, however ineffectively, it didn’t make logical sense. 238 Chapter 13 In an effort to find out why Meheula might have done such a thing, I’d finally gathered the nerve to drive up that long and winding driveway on ‘Okana Road a few weeks after the trial knowing that the house had been raided and labeled a “frightening” working meth lab stocked with dangerous chemicals and firearms. The many “Beware of Dog” signs nailed to the trees didn’t help any, either. But when Lori Rodrigues came to the door with two adorable kids at her side, everyone dressed nicely for a funeral they were headed for that day, it was impossible to picture her as some kind of chronic, let alone a drug kingpin. After I apologized for just driving right up—try finding the one “Rodrigues” you’re looking for in the O‘ahu phone book—and explained what I was up to, she gladly gave me her number and invited me to call the next time I was over from Hilo. Our schedules never worked, but we did speak for over two hours on the phone a few weeks later. When the bloody, knife-wielding Keali‘i had shown up in her house that night, Lori told me, she quickly turned to Donna and Venda and sent them to check on Percy. “When I said, ‘Go check on Percy,’” she went on, “Venda said, ‘Don’t say nothing, don’t say nothing!’ I was like, ‘You know what, I have to say something. How do you think that family’s gonna feel?’ The next morning I called someone, because when it showed on the news, ‘One died, one wounded,’ I was like, ‘One wounded? What are they talking about?’” Lori called her brother, Keith Ryder, who put her in touch with his good friend James Anderson, an HPD homicide detective. Anderson advised her to cooperate fully with the investigation, which she was more than happy to do. “It was shocking to me when Keali‘i came up to my doorway and started saying all this about Percy,” she said, “and then the mom just sits there. I mean if it was my son I would be jumping out of my seat. I was like, ‘Why?’ and you know, ‘What was going through her head?’ At the moment you don’t think nothing, but after a while just thinking about what her reactions were at the time, she wasn’t really excited. You know for me, I was like ‘What? What?’ Venda was just sitting there disgusted and just looking at me. It was no big deal. I don’t know, I just keep on thinking , ‘What part did she play in it?’ I’m thinking like, ‘She took long down there...