Ho'ike
by Sammie

DISCLAIMER: Not mine. If they were, Kono wouldn't be just a pretty plot-mover. Why, ptb, have we still have not seen Grace Park in ANY on-set/filming videos or photos? I've seen more of the individual guest stars than of her! Grr.

RATING: T

SUMMARY: The 5-0 team must solve the death of a prominent island reporter, whose three-year-old daughter is now a target for what she witnessed. (Casefile)

A/N: I'm not creative (I can't do fantasy or sci-fi) and work better in already-set boundaries. (Thus, FF.) One of my favorite episodes of the cancelled-too-soon series "The Magnificent Seven" dovetailed with a "Hawaii Five-0" plotline (evident later). This is a "reboot" of that "TM7" episode.

This is set before "Ua Hiki Mai Kapalena Pau".

I've pulled favorite quotes and tricks from books, other TV shows, films, etc. Obviously this borrows heavily from that episode of "The Magnificent Seven" and also borrows a character and a speech from two other episodes; the names of the characters are in tribute to that fun show. I've also snitched a scene from "Law and Order: Criminal Intent".

"...'Goodnight, light, and the red' - what's that?" The man pointed at a picture on the page, tilting his head slightly to the side so he could look down at the his daughter, sitting in his lap.

"Balloon!" announced the little girl, dressed in a pair of pink pyjamas and snuggled in her father's lap.

The father smiled, tugging on one of his daughter's little blond pigtails as he pointed to the next picture. "What's next?"

"'Goodnight, bears,'" the little girl recited from memory, rather than actually reading. She tucked her oversized stuffed panda under her arm.

"'Goodnight, chairs. Goodnight, kittens, and goodnight, mittens.'" The man paused, frowning, looking up as he heard a car pull into the lot.

The little girl waited, but when her father didn't continue, she turned to look up at him. "Daddy! 'Goodnight, clocks'!"

The man turned back the book for a moment, but rather than reading again, he pulled his daughter up, pausing to peek quickly out of the window. The little girl stared out into the dark, watching the occasional flashes of light and the people getting out of the car. Her eyes settled on a pair of very shiny black shoes, and as she followed the legs up, she saw a shiny thing on the fourth finger of the hand she could see. The wearer was fat and had a round face. "Who's that?"

Her father turned quickly without answering her, picking her up against his chest and maneuvering quickly around the coffee table. Outside, a voice said, "Go around that way."

"Daddy? Who's that?" she repeated as she looked over her father's shoulder.

The father rushed into the darkened kitchen, not bothering to turn on the light. "Don't worry, sweetie. You be real quiet for Daddy," he whispered as he opened the pantry. "Don't make a sound."

"What's happening?"

He started a moment, looking back over his shoulder when he heard another voice coming from the front.

The man reached out of the pantry to the panel of hooks nearby, hooks on which hung various pots and pans, and pulled on the second hook. A wall in the kitchen pantry slowly creaked open, and he pushed his daughter inside, turning on a tiny light along the wall, pointing towards the floor. "Don't come out until I come for you. Don't make a sound."

"Daddy?"

"Be brave, sweetie," he murmured, crouching to her level and dropping a quick kiss on her forehead. "Daddy loves you," he continued, giving her an encouraging smile. "I'll come get you." He shut the pantry wall and then closed the pantry door behind him, leaving her seated alone in the lighted room, listening to the voices outside.

"Holden."

"Get out of my house."

"Not until you talk to me."

"I'm not talking to you here."

"Seeing as you're not going to talk politely - "

"That better not be a gun at my shoulder. Don't even try to threaten me."

"Then stay out of our business!"

"You want to talk, we'll do it at my office. Go. Now."

"I'm warning you for the last time, Holden. Stay out of it."

"You're making a mistake!" The voice was sharper, more desperate, more angry. "Don't do this, Bruce."

"Stay out of this!"

The little girl started when she heard a strong popping sound. She clutched her panda more tightly to herself and looked around her tiny room as feet thundered through the house.

"Steve." Chin gave a nod as his boss hopped out of his truck. "I know it's your day off."

"Governor calls, we answer," Steve commented as they walked towards the house. "Cute neighborhood," he commented, looking around. "Who's the victim?"

"Travis Holden." Chin held up a copy of the newspaper, pointing at the front page, to the journalist's name. "Major journalist for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser."

"That would explain the call from the governor's office," Steve commented with a grin of understanding.

Chin nodded, smiling back. "He's been doing the series on drugs and his wife's been doing the series on medical technology."

Steve frowned, holding up the paper, at the name. "I've been reading both. Didn't get half of the stuff the latter was talking about." He handed it back to Chin. "Who found the body?"

Chin waved at a young man of little more than twenty who was sitting on the steps to the house, looking a little lost. "Travis Holden's intern at the paper," he informed his boss as he led the man over to where the youth was sitting. "He found the body this morning. Steve, this is Jeremy Kahaloa." The young man quickly got to his feet and shook Steve's extended hand. "Jeremy, this is my boss, Steve McGarrett."

"Sir." The intern tugged his polo shirt nervously.

"Want to tell us what happened?"

"Um...yesterday afternoon boss said he'd be in early this morning to drop off some paperwork," Jeremy started, trying to remember. "He's been working from home the last two days." He paused. "He said he was going out early this morning, so he'd be in before eight to drop off his next article. When he didn't show up at eight, I called."

"He's that punctual?" Steve asked.

"He's a Northeastern haole." Jeremy shrugged, as if that were all the explanation required. Both men chuckled.

"What happened when you called?" Steve asked. An approaching officer was intercepted by Chin, who left, pulling away the officer with the evidence bags.

"Nothing. It rang, then went to voice mail. When he didn't show up by eight-thirty, I started getting worried, so I went to the editor, and he told me to come by. I got here just before nine. The door was closed, but - " he pointed towards the window.

Steve looked at the kid, then stepped off to the side into the landscaped area in front of the house and looked in the window into the foyer. The body of a tall, lean man with short, curly, light brown hair lay sprawled on the floor, half-lying in the living room and half in the foyer. Dr. Bergman and Kono were inside the house, with the body.

"So I called 911," the kid finished.

"You didn't touch anything?"

"I've watched enough cop shows to know not to."

Steve gave him a look.

The kid shrugged.

"All right." Steve gestured to Duke Lukela. "Give a statement to Sgt. Lukela, and we'll take it from here."

Jeremy nodded, then suddenly frowned, looking at McGarrett and then to the cops behind him. "But - I - aren't you going to look for her?"

"Look for whom?" Steve frowned.

"His kid." The young man looked at him, but when Steve gave no indication he knew what the intern was talking about, the kid clarified, "Mrs. Holden - Olivia Holden - is out of town, but she went alone."

Steve frowned, looking at the intern. "He has children?"

"Yeah," Jeremy nodded. "Little girl. She's an only child. I didn't see her in the house and nobody brought her out, and she's certainly not out of town with her mom."

"You're sure about this," Steve asked, frowning.

"Boss brought her along to work yesterday morning. He'd never leave her behind." The intern threw up his hands in distressed frustration. "I - he - " He turned back to Steve, trying to think of something to describe his boss. "He'd never leave her behind," he repeated. "There's absolutely no way. That little girl's his life."

"OK. What does the kid look like?"

"Perhaps - um...two and a half...three feet? Something like that. Turned three years old a few months ago." He paused, thinking. "Blonde. Normally has pigtails. Blue eyes."

"Any other identifying markers?"

"Um - " he thought. "I've always seen her with her toy panda. Large - " he tried to give a general shape with his hands. " - thing."

Steve nodded. "OK, we'll look."

Jeremy looked at him with a worried expression, as if willing him to understand. "Sir, you'd have to crawl over his dead body to get to his daughter," he said earnestly, then cringed at the irony of his statement. He recovered, then said in distress, "But, really, if he's dead - " he trailed off.

Steve squeezed the intern's shoulder steadily, reassuringly. "We'll find her."

"Ah! You've arrived," Bergman replied cheerfully as Steve came in. "Splendid. Now, as I was telling Officer Kalakaua, what is most interesting about this gentleman's death - "

"Give me a time of death, Max," Steve replied curtly.

"About 9 in the evening, but that will not be certain until - "

"Good enough. Kono, I need you and Chin to organize HPD into a search."

Kono got to her feet, frowning at the grim look on her boss's face. "What's going on?"

"Holden's three-year-old daughter is missing," Steve said in a low voice, then looked around the living room, then pointed to a small photo frame with a beaming little blonde in pigtails. "According to his intern, who found the body this morning," he continued, "there's no way Holden would have left his daughter on her own. That means she's been missing for" he looked at his watch "twelve hours."

"And if she were taken by the guys who killed him," Kono finished, "they could be anywhere by now."

Steve nodded. "I know we gave Danny off today since it's his weekend with Grace, but call him in, at least until we find her. You and Chin get HPD organized into a search. Split up into two groups," he said, counting them off on his fingers. "Half of you assume the kid ran out the back on her own; rest of you, get out an amber alert for anybody took her. She's our first priority."

"What's the kid's name?" Kono asked. At Steve's look, a "caught you red-handed" grin crossed her face. "You didn't ask the kid's name, did you, boss."

"Ask the intern."

"Got it." Kono disappeared out the door.

"Max, bag the body, get it back."

"Aren't you interested in how he died?" Max asked, looking up from where he was kneeling by the body.

Steve stared at him incredulously, taking a moment to recover from the question. "Max, I'm looking for a missing person right now."

Max blinked, as if not quite getting it. "So you aren't interested?" he asked confusedly.

Steve stared at him for a moment, then shook his head in a "I don't believe this" fashion as he turned and walked out.

Max sighed, then patted the body consolingly before leaning down to the man and whispering, "Don't worry. He'll be back."

Steve trotted down the steps to find Chin talking to Sgt. Lukela. Scores of police officers were on the lawn, each listening to directions and using their phones to take a picture of a large 8x10 photo of the little girl for search purposes.

When he saw Steve come out, Chin broke away. "Her name's Billie. Jeremy said she might have wandered off when she saw something that piqued her curiosity, so that's what we're hoping she's done."

"Hoping," Steve replied doubtfully.

"She's not the type to wander," Chin supplied. "so, not likely."

"Where's Kono?"

"Around here somewhere."

Steve, directed by a HPD officer, found her in the backyard. She was standing at the back of the mid-sized house, frowning; her hands rested on her hips, and her head was tilted to the side as she looked at the house. "Something wrong?"

"We cleared the house," she said in a frustrated, puzzled tone, her eyes still fixed on the house.

"And you didn't find a child."

"No. And we went through the closets, attic, everything," she said in frustration, staring up at the back wall even as she recounted the matter in an absent tone. "Went through the house a second time, too."

"So she most likely was taken," Steve concluded.

"Yeah, most likely," she murmured, and started turning away, a disturbed look on her face.

Steve looked at her expression, then looked at the house, then back to her. "What? What's that face?"

She frowned again, her eyes flickering to him for a moment, as if debating whether or not to speak; she then looked over the two-story house again, as if facing it down. "This house," she said, shaking a pointed finger at it. "Something's not right with this house."

Chin came in to the kitchen, then looked around in a look of barely-concealed, confused disapproval. Steve and Kono were standing in a smoky kitchen, puffing away on cigarettes. "Hey cuz," Kono greeted, then started hacking. "How do people do this?" she mumbled.

"Don't inhale," Steve admonished Kono between puffs. "You're not supposed to inhale."

"Right." Kono blew another stream of smoke at a break in the wall, making another face as she did so.

Chin looked from one to the other in the bizarre, turned-on-its-head smoking scene. "I suppose that means I won't need to report this to your parents, Kono," he deadpanned.

She managed to blow half a puff of smoke at a crease at the wall before coughing again. "That's for sure." She looked askance at the cigarette. "I think I'm going to be sick."

Steve, on the other side, blew some smoke at another crease. "Kono thinks the Holdens have a safe room," he explained. "When you measure the rooms on this top floor and add the space up, there's at least five linear feet missing when compared to the bottom floor."

Chin furrowed his brow, a slow frown forming. He straightened some child-drawn pictures hanging off the refrigerator door. "You think the reason we didn't see Billie is because she's hidden IN the house?"

"We know she's in the house," Kono replied confidently. "Nothing here, boss," she said to Steve as she moved away from the wall closest to the foyer.

"We did thermals," Steve answered Chin's unspoken question. "There's certainly somebody here, in a small saferoom right here," Steve commented, pointing at the kitchen wall which led towards the interior of the house. "We've already tried the other rooms around that empty - no way in. So the door to the saferoom has to be around here."

"We can contact the maker of the house," Chin pointed out, pulling out his phone.

"We might have to," Steve replied as he blew some more smoke at a wall. "The kid's been in here awhile already."

Chin nodded, but the look of confusion didn't disappear. "So we're smoking because ... ?"

"If there's a room on the other side of the wall, the smoke will be sucked into the room instead of bouncing back from the wall," Steve explained.

"Boss bummed a pack off of one the officers outside," Kono replied as she opened the door to the pantry and stepped in, studying the walls inside.

"Need some help?"

"Knock yourself out." Steve tossed him the pack and a rather large butane lighter. At Chin's look, he shrugged. "I don't keep a light on me."

"I got something. I got something." Steve and Chin crowded her in the pantry, and Kono blew some smoke towards the corner where the right and back wall met. Instead of floating around the wall, the smoke sucked straight through the crease and out of the pantry.

"So the entry button has to be around here," Chin muttered. Kono and Steve started pulling at boxes of food - nothing. Suddenly, there was a loud creak, and both pulled their weapons. Chin's face appeared in the doorway to the pantry; he had his gun in hand. "It was the rack of pots and pans on the wall - the second hook."

Steve looked around, then saw a crack between the back wall and the right wall. He raised his gun, pointing it towards the crack. Kono glanced at him, and he nodded. She kept her weapon trained on the door. He held up one finger, than a second; as he held up the third, he pushed open the door hard.

A little girl sat on the floor, staring up at them with wide blue eyes, her stuffed panda clutched in her arms.

"Travis Holden? There isn't a person on earth who'd want to hurt him." The man paused in his yardwork long enough to wipe the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead. "That I can think of," he qualified.

Chin raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. Why do you say that?"

"Amiable. Helpful. Generous. Quiet. Daughter's very well-behaved - polite, sweet, doesn't run into other people's yards. He's a good neighbor."

"Got along?"

"Oh, yeah. We guys around here" the man waved at the neighboring houses "have a monthly poker game. He hosts it a lot."

"Ever get heated?"

The man gave him an exasperated look. "Seriously?" As Chin raised an eyebrow questioningly, the man snorted derisively. "We don't gamble. All right," he corrected, "we actually gambled with chips once."

"And how'd that go?"

"I mean, we literally gambled with chips." The man looked sheepish. "We ended up with a pile of tortilla crumbs on the table." At Chin's raised eyebrow, the man said defensively, "We were a little tipsy."

"So, you had no problems with the Holdens."

"I wish he'd cut his lawn more often than every other week, but - " the man shrugged. "That's a small price to pay for a neighbor who's great in every other respect."

"So his NEIGHBORS don't want to kill him."

The man thought about it, then laughed. "OK, I concede your point. I'm sure he's most likely pissed off his share of people being a reporter. But around here, nobody."

"What about his wife?"

"Livy?" The man frowned. "I don't know. I suppose the chance of somebody wanting to kill her is about as high as it was for Travis. I mean, she doesn't exactly write the weekly recipes and stuff."

Chin smiled and nodded, then gently corrected, "I meant if Livy Holden might have had her husband - "

"No, no," the man interrupted, vigorously shaking his head. "They have a good marriage, from what I can see." He frowned. "'Sides, she couldn't have killed him. She's not even here. She's been gone for the last three days. Was supposed to be gone for awhile - her sister's having a kid."

"Got a phone number for her sister?"

"Nope. I've only got her local house number. Sorry."

Kono gave a small smile as Billie looked up at the doctor, who smiled and patted the little girl on the back. She took her stethoscope off and started to put it away when she saw the little girl's eyes follow her hands. "Want to see it?"

"You has a bear." Her voice brimmed with curiosity.

"It's a koala. Do you like it?" The doctor took off her stethoscope and showed the little girl the toy koala bear which hung off the tubes by its paws.

The little girl beamed and studied the small toy. "The bear has a booboo."

"What?"

Billie clumsily held up the bear and showed the doctor a worn patch on the bear.

"Oh." The doctor looked sheepish. "I think his fur rubbed off from where I kept picking him up."

"Oh."

"Want to listen to your heart?"

Billie brightened. "OK."

The doctor put the stethoscope on the girl's ears, then put the chestpiece over her own heart to show the child how to work it. The child's eyes brightened. Then the doctor placed the chestpeice over Billie's heart and put her hand over it to hold it in place. The little girl looked up in wonder, listening intently.

The doctor then came over to stand by Kono, and the two women watched the little girl for a few minutes. The child had her head bowed to her chest, trying to see the chestpiece. Her face was full of curious wonderment as she listened to her own heartbeat. "She's fine. Hungry, I imagine, and a little shaken up, but not hurt physically."

"Psychologically?"

"Not that I can tell, except for being frightened," the doctor replied. "She seems to maintain her curiosity, trust of adults. Most abused children don't necessarily have these things."

The doctor then waved to the the panda, who was now getting its "heart" checked by its owner, who was talking quietly to her stuffed toy. "You'll need to get that panda cleaned. What happened?"

"She couldn't reach the toliet and just had to go to the bathroom. She went in her clothes and on the floor," Kono replied. "Guess the urine got on the panda, too."

At the doctor's concerned but puzzled look, Kono shook her head. "No, we don't think it was neglect or abuse; by all accounts, you were right in your assessment that she doesn't appear to be abused. And don't worry. We'd report it if it were."

The doctor pulled out the chart, then asked, "Can I have her name, again? I didn't catch it."

"Holden. Billie Holden."

The scratching of the pen on paper stopped. "Holden? Livy Holden's daughter?" The doctor asked.

"Livy Holden - ?" Kono asked in a puzzled tone.

"Olivia and Travis Holden. This is their daughter?" the doctor asked in confirmation.

Kono nodded, then studied the doctor. "You know the Holdens?"

"We all know Livy Holden over here," the doctor replied. "She's a big friend to a lot of our charities."

"Car pulled up around 9 pm. No," the woman said quickly as she looked out of her window, to the Holden house across the street, "just a few minutes little later."

"You sure?" Steve asked.

"Yes." The woman nodded. "I know because I switched from 'Parks and Recreation' to 'The Mentalist', and they'd just run their opening credits." She leaned in to whisper to Steve, "I haven't watched NBC at 9 pm since they put Jay Leno on."

Steve gave her a "does it look like I care?" look, which the woman didn't seem to notice.

"I just love their cute Australian," the woman continued in her stage whisper. "He has the cutest curls in his hair."

"The car?" Steve prompted.

"Yes. I was standing near the window, fighting my TV antenna, and I saw a light-colored SUV - you know, the pale gold type."

"Champagne?" Steve asked in a deadpan voice.

"Yeah. A few men came out - most likely four. They went into the house, then came out about half an hour later." The woman paused. "I think one of them is - well, at least pretends to be wealthy."

Steve furrowed his brow, looking up, interested. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, one of the guys who came out held the door for him. And when he came out he brushed off his shirt and his pants, but the car didn't seem dirty. At least on the outside."

"Did you hear anything?"

"No." The woman waved towards a window and pushed it up. "Hear that? That's ocean. And highway. And my TV was on."

"All right." He handed the woman a card. "Call if you remember anything else."

"What's this all about? Holden's all right, right?"

Steve turned back to look at her from where he was leaving. "No. He's dead." He shut the door behind him.

TBC