CAPTAIN, YOU MAY oughta take a look at this.” Kimo poked his head in the captain’s doorway with a fistful of letters.

     “Come.” Captain Schofield waved Lieutenant Nakazawa into his office overlooking Honolulu, without even looking up.

     “Twenty folks on different islands all got this same letter,” Nakazawa said. “The only difference is the name and address and the dates that they got them.”

     “What is it, some kind of chain letter?” Schofield asked, finally making eye contact with his chief detective.

     “You need to see it for yourself,” Nakazawa said as he handed Schofield the stack.

     Dear Mrs. Thomas … “

     “They all deal with fender benders?” Schofield skimmed the first paragraphs of several of the neatly typewritten letters.

     “Yup,” Nakazawa said.

     “How’d the writer know these particular people were involved in these accidents?” Schofield asked, as he thumbed through the pile.

     “That’s just it,” Nakazawa said. “In each instance, the letters came the day before the accidents occurred.”

     “Run that by me again.” Schofield rubbed the spot on his forehead just above the bridge of his nose.

     “I’m tellin’ you.” Nakazawa ratcheted up his intensity a notch or two. “Take Mrs. Thomas’s case. She gets this letter on Tuesday after work. Thinks it’s some kind of come-on and just sets it aside. The next day, as she’s backing out of her parking space, she can’t really explain what happened -- maybe she fainted or something. She remembers putting the car in reverse and stepping on the gas after checking to make sure no one was coming.

     “The next thing she remembers is hearing the car alarm from the car she just hit directly behind her. Apparently she didn’t hit the brakes and backed right into it. But she doesn’t remember doing that.

     “She was so upset. After leaving a note under the wiper of the car she hit, she drove herself to her doctor’s office for a complete checkup.”

     “And--” Schofield settled back into his orthopedic chair, fingertips touching fingertips.

     “And nothing,” Nakazawa said. “She got a clean bill of health.” 

     Schofield got up and started pacing. “You’re not going to try and tell me that all twenty--”

     “You’re gettin’ the picture,” Nakazawa cut in. He continued, “Some were backing out of their driveways. Others, like Mrs. Thomas, were backing out of a parking space. One was backing up to get out of a space by the curb.”

     “And they all blacked out just before banging into whatever was behind them,” Schofield said, his hands on his hips, staring out the window, “after getting a letter ahead of time?”

     “Every last one,” Nakazawa confirmed. “Freaked them all out enough to go get checked out -- either by their personal physicians, or, in the case of the three of them, at clinics. Then they all got their letters and brought them either to their lawyers or to us.”

     “What about the origin of the letters?” Schofield asked.

     “That’s the strangest part,” Nakazawa said. “They’re all posted from a small post office outside of -- are you sitting down for this? -- Paris, France … “