Primal Instinct

10

July 16. 9 A.M., FBI Headquarters. Honolulu

“ Joe Kaniola's put your shit, my shit, everybody's shit on the street, in print, front page of his rag!” shouted Scanlon at the top of his lungs. “Only good news is nobody reads it and it's in Hawaiian. Course, it's going to be picked up and translated by every paper in the islands and on the fuckin' radio and TV and the mainland anyway, a story like this… Christ, Parry!”

Scanlon was a bear of a man, broad-shouldered and barrel- chested, whose once-hard, chiseled face had collapsed in and was now jowly and square, a near-hidden cleft chin below the folds, and a surprisingly thin nose no longer at ease with a pair of near-closed, squinting colorless eyes. There was a history between Parry and Scanlon, Jim Parry's office having embarrassed the HPD in the past on more than one occasion, but particularly on the Daiporice murders when Parry had, after extensive examination of the facts, quickly linked several island scams which had led to a brutal professional killing. It turned out the hit man was contracted for by a high-ranking city official who was dirtier than most Mafia types Parry had known.

Meanwhile, the HPD blithely followed a path that netted several suspects, all of whom had nothing whatever to do with the crime. The HPD districts weren't communicating well on the case, and each area had arrested separate individuals for the scam and the killing, maintaining the two incidents were unrelated, filing separate reports bearing no relation to each other.

Another body surfaced and this time the FBI, acting on a missing-persons report, got involved. As bureau chief of the FBI, Parry didn't need a formal invite from Scanlon or any of his captains to come in on a missing-persons report, especially if it involved a minor, and Daiporice's own son, aged seventeen, had somehow gotten in the way and been eliminated. The loss of his son brought Ted Daiporice to his knees.

Parry's take-charge style had been viewed as abrasive by some HPD personnel before Daiporice, and it was likely for this reason he'd been “unaccountably” left out of the loop on the seventeen- year-old's disappearance. Parry charged in and crashed HPD's party anyway, when they couldn't find a trace of the missing young man anywhere.

Then came the Wilson Lewis case. Parry studied forensic reports and police reports on the case, along with the so-called confessions of those men being held in connection with a string of brutal slice-and-dice mutilations. Those arrested were mental defectives, down-and-outs and PSOs-previous sex offenders. When Parry came in on the case, he immediately saw the links between the victims; wounds to the eyes in particular showed such force as to indicate uncontrollable rage and hatred. Even the bones around the eyes had been damaged by the hilt of a knife; sexual organs too were gutted and turned out, as if the killer had to look and touch inside them, not unlike the Trade Winds Killer in this regard.

To be fair to Scanlon and his detectives, the bodies were always found weeks later in deserted areas of the forests, far off the main roads, and in the summer heat, that year reaching into the nineties, a cadaver was stripped to skeletal remains within ten days. So Scanlon's people didn't have much in the way of evidence either to identify the victims or to reconstruct the crimes. Like the Trade Winds Killer, Wilson Solomon Lewis, an otherwise mild-mannered insurance salesman by day, didn't leave his victims where he had killed them, so there was no crime scene to analyze per se; all they had to go on was where the bodies were dumped-a stone whodunit, in police parlance, the hardest kind of case to resolve.

Parry went to work, orchestrating a surveillance, his people watching every drop point for a full month, while he and Tony, spelled by others, watched what ought to be the killer's next and last drop point, according to the computer program tracking the bastard. They got lucky one night when a large vehicle consistent with the tire marks found at the other locations drove calmly off U.S. 61 passing the darkened surveillance vehicle on the far side of the road, placed at some distance away. Parry and Gagliano called for backup and drove into the woods, following at a safe stretch until their headlights hit on Lewis, his arms filled with overstuffed garbage bags, the trunk of his car popped, the light from the trunk setting off his features into a mosaic of contortion.

For a moment he looked relieved, waving to them as if he'd expected them long before. Still, he stuffed what he'd lifted from the trunk back into the vehicle and slammed home the lid.

Gagliano turned the spotlight on the man, who was wearing a pullover sweater and jeans, his hands smeared with a red substance that was unmistakable. A body was indeed inside the spacious trunk of his roomy Lincoln Town Car, the one he did regular business in. Wilson Lewis put up no resistance, standing aside like a child staring down at the valuable vase he'd broken, the damage irreparable.

“ Whhhhhh-y'd it take youuuuuu so… so… so long to… to st-st-stop me?” He stuttered.

“ Read him his fucking rights, Tony,” Parry had said, his eyes riveted to the horror encased in the man's trunk, his mind going over the question put to him by the insane.

Why had it taken them so long to stop him? he wondered. How could they've been so blind?

All of Lewis's victims had been prospective clients, many taken right from their homes at midday, all of them single and living alone. Records indicated that Lewis had no previous police record, but a careful scrutiny of his life later unearthed the troublesome nature of this man whom no one liked, not his neighbors, not his relatives, not his former bosses, of whom there were many. He had a long list of jobs from which he'd been fired, often for “odd, lewd or strange” behavior in one form or another. He had all his life been building toward vengeance against women, for women were, in his estimation, the cause of all sin on earth, the mothers of ruination, since his own mother and the mother of his children were satanic.

Parry's handling of the case effectively threw out several HPD “convictions” and so-called confessions, which both the press and the public had been screaming for. A police detective in any state in the land lived or died by the number of cases he closed, so Parry's victory was not as welcomed as it might otherwise have been by detectives who had followed the other, now patently useless leads. Not only were the detectives below Scanlon embarrassed, but so too were the ranking officers, Scanlon included, who had okayed the arrest, confession and indictment of a partially retarded itinerant pineapple farmer.

Since then Parry had begun a secretive crusade of sorts, aimed at indolence and incompetence within the HPD. He began with unsolved missing-persons reports, carefully reviewing the case of Sinitia “Cynthia” Toma the year before, which led to Kololia “Gloria” Poni. The trail led to a list of seven missing within a span of a few months. He'd heard of a similar situation on Maui the year before this. In Maui he learned the girls' names: Ela, Wana'ao, Kini, Merelina, Kimi, Lala, and Iolana. Of course, there were other missing persons, even during the period of these vanishings; however, all of these young women were not only natives, but they shared a common appearance, down to the long-trailing black hair and light-filled wide eyes, as well as size, general age and weight. Parry had made it a pet project, reviewing all information authorities had on the cases, searching for any pattern, any link between them. The first obvious such link was that the victims in Honolulu vanished along a trajectory that was bounded by the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific known as the Punchbowl, the University of Hawaii and the Waikiki Beach resort area. Searches among the foothills, along deserted mile markers off the Pali Highway and elsewhere, turned up no clues at the time. The proximity to the air force and naval bases continued to lead Parry to suspect someone in uniform. Whoever he was, this guy left no trace either of himself or his victims. Yet the geography was always the same, that rectangular wedge of island centering on busy Waikiki. The killer must spend a lot of time there, possibly working in the area, living on its perimeter.

Now Dave Scanlon stopped his lionlike pacing, gave a glance to Dr. Marshal, who'd come in with him, leaned over Parry's desk and got in Parry's face, saying, “We're not going to allow any history between us, Jim, to color what we do here now, are we?”

“ History? History's history,” Parry replied sharply. “All I care about is what we're going to do about this damnable business now.”

Parry stared down at the Ala Ohana newspaper. He could make out enough Hawaiian to know that everything Scanlon had said about Kaniola and his paper was true-and then some. It was a story so hot it fairly burned the hands to hold it.

“ Just read the crap there about the HPD's not doing a damned thing while two of our own cops are murdered in cold blood.” Scanlon pounded his fist over the newsprint as if to do so could change things.

“ Get hold of your self, Dave,” Parry said, trying to counter the bull's rage. “It's just a pile of innuendo and half-truths gathered up by a grieving father who-”

“ The appearance of impropriety, the mere appearance of wrongdoing, Jim, and we're in the stocks down at HPD. You damned well know that, and so does Marshal here.”

Dr. Walter Marshal tried to console his old friend. As the U.S. M.E. from Pearl, he had a lot invested in the case as well, but he wasn't having any luck in calming the HPD Commissioner of Police, so he turned to Parry instead and added kerosene to the fire by saying, “You can bet your ass the mainland'll get this.”

“ Christ,” continued Scanlon, pacing for emphasis. “We've got every uniform, pulled every detective, every sergeant and lieutenant in on this, but old Joe Kaniola makes it sound like we're all sitting around masturbating ourselves! And he's got the inside dope, that top sources with the FBI claim the only man ever to get near the killer was his son who didn't have proper backup! Christ, what a lot of horse shit! And how'd he get information about the blood, Parry, news you didn't even share with me! And what's all this about the supposed killer being most likely a white male? And possibly having some connection with the U.S. military? Christ- a-minny!”

Parry tried to defuse Scanlon as much as possible by repeating himself. “Kaniola's got nothing. A handful of assumptions and innuendos any number of people've been slinging around, Dave.”

“ You just tell that Dr. Coran of yours to keep her mouth shut, or we'll have a full-blown race riot on our hands in the south central quadrant,” Scanlon hotly replied. “I thought she was a pro! I thought she knew what she was doing. I thought you knew what you were doing when you called her in on the case, Jim.”

“ Scanlon, Dr. Coran's remarks to Kaniola were off the rec-”

“ Not any fucking more!” Scanlon paced anew. Parry went instantly to Jessica's defense. “Dr. Coran did not disclose anything to Kaniola intentionally, and so far's I know not a word about the arm, the racial makeup of the killer, or that he could be military. We don't any of us know that.”

“ Bullshit! Then who did?”

“ I don't know.” He privately wondered about Tony, but instantly ruled him out. “Kaniola's just canny, that's all.”

“ Christ, she ought've known you don't expose yourself to an experienced-”

“ She took him to be the bereaving father.”

“ Son of a bitch is bereaving all right-bereaving right down our throats, Parry. He's got nothing kind to say about your bureau either. Read on!”

Parry shook his head, remaining calm. “He's blowing smoke and he knows it. There's no evidence the killer's a white man or that he's from the naval base, none whatever.”

“ But every Hawaiian thinks so now,” challenged Dr. Marshal. “There doesn't have to be any real evidence, not with these types who're just looking for an excuse to torch this city like L.A. in '92.”

“ It isn't going to happen here.”

“ You want to make bank on that?” shouted Scanlon. Jessica Coran pushed noisily through the door, her cane thumping out a requiem, Parry's secretary chasing gooselike after her, quite unable to stop her. The secretary was making excuses over Jessica's words:

“ I'm so sorry, Chief Parry, but this woman — ”

“ Chief Parry, gentlemen,” Jessica began, “I believe I should be in on this roundtable since I am the guilty party here and-”

“- I tried to stop her, but she's so rude and-” Parry motioned his secretary off and the woman stepped back, without turning, obediently closing the door in front of her, leaving Jessica Coran in the center of the big office full of men.

“ All right, Dr. Coran, please join us,” Parry said, trying not to show his displeasure and the dark circles around his bloodshot eyes. “Have a seat.”

She remained standing. “I'm sorry for my ill-timed words of yesterday to Kaniola. I won't be surprised to hear from Quantico, perhaps find myself replaced.”

Parry realized now that she thought she was doing the valorous thing, that she'd come to his rescue, somehow learning of the meeting.

Dr. Marshal cleared his throat and said, “Gentlemen, Dr. Coran, of one thing you can be assured, all leaves to servicemen will be temporarily canceled and every man confined to base at least until the news simmers down.”

“ Good thinking,” muttered Scanlon. “Now whata we do with all of the other white males living in the city? I'm telling you, Jim, your car the other night was just the beginning.”

“ If the newspaper leaks came from within my organization”- Parry fell short of admitting it-”I'll deal with the problems at this end.”

“ And from here on out, I want full cooperation, Jim. No more behind-the-back shit, like alia this crap about how the killer maybe is using the Blow Hole as a dumping site and maybe he's using a U.S. regulation-sized bayonet or machete on his victims.”

“ I said nothing of the kind to Mr. Kaniola,” insisted Jessica.

“ Joe's just feeding his people a pile of kukai, as they say, huh?” asked Scanlon. “For what reason then?”

“ Who knows,” Parry fired back. “To make his son look less like the asshole your department painted him for getting himself killed in the line of duty, maybe?”

“ Or maybe it's become a political thing with Kaniola. Everything's political with him,” suggested Dr. Marshal when the two lawmen had locked gazes. “Now everyone in this room has got to be supportive of each other, gentlemen. We have got to cooperate and stick together on this.”

“ I'll keep my hands on the table if you will,” Parry relented.

Scanlon at first said nothing, then frowned and said, “It becomes clearer the longer this thing goes on, Jim, that we need each other. To pool our resources.”

“ I realize that, Dave.”

“ Good… good…” Marshal, acting as referee, seemed delighted-missing something here, Jessica thought. There was bad blood between Jim Parry and Scanlon. She'd sensed it from the first moment she walked in, and now it was ripe and odorous.

“ Kaniola's facts are wrong and his story's full of shit, like you say, Scanlon, and I think most thinking people, white and Hawaiian alike, will see it for what it is.” Parry held tightly to a heavy paperweight in the likeness of a pair of handcuffs, squeezing hard as he spoke. Despite his words to the contrary, even the new girl on the block, Jessica Coran, knew that the newspaper story was partially accurate: that thanks to men like Scanlon at the top, the HPD nourished a certain amount of inbred prejudice against its own Hawaiian and minority cops, cops who'd been hired to fill quotas fifteen years before, cops who'd never see promotion in the ranks. Nor was Joe Kaniola far from the mark when he suggested that Scanlon's department wasn't pulling its weight in the investigation, that at best they'd fallen into familiar patterns of organizational behavior by arresting derelicts, the homeless, previously known sex offenders, all without the slightest clue as to who the Trade Winds Killer might be. She could almost hear Jim's seething thoughts below his painted smile: Hell, the HPD brass hadn't seen the strange pattern of disappearances of young women of Hawaiian and Oriental extraction over the past two years here in Oahu… nor the link with the missing Maui women before this.

Marshal cleared his throat and spoke up. “Jim, I've heard you call this killer the Cane Cutter, and now Kaniola himself says his favored instrument of death is a huge machete of the type used in cane cutting. We all know that information, leaked properly to the press, can lead to only one conclusion: that our killer is a field worker, one of them”

That information, thought Parry, had been confidential, held in abeyance for the day when a suspect could be brought in and presented with the facts, hopefully to press the man into a confession. Men were known to break during long interrogations when the interrogators had a series of facts in evidence that a killer could not ignore, facts which might cause a guilty man to gasp, fidget and raise an eyebrow. Interrogation only worked if the investigators could carefully walk a suspect along an inexorable path lined with the truth; only such overwhelming evidence might push a recalcitrant sociopath into a corner, awed by the light shone on his actions and secrets. A good interrogation meant laying out all the pieces of the case along the table, in full view of the suspect, like an archaeologist looking over the day's cache of relics and artifacts, but the artifacts of murder didn't lie silent on the table, at least not to the killer or the hunter who had cornered the killer; no, the artifacts of murder literally screamed out at them both.

Now the information regarding the killer's favored weapon, or at least what he'd used on Linda Kahala, was rendered weak and ineffectual by virtue of the fact it'd become part of the public domain, useless as an interrogation tool. Every madman in the city who chose to confess to the crimes could now state that he was the Cane Cutter, that he used a cane knife. Many would bring a weapon in, wasting hours of lab time in which each instrument had to be checked against Linda Kahala's wounds along the one arm.

At the moment, thanks to Kaniola, who no doubt believed in his heart that his news story could only help and never hinder the search for his son's killer, any nut with a big knife might walk into a station house and turn himself in.

Scanlon was right on this score. Joseph Kaniola's story ultimately meant more false leads, more trails to nowhere.

“ I didn't say a word about the weapon, Jim,” Dr. Coran swore.

“ Kaniola says the source of that information came from someone extremely close to the investigation, so if you didn't reveal the fact, who did?” Scanlon persisted.

Her eyes widened at the accusation, the fact the commissioner of police would not accept her word. “Dr. Marshal, here for one-”

Marshal was outraged at the suggestion, shouting, “You can't for a moment believe that I had any-”

“ Elwood Warner, the County M.E., any number of lab techs, cops and agents who are notorious gossips,” she continued, “and now Dr. Harold Shore, your own Oahu M.E.”

“ Dr. Shore? That's preposterous,” countered Marshal, defending the absent M.E.

“ He's been sitting up in his hospital bed, demanding the details of the autopsies done on Hilani and Kaniola, as well as the pathology workup on Kahala's arm. I submit to you, gentlemen, that all these people have had access to the information. Information leaks come from any number of directions and sources, and no one's more skillful in getting someone to verify suppositions and filling in half-truths than a crafty, experienced newsman like Kaniola.”

Parry mentally ran down the list of his agents, anyone remotely connected with the operation. Haley, Reno, Gagliano, Mr. Lau and his people in the labs. He also wondered about himself, if he'd foolishly left anything of a confidential nature lying about for the cleaning lady at the office to pick up. He wouldn't put it past Kaniola to use tabloid techniques to get a story and sell papers.

News leaked… as if it were obligated to. Especially in the case of a red-ball like this, especially in the fishbowl of an island community, with everyone's eye pressed against the glass. U.S. military brass was interested, the state, the county and the city of Oahu all wanted to know the latest yesterday, as did the State Department and D.C. It was the reason Paul Zanek was so free with advice and with Jessica Coran.

Now they could all read about it in the papers. Not altogether satisfied, Scanlon abruptly left while Dr. Marshal lingered behind. Jessica watched the officious military doctor step to the window and stare out at the mountain mosaic in the distance, patches of it cluttered by homes that seemed to creep ever closer to the summit each year.

“ I've lived here for nearly twenty years, Inspector, and in all that time I've never felt afraid.”

“ Afraid, sir?”

“ Never afraid of the volcanic activity, the occasional tropical storm or hurricane, the serpentine traffic, the congestion or the growing tourism… not even the worst backwater streets in the worst sections of the city ever really frightened me. But now… this… this scares me. Parry.” He turned from the window to emphasize his point, staring hard at the FBI bureau chief. “This city could go up in flames tomorrow. We all know that.”

Jessica stepped toward him and firmly said, “I understand your concerns, sir, but I assure you, we are doing everything within our power to bring an end to the killings.”

“ We need more, Parry. We need an arrest, a suspect, a…”

“ A scapegoat?” asked Parry.

“ It would take the heat off; give you room to, you know, maneuver, shall we say? Time to get at the root of the problem. I have it on good authority that the boyfriend of the latest victim has been under interrogation.”

Christ, thought Parry, how many eyes were watching the fishbowl? Marshal was an old man who had watched Honolulu grow, and he, like most haoles, had invested a great deal in real estate here.

“ I'm not prepared to arrest someone just to appease the likes of Joseph Kaniola or any other newsman, Doctor.”

“ No one's asking you to appease Kaniola.” He looked sternly into Parry's eyes, shocked that Parry didn't understand him. “But there are many who would be appeased by an arrest at this time.”

“ I'll let Scanlon do your dirty work for you. Dr. Marshal. The FBI doesn't knowingly make false arrests.”

“ I have friends in the State Department, Inspector, and you can be assured that everyone back home”-America was forever home to the older generation of whites in Hawaii-”everyone is watching this case with extreme curiosity and interest, I assure you.”

The veiled threat wasn't lost on Parry or Jessica. He'd only become bureau chief two years before, and a case such as this, left open too long, or worse, defying solution, could cost him dearly. Jessica guessed now that whatever people “back home”-no doubt senators, congressmen and other high-ranking officials- didn't know about the case, Dr. Marshal was only too happy to provide.

Parry, with obvious disdain, said, “I appreciate and understand the nature of your concern, Doctor, but please, leave the investigation to the experts. It's what we're here for.”

Marshal only stared for a long moment, Parry returning the cold glint until finally Marshal said, “Of course, and perhaps we at the base can be kept informed? Just as the HPD is informed of the progress you and Dr. Coran are making?”

“ Of course.”

Marshal extended a hand, and for a moment it was poised between them before Parry reached out and vigorously shook it, saying, “I'll keep you posted.”

“ That's all I ask. Thank you, indeed.”

With that Marshal disappeared and Parry looked thoughtfully up at Jessica as she waited for him to speak. Instead, he scanned Joseph Kaniola's story once again, and there, in black and white, was George Oniiwah's name, just a line, saying that “Oniiwah has been repeatedly questioned by police,” which meant that the hapa Japa was by innuendo a suspect and that he clearly knew something. “So,” he finally spoke, breaking the unhappy iciness between them, “our good Dr. Marshal thinks it'd be a wonderful idea to lock Oniiwah up, play the Hawaiian population against the Nip population, thereby skirting the FBI profile, which points ever more to a white male, late twenties to early forties. For Oniiwah's own safety, maybe it's not such a bad idea, but it sticks in my craw.”

“ We did it in New York, you know, on my last case,” she offered, falling into a cushioned chair before him.

“ Did it? Did what?”

“ Arrested a known sex offender, you know, to appease the public mind,” she admitted.

He frowned at this. “If it were that easy, I might consider it, but Marshal's only half the problem. While he's trying to save the boys in white and blue from Pearl, any number of whom could be our killer, the governor of Hawaii, the mayor of Honolulu and your boss, Paul Zanek, are all screaming for somebody's head.”

“ Zanek's on your case? That's some nerve! I'll have something to say to him. Hell, he's not even your direct super-”

“ Jess, everybody in the military wants to believe our killer's one of them-Hawaiian or of mixed island blood, that is-while everyone in government wants us to catch the Caucasian killer. You see, such an end to this would show good faith, so to speak, take a hell of a lotta heat off every level of government, and-”

“ That's one asinine way to conduct an investigation!”

“- and our so-called 'good faith' move'll clear law-enforcement agencies throughout the islands of the stain of prejudicial proceedings. Get it?”

“ In one fell swoop. It's coming clearer, yeah.” She shook her head, disbelieving even as she understood.

“ Ironic as hell, isn't it?”

“ Reverse discrimination, so to speak?”

“ At its worst, yeah… something like that.”

“ So what're you going to do?”

“ Nothing.”

“ Nothing?”

“ For now, nada. See which way the wind blows.”

“ As will our killer I'm sure, Jim.”

“ I didn't say we're going to sit on the investigation.” He lost control, shouting, “Just on the goddamned politics surrounding the bloody case!” She dropped her gaze, nodding. “I'm sorry. I know that, Jim. I didn't for a moment mean to imply anything other-”

“ Look, forget it. I'm wound like a top today. Look.” He tried desperately to tread lightly now. “How're things going in the lab?”

“ Torturously slow, but we're moving onward. As soon as I know anything new, you'll be the first.”

“ Well, thanks for coming down on the white charger.”

“ Only hope it helped.”

“ Helped clear the room sooner, that's for sure.”

Together they laughed at this.

But their laughter was short-lived when she lifted a copy of Kaniola's paper, written in Hawaiian, yet crystal-clear from the photos of each of the missing young women bordering the story, and a crude sketch of a human forearm with upper muscle and shoulder, ruptured at the wrist, gracing the bottom of the page.

“ I told him nothing about Kahala's arm.” She didn't want to point a finger, but she didn't want Jim Parry to think any worse of her than he already did either.

“ Kaniola's shrewd. He's weaseled out a hell of a lot of details about the crimes. See this?” He pointed to the word 'a'apl.

“ What's it mean?”

“ He says the blade used on the Kahala girl was warped or curved. Here he speaks of tragic misfortune, 'awa, and of persons dying before their time, 'a'aiole. And that it happens with the ae.”

“ The a-eee?”

'The northeast trade wind.”

“ Geeze… so what else does the story say?” she asked.

“ Depicts Thom Hilani and Kaniola's son as a couple of heroes-the only two cops in the whole of Oahu who'd ever gotten near the Cane Cutter. Describes the rest of the HPD as something far less admirable; depicts the bureau as a confederacy of bungling idiots.”

“ It says all that?”

“ See this word, here, hawawal Its literal translation is unskilled, awkward, blundering and incompetent.”

“ Sounds like the papers back home.”

“ So how'd he get the drawing of the dead girl's limb? If not from you, that leaves someone in Lau's lab, perhaps, or one of my agents, all of whom I'd thought I could trust.”

She told him of Kaniola's connection to Lau. “Look, when the limb rose from the Blow Hole, people witnessed it. Cops were called on scene and got there before your guys, right? Everyone in Oahu knew about the limb.”

“ Guess so… Damn tired of having to fight my back, though.”

“ I hope you don't think that includes me.”

He shook his head. “No, no. You, I think, are genuine. Look at this,” he said, changing the subject, pointing once more to the Ala Ohana's Hawaiian words. “Our pal Kaniola talks about you, too, here.”

“ What?”

“ Calls you an anchor stone for the investigation.”

“ Anchor stone?”

“ Heleuma,” he replied, using the Hawaiian term, and then he read on. “'Dr. Jessica Coran has been called onto the case by top-ranking FBI officials'-that'd be me-'to oversee the forensic investigation in the absence of Dr. Harold Shore. Coran has solved a number of puzzling and bizarre serial-murder cases on the mainland, the most famous of which culminated in the capture of the mad vampire slayer, Matt Matisak, in Chicago, and also the case of the Claw in New York City last year.'“

“ I see,” she said, staring to where he pointed.

“ The placement of your name at this juncture is direct innuendo that the information following this came from you.”

She looked quizzically at the Hawaiian words before her. “What information?”

“ That the suspect is believed to be a white male between the ages of twenty-seven and forty.”

“ I told him that was just probability, that it is statistically likely that-”

“ The Hawaiians are looking for the least provocation to shut down Pearl as a base of U.S. operations; word of this spreads, we're going to catch hell from both sides, and we know Marshal's going to spread it-not to mention the racial tensions which are running quite high right now.”

“ Kaniola's playing on these emotions?”

“ Like a virtuoso, yes. That's how native political power works.”

She shook her head. “I can't entirely agree.”

“ Sure, sure, he genuinely wants his son avenged first and foremost; for all their inherent good nature, the fact that Hawaiians are lovely people does not lessen their sense of justice and faith in vengeance.”

“ Like most of humanity?”

He gave her a knowing look and a smirk. “Okay, but Joe Kaniola's also fanning embers that've been smoldering for a long time, over a hundred years to be exact. He's got a whole population of disenfranchised people to blow off to, to vent his spleen with, over this issue, which leads him and his people straight back to the fundamental issue of who governs here and who carries the big stick of enforcement.”

“ Oh, God… I hope I didn't really mess things up for you, Jim.”

“ Well, the worst of it has nothing to do with what you told Kaniola.”

“ What's that?”

“ Like I said, this mention of George Oniiwah. Putting his name into this story made him a target for anyone remotely interested in avenging Linda Kahala, Thom Hilani, Alan Kaniola or any of the other women. Shit, if someone reading this decides that Oniiwah is the Cane Cutter, some bad pilikia's going to follow.”

“ Is Oniiwah white?”

“ Half Japanese.”

“ Surely that's inconsistent with Kaniola's innuendo that the killer is suspected to be a white male.”

“ Kaniola characterizes the kid as half 'white' by virture of his and his family's so emulating the white man-dressing white, dancing white, eating white, all that.”

“ Surely that's not enough to condemn him. Nobody could possibly decide that the FBI profile states the killer's whiteness is just mock white behavior, could they?”

“ We got some pretty big, pretty nasty and pretty dumb Samoans and Hawaiians on this island who put pilau like that together all the time, and proud of it.”

“ Is the man under arrest, in protective custody?”

“ Neither, and he's missing.”

“ What're you saying? That he's gone into hiding? That he's fleeing, what?”

“ No one's sure at this point.”

“ You're not saying… he's not been abducted? Has he?”

“ Possibly.”

“ Jesus…”

“ Minute I saw the paper, I called to have him picked up, but it was already too late. Oniiwah's roommate tells a story about three heavyset Samoans bursting into their dorm room-middle of the night-at the college. The roommate was knocked senseless, or so he maintains, but we're not sure his story is a hundred percent accurate.”

“ You suspect he was in on the abduction?”

“ Bruises he sustained are minimal; could've been inflicted by someone, but certainly not enough to knock him unconscious as he states. Anyway, his story has these big Samoan dudes taking George out by the hair, kicking and screaming. Tony's continued to grill the guy and-”

“ Neither Scanlon nor Marshal know a thing about this development, obviously, and you're not telling?”

He ignored her and continued. “An APB's being put out on the kid, but it doesn't look good for Oniiwah. All in all, nothing's turned out quite right.”

“ Hell, I didn't even know about Oniiwah when I spoke to Kaniola.”

“ I know that. Look, it could get ugly,” he stated.

“ If the boy's hurt…”

“ Oniiwah's being half Japanese and dressing the way he does… that's all some Samoans need to know. The typical dyed-in-the-wool Samoan believes in 'act now, think later,' and that's why there're so many of them in the state pen. Samoans are worse than the native Hawaiians in their hatred for the Japanese and the whites. They're the ones who initiated and now annually hold the Hawaiian version of Hell Night here, the 'Kill a Haole Day' festivities which annually lands many behind bars. So, don't go whipping yourself over this.”

She sensed that he was doing exactly that to himself all morning.

“ Anything happens, it's Kaniola's fault and mine,” said Parry. “I should've listened to Tony last night. He tried to warn me about the mood of the people. Damn…”

“ What next?”

“ We've got a notion we're playing out. Tony's working on getting paper for a search warrant as we speak. I'd be over at the site myself by now if I hadn't got hung up with Scanlon and Marshal.” He looked at his watch. “Should be about time now. When's the last time you were in on a bust?”

“ A bust? Me?”

“ Sure, why not. You want to see some real local color?” She took it as a challenge.

“ Want to join me or not?” He buzzed his secretary and called for his car to be brought around. “Well?”

“ All right, all right, maybe I will.”

Lopaka's hands are busy over the wheel of the bus he drives, a small, versatile twenty-four-seater for Enoa Tourist Industries. The bus makes stops at predesignated hotel locations to load more passengers till filled to capacity today. A typical Tuesday on the island. But while his hands and eyes are occupied here, Lopaka's mind is elsewhere.

His eyes scan the city streets for his next victim, for someone who resembles Kelia, someone who may walk like her, and whose pattern of life he can approach and intercept. Once their paths cross, he might easily fit into her world, which is his world, too. He's on the same streets every day, doing his job, carting tourists back and forth along the same avenues from the hotels-making some six to seven stops depending-to the sights at Pearl Harbor on his run. Along the way, he must spout the history and culture of the islands to the hungry tourists, who seem to have tattoos over their eyes that scream, “Tell me something I don't know, excite my curiosity, wake me up.”

“ Over to the left, the large building you're looking at is the Bishop Museum, Hawaii's largest and oldest museum. A day's visit in its friendly confines is a delight for all who visit the islands, a real must!” he tells his passengers, but even as he speaks in rote memory of his lines, his mind shifts between past experiences with the Kelias he has known and killed, and the future Kelias he will slay, and he wonders what life will be like after he reaches the final number, seven times seven, the one which will make him immortal.

'The Enoa Bus Line can of course accommodate you on a separate and unique trip to the Bishop Museum, if you wish to see the archaeological treasures of the islands,” he says over the P.A. just as they pass the turn for the famous museum. “Should you wish an extended trip into a truly Hawaiian world of gala festivities, topped off by a traditional evening luau, Enoa buses run daily to the Polynesian Cultural Center on the other side of the island. Read about it on the back of your free Enoa Tours map and plan for a six-hour tour.”

The bus came to a shuddering slowdown with traffic jamming up ahead. “No worry, folks,” he tells his charges. “Just a little accident up 'head on da freeway.” At just the right marker and moment, he adds, “Coming up on your right is the world-famous Hula Bowl, host to the world's finest young athletes, the All-Stars of college football each year after the regular season. The Hula Bowl is also known for being the home of…”

He no longer hears himself, having so often done the stock spiel. His mind is partitioned and while the left side takes care of business in the here and now, the other is considering his choices after dark. He might simply go to Alakana's ABC Liquor and Pharmacy on Ala Moana, the street of abundance, where he'd gotten to know the sales clerk enough to call her by her first name, Hiilani, and while she was younger than Kelia by a few years when Kelia had left him, she was all Hawaiian-no mix. At least she'd claimed to be a full-blood native when he'd jokingly asked if there were any full-bloods left. He had bought his newspaper as usual and had been careful not to overstay his welcome, but he did ask her what she'd do if he showed up that evening to drive her home.

“ In the bus?” she had asked, amused.

“ No, I have a car of my own, a nice car.”

“ Really? But I have a boyfriend.”

“ Is he coming to pick you up?”

“ No, he's too lazy. I have to take the bus usually.”

He'd quickly countered with, “If you were my girl, you wouldn't never ride no public bus.”

She'd only smiled coyly at this. So he had repeated his offer to drive her home, finishing with, “What do you say?”

“ Maybe yes, maybe no. I'll see when I see,” she'd teased.

He recognized bait when he smelled it, and he easily assumed that Hiilani was just as loose and fast as Kelia had been; she just hid it well behind her white smock and long braids, which, if allowed to fall, would trail to her back like Kelia's. While not terribly bright, Hiilani held down a regular job. She wasn't a college girl or a streetwalker like some of the others. She was different from Kia and Linda from the university, who'd both ridden for free in his bus when he'd taken another driver's route for two weeks. They'd teased him about being a bus driver, because earlier in class, he'd bragged about working on a big ranch nearby, saying one day he'd become a lawyer or possibly a doctor. A simple check with the registrar might have told either girl that he was barely capable of paying for one class, let alone a full load, and that he was a failing part-timer at the university.

He had flirted with Kia Wailea, telling her all kinds of stories about himself, building himself up to her. She had seemed disinterested until he suddenly surprised her on the strip, where, after several nights of hunting for a new Kelia, he saw her taking on johns for money. It wasn't long before her friend Linda was doing the same. He saw them in broad daylight doing this; he saw it all from the big tinted windshield of his bus.

It was then that Lopaka began to steadily watch his two classmates to learn their routines. He knew from experience that everyone had a routine, that people walked through patterns of existence that dug ruts as deep as canals, and these two girls were no exception. He counseled himself to be patient, to present himself to the girls whenever and wherever possible as a harmless but interested fellow. He was careful not to pressure either of them, but at the same time to learn their likes. Linda, for instance, was a poetry lover and wanted to write poetry, so he located the only book of poetry he owned, an ancient relic left him by his mother, the only item he'd ever known that belonged to her, a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. It endeared him somewhat to Kia, and greatly to Linda, to give her his mother's book of poems. Some years before giving Linda the book, he'd read the sonnets himself, and he'd underlined passages that appealed to him. The underlined passages spoke to him and to her, the hunter and the hunted in intimate conversation, he thought. Surely, she must know to stay away from him after that, he thought. Meanwhile, he continued to hold an inordinate power over the girls, for he knew their daily routines as well as they. It was only a matter of time before he struck. At the exact right moment, he meant to intersect Kia's and Linda's pathways, so that their meeting by chance beamed brightly like a flash of fate, a surprising crisscross of serendipity, when in fact it was well timed and practiced.

Even when Kia, the more streetwise of the two, questioned that fate, and he confessed to following her, she found it romantic that he should go to such lengths. She teased at first, calling him a stalker, then laughing at her own joke, never really believing him capable of anything but total adoration and awe. Then, too late, she learned the truth of his hunt.

Not for the first time does he realize that the very anonymity of his job, and of the large city of Honolulu, makes success in his hunt possible. The fact he has no friends, no relatives any longer-for they have long since abandoned him-and the fact he is considered an introvert and an 'ae 'e, a wandering, shiftless, rootless, unstable soul, an awkward 'ano'e, and odd duck as the whites say, shying from crowds, parties, relatives, presenting a stiff arm to others-all of it aides in the hunt.

No one has willingly come to his bungalow since Kelia left years before.

Still Hiilani, he tells himself, is a high risk. She has close family ties from what he can tell, and already the island families are outraged about the disappearances of Kia and Linda. It may be safest to go elsewhere tonight in his hunt. He might just return to the Waikiki strip to meet for the fourth or fifth time that heavily made-up streetwalker named Terri, but there's something not quite right about her. There's no way she's a native, despite her dress and that horrid, long black wig she wears, but she does-in her costume-look something like Kelia, and if he were to ignore the fact Terri has no Polynesian blood whatsoever, he might imagine her to be another Kelia.

She could be a cop posing as a hooker, he fears. If not, she's obviously an American girl who's gone native. Terri is slender, petite-Kelia's size-pretty, willing enough if the price is right, but he wants her to come regardless of any transaction. He wants her to open herself to him, to make herself vulnerable to him the way Hiilani already has, the way Kia and Linda did. But there's a hard edge to this Terri that speaks of experience.

Linda was different. Lopaka had to lure and bait her over a longer period of time, and even when he did strike, she'd been weakened more by the sudden disappearance of her friend Kia than by him. She didn't particularly wish to go with him that night. While many others followed him like stray dogs to their deaths, Linda did not go so peaceably. She fought. She hurt and even scarred him. She was more like Kelia in that way than any of the others. So, he wonders now, which Kelia is it to be tonight? The streetwalker or the liquor-store clerk who likes to peek at the dirty magazines?

Either way, he will be doing the work of gods…

He often daydreams on his route, even as he tells the tourists what they want to hear; it is one of his few pleasures. His daydreams surround his killing fantasy. He re-invents the moment of attack, binding the limbs, attaching them to the rack he has built especially to hold Kelia helplessly against the wall, a rack like that used by his father against those who broke the law in the village. He relives those dark-time moments with Linda, with Kia, with all the Kelias he has sent over to Ku and in whose destruction he has found gleeful satisfaction, far beyond sexual fulfillment, he assures himself, for with each killing he comes one step closer to his own godhood.

Sometimes his daydreams become inextricably mixed with memories; memories he'd just as soon forget, reshape or counterfeit, memories of hurt and humiliation so intense they must be forged anew if any of it is to make sense. Yet it was in those early years-even as an infant, humiliation and all-that he was first contacted by the running-wind gods to become their servant. The trade winds rocked his cradle.

Remembrance is painful and he hides from it always, yet it finds him, creeps into his daydreams, slithers into his bed, catches him at the wheel and at his weakest moments. Since he is unable to fully escape, a black and inky depression pours over his soul, blotting all else out. Childhood: No matter how he tries, his huge father finds him. His father still wants him to one day become him, but Lopaka has decided on another fate, one offered by a higher power than his earthly father. He escaped his father's tyrannical domination, escaped the place of his birth, the backward life of his youth, when his father sent him away, ostensibly to gain a deep, abiding understanding of the world through a Western education.

His freedom won, he found himself venting his pent-up rage on the unsuspecting in his midst, first on Maui, until his marriage to Kelia when, for a time, he was in control of his primal urges. Still, his angry father, never understanding the depths to which Lopaka had sunk, was enraged on learning that his son had married without consent or traditional ceremony. His father not only cut off all funds for him, but all contact as well, banishing him from ever returning to his island home of Molokai. He had dared to marry below himself, to marry a mixed-blood at that, to take a noanoa, a common peasant, for a wife. Hypocritically, the old man, chief of his puny tribe, had taken in a white woman, living in sin, giving birth to Lopaka, but she had been, according to his royal father, a “high-born haole.”

As a boy of four, he had seen his twin brother die when the ministrations and incantations employed by his father failed miserably to save the boy from a disease that had spread across their homeland. Lopaka, like his deformed brother, Lopeko, was infected with the contagion and very nearly lost his own life at that time. Often now, as in the past, he wishes it had been him whom the gods had taken.

He saw his brother's body taken away by the woman his father would later take as his second wife. He felt the flames of the fire as the little body of his brother was placed upon a stack of others and bumed. He cried out that his brother was still alive, that he could feel the flames scalding his living flesh; Lopaka had the welts on his body to prove it, but no one listened; they assumed it was the fever talking. Lopeko's bones were cast into the sea for fear they would contaminate the burial ground.

Later, as he grew older, Lopaka began to see his father's cruelty, hidden as it was behind a veneer of civility, law and custom, yet clearly present. He also began to slowly realize that his father and he did not look at all alike, and that his father was desperate to have more sons, to replace the misbegotten one, the one without the 'ele'ele, the luminous black color of the Hawaiian eyes, but rather with pale blue eyes, so it was not long before Lopaka realized that he was an embarrassment to his father, a defilement. That while he was the son of the mokoi, he'd been conceived by a haole who'd brought death and disease to the people. Lopaka's mother, too, had succumbed to the devastating disease which she had brought to the village.

His father's attempts to have more children became common knowledge, and everyone in the village spoke behind Lopaka's back about the evil the white blood in him had brought to the village, and how the chief could not possibly pass on his powers to this pale son.

An outsider who never fit in, he became a misfit at an early age, keeping to himself, living an all-but-mute existence, hearing not the voices of loving parents each night, but falling asleep to the whispered curses of anger, disappointment and distrust coming out of his own father.

For years he tried desperately to change his father's mind and the mind of the community, attempting to be him, mimicking the man, following him around like a dog, gazing up at him with admiration and feigned love. He wore the ceremonial lei and garb of the son of a chief, carried the ceremonial knives and clubs, and generally played the part fate had meted out to him in a pathetic attempt to win acceptance from everyone around him. At the same time, he secretly cursed his stepmother and asked the gods of the air and the earth to make her barren. Unable to have children, the stepmother was soon replaced by another, but she, too, could not give the chief another child, for Lopaka's evil magic was powerful. It was the first time the gods granted him his wish, and they opened his eyes to the true nature of his brother's death. It was a death that Lopaka knew in his heart had nothing whatever to do with the disease.

That healing lotion of his own brain that hid such horrors from the conscious child had placed the terror so far away that he'd lost all memory of it until the wind voices came to remind him. They opened his eyes to what his mind had closed on, that young, deformed Lopeko did not die of his illness but by the ceremonial sword belonging to his father. The gods told him that the hand wielding the sword had been his father's, that Lopeko had been an embarrassment to him.

No matter how he tried, Lopaka-a constant, brooding reminder to his father of all the taboos he'd broken-could never fit in, and in fact had good reason to fear for his own life; he was marked from birth and by the death of his twin, and there was no changing the public mind about him. There were other children in the village considered perfect, the epitome of the race, the last vestiges of it, in fact-children who were full-bloods, with rich smiles and warm, radiant 'ele'ele eyes that told of an ancient ancestry, their little bottoms and sturdy legs thick, their baby skin swarthy and their lives filled with freedom and happiness. And when one of their pet birds or dogs disappeared, found later to have been brutally slain with a long blade, it was held up as a warning to them to never tempt the demons of the night and the forests.

Lopaka's earliest memories of creating a state of non-existence in a living creature were now like the playful struggling and curiosity of a child over a complex jigsaw puzzle. Yet those first experiments in creating death where there had been life had stirred in him feelings and sexual emotions he'd never before touched. It was a kind of crude baptism for him, and his newfound religion quickly escalated when he began to lure smaller children into the forests, where he delighted in humiliating and hurting them, until one day a little girl named Alaya was found dead, her body brutally savaged and fed upon by the forest beasts and perhaps some supernatural demons known to lurk in the black shadows amid the mountains.

No one suspected that the demon was the boy who'd lured Alaya into those woods with promises; no one suspected-least of all the other children-not even those whom Lopaka had practiced his little tortures on. No one but his father. Yet Lopaka simply braved it out, strutting about, pretending to be his father, the little keiki ali'i, doling out justice and punishment at the court of his peers just as he'd seen his father, the ali'i kane, do a thousand times The gods sometimes told him that his father was not his true father, that they were; that Lopaka was spawned from the seed of the supernatural. He didn't at first believe this, but as he grew older, more and more signs pointed to the fact that he was not in any way like his father.

His first killing was unintentional. He was hardly into his teens at the time, and Alaya was a trusting eleven-year-old. He might not have killed her had she not had such a vile temper and nasty tongue, had she not screamed out what everyone else thought of him…

He recalls now with a cold and clear memory, like a photographer interested in light and shadow, just how slowly he eased the knife into the child's limb only to maim. She fainted immediately, and he, using one of his father's ceremonial blades, continued to cut. He had learned much from his father, how to get the most out of a torture victim. Still, it surprised him to learn when the little girl's blood gushed forward that he was moved to a higher plane of feeling. The next wound and subsequent ribbon of red lace over her throat so excited him that he was filled with delirious joy, a kind of ecstasy that forced a ritual dance from him.

He was sexually aroused by the little girl's pain, the suffering making him stiffen in his private parts, the blood begging him to taste of death, to take it on his fingers and lap it up…

The entire attack lasted only a few minutes, but within that compressed moment he'd stabbed the girl thirty, perhaps forty times before he was completely spent, using his blade as his penis, totally destroying her. The act blotted out all of her kind-anyone who dared question him or despise him.

It was the first time that his subconscious had authenticated the trinity, the three-way link between the voices in his head, his need for sexual arousal, and the fact he could only reach it through physical violence. Before this, any sexual arousal had been lukewarm and minimal at best, but now it was fiery and fullblown.

Memories, he thinks now, sitting behind the wheel of his clean, air-conditioned bus, have a place, but he prefers memories that arouse him sexually, so he draws most on memories of his recent bloodlettings.

The little bus he drives now bumps off busy H-l, Kamehameha Freeway, and runs the familiar and crowded off-ramp to Pearl Harbor. The bus winds its way around to the lawns of the well-kept entrance of Pearl Harbor, toward the site of the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, with its bones entombed underwater. Lopaka's passengers, fully two-thirds being curious Japanese citizens with cameras in hand, are prepared to record what they consider their history, regardless of what American textbooks say about the war in the Pacific.

So together, American and Japanese tourists, along with Australians, New Zealanders, Europeans and others from around the globe, will go by solemn Coast Guard cutter out to the sunken World War II battleship. There, shoulder to shoulder, they'll read the list of names in alphabetical order on a “wailing wall” monument, the names of privates and noncoms, officers and marines, from H. Aaron to M. Zwarun, Jr. Then the tourists will stand over the underwater tomb of over eleven hundred men, a 184-foot crypt of shattered metal seen clearly through the crystal waters of the harbor only four feet below the concrete platform built over the forecastle of the sunken ship, a liquid rainbow of leaking oil still rippling over the stern after fifty years.

The bus comes to a jerking stop, and the door opens with a swishing sound; Lopaka gets off the bus with his passengers, leads them like children to the gate and haggles with the ticket-handler for twenty-four discounts for his tour group, discounts they're to receive for riding the Enoa Bus Line. He sleepwalks through the process and then tells his passengers where and when to meet after the sightseeing is finished. This done, he returns to his bus and takes it out of the entrance lanes, to park and wait and think more about tonight, about Hiilani, whom he has finally chosen.