Primal Instinct

17

Mid-morning, the same day

It is at times like this that Lopaka Kowona feels most closely to Kelia again. Again he has her where he can control her; again he has total domination over her. He can do anything to her body; he can even make love to her body again now, if he so chooses.

Waking from the best sleep he'd had since the last Kelia, he stares up at her remains, her eyes staring vacantly back at him, her flesh crisscrossed with blood rivulets, the surface of her creamy skin looking now as if it had been turned inside out. Silently her weight tugs against the restraints and the rack sags; even in death, she fights her fate, she wants down.

He wants to see her come down now, too. Down and out of here, in fact. But how? His car is useless, and if he has it towed and repaired, the bullet hole in the gas pan could easily be a beacon to police after last night's near capture. He needs to know what's going on outside.

He switches on the TV in hope of finding out any information, but he has missed all the news broadcasts. It's mid-morning.

He flicks off the TV set and tries the radio. He switches from station to station for any information. He gives up, leaving on KBHT, Hawaii's hottest rock station, the D.J. spinning “Give Me That Or Time Rock 'n' Roll.”

He then remembers to check for the newspaper on his doorstep, the Ala Ohana. The paper had been recently filled with news of how the cops had arrested the owner of Paniolo's bar and grill, claiming that he was a likely suspect in the Trade Winds killings, both pleasing Lopaka and frightening him, because while he despised Paniolo, the obvious conclusion was that the authorities were drawing ever closer to the truth. He'd known Ewelo back on Maui where they'd both been working cowboys on a ranch there. The man was a Samoan asshole, a creep and a bully, reminding Lopaka of his father in several salient habits and nasty practices.

Still, on coming to Oahu, he'd looked Paniolo up, asking for a job. Paniolo had put him to selling in the limited drug trade he was just putting together, but they'd had a falling out over the money exchange, Paniolo proving to be sharper than he'd let on, allowing Lopaka to dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole.

He'd finally paid Paniolo back, but for a time Lopaka had had to watch his back, fearful that the other man would come out of the next dark comer to put a knife in his ribs. That was Paniolo's style. So Lopaka had taken to wearing one of his more easily concealed knives in an ankle sheath at all times. So far as Lopaka was concerned, the arrest of this man was the best possible solution to the island's ongoing problem with the Trade Winds Killer. Still, it made him nervous to think that the cops had struck so close to home. He hadn't been in Paniolo's employ for over a year, but records could reveal his former association; hell, Paniolo might even think to implicate him, knowing of his liking for swords and knives, and if this happened, the authorities could be at his door within minutes.

He paces, telling himself nervously that there is so damned much hinging on so many things he can't control, and Kelia-her vacant eyes staring like the embers of a dying sun in the west-is now a shadow being, also uncontrollable, unless he can finish what he has started. He lifts his camera and begins taking shots of the dead store clerk's final repose. He takes up the remaining roll, his enthusiasm for the picture-taking escalating as he goes. But his mind is still preyed upon by the mounting fears of his own exposure.

He's too close to his ultimate goal to be caught now, he tells himself. Seven years he has stalked and killed for Ku, and admittedly for his own self-gratification and lust. Seven years of seven victims minus four. He is four away from final victory, the moment when Ku will unconditionally embrace him and enfold him into His bountiful, cosmic arms to accept Lopaka Kowona as an equal.

Things just need to go on a little longer, to be brought to a final resolution, when seven victims this year would end his quest, when the power he would obtain would arrest the red flame of Kelia's life forever, He breathes deeply, inhaling death's presence deeply, thinking of the peaceful kingdom which lies ahead in which he would hold that crimson shadow in his fist in firm, godly fashion.

He goes to the door and looks outside at the bright sunlit, narrow strip of beaten tarmac, the winding, hilly ribbon-like folds where it has buckled. He absently takes in the temperature, the wind conditions, the dryness, and scans the surrounding mountainside, finding nothing out of the ordinary. It's already hot out, a promise of another scorcher. As expected, his paper has been lying there since dawn. Lopaka lifts it and pops the rubber band and hurriedly scans it where he stands in his underwear, the red hue to his skin and the smell of blood about him causing him no alarm. His front door and most of his small house are protected from view by a thick, wild border of pandanus trees.

A certain bravado pervades his mind, telling him that if there is a sharpshooter hidden up there in the mountains, then let him fire. His lazy stance outside the door is a dare he can take. Ku will protect his own.

The front page of the little newspaper strikes him as hard as any bullet. His face, or a very close facsimile, is on the front page, along with his first name, Lopaka. He's stunned, his knees wobbling. It must've come from Paniolo, is all that he can conceive. The lousy bastard has given him up as the Trade Winds Killer, obviously unable to recall his last name but not his features.

“ MotherfuckingbastardPaniolo!” he screeches and darts back into the lair. He scans the paper for what the outside world knows of him. It appears at first very little, in fact, and he catches his breath. He then sees what the paper assumed to be a separate story, that of his near capture of the night before. He scans the story to learn what they know, and it comes clear that the car outside his door is a major liability now. They know the make and model. They know that the fuel line or gas pan was spewing gas as the car sped away. The story relates the tale of a “heroic” attempt on the part of a beefy-faced Irish cop named Ivers to stop a hit-and-run driver, a subsequent fire and the cop's bout with his injuries. A photograph of Ivers shows a tired-looking man with thinning gray hair and a surly glare at the camera.

A scan of missing-persons reports has turned up the fact that Hiilani has not come home the night before, so the paper-not waiting the official twenty-four-hour grace period the HPD usually allows Lopaka-has put out a cry for information regarding her, an accompanying shot showing her sitting before a birthday cake in a crowded little room. Her employer has given a description of Lopaka which is startlingly close, but which the fools haven't yet put together with the description in the Trade Winds Killer story, at least so far as he can tell.

Lopaka feels his knees wobbling. They could stop him. They could put an end to his quest today, within the hour, within a minute, if someone puts two and two together; if Paniolo's memory improves, if that bastard Claxton should for once think past his nose-hell, even if his newsboy that morning smelled the gasoline odor that still lingered to the Buick… or if some particularly observant tourist on the bus yesterday stared too long at his mug shot on the visor.

Panic drips into his brain, filling him with an acidic fear, a consternation and dread like nothing he's ever experienced before.

He feels strongly now he must run, escape to finish his work elsewhere, in a safer environment. But where and how to get there?

Relatives… get to your relatives, he tells himself. The island is teeming with them. One of them will help you off the island; blood is thicker than anything, they say. Besides, what relative would ever imagine the enormity of his crimes, or link him seriously with the string of murders. All he need do is speak of a bad drug transaction that has gotten him into serious shit with a creep like Paniolo, who would implicate his own mother to save his own neck. That will suffice, he tells himself.

“ But what about Kelia?” ask the voices in his head.

“ Her remains must be cleansed and sent over. “

“ You can't just leave her here like this. “

“ I'll be back for her. I'll find a way,” he replies, going for the closet-like bathroom, where he rinses blood from his hands and chest and abdomen. Using a hand rag he wipes it from between his toes and off his shins, leaving it to linger on his private parts. He quickly dresses, gulps down a glass of water and taking all of his savings, rushes out, locking the door behind him. He walks down the narrow, winding road for the main road where he can catch a bus, aware that neighbors who have seldom if ever seen him are staring from behind windows and drapes.

“ I'll be back for you, Kelia,” he vows halfway down the hot road when he hears the rack inside his den and inside his head sag once more with her weight, as if in reply.

Navy divers called in by the FBI had given every effort to recover any unusual objects and bones found in, around and about the area of the Blow Hole, but very little was forthcoming. Some of the bones found were not bones at all but fossilized coral, others were animal bones, but there was a human femur, an ankle bracelet, an earring, several watches and one human pelvic bone. The Blow Hole and its subterranean runway was giving up very little; it appeared that this particular purgatory was a timeless one for the victims of the Cane Cutter.

Still, Jessica couldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, so she thanked the Navy representatives who'd come bearing these questionable forensic gifts, apologizing for not being able to do more. And with Dr. Lau's help, she went instantly to work over the new specimens.

“ God, what I wouldn't give for a skull,” she now told Lau, her exasperation apparent.

The little man silently nodded his understanding, picking about the sad assortment of bone fragments, and clearing his throat, he added, “It would be too easy.”

She knew what he meant. With a skull identification could be far more rapid and sure, with its teeth intact, for then extractions, scars and other features unique to an individual could be “hit” points on an I.D. chart. All they'd need were comparison X-rays showing faulty tooth occlusions and corrections, and a good forensic orthodontist to tell them what they were looking at. But as Lau said, nothing came easily.

Photographs of the cleaned and dried artifacts brought up by the Navy divers had to be made, but not before cleaning in bleach, soap and ammonia and then a thorough drying. Some of the bones were in a fragile condition, flakes peeling away. It would take time to air-dry them for a day or two before they could safely be handled, but who had that kind of time? She knew they'd have to allow time its due nonetheless. The waiting was one of the more maddening aspects of the work.

Like hef, Lau was anxious, wanting immediate answers and so vulnerable to wrong interpretations as a result. They must do as her father had always said, “Bow to the wisdom of time.”

But even so, even with the naked eye and the encrusted femur, Jessica could read the fact it bore an injury, an injury that looked like the painful rent of a powerful metal object like a cane cutter or even a sword. Lau, looking from the femur to her and back again, saw the same indelible fracture.

As soon as the bones were air-dried and photographed they'd go to work with the Butvar, a granular, dry adhesive mixed to a gel-like consistency and applied liberally to the porous bone fragments to permanently fix them. After this dried, the fragments could be newly photographed and the photos so tagged.

For any of the pieces that might be found to fit together, they'd use Florentine Red Wax to re-invent the structure. It was the same wax used by archaeologists to reconstruct pottery pieces. The process promised only tedium without any further guarantees, but Jessica was saved from this purgatory when a lab tech called out that a phone call had come for her.

“ Tell 'em we're busy here!” she countered, not wanting to leave Lau alone with the unsavory work.

“ It's Chief Parry.”

She frowned and Lau, with a funny little gesture of the fingers in a miniature horse race, indicated for her to run. “Chop, chop,” he said.

“ I won't be long,” she promised.

'Take whatever time is necessary, Dr. Coran. We here can manage with these paltry bones.”

She nodded and moved off at once, going for the office that'd been turned over to her. Closing the door, she took Parry's call. “Hello, Jim?”

“ We got an interesting cross-reference on a lead that could pan out to be our killer. You interested?”

“ Damn straight, I am.”

“ I talked with Ivers. He gave me a name, a first name, Lopaka.”

“ Lopaka?” She repeated it, realizing that it was the same as that given by Lomelea, Kaniola's great-granduncle, when she had visited him at the shrine. “Robert,” she said into the phone.

“ Hmmmmm, your Hawaiian is coming along,” he replied curiously. “Anyway, seems when Paniolo Ewelo was shown the police sketch we put together and the tapes were played for him, he instantly came up with Terri Reno's would-be protector and provider.”

“ That's great.”

“ And get this, the name's Lopaka. Ewelo calls this guy a creep, if you can imagine that.”

“ Our boy scout pointing a finger? Imagine that. Of course, you know how impressed a jury will be with Ewelo.”

The sarcasm and truth of what she was saying wasn't lost on Parry, who continued. “Well, I think we can nail this bastard without cutting any deals with Ewelo.”

“ Really? Do you have another avenue?”

“ Yeah, our fat friend. Professor Claxton, came up with the same name when Tony questioned him with the new information. Seems the creep is on one of his old class rosters, but had dropped out prior to completion.”

“ So now Claxton's memory is jogged. Convenient. You sure he isn't just reacting to events?”

“ Sure he's reacting to events. Claxton got shit scared out of him when Ewelo and his boys killed Oniiwah; don't let the man's bravado in front of female cops and tough guys like me fool you. He seems also to have remembered someone he slept with once, someone Paniolo fixed him up with.”

“ Really? He slept with Linda Kahala like Oniiwah said, but not for a grade change?”

“ And Kia before Linda. Seems the relationship between Claxton and the cowboy goes a lot deeper.”

“ Patron of the prostitutes and benefactor, I get it.” She leaned back as far as the office chair would take her, interested, listening intently now while her fingers idly played with a paperweight in the shape of the islands, an odd object to say the least. “The guy's full name is Lopaka Kowona,” Parry said.

She repeated the name slowly as if doing so would exorcise all demons. She had a sense, a purely instinctual feel about the name, that it belonged to the Trade Winds Killer, Linda Kahala's murderer. “And you say Ivers picked up on the same name?”

“ Nate heard the abducted girl call her abductor Lopaka. I had Gagliano check with the registrar's office at the university, and he found that there was a Lopaka Kowona registered part-time at the same time that both Kia and Linda Kahala were enrolled. Nate also wrote down half a license plate number and a check with DMV shows it registered to a Lopaka Kowona. Enough to get a warrant? Probable cause? You bet it is, and now we've got a door to kick.”

“ I'll be damned,” she said, a feeling of relief washing over her. It was probably too late for the pretty little girl she'd read about in the Union Jack that morning, but this could mean an end to a seven-year reign of terror about the islands. The series of lucky strokes was almost too much to believe. “I want to be there,” she demanded.

“ If we can nail this guy Kowona, and Ivers and Claxton both I.D. him, we put the lid on his coffin without cutting any deals with Ewelo. That'd be the crowning glory.”

She pushed aside the paperweight and realized how like a dragon the series of humps that made up the islands were.

“ Don't get your hopes up too high, Jim. It sounds like we'll still need Ewelo as corroborating-”

“ To hell with that.”

“ What?”

“ Try this. A maroon sedan's sitting in this guy's driveway as we speak, and it stinks of a gasoline rupture. HPD has had an APB on the description of the car all night, and with one of their own hospitalized, they look that much harder.”

“ Damn, then maybe we do have the bastard dead to rights after all? I want in.”

“ You realize this girl, Hiilani, could well be in that house?”

“ Let's hope she is. Otherwise, she's at the bottom of the ocean, and if that's the case, we'll have a hell of a time proving our case.”

“ Not if we can find enough trace evidence inside the car and the house.”

“ I'm with you.” And she was. Many cases today were being solved even in the absence of a body by virtue of the magic of DNA, blood, and serum typing, fiber and trace evidence.”Meet me at the garage, and bring your bag, and I've got an ambulance on standby,” Parry said. “I got a bad feeling about this one… think we're going to need a lot of plastic bags.”

Everyone was in on the kill. And everyone who wasn't wanted to be. Terri Reno and her burly partner Kalvin Haley were on hand, along with Tony Gagliano, Jim Parry and Jessica and everyone in the Hawaii FBI who had worked the case, plus a couple of HPD squad cars, one carrying Police Commissioner Dave Scanlon. They had all collected out front of the remote little bungalow on this bright Hawaiian day, the sun blinding in its intensity, the heat sending up a searing mix of gasoline and blood that mingled in the few feet between home and auto. Something about the house and the loud music coming from inside the crumbling little structure, its deserted location on a dead-end street, the terminus a crevasse looking two miles back down toward the city, and even something about the dark maroon car spoke clearly to Jessica that this was it.

At the door, there was no answer to Tony Gagliano's insistent pounding. Tony called out, “FBI, open up!”

The waiting seemed a lifetime before Parry abruptly shouted to Gagliano, “Kick the sonofabitch in.”

“ You got it, Boss,” said Gagliano, relishing the moment. “It'll make me feel useful.”

Everyone had a gun drawn. With all his might, Tony made a clean strike at the lock, sending the door in on its hinges, wood splintering going up against the door frame creating spiked lances. From within, the blare of a Hawaiian radio station hammered out an old favorite, Jim Croce's “Leroy Brown.” Swelling up also from within the dark little interior was an odor like nothing Jessica had ever encountered, not even in an exhumation. The odor wafted past the door, which, swinging on its destroyed hinges, made an eerie irk-irk-irking sound.

“ Smells bad,” complained Gagliano, whipping out a large red bandanna to cover his nostrils and mouth before stepping through.

“ Don't touch anything,” Jessica warned from behind Parry, who quickly followed Gagliano inside, using a flashlight to illuminate the place. The incredible sunlit brightness of the Hawaiian street outside was at such great odds with the bleak hole of the doorway, so that every shadow inside was plunged that much further into darkness. Jessica's skin crawled as she stepped past the dangling door, her nostrils now flaring at the thick, pungent odor of death emanating from inside as if the odor were a living creature that had taken up residence permanently and was about to pounce shadowlike from a comer. Her eyes battled to adjust to the lack of light. When her eyes won, she found Gagliano and Parry staring back in her direction, Gagliano playing the flashlight over the wall behind Jessica's head and to her immediate left.

The place was a pigsty, she was thinking when she heard Jim's warning: “Don't turn around, Jess.”

She did exactly as instructed not to do, turned and gasped at the mutilated woman dangling there, her features torn from her, making it impossible to readily identify her as the young store clerk listed as missing. Jessica's immediate reaction was one of horror and fright, but at the same time she saw the telltale signature wounds she'd come to expect from the Trade Winds Killer, each slash a meaningful symbol to the insane man. These body art marks created by Lopaka had until now been mere speculation, since all previous victims had been swallowed up by the sea.

She shuddered at the enormity of the suffering that was apparent. Parry grabbed onto her shoulders and tried to usher her out.

“ No, no, Jim,” she said, pulling free of him. “Have to protect the… integrity of the crime scene… learn everything we can about this sadistic monster.”

“ Just step out and get your bearings, Jess.”

“ Going out at this point'II just make it doubly hard to step back in, and it'll just make breathing tenfold harder. No.” She remained adamant. “Just get me some decent illumination in here and the best equipment you've got.” She was panting, trying to gain control of her autonomous reflexes. “And… and for God's sake, Jim, don't let anybody walk through here until I'm finished.”

He looked deeply into her eyes, biting his lip and biting back his own sense of horror and insult, and recalling for a moment her tenderness of the night before, tried to reconcile that with the woman he stood before now.

“ Do it, damnit. Get me some field lights in here and one of those newly developed ultraviolet reflective imaging systems if you've got one. We'll intensify the light in here seventy thousand times and maybe, just maybe we can find some usable prints in this pigsty, but whatever we do, we're going to find enough evidence to bury this bastard. The death penalty in effect in Hawaii? God, I hope so.”

“ Sorry, no can do… not even the chamber,” replied Tony, shaking his head. “And if we ever needed it…”

“ Too good for this guy,” countered Jim Parry.

On the wall, on an elaborately constructed bamboo and wood “meat” rack, hanging by her wrists, her legs dangling free, Hiilani's corpse was like an agonizing, deafening scream that drowned out anything Jessica or anyone else had to say. The body, somehow like a stone object with soft, human eyes, might be made of papier-mache and paint, ketchup and fake blood, except that the caked-on stuff was real and the flesh was responsive to the touch, the vitality of the cells having returned after rigor had come and gone, releasing the corpse from its stiffness, allowing a kind of supple “life” to return at the cellular level. Naturally, all of the lividity was in the lower extremities, all the blood having rushed there. She might appear mannequin-like, but she wouldn't feel that way, not when Jessica had to touch and prod the corpse for wound measurements, specimens and samples and slides and swabs.

She thought of the stark bone-fragment evidence brought in by the Navy guys, and now this. “You wanted evidence,” she muttered to no one in particular, staring at the leis made of teeth and native hair, predicted by the old man.

“ Not like this,” replied Parry.”Careful for what you wish…”Gagliano had staggered about the small enclosure trying to train his eye on something-anything but the mutilated China doll on the wall. In doing so, like Jessica, he began to go to work, scanning for anything that might be useful. He immediately zeroed in on a rack of swords and knives on a wall the other side of the room. “Jesus, look at these,” he said, pointing, about to reach out and touch one of the blades before catching himself.

“ Check the refrigerator,” Jessica told them.

“ What?” asked Gagliano.

“ Mutilation murderers… lust killers, they often keep 'trophies' on ice. Like the ropes he used on her.”

“ What about the ropes?” asked Jim, coming closer and shouting at Terri Reno, Haley and the others at the doorway to stay out, that it was already too damned crowded inside. Reno shouted back, “Do we have the son of a bitch or not?”

“ We know where he kills,” Parry replied tersely before turning his attention back to Jessica, who, using a scalpel pulled from her jacket pocket, sliced one of the restraints holding the victim. This brought both victim and rack further from the wall, but everything held.

She held out the twisted rope. “It's human hair, most likely from his earlier victims.”

“ Jesus… and teeth, human teeth.”

Gagliano moved to the icebox and snatched the door open to find it relatively empty, the little light coming from it reflecting off the dead girl on the wall, making her look like an odd specimen in a house of horrors display. The fridge compartment revealed a man who didn't live on food.

“ Check the freezer compartment,” said Jim, holding onto the black-hair rope which might well have been Lina Kahala's hair.

Gagliano swallowed hard before snatching open the freezer door. He did so a little too abruptly, and out flowed a stack of frozen female hands complete with rings and painted nails. Tony hopped back, gasping and swearing when the solid, iced hands hit the floor like so many T-bone steaks.

Parry called to the others who'd remained outside daring only to poke their heads beyond the perimeter of the broken door. He called for field generators and to have Dr. Lau dispatch all the evidence-technician support he could muster.

The men outside fought over who'd get to do this chore. Along the narrow street outside, nearby residents had begun to assemble, stare and point.

Jessica thought of the old man on the mountain, Kaniola's great-granduncle, and his predictions. How true to form was this? she wondered. Had he been speaking in symbolic epigrams? Was the red path that led to the sun here on the caked and bloodied floor of this awful place that led to the sunlight outdoors? Had he foreseen this? Hadn't he called the killer Lopaka? Had he known this Lopaka Kowona all along? Was Lopaka Kowona the child in the story the old man told of a chief who had killed one son for his deformities while another watched? Serial killers were bom of man and woman, many bom of much less pain than this Lopaka suffered on seeing his crippled brother destroyed in a dark wood by his father, and later burned in the village pyre-slash-garbage dump, his bones unceremoniously dumped in the ocean where the sacrilegious and demonic were cast out.

She wondered how much of this “legend” and ancient history had to do with the real killer. She wondered how much-if any-of her visit to Kaniola's seer she wished to share with Jim; wondered whether now it had any relevance or not. All Parry and company need do now was to locate the whereabouts of Lopaka Kowona. As soon as the Hawaiian community learned that one of her own had been at bottom of the Trade Winds killings, as soon as Lopaka's name was made public throughout the islands, he would either be cornered by the authorities, or murdered quietly the way George Oniiwah had been. She had no illusions anymore about Joseph Kaniola's agenda. She knew that he would be, if given the chance, the one to ram the spear through Lopaka Kowona's heart, to end the life of this vampire who preyed on young Polynesian women.

Had Kaniola known of Lopaka, suspecting him for some time now? If the university professor Claxton and the lowlife Ewelo both knew of Lopaka, then the all-knowing, nosey newsman must've had some inkling, especially after Lopaka's police sketch and description were handed to him. Joe Kaniola was among the first in Hawaii to get this description, and his very next move was a friendly visit to his great-granduncle's shrine? Had he simply been using Jessica to loosen the old man's tongue? Perhaps and maybe, she thought, recalling the tape recorder at Kaniola's side.

Kaniola had been shrewd throughout, shrewd and determined to see that his son was avenged. Revenge was best served up cold, the old saying went, and it would seem that Kaniola's every move since his son's death had been quite cool, quite calculated.

“ Jim, I've got to tell you about something,” she finally said, while Parry, evidence bags in hand, was scooping up the dismembered hands of each victim of the Trade Winds Killer.

“ What's that, Jess?”

She quickly surprised him about her early morning visit to the guru on the mountain.

“ I've heard of the old man, but I didn't know he was related to Kaniola,” Parry finally said. “Explains your new look.”

She stared, her shoulders rising, her eyes questioning.

“ Your cane. I noticed earlier that you were liberated from it. I was just naive enough to think that maybe I'd had something to do with its… disappearance.”

“ Yeah, well… maybe you did. Anyway, I had to give the old man something.”

“ In return for a handful of fifty-fifty generalizations any palm reader might've handed you?”

“ He was extremely close to Lopaka Kowona's description, Jim. Pouting, large lips, flame-red hair, dysfunctional.”

“ But he couldn't give you a name and address…”

“ No, but he may very well have given it to Joe Kaniola.”

“ Whataya' mean?”

“ I think Kaniola went there hoping the old man would verify his own suspicion that you and I were wrong about Ewelo being the killer, and that the old man would confirm his conviction the killer was not in custody.”

“ So, you think Kaniola's going after this guy Lopaka?”

“ If he finds him before we do, we'll be trying Joseph in a court of law instead of Lopaka,” she said with certainty. “And as for the cane, Lomelea needed it more than I did.”

He nodded, understanding. “I'll see where Kaniola is and put a tail on him.”

“ Good idea. Meantime, I'll do what I can here.”

Watching Parry lift the bag of hands to give to Gagliano before he stepped back out into the light made a powerful image in her mind. This side of the door was like being in the looking glass; this side of the door was some rung in the spirals of Hades described in Dante's Inferno; on the other side of the door there was light and paradise waiting. She wondered what was hardest, stepping out or staying in. In Jim's case he'd go out to his car now, make some calls on his radio, feel the ocean breeze and God's warm hand in the form of sunlight against his brow, but he'd have to climb back into this red hell a second time. She and Gagliano remained this side of the mirror, in the bleak shadow world of evil and death and madness.

Her bag was passed through to her as if she and Gagliano were down inside a deep hole and those outside were providing a source of hope and sustenance from above. Still, none of the others wanted to climb down into the hole, content to watch from the other side of the looking glass.

Gagliano reached out to her, placing his meaty paw on her shoulder, and said, “Doc, I have to admit… you've got some grit.”

“ My father called it sand.” She was privately pleased that Jim's best friend had finally accepted her.

Jessica now forced all annoyances, images, sights, sounds and odors and her own encroaching fears and phantoms from her consciousness; she pushed Jim and Tony and the racket of the others from her mind. She snatched open her valise and pulled forth her white lab coat and gloves. She searched next for the necessary tools of her trade. It was time to do her part.