Primal Instinct

  PRIMAL INSTINCT

  Robert W. Walker

  Copyright © 2010 by Robert W. Walker, www.robertwalkerbooks.com

  Cover copyright © 2010 by Stephen Walker, www.srwalkerdesigns.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Robert W. Walker.

  1

  Hawaii, the island of Oahu, the outskirts of Honolulu near Koko Head crater... 1:35 A.M., July 12, 1995

  He does a bad Elvis imitation, crooning aloud the words for “Don't Be Cruel” as it's pounding from his car-radio speaker on Hawaii's hottest rock station, KBHT—“Hot Hawaii!” He interrupts himself with a snicker and says, “Too late, hey, Kelia honey... tooooo late for doughn't be cruel, huh, baby?”

  He chuckles lightly at his antics and the irony of the Elvis tune, and then he reaches out to his passenger, lifts the disfigured head from the bloodied chest, and stares into the vacant eyes of the dead girl he calls Kelia. He momentarily studies the fact her hands are missing, both severed at the wrists. He doesn't remember slicing them off, nor, for that matter, if he'd earlier taken time to put the hands on ice. If not, he will secure them later, when he gets back home. Lopaka doesn't remember a lot of what he does while in the act itself; he is able only to piece things completely together after long bouts of depression and weeks of flashback. Looking at the dead girl's hands, for months afterward, allows him to relive the whole experience once again, the only thing save another kill that lends respite from his depression, even if temporarily. And he doesn't think the gods will really miss a pair of hands.

  Kelia, he says mentally to the dead girl beside him, you 're so good for me now and forever.... A touching sentiment with Elvis as backdrop, he thinks.

  He has taken his time with Kelia, all night now, and now it is time to send her over. He is secure behind the moonless Hawaiian night and the black interior of the Buick. He stares again into her dead, vacant eyes. To stare into the abyss, into the iris of death, is part of it, he tells himself.

  Elvis is replaced by a Neil Diamond song: “You got the way to move me.” The cowboy sings now in unison with Diamond, his gruff voice drowning out the mellow tones. “You got the way to move me... you got the way to move me... ahhhh, ahhhh, owwwww!”

  The trade winds have swept over the island of Oahu and the city of Honolulu for several weeks now, the powerful caress like one long, unending, coiling draft begun high atop Mount Haleakala on neighboring Maui, arriving here in full force. Yet the unending wind is adored by the tourists as it allows for lovely, open-air seaside dining, moonlight walks along the beach and palm corridors, making love on the balcony without pesty insects swept up by the trades. It is the same wind that tells him to kill and kill again.

  In the bleak darkness of a moonless sky, the wind now batters the trees that line the lavender-lit Ala Moana roadway; the trade winds threaten to lift and toss the car; so strong are the gusts that they make him think it might be the acrid breath of an ancient, tyrannical island god, perhaps Kaneloa, what the Christian religion calls Satan. Perhaps the great Kaneloa wants Lopaka to know that he approves of this night's work. Soulful voices in the “long” wind which careen down from mauka, the mountain side of the island, as always this time of year, speak clearly of the kapus, taboos broken over time.

  He travels toward the waiting lips of a hungry sea that will lap up the remains of his prey. Maybe it isn't the wind that tells him to kill; maybe it's God.

  His car finds the Kalanianaole, Highway 72 by the road sign, where the smaller tarmac parts with the Interstate, the main thoroughfare through Honolulu and all of Oahu's makai, or southern seaside.

  He drives determinedly yet dreamily up the steep cliffs overlooking Hanauma Bay, fifteen miles south of Honolulu. About three miles further south and he'll be at the southernmost tip of Oahu, at the much-visited-by-day, deserted-by-night tourist snare called the Blow Hole. There, at this crevice in the volcanic rock extending in a cavernous ledge over the waters of the Pacific, he'll dump the girl's body.

  The Pacific waves roll into the mouth of the cavern there with such force that it drives the waters skyward through the Blow Hole, giving it the appearance of a whale's plume, the terrific geyser effect sending the water up for over twenty feet. The spectacular dance between water and earth creates such a powerful force within the cavem that any object cast into it, such as a human body, is immediately pulverized beyond recognition, handily destroying all evidence of his crime, as it has before, in a matter of minutes.

  The girl's clothes, tied in a soft, bloody bundle, will be disposed of elsewhere. She'll leave this world as she entered, with nothing whatever to identify her as the whore and prostitute that she was, a whore of Honolulu.

  “Yeah,” he mutters to himself as he turns off into the well-paved parking lot overlooking the Blow Hole, “trade winds're up.”

  When he steps from the car the wind sweeps about his legs, at first a playful animal encouraging him to carry on his work, now at his back like the hand of a benevolent father firmly pushing him forward. If Kelia were alive and walking around the car to meet him, the wind would be blowing her dress up so high that nothing would be hidden. All the Honolulu whores allow the wind to show their wares. But she no longer walks or talks or cries as she did the night before.

  1:40 A.M., Koko Head Road

  Officer Alan Kaniola was on patrol on the Waialae Road, the old main highway leading out of the city toward the southern end of Oahu. He'd earlier gotten a not-so-unusual report of what appeared to be a street disturbance and a possible kidnapping; at one location a fight had erupted between passengers in two separate vehicles over some slight accident, and at another location along Ala Wai Boulevard there'd been a report of a young girl's having been manhandled and forced into a car apparently against her will. It might be assumed it was a lovers' spat, or an altercation between a hooker and her pimp, but who knows? There was little to identify the car or the attacker, which didn't sound like any pimp Kaniola knew. It was reported as a lackluster vehicle, dark in color, either brown or maroon, lightly tinted blue windows, a battered body but a “souped up” engine, a car otherwise without any distinguishing feature.

  Now here was a maroon Buick sedan in ill repair heading out toward Koko Head, a volcanic promontory at the southern end of the island. The car was traveling at a fairly high rate of speed, and something about it made Kaniola curious. He radioed his position and told Dispatch that he was following a suspicious-looking car, and as he said the words he wondered himself how a car might “look” suspicious.

  He got a buzz from another patrolman. Thorn Hilani, also a Hawaiian cop. Hilani was a big motorcycle cop, and he, too, had noticed the speeding car that was touring toward Koko Head. Hilani fell in behind his friend Kaniola, saying that he would back him up. It was a quiet night except for ceaseless radio static and the knocking noises caused by wind through the coconut palms and monkeypod trees. By daylight this was a beautiful ride, with the stark-white beaches and ceaseless emerald and blue stretch of water below in Hanauma Bay, which nestled between two claws of land jutting out into the Pacific. At this hour, it was a different matter, with no street lights to guide the patrol car as it twisted and turned its way up the precipice, further and further from the lights of Honolulu. But Kaniola liked old Hawaii and he knew the roads well, and he had backpacked into the mountains on many occasions.

  Somehow in the twisting, upward spiral toward Koko Head, Alan
Kaniola lost sight of the car he was pursuing, and then he almost passed it where it was parked in the lot overlooking the bay and the famous Blow Hole.

  He abruptly halted his patrol car, thrust it into reverse and was backing it up just as Hilani's cycle came around the bend, nearly colliding with him, causing Hilani to swear over the police band and blare out with his cycle horn. “Call in our position, Hilani,” Joe told the other officer.

  So much for the element of surprise, thought Kaniola. After having words with Officer Hilani, Joe veered off and into the parking area, which by day was jammed with visiting tourist buses and cars of every size and stripe so that it was a hazard to dare drive in. Here tourists, by the busload, fought for position along the man-made paths and rails to see the famous Blow Hole some thirty or forty meters below, the spray from it wetting their camera lenses.

  Most of the tourists were Japs, lamented Kaniola. Like most Hawaiians, he had a lingering hatred of the Japanese and their attack on Pearl Harbor, which had killed many civilians as well as American enlisted personnel. Kaniola's grandfather had been a victim of that attack, and the stories surrounding that day were as fresh as yesterday's sea catch. Young Hawaiians and part- Hawaiians were taught to never forget the treachery of the Japanese, no matter how big the tip. It was confusing for Hawaiian boys and girls of mixed Japanese blood.

  Nowadays Hawaii had become the Rio de Janeiro of the South Seas, playground of the wealthy Japanese who converged on the islands every year in greater and greater numbers. Newlywed Japanese couples actually married and honeymooned in the islands in order to save the enormous costs of a wedding back home, for if they married in Japan, they had to invite every single member of their far-flung, extended families on both sides. It was no dishonor, however, to elope to Hawaii....Of late, much of the property of the islands had fallen into the hands of wealthy Japanese business interests, replacing to a large degree the historically white economic choke-hold on the islands' wealth; at the same time, native Hawaiians owned little or nothing of lasting value in their own homeland, so disenfranchised had they become at the hands of the English and American haoles decades before. Still, like most Hawaiians, Kaniola preferred the Americans and British to the Japs. Through it all, few Hawaiian full-bloods were as happy as depicted in the tourist literature and Bimbaum's Guide to Paradise.

  Many Hawaiians found solace in booze and forgetfulness; others worked hard to acquire Western paraphernalia to closely imitate the white man's ways, to become if not wealthy, at least capable of providing for their young in an ever more dangerous world. Still others found their native humor, dark and gritty at times, was the best medicine against Western progress, which had long since engulfed Oahu and the city of Honolulu, the Miami of the South Pacific, in particular.

  Alan Kaniola had taken two years of college before enlisting in the police academy in an attempt to bring fortune to himself and his small family of five. Usually, he enjoyed the work and seldom had to use force against anyone, the uniform alone doing most of the talking for him. But Honolulu's crime rate rose steadily each year, now rivaling anything on the mainland. When necessary, he could deal with the toughest of the street element or the Pearl sailors on their own terms. He particularly liked arresting American sailors and Japanese tourists, but whenever he did so, he found himself admonished by his superiors for having too heavy a hand. It was likely this, along with his ancestry, that had kept him from making detective the month before.

  “Much safer to arrest a Chinese or Japanese prostitute,” he once told his father, who ran a small Hawaiian-language newspaper which was pro-native and pro-environmentalist. One of the last of its kind, the paper was called The Ala Ohana, The Pathway of the Extended Family. His old father was old-fashioned, and a dreamer, always with his face to the moon, thought Kaniola.

  Alan flooded the lone vehicle before his patrol car with his searchlight and cautiously got from his car and inched toward the dark Buick with all due care. There appeared no one inside. Thom Hilani stepped briskly along the other side of the car and both men moved in silence.

  At the same moment, each spied the bundle of oil-stained clothing in the rear seat. There were also multiple dark stains on a blanket in the front seat of the car. Hilani made as if to reach inside for the bloody bundle in the rear, the windows being wide open, but the more experienced cop halted him, lifting the garments in his own hands and smelling the coppery odor of the purple stain, realizing at once that it was blood so fresh that it wet his hand. “Go back to your cycle, Thom, and call for backup. I think we may've caught the Trade Winds Killer.”

  “No shit, yeh, auwe, heh? Maybe, huh? Dis gonna make dem okole-holes at headquarters sit up, yeh, damn man!” Thorn always reverted back to the easy rhythms of pidgin English whenever there were no haole cops around to hear.”Hurry, get help, Thorn. This guy could be armed.”

  A blast rang out and Hilani's body hit the pavement so hard that Alan Kaniola heard his friend's skull crack. Kaniola searched for where the shot had come from, but saw only blackness all around, realizing that his own headlights made a perfect silhouette of himself. He dove for cover just as a second shot rang out.

  He was unhit. If he could just get to his radio, call for assistance. The distance between the Buick and his radio car was too great. He had to think fast.

  It figured that the killer was somewhere along the path to the Blow Hole, likely depositing his night's work, a body. What a place to dispose of it, the policeman thought. Damned clever bastard. He tried now to concentrate his night vision along the mouth of the path, and he began firing at what appeared to be the outline of a man. Another shot hit Kaniola in the right shoulder, the impact tearing his firearm from him. He lay helpless alongside the suspect vehicle, bleeding and weakened, clutching the bloodied clothes he'd held in his left hand, pressing them into his wound, desperately trying not to pass out.

  He heard the other man's footsteps nearing, and he saw from below the right fender of the Buick a pair of silver-tipped boots rounding the car. Kaniola had no feeling in his right hand, but he reached for the gun he kept strapped and hidden against his ankle anyway, guiding the hand like a stump. He could feel his strength draining with his blood. He felt his fingertips just reach the second gun when the man's boot came viciously down on his hand.

  The killer stood over him, grinning, a jackal's laugh escaping him, the bastard's features dark and distorted by light and shadow. Kaniola met his dark, disturbing eyes, and in a flash of hope he imagined Thorn getting up, taking aim, and killing the lunatic. Instead, a lightning flash occurred before Alan Kaniola's eyes, the flash of an enormous cane cutter, the huge blade sluicing easily through Kaniola's dark wide throat, painting it and his lapels with his blood.

  The killer quickly tore Kelia's bloodied clothing from the dead cop's contorted fist and returned it, along with the big cane knife, to the safety of his car. There was no telling how many other cops were on their way, and so he hurriedly jumped into the car and wheeled out of the deserted parking lot, leaving the dead cops alone with their gods. He hadn't wanted it to come to this, but they shouldn't have pursued him here. They'd brought it on themselves, he reasoned.

  He turned on the radio and found some soft Hawaiian traditional music, so soothing and real. He forgot about the incident with the policemen, and instead relived in his mind how he had made the girl suffer for what she had done.

  The big sugar cane knife had been cruel and gigantic and shining against the light in her small black Hawaiian eyes. Now there was no light in those eyes, nothing left of her lithe little body, those creamy-skinned legs, or that mocking mouth, thanks to the sea.

  Only a handful more to go, he silently reminded himself.

  2

  I will ransom them from the power of the grave;

  I will redeem them from death....

  Hosea. 13:14

  Off the coast of Maui, below the ocean at Molokini underwater crater, the following day...

  Schools of fat kal
a and malolo fish darted among the blue fire and fan coral, and as Jessica extended a finger, the lovely, star-shaped kihikihi slipped below the brilliant silver and golden-yellow coral, which gleamed beneath the ocean in the refracted light in the undersea forest. There were some six hundred and fifty different varieties of fish in the Hawaiian waters, and Jessica believed she had seen all of them this morning when she had dived from the outrigger Ku's Vision into the famous Molokini crater just southwest of the Wailea coastline on the island of Maui. Here Jessica Coran was scuba-diving with the local dive set, and her mind was free, her body alive. It was the complete and utter feeling of weightlessness and freedom from all things human that excited her, along with the psychological distance from her normally grim work as an FBI medical examiner, that she so needed and wanted. She had dived in the Bahamas, the Keys, Aruba, but there was nothing quite like diving amid a gentle old volcanic crater buried below the ocean to make one step out of oneself and realize the enormity of life on earth.

  At the surface, a crescent-shaped tip of the crater formed Molokini Island; less than a mile in size, it was a marine sanctuary and a haven for divers. Nobody, not even the new Chief of Division IV, Paul Zanek, could touch her here. She'd even forgotten about Jack Westfall, a hardworking FBI grunt whom she'd begun to have strong feelings for just before he killed himself. Jack's last conversation with her had been a call for help which she had not heard.

  “Ever been to the Smokeys?”

  “Smokey Mountains?” she'd asked.

  “Man can get lost in there; swallowed up.”

  “I get my kicks from hunting and diving, Jack, and when I can't get away, it's the firing range.”

  “I try to get there least once a year, to the mountains, I mean....” he'd continued. 'The bluest blues there.”

  'Take me next time,” she'd dared him.