Primal Instinct Read online

  Jessica could see the pained expression on Tern's face from across the room, and she could well imagine what was going through Terri's mind at the moment. She flashed on a time when she was defenseless against a maniac bent on taking her own life.Parry continued. “While you two are busy with a sketch artist, Haley, the rest of us want to hear those surveillance tapes. Terri, you get started with Don Myers. Haley, fetch those tapes.”

  “Will do, Boss.” Kalvin Haley needed no second telling, relieved to be going out of earshot of his chief.

  “The guy knows Hal Ewelo,” Parry said thoughtfully, “and Ewelo ironically kills an innocent kid in an attempt to leam the killer's identity!” He shook his head. “Sometimes people do prove the stereotype, and Ewelo's one stupid kanaka. We push Ewelo harder, find out who his friends are, who his goddamned relatives are, who he knows that's kinky or strange or sexless in his estimation, anything out of the norm. Promise the bastard a deal. Tony, you're on that, and don't hesitate to use this information to get some leverage with the bastard.”

  “He's called in a lawyer.”

  “Then do it with his lawyer present, but do it.”

  Tony hustled off, disappearing as Haley had before him.

  “We're going to end the killing,” said a resolved Parry.

  Every wheel went into motion. Parry, along with Jessica, listened intently to the taped meanderings of their latest mystery suspect, and she found Robert all that Haley had said and more. He sounded like a pitiful soul, a poor castaway wretch, just searching the city for a little kind word, a soft touch, a pleasant smile. He talked of everything and anything, almost nonstop, as if Terri were a long-lost relative, and with each contact, he became more and more familiar while maintaining a mewing, whimpering voice, conspiratorial actually, in which he maintained that he was a lot like Terri, a down-and-outer, misunderstood by his parents, his friends and relatives, not to mention his bosses, and that he had kicked about from one job to the next, always being pushed around by some bully or a boss, and always fired or let go because someone didn't like him. Politics, he called it. On subsequent tapes he let Terri know more about himself, or about his false self, one could not tell for certain. He spoke of his favorite job once as a cowboy.

  This made both agents sit up after the long and tedious rendition of the previous tapes.

  “Oh, really? A cowboy.” Terri's leering laughter followed, and then: “Ever ride a cowgirl? Want to break this mare? Huh, cowwwww-booooyT'

  “You don't believe me?” he asked her.

  “Sure... sure, cowboy. I believe you.”

  “It was a big ranch on Maui. I was in charge of strays and fence-mending. I did an excellent job.”

  “Then why did you leave your pony on Maui, cowboy, for this? Bright lights, big city and pretty things like me?”

  “You are pretty.”

  “You want me? You got the money, cowboy?”

  “I... I tol' ya, I don't cheapen a lady like that. If you just come with me, I... I can take care of you, make you eternally happy. It's not about money.”

  “Honey, everything's about money.”

  “No, not everything. I tell ya, I can set you up with everything. Maybe, in time, you get to know me better, you might wanna marry me or something....”

  Terri laughed uproariously and contemptuously, which effectively served to end the conversation, but still he came back for more the following night.

  “Now we've got two cowboys who know each other, both from Maui. This guy and Ewelo,” Parry said. “Let's go see how Terri and Kalvin are doing with the sketch artist.”

  The sketch artist, Don Myers, with Terri Reno's help had accomplished a great deal. Myers was better than the usual police sketch artist and was in fact an accomplished painter on the island, doing Hawaiian scenes that sold in the boutiques around Honolulu. The rendition here was a true creation with pigmentation and shading, detailed and sharp. Obviously, Terri Reno had remembered far more of her strange night visitor than even she'd realized. With Haley's additions, the portrait of the killer was remarkably clean and distinctive, the eyes like emotionless blue stones.

  “If we're going to see him tonight or tomorrow night, why bother with a sketch?” Terri, the junior member of the team, wanted to know. “Why not just pick him up?”

  Haley raised a hand asking that he be allowed to field this one while the others looked on. Haley told his partner, “You see, dearie, it's like this. If we have the sketch of the suspect ahead-a-time, before we nab 'im, it's just one more nail in his bloody coffin.”

  “One more item to stack onto the evidence side when a judge and jury get at him,” added Parry.

  “But it's just our suspicions, now isn't it?” she replied in a mock Cockney accent. “How's it going to hold up in a court of law these days?”

  “Police suspicions are still worth a little something in a court of law, and FBI suspicions even more. Add the fact we were concurrently working on this sketch along with what we got from the connection with Hal Ewelo, and every bit helps,” Jim Parry explained. “I just hope Tony can get something out of Ewelo before we have to use the sketch and taped voice on him. It'd sit better if the bastard would implicate our man before we flash a picture or run a tape in the interrogation room, believe me.”

  Jessica only half heard the legal discussion among the others, becoming lost in the sad, doe eyes of their possible mass murderer, marveling at the features, so mild on the surface, not the least resembling a Halole Ewelo; rather this was the face of anonymity here in the islands, the face of a half-breed, a hapa haole, of which there were literally hundreds of thousands, many with the telltale wide cheekbones of the native, the somewhat slanting eyes, the thick neck and nappy, native red-brown hair and the softened nose and bone structure of the white race. The only feature that marked him as remarkable were those cerulean eyes in the native face. There was no telltale distinguishing scar or birthmark, nothing but the vacant blue coals for eyes and a slight haole tinge to his skin. The natives had called the first whites they'd encountered haoles because of their pale skin, assuming they were the dead ancestors come back to roam the earth in ashen and anemic form, risen as it were from the grave. There was certainly something dead about this man, Jessica thought, and much to mark him as partially white. His Hawaiian features dominated, but there was a muted understatement that spoke of his mixed-blood ancestry, possibly part American, certainly Caucasian.

  “At least now we've got something real to rattle the snake with, heh. Chief?” asked Haley, whose infectious smile and bright Aussie eyes had lightened the intense work.

  Everyone in the room knew the value of actually having hard information before walking into an interrogation room, and knew that at the moment Tony was only working a bluff with Paniolo. “Get a copy down to Tony right away, Don,” Parry instructed the artist. “And spread 'em around. Call Dave Scanlon and share it with him. Tell him he can take it to the nightly news guys tonight if he wants.”

  The decision to allow Scanlon to give it to the press represented a gamble. Parry was damned if he did, damned if he didn't. They could sit on the suspect's description or put it out as an APB. If they withheld the information from the public, it could end up costing another life; by the same token, if they published it along with the sketch, the killer was also likely to know, and his first reaction most likely would be fleeing and going into extended hiding, possibly escaping the island. Because Parry wanted him off the streets of Oahu at any cost, he chose to put out an APB and to involve the TV and radio stations as well as the press. At the same time, he had all the airlines, passenger ships and Port Authority points notified.

  Myers picked up his art materials and promised to get copies around as ordered, took a bow to a standing ovation and quickly left.

  “Now, let's get back out on the street, and this time, Haley, I'm going to be there with you when Junior here shows up. As for you, Terri, just play the creep the exact same as always. Bat it right back at him. He says
he's a cowboy, stomp on his horse.”

  She smiled at this. “Got it, but what if he wants me to go bye-bye with him? Not so sure I want to be alone with the Devil, if you know what I mean.”

  “We'll escort you to the door, and as soon as he's home and closing the door on you, we'll kick it in and search the place on probable cause.”

  “The tape and the sketch?” she asked, wondering if that was enough to make probable cause.

  “That and the connection with Ewelo, yeah. But we need to know where his den is, and unless Ewelo comes clean with it, well, it's up to us.”

  “Been a hell of a night for discovery,” commented Jessica.

  “Quantum leap!” Parry replied, smiling for the first time all day. Jessica agreed with Jim's moves. Something had to end. Either the killings or the killer's life had to stop. Something had to shake loose. Something had to give.

  No more women could be abducted, mutilated and cast into the sea by the Cane Cutter.

  The description alone would cause a great ripple effect across the islands: Hawaiian male of mixed ancestry, light-skinned, thickly built, five-nine, 165 pounds, age twenty-seven to thirty, dark blue eyes, driving a Buick sedan, possibly black to maroon in color.

  It wasn't much, but it was, along with the sketch, far more than they'd had before now.

  13

  The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman.

  Shakespeare, King Lear, III, iv

  Midnight, July 17. near Fort DeRussy, Honolulu

  Beneath multicolored signs and lights, Lopaka prowls the streets of Oahu's Waikiki area, blending in easily with the ebb and flow of tourists. At one with his surroundings, wearing a billowy Hawaiian shirt, he lets his tattooed arms hang free and unencumbered. The only thing that marks him as different from everyone else on the street is that he isn't in a group, that he strolls alone, yet he might easily be regarded as a bellhop for one of the dozens of hotels along the strip, or even a clerk from one of the countless shops here.

  He's pacing outside the ABC Liquor and Pharmacy, waiting for Hiilani's shift to end. She is his newest Kelia who has yet to feel his brand of final absolution. She half expects him, after all. She wants it, even though she doesn't completely understand why. He hopes not to disappoint her.

  He has seen some other possibilities tonight, but with the store clerk he has a history, and that will make for small talk and a rapport he has yet to build with the other girls he has marked. With Hiilani, who is easily flattered and easily amused, he can be more natural. He'll offer her some of his weed. She can take it or leave it, he'll tell her, but either way, he finds her beautiful and he wants to be alone with her. In his car a hypodermic filled with a narcotic is awaiting her arrival.

  She 'II come away with me, climb into my car without argument, and go with me. a lamb to my slaughterhouse. Once inside... the thought makes him swell and bulge. He swoons with a flush of heat and power that is too much for his neurons to take, exciting his blood, and tingling his private parts in a way that ordinary sex had never done.

  He is intent on his prey now, and the circling perimeter of his stroll is coming in tighter and tighter loops as the time for Kelia's appearance approaches.

  Timing, like the smoke, mirrors and sleight of hand of a magician—diversionary actions—all become the tools of the hunter. Everything is fair; everyone is fair game; nothing is kapu so long as the result feeds his god, for it then becomes a sanctifying, a ho'okapu, and no more taboo....

  It had been so with Linda Kahala, his last Kelia. She was surprised to see him at first, perhaps even embarrassed a little, although he'd had her in his sights for several weeks by then. It was obvious she was turning tricks on the avenue. It was the only way she could possibly come up with the money she needed for tuition, and she wanted out of her house in the worst way, so she needed rent money as well. She had confided a great deal before they got to his place. When she'd first laid eyes on him, a failure and a dropout in her eyes, she hadn't wanted anything to do with him, but then he wore her down with his attentions, returning nightly to shower her with high praise, telling her that she did not need to prostitute herself, that if she came to live with him, he could take care of her and defray the costs of her tuition as well, that he was the answer to all her prayers. Remembering how she loved poetry, he reminded her of the book of Shakespearean sonnets that had belonged to his mother, which he'd given her.

  He pressed her, begged, pleaded, not for her services, but for her... saying he was lonely and that he could free her of the streets, if only she would just be his. This offer gave her pause, but at first she still remained recalcitrant, saying she had no usual price, and that she was no whore. After five weeks of this, he threatened her with exposure to her parents, whom he'd met once when she'd brought him home with another friend. Then he begged her apology for being so low to even suggest such blackmail.

  She hadn't actually wanted to go with him that night, but when he grabbed her and she felt the strength in his arms as he forced her into his car, his grip caused her to relent, to in fact freeze for a moment.

  She let out a little cry and said, “All right... all right, you don't have to get rough. Damn it, Lopaka, look, you've brought up a bruise. If you're going to get rough, I'll never speak to you again.”

  He apologized. “Once you see how nice my place is, and once you have a littlepakalolo with me, you'll know you're in heaven. You'll never have to work the street again, I swear.”

  “How're you going to do that? Pay for me every night? And what about Paniolo?”

  'To hell with that bastard. One day, I'll cut his throat.” He had half expected her to leap from the car before he could pull away from the curb, but she seemed to have resigned herself by then. Perhaps she liked the idea of his coming to her “rescue,” or the thought of his slitting Paniolo's throat. Either way, that night he lived up to his promise: She never again had to return to the streets. Now she was with all the previous Kelias and with Ku, the great god of the seas, the winds, the fire and all things.

  As always, his mind wanders back to Kelia. She was his wife, and they had met in bustling, busy Lahaina on Maui. Both of them had aspirations to go to Honolulu and the University of Hawaii, but neither had enough money at the time. They talked freely with one another and found much in common, and soon they made a pact that somehow, together, they would one day make it to Honolulu and the university.

  Kelia had sacrificed so much for him, working and saving, and while their sex life was unfulfilling—due his inability to perform without some type of sadism involved—they managed to maintain the relationship.

  Kelia was good for him, never judgmental, always supportive, never angry or upset or afraid of him. Soon she was even allowing some sadism to be played out on her for the sake of their relationship. She was the first and only woman to understand that his craving was a compulsion. She pretended to enjoy it, the humiliation he heaped on her, but her love for him was no pretense, not at first anyway. Then he found her with another man.

  All the memories of childhood flooded back in on him, the memories of torment and the inadequacies he had felt all his life. Unable to cope, he locked her in a closet, her hands and feet tied, her eyes blindfolded, for a day and a night before he went to her with one of the many swords he kept in the house, fully intending to do to her what he'd done to other women who had hurt him.

  He removed her blindfold, wanting her to see his anger. He slapped her repeatedly and brandished the long blade, slicing parts of her clothing while telling her how he had killed the little girl named Alaya in his village so many years before, and now the disappearances of young native women reported on the Island of Maui were due to him.

  He watched her squirm against the cold touch of the blade, and he felt himself becoming sexually aroused. She pleaded, struggled against him and this only made him harder and hotter, and he ejaculated into his pants, and he grabbed her roughly by her wild black hair and shoved her face into the growing wet spot, hi
s blade raised above the soft nape of the neck, prepared now to fall.

  But at the last he stopped him self, unable to punish her further fearful of what the sight of her blood would do to him. He knew that if he drew the least blood, he would revel in spilling all hei blood.

  He instead loosened her bonds, kicked her hard, and ordered hei to get away from him. She didn't need to be told a second time She tore from the house with the shredded clothing on her back He never saw or heard from her ever again—except in his fantasies, when he finds her again on a street comer in Waikiki.

  And tonight Lopaka's eye falls on the lovely, little sales clerk Hiilani as she steps from the brightly lit store to wait outside foi her boyfriend to arrive and pick her up. But no luck for her mean; much luck for him; his patience is rewarded, for now she's goinj straight for the bus stop. There are some others at the stop, but thi« does not deter him.

  “Ho, Hiilani, hi!” He startles her from behind, but she laughs a her own fright, her eyes sparkling, trusting and smiling. “Lopaka? Whatchu doing here?” she asks coyly as he smiles back, displaying his crooked front teeth.

  “I tol' you, I come fo' you.” Lopaka falls easily into pidgin English to further put his prey at ease.

  “But I gotta go home.”

  “To dat lazy boyfriend? He no can bother to pick you up, even with a killer running round da island, killing girls who look like

  you?”

  “All of the girls didn't look like me. I saw the papers.”

  “They were all like you,” he disagreed.

  She shook her head, not wanting to hear this.

  “I mean all of dem was Polynesian girls with long, dark hair like yours, and beautiful eyes like yours, and all about your age. Dat's why I'm frightened fo' you, and I will happily drive you home.”