Primal Instinct Page 24

  new child in place, the chief brooded and feared that the evil-looking, obviously cursed son would infect his new son. When the sickly boy grew ill in a new bout of suffering, the chief drunkenly took hold of him and carried him out in a storm into the forest, where he destroyed the child, using a ceremonial blade. Later, telling his people that the boy had wandered away and had been mangled by the beasts of the forests, he had the body taken to the village dump, claiming it to be cursed, and had it burned in a ceremony to defeat the devils that plagued his royal house. The bones were cast into the sea, an act of disdain, an ignominious end for a Hawaiian soul. He did so before the eyes of his adopted child.

  Over the years, as the adopted child grew, it became more and more apparent that while this well child did not show any physical signs of disease, he was morally and spiritually crippled in ways unapparent until one looked into his cold blue eyes.

  Kaniola added, almost as an afterthought, “This child was banished from the life of the commune when his father discovered that he had killed a girl child younger than himself.”

  Jessica now stared from Joe to the old man, who was slowly climbing from his trance state.

  “Are you saying that our killer is this same child? Or is this a quaint Hawaiian parable?”

  “I cannot say,” replied Kaniola. “I have heard this tale in many guises. It is possible it may be just a parable, as you say.”

  She asked the old man outright, and Kaniola put it to him in Hawaiian.

  “It is truth at least in one eye,” whispered the old man in English.

  Whose eye? she wondered. His or the killer's?

  “This child... today he is a ho 'o-haole ia as his people say, and they banished him.”

  “A ho 'a-what?”

  “He apes the white people, became Americanized by the white schools and books,” said Joe, “kina like me, hey, Great Uncle?”

  “I don't suppose you have a name for this boy?” she asked.

  “Lo-paka.” The old man spewed the name with spittle.

  “Lopaka?”

  “That is how it come to me, yes.”

  “It is what you Americans and English call Robert,” said Kaniola.

  “He once on Maui lived... cowpuncher,” said Lomelea. Here was another clue that Terri Reno's Robert and Ewelo were connected. Joe pursued this. He spoke to his great-granduncle for a moment in native Hawaiian, leading him toward Ewelo, Jessica recognizing only the name.

  “Paniolo, yes... yes,” replied the old man unmistakably, “cowboy... cowboy...”

  Joe frowned and now asked the old man if there was anything else he might want to add.

  The old man, by now extremely weary, shook his head, pulled himself from the lotus position he'd assumed and, with Joe's help, found his hammock.Jessica knew that much of what the old man had said about the killer might easily have been surmised from Kaniola or other sources, yet there was something genuine about Lomelea. And could it be purely coincidental that Terri Reno's strange admirer had called him self Robert? It was information Parry had withheld from the press release.

  Jessica went to the old man and extended her cane to him, his eyes lighting up in response. He rubbed the silver handle between his hands appreciatively and pointed to his wall. He had already selected a place of prominence to display the gift.

  17

  Murder is not an instinct but an invention.

  From the Notebooks of Dr. Jessica Coran

  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?”