Primal Instinct Page 37

  “News travels fast around the islands, especially on the Hawaiian hot line, Chief Parry. You've been watched since leaving Oahu, and we know of your desecration of the burial site at the Spout.”

  “You're PKO?” asked Jessica.

  “Every Hawaiian is PKO. Some of them just don't know it yet,” replied Awai sternly.

  “Then you do know the chief here.”

  “That's right.”

  “And you wanted your cover protected, so you wanted to wait at the shrine, or were you simply going to turn back for your boat and disappear?”

  “All of the above, but it appears the chief wants to see me as well.”

  “I see your English has improved since we came ashore, too,” said Parry, his teeth now set in anger at the man. “You just better pray, white man.”

  Jessica exploded at Awai even as she fought to keep on her feet, what with being shoved forward. “You harm an agent of the FBI and your little island paradise here'll be swarming with U.S. marshals and G-men. It'll make Waco, Texas, look like a backyard barbecue! Is that what you want, you... you native son of

  a—?”

  “You don't have no juice here, and your haole threats fall empty on Hawaiian soil, so shut up, white bitch.”

  “Do as he says, Jess. Hold onto your temper. We'll have to use our wits here, negotiate an agreement, some sort of amicable settlement so we can extradite Lopaka Kowona. That's all we're here for.”

  “I can just imagine what they'd like for a settlement. Especially Lopaka Kowona,” Jess replied in defeat.

  “Settlement, agreement, you haoles,” said Awai, shaking his head sadly. “You're trying to write up one treaty while you're trampling another.”

  She countered, “You know why we're here! What kind of an animal we're tracking!”

  “The island is off-limits to U.S. military personnel, and the entire Caucasian race. That's what was granted us, this scrap of native land. You desecrate it without a thought, and you look for leniency from our chief?”

  They were forced onward to march to the village. Parry leaned into her and said, “Don't worry, Jess. They're not so stupid as to harm us.”

  “Who even knows we're here, Jim? Anyone?”

  Parry gritted his teeth and air seeped through them in a hiss. “Only Ivers, but Tony's smart. He'll figure it out.” Just then they smelled wood fires and the lingering cooking odors of the village, and in a moment flickering fireflies shown among the wall of green darkness before them, campfires.

  Ben Awai brandished the cane cutter and Parry's .38 over his head as he welcomed himself into camp ahead of the others, calling out his name repeatedly, “Awai, Awai!”

  Ben was greeted by several of the children who'd come awake and wandered to the noise. Women, too, hung on Ben Awai until he shooed them off with their children in tow.

  Jim and Jessica were pushed ahead, out of the dense foliage where they might have found safe hiding, a point from which to observe the village at a safe distance, spying to determine if Lopaka were actually there or not. But all those plans were dashed now, and they were forced to their knees in a neady carved clearing where traditional huts stood about the circle of a communal campfire.

  Jessica felt her stomach chum, fearing the worst lay ahead of them, getting extremely annoyed at the same time with the short creep that kept poking her ribs with a war club.

  She wondered if these people were f6r real or if they were like the survivalists she'd encountered on tf^e mainland, who were more obsessed with a lifestyle than committed to a way of life. The native population was crowded around them, obscuring her view, but she could hear the collective gasp that followed in the wake of Chief Kowona, who parted an Army-issue tarp acting as an entryway cover and came towards them, wearing a thick feathered headdress.

  She felt Jim's hand grasp hers and tightly squeeze. “Let me do the talking. If you talk, he'll see it as a sign of weakness.”

  “Whose weakness?”

  “Mine.”

  25

  Once upon a time a man looked into the reverse side of a mirror and, not seeing his face and head, he became insane.

  The Teachings of Buddha

  They were forced back on their feet and toward the center of the village, while the chief, acting as if they were not even present, performed a ceremony of dancing before the fire, which was brought to a fever pitch by the natives. But Jim suddenly stopped in his tracks beside her, and Jessica, following his eyes, stared across the fire and the compound to a ten-foot-high wood and bamboo rack that looked like an instrument which normally held fish and possibly goat meat stretched across it for drying in the sun.

  A bloodied, mangled man with dark skin and Hawaiian features dangled from the rack, his hands and legs tied to bleeding with thick, native thongs. The man's wounds were man-made, the awful slashes creating a crisscross network of blood and flesh. Below him a Tire kept sending up cinders to rest in his wounds, and dogs sniffed about the dying man's feet, occasionally rising up to lap at the blood as it drained down his calves.

  “Oh, my God,” Jessica moaned. Her worst fears were realized before her eyes. “They may not be cannibals, but they are savages.” Kahoolawe justice appeared both cruel and torturous.

  Jessica was roughly forced ahead. She and Parry stood now side by side, staring at the dangling man on the rack, his face a mask of pain and blood. He'd been slashed repeatedly about the face as well as the naked torso and limbs. Jessica recognized a zigzag pattern to the wounds, realizing that each had some ceremonial significance. Her eyes then traveled to the hapless victim's private parts. His penis had been removed and the stub sewed up and burned in order to cauterize the wound and keep him from bleeding to death. A quick death would obviously end the village's and the old chief's pleasure in watching the man die at the rate of a beheaded snake.

  “Oh, God, Jim,” she sobbed, grabbing onto Parry for support. “I never dreamed—”

  Awai, the cane cutter in his hand, jabbed it into the suffering man's chin and lifted the face, allowing for study of the features. “Here's your mass killer, Lopaka,” he said.

  “Look closely on him,” bellowed Chief Kowona, still in as thick, feathered headdress, coming forward now. When he removed the headdress, they could clearly see that it was Joseph Kaniola.

  “Why, Kaniola, you son of a bitch. You're behind all this,” cursed Jim before lunging at the newspaperman and being restrained by the men around them. “Getting Oniiwah killed wasn't enough for you, no. You have more blood on your hands than you know what to do with, and now this?”

  “I don't expect either of you to believe me, but I had nothing whatever to do with the abduction of the Oniiwah boy. And I regret with my soul that I used his name in my paper. It was a mistake. I should have expected reprisals, but there's not a man here who hasn't made some mistake in this ugly business.”

  Jessica, shaking her head in disbelief, pointedly asked him, “How could you—an educated, civilized man—be a part of this... butchery?”

  “Like you, I am a guest here, no more, no less. Chief Kowona, Lopaka's father, shares my grief at the loss of my son Alan, as well as the combined tears of those who've lost so many daughters, all due to the son he banished from his sight years ago.”

  A man with regal bearing, despite being stoop-shouldered, appeared from the largest hut at the center of the village and Jessica, seeing the intricacy of the leis about his neck, the enormity of the handiwork that'd gone into his feathered kahilis and headdress, and his royal clothing, instantly guessed this to be the real Chief Kowona, for wherever he stepped, others hastened from his path, and wherever he pointed, others stared.

  Jessica searched the old chief's wrinkled yet hard, leathery and brown countenance and the massive, swollen, heavy eyes, finding there a deep sense of remorse, shame and guilt commingling like ancient tenants. She imagined a well of withheld tears and the pain of not being in a position to allow the free flow of grief.

  The old chief's hair, l
ike Lopaka's, was rust-red and about the coal-black eyes she read a resemblance. And this place of red-earth paths recalled to her mind what old Lomelea, the prophet, had seen in his vision, that she'd find the killer in a land of raw earth, scarred not only by the foolishness of human folly, but the tears of a chief over the loss of both his son and his lineage.

  “The old chief feels responsible,” continued Joe Kaniola. “And whether you believe it or not, I also came here from Oahu because I knew you two were getting in over your heads.”

  The chief spoke in Hawaiian, Kaniola translating. “So, you now know I and my son have been sufficiently punished for our crimes.... Eye for an eye, as the missionaries used to say...”

  “This is awful, Kaniola,” she sternly said, pointing to where Lopaka's twitching body continued to feed the insects that swarmed about so many wounds they could not be counted. “How long has he been made to suffer?”

  “What is this, mock indignation?” asked Kaniola.

  “There's nothing mock about it!”

  “I know the feeling among the authorities, you two included. In a state where they put people like Lopaka into a hospital for the criminally insane, you two were hoping to catch him in the Koolau Range and set the dogs on him and pump your bullets into him. So spare me your canned outrage, Dr. Coran. You see, I know about your previous cases, about Matthew Matisak, Simon Archer and others you've personally seen to eternity or wished to.”

  Now the veins in Kaniola's neck told of his anger with her. The chief placed a hand on Kaniola's shoulder and spoke in Hawaiian to him. Kaniola replied in his native tongue before turning back to them and saying, “The old chief wishes to answer your question, Dr. Coran, as to the duration of Lopaka's punishment.”

  “How many days and nights?” asked Jim.

  “Shorter, I assure you, than the suffering he caused when his many victims agonized in their restraints.” Kaniola's reply was a translation of the chief's words, but then he began speaking from his own heart. “Enough of your false outrage. You will take word back with you, Parry. And no one will come behind you to Kahoolawe to make reprisals on these people here. Do you understand this and agree?”

  Parry exchanged a look with Jessica. His eyes and the way his teeth were grinding together told her they'd better take the offer as it might be the only one they were likely to receive here.

  Jessica helplessly stared anew at the suffering Lopaka, studying closely the features beneath the bloody, pulpy mask his face had become.

  “Ho'okahe wai!” shouted Ben Awai at another of the Hawaiian men, who responded by rushing forward with a leather bucket of water.

  “Waiele,” shouted Ben, and the other man sent the water cascading over the tortured man's face, reviving him but barely.

  The water cleaned his features enough to tell both Parry and Jessica that the suffering man on the rack did indeed resemble the photos they'd seen of Lopaka Kowona.

  The aged chief, barely able to straighten his spine, stood before them now in full regalia and headdress and began a river of native words which Kaniola translated.

  “My son who is not my son was sought out by the Ohana and told that he would be given refuge on Kahoolawe if he came to us. The people guiding him were relatives he trusted.”

  Ben Awai interrupted, saying, “I myself am the boy's paternal cousin. The chief is my uncle. Returning him to his homeland of Maui and finally to here was a simple matter. He believed me when I told him that his father, now very ill and weak of mind, would welcome him back.”

  “So I welcomed Lopaka home....” The powerful but croaking voice of the ancient man came out in English haltingly. He had patches of white hair and a broad, strong Hawaiian face below the headdress. Jessica imagined him to be in his late sixties or early seventies, but he was as rigid as wood, powerful in both size and

  dress. Not so spry as Kaniola's great-grand uncle, she thought. He knew enough English to get by, but apparently preferred the ancient tongue. There was a glassy stare and a tear in Chief Kowona's eye, and at his hip, as part of his ceremonial garb, was a powerful sword now caked with blood.

  “You can't let this go on a moment longer, Chief Kowona,” Jessica dared shout. “Lopaka is beaten. End his torment. Turn him over to us. We will see that he—”

  “Men talk this talk!” shouted the chief, his eyes now darting among Kaniola, Awai and Parry. “Now quiet, wahine”She had obviously treaded on one of their many taboos, one she cared little for. Kaniola said, “Here, women do not speak directly to a chief.”

  “Jess,” cautioned Parry, “let me. How long's this torture gone on here, Kaniola? How long?”

  “ 'Elua la noa,” replied the haughty old man.

  “Two days,” Kaniola translated.

  “Crippling your son is not just retribution for his crimes, Chief Kowona,” Parry contested.

  “He will soon be beyond any misery,” Kaniola countered.

  Parry shouted, “He must be returned to Oahu to stand trial in the deaths of—”

  Jessica felt faint at the wretched sight, unable to bear the spectacle of the dying man a moment longer, unable to close her hearing to the animal keening which welled up from deep within his frame, wracking his body to get out in a garbled plea for mercy, his eyes fixed and dilated. She suddenly dropped to one knee, and pretending her own plea for Lopaka, she slapped for the gun strapped to her ankle, brought it up and was about to end Lopaka Kowona's suffering here and now when Chief Kowona's regal hand flew into her line of fire, his huge sword leaping into his other hand as if it were alive, and in the fluid motion expected of a much younger man, he sliced off his son's head, sending shards of the wooden rack in all directions.

  The head tumbled to the dogs, who at first, frightened by the old man's sudden action, crept back slowly to sniff curiously at Lopaka's decapitated and bloody head.

  “Suffers my son no more,” declared the old man, dropping his sword into the red earth before the malevolent son he had dispatched and going to his knees. The old man wailed, his own pain escaping openly before his followers, a punished king. At the same time Jessica and Parry were frozen in place by the display of swift, sure justice that had come with the stroke of the enormous blade, a guillotine of finality descended over them when tribal followers wrested the gun from Jessica's hand, one of them pushing her roughly to the ground. Parry, coming to her aid, fearful the gun would go off, decked her attacker with a single blow, but this was met with a heavy war club to his back and a second to his jaw, knocking him off his feet.

  Jessica crawled to Parry, clutching him, certain now they, too, would be killed by the savage justice of this cruel place. “Jim, Jim, are you all right?” Tears came of their own accord.

  “Justice is served, Parry, Dr. Coran,” said Joe Kaniola.

  “Everything settled,” agreed Ben Awai while both men stood over them.

  Kaniola seemed to be acting as a bishop of sorts here. “Take them to their quarters, Awai, and then return here. We have much to discuss.”

  Jessica and Parry were led away to a guarded hut and told to remain peaceable and silent, and that any attempt at escape would cost them dearly.

  The threat of Lopaka Kowona to the islands was at an end, but now Jessica and James Parry faced a new kind of threat. Surrounded, with no visible way out, no weapons to protect themselves with, they were witnesses to an execution-style murder here on Kahoolawe. It seemed unlikely that they would be allowed to leave with such knowledge.

  At daybreak the old chief, Awai and Kaniola came into their prison. They'd obviously counseled with one another on the situation, but for now Kaniola, sitting on the old chief's right-hand side, began. “No white courts, no white law, no loopholes and no life terms, no appeals or paroles, nor endless denial of justice here, Parry.”

  “No hard to know tribal justice,” croaked a defeated chief.

  “You can both understand the pain and suffering all in this village, the shame and humiliation which these people have endured,
not to mention Chief Kowona's personal loss and shame,” continued Kaniola. “Can't you?”

  Parry exchanged a look with Jessica. “Of course we can,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “And you. Dr. Coran?” She firmly agreed with a slowly building nod, recalling that the chief liked his women silent.

  “Then there is an end to it, here... now,” said Kaniola. “No more pain... no more suffering, a clean end to it.”

  “We can live with that,” agreed Parry. “Can't we, Jessica?” He nudged her.

  “Well... yes...”

  “Good... good, then Ben will take you both back to Maui. Ben,” said Kaniola.

  Ben Awai, looking stunned now, pleaded with Kaniola for an answer. “What? Whataya mean, take them back to Maui?”

  “Just do it, Ben.”

  “But they'll cause trouble for us all, Joe.”

  “You just do as I say, Ben.”

  The argument obviously hadn't yet been settled, but it was now cut short by the chief, who bellowed his own orders. Kaniola translated. “Chief Kowona's talking now to Parry directly. 'Tell everyone outside of Kahoolawe that the Trade Winds Killer is dead, his body fed to the bay.'“

  “Chief,” countered Parry, “no one in my world will believe me when I speak of this.”

  “Chief you are? Among your people are you not?” he asked directly.

  “Yes, but my people do not always believe in the word of their chiefs.”

  He nodded as if he understood this. “Sad it is when people do not trust. Married I once into your race, and result”—he indicated the outer encampment where the headless form on the rack had remained dangling all night—”is dat... monster.”

  Kaniola stared at his old friend, the chief, who struggled now to his feet, the others following suit. Parry and Jessica were told to follow. Standing now in the encampment, Parry stretched and Jessica clung to him.

  Jessica could hear the flies before she got up nerve to look in their direction. Already at work, they buzzed about and perched in Lopaka's dead eyes, laying their eggs against the soft tissues, there just ten feet from her. The man's red body was suspended like a grotesque doll on the rack. With the sun bathing the entire village in a crimson dawn, reflecting back the red soil, she recalled Lomelea's prediction that she would never completely take hold of the red shadow, Lopaka, but that she would find a place like this where the sun would appear to be a blood orange in the sky and where the paths were scarlet.