Primal Instinct Read online

“Have to get rest... sleep,” he anxiously tells himself now. He has suffered now for two years with bouts of insomnia; it is one of the reasons he willingly accepts night-shift work from 2 to 10 P.M. He's become used to sleeping three or four hours a day, scouting the downtown area for a while before going on duty, and then returning afterwards to the streets of Oahu to continue his hunt. But today is his day off.

  He is not easily satisfied. His princesses all must be elegant, at least in appearance, to appease his gods. They must be strong- willed, not the pliant, easy pickups that will get into a car with just anyone. He likes them to stand up to him, to fight. It shows their courage, that they're worthy of his plan to re-ignite the powerful lords of the islands who speak to him, speak through him, urging him along the path he has chosen.

  “Lopaka,” they each in turn call out to him. “Lopaka... son of chiefs before you...”

  “It is you... Cowboy Lopaka. “

  They each reach out to him through their sonorous voices. Their voices all mesh into one when they chant his name. The sound of it reverberates through his brain. They claim him as one of their own.

  “Lopaka...”

  “We, your gods, need you... beg you...”

  “... feed the hunger...”

  “... hunger that is great...”

  “... feed the blood-sky-fire that feeds you...”

  “... empty yourself into us...”

  “... into the unbearable fire coursing through us...”

  “... find us... give us your fire heart...”

  “... give us our daily red...

  He stands it—the suffering of those ethereal voices, dripping with unimaginable sorrow, stabbing at his brain—until he can stand it no more.

  This is how he remembers it in the beginning, with the first life he ever sacrificed to the voices. It had begun with the noises in the wind, voices only he could hear, even long before he ever knew Kelia. He'd tried to change after meeting Kelia, whose presence at first ended the lamenting voices inside his head. For a time the voices were silent and held in check.

  After Kelia had left, he slowly came to a startling realization: The gods had chosen Kelia for him, to grant him a special insight into their spectral world. Kelia was really the kind of sacrifice they wanted. And finally, he'd known what the gods wanted of him, why he had been born, why he had come here from his true homeland, what his purpose, after all, was... and why he killed. All part of a plan beyond even his full comprehension.

  He is so focused by them when he kills that it happens independently of him, as if his limbs and his mind are overtaken by the powers who speak through his actions, as if he is no more than an arrow of his gods, as if he is not even truly present in the normal sense.

  The next day, after he kills, he's awakened into a new body and being, refreshed and feeling clear-headed, remembering only the final moments before she finally expired, her blood spewing about him, painting him as he carves on and ejaculates on the body.

  His ingenious method of disposing of the bodies he also owes to the inspiration of his gods.

  In time, under the most common of circumstances, he will remember snatches of what he has done—or rather, what they have done, until eventually flashes of memory will reveal everything—absolutely everything.

  He recalls only one name for all his victims, Kelia—for they are all one and the same when they belong to him; they are no longer Lindas or Kias, but Kelias. He knows they are all alike; that they are all shallow little creatures, interested only in pop music and rock stars, in mindless magazines and makeup, in instant gratification—“What's between their legs”—in becoming yet another dark-skinned haole, loving all things white. Western and decadent. Kelia—the real Kelia—is a full-blood Hawaiian, rarer these days than a virgin, but the Kelias he has sent to his gods were all of mixed blood, and now the gods are repeating their demand for a full-blood Hawaiian. He has tried to get it right, but the intermarriage between the races makes it near impossible here in Oahu to find such a flower for his gods.

  To him, there seems little difference, just so they look like Kelia, so that when he begins to hack away with the cane knives or the swords, he might voyeuristically enjoy Kelia's torturous death again; it seems of no importance what kind of blood it is while he is catching it in his hands, sending it to the ceiling and walls or rubbing it into his nude body in an ecstatic orgy of body art.

  His little bungalow's walls bear the marks of many such deaths now. It is fortunate that he lives at the end of a dead-end street against a vacant lot, his closest neighbors the clannish Portuguese down the block. No one ever seems disturbed by the noise or the odors coming from his home.

  But now with the killing of the two Hawaiian cops, he worries. They are not killings he planned or wanted, particularly since the men killed were Hawaiians, and most certainly he was not told to take these lives by his Hawaiian gods, who have, for the moment, abandoned him. His gods speak continually of regeneration and rebirth, of a great empowering of the Hawaiian race far beyond what the Hawaiian politicians and newspapers scream for. How then do they feel about his having killed two strong Hawaiian warriors? He now wonders.

  Warriors, hell... he rationalizes his last killings. They were working for the man, playing white cop.

  He now puts his head against his pillow on the bloodstained couch and tries desperately to pretend that his eyes are weary, that he is sleepy. The drugs he uses have helped to bring him down; still, his eyes roam about the little place, marking where the previous night's fresh blood, brighter in color, shining in the glow of the oil lamp, has splattered the ceiling fan. He is effectively painting his interior in crimson, all since Kelia's leaving.

  He wonders again if Kelia will ever return. Wonders if he will ever again find her. Again... perhaps a pointless time frame as long as she refuses to understand. Still, he wonders and wanders over the shards of his past, the moments when he tried to convince her, what he might have said to otherwise convince her to accept her fate, to become a sacrificial lamb. Now the what-ifs cram into his mind. He wonders if he can gain her back, what then? Might she understand now more than she did? Would she ever willingly share his newfound religion with him? Or would she again run... again too afraid to allow him a single cut, much less willingly sacrifice her life for his beliefs.

  He stares at the still-blaring TV set. Reporters are jockeying for position around the federal building downtown, trying to get some joker in a beige suit to talk about the deaths of two kanaka cops. It looks like a re-hash of the earlier news programs, and so he pretty well ignores it, just letting the voices wash over his brain, their tedium hopefully helping him to get the sleep he so needs, when suddenly his ears perk at the mention of a supposed human body part found at the Blow Hole.

  “Ho'ino wale, damn! Kuamuamu.r' he curses.

  He instantly sits upright, staring at questioner and questioned. The FBI man wears expensive Costa Del Mar dark glasses and has handsome haole features, is tall and ruddy-complexioned. He quickly denies knowledge of any body parts dredged from the Blow Hole.

  “It's impossible,” Lopaka tells himself.

  The TV voice continues. “Seems some boys were playing a prank, a practical joke, with some mannequin parts,” says the FBI man named on the screen as Parry. “Scared a few tourists using broken parts of mannequin. That's all.”

  They got part of her out. They found part of Kelia.... He cringes, stares about at the evidence of multiple murder all around him. He wonders what he must do. Wonders what his gods want him to do. He can't possibly go on as if nothing has happened, as if all is right with his world, as if they don't know anything about him anymore, and aren't actively searching for him this fucking moment. Before now authorities knew only what the gods wanted them to know, only that a shadowy “maybe-man” called the Trade Winds Killer whom they hadn't a clue about was abducting whores. But now? Now they know something about him, and they know something about Kelia; they have a part of her, something that
belongs to Ku... and they'll have the Blow Hole staked out.

  The thought terrifies him.

  He imagines they know his name, his place of work, where he lives. That they have the living Kelia in custody and under questioning, grilling her. He imagines they have the dead Kelia's head, and the damned thing is speaking to them from its parched lips.

  He envisions them crashing through his door with huge animal nets and a cage to put him into; imagines them dragging him before the TV cameras now focused on a second FBI man named Gagliano. He imagines being dragged into a court of law, being sentenced to a life behind bars unless he is executed by some angry cop or relative.

  “Hell,” he tries to convince himself, “such a quick end mightn't be so bad, really.”

  It'd mean an end to all his unrest, to the fevered state of his soul; maybe in the next life he'll be a god, a real god... not some make-believe god, or at least somebody. In this life, what chance did he have with his father always standing over him? His bloody father was the reason he chose to leave home to seek out a place of his own, and perhaps why he hears the voices in the trade winds, and perhaps why he helps the evil ones to feed upon the Kelias of the world. His father was one of the sharks, and so was he....

  In this life, if he'd never heard the voices telling him what to do, what would he be? Nothing, less than the sand on the beach, dirt. Besides, now on the rare occasion when he dares disobey his gods, they torch his brain with a searing red poker that scorches with a great fever of disquiet. It is the worst kind of torture imaginable, like super-heated, jagged knives being slowly placed into his eyes and ears, and the only release comes with slaughtering sacrifices in the manner of his own torture, as if Ku is showing him the way it is done.

  He remembers heating the sword the night before, thrusting it, searing flesh.

  The gods warn constantly of tortures far in excess of anything mankind might do to him, that these god-directed tortures wait for him should he fail to do what he is told. If he were locked up and unable to provide for his gods, what then might they do to him? He shudders at the thought. Now a moment of calm washes over his brain. What does he have to worry about? he asks himself. No one has the first idea that he's guilty of anything, that he's the Trade Winds Killer, and they never will. He closes his eyes and sleeps his fitful, drug-induced sleep until a calm peace descends like an unexpected gift....

  He dreams of a lush forested backyard and a hiding place where once he felt safe, a place where Father can't find him. The dream lulls him into deeper and more peaceful sleep at first, but then the forested area is stripped away, the soft, billowy dream colors turning crimson and black, the dream itself replaced in a sudden eclipse of images....

  Another dream or another's dream? A dream out of the mind of a god? A vision? his subconscious is asking. It's an unfamiliar landscape; it's not his dream... coming from someplace else, someone else...

  ... deceptively simple and pleasing, a pair of enormous hazel eyes looking squarely into his brain, as if...

  He gasps on realizing the woman's soft eyes are looking into his brain, slicing with a laser, his removed scalp pulled over his eyes. The eyes are those of a giant Kelia, larger than Diamond Head, larger than the island itself, boring into him and lifting everything from his mind and knowing. She always knew.

  He must find Kelia... must destroy her.

  5

  Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces kings of.

  Horace. Odes

  Paul Zanek at Quantico told her in no uncertain terms to remain in Oahu and cooperate completely with Parry, and to keep him and the Psychological Profile Team in Virginia informed and abreast of developments, and that they would do all in their power at long distance to help profile and track the supposed killer.

  “I was supposed to be taking it easy here, having a vacation, you know, how do they spell it, r-e-s-t?”

  “Sorry, Jess, but Parry's in straits there, what with his main guy out. Trust me, nobody planned this.”

  “Sure, Chief. I'm just feeling tired and a little sorry for myself.”

  “Remember, anything you need, Jess.”

  “Don't you get on a plane and start out just yet. So far I've seen nothing to indicate we've even got a serial killer here.”

  “Parry's an experienced bureau chief, Jess, and I'd—”

  “He could be blowing smoke this time tomorrow, Chief. I'll let you know. My regards to J.T. and the team.”

  “Thorpe's in Detroit.”

  “Oh?”

  “Something nasty cooking there; series of slum killings, mostly homeless.”

  “Well, if you hear from him, tell him I send my regards.”

  After she hung up, she gave a few moments' thought to John Thorpe, her next-in-command at the criminology lab at Quantico in Sector IV. He'd recently undergone a difficult bit of surgery, and this on top of a tough divorce that had separated him from his kids. It sounded like J.T. was a man of his word, burying himself in his work. She had a choice now of showering, calling room service for dinner or going through the nine files staring at her from the table across the room. She'd just as soon go to sleep, but her mind wandered back to New York City and Alan Rychman, whom she'd still not forgiven for forsaking her here. He had promised her for months that he'd get away with her to Hawaii and that everything was set, but now that he was angling for commissioner, he had very little say-so about his own schedule or life, it seemed. So they'd argued again. As it looked now, she supposed it was perhaps best that Alan had missed his flight after all, since things were shaping up here as they were. She imagined his rage had he been here, seeing her sucked into the island case. If he were in her company when all this occurred, he'd be as upset with her as she presently was with him.

  She toyed with the idea of calling Alan, as he'd have no idea where she was by now. If he did call, he'd be trying to find her in Maui. Maybe he'd left word at the hotel there. She made a quick connection and learned that there'd been no word from Alan after all. Maybe she'd just let him stew. She decided to shower, and was soon under the relaxing spray. Fresh now, she put on a robe and stepped out onto the balcony to watch the brilliant orange, lavender and purple spray of sun and cloud out over the ocean on this gorgeous Hawaiian night settling lazily over the city. It was beautiful and exotic, this place so many thousands upon thousands of miles from Quantico, Virginia, which she'd called home since her days in the FBI academy.

  As beautiful as Hawaii was, her heart was heavy. She'd come a hell of a long way just to be alone. She thought again of the moment in San Francisco when she finally got it: the fact that Alan Rychman wasn't going to be meeting her there to fly on to the Hawaiian islands with her after all. His city. New York, had won again, just as on earlier occasions. Still, she was honest enough to agree that her own profession had called her away from him more than once.

  Perhaps their relationship had been doomed from the start, as her friend J.T. had said in his less-than-comforting certainty when she'd called to cry long-distance on his shoulder, inviting him to join her and knowing how foolish it sounded the moment the words left her. She just didn't want to be alone so far from home. It wasn't like she was trying to muscle in and take advantage of J.T.'s recent change of status to single and less-than-carefree. Nothing was certain in a world where even J.T.'s supposedly perfect marriage had gone aground on the jagged rocks of divorce. There hadn't been a single clue, so closed-mouthed had he remained about it.

  “Life as medical cops,” she muttered to herself, sipping at some wine she'd found in the dry bar. She had an M.E. after her name, and she was an FBI agent, but it all boiled down to the work of a cop, after all, and it left little in its wake for what others might consider a normal life.

  “A relative term at best,” she reassured herself with another of her father's favored phrases. She recalled him saying these words when, as an army brat, she'd protested his lifestyle as less than normal; so uprooted were they t
ime and again.

  “But when do you get to slow down, enjoy life. Dad?” she'd asked.

  “I do enjoy life, Jess. I love my work.”

  “And what about me and Mama?”

  “I love you guys, too.”

  She felt a tear well up at the memory. It was not long after that her father was filled with regret at not having loved her mother enough, at not having spent more time with them both. She had had to reassure him thereafter until his death that he'd been a terrific husband and father, and he had. He had raised her to be independent, to be a self-starter, a hard worker, a self-thinker, and to be obsessive about caring. He had taught her the tactics of the deer hunter, the methods of the hunt and how to deal with the prey once you caught it. He had taught her strength and gentleness in the same lessons.

  She wiped away her tears and stared out at the expanse of ocean, getting dreamily caught up in the ebb and flow of the current far below her balcony. Lovers walked among the palm- lined paths in the distance where Waikiki Beach was lit with the torches of a luau just getting underway. The trade winds blustered about the balustrades and rattled the small outdoor furniture, threatening to lift her robe to reveal her nudity beneath, but the feel of the wind against her skin was warm and pleasing as if it were alive and interested in her alone.

  “More than I can say for Alan Rychman.” Her sad little joke was followed by a pout.

  She allowed her mind to play with the wind as it poured over and through her, at first not hearing the phone, which was ringing insistently inside her room.

  Blowing out a long thread of exasperated air, she stepped back inside, out of the wind and stars to lift the receiver.

  “Have you eaten?” It was Parry.

  “No, I mean, yes... I mean, I was about to order from room service.”

  “I'm downstairs... and if you'd care to have someone to dine with, well... I just thought...”

  He sounded like a nervous boy. She cleared her throat. “I'm awfully tired.”

  “Maybe a little wine and some decent opaka-paka will—”