take care of you.” He seemed to hesitate.
I’d been wrong about the fire. I thought it had used up all the fuel in that part of the park, that we were safe. But as I stood there across from Jeff White, I could hear the fire had returned, feel the heat, smell the smoke. The kids were so frightened they were paralyzed, but at any moment they could start crying or screaming again, which would make it that much harder to get Jeff White to focus on me. I was also worried that Haoa and his team were going to stumble on us any minute, adding yet another unpredictable element.
Then Pele stepped in once again. Although I can’t say I believe in the old Hawaiian religion, as a surfer I’ve often seen the power of nature and felt that it’s possible there is a divine hand guiding it. Maybe Pele was angry that someone else had started a fire, or maybe one of the other gods or goddesses that protect the islands alerted her and asked her intervention.
First there was a big cracking noise, and some ironwood trees off to the right caught on fire. They lit up the area brightly, distracting all of us for a moment.
I’ve tried since then to piece together what happened next. I think the little boy, Cole, must have tried to free his sister then, starting to pummel Jeff White’s leg. Jeff lowered the gun hand for a minute to fight the boy off.
That’s when Haoa and his team came bursting through the trees from the left. Jeff was clearly scared. He turned and let go of Caitlin, then raised his hand and started to shoot, first at me, then at Haoa and his team. I quickly dropped into a crouch, balanced my arm as best I could, and shot, hoping for the best.
It was all chaos after Jeff White fell to the ground. The fire was raging around us, and the air still rang with the sound of our gunfire.
I had to take a minute to evaluate. I was feeling shaky, but I hadn’t been hit in the crossfire. Neither had Haoa or the two uniforms with him-Frank Sit, and another guy I didn’t know. Tony Lee and Steve Hart had both gotten what looked like shallow wounds.
Jeff White was sitting on the ground sobbing, holding his upper arm, which was bleeding. He’d dropped his gun, and the kids had run to Akoni, who had them both wrapped in his beefy arms. Cole Harding had a bullet wound in his upper chest and he was breathing shallowly, the blood dripping onto Akoni’s shirt as my partner talked soothingly to both kids. Caitlin was sobbing and shaking, but she’d nestled her head against Akoni’s bulk.
I inched over to Jeff and picked up his gun. But it was clear that all the fight had gone out of him. I helped him stand, and though I knew he had done terrible things, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. I’d been stuck in the closet myself, and I knew what that was like.
By then it was incredibly hot, and the sweat was pouring down all of us. Haoa took Caitlin Harding from Akoni, and said, “We’ve got to get out of here before the fire comes back.”
We started down the path, Haoa leading, with the little girl cradled against him. Akoni went next, carrying Cole Harding. When we’d worked together, he and his wife had been thinking about kids, and I hoped that they would start soon. For a big man, he could be very delicate, and like with Haoa, kids could feel the good spirit flowing out of him.
Steve Hart and Tony Lee went next, holding each other up. Both were bleeding, and I hoped that they were only flesh wounds, and that they’d make it down safely to the paramedics.
I picked up Sheila White and slung her over my shoulder, just as I’d done with Sandra Guarino after the Marriage Project bombing. Jeff White stumbled behind me, with Frank Sit keeping his gun trained on him. Within moments the flames were licking at our backs, and we had to run, as best we could, down the slippery, twisting mountain path.
It felt like we were souls trying to escape from hell, noise and heat and flames all around us. I wanted to pray but I was too intent on finding the next safe place to put my foot down, holding onto Sheila White and saying, “Stay with me, bitch. I want to see you alive and behind bars.” And I didn’t want Jimmy Ah Wong to ever feel he’d been responsible for her death.
A loud noise erupted to our right, and I was sure that there was another set of flames about to hit us-but it was a pair of wild pigs, racing through the underbrush trying to find a safe place away from the fire.
A minute later, we ran right into a line of firefighters, Mike among them, and they managed to beat the flames back enough so that we could get clear. I hated leaving Mike behind, fighting the fire, but I knew I had no choice. I had to get the people I was responsible for to safety.
JEFF’S STORY
We came around the last curve to see the park entrance below us. Eli and Fran Harding rushed forward to embrace their kids, and soon after a rescue chopper airlifted Cole Harding to The Queen’s Medical Center, his sister and his parents going along. Once the Hardings were gone, Lidia Portuondo took charge of Kitty and Jimmy, making sure their wounds were treated and they got some fluids in them.
Sheila White woke up while the paramedics were giving her oxygen, though she refused to say anything. Jeff White stayed with Frank Sit behind a fire engine until and an ambulance had taken her away to check on her concussion and a couple of second-degree burns. Gary Saunders was still coughing, so he went along to get checked out and make sure Sheila remained in custody.
I was drenched in sweat, and the healing burns on my back itched like crazy, but I had to talk to Jeff White before he was taken away for booking. Sampson got a digital tape recorder from his car, and Frank Sit brought White over to the picnic table, standing alertly a few feet back in case White decided to bolt.
Sampson sat next to me as I read White his rights again. He shrugged when I asked if he understood them.
“You have to say something for the tape,” I said.
“I understand,” he said.
“Why don’t you tell us what’s been going on, Jeff,” I said gently.
“Ever since we were kids, Sheila’s been the boss. When we were teenagers, we started, you know, fooling around.”
He looked up at me, and I could see that tears stained his face. “I love her. Just not the way she wants.”
“Must have been tough for you in Texas,” I said. “Hiding.”
He nodded. “That’s why Sheila said we had to leave. When our parents died, we inherited a little money, and we decided to take a vacation together. We came here, and Sheila decided that we should move here, start over in a place where nobody knew us.”
“How’d you come to start your church?” Sampson asked.
“We were looking for a business to start,” Jeff said. “I wanted us to buy a copy shop, but Sheila and I had been lay ministers in our church in Texas, and she thought we should start a church instead.”
I looked over at Sampson. Just a business decision, I guessed.
“Sheila was really upset over the whole gay marriage thing,” Jeff said. He looked down at the rough wood of the picnic table. “I think she knew-about me. And maybe she was worried that I would leave her if I found some guy. She got crazier and crazier, especially with those gay guys next door, and with the rooster down the street. The damned rooster used to wake us up every morning, and Sheila hated that.”
He looked up at me. “She had her routines, you know. She liked everything to be quiet in the morning-I wasn’t even supposed to talk to her. She’d put on her headphones and go for her run, and by the time she got back she liked me to be up and have breakfast on the table.”
I was starting to get a picture of life in the White house, and it only made me pity Jeff even more. “One day she came home from her run and she told me that she’d shot the rooster, and then the homeless man. I didn’t know anything about it until she told me. I mean, I knew the old guy, he was kind of creepy, always spying on what people were doing. He told her he knew about what we were doing in the back yard, and so she didn’t have any choice. She had to shoot him.”
“What made you want to bomb the Marriage Project party?” I asked.
“Sheila saw this show on TV about the bombings in Oklahoma. She got really interested in that sort of thing, started investigating how to make bombs, how to set fires. We practiced on a couple of places-all places she said deserved it.”
