Closer Than Blood

reef. The sun was lower in the sky than in the photo. She looked up the coast where she could see the outcroppings of Kaena Point, partly veiled in a thin layer of volcanic ash and fog the locals called vog. Kendall didn’t know what she was really looking for because so many years had passed, it was possible the sands had shifted and moved the most desirable part of the beach out past the landmark that Kiwana had given her.

“The place where it happened is directly in front of the palm swallowed by the banyan,” she had said. That was easy enough to find. In the way that only God could devise, a coconut palm had somehow managed to punch a hole in the canopy of a sprawling banyan tree just off the highway. It looked like the tufted head of a peacock emerging from a mountain of dark green foliage. It could not be missed by anyone with a sense of imagination or a need for shade. The heat was getting to Kendall once more. She’d coated her exposed skin in a waterproof sunblock that made her sweat. Every time she touched her arms, she felt the oily slick of a product she’d never use again. It was called Banana Boat, but she figured Banana Peel would have been a more appropriate moniker. Kendall looked at the second photo, the one retrieved from the victim’s camera. It was Tori. She was wearing a hot pink bikini and no one would argue that she could get away with donning one. In fact, if she’d wandered past one of those Hawaiian Tropic bikini contests on Waikiki Beach, she might have been confused with the winner. Without oil and the help of the implants yet to come. Probably without an entry form, too. She was simply stunning. Her blond hair seemed more golden than in any other photo Kendall had seen. Her eyes were blue, but not the vapid kind of blue that suggests a swimming pool or charmless sky. There was intensity, a depth of lapis. Kendall looked at the necklace around her friend’s sister’s neck. It seemed so fitting. Shark’s teeth, she thought.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Haleiwa

Ten years ago

Maryanne Milton was mad at her husband, an airman stationed in Hawaii. Mad was hardly the word. She was bitter, angry, and hell-bent on revenge. He’d cheated on her with another woman, a secretary who worked at the base. To add insult to injury, it was a woman Maryanne had known and admired. Maryanne filled a cooler with beer and drove out to the beach near Dillingham. She figured that she’d drink the beer, then walk out into the creamy surf and let the waves carry her to something that approximated peace. Tranquility. A place away from the embarrassment and torment of marrying the wrong man and having a father who’d been right on the money about the louse. Other unhinged women might have sought revenge by killing their husbands, but not Maryanne. She figured that the burden of her suicide would haunt him for the rest of his life. She parked her yellow VW and dragged her cooler to a deserted spot where the waves struck the shoreline with a fury that suited her mood. She turned the dial on her radio to find the last song she’d hear before she died. A suicide soundtrack is harder to come by than the happy can imagine. Alanis Morissette was too angsty. A tears-in-her-beer country song she couldn’t place was too maudlin. Maryanne wanted something melancholy, but settled on an angry woman’s anthem, Linda Ronstadt’s “You’re No Good.” Old school, but oh-so-right. As she settled into her misery, she noticed a man and a woman down the beach. The woman in a pink bathing suit was on top of the man while another man kneeled behind her. Maryanne averted her eyes when she figured out what they were doing. They were making love. Great, she thought. Rub my face in it. I can’t get one man. And she has two. I wonder if they are cheating on their spouses as they act out their little From Here to Eternity scene. The next time Maryanne looked, the woman had moved her blanket closer to shore and was sitting alone. Maryanne was planning her next move, her last act of desperation and revenge. She was wondering how her family would react, how the woman who’d stolen her husband would feel. She looked up to the sound of sirens as police and aid cars converged on the road up the beach. The woman in the pink bathing suit was waving her arms and screaming. In less than an hour, paradise had turned into a nightmare. Half drunk but sobering up quickly, Maryanne ditched her remaining beer in a trash can, and returned to her car. The hot sands of the beach crunched like tin cans under her feet. A dose of reality had saved her life. But not the man who’d been making love with the woman on the beach. She saw on the news that night that one of the men had died during a boogie board accident. As far as she knew, the trio hadn’t been boogying on anything, much less a board. She didn’t say anything to anyone about what she’d seen. She didn’t want to explain why she’d driven up to the North Shore.

A fifty-five-year-old woman named Selena Jonas sat at her kitchen table in Haleiwa. Her toes tapped a Morse code of agitation on a well-worn linoleum floor. She shook her head at the late-night circumstances as she eyed the wall-mounted kitchen phone. It stayed mute as it had all day. What did you do now, Ronnie? It was a rhetorical question, one she had asked over and over from the time he was small. Shoplifting at seven. Drugs at eleven. Juvenile detention at fourteen. Ronnie had been nothing but trouble. Over and over. He’d promised to get his act together. He said that he’d sober up, go back to school. He agreed to a curfew. All of that had been a big, sad lie. She only moved from her chair to unhook the receiver to make sure that the line was not dead. Cigarettes piled up like Pickup sticks in a Scotch plaid beanbag-based ashtray. Her husband, a Haleiwa boat mechanic, entered the kitchen and patted her gently on the shoulder. He told her that whatever had happened, Ronnie would be all right. It was a hope. Nothing more. Deep down, Selena knew it. The police arrived three days after Ronnie went missing. The teenager’s body had washed up on the northern shore of Kauai, the island neighbor to the west of Oahu. A female tourist walking the beach near Kilauea found him. The sight was horrific beyond imagination. Parts of his face and the soft tissue of his abdomen were missing.

“Juvenile sea turtles,” the officer told her, “made a mess of your boy. You don’t want to see him.” Serena had braced herself for the news, and yet her resolve to hold it together was crumbling.

“How did he die?”

“Looks like he hit his head on a rock or something.”

“You aren’t going to cut him up, are you?” Her eyes were raining tears.

“Yes, ma’am. If you mean are we going to do an autopsy? The answer is yes.” Selena cried until she could cry no more. After that she could never look at the image of a green sea turtle without thinking of what had happened to her boy. In Haleiwa that was very hard to do. Turtles were everywhere. The next day the Honolulu Advertiser carried a story in the back of the news section. It was only five lines, the kind of article that means nothing to anyone but those who loved Ronnie Jonas.

Haleiwa Boy Dies

In Surfing Accident

Without mentioning Zach Campbell by name, the piece noted that the Jonas boy’s death been the second of two deaths in the area in three days. It was the only time the deaths were linked in any manner.

The boy was loading his beat-up Chevy Cavalier with a stereo when Tori Campbell first saw him. She’d been walking in the neighborhood at first light; an obnoxious cacophony of tropical birds fed the irritation and anger she’d felt toward Zach. With each step, the anger bubbled over.

“Shut up,” she said to the birds.

“Shut it up!” She thought of all the things she could do to make her life better. She could leave him, of course. He’d only married her as arm candy and there was no genuine love between them. And yet, the idea of just walking away seemed like a futile waste of resources. His resources. He had the house before they married. He had the bank account. He had everything she ever wanted. The only problem was him. Then she saw the boy. A beat later, he saw her.

“My stereo,” he said.

“Your stereo, my ass,” she said moving closer to his car. The backseat was filled with valuables that she knew never could have belonged to him. She reached for her cell phone.

“Please,” he said.

“Do not call the police. It will mean big trouble for me.” She moved closer, unafraid.

“You should have thought about that before you stole from that house, you stupid little thug,” Tori said, indicating the beachfront two-story that had been the source of his booty.

“I can put it back,” he said, his eyes widening. She had been young like that boy and she knew how hard it was to climb back toward respectability after the world decides who and what you are. His fear was useful to her.

“No, keep it.”

“I can go?” She held a camera to her eye and clicked twice, first an image of Ronnie. The second time, she took a photo of the car, its Hawaiian license plate clearly visible. Like the proverbial frog in the cool water on boil,