signed up with a missionary group that preaches to poor Mexicans in rural areas. Even with the way people are getting shot and beheaded in Mexico I’d bet she’s still there. It would take more than a bullet to kill her anyway. Hell, if they beheaded her they’d still have to bury her head a half mile from her body or she’d figure out a way to get it back together. She was tough and had a very sharp tongue. Still does, I’m sure.
‘When she decided she was going missionary she contacted Jim and I said send the boy here. She had him on a plane the next day. I’m not making any of this up. Matt still has a little Kentucky twang but he can surf. He’s an islander.’
‘Are Jim Frank’s ashes really up under those rocks?’
‘Just ashes and I made sure they burned it all down to nothing, the teeth and every last bone fragment, so that no one could pull any DNA later.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, let’s just say many things were possible with Jim.’
Casey picked up his beer and smiled an odd strained smile. It changed the room.
‘There was a judge in San Francisco who lived in the penthouse of an apartment building on Russian Hill. His wife wouldn’t let him smoke on the penthouse decks because she didn’t like the dope smell drifting inside, so he smoked on the roof deck up with the equipment. He fell off one night. Did Jim know about it? It seemed like he did. Did he have a part in it? How could he but he seemed to know something had happened to the judge other than an accident.’
‘Judge Brighton.’
‘Is that one of your cold cases? They replaced that judge with an even more liberal judge, so it was all a goddamned waste of time if it was about politics, and God knows he had opinions and he was unusual in what he was willing to do. Jim wasn’t a killer but killing didn’t weigh on him. We’d take it to the Cong and fry the villagers along with them. None of that ever bothered him as far as I knew. It was just part of the war, yet he was a man with a strict personal code.’
‘How was his career as an airline pilot?’
‘Whenever they got a new model jet they put him in the seat. Retired him with honors, same as the Navy, but let me go get something and show you.’
He limped out of the room, his leg stiff from sitting, Raveneau guessed. He looked at photos on a wall, in one, Krueger, Casey, and Frank in uniform, Frank somehow standing out in the photo. Then one of Frank and his son here, Frank looking like his health was gone. When Casey returned Raveneau asked, ‘What other friends of Alan Krueger are still in the islands?’
‘There’s an officer up at Bradshaw Air Base named Shay.’
Casey slowly sat down. He slid the bowl with the poke aside and set a small painted metal box with a dragon painted on the lid on the table between them. Then, before sitting he pulled his pant leg up and showed Raveneau a long scar running from his knee.
‘This was from flak. It’s why I limp and don’t play polo any more.’ He smiled. ‘That last is a joke. You don’t need to make a note about looking up polo teams.’ He studied Raveneau. ‘You just missed Nam, right? But not by much.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, Nam was a fucked-up situation if there ever was one, but at least we had a draft so we did it as a country as opposed to the bullshit now. Flying combat missions adrenalized Jim as much as anybody else, but at the same time he enjoyed it. If they hadn’t run out of war he probably would have stayed in the military. He was here in Hawaii recovering from wounds when they canceled the war. He celebrated with everyone else but I believe part of him was disappointed. Open the box.’
When Raveneau did he was looking at one, then a second Navy Cross There were stripes that looked like they’d been removed from a uniform.
‘Did you save the uniform?’
‘No, I had him dressed in it before he was cremated. But that’s not to say it was my idea. He got the uniform out, had it cleaned, and then left it hanging with the plastic on it in his closet. I was up there one night for a drink. Just about every night I’d walk up or he’d walk down. It was a regular thing if neither of us had guests. It was always best when it was just the two of us. Near the end it was mostly me going up there. We had a couple of drinks one night and he showed me the uniform hanging in the closet.
‘“Dress me in that,” he said, and then walked me out to where we spread his ashes. When we were standing there he said, “It’ll be before the end of the year.” It was two months later in October.
‘All the way down he never once complained, or not once that I heard. He died at a place in Waimea, not far from here. He took death as he took life, as a thing to do. He lost a kidney, his spleen, and some his intestines the second time he was hit in Nam. When he started to have trouble, it was the remaining kidney.
‘This photo here is us after a bombing run to Da Nang. The woman in the chair there next to Jim had known him for about thirty minutes.’
Jim Frank rested his arm on the back of the woman’s chair. The chairs were rattan. His smile lit his face and Raveneau saw both of his sons in him.
‘What about the other marriage?’
‘Allyson was a great woman. She was the one who understood him and didn’t have to change him. He made a big mistake letting her go.’
‘Did they see each other after she moved to San Francisco?’
‘They did and for several years after the boy was born he’d fly in and stay with her. Here, I’ve got a photo.’
He led Raveneau to a drawer behind a teak bar in the corner of the lanai.
‘The rain blows in here and I can’t hang everything I want.’
He slid the drawer open and lifted out a framed photo of Frank and Allyson and Ryan. Frank was in his United Airlines uniform. Ryan Candel looked like he was somewhere between eighteen months and two years. Allyson was beaming.
‘That’s her. That was her smile.’ Casey held the photo out for him to take. ‘Would this photo help his son?’
‘I think it would.’
‘Take it with you.’
‘Can I borrow some of these others?’
‘Yes.’
Tom Casey walked out with him. He stood alongside Raveneau’s car.
‘You didn’t quite get what you needed, did you? But then you jumped around with your questions.’
‘I’m scratching around the edges and I generally know when I’m going to get information that will help the case. Sometimes it’s good to get the stories first. Do you have any problem with me calling you?’
‘None as long as you’re working AK’s murder.’
‘How often do you leave the island?’
‘Not often. Sometimes I tell people I never leave here. That’s about the war.’ He tapped his palm on the roof of Raveneau’s car.
‘Jim would have been the first to lift a door off if he wanted to get into a house. He broke a window here once just to get to the whiskey, so I guess it fits you break into his house. You can call me anytime with questions about AK, and if you find his killer I’ll fly to San Francisco and buy you the best dinner in town.’
‘I’ll hold you to that.’
‘I hope you do.’
THIRTY-FIVE
‘ How’s Hawaii?’ la Rosa asked. ‘Where are you?’
Raveneau turned off the highway and on to what was called the Saddle Road. The road crossed the interior of the island connecting the north and south. Along the road was Bradshaw Army Air Field where Raveneau had
