“ Still, English has been the spoken language of Hawaii since the 1850s and it's taught in all island schools.”
“ I've heard a pidgin English among the bellhops, cabbies and others.”
“ Mo betta leave da kine talk 'lone.”
She laughed at his charming accent.
“ Hawaiians liberally lace their language with pidgin; kind of a tapestry of Hawaiian words, English words and something in between. Tony, me, others working the law here have had to learn it as a matter of survival.”
She knew that the Hawaiian alphabet was the shortest in the world, using five vowels-a, e, i, o, u-and only seven consonants-h, k, 1, m, n, p and w. All vowels were pronounced and there was a vowel at the end of each syllable, and a vowel always between consonants. An eighth consonant was a glottal stop, pronounced the way the breathy pause in “oh-oh” was created. The w after an i or e made the sound of a v as in Ewa.
“ And I should warn you about asking a Hawaiian about directions,” he added.
“ Oh, and why's that?”
“ You've got two main directions here: mauka-towards the mountains-and makai-towards the sea. Even on their maps you'll be hard pressed to know north from south, east from west. A kamaaina refers to landmarks rather than to points on a compass.”
“ Give me an example.”
“ All right, to reach Iolani Palace from here, 'da kine trip, you go mauka four blocks, then waikiki three blocks, li' dat. Now geev um, brah-go for it, friend!”
Jessica's full, warm laughter filled the cocktail lounge. She stared out at the unending sea and back to Diamond Head. Parry watched her gleaming eyes.
He said almost in whisper, “Leahi.”
Her eyes returned to him, her lips parting, asking him to explain himself with a mere look, almost certain he was paying her some sort of Hawaiian compliment.
“ Wreath of Fire.”
“ What?”
“ Leahi-that's what the Hawaiians called it-Diamond Head. They called it Wreath of Fire because long ago signal beacons were lit up there, or possibly because in Hawaiian mythology, Hi'iaka, Pele's little sister, compared the crater's shape to the brow-lae-of an 'ahi fish, the yellowfin tuna.”
“ Then how'd it become Diamond Head?”
“ It was first called Diamond Head by British seamen who mistook the calcite crystals they found there for diamonds. At night sometimes, when the light is right, the calcite crystals resemble-at least for the Hawaiian romantics-the tears of Pele, goddess of the crater. Her tears were formed into diamonds, so to speak, by the force of the lava. Anyway, makes for great copy for the island promos.”
“ It is beautiful,” she said, “and so are the legends, wherever they come from.”
“ Sometimes hard to distinguish fact from fiction here,” he replied, lifting his empty glass at the waitress. “People think that grass skirts and ukuleles were invented here, but not so.”
“ It still sounds to me as though you love the islands, Jim.”
He smiled at the use of his name. “I do. It's become home for me now. I've gotten accustomed to their ways.”
“ Guess I feel the same about my place in Quantico. We certainly grow attached to our surroundings-people in general, I mean.”
“ People in our line of work in particular,” he added. “You try to build a safe wall of protection, a place to finally get away from what your normal day-if you can call it that-brings you. I don't have to tell you.”
She shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder why I stay in the FBI.”
“ So do I, but then I get up in the morning and go straight back in. Some of the cases I've worked have been so brutalizing, dehumanizing, awful-for me, I mean. Guess… guess from what you've said, you're not wanting in that department.”
She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, thinking of the nearly nine months of intensive psychological trashing she had taken at the hands of her therapist. “Guess it's in my blood,” she replied, telling him about her father instead, a man who had been an M.E. for the Navy for most of his life. She didn't want to admit to any failures or scars, either physical or psychological. She didn't want Parry to think her less than perfect, for despite the cane, he seemed, at the moment, to think highly of her.
Parry now ordered an island daiquiri, explaining that the locals made the drink two and three times as potent as normal. “I earned it,” he proclaimed. “I'll need it for the trip back to the Kahalas'. Time to inform the parents…”
“ I'll go with you,” she offered, extending her hand, her jaw set firmly, eyes fixed onto him. “I've dealt with grieving parents before.”
“ I'm sure you have.”
“ Having a female along might help.”
“ It might at that, but you've had enough for one day.”
“ Worried about my stamina or Paul Zanek?” Instead of answering her, he pulled out a small, tattered-looking book of poems which might have come from an ancient pawnshop. “Found this in Linda Kahala's room several days ago.” He handed it over.
The title read Shakespeare's Sonnets. He-indicated the highlighted lines, flipping through to Sonnet 73, where Jessica scanned the morbid lines underlined in red, made more curious by the circumstances of Linda's death:
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all the rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
“ I've checked with the university and she was involved in a Shakespeare class,” said Parry. “Most of her grades were pretty mediocre, except for the English, with the exception again of the Shakespeare course. So thought I'd take a pass at her instructor. See what shakes out there.”
“ Not a bad idea. She certainly seemed melancholy, but that's true of most teens. It's the age when they groove on Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Love craft, too, so maybe you ought not to take these red marks too seriously.”
“ Just a hunch, a feeling.”
“ I still think you ought to get some divers as close to that Blow Hole as possible; see what may have flushed out from the bottom,” she suggested.
“ Didn't suppose you'd let that go. But it'll be dangerous, even for the most experienced men. Still, I guess we'll have to go hunting down there now for sure.”
“ I'm not interested in a media show, just forensic evidence. If this bastard's ever caught, we're going to need all we can get on him.”
“ Whether you like media circuses or not, we've got one on our hands. No way to duck it, and maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we ought to use the media to our advantage.”
“ That kind of thing can be risky. People can get hurt.”
“ I'm aware of that, Jessica. I wanted you here for good reason. You've used the press to advantage in the past.”
They sat in silence for a moment while she tried to decode what he was getting at. Failing this, she repeated herself. “I meant what I said about the Kahalas. If you'd like me to, I'll go with you as moral support.”
He almost took her up on her offer, but shaking his head, he replied. “You've been through enough today. I'll take you home and maybe you can sample Waikiki Beach.”
“ If you're sure.”
