pretty sure she was tooting, Boss.” Tony had called it “tooting” for years. “According to Georgie boy, Kia told Linda that hooking was her ticket to get through school, all that. George says when he learned about what she was doing that he went a little crazy. They had a big fight. He slapped her around some… she scratched hell out of him.”
“ Any fresh marks on him that you saw?”
“ No, but they split some time ago. Says he broke it off and hasn't seen her since. That was three months ago, he said, but he lied. It was less than a month ago he last saw her, according to the girl's parents.”
“ Gag, if the punk's lying about that, what else's he hiding, huh? Is he half clean or half dirty?”
“ I think he's hiding plenty about his relationship with the girl, but I think it's small potatoes.”
“ Then why's he lying to you?”
“ It's not small-time shit to him; to him it's important shit.”
“ Well, if it's important to him, and he's the only thread we got, then it's important to me, so out with it. What is it he doesn't want to get around?”
“ For one, he's worried shitless that the girl's relatives are going to come after him, you know, the way we have, and if they do, they're not likely to be so gentle.”
“ What else?”
“ Just a lot of crap, Jim.”
Tony's guessing games sometimes annoyed Parry, who stared hard across at his subordinate now.
Gagliano finally said, “His pride.”
“ His pride? What the hell do we give a shit about this punk's pride?”
“ Nothing, just that you know… he goes to bed with her again-”
“ Again?”
“ After he'd learned she was tooting, after he'd had time to cool off.”
“ You don't think he's angry enough over this to kill her?”
“ Getting ahead of yourself, Jimbo. No, now he's had time to think, and he's asking himself how he really feels, down and deep, you see. Maybe it'd be kinky and fun to sleep with a dirtied, soiled dove, and Linda's a perfect way for him to find out. She takes on a whole new dimension since she's become a prostitute, more rounded, more complex, more interesting to his hapa Japa brain. Know what I mean?” Parry followed Tony's reasoning. “It's risky. She's taking risks with AIDS and all, and now he's taking risks.”
“ He gets a hard-on he didn't expect, a rush to jog his safe, little world.”
“ I see.”
“ Only, he doesn't want anyone to know that he's got back together with her, not on the outside, anyway. Still, her parents aren't completely blind, and it seems every kid at the college knows who's on and who's off who, just the same as they know who's on drugs, who's selling, and who's tooting whatever down at Waikiki.”
“ So when did Georgie last see her alive?”
“ Just a few days ago. Friends saw them together.”
“ Then maybe he did her.”
Tony frowned. “Don't think so, Chief.”
“ Why not?”
He continued shaking his head. “No stomach for it. He's Mr. Clean, like I said; Hawaii goes preppy.”
“ So that clears him?”
“ That and a lie detector, yeah, in my book.”
“ Lie detectors aren't foolproof. Anybody know we've questioned the kid?”
“ Not a soul. The test was done in an out-of-the-way fashion, strictly hit and run. I did the test myself working out of the case. Convinced Krueger to turn over the machine to me.”
“ Good… good,” replied Parry, popping a mint. “Keep it that way.”
“ I'm telling you, Chief, another go at this kid's a waste of time. And it could expose him to some ugly feelings in the community.”
“ Maybe, but I've got to ask him a few questions. After we're finished with the Kahalas, you can run me over there.”
“ Waste of time.”
“ Maybe, but perhaps I can shake loose something from the kid.”
“ Something I missed?”
“ Something you weren't aware of.”
“ Swears he knew nothing about how she was living in between the time he dumped her and last saw her.”
'Ted Bundy swore a lot of 'truths' too. Come on, Tony, the kid freakin' lied to you about the timing.”
Gagliano shrugged. “Whatever you want, Boss.”
“ What I want is some answers. So far, we got shit, Tony.”
“ What about the doctor lady? She come up with anything?”
Parry brought his agent up on the news from the lab. It was enough to light Tony's eyes up. “Then those kanaka cops were on to something. Too bad they failed to follow proper procedure.”
“ They were good men, Gag.”
“ First thing they ought've done was call in the damned plate. Had they done that, we'd have their killer, the Trade Winds Killer, locked away for life right now.”
“ Maybe there was a good reason they didn't call it in immediately. Plate might've been obscured.”
“ So they inspect the car instead?”
“ Yeah, like that and-”
“- and they find blood on the interior, maybe the girl's clothes, but before they can make another move, they're under fire.”
“ Like sniper fire from the brush. Never saw it coming.”
Both the FBI men had served in Viet Nam and both understood how sudden death could strike.
The time in and out with the Kahalas to inform them of the positive I.D. made on Linda's torn limb, making it a certainty that their daughter was at peace with her Maker, was a mere twelve minutes, but it seemed like an hour. The mother crumpled under the weight of the news, supported only by her husband, who also slid to the floor. In their dark house of mourning, the couple reminded Parry of the twisted, sad figure in Picasso's Blue Guitarist.
The FBI men left a card and quickly disappeared, leaving the grieving parents to themselves.
“ Get me to this Oniiwah kid,” Parry said in an acerbic voice.
Gagliano knew the tone and what it meant. He said nothing as he and Parry, boarding Tony's car together, drove for the University of Hawaii. After a few miles, Tony said, “The kid lives in the dorm. We may not catch him. Could be out at a pizza joint, a dance, a party, a rat's-ass gala, anything.”
'Tonight, Tony.”
“ We'll find him…”
Just then the usual clatter and clutter of the police ban radio in Tony's unit caught their attention, the dispatcher calling on a city squad car to investigate a disturbance on Paani near Kapiolani
Boulevard. It was coincidentally the same street on which the Kahalas lived and where Parry had left his car.
Each of the men looked at one another. “What do you think, Jim?”
“ Dispatch gave it a 10-6. Couldn't be anything too big. Let's push on for the college.”
As they did so, Parry thought of Linda Kahala's small, tight-knit community, thought of her hanging out on the corner at the drugstore where she and other children bought their crackseeds and Coca-Colas, thought about her walking the few blocks to Iolani School as a child, about her later catching the bus for Kapiolani Community College, which she'd attended for two years before going on to the university. She'd seemed a determined young woman with a plan. Parry had to know what had happened to end that plan.
They were now entering the Manoa Campus of the University of Hawaii, its peaceful, serene setting at the base of the mountains where the lush, green blanket of the Honolulu Watershed Forest Preserve marked its boundary, making it appear a place where nothing bad in the world could ever happen. For the FBI men such a fantasy world did not exist; they knew that no matter the place, so long as there were people, evil was very much
