rack of test tubes and slide trays he fiddled with, Jessica knew that he knew she'd just assessed his body language.
“ You are closely related to Joseph Kaniola?” she asked.
“ Closely? No, not closely.”
“ But you are related?”
“ By blood, no.”
“ Marriage then?”
“ Yes.”
“ You know your work here must remain confidential at all costs; you know that, and yet you told Kaniola details that should not have left this office.”
Lau's brow creased and he found a stool to sit on. Shaking his head as if to say no, he replied. “I only told what was already public record.”
“ No, you told him about our cane-cutter theory.”
“ And you told him more than that,” he said defensively.
She stared back at the impenetrable black eyes of the small man. “I am an investigative member of this team as well as a forensic expert, Mr. Lau. You are the manager of a lab. Are we clear on that?”
His jaw tightened, but he said, “Yes, of course.”
“ Chief Parry knows that it was you who divulged the fact the killer uses a cane cutter.”
“ Kaniola promised me it was off the record, that he would not use such information.”
“ Right,” she said, but she could believe the little man, too. “So what're you saying, that Joseph Kaniola was forced into printing all that he knew?”
“ Who do you think funds his paper? You know business? Politics?” A little shrug of the shoulders and Lau felt he had explained all.
She nodded. “All right, so far, so good. Kaniola is pressured by the nationalist party members to tell all to the people. Who's twisting Kaniola's arm?”
“ The Honorable Provisional Government of our people, the PKOs, those who will take over power of the islands when your government has lost our many standing suits in your courts.”
She could almost forgive Lau his idealistic and naive dream that the U.S. Government would one day benevolently return all native lands and properties to the Hawaiians. It was about as likely as one day seeing Arizona returned to its native population there. With the capital invested in Oahu alone, in the Waikiki strip alone, the islands of Hawaii were inextricably bound to the economic and social fabric of the U.S., and nothing would ever change that, despite the agreement to return Hong Kong to China by Great Britain in 1977-or perhaps because of it.
Jessica could almost forgive Joseph Kaniola now, knowing that his own “provisional government” ties could make life hell for him and the rest of his extended family, and that such a government wasn't above using a man like Halole Ewelo anymore than her own might. As for Ewelo's part, he must've been promised much for the role he'd played in the drama-his attempt to lead the investigation to a white male suspect, namely Professor Claxton, knowing that hanging a white teacher for the murders of island girls would spell out a victory for the nationalist party. But perhaps no one could know just how far Paniolo Ewelo might take his deadly interrogation techniques.
“ Who are the PKOs?” she curiously asked.
“ Kahoolawe preservation society. They want everything to return to traditional ways.”
Jim had mumbled something about this PKO group in the car on their way back. She had to get Jim on the line, explain her newfound knowledge to him. See if he did not concur that both Kaniola and Lau were being squeezed, and that these men were both in an impossible position. But for now she had Lau to deal with.
“ Now we have another dead Hawaiian, Mr. Lau, thanks to politics. Do you really think the deaths of all these young women have anything to do with political matters on the island?”
“ No, of course not, but your government-whom you work for-is desperate to use the killings, to point to the heathens living here-”
“ I've got no such orders!”
“- to bring home the fact we can't conduct our own affairs-”
“ I've had no such instructions, Mr. Lau, and neither has Parry,” she scolded.
“- that we are little more than pagan children still to be Christianized and colonized and Westernized and homogenized.”
“ You can't believe this, Mr. Lau.”
“ If your government can show this, then they take back Kahoolawe and all lands and titles we have fought to regain over the years.” A kind of native islander's paranoia had infiltrated the man's voice.
“ Damnit all, Mr. Lau, we-people such as you and me-we have an obligation to the truth first and foremost. In the laboratory there are no bloody politics, only science… only fact. That's true in every state of the Union, including this one!”
“ Noble words, sister American,” he said calmly, “but all we do, all we say, they wait to pounce upon and twist to whatever expediency may suit them. Read the Congressional Record.”
Christ, she silently admitted, he did understand the Great White Way. “You can trust Parry.”
“ Can I?”
“ Yes, damnit, and you can trust me. The only question remaining is, can either of us trust you?”
He hesitated answering. “It is a small island still in many ways. We have modern skyscrapers. Western high- tech businesses, the computer revolution confronting us, all this speeding change in a handful of years, change which your country and people have had a hundred years to assimilate to. We still struggle and stumble. And I must live here after you and Parry and others are gone.”
“ I need your help to catch a killer, Lau; that's all that matters inside this lab.”
His steely eyes bore into hers, and she allowed her own to send forth a vivid fire of determined anger. “Are you willing to give your full support to this investigation? And to keep what is confidential in-house? I must have your word, your guarantee; otherwise there will be more George Oniiwahs.”
“ No one wished Oniiwah dead, least of all me.”
She saw the pain he'd concealed. “Mr. Lau, if anyone's to blame for Oniiwah's death, it's the man they've jailed for it.”
“ No, the fault belongs to us all,” said Lau, “to the climate we've all contributed to here, one of fear and desperation and political unrest.”
“ Yes, I believe so,” Jessica agreed, extending a hand. “I want to trust you again, Mr. Lau.”
“ Now it is Doctor Lau,” he replied, taking her hand and vigorously shaking it, “as of today. I received news of my final review and dissertation acceptance.”
“ Congratulations.” Her smile was genuine. “It was being held up… for political reasons.”
She shook her head over this, realizing that it was due the ineptitude, mistrust and jockeying of Lau's so- called superiors- white men-that he had become the enemy beneath their noses.
“ Then we are all guilty after all,” she conceded. “Will you trust me, Mr… ah, Dr. Lau? And can we work as scientists, together, amid this turmoil, keeping no secrets from one another?”
“ I would like that very much, yes.”
She demonstrated her trust by giving him the details of the death of George Oniiwah and asking him to finish the lab analysis of Oniiwah's blood type, so she could be in attendance at a meeting of all the FBI agents involved in the ongoing search for the Cane Cutter.
Lau took the samples and promised to have results back to her as soon as humanly possible. She knew now that they could start over, on firm ground.
As she was about to leave, he said, “Oniiwah was not supposed to be killed. How it happened? Only this man, Paniolo, can say.”
“ He was not under orders to kill the boy, we know.”
“ No, no such orders, ever.”
“ But he was ordered to interrogate the boy?”
“ For information, that is all.”
“ Dr. Lau, you tell these people for me that, under U.S. law, it is they who are legally responsible for