away and had been mangled by the beasts of the forests, he had the body taken to the village dump, claiming it to be cursed, and had it burned in a ceremony to defeat the devils that plagued his royal house. The bones were cast into the sea, an act of disdain, an ignominious end for a Hawaiian soul. He did so before the eyes of his adopted child.
Over the years, as the adopted child grew, it became more and more apparent that while this well child did not show any physical signs of disease, he was morally and spiritually crippled in ways unapparent until one looked into his cold blue eyes.
Kaniola added, almost as an afterthought, “This child was banished from the life of the commune when his father discovered that he had killed a girl child younger than himself.”
Jessica now stared from Joe to the old man, who was slowly climbing from his trance state.
“ Are you saying that our killer is this same child? Or is this a quaint Hawaiian parable?”
“ I cannot say,” replied Kaniola. “I have heard this tale in many guises. It is possible it may be just a parable, as you say.”
She asked the old man outright, and Kaniola put it to him in Hawaiian.
“ It is truth at least in one eye,” whispered the old man in English.
Whose eye? she wondered. His or the killer's?
“ This child… today he is a ho 'o-haole ia as his people say, and they banished him.”
“ A ho 'a-what?”
“ He apes the white people, became Americanized by the white schools and books,” said Joe, “kina like me, hey, Great Uncle?”
“ I don't suppose you have a name for this boy?” she asked.
“ Lo-paka.” The old man spewed the name with spittle.
“ Lopaka?”
“ That is how it come to me, yes.”
“ It is what you Americans and English call Robert,” said Kaniola.
“ He once on Maui lived… cowpuncher,” said Lomelea. Here was another clue that Terri Reno's Robert and Ewelo were connected. Joe pursued this. He spoke to his great-granduncle for a moment in native Hawaiian, leading him toward Ewelo, Jessica recognizing only the name.
“ Paniolo, yes… yes,” replied the old man unmistakably, “cowboy… cowboy…”
Joe frowned and now asked the old man if there was anything else he might want to add.
The old man, by now extremely weary, shook his head, pulled himself from the lotus position he'd assumed and, with Joe's help, found his hammock. Jessica knew that much of what the old man had said about the killer might easily have been surmised from Kaniola or other sources, yet there was something genuine about Lomelea. And could it be purely coincidental that Terri Reno's strange admirer had called him self Robert? It was information Parry had withheld from the press release.
Jessica went to the old man and extended her cane to him, his eyes lighting up in response. He rubbed the silver handle between his hands appreciatively and pointed to his wall. He had already selected a place of prominence to display the gift.
17
Murder is not an instinct but an invention.
Mid-morning, the same day
It is at times like this that Lopaka Kowona feels most closely to Kelia again. Again he has her where he can control her; again he has total domination over her. He can do anything to her body; he can even make love to her body again now, if he so chooses.
Waking from the best sleep he'd had since the last Kelia, he stares up at her remains, her eyes staring vacantly back at him, her flesh crisscrossed with blood rivulets, the surface of her creamy skin looking now as if it had been turned inside out. Silently her weight tugs against the restraints and the rack sags; even in death, she fights her fate, she wants down.
He wants to see her come down now, too. Down and out of here, in fact. But how? His car is useless, and if he has it towed and repaired, the bullet hole in the gas pan could easily be a beacon to police after last night's near capture. He needs to know what's going on outside.
He switches on the TV in hope of finding out any information, but he has missed all the news broadcasts. It's mid-morning.
He flicks off the TV set and tries the radio. He switches from station to station for any information. He gives up, leaving on KBHT, Hawaii's hottest rock station, the D.J. spinning “Give Me That Or Time Rock 'n' Roll.”
He then remembers to check for the newspaper on his doorstep, the Ala Ohana. The paper had been recently filled with news of how the cops had arrested the owner of Paniolo's bar and grill, claiming that he was a likely suspect in the Trade Winds killings, both pleasing Lopaka and frightening him, because while he despised Paniolo, the obvious conclusion was that the authorities were drawing ever closer to the truth. He'd known Ewelo back on Maui where they'd both been working cowboys on a ranch there. The man was a Samoan asshole, a creep and a bully, reminding Lopaka of his father in several salient habits and nasty practices.
Still, on coming to Oahu, he'd looked Paniolo up, asking for a job. Paniolo had put him to selling in the limited drug trade he was just putting together, but they'd had a falling out over the money exchange, Paniolo proving to be sharper than he'd let on, allowing Lopaka to dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole.
He'd finally paid Paniolo back, but for a time Lopaka had had to watch his back, fearful that the other man would come out of the next dark comer to put a knife in his ribs. That was Paniolo's style. So Lopaka had taken to wearing one of his more easily concealed knives in an ankle sheath at all times. So far as Lopaka was concerned, the arrest of this man was the best possible solution to the island's ongoing problem with the Trade Winds Killer. Still, it made him nervous to think that the cops had struck so close to home. He hadn't been in Paniolo's employ for over a year, but records could reveal his former association; hell, Paniolo might even think to implicate him, knowing of his liking for swords and knives, and if this happened, the authorities could be at his door within minutes.
He paces, telling himself nervously that there is so damned much hinging on so many things he can't control, and Kelia-her vacant eyes staring like the embers of a dying sun in the west-is now a shadow being, also uncontrollable, unless he can finish what he has started. He lifts his camera and begins taking shots of the dead store clerk's final repose. He takes up the remaining roll, his enthusiasm for the picture-taking escalating as he goes. But his mind is still preyed upon by the mounting fears of his own exposure.
He's too close to his ultimate goal to be caught now, he tells himself. Seven years he has stalked and killed for Ku, and admittedly for his own self-gratification and lust. Seven years of seven victims minus four. He is four away from final victory, the moment when Ku will unconditionally embrace him and enfold him into His bountiful, cosmic arms to accept Lopaka Kowona as an equal.
Things just need to go on a little longer, to be brought to a final resolution, when seven victims this year would end his quest, when the power he would obtain would arrest the red flame of Kelia's life forever, He breathes deeply, inhaling death's presence deeply, thinking of the peaceful kingdom which lies ahead in which he would hold that crimson shadow in his fist in firm, godly fashion.
He goes to the door and looks outside at the bright sunlit, narrow strip of beaten tarmac, the winding, hilly ribbon-like folds where it has buckled. He absently takes in the temperature, the wind conditions, the dryness, and scans the surrounding mountainside, finding nothing out of the ordinary. It's already hot out, a promise of another scorcher. As expected, his paper has been lying there since dawn. Lopaka lifts it and pops the rubber band and hurriedly scans it where he stands in his underwear, the red hue to his skin and the smell of blood about him causing him no alarm. His front door and most of his small house are protected from view by a thick, wild border of pandanus trees.
