allowing a kind of supple “life” to return at the cellular level. Naturally, all of the lividity was in the lower extremities, all the blood having rushed there. She might appear mannequin-like, but she wouldn't feel that way, not when Jessica had to touch and prod the corpse for wound measurements, specimens and samples and slides and swabs.
She thought of the stark bone-fragment evidence brought in by the Navy guys, and now this. “You wanted evidence,” she muttered to no one in particular, staring at the leis made of teeth and native hair, predicted by the old man.
“ Not like this,” replied Parry.”Careful for what you wish…”Gagliano had staggered about the small enclosure trying to train his eye on something-anything but the mutilated China doll on the wall. In doing so, like Jessica, he began to go to work, scanning for anything that might be useful. He immediately zeroed in on a rack of swords and knives on a wall the other side of the room. “Jesus, look at these,” he said, pointing, about to reach out and touch one of the blades before catching himself.
“ Check the refrigerator,” Jessica told them.
“ What?” asked Gagliano.
“ Mutilation murderers… lust killers, they often keep 'trophies' on ice. Like the ropes he used on her.”
“ What about the ropes?” asked Jim, coming closer and shouting at Terri Reno, Haley and the others at the doorway to stay out, that it was already too damned crowded inside. Reno shouted back, “Do we have the son of a bitch or not?”
“ We know where he kills,” Parry replied tersely before turning his attention back to Jessica, who, using a scalpel pulled from her jacket pocket, sliced one of the restraints holding the victim. This brought both victim and rack further from the wall, but everything held.
She held out the twisted rope. “It's human hair, most likely from his earlier victims.”
“ Jesus… and teeth, human teeth.”
Gagliano moved to the icebox and snatched the door open to find it relatively empty, the little light coming from it reflecting off the dead girl on the wall, making her look like an odd specimen in a house of horrors display. The fridge compartment revealed a man who didn't live on food.
“ Check the freezer compartment,” said Jim, holding onto the black-hair rope which might well have been Lina Kahala's hair.
Gagliano swallowed hard before snatching open the freezer door. He did so a little too abruptly, and out flowed a stack of frozen female hands complete with rings and painted nails. Tony hopped back, gasping and swearing when the solid, iced hands hit the floor like so many T-bone steaks.
Parry called to the others who'd remained outside daring only to poke their heads beyond the perimeter of the broken door. He called for field generators and to have Dr. Lau dispatch all the evidence-technician support he could muster.
The men outside fought over who'd get to do this chore. Along the narrow street outside, nearby residents had begun to assemble, stare and point.
Jessica thought of the old man on the mountain, Kaniola's great-granduncle, and his predictions. How true to form was this? she wondered. Had he been speaking in symbolic epigrams? Was the red path that led to the sun here on the caked and bloodied floor of this awful place that led to the sunlight outdoors? Had he foreseen this? Hadn't he called the killer Lopaka? Had he known this Lopaka Kowona all along? Was Lopaka Kowona the child in the story the old man told of a chief who had killed one son for his deformities while another watched? Serial killers were bom of man and woman, many bom of much less pain than this Lopaka suffered on seeing his crippled brother destroyed in a dark wood by his father, and later burned in the village pyre-slash-garbage dump, his bones unceremoniously dumped in the ocean where the sacrilegious and demonic were cast out.
She wondered how much of this “legend” and ancient history had to do with the real killer. She wondered how much-if any-of her visit to Kaniola's seer she wished to share with Jim; wondered whether now it had any relevance or not. All Parry and company need do now was to locate the whereabouts of Lopaka Kowona. As soon as the Hawaiian community learned that one of her own had been at bottom of the Trade Winds killings, as soon as Lopaka's name was made public throughout the islands, he would either be cornered by the authorities, or murdered quietly the way George Oniiwah had been. She had no illusions anymore about Joseph Kaniola's agenda. She knew that he would be, if given the chance, the one to ram the spear through Lopaka Kowona's heart, to end the life of this vampire who preyed on young Polynesian women.
Had Kaniola known of Lopaka, suspecting him for some time now? If the university professor Claxton and the lowlife Ewelo both knew of Lopaka, then the all-knowing, nosey newsman must've had some inkling, especially after Lopaka's police sketch and description were handed to him. Joe Kaniola was among the first in Hawaii to get this description, and his very next move was a friendly visit to his great-granduncle's shrine? Had he simply been using Jessica to loosen the old man's tongue? Perhaps and maybe, she thought, recalling the tape recorder at Kaniola's side.
Kaniola had been shrewd throughout, shrewd and determined to see that his son was avenged. Revenge was best served up cold, the old saying went, and it would seem that Kaniola's every move since his son's death had been quite cool, quite calculated.
“ Jim, I've got to tell you about something,” she finally said, while Parry, evidence bags in hand, was scooping up the dismembered hands of each victim of the Trade Winds Killer.
“ What's that, Jess?”
She quickly surprised him about her early morning visit to the guru on the mountain.
“ I've heard of the old man, but I didn't know he was related to Kaniola,” Parry finally said. “Explains your new look.”
She stared, her shoulders rising, her eyes questioning.
“ Your cane. I noticed earlier that you were liberated from it. I was just naive enough to think that maybe I'd had something to do with its… disappearance.”
“ Yeah, well… maybe you did. Anyway, I had to give the old man something.”
“ In return for a handful of fifty-fifty generalizations any palm reader might've handed you?”
“ He was extremely close to Lopaka Kowona's description, Jim. Pouting, large lips, flame-red hair, dysfunctional.”
“ But he couldn't give you a name and address…”
“ No, but he may very well have given it to Joe Kaniola.”
“ Whataya' mean?”
“ I think Kaniola went there hoping the old man would verify his own suspicion that you and I were wrong about Ewelo being the killer, and that the old man would confirm his conviction the killer was not in custody.”
“ So, you think Kaniola's going after this guy Lopaka?”
“ If he finds him before we do, we'll be trying Joseph in a court of law instead of Lopaka,” she said with certainty. “And as for the cane, Lomelea needed it more than I did.”
He nodded, understanding. “I'll see where Kaniola is and put a tail on him.”
“ Good idea. Meantime, I'll do what I can here.”
Watching Parry lift the bag of hands to give to Gagliano before he stepped back out into the light made a powerful image in her mind. This side of the door was like being in the looking glass; this side of the door was some rung in the spirals of Hades described in Dante's Inferno; on the other side of the door there was light and paradise waiting. She wondered what was hardest, stepping out or staying in. In Jim's case he'd go out to his car now, make some calls on his radio, feel the ocean breeze and God's warm hand in the form of sunlight against his brow, but he'd have to climb back into this red hell a second time. She and Gagliano remained this side of the mirror, in the bleak shadow world of evil and death and madness.
Her bag was passed through to her as if she and Gagliano were down inside a deep hole and those outside were providing a source of hope and sustenance from above. Still, none of the others wanted to climb down into the hole, content to watch from the other side of the looking glass.
Gagliano reached out to her, placing his meaty paw on her shoulder, and said, “Doc, I have to admit… you've got some grit.”
“ My father called it sand.” She was privately pleased that Jim's best friend had finally accepted her.
Jessica now forced all annoyances, images, sights, sounds and odors and her own encroaching fears and phantoms from her consciousness; she pushed Jim and Tony and the racket of the others from her mind. She
