“ Then there is an end to it, here… now,” said Kaniola. “No more pain… no more suffering, a clean end to it.”
“ We can live with that,” agreed Parry. “Can't we, Jessica?” He nudged her.
“ Well… yes…”
“ Good… good, then Ben will take you both back to Maui. Ben,” said Kaniola.
Ben Awai, looking stunned now, pleaded with Kaniola for an answer. “What? Whataya mean, take them back to Maui?”
“ Just do it, Ben.”
“ But they'll cause trouble for us all, Joe.”
“ You just do as I say, Ben.”
The argument obviously hadn't yet been settled, but it was now cut short by the chief, who bellowed his own orders. Kaniola translated. “Chief Kowona's talking now to Parry directly. 'Tell everyone outside of Kahoolawe that the Trade Winds Killer is dead, his body fed to the bay.'“
“ Chief,” countered Parry, “no one in my world will believe me when I speak of this.”
“ Chief you are? Among your people are you not?” he asked directly.
“ Yes, but my people do not always believe in the word of their chiefs.”
He nodded as if he understood this. “Sad it is when people do not trust. Married I once into your race, and result”-he indicated the outer encampment where the headless form on the rack had remained dangling all night-”is dat… monster.”
Kaniola stared at his old friend, the chief, who struggled now to his feet, the others following suit. Parry and Jessica were told to follow. Standing now in the encampment, Parry stretched and Jessica clung to him.
Jessica could hear the flies before she got up nerve to look in their direction. Already at work, they buzzed about and perched in Lopaka's dead eyes, laying their eggs against the soft tissues, there just ten feet from her. The man's red body was suspended like a grotesque doll on the rack. With the sun bathing the entire village in a crimson dawn, reflecting back the red soil, she recalled Lomelea's prediction that she would never completely take hold of the red shadow, Lopaka, but that she would find a place like this where the sun would appear to be a blood orange in the sky and where the paths were scarlet.
“ Chief,” she called out to the stooped and broken men who walked ahead of them, “all peace in the islands can be kept if…”Speaks too much, your woman,” said the chief to Parry.
“ Yes, yes… I know, Chief Kowona.”
She glared now at Parry, who kept talking. “But she's not an ordinary woman. Chief. She is a doctor, a medical examiner for the FBI.”
“ Hmmmmmmmm,” he intoned, mulling this over. “A doctor woman, yes… and holds she secrets?”
“ Many… many secrets, yes.” Parry had found his voice and was trying desperately to help Jessica's case, feeling confident that he knew what she was driving at. “She is like your own kahuna-a priestess.”
“ Hmmmmmmmmm, and knows she the secret to peace in the islands?”
“ If you will allow me… us… to return with your son's body-” Jess began, but Parry cut her short with a hand cupping her mouth.
“ Shuuuuuut up!” he firmly told her.
“ What will your woman doctor do with my son's body?” asked Kaniola, translating the question for Parry.
Parry cautioned her to remain silent, to allow him to do the parlaying. “She can show conclusively that this is the same man who terrorized Oahu.”
“ But this is well known,” said Kaniola, who said the same in Hawaiian to the chief.
“ Not officially. Only circumstantially. She can prove it beyond any doubt, by the bodily fluids, his DNA. You know that, Kaniola.”
Kaniola relented his personal objections and spoke at length with the chief in their native tongue. Then the old chief looked to Parry and Jessica, his enormous eyes fixing them in place. “Your government…” He struggled with the words. “… requires this…” It was a statement, not a question. He seemed deep in thought now until he said, “No bettah way to foul Lopaka's body than give over to da fishes, 'cept for one way.”
The old man stared at Jessica now, understanding now exactly what kind of a doctor she was. He had believed there could be no worse desecration of his son's body than he had already inflicted until Joe Kaniola had explained the nature of an autopsy to him.
“ You are strange people. My son's body you want. For au… au…”
“ Autopsy,” finished Jessica, making Jim blanche and seethe through his teeth. “Autoop-sie,” the chief repeated. Parry nodded approvingly. “Will you allow us to take your son from this soil?”
“ The haoles will think you are a butcher, Uncle,” said Awai. “That you butchered your own son. They will… will think our people pagans. This could cause us problems with the U.S. government.”
Jessica exploded at this, pushing into the chief's face, saying, “You are a chief, and so is Mr. Parry. Between the two of you, between your governments, certain problems exist. I assure you, sir, that if you cooperate, there'll be no further prosecution of this matter and-”
“ Jess,” Parry interrupted her, taking her aside and whispering, “we can't make these kinds of blanket promises, not even to a chief in a protected territory.”
“ Not even to a chief who holds our lives in his hands, Jim? And face it, Jim, without the body we can't officially close the case; we can't prove any of this ever happened. It'll remain on the books forever.”
“ In the Hawaiian scheme of things, our closing our books doesn't mean shit, Jess.”
Kaniola, going between the chief and the FBI agents regularly now, said, “All right, Chief Parry. You take the body back and you don't get too technical about how he died, right, Dr. Coran? Is that a compromise you can live with?”
Jess wasn't absolutely sure she could live with such a lie, and yet it appeared that lies were the only avenue off Kahoolawe at the moment. The concern clearly painted on her face was making Ben Awai edgy.
She glanced into Parry's eyes and he said, “We could say he fell off a cliff while we were in pursuit, or a pack of wild quarry dogs got hold of him and tore him from limb to limb before we could get to him.”
“ Dr. Coran?” asked Kaniola. She looked around the encampment, seeing the volatile Ben Awai and the painted faces of Chief Kowona's followers.
“ We… we…” she began, “we can do better than cliffs and quarry dogs, Jim.”
“ What's that?” he asked.
“ I think it'd be fitting, even poetic, if the readers of the Ala Ohana and other island papers learned that Lopaka died as a result of suicide.”
“ Suicide?”
“ That he tried leaping into the Spout on Maui where not only his body was recovered by divers, but a cache of bones belonging to his victims?”
“ An excellent story,” agreed Kaniola at once.
“ Yeah… that'd make great copy, huh, Joe?” Parry asked.
“ And I'll do all within my power,” she continued, “to see to it that the autopsy reflects how he died.”
“ We'll keep a lid on the powder keg, Joe,” added Parry. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“ I have your word?”
“ You do.”
“ That will best serve the press, the PKO, even the U.S., so we all remain one big happy ohana.”
“ And there's no further trouble?” asked Ben Awai.”Chief Kowona?” asked Kaniola.”The carcass take, but keep we Lopaka's head.”
“ What,” asked Jessica.
“ To display in the village until it rots,” explained Kaniola. “Barbaric perhaps, but effective.”
“ You wanted his head on a stick, remember?” Parry said.
“ Chief Kowona-” she began to argue.
“ Jess,” cautioned Parry.
“ Chief, we need the entire body for this thing to work,” she said, continuing her plea.
Kaniola translated. Kowona appeared crushed now. Finally, after some thought, Kaniola translated his words in a cold counterpoint to the Hawaiian he spoke. “I have personally seen enough of my son's defilement, but my
