one-and-a-half-hour-long drive to the only airstrip on Maui capable of handling military jets.
“ You can sleep on the transport back,” Jim had promised her, but she didn't even make it that far.
Even as she slept, in the back of her mind there was a nagging voice telling her that she couldn't truly rest until she proved to herself, beyond a shadow of a doubt lurking there, that she and Jim actually did have Lopaka Kowona's body in that basket.
From the disfigurement of the facial features, there still remained some doubt in Jim's mind as well as Jessica's. Could the wily old chief have been playing out a charade, his final performance? And Kaniola? Had he, too, been duped, or was he part of the masquerade? Could they've been playing out a sting operation, a magician's switch, on Kahoolawe, substituting another for the true son's life, to spare that royal blood no matter its transgressions? A hundred what-ifs remained swirling amid Jessica's dreamscape…
The thought that Lopaka, for whatever inscrutable reason, might be harbored and someone butchered in his place to appease the white race both infuriated and defeated her, but a part of her mind screamed that there was no way the two of them would then have been allowed safe passage back with a ringer's body. Kaniola, Awai and the others knew that such a hoax would be impossible, that it would be discovered quickly in the lab. On the other hand, such a falsehood played out against the FBI would not only prove embarrassing, but also show that she and Jim had violated international agreements between the Hawaiian natives and the State Department. Could Kaniola be that shrewd? And could they've found such a close double for Kowona?
Such questions hounded her, and Jim as well, she suspected, all the way back to Oahu. She kept trying to reassure herself, and when she came awake only a few miles from the airport, the ambulance in the far distance ahead of them, she realized that Jim Parry had fixated on similar doubts, having had only the interior of the car to commiserate with. Was it really Lopaka in the body bag?
Soon they reached Kahului Airport, not the most modem facility by anyone's standard, and the waiting ambulance drivers looked on with such inexplicable eyes and nonchalance that Parry and Jessica began to wonder just what Kaniola had said to them back in Makena at the warehouse. Parry cautioned the two men once more to remember nothing of their trip from Makena to the airport. They assured him with nods and grunts that they had no problem with silence.
“ Where was this body transported from?” he asked one of the men.
“ Hana Town.”
“ At the Spout,” added the second man firmly.
“ Good… good…”
But Jessica sensed that Parry wanted to tear into the two youths, throw a scare into them, see what spilled out.
“ If I have to come back because you men've lied to me in any way,” he warned, his large finger rising to their eyes when a jetliner crashed over, drowning out the rest of his words.
“ No lie, Boss.”
“ No lie…”
In a matter of fifteen minutes and two cups of coffee, the military transport came to a smooth landing on the strip and taxied over to the hangar where the ambulance waited, getting directions from the tower as to the exact number on the tarmac over which they must come to rest.
The body, loaded from the ambulance, was left in the body bag, and deposited into a Navy-issue coffin. Parry and Jessica boarded, and the plane was given immediate clearance, holding up an incoming Aloha Airlines jet filled with tourists, forcing the commercial flight to make a second pass over the island as a result.
News throughout the island-that “Parry had his quarry”- spread like wildfire ahead of them.
26
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation.
Once in the air, the team of Parry and Coran felt a sense of great relief wash over them. The plane wasn't much on comfort, the seats like those of a '57 Chevy, the plane an old bucket itself. But they were airborne and as they stared down on the islands, all seemed beauty and tranquility. Jessica rested her eyes. She wanted all the turmoil, all the guessing, all the doubts over, and she wanted to believe that the natives on Kahoolawe had dealt with them fairly, that their cargo was indeed what it was purported to be.
Beside her. Parry seemed on a cocaine high. He couldn't sit. He paced the small interior of the lumbering aircraft. He sat, stood up, sat again until finally she said, “What the hell's the matter, Jim? I'm trying to catch a few winks here. Do you mind?”
“ Sorry, I'm just so wired by all this.”
“ I understand, but you'll blow a gasket if you don't slow down.”
“ You know this'll kill Scanlon.”
She blinked curiously at him. “Scanlon?”
“ It's going to blow Scanlon right out of his office, don't you see?”
“ Scanlon? Commissioner Scanlon?”
“ No way he can stay on as police commissioner in Honolulu now. He'll have to go Stateside just to find someone who'll hand him an application.”
“ Jim, just how much pleasure are you deriving from this fact?” She fully opened her eyes to study his response.
He shrugged, but a smug look remained on his handsome face. “Some… some,” he confided.
Her frown displeased him, and suddenly his frustration and perhaps his fatigue got the better of him, and he simply lit into her. “What, you don't think the bastard's got it coming? He's an incompetent ass, Jess, and it's bigots and assholes like him who get other people killed.”
“ Whataya mean? He's responsible for all of Lopaka's victims? For Lopaka's psychosis? If you want to blame someone, blame the bastard's father.”
“ Scanlon's got no business in such a position of power… it's just not right,” Jim said, continuing his tirade. “Ahh, forget it.”
“ Abuse of power? You want to talk about abuse of power, think about that Chief Kowona guy, who-” Suddenly, a light came full on deep inside her brain, illuminating all the dark, fuzzy contours around Jim's relationship with Dave Scanlon. “Wait a minute, Jim, what's this really about?”
“ Whataya mean? It's about a bad cop.”
“ A bad cop?”
“ An incompetent cop. You heard what Lopaka Kowona's wife Stateside had to say about Scanlon.”
“ Yeah, and you knew all that long before I got her on the phone. It was all old information to you. And you didn't pay her any more attention than Scanlon had.”
He looked stricken. 'That's not exactiy fair or correct, Jess. I had access to the records of the victims, and access to police calls relevant or otherwise to the cases in the missing-persons files. I didn't have access to anything Scanlon didn't want me to have. I didn't learn about Kowona or his wife until it was too late. You've gotta know that.”
“ Then tell me this, Jim. Why'd you ever begin delving into Scanlon's old caseload to begin with? What set you on his course in the first place?”
“ That's obvious, isn't it?”
“ No, not entirely.”
He gritted his teeth. “I admit, it began as a search through Scanlon's past record.”
