“ Why? What makes you hate the man so?”
“ He intentionally screwed with an undercover operation when he was a lieutenant with the HPD, and he got a partner of mine killed as a result. He was somewhere he had no business being, Jess, and a friend was killed. Reason enough for you?”
“ So you started on this case to revenge the death of a friend? All along, that's been your motive.” Her tone alone condemned him.
She couldn't look at him. She turned away, staring out the porthole to see Pearl Harbor below.
“ Jess, Jess,” he pleaded, “it may've started out that way… well, yes, it did start out that way. But that was all back-shelved once I saw the enormity of the crimes. I cared about the victims, and I forgot my original reasons and Scanlon in the process, all before I met you.”
“ Really?” she countered. “And I'm supposed to believe that with you dancing the aisles here, unable to hold yourself in check because you're so jubilant over Dave Scanlon's tumble from grace?”
'Think of the number of his own cops who've died or been hurt by this, Jessica!”
“ And think just how tarnished you've become over it, Jim.”
She turned away, unable to speak another word, anxious for the plane to land and for their departure, anxious to get away from him long enough to sort out her feelings.
9.-45 A.M., Pearl Harbor, Honolulu
When they landed at Pearl, they were encircled by brass and press there on the tarmac, including Joe Kaniola, who'd caught a chopper in Wailea near Makena and had openly spread the word ahead, labeling both Parry and Jessica as heroes worthy of the welcome afforded knights returning from a crusade. It'd become overcast and dark on Oahu. Blinding flashes of light came from both cameras and an approaching storm. There were microphones everywhere with the NBC, ABC and CBS logos and others attached to a podium. Everyone in the crowd expected a news conference on their disembarking. Jim looked from the cameras outside to the body at the rear of the transport. “Keep this body under armed guard until I-and no one but me-tells you otherwise, Lieutenant,” he told the young copilot standing beside him.
“ What if the brass says otherwise?”
“ Nobody takes the body out of this place except me. Clear?”
“ Yes, sir.”
“ You'd think we just escaped from Iran,” she whispered to Jim. “What're you afraid of, Jim? That somebody'd actually hijack Lopaka?”
“ Hey, there're people on this island that'd like to tear that body limb from limb, who'd be unhappy to know that the head was cut off before they got a chance to do it. Besides… not so sure I trust Kaniola.”
The disembarking was met with cheers, cameras zooming in for the local and network news teams. Everyone of rank wanted to have his picture taken with Parry and Jessica. However, Parry took the initiative and simply refused to play their games, insisting he had work to attend to, and Jessica followed his lead, rushing off for the rear of the plane to oversee the disembarking of the third passenger. Hell, they had a body to attend to, she thought, and if it should suddenly disappear, who was to say whether it was or was not that of Lopaka “Robert” Kowona? If Joe Kaniola had planned this diversion and planned on hijacking the body, they might easily have played into his shrewd hand.
Parry was having none of it. He and Jessica saw to the body's careful transportation to the FBI Crime Lab, irking a number of people in the process, with Doctor Marshal, M.E., for the military, and PC. Scanlon at the head of the line.
Later, with much help from Dr. Smits, Dr. Lau and his people, Jessica completed the various tests over the body and the autopsy report. She became convinced in the process of her work that they indeed had the man known variously as the Trade Winds Killer, the Cane Cutter and Lopaka “Robert” Kowona on her slab. The blood match was identical to blood found in his home and in the vehicle that had been impounded. Serum and bodily fluids, DNA, all a match. Dr. Smits, using her vast knowledge of cranial reconstruction, created a caste from Lopaka's head and had begun to mold and sculpt it into an exact likeness of the killer. Even unfinished where it sat in a vise in the lab, the chilling thing left no doubt in Jessica's mind that they did indeed have Lopaka. The bone structure screamed the truth and X-rays had been made, which would further prove their case.
Even before the sculpting was finished, before all the prelim tests were completed, something instinctual told her that the beheaded corpse with the fire-red hair and the dark eyes that shone like two sides of an impenetrable abyss below her light was the killer they had sought. Below his nails flesh and blood fragments that matched those of his last victim, the little woman from the liquor store, were still embedded.
She didn't believe that even Chief Kowona and Ben Awai, even if they could get help from Dr. Lau, could have planted such incriminating evidence on a decoy. She didn't believe this was a case of tampering.
As to the total fabrication that Lopaka had died of self-inflicted wounds as a result of his suicide at the Spout, choosing that end over Pany's capturing him alive, no one questioned it. Nor would they should she choose to perpetuate the story. In fact. Dr. Lau made it painfully obvious that as far as he was concerned, no one would ever know of any inconsistencies in the autopsy. And Dr. Smits, a bone specialist and not a forensics expert, saw no reason to question Jessica's clinical diagnosis.
Jessica felt that the lie was worth the peace it preserved and Jim Parry agreed. And now she was exhausted, and she wanted a hot shower and a bed.
Downstairs, free of her lab coat and responsibilities toward Parry and his office, free of the dreaded case that had removed her both bodily and mentally from the paradise of her surroundings, the case which had haunted her nights now for so long, she breathed in the native air as it whipped and wended its way by her, the continuing trade winds. Investigating her, the mischievous wind next moved out to sea forever. She had left extensive notes for Parry, finishing with a reminder that the body be removed now for the promised burial at sea.
There Lopaka's evil, feverish soul could wander in limbo for longer than any forever that existed anywhere else on Earth.
She hailed a cab, feeling quite alone tonight. Jim had not gotten back to her. She didn't know his whereabouts, and she had to pack for D.C. in the morning.
The taxi that pulled up to the curb was an island Yellow Cab and someone was in the backseat. She looked through the window to find Joe Kaniola waving for her to climb inside, a rare smile on his face.
Opening the door, she said, “I'm too exhausted for another kidnapping, Mr. Kaniola.”
He laughed lightly, smiled and pushed the door open. “I only offer you a ride to the Rainbow Tower. That is where you're going?”
“ Thank you.” She got in, and even the stiff seat felt good to her. “I'm very tired.”
“ Everyone wishes to thank you.”
“ Everyone?”
“ The Ohana.”
“ Ahh, the Family, the PKO.”
“ For your discreet handling of the case.”
“ Hmmmm, but you forget. It's not my case; it's Jim Parry's case.”
“ I've already thanked Jim, but I must say, he did not accept my congratulations as gracefully as you.”
“ Nobody reads Miss Manners anymore, Kaniola. You ought to be grateful he didn't find some charge to bring you in on, say, aiding and abetting, conspiracy to-”
“ Chief Kowona had a right to administer his own justice to his own son. As a father and a Hawaiian, I respect that.”
“ Maybe… maybe…”
“ We both know what would have happened with Lopaka's case here if it had gone to court. Lawyers with an eye for sensationalism would have prosecuted while others with an equal eye would defend. Before it would have been over…”
He allowed his thoughts to trail off, but she could read them clearly enough: Two, maybe three years would've passed before Lopaka would be sentenced, if the madman hadn't found a way to kill himself.
Kaniola said knowingly, “He would have been analyzed and psychoanalyzed and proven and disproven and proven again to be insane. His civil rights would have been proven violated by the HPD, the FBI, perhaps you, Doctor. And the best we could hope for in the State of Hawaii is that his case would end in a sentence of life
