They arrived at the beautiful Rainbow Tower in the Hilton Hawaii Village in Waikiki, and Parry drove into the winding circle drive, dropping her at the door. “Listen,” he said, his voice taking on a near-conspiratorial tone, which was both curious and pushy at once, “if you need an escort, someone to have dinner with… well, give me a call at either of these numbers.” He handed her his card and sped off.
Her eyes took in the heady, exciting capital city of Hawaii, the seemingly unreal mountain faces carpeted with lush, dense green, reminding her of a visit to Ireland only on the sunniest of days there. Pivoting to her west, she could see the deep azure blue of the Pacific peeking from between the skyscrapers, and she felt the firm touch of the trade winds as they swept over her skin. The winds were so strong that she imagined it would be easy to lift her arms and fly off to wherever winds ran away to.
She felt an urge to rush out to the sand and surf of the beaches here, a desire to return to the sea from which Parry had plucked her, to run from the city, from Parry, from the FBI and her responsibilities here in Oahu. Why not, she desperately wondered. Hadn't her shrink told her that quitting the FBI was one option she could exercise? That such a change in her lifestyle might help quell her bouts with depression and fear?
But her father didn't raise a quitter, so instead she marched briskly into the hotel where she was immediately caught up amid the bustle of tourists both coming and going. She wasn't surprised when, asking for her key at the desk, she was informed of several messages from the mainland-from Quantico, Virginia.
Maybe later she'd get down to the pool, try out that new bathing suit she'd found in that little shop in Lahaina, Maui… maybe…
Somewhere in Honolulu the same night
He shuffles around his place where the furniture is ancient and large and heavy, the end tables made of old crates used to haul grocery items, crates he once thought to turn into rough-hewn works of art, except that the stain had gone too dark and he never could get the polish to take effectively. The lamps are likewise homemade, built of sturdy wood he's gotten for nothing, scrap parts at the mill. The old canvas-covered couch nestles between two enormous lamps carved with the faces of Hawaiian gods, lamps that seldom see use since he is adverse to the light. The floors are gummy with dirt and filth, blood and other seminal matter. He isn't much of a housekeeper and part of the stickiness and the stench is endemic now, ground into the floors, particularly one corner caked with blood.
He is antsy, angry with himself and with circumstances. For so long now he has gone undetected, his work known only to the dark lords of the islands. But now everyone in Honolulu is either reading of, or listening to, news reports on their TVs about his latest work, the killing of two local cops, both Hawaiian-as bad luck would have it. This means an uproar that isn't likely to soon die away. The only hope he has is that someone else might be arrested for the crimes. Local police are now hinting that arrests are forthcoming.
He enjoys learning about the politicizing of his crimes, the furor he has caused between the races. Still, not a word about the disappearance of his latest Kelia. He's read one or two items about the so-called Trade Winds Killer, a phantom stalker on the islands between April and August, but to date nothing has linked him to the crimes, and police have not recovered one shred of evidence to prove the murders have actually taken place. They can only point to “disappearances.” So long as they find no bodies, he reasons, they can never find nor prosecute him, even if they know! With the lack of physical evidence and eyewitnesses, nothing whatever to link him-or anyone, for that matter-with the deaths, a U.S. court of law would not dare touch such a case. God bless the Blow Hole and the U.S.A.
Policemen, a white guy and a Samoan, spoke to him once, for a statement, when they were canvassing the district for any possible witnesses to a killing he'd committed the year before, but they never returned.
They still don't know how he does it, or the kind of weapon he uses on his victims. He means not to make the mistakes of other killers. He means never to give his enemies the least satisfaction or opportunity or magic to hold over his head…
Have to get some sleep, he tells himself now. His dreams have been disturbed by roaring gods since his stupidity: drawing the attention of the two Hawaiian police in the first place, and then having to kill them. He dreams of landscapes littered with his own serated flesh and blood, of cavernous tunnels into which he's been cast, where demons of bizarre shape, size and lurid color give chase, trampling him and tearing parts of him away. These caverns are interconnected, the walls running with a yellow, stewy gruel, and the moment he escapes one, he finds himself trapped in another, sliding down a wall, unable to stop his spiraling progression downward toward yet a deeper prison, a filthy hole. Dante's Inferno or someplace only the Hawaiian gods knew of, Kehena?
Such troubled sleep will not help him on the job tomorrow, or when he goes cruising. He has a number of other sacrifices to make between now and when the trades decide to leave the islands. The winds could be capricious. They might leave at any time.
Maybe warm milk with a dollop of cocoa, tinged with a tad of vanilla extract, he thinks. He's read somewhere that sleep is helped along by some chemical in hot milk. Trypteeo-something.
He steps into his ramshackle kitchen in the dingy and cramped bungalow, its black memories and dark corners echoing in his consciousness. He snatches open the small icebox and pulls forth a quart of aging milk.
He pays no attention to the odors emanating from his icebox, closing it on the collection of hands he's kept as souvenirs of his conquests. He now quickly warms his milk to a temperature most men could not tolerate. Once the cocoa is prepared as he likes it, he wanders about the empty, wailing house he once shared with Kelia. The shadows, even the wood and the wood grain in the walls, are alive with Kelia's many ghosts who scream at him. Kelia has long ago left him, deserted him. She had to die for that indignity and she has… At least in his mind, he has killed her many times over now. He would like to kill the real Kelia, but he knows he can't, at least not now, perhaps never unless she comes back home…
He fervently misses their former life together on the island of Maui and later here on Oahu. She was alive and well, living with friends on the mainland in California, afraid one day that he would come for her. But if Kelia were ever to be murdered, the family-everyone-would know who had killed her.
So he kills Kelia by killing the others who are-or were-like Kelia.
He occasionally wonders if Kelia hasn't at some time snuck back onto the island of Oahu without his knowing. He gets reports from relatives now and again, but they are vague, unsure. His people don't come around him. Most think him strange. Most of them think that he lives too much in the past.
He is a big man, although short at five-ten, stout and strong, proud of his strength, his barbells always nearby. His living room is taken up by his equipment and he routinely works out here until his muscles bulge.
He must keep in shape for his self-esteem and for the passionate work he does for his gods.
He likes to keep the house dark. Without A.C. or the hope of air-conditioning, he keeps the place cavelike and cool, accepting the dankness over the heat. He once had a dream of building a house into the side of one of the mountains, for natural cooling and heating. He'd dreamed of building it for Kelia. God, that was so long ago, when he and Kelia first lived together on Maui. He realizes the old dream is in ruins; only his new dream can come to pass now.
He lifts his long sugarcane knife, his favorite of several he owns. He has a rack of such knives along with several Japanese swords he has purchased over the years. He has a fascination for shiny steel blades; he likes their feel, the cool evenness of the metal as it is ripped from its scabbard, the way it cleanly slides into flesh and out again without disturbance to the metal. A powerful knife is like the phallus a god dangles between enormous legs, and lately, he has begun to think of his own body as a steel blade to be put to use by the gods of Oahu and the islands.
“ Have to get rest… sleep,” he anxiously tells himself now. He has suffered now for two years with bouts of insomnia; it is one of the reasons he willingly accepts night-shift work from 2 to 10 P.M. He's become used to sleeping three or four hours a day, scouting the downtown area for a while before going on duty, and then returning afterwards to the streets of Oahu to continue his hunt. But today is his day off.
He is not easily satisfied. His princesses all must be elegant, at least in appearance, to appease his gods. They must be strong- willed, not the pliant, easy pickups that will get into a car with just anyone. He likes them to stand up to him, to fight. It shows their courage, that they're worthy of his plan to re-ignite the powerful lords of the islands who speak to him, speak through him, urging him along the path he has chosen.
“ Lopaka,” they each in turn call out to him. “Lopaka… son of chiefs before you…”
“ It is you… Cowboy Lopaka. “
They each reach out to him through their sonorous voices. Their voices all mesh into one when they chant his
