Where There's a Will

discuss Dagmar.

“Is she all right?” John asked. “She looked like absolute hell.”

“She sure did,” Axel agreed. “Well, we’ve been raking up some pretty painful memories, but she’ll be all right. You know what a tough old bird she is.”

“She also went in for her annual lube and oil change this afternoon,” Malani said, then laughed at the puzzled expressions on her guest’s faces. “That’s what she calls her annual physical at Kona Hospital. She stays overnight, and she’s always worried before she goes in...you wouldn’t think she was a hypochondriac, would you, but she is. But she always comes out with flying colors. She’ll make it to a hundred, you’ll see.”

“Knock on wood,” Axel said and demonstrated on the table top.

The rest of the dinner conversation was devoted to Axel’s ranting about a letter to West Hawaii Today in which a local environmental group had complained about pollution of the land due to cattle manure.

“You should never, never confuse human waste with animal waste,” he fumed. “Cattle manure is not your everyday, ordinary crap, and cow droppings are not cat droppings. Cattle manure is nothing more nor less than a dilute multi-nutrient fertilizer filled with micro- and macro-nutrients that improve the soil—nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium. Not only that, it has physical advantages. It improves carbon exchange capacity, it increases water filtration, it does all kinds of beneficial things. Now, of course, I admit that the smell can sometimes be a little—”

“What charming subjects we talk about at dinner,” Malani mused.

Julie laughed. “At my house it’s skeletons and exit wounds.”

“It is?” She thought about it. “Well, all things considered, I think I’d rather eat at your house.”

That was the high point of the meal, and breakfast the next morning was much the same, with no talk of what was really on everyone’s minds. But afterward, when Malani and Axel left to attend to ranch affairs, John, Gideon, and Julie went out onto the porch. Breakfast had been a heavy affair of sourdough pancakes, thick-sliced bacon, potatoes, fresh pineapple and mangos, and pot after pot of thick coffee, and it felt good to stand out in the fresh morning air, looking out over the morning-mist-cloaked hills, feeling the dew on their faces and listening to the hollow, distant lowing of cattle they couldn’t see.

“You know,” Julie said, “I was just thinking that now there does seem to be another one of those loose ends you two were talking about.”

“What’s that?” Gideon asked.

“No body.”

“Nobody?”

“No... body,” Julie said. “No Magnus. Presuming it is Magnus, he’s just a pile of ashes in a little box.”

“You know, that’s true,” John said reflectively. “No body, no trial, no perps, a misidentified victim...I have to admit, that’s a lot of loose ends.” He looked at his watch. “Well, time to see if we can tie a few of them up. Doc, ready to go talk to the Waimea PD?”

Gideon hesitated. “I guess.”

John frowned. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, I’m going to barge in on some detective’s turf, totally unasked, a complete stranger, a self- proclaimed ‘expert’ he’s never heard of, and tell him he botched a case he handled eight years ago, not even getting right who got killed. I’ve been there before, John, and I can imagine his reaction. I know how I’d feel.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. In the FBI, we come up against that kind of situation all the time. There are techniques for defusing it. See, the trick is you have to make them see you as helping them, not horning in. Besides, I used to work for Honolulu PD, remember? I know these people, I know how they think. Trust me. Just follow my lead, we’ll get along great.”

“John, you have my implicit trust,” Gideon said, “but if it was the Kona CIS that handled it, why are we going to the Waimea PD?”

“Because they would have been the first on the scene, and the ones who opened the case. And they’re the local police force. It’s a matter of professional courtesy. See what I mean? There’s a right way to do this.”

THE Waimea Police Department was closed.

“Closed!” John yelled through the glass front doors at the stern and preoccupied-looking woman on the other side. In response to their thumping on the glass she had grudgingly emerged into the unlit vestibule from somewhere in back to bark at them: she couldn’t let them in; the office was closed. In one corner of her mouth a cigarette jiggled up and down as she spoke.

“How the hell can you be closed?” John shouted. “What, there’s no crime in Waimea on Sunday?”

Her eyes narrowed. She took the cigarette out of her mouth. Her lips, thin to begin with, disappeared altogether. “Do you have an emergency, sir?”

“No, we don’t h—”

“Are you in immediate need of the assistance of a police officer?”

“No, dammit, but we need to talk to—”

“Office hours are Monday through Friday, eight to five.”

“Look, lady,” John yelled even louder, holding his identification up to the glass. “I’m trying to be polite here. My name is Special Agent John Lau of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I damn well want to talk—”

“Monday through Friday, eight to five.” She stuck the cigarette back in her mouth and went back out of sight around a corner. John was left steaming, holding his card case up to the deserted vestibule. “Do you believe this?”