Spider Bones

to one and all.

Dr. Hadley Perry was not an exuder.

“Day before yesterday a couple of high schoolers were snorkeling in Halona Cove, between the Blowhole and Hanauma Bay. You know it?”

Setting for the famous Lancaster-Kerr kiss, Halona Cove was known to locals as From Here to Eternity Beach. The little inlet has soaring cliffs, killer waves, and very few tourists. Accessed only by a steep, rocky path, the spot is a favorite with local teens hoping to get more sand in their shorts than Deborah and Burt.

I nodded.

“Kids spotted something on the bottom, maybe twelve feet down, in one of the rock cuts. Brought it up, dimed nine-one-one when they realized their prize was a human knee.

“Cops called me. I ordered divers, went out there myself. The girl was still tossing chunks. The boyfriend was trying for macho, not pulling it off.”

Perry worked a way too colorful nail on her blotter, brushed the flotsam with the back of one hand.

“Divers searched for over two hours. What you just saw is what they collected.”

“Got any MPs fitting the profile?”

Perry lifted a printout and read.

“Anthony Simolini, date of birth December fourteenth, nineteen ninety-three. Haole.”

“Meaning white.”

“Sorry. Yeah. Brown hair, brown eyes, five-eleven, a hundred and eighty-five pounds. On February second of this year, at approximately ten p.m., Simolini left a Zippy’s restaurant on the Kamehameha Highway in Pearl City. He was heading home but never showed. Kid’s a high school senior, big-deal athlete. Friends and family say no way he’s a runaway.

“Jason Black, date of birth August twenty-second, nineteen ninety-four. Blond hair, blue eyes, five-nine, a hundred and sixty pounds.”

“Haole,” I said.

“January twenty-seventh of this year, Black had a throw-down with his parents, stormed out of the home, vanished. Kid has a history of drug abuse, problems at school. Friends say he often talks about splitting for the mainland.

“Ethan Motohiro, date of birth May tenth, nineteen ninety-three. Asian, black hair, brown eyes, five-four, a hundred and twenty pounds. Last September Motohiro set off to circle the island by bike. A motorist saw him on the Kalanianaole Highway near the entrance to Makapu’u Point, probably on the seventh. That was the last sighting.”

“Makapu’u Point is close to Halona Cove, right?”

“Yeah. Motohiro had a steady girlfriend, was an A student, planned on attending university.”

“Not the pattern for a runaway. Also, he may be too small. I think this kid was pretty big.”

Back to the printout.

“Isaac Kahunaaiole, date of birth July twenty-second, nineteen eighty-seven. Native Hawaiian, black hair, brown eyes, six-three, two hundred and seventy-five pounds. Worked night security at the Ala Moana Shopping Center, lived at home with his parents and four of six siblings. December twenty-second, two years back, Kahunaaiole boarded a bus for Ala Moana. Never showed up. Coworkers say he was cheerful, well liked, had a good work ethic.”

“Maybe. Size sounds right.”

“Four males sixteen to twenty-two. I suppose I could expand the age range. Or the time frame. I only went back two years.”

“Given the amount of soft tissue, I doubt this kid has been dead that long.”

Perry snorted. The sound was not pretty.

“A body drops deep enough, all rules about decomp fly out the window. Add sharks to the equation, forget it. I had a suicide once, a poet from Perth. People saw him jump off Makapu’u Point. Choppers got there within the hour. Sharks had already opened a soup kitchen. The guys in the chopper watched the bastards strip the body down to bone. A month later, I get a call. A fisherman found a segment of arm inside a shark belly.”

“The dead poet?”

“Yep. Still wearing his engraved watch. In there with him I found seven corn husks, an alarm clock, a Cutty Sark bottle, and the hind leg of a dog.”

Note to self: Research shark digestion.

“Hell, if this is murder, the kid could have been buried for a while. Or stashed in a freezer, then taken out and dumped.”

“Have you queried missing boats and planes?”

“One body was never recovered following the Ehime Maru collision.”

In 2001, a Los Angeles-class fast track submarine, the USS Greeneville, struck a Japanese fishing training boat, the Ehime Maru, just south of Honolulu. Thirty-five students and crew went down with the ship.

Later, the U.S. Navy raised the Ehime Maru from a depth of two thousand feet with most bodies still on board, and divers recovered additional victims. Thanks to the Honolulu ME, all but one crew member were identified.