“The reason I didn’t say how long I’m staying,” she added, “is that I can leave at any time. I won’t hang around your neck, Kawika. There’s no obligation.”
In the end, the temptation was too great. He yielded to it, knowing he shouldn’t, feeling swept away, aware he’d conspired in the sweeping and that he’d feel the consequences later.
Back at her condo, she grabbed a blanket and led him outdoors. “Down there,” she said, pointing. “Under that pandanus tree. By the beach.” It was a long walk, circuitous to avoid the lava rocks. She stopped him several times to kiss. But toward the end, they walked rapidly, no longer stopping at all.
Kawika helped her spread the blanket on the little lawn he’d first crossed two days earlier, when he’d ducked under the crime scene tape. There in the dark, under a tree, mere yards from where Fortunato had died, they felt hidden from view. On the other side of a low rock wall, big waves crashed, rolling sea-rounded cobbles up and down the steep black beach in a rising and falling murmur.
Still standing, they undressed quickly. Urgency overcame them. Sinking awkwardly down to the blanket, they kissed, fumbling. Patience at once lay back, ready to receive him. Kawika savored a brief moment of anticipation: first contact, flesh in flesh, sinking into a new lover for the first time.
But then from some nearby sound or movement, Kawika sensed the presence of someone else, someone right behind the lava rock wall. He yelled involuntarily and spun to his side, scrambling to his knees.
“Don’t mind me, folks,” a man said apologetically from the dark. “I’m just here to pick up a cat trap.”
Groaning, Kawika rolled onto his back. He reached a hand to Patience, lying there beside him. He heard her exhale sharply, a loud puff. Her head thumped softly back onto the blanket-covered turf. For a moment even the waves fell silent. Then a cat yowled plaintively.
Patience began to laugh and couldn’t stop.
Kawika laughed too.
“Let me ask you again,” he said. “How long are you staying, this trip?”
15The Mauna Lani
The cat had to be released. Kawika needed a statement from the trapper, and Kawika was in a hurry. There wasn’t time to take the cat to the shelter, and making it wait would have been cruel. So the cat went free, yowling one last time as it raced off into the night.
Kawika peppered the trapper with questions, even as he and Patience struggled into their clothes.
“You trapping feral cats?”
“Yup.”
“For whom?”
“Kohala Kats. Local group. We neuter ’em, give ’em shots, then turn ’em loose again, back where we found ’em.”
“You trap here often? In this spot?”
“Every night.”
“You here three nights ago?”
“Yup.”
“See anything unusual?”
“The killing, you mean?” asked the trapper.
“Yeah, the killing.”
“Yup, I saw the killing.”
“You saw it? You’re an eyewitness?”
“Yup. Guy stuck a spear through another guy? Yup, I saw that.”
“Jesus. Were you thinking of maybe telling the police?”
“Yup. I was thinking of maybe doing that. Haven’t decided yet.”
“Well, I’m the police. Detective Wong. I’m in charge of the investigation.”
“Wow. So you want me to help you?”
“Of course.”
“The way this pretty lady was helping you? Not sure I can.”
A little later they all sat on Patience’s lanai. She brewed fragrant Kona coffee, and they each had a cup. Then she booted up her laptop. At Kawika’s request she began typing an official-sounding statement for the trapper, just a preliminary one in the middle of the night, a document to have before Kawika interviewed him formally at the station in the daytime. Patience cleaned up the cat trapper’s answers to Kawika’s questions.
My name is Jason Hare. I am fifty-two years old. I have no fixed place of residence, but generally live in or near Kawaihae, Island of Hawaii. My address is P.O. Box 173D, Kawaihae.
“I recognize you!” Patience had exclaimed once they’d stepped into the light. “I see you out on the highway.”
“Yup,” the trapper said. “That’s me, the guy who walks along with no hat, no shirt, just my shorts. I look for scat.”
“What?”
“Cat crap. Days, I look for cat crap, try to find the cats. Nights, I trap ’em.”
As he continued, Patience typed:
I work as a feline retrieval officer for Kohala Kats. My duties include locating feral cats and trapping them. If a cat is ear-clipped, indicating it has previously been captured and treated, I release it. If not, I take it to the shelter in Kawaihae.
“Why do you trap here?” Kawika asked. “At this part of the Mauna Lani?”
“Shitload of cats here, that’s why.” He said that for the past month he’d kept a trap near the championship tee box on the fifteenth hole of the South Course at the Mauna Lani, because nearby homeowners had complained about the cats. Patience put that in the statement.
Kawika: “Tell me what happened three nights ago.”
Jason Hare’s statement continued:
On the night in question, I went to check the trap around midnight. The darkness and my location behind a rock wall apparently hid me from view. I heard someone approaching. A man was talking but I could not make out his words.
I observed two men, one behind the other. I could not see their faces. They were of similar height and build. The man in back sometimes pushed the man in front, who sometimes stumbled. The man in front had his hands bound before him at his waist. His elbows were behind him and a pole was inserted in the space between his elbows and his back, so he could not move his arms.
Kawika: “Why didn’t you say something? Shout? You might have saved him.”
Jason’s statement:
I did not alert the men to my presence because I was unsure what was happening. I realized the situation might involve potential violence, but the men might also be drunk or involved in some dare or party game. I thought that if violence was imminent, by disclosing my presence I might end up becoming a victim myself.
Kawika: “Describe the killing.”
The men climbed the steps to the tee. I
