“Good. Then let’s meet on the mountain. There’s a good spot on your route, nice place for a visit. Park at the trailhead near the power line right of way. You know it?”
“I’ve seen it, I think.”
“Good. Park there, take the old cattle trail over the lava. After a while, you’ll come to a kipuka. I’ll meet you there.”
“A kipuka?”
“Yeah, a little island of native forest. The lava just split and flowed around it. Very beautiful. One of my favorite places. Lots of native species. No tourists. No locals anyway. I’ll bring something for lunch. Around eleven, say? Can’t leave it too late—clouds roll in around one. Easy to get lost in the fog, coming back over the lava.”
Kawika was happy to meet out of the public eye; he’d begun to feel apprehensive about the newspaper the Kohala folks seemed to be reading. His next call, with Michael Cushing, heightened his unease.
“I’m happy to see you, Detective,” Cushing began, “but not at the office, okay? You’re the wrong kind of celebrity these days. People see you coming in, we’d have an angry crowd in no time. How about my house, tomorrow night?”
Kawika had been thinking tonight. He’d planned to see Kimaio and Cushing, spend the night with Patience—any resolve he’d had not to see her had weakened the nearer South Kohala became—then the next morning interview the Murphys, who’d returned from California at Tanaka’s insistence. After that he’d head back to Hilo. If he had to wait and see Cushing the second evening, he’d end up spending an extra night in South Kohala.
“Would tonight work for you?” Kawika asked, fighting the temptation of that extra night.
“Sorry, no,” Cushing replied. “Gotta get financial reports to Japan by tomorrow morning.”
“Okay,” said Kawika. It’s out of my hands, he thought.
He next reached the lawyer Ted Pohano in Kailua. “I want to meet the Murphys tomorrow at their house,” Kawika said. “You’re welcome to join, of course.”
“No can do, I’m afraid,” said Pohano. “I’ve got them meeting a criminal lawyer in Honolulu tomorrow.”
“You’re not a criminal lawyer?”
“Not really. They’re going to need the very best, don’t you think?”
“That’s a tricky question for someone who’s not a criminal lawyer.”
“I try. How about the day after tomorrow?”
“If that’s the best you can do.” I’ll be spending the night now anyway.
“Eight o’clock?” Pohano suggested.
Kawika considered how his morning might unfold at the Mauna Lani. “Nine o’clock,” he replied. “Nine’s better for me.”
“Okay,” said Pohano. “Nine it is. The criminal lawyer, the Murphys, and us.”
“Now, about your press release,” Kawika said. “Seems it did a little damage.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. The paper over here—someone was confused, I guess.”
“What exactly does it say?” Kawika asked.
“You haven’t seen it? No one’s read it to you?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh. Well, ah, some readers might make the mistake of thinking you shot the Malos.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Sorry. The reporter kinda muddied it up. She wrote you’re responsible for the deaths—because of your investigation, you know. And she linked that with your blaming Peter Pukui for Fortunato. Got some stuff in there about Melanie Munu too. So she sorta suggested you’ve declared open season on Hawaiians. That sort of thing.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Like I said: sorry. The article was just sloppy. We could clarify things in another press release, though—hail new developments, new suspects, and so on. Are there new developments?”
“You’d know before I do, with all your inside sources.”
“Yeah, I hear you met Bingo Palapala. Piece of work, that guy. What’d I tell ya?”
“We were discussing your next press release, I believe.”
“Right. Okay, how about this? We say S&R met with police and offered to assist your investigation on lines of inquiry other than Peter Pukui. And we’re pleased the police—led by you, Detective Kawika Wong—have yielded to public indignation and accepted our offer. We’d also clarify that you didn’t shoot the Malos, of course.”
“Of course,” Kawika replied.
“We could issue it right away. Or maybe we should wait till after you’ve met with the Murphys?”
“Very clever. Now you do sound like a criminal lawyer: a lawyer who’s a criminal.” Kawika hung up and called Patience at her condo.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“I’ll be better when I see you. Can’t see you in public, apparently.” That was a relief, actually; less risk of love affairs colliding.
“Public isn’t what I had in mind,” she teased. “Went shopping, got everything we need. But by the way, as I was driving up to the Village, I saw something kind of strange. You know how people over here write graffiti on the roadside, using white pieces of coral?”
“Yup, sure do. Bleached coral on lava—blackboard of the gods.”
“Okay. Last time I saw some graffiti that said ‘KW’ and ‘HI.’”
“Initials, right?” he said. “Boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“That’s what I thought. But yesterday I noticed someone’s taken away the ‘HI.’ The ‘KW’ is still there. But after a colon it says aloha in block capitals: ‘A-L-O-H-A.’ What do you make of that?”
“I don’t know,” replied Kawika.
“Well, I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Could be a coincidence. But maybe someone’s trying to communicate with you.”
“Two possible explanations? What if we apply Occam’s Razor, P?”
She laughed. “Probably just coincidence, you think?”
“Probably,” he agreed. “I mean, if someone’s using graffiti to communicate with me, how am I supposed to communicate back?”
PART THREE
KOHALA AND HILO
Fallen is the Chief; overthrown is the kingdom,
Gasping in death, scattered in flight;
An overthrow throughout the land;—
—Fragment of the epic poem “Haui ka Lani,”
from E. Smith et al., Ancient Hawaiian Civilization (1933)
28At the Kīpuka
The lava Kawika crossed to the kīpuka consisted mostly of ‘a‘ā, broken and jumbled and sharp enough to cut shoe leather. At intervals he encountered expanses of smooth pahoehoe, once-molten rock now cooled and weathered. In the ‘a‘ā, the old cattle trail was a path of crushed cinders. On the pahoehoe—flat and hard and colored like a rain cloud—the trail became indistinct, sometimes visible where hooves had chipped a rocky edge, sometimes marked by small stone cairns.
Kawika knew this vast stone
