After breakfast, Patience got in her car and wound her way up the mountain toward Waikoloa Village. The traffic had vanished; everyone was already at work. Including Kawika, she realized. She couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Usually she would have driven straight to the Village Market. Today she decided to poke around a bit, explore the Village itself. She drove along the side streets, observing the housing, the yards, the flowering vegetation. She tried to imagine where Kawika had driven, which house might be Joan Malo’s, which belonged to mainland retirees and which to Kawika’s local people—the ones who worked at the resorts, who might feel soiled.
Returning to the Mauna Lani, Patience met her trainer at the gym, then followed her workout with an outdoor massage. After that, she stopped for coffee and noticed the large number of single parents at the hotel restaurant, adults without wedding rings, alone with children, sitting placidly, their gazes resting on their kids or raised to the horizon. A guide explained to some newly arrived guests, “It’s so dry here, there’s not a single year-round stream on the entire South Kohala coast.”
Patience wondered about a year-round life for herself on the South Kohala coast. Or in Hilo. “Damn,” she muttered, with a small laugh. “I really am impatient.” Impatient for the night ahead.
31Mauna Lani
Kawika and Patience awoke three times in the night. The first time, they used few words.
“Jesus, Kawika.”
“I know. Me too.”
The second time, she lay with her cheek on his chest while he nuzzled her hair.
“You’re an incredible lover,” she said.
“But not very considerate,” he replied. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I realize there’s something important happening here, P. With us, I mean. I wasn’t expecting this, or anything like it. I know I should focus on it, but I can’t. I’m preoccupied with this case.” He knew that wasn’t strictly true. He was also preoccupied with his personal dilemma.
“It’s okay,” she murmured, and kissed him. “Be preoccupied. You should be. You’ve got a murder to solve. But not tonight.”
She settled her face on his chest again. He regarded the whiteness of her hand against his belly, the contrast greater in the low light. White hands on dark skin: it might be a novel sight for her—he guessed it probably was—but it wasn’t novel for Kawika. A white woman had raised him, and on the mainland he’d had white girlfriends. It wasn’t her whiteness that seemed unusual; it was that she wasn’t Carolyn. He was accustomed in the night to other hands.
Kawika sighed inwardly. He longed at some level for the familiar—for Carolyn, for his settled existence, for the durable intimacy Carolyn might offer if they could agree on one island or another, and if she didn’t need someone more Hawaiian. He also dreaded, at some level, the arduousness of the new—of Patience. But he couldn’t avoid seeing that dread for what it was: insubstantial, flimsy. Nothing—not longing, not dread, not guilt or scruples—could restrain him from exploring Patience, from exploring himself with Patience. For the first time in his life, he felt the power of sexual thrall, and something more, some feeling about himself that went with it, some feeling he really liked.
But in not talking about their situation he wasn’t simply avoiding a difficult discussion. He really was preoccupied with the case—and worried.
So the third time, Patience awoke to find Kawika staring intently at the ceiling fan. “Let me guess,” she said. “You’re thinking about a guy who traps cats.”
“Not just that. I’m also thinking about a guy who shreds papers. Assuming that was Michael Cushing you saw with the shredder.”
“Well, earlier tonight you said there’s some kind of fraud going on,” she observed. “Not surprising papers get shredded.”
“What’s surprising is Michael Cushing shredding them,” Kawika said. “Not Fortunato, but Cushing. The fraud was Fortunato’s, right? But Cushing must be in on it.”
In the morning, she found him sitting on the lanai, watching the sunrise strike the summit of Haleakalā. “Sorry,” he said. “No coffee yet. Didn’t want to wake you.”
As if out of habit—as if two occasions could form a habit—she slipped behind him, opened her yukata, and held his head against the bare skin of her chest. She said softly, “I’m not in love with you, Kawika. Not yet. But I am in major like.”
He reached an arm up to her, pulled her closer.
“How can I help you, Major Like?” she asked.
“Make the coffee?” he suggested, laughing.
“Pig,” she said, kissing the top of his head. “No more Major Like for you.” Then she went to do as he’d asked. He followed her and sat at the kitchen counter.
“Seriously,” he said. “Help me figure out Jason Hare.” He recounted his conversation with Malia Evans of Kohala Kats.
Patience frowned. “Well, we knew he was lying about something. Guess he was lying about a lot.”
“Yeah, but not about everything,” Kawika said. “He saw the killing. The details fit. We’ve known that all along.”
“So now we know something else,” she said. “He probably wouldn’t work with Peter Pukui, right? Because Pukui’s a notorious cat abuser. Jason Hare even reported him.”
“Right. And Hare’s not just a cat lover. According to you—and Malia Evans, I guess—he’s right up there with Lizzie Borden.”
“Quit teasing,” she warned. “This is serious.”
“Very serious,” he agreed. “Jason Hare witnessed the killing, but he’s not afraid of the killer. And that can’t be because the killer’s Peter Pukui. Jason wouldn’t work with Pukui or even protect him.”
“Which means …?”
“Which means I must be guilty as charged.”
“Guilty of what?”
“Guilty of persecuting Peter Pukui.”
32Waipi‘o and Hilo
Sammy Kā‘ai and his team of cops were busy terrorizing a druggie atop the cliff at Waipi‘o, trying to crack the Shark Cliff case, when a ragged and nearly skeletal Peter Pukui staggered up out of Waipi‘o Valley. Startled, the
