“We’ve sent lots of killers to prison on circumstantial evidence,” Tanaka replied. “Your clients wouldn’t be the first.” He turned to the Murphys. “Now, it’s possible you didn’t kill Fortunato,” Tanaka continued, “and maybe you think the charges won’t stick. Fine. But you should try hard to convince us. You know more than you’re saying. That makes our job more difficult. You’re standing between us and the end of the field, between us and quitting time. Between me and my fishing, more to the point. I don’t like it.”
The Murphys and their lawyers seemed to start to understand.
“Guess what?” Tanaka continued. “Whether you help us or not, we will get to the end of this case. And when it’s pau hana, we’ll go back and take a look at those things we turned up in the field.”
“What are you suggesting, Captain?” the Honolulu lawyer asked.
“Your clients know,” Tanaka replied. “They can tell you about it on the way home. They’re trying to corner the market in Mauna Lani real estate.”
“Buying real estate’s not a crime,” the lawyer said.
“Depends on how you go about it, doesn’t it? What you disclose, what you don’t. Whether there’s a conspiracy, an effort to rig the market. How your accounting works, what dummy corporations you set up, what you tell the banks and the tax man. White-collar stuff like that.”
“Oh, come on,” said the lawyer, feigning disgust.
Tanaka shrugged. “Maybe your clients have nothing to worry about. But just the same, discuss it with them. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you.”
As the Murphys stormed out, Tanaka took Pohano aside. “Look, you phony,” Tanaka said, “I checked up on you. Do your clients know you’re from Los Angeles, that you changed your name from Pohaus?”
“I’m still Hawaiian,” Pohano insisted. “Just born on the mainland.”
“Maybe,” Tanaka replied. “But know this, Mr. Poor House: if anyone harms a hair on Kawika’s head, you and your organization with your hateful press releases are toast. Tell that to Mele Kawena Smith—and Keoni Ana.”
Tanaka turned and headed to his office. His assistant greeted him with a slip of paper. “Dr. Smith called,” she reported. “He said Kawika’s voice mailbox is full. I offered to put him into yours, but he asked me just to give you this message: ‘The DNA matches, and it belongs to Michael Cushing.’ Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Tanaka assured her. “That makes perfect sense. Let Kawika know.”
It makes sense, he thought. But I bet it’s still a stray.
49Queen Lili‘uokalani Gardens, Hilo
When the first bullet whizzed past him, Kawika didn’t think, Someone is shooting at me. He’d heard no gunshot, just felt a disturbance of the air. The bullet blew through a lava rock wall in the Queen Lili‘uokalani Gardens, where Kawika had taken Ku‘ulei to sightsee before the hula performance. Kawika heard the noise of the impact—it was very loud—and looked behind him to see a cloud of dusty gray silica mushrooming into the sunlight beside Ku‘ulei’s head. His first thought was that the wall must be giving way. Instinctively, he looked up, expecting a tree might topple if the retaining wall collapsed. Ku‘ulei turned to him, confused, holding a cone of shave ice he’d bought her minutes before.
The second shot ricocheted off the dense basalt of an ancient leaning stone in the Gardens. Kawika heard the bullet’s whine and falling pitch as it sped on. Tiny flecks of rock stung his cheek and neck. He smelled something acrid and burning. Carolyn’s whacked-out kanaka leapt to his mind, speeding his reaction by a fraction of a second. He realized now that someone was shooting at him, and he sensed from what direction. He’d also heard the second shot.
Kawika shoved Ku‘ulei down hard, dropping her behind a low lava rock wall and splattering her shave ice, knowing the wall couldn’t stop a high-powered bullet but hoping it would hide them. As he tried to cover her, something pushed him hard across his back and upper arm, furrowing his back muscles and his triceps. He felt pressure, not pain. He first knew he’d been shot when, puzzled, he saw warm liquid trickling down his arm. Then the pain began.
Ku‘ulei lay pressed to the concrete, her cheek and forearms scraped and beginning to bleed. She was crying, and Kawika’s blood was dripping on her. He could smell it now and knew she could too.
“Someone’s shooting at us,” Kawika whispered. “Don’t move, Ku‘ulei. Don’t move and don’t cry.” She whimpered but stopped crying at once.
Kawika rolled to his left, still out of sight behind the little wall. He figured the shooter might expect him to peer over the wall but not around the end. He wished he had a gun, but he never carried one, and as he rolled, he realized his right arm wasn’t doing well anyway.
He heard a squeal of tires and looked around the wall. A metallic blue panel truck sped away, obscured almost at once by the thickly planted border of the Gardens. The truck had a logo, but Kawika couldn’t see it clearly as the vehicle turned and was gone. Something with a helicopter, perhaps? That’s all Kawika could later tell Tanaka, who began questioning him while Kawika lay face down on a gurney, the doctors still cleaning out his wounds.
Within an hour the shooting made the news. Within two, Carolyn called Tanaka from Maui, screaming at him—really screaming—to get Kawika the fuck out of there. Not just off the island, she yelled; out of the state. Jarvis came for Ku‘ulei and kissed his son forcefully on both cheeks. Tommy came from Kohala too, and seeing Kawika’s aloha shirt torn and bloody and needed for evidence, Tommy gave Kawika his. “Literally the shirt off your back,” Kawika, smiling, said appreciatively. Guarded and bandaged, Kawika was soon aboard a police helicopter bound for Maui. There he shared a brief airport embrace with a frightened Carolyn, surrounded by watchful cops. “You wanted me to join you on Maui,” Kawika joked, and she laughed a bit as
