A helicopter—a small one, though it seemed enormous, flying only thirty feet above the highway—was rapidly overtaking him. The copter displayed no lights. It was a loud black object against a nearly black sky.
Cushing swerved erratically across the highway, his tires squealing. The helicopter crew may not have anticipated this maneuver, because when the helicopter delivered its parcel—a man wrapped tightly from his ankles to his mouth in silvery duct tape, his nostrils flaring and his eyes wide with terror—instead of dropping cleanly into Cushing’s back seat, the falling man struck his head on the rim of the passenger compartment, crushing his skull and breaking his neck.
Cushing screamed, braked hard, and swerved off the road, bouncing over rough lava rock until he jolted to a stop, his face whipped by thorny kiawe branches and then punched by his airbag—a blow that broke his nose again. The airbag deflated with a hiss. The tape across Cushing’s nose was covered with blood as he turned in horror to look behind him, first at the helicopter—which rose and banked away—and then at the dead man in his back seat, a man he’d never seen in his life.
Later, Cushing told Tanaka that as the helicopter turned away, the first light of morning caught it and it appeared, perhaps, to be blue. Apart from that, Cushing couldn’t provide useful information. He had no idea who’d been dropped into his car, or why. He claimed he’d gone for an early morning drive with his convertible top down because he couldn’t sleep. He’d needed to think, he said; to clear his head.
“I don’t believe you,” Tanaka said. “But I’ll tell you this: if you didn’t need to think before, you do now. That was a crazy Mission Impossible stunt. Don’t let it distract you. What matters is this, Mr. Cushing: someone wants you dead.”
53Waimea
Dr. Terrence Smith autopsied the dropped body, but no one could identify it. Smith called him the Duct Tape Mummy—an exaggeration, since nothing was covered below his ankles or above his mouth. Smith guessed the nickname would catch on.
The doctor duly recorded measurements, vital statistics—even the total length of tape in which the dead man had been wrapped. He took photos of the victim’s features, his suntan verging on sunburn, and his sun-bleached hair, tattoos, callused hands. He noted the cause of death: a broken neck—cervical fractures and displaced vertebrae—and a skull fracture from a massive blow to the head. Take your pick, Smith thought.
The cervical dislocation intrigued Smith particularly. It was as if the man had been efficiently hanged, with the knot against the right side of his neck. Smith had read that during the French Revolution, executioners delighted in displaying a discovery to the crowd. If a just-severed head was held aloft by the hair, the eyes would turn briefly toward someone who shouted the victim’s name. Smith wondered if hanged men—men hanged properly, that is, with their necks snapped—also experienced a moment of consciousness after the cervical dislocation. How much had the Duct Tape Mummy known?
As he worked, Smith would hum a bit, then sing a few Leonard Cohen lyrics:
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it’s real,
A thousand kisses deep.
Then, unexpectedly, Smith found in the dead man’s otherwise empty trouser pockets a sprig of greenery with small white flowers. He recognized the plant: shore naupaka. He whistled in surprise and admiration at the daring of it. Who do you think you are? Smith wondered, silently addressing the killer. The Scarlet Pimpernel? Maybe, Smith thought, he’d tell the police a bit less in his autopsy report now, rather than more.
Later, with everything neatly put away, Smith turned out the lights, singing softly from the same song:
You lose your grip, And then you slip
Into the Masterpiece.
Smith rolled the Duct Tape Mummy’s body into a dark refrigerated body drawer—a crypt, to those in Smith’s profession. He had two other crypts available, but Smith chose the same crypt in which Fortunato had once lain, before Smith had cut him up.
PART FOUR
SEATTLE TO THE METHOW VALLEY
“So you find us here, and we find you here. Which is the most surprised, I wonder?”
“There’s no telling,” said I, keeping as amiable as I could; “nor any telling which objects the most.”
—Owen Wister, The Virginian (1902)
54Seattle
Stepping off the Maui flight into the unheated SeaTac Airport jetway, Kawika thought, The AC’s on too high. Chilly, he entered the terminal, and there stood Lily, his mother, clutching her husband, Pat, and greeting her son with a brave smile and profuse tears.
“Aloha, Sport,” said Kawika’s stepfather.
For a long time, murmuring reassurances, the three embraced, although lightly. Lily and Pat were careful not to touch Kawika’s upper back or right arm. The stream of other passengers split and flowed around them like lava around a kīpuka.
“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m fine. Really. It’s a scratch.”
“Hardly a scratch,” said Pat. “You’re very lucky.”
“Very,” Kawika agreed. Shit, the guy took three shots.
An hour later, they sipped decaf coffee at the table where Kawika had eaten his cereal as a boy. Lily sometimes wept, and the men put their arms around her. They discussed everything they reasonably could about the shooting and about Ku‘ulei’s condition—she was okay, no stitches, just scraped up and badly frightened. Then Kawika wanted to turn the conversation away from the narrowness of his survival and Ku‘ulei’s.
“Remember Father Brown?” Kawika asked Pat, changing the subject.
“Of course,” his stepfather replied. They’d read G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories aloud together during Kawika’s boyhood. A career prosecutor, Pat had
