“Do you remember Father Brown saying that the greatest dangers in life aren’t physical?”
“Father Brown said that?” Pat asked.
“I hope so,” Kawika replied. “That’s what I keep telling people. Including Dad, it seems.”
“Could be, I suppose,” said Pat. “But wouldn’t Father Brown say something like ‘Life’s great dangers aren’t to the body, but to the soul’? Only more graceful, I suspect.”
“Well, I don’t know about my soul,” Kawika said. “But …” Then he explained to them, with hesitation and head shakes and not much elaboration, the dilemma he’d created for himself, his woman problem. “I’m worried—more worried than about getting shot, now I’m here. I’ve really messed up. And I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh dear,” said Lily, struggling to change her train of thought. “Something went wrong with you and Carolyn?”
“Wrong with me, I guess. I was hoping to talk with you about it—maybe in the morning?”
“Darn,” said Pat. “Can’t be here in the morning, Sport. Legislature’s in session.” Pat ran the association of county prosecutors in Washington. He needed to commute to Olympia during the legislative session.
“Actually, it’s Mom I need to talk with.”
“Your mother?” Pat said with feigned indignation. “What does she know about love that I don’t?” Mother and son both looked at him sadly. “Oh,” he said. “I get it. She knows about the little brown gal—or the big brown guy—in the little grass shack in Ha-vai-ee. Well, yes, she does.”
“I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay, Sport,” Pat assured him, tousling his hair gently. “But, hey, if that’s tomorrow’s topic with your mom, can you talk about your murder investigation tonight? Just a bit? Give an old prosecutor something to think about in traffic jams on the road to Olympia?”
“Sure,” replied Kawika. “But just the Cliff Notes, okay? Still gotta make a lot of calls to Hawaii tonight.”
Kawika told a compressed tale. A Big Island real estate developer, Ralph Fortunato, found dead on a golf course with an old Hawaiian spear through his chest. Hands tied with ancient Hawaiian cord. The dead man had angered Native Hawaiians, apparently intentionally. Looked like a Hawaiian group must have done it, but lots of other people hated the dead man too.
“Any eyewitnesses?” Pat asked.
“Yeah, one guy. But—”
“But he lies like an eyewitness, as the Russians say?”
“Exactly.”
“And you think?”
“I think he may be an accomplice, but not the killer. It wasn’t the Hawaiians—not the organized ones anyway. Whoever did it just wanted us to suspect them.”
“That’s odd behavior,” Pat observed. “If you want to get away with killing someone, the formula is pretty simple. This Hawaiian spear killer didn’t follow it.”
“What’s the formula?” Kawika asked.
“Oh, you know, I’m sure,” replied Pat. “First, do the job yourself. Never involve anyone, never tell anyone—then no one can betray you. Second, use a common weapon—a popular gun, say, with widely available ammo, so the cops can’t narrow the list of suspects. Nine-millimeter handgun, usually. That’s the most common. Then get rid of the weapon. But your killer did the opposite: used an unusual weapon and didn’t get rid of it.”
“Right—keep going.”
“You’re not just humoring me?”
“Not at all.” But partly he was. Kawika felt guilty about excluding his stepfather from the talk he planned with his mother. He needed to ask her things he couldn’t ask in front of Pat—things Jarvis had suggested, things about Hawaiian men and haole women.
“Well, then,” Pat continued. “Plan your alibi. The police won’t believe it, of course. They don’t have to. It just has to be an alibi they can’t break. Like, fumble your change and ask an odd question going into a movie theater; the cashier will remember you, and you’ve got the ticket stub. When the show gets out, have a fender bender in the parking lot—swap insurance cards, maybe even call the cops. If you’re lucky, no one can prove you weren’t in the theater the whole time.”
“Risky. Things could go wrong with that one.”
“Okay, but then keep working to come up with a better one. ‘Better’ meaning less likely to be broken. Any murder with a motive, not a drive-by shooting, the cops will eventually figure out who did it. But with a good enough alibi, they can’t send you to jail.
“And that’s the last point,” Pat emphasized. “If you want to get away with murder, you’ve got to live the rest of your life with the cops knowing exactly who you are.”
“Who you are,” Kawika said, “and where you are too. Right?”
“Right. They’ll keep tabs on you.” Pat stood, squeezing Kawika’s good shoulder before heading off to bed and offering a parting thought. “If the cops know who the killer is but just can’t prove it, they’ll never let an old case become a cold case. Never.” Then Pat headed upstairs for the night.
The next day, Pat called Kawika from Olympia. He’d thought of something to add.
“Hey, Sport, remember that Edgar Allan Poe story about the guy who tricks the other guy and walls him up in the catacombs of Venice?”
“‘The Barrel of’—something,” Kawika replied.
“‘The Cask of Amontillado.’”
“That’s right. Gave me nightmares as a kid,” Kawika said. “Why do you mention it? What’s up?”
“Well, I knew the name Fortunato reminded me of something. Took me a long time to remember; it was driving me crazy. Finally I got it. So go get our old book of Poe stories. The blue hardback. It’s in the bookcase by the fireplace. Read me the first paragraph of ‘The Cask of Amontillado.’ I’ll wait.”
Kawika found the volume and the story. He read the first paragraph aloud to Pat over the phone:
THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. AT LENGTH I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled—but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not
