“Interesting, huh?” Pat asked when Kawika had finished.
“What a spooky coincidence,” Kawika agreed. “Of course, it’s not a clue.”
“Perhaps not,” Pat conceded, “if you believe in coincidence.”
55Seattle
Kawika spent a few days in Seattle—long enough to get his stitches checked—and it was there Tanaka called to tell him about the Duct Tape Mummy.
“Dropped right into Cushing’s car!” Tanaka still couldn’t get over it.
“Sounds impossible,” Kawika said doubtfully.
“Yeah, it’s crazy. Just the same, someone did it. Sending a message to Cushing—or trying to kill him. Cushing swears he’s never seen the dead guy. I asked if he’d take a lie detector test, and he said yes. Very emphatically. And he passed it.”
“That naupaka in the guy’s pocket—that’s not a stray, is it?” Kawika asked.
“No,” Tanaka agreed. “Two bodies, two plants, nothing else in the pockets. Can’t be a stray. Could be a coincidence.”
“How so?”
“Well, the first killer used naupaka to suggest Hawaiians killed Fortunato, right? But we never made that evidence public. If the killer’s the same in both cases, that explains it. But if not, the second killer is trying to send a message of his own.”
“What message?”
“Could be a red herring: ‘The Hawaiians did it.’ Or a boast: ‘I’m a Hawaiian, and I did it.’ Either way, we’re meant to suspect a Hawaiian.”
“There’s a legend about those plants,” Kawika said. “Pele killed two lovers, turned them into mountain naupaka and shore naupaka. When you put their flowers together, the lovers are reunited.”
“You think Fortunato and the Duct Tape Mummy were lovers?” Tanaka joked. “The Mummy couldn’t bear his grief, so he tucked a flower in his jeans, wrapped himself in duct tape, and jumped out of a helicopter? You’ve been off the case too long, Kawika. But keep thinking.”
It’s what Kawika was doing. He was thinking about Carolyn and Patience—or Patience and Carolyn, depending on the moment—and about the mess he’d created. But even removed from the case and with Tanaka in charge now, the baton having passed decisively this time, Kawika’s thoughts still ran to Fortunato’s murder. And in Seattle, what could he do to solve it?
Seattle wasn’t a good place to think. There were too many distractions. Lily needed constant reassurance. Pat kept driving up from Olympia to share dinner. Friends from the Seattle Police Department—Kawika still had a few—invited him for lunch or coffee. Everyone in Hawai‘i—Patience, Carolyn, Jarvis, even the busy Tanaka—kept calling to check on him.
More important, in Seattle there wasn’t a single clue, no evidence, not one line of inquiry for him to follow. With nothing new to pursue, he could think—even obsessively—but not productively. He felt like an electric pump in a well run dry, a pump doing no good, sucking air, getting closer and closer to burning up, shorting out.
He needed water in that well. It didn’t take him long to decide where to look: the Methow Valley. He didn’t know what he’d find. He regretted not having learned more from Frank Kimaio, the ex-FBI agent. They’d intended to follow up by phone, but Kawika had been distracted. The day Kawika had seen Kimaio last—the day he’d encountered him at Dr. Smith’s—was the same day Kawika had broken Cushing’s nose and gotten suspended. Then after a day at the volcanoes, he’d promptly been shot.
Technically, Kawika’s five-day suspension must have ended, he supposed. But still, he was on medical leave, not on the case. So he wouldn’t ask Tanaka’s permission to go to the Methow Valley. If he found something, then he could call Tanaka—and after that, if Tanaka allowed him back on the case, he could call Frank Kimaio and try to learn more about Fortunato in Washington.
Meanwhile, Kawika decided, he’d just go recover in the Methow Valley, as any recovering Seattleite might do. And maybe poke around a bit, see the sights, talk with the locals. He’d visit the site of Fawn Ridge, try to meet Jimmy Jack and Madeline John—he loved their names—find Fortunato’s first wife, if he could, and anyone else involved in the events Kimaio had described, the people Tanaka had labeled “Mainland guys” on the whiteboard. Maybe he’d be lucky. Maybe he could break the locks on Fortunato’s past, search out the secrets of his spear-shredded heart.
56Winthrop
Kawika drove over the North Cascades Highway, looping up near Canada and dropping down into the Methow Valley from the north. The dramatic mountain passes, high and narrow, might have inspired a line in Owen Wister’s The Virginian: “Love was snowbound for many weeks.” Kawika, though snowbound—or avalanche-maytagged—in matters of love, wound his way down on clear, dry pavement to the imitation Old West town of Winthrop.
He’d chosen Winthrop so he could start with Jimmy Jack, the Methow Indian who’d tantalized and frustrated Frank Kimaio with his knowledge of Fortunato’s fraudulent Fawn Ridge activity but who’d refused to testify. Jimmy Jack had a Winthrop phone number. Kawika hadn’t wanted to call him in advance; it seemed better to go to Winthrop first, try to arrange a meeting once there, perhaps make Jimmy Jack a little more willing to talk.
Kawika had years ago visited Winthrop, the Western-themed town with its wooden sidewalks and false fronts and cowboy-related images everywhere, a riverfront village set amid grassy meadows and tall ponderosa pines, replete with grazing cattle and scores of lofty Cascade peaks. This time he rented a little cabin at The Virginian, a motel on the bank of the Methow River. While checking in, Kawika asked where to get a good view of the valley.
“Sun Mountain Lodge,” said the friendly clerk. “Head for the bar. Go out on the deck. Best view around, anywhere they serve a drink.”
Kawika picked up a Methow tourist guide. On the same table, paperback copies of The Virginian stood stacked beside a little sign: “Classic Western novel based in part on Methow Valley and
