Tanaka smiled. “And he really likes being a detective. He just wants to solve crimes. It’s always, ‘Put me in, Coach, put me in!’ He works all the time. Hardly goes surfing anymore. Plus he’s got brains. Truly. Maybe that’s most important. He learns fast.”
The police chief chewed his malasada and, mouth full, nodded approvingly. “So you’re not concerned? About Kawika and this case, I mean?” he asked when he’d swallowed.
“Of course I am,” Tanaka conceded. “An old Hawaiian spear, the victim displayed on that fake heiau—fancy way to kill a guy. Someone sending a message, obviously. Not a very clear one. Maybe the physical evidence will be enough. But maybe Kawika will need to figure out the message.”
“Well, Terry,” the chief concluded, tearing another malasada in two and preparing to pop half in his mouth. “I trust your judgment. But this one’s on you, okay?”
Tanaka understood. One risk was Kawika’s rudimentary knowledge of Hawaiian history and culture. Despite having a Hawaiian father and first name, Kawika didn’t speak the language, didn’t know the songs or symbols. From age eight, when his parents divorced, he had grown up mostly in Seattle, just spending summers with his dad, Jarvis Wong, in Puakō. His mother was haole, his father a quarter Chinese and three-quarters Native Hawaiian at best. With his brownish hair and hazel eyes, Kawika could almost pass for a tourist with a good tan.
Ordinarily, Tanaka thought, the Hawaiian part might not matter. Tanaka himself was a third-generation Japanese American. He didn’t speak Hawaiian and knew more about Japanese temples than Hawaiian ones, yet he could solve an ordinary Big Island murder. But this case just wasn’t ordinary.
Fortunately, Tanaka knew, Kawika had Hawaiian assets, including his father, a lifelong Kohala resident. Jarvis Wong knew Kohala completely: every person, every lava rock, everything Hawaiian. Jarvis could provide a big boost to Kawika—and not for the first time.
Finally, Tanaka reminded himself, there was Kawika’s other Hawaiian asset: his girlfriend, Carolyn Ka‘aukai, a serious student of Hawaiian history and culture and a doctoral candidate at UH Hilo, even planning to write her PhD dissertation in Hawaiian. Carolyn spoke the language, knew the chants. A heiau, a human sacrifice, an old spear through the heart: Carolyn would help Kawika make sense of it.
4Waimea
Dr. Terrence Smith strode toward Kawika in aloha scrubs: mint-colored hibiscus blossoms and philodendron leaves against a dark green background. He also wore a matching cap, a bushy red moustache, and a broad smile. Together, the scrubs and moustache gave him a jaunty Christmas color look.
“A-lo-HA!” he said, extending his hand. He smelled faintly of chemicals. “You’re the great detective, right?”
Dr. Smith, a surgeon and general practitioner, also served as coroner-on-demand—an oddly jocular one on this occasion, Kawika thought. The Kohala Coast didn’t possess a morgue and didn’t really need one. But sometimes the North Hawai‘i Community Hospital in Waimea was pressed into service.
“Got our friend in the other room,” Smith said. “No write-up yet, of course. But I can show you what ails him.”
Smith led Kawika to an operating room—the coldest room Kawika had ever entered in Hawai‘i. A sheet covered the corpse. The doctor stripped it back, revealing Ralph Fortunato to the waist. His torso was neatly slit to the neck, the halves pried apart. He didn’t resemble a dead person; he resembled a slaughtered hog. Kawika almost gagged.
“Normal forty-six-year-old male,” Smith said. “Dead, of course. But otherwise normal. Died around midnight.”
Smith lifted a stainless steel pan with a body part in it: Fortunato’s heart.
“Here’s the problem,” Smith said. “The spear went right through it. Auricles, ventricles: everything’s destroyed.”
“A single blow?” Kawika asked, quickly looking back up at Smith.
“Yup,” Smith said. “Just one blow. But a big blow. And I mean big. Smashed his ribs, went clear through his back, right into the turf. Even took a fair-sized divot. Yes sir, done with emphasis.”
Smith replaced the pan on a stainless-steel counter and re-covered the corpse. He pointed toward a larger pan. “Stomach,” he said. “The last supper. We’ll give you a report, tell you what he ate. There’s alcohol for sure—lots of it. Not a cautious type, apparently. He was risking a DUI. Lucky for him he never made it back to his car, eh?”
Smith walked across the room, picked up the fatal spear, brought it back to Kawika. Kawika slipped on a pair of gloves and took it. Very black, as he’d noticed at the crime scene. Heavy, carved from hard kauila wood. Six feet long. Three somewhat dull wooden barbs behind the tip. “Those three barbs made the extraction rather difficult,” Smith said. “We had to go slow, be careful. He was dead, but we didn’t want to hurt him.” The spear still showed powder where the Waimea police had dusted it for prints.
“As you probably know—do you?—this one’s called an ihe,” Smith explained. “A javelin. It’s pretty old. Those three barbs should help identify it. Find out who owns it, you‘ll probably find your killer. Could be a museum piece—probably missing from a collection somewhere. Kamehameha might have used it, training for the Olympics—if he’d lived at the right time, of course.”
“Anything else?” Kawika asked coldly; Smith’s jocularity, appealing at first, now seemed peculiar. Is he nervous? Kawika wondered. Why? He handed the spear back to Smith. Ignoring Kawika’s change of tone, Smith took a little run with it, did a cross-step, pretended to throw it. Then he put it down, returned to Kawika.
“Odds and ends,” the doctor replied. “For example, he was gagged.”
Kawika frowned. “Not when we found him.”
“Dead men tell no lies,” Smith said. “But alive, men sometimes holler. There were fibers in his mouth, and bruises. Also telltale lacerations.”
Smith walked to another counter, returning with a pan that contained a piece of twine. “Here’s something that’ll interest you,” he said. “Another bit of Hawaiiana. It’s an old cord. The killer used it to tie our friend’s
