“Yes, I know that now. But why would Rocco’s abductors in Hawaii care about that, Marshal?”
“Good question,” Hanson replied. “But I’ve got one of my own. You just learned someone saved your life. Grabbed this fellow Rocco in the act of shooting at you. Isn’t that what Captain Tanaka said?”
“That’s what he said.”
“But you didn’t ask Captain Tanaka about it,” Hanson pointed out. “Aren’t you curious?
69On the North Cascades Highway
The confession confounded him at first, but long before Kawika reached Seattle, he knew it couldn’t be entirely true. The notion that Cushing’s hired killer had murdered Fortunato was just plain wrong, Kawika was convinced. Cushing’s terrified, panicky fear of Fortunato’s killer on that first day could not have been faked, nor his reaction when Kawika told him the killer wasn’t Peter Pukui. Tanaka hadn’t seen Cushing either time. Otherwise he, too, would know that at least part of the confession was simply false.
Tanaka hadn’t known who’d abducted Rocco and coerced his confession. Marshal Hanson suggested Kawika seemed incurious about that. Actually, Kawika thought he knew. He simply hadn’t wanted to betray his conclusion to Hanson. It was the conclusion that Hanson and everyone else Kawika had met in the Methow Valley and Wenatchee seemed determined to prevent him reaching.
The great relief for Kawika was that Rocco, not Fortunato’s killer, had apparently been his shooter. The rifle in Rocco’s motel room clinched it. Rocco as his shooter allayed Kawika’s deepest fear, the fear that seized him the moment he’d realized his shooter wasn’t some angry Hawaiian; the fear that Fortunato’s killer intended to kill him too—kill him for getting too close.
Winthrop to Seattle was a four-hour drive. Along the way, where reception permitted, Kawika took advantage of the three-hour time difference with Hawai‘i. He called Jarvis and Ku‘ulei. Then he called Carolyn at her dad’s on Maui. Tanaka had already been in touch with her. Kawika heard her weeping softly, covering the mouthpiece of the phone. He explained he’d been out of communication—basically hiding—until the shooter was caught. Yes, he agreed, it was a relief the shooter turned out not to be an S&R-enraged Hawaiian.
“But, Carolyn, we should have known. Ku‘ulei was with me. No Hawaiian would risk killing such an obviously Hawaiian little girl, would he?” This might not be true, but he hoped it might banish one of Carolyn’s bad dreams.
As a less fraught diversion, he also told Carolyn about Jimmy Jack. For many minutes he described Jimmy’s land restoration work, working from memory as he drove. It did calm her. She even asked questions, took an interest, wanted to know more.
He didn’t call Patience; it was too late. He told himself she might still be traveling, or home sleeping in California. But that was just avoidance. In reality, he couldn’t share what he now believed about Fortunato’s killer. Not until he’d met with Tanaka—who was thoroughly misguided on this point, Kawika felt sure—and even before that, figured out how to handle that knowledge himself. It seemed an intractable problem.
Most of the time there was no cell reception. He drove through the mountains on a clear black night with a nearly full moon. Little other traffic shared the eerie vastness, the uncanniness of the alpine darkness somehow supporting, high above him, huge snowfields and glaciers ghostly white in the moonglow.
In solitude, with the enforced lull, relieved about his shooter, Kawika reflected on how he’d become a detective through the seductions of murder mysteries, stories Pat read him in childhood, and the shared enthusiasm of stepfather and stepson, each hoping to bond with the other. As a result, who were the detectives he knew? Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, Father Brown, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, Inspector Morse, Philip Marlowe, Adam Dalgleish, Travis McGee, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Kurt Wallander, Martin Beck, Detective Jim Chee, and so on—the literary detectives of Pat’s generation and enthusiasms. None seemed relevant to Kawika in real life. Well, maybe Father Brown. Father Brown always felt uneasy about his soul, never entirely pleased with his own cleverness.
Not entirely pleased with his own cleverness: Kawika knew Tanaka had gotten the main thing wrong, namely, who killed Fortunato. Tanaka’s dismissal of inconvenient evidence as strays might be helpful most of the time. But this time? Or maybe Kawika, in his cleverness, was overthinking the situation, hoping to be the one to enlighten Tanaka and earn a satisfying Iiko, iiko. Worse yet, maybe Kawika was being disloyal. Tanaka couldn’t really have been fooled, could he? He must have some reason for accepting that a hit man killed Fortunato, mustn’t he? He and Tanaka needed to talk. And not, Kawika had finally understood, by phone.
Uneasy about his soul. Now that he was heading home, Kawika also tried to focus on his situation with Patience, how to tell Carolyn, all the details and consequences he’d put off in the Methow. He’d escaped to the North Cascades, or been hiding, not communicating anyway, testing the firmness of his choice, trying to delay having to deal with it.
Now, he knew, he couldn’t postpone dealing with it for long. But the timing was terrible. He’d just solved the case. He was ready to close the books on it, if he could convince Tanaka that Rocco wasn’t Fortunato’s killer, and then make the arrest. First things first. He needed to wait at least that long to talk with Carolyn; he needed to temporize a bit longer.
Uneasy about his soul too, for an even more important reason. Even if he convinced Tanaka, was he actually going to arrest the real killer? What would become of him if he did? If he didn’t? He couldn’t decide as he drove. The intractable problem remained.
Kawika arrived in Seattle bone-tired. He found his mother and Pat waiting up for him as if he were a teenager, greeting him with smiles, embraces, murmurs, the familiar pleasure of their decaf coffee. They’d already spoken with Tanaka. He’d called, thoughtfully, to
