“We got you something to read,” Lily said. “The confession will be here in the morning. We didn’t want it to be the only thing you had on the plane.” She handed Kawika a paperback copy of The Virginian. “I wasn’t sure if you knew about this,” she said. “It’s a famous old Western, partly inspired by the Methow Valley. Since you’ve just been there—”
“Perfect,” he said, giving her a kiss. “I saw it over there but missed my chance to buy it.”
Kawika stayed up late. He opened The Virginian and got far enough to read about the hero, the unnamed Virginian, dutifully and without pleasure lynching two men who’d rustled cattle from Judge Henry, the Virginian’s employer, and about Judge Henry’s efforts to persuade the Virginian’s horrified sweetheart that in the conditions—and traditions—then prevailing in the West, the lynching of bad men was a way of upholding the law, not defying it.
But that was a hundred years ago, Kawika thought. We’re not the Wild West in Hawaii anymore. It occurred to him, just as he fell asleep, that maybe the Methow Valley still was.
PART SEVEN
THE KA‘Ū FOREST RESERVE
“I think there is something rather dangerous about standing on these high places even to pray,” said Father Brown. “Heights were made to be looked at, not to be looked down from.”
“Do you mean that one may fall over?” asked Wilfred.
“I mean that one’s soul may fall if one’s body doesn’t,” said the other priest.
“I knew a man,” he said, “who began by worshipping with others before the altar, but who grew fond of high and lonely places to pray from, corners or niches in the belfry or the spire. And once in one of those dizzy places, where the whole world seemed to turn under him like a wheel, his brain turned also, and he fancied he was God. So that though he was a good man, he committed a great crime.”
—G. K. Chesterton, “The Hammer of God,” from The Innocence of Father Brown (1910)
70From Seattle to Honolulu
The six-hour flight to Honolulu gave Kawika ample time to read and reread the hit man’s confession. Each time Kawika did so, the dead killer seemed to tell him more.
Statement of Roger (Rocco) Preston
This statement is intended for Detective Kavika Wong of Hilo.
My name is Roger (Rocco) Preston. I live at 126 Treaty Oak Avenue in St. Helena, California. This statement is true, but I am being forced to make it. My captors are not police. They say they will kill me if they find anything in this statement to be untrue.
Kawika could guess the identities of two of Rocco’s captors, although one he’d never met, just knew by name. Perhaps there was a third, if the other two trusted a half-mad highway walker. And might there be a fourth, he wondered—a doctor?
Michael Cushing hired me to kill Ralph Fortunato, Melanie Munu, and Kavika Wong. Fortunato was killed with a Hawaiian spear, which was left with his body. Munu was killed with a baseball bat, which I buried with her. Wong was supposed to be killed with a rifle that Cushing gave me.
Earlier, in 1998, Fortunato hired me to kill Steven Kellogg in Washington. However, I did not kill Kellogg. I believe Fortunato did.
A lot of information there, though some was false. Well, not exactly false, Kawika realized. Fortunato actually had been killed with a Hawaiian spear. But there the confession was deliberately misleading, Kawika knew.
When Cushing first hired me, he said he and Fortunato were having a business dispute. Cushing said I had to make it look like a native Hawaiian group killed Fortunato. He said Fortunato’s body should be left on the championship tee box of the 15th hole of the South Course at the Mauna Lani. He said I should drive a Hawaiian spear through Fortunato’s chest at that location, put a sacred Hawaiian flower in Fortunato’s pocket, and use other Hawaiian artifacts Cushing supplied.
Cushing said he’d give me the spear, the sacred flower, etc., after I got to Hawaii. Each day for several days I drove to Hapuna Beach in a rental car. I left my car keys on the wall of the men’s restroom by the parking lot. When I got back from the beach each day, I picked up my keys and drove to my motel in Kailua, where I opened the trunk. The first few days, it was empty. Cushing said I should kill Fortunato on the day after I opened the trunk and found the Hawaiian spear, the sacred flower, etc.
After Fortunato was dead and his body left in the place Cushing wanted, I flew to Honolulu and then to San Francisco on Hawaiian Airlines.
There’s the crucial omission, Kawika thought. Right there. Did Rocco ever open his car trunk and find the items Cushing had promised? The confession didn’t say so. And if he did, what happened between that moment and when Rocco boarded the plane? The confession was silent on that too.
Kawika could easily imagine the heated negotiations between Rocco and his captors over these paragraphs. A terrified Rocco must have refused to say outright that he’d murdered Fortunato, because his captors had insisted they’d kill him if he lied—and they knew he hadn’t murdered Fortunato. So somehow captors and victim had negotiated this not-quite-false but highly misleading compromise language. And it hadn’t saved Rocco anyway.
After I returned to California, Cushing had me come back to Hawaii to kill Melanie Munu. He told me Munu was trying to extort money from him.
Cushing did not want Munu’s body found. He said I should arrange to meet her at Waiki’i Ranch. I used cash to buy a shovel, a plastic tarp, and a baseball bat in Kailua. I drove to Waiki’i Ranch and stored the bat at the house. I dug a grave beside an animal path about two hundred yards downhill from the house, piled the dirt
