Cushing called Munu to say I’d bring her the money and told her where to meet me. I got the bat and walked her to the grave at gunpoint, where I hit her once on the back of the head. It was quieter than shooting her. Then I buried her and the bat. I dropped the tarp and shovel in dumpsters in Kailua. I called and left an agreed message for Cushing, who was in Honolulu for his alibi. The message was, “An overthrow throughout the land.”
Poor Melanie, Kawika thought. He could guess what had killed her. She must’ve tried the heir-of-Ku‘umoku extortion ploy with Cushing after Fortunato was gone, presumably omitting to tell Cushing that the Murphys and S&R’s lawyer Ted Pohano had a real heir who’d challenge the title anyway. It hadn’t worked. Dr. Smith must have guessed something of what she intended; no wonder he’d told Kawika she was in danger.
Before I left Hawaii again, Cushing called and said he also needed me to kill Kavika Wong. He said Wong was investigating Fortunato’s death and had information that could link Cushing to the Hawaiian items found on Fortunato’s body.
Each time Kawika read this, he shook his head. He’d missed so much that evening at Cushing’s. Partly it was chance—what if he’d simply said, The murder weapon has three barbs, and yours has four? Cushing would have dropped his blender full of Mai Tais, and events would have taken a wholly different course.
Yet some of it was Kawika’s fault, a failure of alertness even before he’d sipped a drink. Kawika thought he’d been clever, disguising from Cushing why he knew about olonā. But he’d failed to put two and two together—or one piece of olonā fiber with another—as he gazed at the fishing line in Cushing’s display case.
Of course, the confession finally provided Kawika the answer to Tanaka’s question, “Why did Cushing provoke you?” He’d wanted to get Kawika fired immediately. Once arrested, Cushing had admitted that the murder weapon was his—a three-barbed ihe that should have been hanging above his door. When he’d walked Kawika to the door and seen the wrong ihe hanging there, Cushing must’ve realized in an instant that his own ihe, the one whose legendary history he’d just described to Kawika, had been stolen and used to kill Fortunato—realized, too, that someone was trying to frame him, not just with the ihe but with Cushing’s missing length of olonā fishline. But only Kawika knew about the London dealer, the man who could link that ihe to Cushing. If he’d been fired, Kawika now realized, the murder weapon might never have been traced. Kawika had forgotten all about the London dealer until Cushing’s arrest, and until reading the confession Kawika never had any reason to suspect Cushing owned the fatal spear.
I did not want to kill a cop, but Cushing said Wong’s boss refused to remove him from the case, leaving him no choice. Cushing also wanted me to use a rifle I’d never seen, one owned by a native Hawaiian. I knew if I didn’t cooperate that Cushing could implicate me for the other murders if Wong arrested him, so I went ahead.
Ironic, Kawika thought. If only Tanaka had fired him after he’d broken Cushing’s nose—doing what Cushing hoped and what Cushing’s lawyer demanded—Kawika would never have found himself in an assassin’s gunsights.
Cushing said native Hawaiians were mad at Wong and blamed him for several deaths. Cushing said the native Hawaiian features of Fortunato’s death had kept suspicion from him, and the same would be true if Wong was killed with a gun owned by a native Hawaiian.
Cushing gave me the gun and ammo, again by putting them in the trunk of my car. He included a newspaper photo of Wong so I could recognize him. After the shooting I was supposed to leave a message for Cushing, who had gone to Kailua to establish his alibi. The message was “The bones of Hilo are broken.” Then I would return the gun to Cushing by leaving it in my car trunk at Hapuna, etc.
Those damn S&R press releases, Kawika thought. And that damn photo. True, a Native Hawaiian hadn’t shot him after all. But still, there was only one reason for the big front-page headshot.
Cushing told me he called the police station and learned that Wong would return to Hilo from the volcanoes the next day. Cushing said Wong drove a yellow Mustang convertible. He told me the route Wong would probably use. He instructed me to leave the shell casing behind after I shot Wong, so the police could trace it to the gun’s native Hawaiian owner.
Kawika bristled every time he thought of someone giving out his itinerary over the phone. Didn’t everyone at the station realize S&R was inciting Native Hawaiians against him? And that there must be almost twenty thousand Native Hawaiians on the Big Island for S&R to incite? On the other hand, he did recognize, ruefully, that a bright yellow Mustang convertible might not have been the best automotive choice for a homicide detective.
I spotted Wong’s convertible and followed it to a city park. I concealed the rifle in a beach towel. The rifle has a telescopic sight, but I missed him with two shots and only wounded him with the third. I realized the rifle must not be sighted properly and was about to compensate, but Wong ducked behind a wall, and right then my captors abducted me and drove away.
Thank God for small favors, Kawika thought. Either Bruno Moku‘ele had never sighted the rifle properly, or Cushing must have bumped the sight while putting the gun in Rocco’s trunk—or perhaps Rocco had hit a pothole on the drive from Hapuna. The fact that the rifle wasn’t properly sighted was, in this case, definitely more important than why.
Back in 1998, Fortunato called me from Seattle. He said he’d gotten my name at a gun show from a guy
