The Rough Cut

by Douglas Corleone

  The morning after the weathergirl died, I could have flipped from one local station to the next to record my Act One montage. Local stations KHON, KITV, KGMB, KHNL all led with Piper’s murder. Her home station, however, remained eerily silent, devastated by the sudden loss of one of their own.

  I settled on my fallback channel and fell into the couch to watch just as an attractive middle-aged male anchor, who could well be confused for a life-size Ken doll, filled the screen. In the upper left corner, a fingerprint graphic overlaid with police tape displaying the words ‘Homicide Investigation’.

  ‘Honolulu detectives are investigating the murder of local weather reporter Piper Kingsley,’ the Ken doll said, ‘whose body was discovered last night by her boyfriend, unclothed and facedown in the swimming pool of her Tantalus home. Kingsley’s boyfriend Ethan Jakes, a local musician who was residing with the victim, dialed nine-one-one and reported the grisly finding. According to police, Mr Jakes is currently cooperating with the investigation. We now go live to correspondent Kalani Webb, in front of Piper Kingsley’s home on Tantalus Drive.’

  Enter a baby-faced male Pacific Islander in an aloha shirt. Cute. OK, super cute. But his delivery, in my opinion, was strangely dry.

  ‘Thanks, Seth. Police say the victim was last seen by her boyfriend, local musician Ethan Jakes, at her home here on Mount Tantalus. Mr Jakes told investigators that he left the home for less than half an hour before returning to find his girlfriend dead in the swimming pool behind the house. Meanwhile, friends and colleagues of Piper Kingsley are in shock at her death.’

  Cut to: Neighbor, an upper middle-aged Caucasian female in a boho muumuu, one of those ‘rich hippy’ chicks so prevalent in yoga studios across the islands.

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ she said, shaking her head as though she couldn’t find the arugula aisle at Whole Foods. ‘I’m still in shock. She was so beautiful, so talented, so full of life.’

  ‘Save the poem for spoken-word night, sister,’ Brody said to the television as he flopped onto the sofa next to me, a bowl of dry Cinnamon Life cereal in his lap. He immediately reached to his left and retrieved the last half of the blunt he’d started last night. Spent several seconds searching for his Zippo, finally located it between the couch cushions, and blazed up.

  Cut to: Random Gal on the Street, a twenty-something in a sports bra and hot pants, either on her way to an early-morning workout or doing the walk of shame following a night with a personal trainer from 24-Hour Fitness.

  ‘Yes, I know Piper Kingston! She’s the redhead who does the weather, yeah?’ She paused, her words suddenly lodged in her throat, a tear threatening to fall. ‘This is just so, so sad.’

  The moment they cut back to the Ken doll, something in my stomach capsized and I moved to the edge of the couch to throw up. Behind me, Brody extinguished his blunt. Set his hands gently on my shoulders and soothed me with his voice.

  ‘You’re OK, baby,’ he said. ‘You’re going to be just fine.’

  I didn’t vomit but held that position for fifteen or twenty seconds until the feeling passed.

  I suffered them all the time, these goddamn panic attacks.

  I pulled my pill case from my pocket and popped a Klonopin. As the pill slowly dissolved under my tongue, I thought: Piper was a person.

  Piper wasn’t just a person, she was someone I knew.

  Piper wasn’t just someone I knew, she was a friend.

  Why couldn’t I at least cry?

  Even Brody, who’d never met Piper, who had just seen her on the news with me nearly every evening, cried last night when we got home. Not the usual waterworks triggered by ‘major life events’ such as the death of his beloved fifteen-year-old tabby, but a good, solid cry for the occasion.

  ‘She was just so young,’ he said. ‘And I know how much you were looking forward to getting together with her.’ He leaned his head on my chest and I ran my hand through his soft hair. I could feel his tears through my cotton tank-top. ‘I’m so sorry, Rye. I can’t imagine losing a friend that way.’

  I felt sympathy for him. Then relief that I at least felt sympathy for someone. But the defensiveness in my voice was unmistakable. ‘I only hung out with her twice.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘but wasn’t one of those times two weeks as a guest in her house?’

  I didn’t reply. Tried to nod but my head just kind of fell to the side. I felt Brody’s eyes on me. With every awful memory in my head I attempted to summon a tear but ultimately came up dry. ‘Dry as a dead dingo’s donger,’ as Piper used to say at the bar when she was impatient for drinks.

  Brody is just so goddamn sensitive, I thought. It was true, too. Brody felt things more intensely than the rest of us, especially painful things. But his sensitivity was always a pro, never a con, particularly after the last asshole I’d seriously dated: an investment banker from the northeast, handpicked by my dear old daddy.

  I hadn’t realized Brody had paused the television; I’d thought he’d just muted it. So I was startled when I glanced up at the still screen and saw Piper’s father, photos of whom had ornamented every room of her house, at least back when I visited.

  Daddy’s little girl, she liked to call herself.

  Brody pressed PLAY on the remote.

  Zane Kingsley was an older man, well-built but short, head shaven bald. With a single duffel slung over his right shoulder, he shot past the luggage carousel like a bullet. The cameras could barely keep up.

  ‘I hope they arrest her killer,’ he said curtly, with a deep Australian accent, ‘and I hope they string ’im up.’ There was a seething in his voice, a ferocity perfectly in line with how Piper described him. ‘’Cause if they don’t, I will.’

  I snatched the remote from Brody’s lap and paused the TV to consider his words. Zane Kingsley hopes they arrest – not find or catch – the killer. Hopes they string ’im up, not ’er.

  Piper’s dad was insinuating police already knew the identity of the killer; they just hadn’t effected an arrest yet. Which could well have been true. Maybe Ethan Jakes was currently under surveillance, maybe detectives were hoping he’d fuck up and take them to the murder weapon, lead them to a lover, say something incriminating over the phone.

  It might just be a matter of time until his arrest. At which time Ethan Jakes would become inaccessible to me. If I wanted his side of the story before the indictment, I knew I had to act fast.

  I hit PLAY. Onscreen the Ken doll extolled: ‘Piper Kingsley was a rising talent in the Hawaii news industry and she will be sorely missed.’ He paused for effect. ‘Once again, Piper Kingsley, dead, at only twenty-eight years old.’

  Everyone was trying to reach Ethan Jakes that day. But only I got through.

  The previous night I’d made a few calls from our Waikiki apartment to those of Piper’s colleagues and friends I’d met a few years earlier. Unsurprisingly, many of their numbers had changed, and those I managed to reach didn’t remember me.

  I did, however, catch the weekend weather guy, Kyle Myers, a fabulous gossip who, like me, was in his late twenties. From Kyle, I learned that Ethan and Piper had been together about eight months. However, that Ethan was living with Piper was news to Myers. Maybe staying over a lot, but he didn’t think Piper would have made that kind of commitment. She’d given no hint that she and Ethan were that serious. In fact, Myers told me, Piper had planned to move to the mainland in the upcoming months. She’d recently been hired to do morning weather for a CBS affiliate in a large market in southern Wisconsin.

  While I made the calls, Brody googled the name Ethan Jakes and found a Wikipedia page, which confirmed Ethan was a local musician but little else. He then moved onto Net Detective, which he’d subscribed to for just such an occasion. He discovered Ethan’s date of birth, his cell phone number, and the address in Waialua that appeared on his current driver’s license.

  I tried Ethan’s phone. Got voicemail, and it was full. I sent a text but had no way of know
ing whether it was received. (I’d later learn it was, not by Ethan but by the police.) I tried an AOL account listed for him but didn’t hold out much hope. The only person I’d known who still used an AOL address was Professor Leary, just before his death, and he’d assured me that it was an exclusively sixty-and-over club.

  I flipped to Facebook, took to Twitter and Instagram, but Ethan Jakes had been silent since before Piper’s murder. I reached out to a few of his friends, sent him a couple of direct messages, but went to bed having failed in my quest to make contact.

  But less than two hours after I woke, I succeeded. Once the segment on Piper’s murder finally ended, I felt along the couch for the remote, hit the mute button, said, ‘How the shit am I going to get in touch with Ethan?’

  Brody blew a dense stream of smoke from the side of his mouth. ‘How about that address we found for him last night?’

  ‘The one up North Shore?’

  ‘Waialua, right?’ He was already toasted. ‘There’s an apartment number. He probably rents. Find out who owns the property in Waialua. If Jakes has a landlord, the landlord may have an emergency contact or something.’

  I said, ‘Brody Quinlan, I could blow you.’

  He smiled. His eyes were already bloodshot. He was forty-one, and looked every minute of it. He was in the same clothes he’d worn yesterday and the day before that. Three days’ growth had accumulated on his face, his hair was a jungle, and he reeked of pot. Probably hadn’t showered in a week. Yet I loved every inch of him. Loved him for his heart, loved him for his head. Loved him because he somehow still gave a fuck while so clearly having no fucks left to give.

  A Zillow search yielded the name of the landlord. Net Detective imparted his number. When I called, he explained Ethan had four roommates and supplied me with the number for one of them. That one was ‘more roommate than friend’, but did have the number of one of Ethan’s amigos. So I called that cat, told him who I was, what I was doing, how I wanted to help Ethan through this perilous time and would pay a shit-ton to do so. I had him repeat back my cell number, twice.

  Thirty minutes later Ethan called my phone from restricted digits.

  ‘I don’t have access to anything of hers,’ he started. ‘Or anything of mine for that matter. It’s all considered evidence now, it’s crazy.’

  ‘That’s why we need to meet,’ I told him. ‘We need to get your side of the story on record, because if—’

  ‘On record? No, no, nothing on record.’

  ‘Look, Ethan, if the worst happens and you’re charged and convicted, we’re the Court of Last Resort. Appeals go on for years while you rot in prison, unless you have the public’s attention. And the best – and sometimes the only – way to do that these days is to star in a documentary. You think Brendan Dassey’s conviction would have been overturned if not for Making a Murderer?’

  Following some seconds of silence, he said, ‘Didn’t seem to help that Durst fellow, though.’

  ‘For every Durst, there’s an Amanda Knox and a West Memphis Three.’

  He changed tack. ‘You told my boy Chuck you’re Piper’s friend. How do I know that’s true? Send me a photo of you and Piper together.’

  I thought about it. Only a few pictures existed and they were taken before I’d ever heard of such a thing as the cloud. ‘That’s going to take some time and—’

  ‘Well, that’s what it’s going to take to speak to me.’

  I tried to counter with an offer of alternative evidence of my friendship with Piper, like maybe answering some questions about her favorite color (red), her favorite movie (Bad Santa), her favorite song (‘Rehab’), but he’d already disconnected the call.

  Brody once again swept into action. He scanned Piper’s Facebook page, but she hadn’t posted very many party pictures, probably as a precaution for prospective employers. Brody then vanished into our bedroom and returned minutes later with a shoebox full of memory sticks.

  Before we’d moved from the mainland, Brody had downloaded all our photographs in case our computers were damaged in transit. Which was lucky since I’d scrapped my five-year-old HP laptop less than a month after we arrived in the islands.

  Brody plugged in one stick after another and scanned the contents. Sure enough, after a little over an hour, we found the file containing the photos from my last Hawaiian adventure.

  To Ethan’s friend, Chuck, I texted a picture of me and Piper at a beach bar in Kailua.

  Minutes later I received a text message back: MANOA FALLS 7 P.M. ALONE.

  I tried: JUST ME AND THE CAMERA GUY.

  Got back: NO CAMERAS. ALONE OR NO DICE.

  There would be no B-roll of Manoa Falls, because as far as the documentary is concerned, the first meeting between myself and Ethan Jakes never took place. Although the scenery would have heightened the beauty of my film, given his insistence that I carry no camera, I was less than thrilled with the location he’d chosen.

  First, there was the twenty-six-minute drive in the Jeep from Waikiki to Manoa Road. From there, I walked a mile-and-a-half dirt trail to the falls. It was dusk and the mosquitoes were out in full force. I’d gotten a few bites the previous night on Tantalus Drive, but Brody had taken the brunt: dozens of itchy, bright red bumps, up and down his arms and legs, even on his neck.

  Like last night, a thin rain fell, just enough to make the trail muddy and slippery, just enough to threaten a downpour, which could result in a flash flood. Not only would I get swept away, but the overflow from the freshwater stream was lousy with Leptospira, a corkscrew bacteria that caused the infection leptospirosis, symptoms of which included headaches, muscle pains, fevers, severe bleeding from the lungs, and possibly meningitis.

  No, I’m not a hypochondriac, but Brody damn sure is, and he likes to discuss his findings with me. So I knew all about the café waiter on Maui who gradually turned yellow from kidney failure, and the schoolteacher who became infected on her Kauai vacation and died of severe pulmonary hemorrhage six months later.

  The idea petrified me even more given the scores of scrapes I’d collected during my sprint through the razor-sharp branches behind Piper’s house the previous night.

  I tried to keep my mind off the deadly bacteria. Unfortunately, the spores were instantly replaced by Brody’s bedtime stories of the Night Marchers, ancient Hawaiian ghost warriors, who just so happened to march at sunrise and dusk.

  ‘You’ll hear their drums,’ he told me late one night under the covers, ‘followed by a foul and musky smell. Run, Riley. Run. Because once the conch shell sounds, you’ll see the glow of dozens of torches, fires that burn brighter and brighter as the Night Marchers near you. Chanting. Carrying crude but effective weapons. And once their eyes are on you, it’s over. They take you, Rye. They take you back to their camp and then it’s just a matter of time. Until they strap you to a stake and burn you alive.’

  Brody had told me how to protect myself, but damned if I remembered that part. It’s like listening to flight attendants telling you what to do in the event of a water landing; how can you concentrate on inflating your fucking life jacket when you’re suddenly panicking at the possibility of the jet crashing into the ocean?

  When I finally reached the falls, I was out of breath, and there was no one in sight. Because of its camera, I’d been strictly forbidden from bringing my cell phone. Shit. Maybe Brody was right. We’d argued vociferously on the matter. He’d demanded I not go by myself.

  ‘It’s the only way he’ll meet me,’ I shouted in our twenty-third-floor open-air apartment.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘The guy is very likely a killer of women. Why would he want you to bring someone along?’

  I shrugged theatrically.

  ‘Don’t make light of this, Rye. This isn’t funny.’

  ‘How about, let’s just not have this conversation at all.’

  From 150 feet above, water gushed over the falls into the freshwater stream, while all around me the jungle turned to night. Ethan was nowher
e to be seen. I waited five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, and still no sign of him.

  Then a voice. His voice. The voice I’d heard briefly over the phone, the one now forever seared into my memory.

  ‘Riley,’ the voice said.

  I turned toward it. Out of the lush greenery stepped the man I’d seen speaking to police in Piper’s backyard the previous evening.

  He motioned up and down with his finger. ‘Lift your shirt.’

  ‘We’re a little forward, aren’t we?’

  Highlighted by moonlight, Ethan Jakes was truly a sight. Movie-star handsome, basketball tall, with a swimmer’s body, he appeared equally hard and soft. As I peered into his perfectly symmetrical face with its perpetual five o’clock shadow, I nearly relented and removed my shirt. Then I swiftly reminded myself that no, this wasn’t the way love stories started. Not in real life, not even in movies. This, if anything, was the plot to a bad porno.

  ‘I need to know you’re not wired,’ he said.

  ‘Then take my word for it.’

  ‘Not good enough.’ He took a step toward me. ‘Get wet, then.’

  ‘Wow, we are forward,’ I said.

  He pointed to the stream.

  I grinned and shook my head. ‘Leptospirosis. Pat me down instead.’

  He did, gently, timidly even, running his fingers over my ribs like a classical pianist. He was sheepish, apologetic, not at all what I had imagined from the looks of him. He performed such a half-assed job, I could have hidden a three-man crew with equipment inside my G-string and Ethan would not have been any the wiser.