The Bone Field

by Debra Bokur

  Hara’s smile grew a little wider.

  “Yes, that’s right.” He looked nervously at Walter. “The shelf—that was nothing.”

  Kali poured a splash of cream into one of the mugs, then lifted both, leaving the carton of cream open on the table. She walked to Hara’s desk and placed one of the mugs next to his keyboard.

  He looked up. “Thank you very much.”

  She smiled in acknowledgment, taking the other mug for herself. She walked to a desk in a corner of the room, sitting down with the hot drink held carefully in her right hand. This was officially her desk, though she rarely used it. There was a window behind it that was partially open, and she could feel the warm, outside air making its way into the room. It smelled clean, carrying the aroma of the nearby sea. She took a sip of her coffee, releasing an audible sigh of pleasure.

  Walter stood halfway between the door and his desk holding the box with the pineapple, watching the display of coffee distribution. He waited as Kali took another sip.

  “I see,” he said to her. “Get my own coffee, is that how it is?”

  “Do I look like your secretary?”

  “No, right now you look like his secretary.” Walter’s voice was dark. He glanced from Kali to Hara and back to Kali, his gaze slightly defiant.

  “You didn’t build a shelf,” she said, shrugging. “Lazy bastard.” She swung her chair around to face Hara, and raised her coffee in salute to him, then turned back to Walter, bearing a wide grin. “I believe I’ve heard you say more than once that enterprise should be rewarded.”

  Walter turned toward his own desk and placed the box with the pineapple on its surface. He pulled out the cushioned, wheeled office chair and made himself comfortable.

  “Didn’t want any coffee anyway,” he grunted. Looking worried, Hara rose to his feet, moving swiftly toward the table and coffeemaker, but Walter waved his arm lazily in the air. “Don’t bother, Officer, please. I’m going to let Detective Mhoe think she made a point, which will make her overconfident about her next move and thereby give me a slight advantage.”

  There was a look of bewilderment on Hara’s face. He ran one hand through his short, dark hair, opened his mouth to say something, then turned back to his computer, his thought left unvoiced.

  Kali snorted. She moved her mouse, opening her computer screen, and became suddenly businesslike. “Okay, Hara, the list you compiled—you sent a copy to me, yes?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And also to the captain.”

  “During our visit to the coroner’s office this morning, Stitches suggested the pineapple may have once been a decoration on top of a fence post, which makes sense as there’s a hole at its base, roughly square and a few inches deep.” She nodded toward the box. “It’s in there; you’ll see as soon as you turn it over. And she found this in the pocket of the dead man’s trousers.” She reached into her bag and removed the anchor encased in protective plastic, tossing it to Hara. “It was sewn into the very bottom corner of one pocket, as though it was too important to risk losing. He may have carried it as a talisman.”

  Hara looked at it with a great deal of curiosity. “Okay to remove it?” he asked. As she nodded, he slipped it carefully into the palm of his hand. “It looks sort of like an anchor,” he said.

  “That’s also what I thought,” she said. “Let me know if anything occurs to you. Other than that, Stitches says our pineapple man stood between five feet seven and five feet ten.”

  “Right,” said Hara. Handing the anchor back to Kali, he swung around to his desk. His keyboard clicked as he performed a search through the information he’d compiled on missing persons. “That means we can probably eliminate five names so far, based solely on height.” He looked at Walter. “Should I do that, Captain?”

  “Don’t eliminate them, but flag them as unlikely,” answered Walter.

  Hara made the necessary notation, then sent his file to the printer. In a few seconds, the machine began to whir. Then came the sound of printing pages. Hara rose from his desk in time to intercept them as they were expelled by the machine. He stapled the pages together in three separate stacks, then handed a copy to Kali and one to Walter, keeping one for himself.

  Each of them scanned the list, in which Hara had included all known information provided to the police about each of the unaccounted-for men at the time they had been reported missing.

  “All right,” said Walter, turning to Hara. “Go through our database again and see whose jurisdiction these fall under, then the national database one more time to see if any of these names can be eliminated as deaths occurring elsewhere. Then it’s phone call time, I guess. Do some digging. Find out who was in a messy divorce, who owed someone else a lot of money—including IRS debt—and who had a criminal background. Pay attention to anyone who might have had a reason to disappear of their own accord. All the obvious stuff.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hara hesitated, then added, “Shouldn’t we already have that kind of information on file?”

  “Not necessarily,” Walter answered. “Depends on who reported someone missing, and how much follow-up there was. Lots of room for things to slip through the cracks.”

  “Or not be reported at all,” Kali added. “Not everyone who goes missing is actually missed.”

  Walter nodded. “True dat. But find out what you can.”

  “I’ve just texted Tua over at the Hana Cultural Center,” said Kali. “He’s going to meet me over there so I can show him the anchor charm.” She looked at Walter. “Care to join me?”

  He grimaced. “Would love to, but I’ve got overdue paperwork that’s got to be dealt with before the end of the day. Let me know if anything interesting turns up.”

  “Will do,” she said, draining the last of the coffee from her cup and rising from her seat. She gathered her belongings and walked toward the door, her thoughts far away, imagining how important the charm must have been to the dead man, and wondering why.

  * * *

  The Hana Cultural Center and Museum was a modest building on the Uakea Road above Hana Bay. It was located on the same grounds as the former Hana Courthouse, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and now used only occasionally for official business. Though the museum was only open to visitors for limited hours a couple of days a week, Kali knew Tua Kalani, the current director, who had been helpful to her on past cases.

  Tua was waiting for her on the museum’s steps, waving as she pulled the Jeep into a parking spot. She saw him stand up and dust off the back of his trousers as she made her way across the grass.

  “Aloha, Tua,” she called in greeting.

  “Aloha kakahiaka.” He smiled as he said “good morning” and turned to open the door, standing aside so that she could enter. “Here to talk story today?”

  “Maybe a little bit,” she said. “Mostly I want to show you something and get your reaction.”

  He watched as she pulled out the plastic evidence bag and slipped the small anchor from inside. She offered it to him, and he took it, clearly intrigued.

  “I guess this means you aren’t worried about fingerprints,” he said, grinning slightly.

  “Already checked. There’s nothing. So please give it a close look, and tell me if it suggests anything to you.”

  Tua walked across the front room to a door leading into a small office. There was a wooden desk in one corner. He moved a few items around until he’d uncovered an old, thick magnifying glass on a silver handle. He moved to the window, lifting the anchor with the fingers of one hand, holding the magnifying glass in the other. He studied the small metal trinket, turning it over carefully several times. He went back to his desk and located a heavy magnet, then played for a moment longer with the anchor.

  Kali waited.

  “Well,” he said finally, “it appears to be an anchor in design, as you’ve no doubt already determined; but it’s not made of any precious metal such as silver or gold. Gold, of course, would be obvious. Silver or silverpla
te would likely show tarnishing if it was of any age. The magnetization is very strong, as expected with steel. Watch.” He held the magnet above the anchor and it immediately became adhered to the magnet’s surface. “So not valuable, if that’s one of your questions.” He looked at her intently. “Though value, of course is entirely relative. Something may have great sentimental or other meaning, but no measurable market value. It may have a significance entirely removed from what it’s made of or sells for.”

  She nodded. “What about the symbol?”

  “Yes,” he said. Small wrinkles formed in his forehead as he frowned slightly. “Well, an anchor may mean many things. Security. A connection to water and the sea. It’s also a common Christian symbol, used to represent the Christ figure as hope and conviction in an afterlife.”

  Kali tilted her head. “How about a fishing charm?”

  “Those are very common, but usually we see fish symbols carved from stone. Jade is particularly popular with fishermen of Asian heritage.” He looked again at the anchor. “Fishing charms almost always have some device for attaching them to a net, though I can see that this one has a small hole between the two sides of the anchor at the top, through which a thin line or string might be threaded to secure it. There’s a belief among some fishermen that the power and beauty of the charm lures fish into the net. Blessings are sometimes performed to maintain or restore the charm’s power.”

  “If you had to guess, is that what you’d assume this anchor to be? Some kind of fishing amulet?”

  Tua shook his head. “Sorry, Kali. I’m not confident that it is.” He handed the small anchor back to her. “And it could be both a religious symbol and a fishing charm, used by a fisherman who was also a believer. I wish I could be more helpful. Can you tell me anything more about it to put it into context? Some kolohe making trouble?”

  “No troublemakers right now. It’s part of a larger investigation, found in someone’s trouser pocket.”

  He nodded. “Well, all I can say is that if someone was carrying it with them, it was likely to have been of personal significance.” He laughed suddenly. “Unless they’d just seen it on the floor, caught in the sunlight, and decided to pick it up and take it home.”

  She sighed. “Yeah. Thanks for that.”

  Tua grinned. “Always happy to help.”

  They moved from the interior office toward the building’s front door. She waited outside on the lanai as he locked the door behind them, then followed him down the steps onto the lawn.

  “You know, I think I remember something not unlike this anchor somewhere else. Over on Lna‘i, one of the ki‘i ‘i phaku carvings.”

  She nodded slowly. “The ancient petroglyphs on the rocks down in the south.”

  “Yes, they’re on a group of huge boulders as you’re driving toward the Palawai Basin. There are more up on the trail off Shipwreck Beach, but the one I’m thinking of is on a rock that also has carvings of a boat on it.”

  “I remember that scene. A sea battle, I think.”

  Tua shrugged. “Maybe. There’s never been any agreement about what they mean. As far as I can tell, someone was merely documenting life in the islands. Probably only important events that warranted the effort the carvings would have taken to create.”

  “No doubt.” She moved toward the Jeep, lost in thought, watching as Tua walked away.

  “Mahalo nui loa, Tua!” she called in thanks.

  He waved in response. “Anytime, Kali.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Kali backed the Jeep carefully into the parking lot of George’s Island Market. The lot was packed, which was not surprising given that it was off-season. The special room rates advertised by many of Hawai‘i’s hotels and resorts had attracted the usual crowds of tourists who’d despaired that spring would ever arrive in whatever snowy, icy town they called home.

  The general store was typically the place where everyone restocked their coolers after the long, winding drive along the famed Hana Highway bordering the island’s eastern shore, and today was no exception. College-age kids in surf shorts and bikinis mingled with couples and families in brightly colored vacation clothes.

  Right now, the most pressing thing on Kali’s mind was picking up a bag of dog food. It had been an extremely long day, and a hungry Hilo was more than Kali felt like dealing with this evening. She left Hilo sitting in the front passenger seat of the Jeep and told him to stay put. The sound of his moaning followed her as she walked toward the store’s entrance.

  Inside the cool, air-conditioned interior, she saw that George Tsui, the store’s longtime proprietor, was seated behind the counter next to the cash register in his worn, cushioned easy chair. Tourists were milling about, examining the products displayed on the shelves. George stood up and greeted Kali the way he almost always did, reporting on the day’s headlines splashed across the front of his favorite tabloid newspaper.

  “The government is putting mind control drugs into the drinking fountains in schools on the mainland,” he said. “I wonder if it will do any good.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Kali said. “For starters, when’s the last time you saw a kid actually drinking water? I don’t think they drink anything anymore unless it’s at least fifty percent sugar.”

  “Good point. They should put those drugs into French fries, instead. Kids are always eating.”

  Kali walked down an aisle and chose the largest bag of dog food available. She slung it across one shoulder, then moved to the next aisle and selected a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread from a display of bakery goods, smiling as she reached in front of a middle-aged lady wearing a sun visor emblazoned with the logo of a nearby resort. The woman smiled back, her expression friendly and relaxed.

  George looked critically at Kali’s bread selection as she placed it on the counter in front of him.

  “You should buy the whole grain kind,” he said.

  “I should, you’re right. But if I did, it wouldn’t get opened until it was too stale or moldy to eat, and then I’d just feed it to the birds and drive all the way back here to get a loaf of this.”

  “Seems like you’ve thought this through.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay.” He looked at the dog food as he rang up the purchases. “At least you buy the healthy, grain-free food for Hilo. He’ll probably outlive you.”

  “True,” she said as she handed him her credit card. “But not because of what either one of us is eating.”

  As she gathered up the dog food and bread, George glanced meaningfully toward the door. Hilo had abandoned the Jeep, and now stood looking inside the store’s entrance, effectively blocking the exit of two women in shorts and bathing suit tops.

  “Assistance needed near aisle three,” said George quietly.

  Kali sighed. The tourists stood at the door, frozen, regarding Hilo with a mix of wonder and alarm. Kali silently reminded herself to put the detachable doors back onto the soft canvas frame that covered the interior of the Jeep, which might actually serve the purpose of keeping Hilo contained.

  “He’s mostly harmless,” said Kali, approaching the door, smiling again in what she hoped was reassurance, the bag of dog food under one arm and the raisin bread swinging from her hand.

  The women looked at her incredulously.

  “Mostly?” one of them repeated, her voice faint.

  “Except when he’s missed a few meals,” acknowledged Kali, gesturing to the dog food. The women backed away, allowing Kali ample room to slip outside.

  Hilo wagged his tail happily, sniffing at the bag. He followed Kali back to the parking lot, leaping onto the car seat unbidden. She climbed in behind the steering wheel and started the engine.

  “People are afraid of you, you know,” she said affectionately, reaching over briefly to scratch his ears. Hilo closed his eyes, leaning into Kali’s hand, enjoying the attention.

  She drove slowly out of the parking lot and back onto the main road. When she reached the driveway leading t
o her small clapboard house by the sea, Hilo leapt out and galloped toward the porch, where someone was waiting in one of the rattan deck chairs facing outward from the house. She could hear the sound of ukulele music, and as she pulled closer, she saw the police cruiser parked in the shade. She turned off the engine and slid to the ground, making her way leisurely toward the porch steps.

  “Do you ever keep your phone ringer turned on?” asked Walter from the comfort of the chair. He was holding his old, burnished ukulele angled across his lap, and he ran his fingers across the strings, punctuating his words. “Or, even better, check your texts? I’m merely asking, of course, because technically you’re on duty, and technically I shouldn’t have to drive over here to hunt you down.”

  Kali eyed the ukulele. “I see you at least got in some time for a rehearsal. Don’t think I don’t know you’ve entered the contest at the festival that’s coming up at the end of the month.” She pulled up another aging rattan chair from the other side of the deck. “Nice to see you, too, by the way.” She yawned as she sat down, hoping Walter would be brief so that she could go inside and take a nap without the extra guilt of having been seen collapsing onto the sofa.

  “You’ll change your mind about that in a minute,” said Walter darkly. “Your presence is requested over on Lna‘i. You need to get over to the ferry dock at Lahaina first thing tomorrow. The police cruiser will be heading over, but you can take the ferry across if you miss it.”

  Kali leaned forward in her chair, instantly alert. She could feel the small hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She watched Walter’s face carefully.

  “They’ve located the head?”

  “No.” He waited. “But the search turned up another body. You’d know all this already, of course, if I’d been able to reach you.”

  Her sense of trepidation increased.

  “And?”

  “Scene-of-crime crew will fill you in on the details when you get there. There’s another room booked for you at the Hotel Lna‘i in town for tomorrow night, and the following one if staying over is necessary.”