The Bone Field

by Debra Bokur

  George tilted his head in thought. “Commune and church? Sounds kind of like a cult.”

  “That’s our thought as well, though we can’t find a lot of information about what exactly was going on, other than allegations of young girls being involved.”

  George’s face flooded with alarm. “How young is young?”

  “Not sure yet,” said Kali. “Late teens, early twenties is what we’ve heard so far. Whatever was going on there, enough of a problem was developing that the program—or whatever it was—got shut down on Lna‘i. We have reason to believe that he’s trying to run the same show here on Maui.”

  “I’ll keep my ears open,” said George.

  Kali nodded in gratitude, and handed the coconut cake to Hara, who carried it to the Jeep. They made their way through the tourist traffic moving slowly along the southern end of the Hana Highway. When they finally reached the pineapple mailbox at the foot of Manuel’s driveway, it was growing late.

  Hara followed her up the walkway. By the time they’d crossed the short distance to the door, Manuel had come out and stood waiting. He smiled when he saw Kali.

  “Aloha, Detective,” he said.

  “Aloha, Mr. Raso,” she said. “This is my colleague, Officer David Hara. We’ve come with a few more questions about your photographs. I apologize for not calling first, but do you perhaps have some time to spare for us?”

  Some small shadow of loneliness in the old man’s eyes lifted.

  “Of course—please, come inside,” he said.

  Kali nodded to Hara, and he extended the cake box. “We’ve brought you a little something,” she said. “Coconut cake. I’m sure it’s not as good as the ones your wife used to make, but we hope you enjoy it.”

  Manuel’s face lit up. “My goodness! That’s very gracious of you. I’m sure it will be delicious. Would you like to have a slice? I could make coffee.”

  Hara looked hopeful.

  Kali smiled. “No, but thank you. I’m afraid we can’t stay that long. We’d like to ask you about a few of the people who appear in your photos to see if you can tell us anything about them, but then we need to be on our way.”

  Manuel placed the cake carefully on a table in front of his sofa and led the way through the living room and out the back door to his shady lanai, where Kali had sat with him during their first meeting.

  After they made themselves comfortable, she placed the small stack of individual photos on top of the album. Hara pulled a notebook and a pen out of his duty belt and sat attentively, waiting to jot down any information that Manuel could add to the investigation.

  “When I first spoke with you, you told me about the chemical companies spraying the fruit crops. Do you remember a company representative by the name of Matthew Greene who had been sent here to experiment with some new sprays to control bugs and other things that might have damaged the crops and reduced the yield?”

  “Do I ever.” Manuel’s eyes grew dark. “Greene was a bully. Liked to throw his weight around, and was especially aggressive with the women. Worse, I think he knew those sprays weren’t safe. Too bad he wasn’t around to answer for all the illnesses and cancer cases that eventually popped up.”

  Kali looked sideways at Hara, who was fidgeting. She tilted her chin towards him, and he turned to Manuel.

  “Do you know where he went?” Hara asked.

  “He skedaddled is all I know,” said Manuel, still frowning. “One day he was there, and then he was gone. The guys in suits were quiet about it. The few of us that were still around to close up the facility thought maybe he got fired, but I always thought he just got on a plane and went back to some big, showy house on the mainland. He used to brag about how big his swimming pool was. Too blind and ignorant to see the enormous ocean right at his feet.”

  “And did you know anything about his wife?” Kali continued.

  Manuel looked blank. “No. Can’t say I knew he was married. She must be a saint to put up with his arrogance and tormenting. If they’re still married, of course.”

  “They aren’t,” said Kali. “The wife, Lily Greene, died after a prolonged illness, and Matthew Greene has been missing for a number of years. All accounts suggest he never left Lna‘i.”

  This seemed to interest Manuel. He stared off into the distance for a moment, then turned back to Kali. She passed him the photo of Helen Stafford.

  “What about this girl?” she asked, trying to keep the hope from her voice.

  Manuel studied the image, turning it toward the light.

  “Yes. I think that’s the girl who used to choose the display fruit—a few especially large pineapples with bright colors that would go to the grocery stores to be placed beside the product displays.” His brow wrinkled as he searched his memory for details. “Hannah, maybe?”

  “Helen,” said Kali. “Helen Stafford.”

  Manuel sat back slightly, smiling. “Oh yes—Helen! That’s right. A nice, friendly woman. Always smiling.”

  “Did she work at the plantation for very long?”

  “No, not that long as I remember it. She had a friend who helped with planting the crowns. Maybe her boyfriend, come to think of it. I can’t recall his name, but I remember that his hair was kind of long. He looked like a hippie, but he was nice.”

  “And these girls?” asked Kali, showing him the photo of the young girls in the long blue skirts.

  Manuel peered at the image, frowning. “Oh, those girls from the church. The Garden of Eden or something like that. Sure, I remember them. They were always dancing around instead of working. Most of them were only there for a short time. I think they’d run out of cash and come to work in the fields for a few days or weeks.” He took the photo from Kali. “Except the little girl. She was there longer. I think she was part of the family who ran the church. One of those other women in the picture was her mother. She worked there part-time, and used to bring the little girl with her to the plantation. She used to encourage the little girl to run around, telling everyone happy stories about their church and inviting them to come for a visit.” He thought for a moment. “Lots of people brought their kids with them, though. A couple of the kids—that little girl included—got after-school jobs when they got older.”

  “What can you tell us about the people from the church?” asked Kali, watching as Hara wrote in his notebook. “Did you ever run into the founder, Abraham Waters?”

  “Abraham Waters? Oh yes. I went there once to see what it was all about. It was after my wife passed away. Everyone was talking about it—a retreat that was about getting closer to God, and how the message was all about how to live in harmony with the events of your life, without allowing grief to cripple you. That appealed to me at the time. But that’s not what it was all about. And Abraham Waters? Now that’s one seriously crazy man.”

  “Could you be a little more specific?”

  Manuel hesitated. “Well, for starters, it wasn’t really a church. Not like a little white building with a steeple and a bell tower. It was more like a commune, or like a nice cult with yoga and live music. People all lived together on one piece of land. Waters didn’t own it, but I believe I heard that he leased it from someone who bought it way back in the 1960s when the counterculture was taking hold in San Francisco, and a lot of people who identified with the hippie movement began moving here to the islands.”

  “Were there a lot of local people there?” asked Hara.

  Manuel shrugged. “I don’t know. What’s ‘a lot’? The day I was there, there were maybe thirty people, tops. You’d see them in the shops sometimes, too, but I think they grew most of their own food. For a while, they were around in the town, knocking on doors. Trying to get people to join their club, I guess. After I’d seen what was really going on, I mostly ignored them. What’s it to me, right?” He laughed. “Maybe if their music had been better, I’d have taken them more seriously, but it was all noise—tambourines and bells.”

  “What about rumors that there may have been odd thi
ngs going on at their farm?”

  “Well, it’s true that some of the locals were pretty annoyed that the Eden people would wander into the old ruins for some of their ceremonies. The commune people thought the Hawaiian beliefs were evil, so they used to bring holy water into the site and throw it on the old stones and pray over them.”

  “For what purpose? To bless them?”

  “To cast out what they saw as things tainted by the devil.” Manuel shook his head and sighed. “That’s the problem, right? Convincing yourself that only your own personal beliefs are the right ones.”

  “That’s part of the problem,” agreed Kali. “But we’re more concerned about claims that underage girls may have been targeted by Abraham Waters.”

  Manuel considered her words. When he spoke, he gave off an uneasy air. “After a while, they started to keep to themselves. It’s hard to say what was really going on.”

  Kali reached into her bag and pulled out the little anchor. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  Manuel leaned forward, reaching out to gently take the charm from Kali. He held it in his palm, turning it over several times. “A little anchor,” he mused. He sat up suddenly. “Oh, yes. I remember. The anchor bracelet. The little girl—Abby, we called her, the little girl who was in the photo we just looked at—she had a bracelet with these little charms on it. A dozen, at least. She used to wear it all the time, and you could hear the jingle when she was around.”

  Both Kali and Hara tensed. “Are you certain?” asked Kali.

  “One hundred percent,” said Manuel. “I know, because the clasp broke one day and the little girl asked me if I could help her mend it. She was awfully upset. It had been a gift from her daddy, she told me, and he would have been furious with her if she lost it.”

  “Furious if a little girl lost a bracelet?” asked Kali. “That doesn’t sound much like peace and love.”

  “Well, those kinds of people—setting themselves apart and making up their own rules. It’s never really about peace and love, is it? It’s always about something else.” He laughed cynically. “Usually money or power, in my experience. Love? That’s just the bait.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Kali and Hara listened as Manuel talked some more about his days working in the pineapple fields. It was acutely apparent to both of them how much he missed the purpose and the work, and the people with whom he had shared those experiences over the years.

  They assured him that the album would be returned as soon as possible. Afterward, Manuel walked them to the door. He thanked them again for the cake and reminded Kali of her earlier promise that she would return some time to visit when the investigation was over.

  “Let me know if there’s anything else I can tell you,” he said, waving as they climbed back into the Jeep.

  They’d pulled out onto the street when Hara turned to her.

  “You know,” he said, “I’ve studied cults a bit.”

  She regarded him with disbelief. “Firsthand?”

  He smiled, suddenly shy. “No, not exactly. I didn’t belong to one or anything. But one of the courses I took on criminal profiles delved into the topic a bit, and I found it really interesting, so I’ve read a lot more on the topic than the curriculum required.”

  “So tell me,” she said encouragingly. “Give me the short course on what you learned about successful cult leaders.”

  “You probably know a lot of this,” he said. “And the names of the famous cult leaders like Jim Jones, but there are certain personality traits that are consistent with the kinds of people who—well, you know, choose it as a career.”

  She laughed. “Okay, so we’ve got our Jim Jones and Charlie Manson and my favorite—Marshall Applewhite and his comet riders.” She looked at Hara, weighing her observation. “I guess the big ones are all men with something to prove, or some need for adoration.”

  “Yes—and they were, or are, generally very charismatic, at least when it serves their goals. On the inside, though, there’s often a lot of abuse and subjugation.”

  “Sexual?”

  “Definitely.”

  “From what we’ve learned about Abraham Waters, would you say he’s a classic example?”

  “I would,” he said. He stumbled over his next words. “I know you’ve been trained to be a traditional wisdom keeper, and that your role involves knowing a lot about spirituality. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to you . . .”

  “You shouldn’t be the least bit concerned about that. We’re two colleagues, having a professional discussion about personality types that may help lead us to a serial killer. That’s a discussion worth having, don’t you think?”

  “It’s just that I go to church,” he said. “I don’t think most people who have religious beliefs want to hurt others.”

  She thought about his words. In her estimation, religious institutions were places where evil often hid in plain sight, but that didn’t mean there was nothing more. She kept her thoughts to herself and listened as Hara explained the profile of many of the famous cult leaders who had been tried and convicted. In addition to an inflated ego and unrealistic sense of personal power, the leaders he mentioned often believed themselves to have been divinely chosen by a higher power or authority to rule over others, a vantage point that allowed them to make unreasonable demands that included humiliation and sexual services—always in the name of good.

  “An important characteristic of the people I studied is that they would systematically reward the followers who worshipped or venerated them, and got rid of anybody who challenged them or their absolute authority,” said Hara, warming up to his topic. “It’s how they keep control, by removing any kind of threat to their position.”

  “The location is important, too, isn’t it? Keeping people away from their friends and family?”

  He nodded vehemently. “Seclusion is key. Not only physically, but keeping people from listening to the news or watching television or having access to visitors or outside influences like computers.” He stirred it all over in his mind. “Seems to me like Eden’s River is pretty textbook.”

  * * *

  By the time Kali got home, the sun was going down. Shadows sprang up in the yard, and the evening songs of birds filled the air. She sat on her front steps for a few moments, enjoying the tranquility of it all, then walked to the clearing in her yard. She kicked off her shoes and cued up her phone to a music selection, then laid it on the ground with the speaker volume turned up. The song she’d chosen was “E Ho ‘i I Ka Pili,” composed and sung by Keali‘i Reichel, one of her favorite performers.

  The rich layers of Reichel’s voice filled the air. Kali wished that she could just sit on the steps in the shade and listen, but the coming performance at the cultural festival was weighing on her mind. Practicing was unavoidable. The last thing she wanted to do was disgrace the tradition, even if she had been pressured to appear instead of having made the choice herself.

  Instead of swearing at Pait, she began to move, at first slowly and with hesitation, then more strongly, her body embracing the music through dance, the ancient form of hula that was sometimes said to have been gifted to the Hawaiian people by the goddess Laka. Kali danced the old form, the hula kahiko that existed long before outsiders arrived on the islands’ shores and missionaries proclaimed that the practice was fraught with evil. Later outlawed and made kapu, or taboo, hula had quietly been kept alive until a less rigid sensibility was restored and it was again allowed to be danced in public.

  At the hlau hula school she’d attended as a girl, the instructor had been an impatient woman who had been critical of Kali’s natural skills. Her constant running and jumping, the instructor had told her, had given her tomboy muscles unsuited to the graceful movements that defined the dance. Kali had struggled particularly when it came to the lessons on rain. The strong muscles in her young arms had developed in response to hanging from trees, throwing balls, and doing backflips, and her teacher was unimpressed with Kali
’s efforts to suggest raindrops falling gently from the sky.

  “You have thunder in your arms!” her teacher had admonished. “Think of the rain landing lightly on the leaves and grass, not pummeling them!”

  Kali could still remember the hot, red flush that had filled her cheeks. She watched the other girls and boys, growing vexed and impatient. Try as she might, none of her efforts seemed to please her teacher. When her grandmother asked her later that day if she had enjoyed her lesson, Kali had only scowled, declaring that she was through with hula forever, and would learn to fish instead.

  Her grandmother had merely smiled. She waited patiently as Kali sat down, sullen, on the steps leading down from the lanai to the lawn, shoving her bare feet into the deep grass.

  “I understand,” said Pualani. “When I was learning hula I used to go to the left when everyone else went to the right. One boy who was learning with me said that if I was told to follow a path into the mountains, I would end up in the sea instead.”

  Kali had been skeptical. “You’re only saying that to make me feel better.”

  “I’m afraid it’s quite true. Of course, because it was challenging for me, and especially because I wanted to prove that boy was wrong, I made it a point to learn every hand movement and every step—when to bend and when to raise my arms. But that’s just how I am. When someone tells me I can’t do something, it only makes me want to do it more, and do it better.”

  Pualani looked out across the lawn at the shimmer of light that rose from the place where the sunlight met the surface of the sea. “Why don’t you help me in the garden today instead?” she asked Kali. “It needs weeding.”

  Kali had agreed, and followed her grandmother to the side of the house where tomatoes and long beans grew on trellises next to a small, landscaped bed of flowers. Over the next hour, Kali and Pualani knelt and pulled weeds from the beds, reached and pinched suckers from the trellised plants, and bent to tidy the ground around their roots.