Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  It seemed an endless time though it was probably only two or three minutes before Wakefield walked down the steps. The other three were with him. One was carrying a small black object not much larger than an electric shaver. They closed the door behind them, appeared to check the street, and came down the steps.

  He hadn’t had time to learn much about the building. He’d only been here a few days in pursuit of another story, and now he’d learned the satellite was coming down and what it might mean. His luck had been phenomenal, stumbling across the connection with Wakefield. His luck, and his rage. As far as Elliot Propter was concerned, these were the bad guys.

  He’d spent much of Friday watching. In the few minutes he’d spent in the County Building he would read a name off an office door, then stick his head in a different office and ask for that person. The secretary or bureaucrat in the office would redirect him. He would thank them and back out. In this way he saw faces in every office. The rest of the time he watched people go in and come out, loitering in the lobby reading the bulletin boards to see who went into which office.

  And he spent some time tracking the four men coming down the steps. He slumped in his seat and watched as they walked across the grass toward his car. As they approached he pulled up a tourist map of Kaua’i and pretended to be looking at it.

  A number of pieces had fallen into place, but the essential component was missing. He had only guesses. They were unpleasant guesses. He hoped they were right, because if they were this was a very big story. Something was coming down.

  Elliot was a journalist, not a goddamn detective. He should be sitting in the bar at some hotel or other having a Mai Tai, or snoozing back in his room at the Hibiscus Court Motel.

  On the other hand, he’d done his share of leg work, and as leg work went this was simple stuff. It seemed, for a brief moment, that it was too simple, but he pushed the thought aside. Something was going to happen, and he intended to be there when it did.

  He waited until the group turned into an alley before starting his engine. He cruised slowly down Rice, pretending to look at street numbers. He passed the alley. There was no sign of the men. He drove around the block and into the alley, which ended in a parking area with a few desolate stores around it, a miniature mall fallen on hard times. Across from the parking area was a Chinese restaurant called the Golden Pagoda. He parked.

  He hesitated a moment by the car door while he looked around the shops before going into the restaurant. As he opened the door he met Wakefield and the others coming out. Wakefield politely held the door for him.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, lowering his head. As he shuffled into the dim interior to the takeout window he scanned Wakefield carefully. He was shorter than Propter had thought, maybe five-nine. His small mustache was gray, matching the close-cropped marine haircut. His eyes as he looked at Propter were the coldest the journalist had ever seen, and he had spent time around some of the most calculating politicians the country could produce, people whose media personas were warm and affable, but who off-camera were ruthless. Wakefield, he thought, had no reason to affect warmth; he was not in the media limelight.

  “Sure. Any time.” Wakefield’s voice was deep and firm and absolutely bleak. The other three men, one of them holding the paper bags of Chinese food, another the black object, stood outside in a semicircle, as if ready for trouble. Propter moved inside. The screen door slammed. He watched them turn left and disappear as he picked up a paper takeout menu. He looked at it for a few minutes, as if considering. Then he folded it, put it in his pocket, and followed them.

  Twilight was settling over the island; the street lights already were on. A couple of the shops around the mall were about to close. One sold T-shirts with surfing or sunset cartoons. The other imported South Seas or Western Pacific artifacts— monkeywood salad bowls and cheap Japanese paper wallets. Elliot checked both stores quickly, then ran down the alley, afraid to take the time to get in his car.

  There was no sign of them on Rice. He ran around the corner to the other entrance to the mall, thinking they might have gone to a nearby park to eat, but the only park in sight was the one in front of the County Building, and they were not there.

  He almost panicked. It was after seven. The satellite was due to come down with a spectacular display a little after eight. He walked back to his car and sat behind the wheel for a few minutes, feeling despair. His big story was slipping way. He realized they must have parked here and walked over to the County Building earlier. They were gone.

  He started the engine and eased the car down the alley to Rice. He turned left, drove to the intersection with the highway, and turned right. His luck had run out.

  At least he knew what they were doing in the County Building. The small black object was a pocket copier: so they had been copying something.

  He turned into the Moali’i Hotel driveway, past the coconut palms, and parked. He went into the lobby, heavy with floral scents and negative ions, an overwhelmingly healthful environment. In the bar he ordered a Mai Tai; when it arrived he carried it to a small round table near the back and sat down to think.

  He could look out on the well-lit pool surrounded with torches that flared and danced in the light breeze. The pool was underused at this time of evening, but a few women sat in a small group on beach chairs, still glistening with oil. Their conversation seemed both animated and hushed. He could not hear despite the fact that the windows were open.

  A large, nearly full moon, swollen and orange, was rising over the ocean beyond the palms that fringed the beach. Although he could not see them, Elliot was sure the waves were small and benign. The evening was calm, like the sea.

  “He died slowly,” someone at a nearby table said, the phrase floating out of the background hum of bar talk. The level of conversation fell below threshold again. Elliot turned slightly in his seat. Four people sat in one of the booths near the door, about ten feet away. Elliot could make out a Japanese couple and a white couple leaning toward each other across the narrow table. The Japanese man was talking. Elliot strained to hear what he was saying, but only fragments coalesced out of the murmur. “…Kapuna Shores development. Fifty luxury units, that sort of thing… historic archaeological site.” Later on he thought they were talking about the satellite. They seemed certain it would not come down on land. Kaua’i was a small dot on a vast ocean. Odds were a million to one against.

  He turned back to the pool and sipped his drink. The women were gone, leaving the surface of the pool shimmering as it settled. His watch read 7:55.

  The nape of his neck began to itch. He took out five dollars and put them carefully on the table. He made his way outside and walked along the driveway beside the coconut grove. At a tree about halfway down he paused to place his hand against the trunk.

  It was about to happen and he didn’t know where or exactly when. No one knew.

  He watched the traffic flow along the Kuhio Highway for a few minutes. Then he walked along the driveway, past a procession of torches set on metal posts along the edge of the road. When he found the darkest place he could, he sat on the turf and leaned against a tree. The Mai Tai felt pleasant in his stomach, offering him surprising warmth. It reminded him of Sis, her warmth and her spirit. The thought made him angry again. Then he realized he hadn’t eaten. Maybe that was where this empty feeling came from. For a moment he closed his eyes, and at first he didn’t notice the strange whistling sound against the hum of traffic on the highway, the rustling of the oleander leaves in the hedge across the drive, the small evening sounds of the tropics.

  When it did force its way into his awareness, he snapped his eyes open. Even so, he almost missed it.

  The long red streak came in and down from the west, high up above the last lingering clouds around Wai’ale’ale. It seemed to be falling straight down, though he knew that must be an illusion. The sound grew louder and harsher and more eerie as it approached. Pieces seemed to break off as it fell, throwing red-lit smoke trails
sideways in widening funnels only to vanish abruptly in incandescent flashes. Intolerably bright white magnesium flares spewed off the main object as it fell.

  For Elliot time seemed to dilate and expand as the streak of red and white light drew itself down the sky, then time collapsed into a microsecond, leaving only a reversed-color afterimage behind it.

  The explosion shook the ground. Elliot stood up and watched the smoke drift away.

  When he got back to the hotel a number of people were standing on the driveway looking up. They were asking one another what it was, what had happened. He saw the two couples from the bar. The white woman was pregnant. Her husband had his arm around her, a big man with a beard. He patted her shoulder and she looked up and smiled at him, her face framed by short black hair. Elliot thought she was quite lovely, and felt a stab of envy at that brief domestic scene.

  She reminded him of Sharleen, pinned by a less joyous incapacity to her chair. His sister had the same dark hair, the same round, open expression, but she was far away in a colder place where she would never have a tan like this woman’s. It wasn’t fair, but he did what he could for her.

  He paused for a moment, then moved briskly to his car.

  Others clearly had the same idea. Traffic began to flow onto the driveway. He made it out at last, turned north away from Lihu’e. Just across the Wailua River he turned left toward the mountains. Somewhere up there the satellite had come down. If there was anything left of it, he wanted to know what it was. Judging from the afterimage still burned in his memory there would be plenty left. He left the park, and the Opaeka’a Falls behind.

  The explosion had brought many people out of their houses. As he drove through the subdivisions above Wailua he saw them standing about in small groups, talking and gesturing toward the sky to the west.

  There was no further evidence of the crash. No smoke, no fire. The trail of smoke and debris was gone. The stars, blurred and faint above the street lighting, were visible again. The night was once more calm. It was 8:32.

  He turned on the radio. “…nothing to worry about. The meteor apparently came down near the crater. There are no reports of injury and no cause for alarm. We repeat, a meteor of some sort apparently came down near Wai’ale’ale. There is no need to call the station or the police. County officials assure us it was only a meteor, and not this satellite everyone’s been talking about… oh, OK. I’ve just been told by my engineer, Al, that if it lands it should be called a meteorite. I stand corrected.” The announcer chuckled at Al’s silly concern for such niggling details. “Anyways, County officials say the ‘meteorite’ was probably not the Russian satellite that was supposed to come down in the ocean west of Kaua’i about the same time, but police officials are planning to investigate, just to make sure. I guess if it was a satellite I shouldn’t be calling it a ‘meteorite,’ eh, Al? Now, now, Al, none of that. Al’s making rude gestures at me through the window. If we hear anything more about the ‘meteorite’ we’ll let you know. Stay tuned. Now let’s return to our interrupted e-e-easy listenin’ music…”

  Elliot switched off the radio and smiled, certain now it was the satellite, and that Wakefield had to be up there somewhere.

  He was soon lost in a maze of small streets and had to pull over to look at the map. A tangle of roads draped over the hillsides, dwindling to one a little further west past the arboretum. He started up again and made a series of turns, headed generally west. The darkness increased as clouds moved out from the volcano’s rim 4,000 feet above and he left the last of the streetlights behind. He passed the university agricultural station and swept around a series of turns into the arboretum, where he stopped to examine his map. There was a secondary road pointing straight at the heart of the mountain a couple of miles further on.

  The Toyota strained as it crossed the river. Shallow water was flowing across the low cement road, and his wheels sent rooster tails into the wheelwells with a rushing sound. He climbed a hill, bounding in the ruts and potholes, then stopped. To his right a deeply rutted road climbed upward. He looked at the map again, tracing the road with his fingertip, then drove on, descending the hill again. Suddenly his headlights plowed into endless cane planted on either side of the road. The tall plants swayed and bowed over the car, brushing against the sides from time to time as he swerved to avoid an ominously deep hole in the road.

  More roads appeared, merging with the one he was on from both sides, and he realized he was entering a maze of cane roads. Just when his resolve began to falter he emerged from the cane into the open, and there, to his right was a wide dirt road going west toward the mountain. He turned.

  He drove through open space for a time, and then entered a dense grove of hau trees. Their broad round leaves rustled in the night breeze. The road deteriorated, then failed.

  At the edge of a eucalyptus forest he climbed out to examine a small wooden sign. It warned him to leave any dogs he might find alone. They belonged to hunters who would return soon.

  Could Wakefield and the others have come up here? He tried examining the dirt of the road for tire marks, but he had no idea whether the tangle of tire treads in the caked mud, hardened into ridges and sculptures of waffles and chevrons, represented new tracks or not. He climbed back in the car and eased the Toyota forward. The road was now worse than he expected. Deep ruts bracketed high weeds. Although the road was fairly wide it was very rough and seemed to be finding some strange level of its own along a ridge hidden in vegetation. The darkness beyond the edge of his lights was profound.

  He shifted into low gear and pushed ahead, certain he would come to a place wide enough to turn around soon. He would be unable to back out from here. The Toyota heaved and lifted, whining, over each hole and bump in the trail. The scraping of first weeds and then earth on the bottom of the car was nearly continuous. He struggled with the wheel against the ruts and holes, now filled with water as he moved further inland toward the wettest spot on earth.

  After nearly an hour of crawling through potholes and swerving around ruts, his odometer told him he’d only gone a mile. He’d found no place to turn around. Finally he simply stopped. A mist seemed to be seeping up from the ground, twisting in his headlights. Over the hum of the engine he could hear a faint whistling sound. He shut off the engine, and the whistling grew louder.

  The mist was coming from his engine. So was the whistling. He looked at the temperature gauge and for the first time he thought perhaps the satellite was not worth this effort. The needle hung in the red, and the steam escaping from his radiator increased.

  Cautiously he opened his door. He had to push it against the ferns crowding the edge of the road on the left side. The darkness was profound. He opened the trunk and stood gazing at its contents for a long moment in the dim light from the trunk lid. There were no tools he could see that would help him with this problem. But perhaps he could unburden himself of other worries.

  A few minutes later he unlatched the hood, and a cloud of steam filled the air. Very slowly the whistling died away with the steam.

  If Wakefield was up on this trail he’d be coming down and they would meet. If he was not up here, then Elliot was stranded. He did not know which prospect was worse.

  Then it began to rain, and that, as it turned out, was worse than either.

  CHAPTER 6

  “ ‘GROPING ABOUT, SEEKING to seize the truth in my hot hands,’ as the great detective Chan would say. So simple, really. What we have had today is a clean, unassuming murder. Nothing fancy, mind you. A shooting. Bang, you’re dead.”

  The Takamuras and the Koenigs were at the Moali’i Hotel for drinks before dinner. Cobb had suggested earlier that perhaps they might hear some gossip in the bar, but so far they had heard no mention of Linz’s death. At the moment Cobb was hunched over a hideous concoction called a “Blue Hawaiian.” Neither Chazz nor Patria had the nerve to ask him what was in it. He had decided to focus on this ghastly drink and forget business for a few hours.

  “We
ll, there is one thing about a simple shooting,” Patria offered, bringing him back to business once again.

  Cobb lifted his glass and looked at her. “And what is that?”

  “Well, with a simple shooting there is nothing for Chazz and I to do but sit back and watch the local constabulary in action. And perhaps gasp in admiration from time to time.”

  Cobb took a sip of the bizarre blue fluid and smiled in satisfaction. “Ah. Yes.”

  Patria detected something. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, ‘yes’.”

  “Just ‘yes’?”

  Cobb nodded. “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Patria said firmly.

  The bar was crowded. Tourists danced intricately around each other, approaching or avoiding. The hotel was popular with tours and singles, and the social play fascinated Patria, whose anthropological fieldwork had been among the Maya of Yucatan, where such social structures were less intricate if more exotic.

  “Well,” Cobb said. “You needn’t believe it. He— the victim, that is— was a man of means, as the newspapers put it. Involved locally to an extent as yet unknown in the development of Kapuna Shores, a shift of land use popular only in certain segments of our small but diverse society. Kapuna Shores has been, ah, controversial, shall we say? Replacing sugar fields with condominiums— fifty luxury units, that sort of thing. Another golf course. Some people, those who live here year around, those who work here and must earn a living by the sweat of their brows, are unhappy. Mr. Linz, I fear, has made some enemies. And someone has shot him. His son Peter Linz of Utah will arrive soon, and he will tell us exactly who might be interested in shooting Mr. Linz, we will make an arrest, and the case will be closed. Simple.”

  Kimiko had said little. She seemed lost in her own thoughts, and had let her husband take the conversational lead. Now, though, she placed her hand gently on Cobb’s arm. He glanced at her and seemed to relax. “Perhaps,” he said softly, “it would be better to discuss other topics. After all, we are still trying to celebrate your good news. Murder makes unpleasant conversation. So I will change the subject somewhat to point out that one reason for the controversy is that Kapuna Shores is to be built on an historic archaeological site, which may be of interest to you, Patria.”