by Swigart, Rob
“That’s as near an X-rated shirt as would be allowed in public, Kikui Nut,” Cobb said good-naturedly. Sammy spread the paper bundle on what was left of the coffee table.
It was a large-scale topographic map of the Kapaa region. Sammy removed his toothpick and looked at it judiciously. He decided its destruction was complete and dropped it into the debris on the floor. “Dotted lines are unimproved roads. They’re a mess. It would be a rough ride for a passenger car, but they could make it. The roads crisscross one another all through the foothills of the Makaleha Mountains. If the Bad Guys went down through the papaya as you say, they’d end up here. Right turn brings them back to town. Left turn goes out here, southwest. There’s an old homestead up this ravine, a real shack, but an old woman still owns it, name of Somoza, Portuguese-Hawaiian, a widow. She’d be in her early sixties now, I guess. Lives there, far as I know, though it’s long dropped off the tax rolls. Certain things slide in county government, you know. She doesn’t have much, and the house was condemned back in the seventies, so in theory it doesn’t exist any more, but there’s no record it was actually destroyed. I don’t know how your man could have found out about it unless he’s a magician.”
“Sammy knows everyone on this island,” Takamura told Handel. “And Phoenix is a magician.”
“I’d be concerned about Mrs. Somoza,” Sammy frowned. “But it’s the only bet out there.”
Sammy had a four-wheel drive. The small fluffy clouds that had drifted across the moon earlier had huddled together and hidden the sky, threatening rain over the entire island. The night air was close and still.
Their headlights cut the dark, scything through papaya trees, sugar cane, then scrub lehua and the large spade-shaped leaves of hau. Chazz, Scott Handel, and the two patrolmen were in the back, Cobb in front. Sammy drove expertly over the rutted dirt roads. The darker form of the mountains loomed against the clouds.
Rain began to smear the windshield.
They stopped once and Sammy climbed out. “Before the rain wipes them away,” he said, stooping before the headlights to look at the ruts. “Civilian tires,” he grinned as he climbed back into the Bronco.
“You have a plan?” Chazz asked over the engine whine.
“Nope,” Takamura answered. “No plan. Just hurry. Phoenix is unpredictable and very dangerous. He’s got Patria.”
Chazz settled back. Breathe in, breathe out. Glance at the shining spear of anger, waiting. Let the water flow over his name, wash it away. Not even carved in sand. Only water, flowing in, out.
Sammy switched to parking lights, moved ahead more slowly a few hundred meters, stopped. The engine ticked under the strengthening fall of rain. “Gonna be wet,” he murmured.
They got out. Sammy showed the twin ruts of a trail leading into a narrow valley. They walked, five men moving through falling water.
The only car parked in front of the house was the rented Toyota.
Faint yellow light illuminated the two dusty front windows. They spread out and surrounded the house. Rain fell straight down; mud sucked at their shoes. Beyond the dim windows the darkness was complete.
Chazz found a door in back next to a shed rotting over a pile of ancient wooden boards and an abandoned old-fashioned washing machine. Vegetation grew right against the house in some places.
He listened at the door but heard nothing. The grimy window beside it revealed nothing. He tried the latch and almost fell when the door opened. He could see nothing inside.
To his left one of the patrolmen grunted, a small sound lost in the hiss of falling rain.
He slipped inside. He was in a small anteroom that smelled of damp and dust. He felt the handle of a tool, the wood rotted and splintery: a shovel. The damp smell of newly turned earth rose from it.
There was a faint light showing under the inner door. He crept to it and listened. He could hear nothing.
He made a decision. He opened the door and stepped in.
When the patrolman grunted, Cobb Takamura, right behind him, touched his shoulder “What is it?” he whispered.
“I stepped on something.”
They crouched down, feeling with their hands. It was something soft that felt like flesh. Cobb did not dare risk a light, but when he felt the outlines of an arm he stopped for a moment.
“What is it?” the patrolman hissed. Cobb heard the tension in his voice.
“I don’t know, but she’s dead.” He stood up. “First we find out what’s inside. The Toyota is here; maybe they are, too.”
They made their way to the front.
Sammy and the second patrolman were on the other side of the house, blocked by dense brush. A high window threw an indefinite yellow oblong into the leaves. Sammy strained to look inside, but all he could see were vague shapes that seemed to dangle from the ceiling. The light was bad, the angle wrong.
He backed slowly, bumping into the patrolman. “We can’t get through here,” he murmured. “Either we go around the other way, or we go in through the front.”
They crept back the way they had come.
Cobb stood by the front door, his gun in his hand. He waved Sammy to the other side. The two patrolmen were backup, guns drawn, waiting below the steps to either side of the door.
Cobb nodded and started for the door when it opened. Chazz was standing there. “Somebody get me something, a blanket, a coat, anything. Patria’s here. She needs help.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
VENOM
She huddled under the blanket Sammy had pulled from the back of his Bronco. The bruises on her neck and face were dark smudges in the dim candlelight. Her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. Chazz squatted beside her, his big arms around her shoulders, as if by their strength he could hold her together. For a long time she couldn’t talk.
Under the blanket she was naked.
“He raped her,” Chazz told Cobb. He showed his teeth. It was not a smile.
Cobb Takamura had gestured to the others to leave. They waited outside by the car. Now he looked down at his friends, his face expressionless.
Patria spoke. “He… he thinks he’s a bokor, a sorcerer. Black magic. B-but I know who he is…” She shook uncontrollably. Chazz stroked her hair.
“He’s Phoenix,” Cobb said.
“N-no. Not… Phoenix. His mother…” She started shaking again.
The photographs of skulls hung from loops of string overhead, hundreds of them. The walls were crudely painted. Spider webs filled the corners.
There was a light knock on the door.
Takamura opened it and looked out. Sammy Akeakamai stood there. Cobb nodded.
“Dead,” Sammy said. “Mrs. Somoza. Two or three days, strangled.”
Cobb nodded. Nothing surprised him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Call in. You know what to do.” Sammy nodded and turned away. Cobb closed the door.
“What happened?” he asked Patria.
She tried to answer, shook, tried again. “He was making up his powder, zombie powder. The bokor needs special ingredients. Not all of them are active. But he was missing one. This was after he…”
“Never mind.”
“What was he missing, Patria?” Chazz asked her softly. So softly Cobb barely heard. So softly only menace came through.
“It sounded like ‘cone.’ He was going to make me his ‘beast.’ He said that. He started making the stuff— all the right rituals. Ceremony and resurrection. Cotton in his nostrils so he wouldn’t inhale the powder himself. Wrapped in burlap. N-not funny at all. The others came, in a hurry. I caught some of it. There was a fight, I guess. Something. He went into a rage. Screamed he had to get the cone. S-same word in French.”
She breathed rapidly for a time, convulsively. Chazz held her tighter. He pulled the blanket around her, held her.
Gradually, she calmed and went on. “I know who he is. He talked, while he was…” She couldn’t finish. “He killed her.”
“Who?” Cobb asked.
“He killed his mother.
He talked. He was a child, singing a song, like a nursery rhyme. Talking, babbling. She must have done something to him, but his French was too fast, I couldn’t follow. He hated her. He thought I was her when he was on me. I told him he was small… inadequate. My French isn’t that good, but it was enough. He went wild, talking about his mother. I tried to humiliate him.” The words began to tumble out of her. “I thought he wouldn’t be able to do it, then. But he could; he was crazy, strangling me, babbling, leaning over me. Afterward he started making the powder, glaring at me. Then the others came and he started yelling about the cone.”
Cobb looked at Chazz. Finally, the biologist looked up at him. “Cone snail,” he said. “Must be his little improvement. The venom of the cone snail. It’s Guillaume, of course, Jacqueline Guillaume, the famous radical mistress of the famous.”
Cobb agreed. “She had an affair with Queneau, among others. She must have done something awful to her son to make him what he is. And now he’s gone to look for a cone snail, to finish the powder?”
Patria nodded. “You’re looking for an old Chevy, brown, very rusty, dirty inside. No dash, wires hanging out. He had it stashed somewhere, I don’t know. He knocked me out; I woke up in the car. He got me here, carried me in, ripped my clothes…”
Again she started shaking. This time the shaking did not stop.
Cobb opened the door. “Sammy!”
They left Sergeant Handel and the two patrolmen at the house with the old woman’s body. “Be ready,” Cobb said. “They could come back. A patrol unit is on the way. You’ll have a radio. We’ll call.”
Sammy drove expertly. On the way, Patria talked brokenly, almost incoherently. She was still in shock. She was trying to tell them who the Phoenix was.
In a little less than a half hour they delivered Patria to the emergency room at the hospital. Kimiko was already there, called from police headquarters. Two patrol units were watching the house in the woods. Scott Handel was on his way in.
They ran back out to the Bronco. As they climbed in Cobb asked, “Cone snail?”
“A very powerful venom,” Chazz answered, buckling his seat belt. “A snail just a few inches long can kill a man. There’s only one place to get one easily on this island.”
“As I thought,” Cobb Takamura said. “Sammy.”
The big Hawaiian nodded. He was already turning south. “Douglass Research Center.”
The moon was disappearing behind thick clouds, imparting only a faint luminescence to the sky. Rain was intermittent.
Handel and two men met them on the highway by the road down to the DRC.
“There are three of them,” Cobb said. “Well-trained and well-armed.”
“They know a form of kick-fighting,” Chazz added. “Watch their feet. They have machine pistols and knives. Phoenix knows the layout— he’s been there before. He met the Richards woman on the tour.”
“An old Chevy wouldn’t make very good time on the dirt roads— so they have maybe a twenty-minute head start,” Cobb concluded. “Include time to break into the buildings, they’ll most likely just be getting inside now.”
Security was minimal. An electronic gate stopped vehicular traffic, but anyone walking in would have no trouble reaching the building. They could have left the Chevy anywhere.
Getting inside the exhibit hall would be difficult but not impossible for professionals. The security systems would only slow them down.
They found forced entry in the south side exhibition hall: a small access window to the basement utility area. The alarm system had been neatly rerouted.
Phoenix was inside. No, not Phoenix. Now he had a real name, an identity.
“We could trip the alarm,” Handel suggested. “Wait for them to come out.”
“Risky. Someone might get away. I’d rather take them inside. We might as well use the same entry.” If Sergeant Handel was shocked at his boss’s suggestion, he gave no sign.
Sammy Akeakamai shrugged and thumped his ample belly. Takamura grinned. “Kikui Nut, it’s true you and Chazz will never fit through this window.”
Chazz nodded. “We’ll go to the front. One of you can meet us. The foyer is a long way from the Bounty of Nature exhibit, and I’d be willing to bet they’re planning to get out through the delivery entrance, so we’d be safest going in that way. Unfortunately, I don’t have a key.”
“Officer Wallace will meet you. Scott and I will check the exhibit halls.” Takamura slipped one leg through the open window.
“Okay.” Chazz agreed. “There’s a maintenance stair in front. You can slip upstairs there without being seen. You come out behind the gift shop just inside the entrance. The front door alarm turns off under the counter.”
“Five minutes.” Cobb slipped inside. Handel and the two patrolmen followed.
Chazz and Sammy waited in the cover of a huge splash of lantana near the front door. The moon was completely covered; it was dark except for the bright security lights on the parking area beyond the next building and the smaller utility lights over the entry.
They could hear distant surf and, somewhere closer, running water. The only other sound was the small metallic clicking as Sammy checked his revolver. The .38 looked tiny in his enormous hands. The front door opened and Wallace stuck his head out. Chazz and Sammy dashed across the exposed entry and slipped inside. Chazz paused only long enough to reset the alarms.
The DRC marine research wing was an eerie place at night. The sounds of pumps and air bubbling through water came from every direction. Chazz paused at the first tank at the end of a short hallway long enough to see that Plato was comfortable in his temporary home. The octopus was moving slowly, extending and contracting his tentacles in its never-ending quest for food.
The creature mirrored the tattoo that writhed around the forearm of the man in the hospital, itself a copy of the one Hobart/Phénix displayed. Chazz liked the one in the tank a lot better.
The large central room contained an enormous tank. Only a few dim lights revealed four sharks circling endlessly. They were not large, nor were they pretty.
To either side, the tanks were interrupted by arches leading on the right to a black-light exhibit and on the left smaller exotic tropical fish, crustaceans, bivalves, a chambered nautilus. The back of the building held the Bounty of Nature display, with its complex ecology of toxic and medicinal plants and animals, a long exhibit of a coral reef, including the blowfish.
Except for the pumps, the silence was absolute: no voices, no traffic, no footsteps. Chazz and Sammy slipped between exhibits, moving from cover to cover, watching for shadows, for movement. Wallace, who was behind them, thought he heard something in the left-hand room and slipped away to investigate. The other two men did not notice.
Chazz and Sammy cautiously circled the ceiling-high shark tank and saw no one. Chazz gestured, and they went through the arch to the right. In the darkness of the tanks, luminous creatures drifted or swam, lit only by ultraviolet bulbs.
The aisles were interrupted by large sculptural exhibits showing the inner structures of some of the creatures in the tanks. During public hours, they were lit from above, casting dramatic shadows. Now, though, they were indefinite shapes looming in their way.
The crash, when it came, was far away, behind them on the other side of the sharks. A shout, then a series of thuds, more shouts. Sammy turned. Chazz touched his arm and gestured ahead. They moved through the arch into the long rectangular back room lined with tanks. They could hear water dripping, and then felt it underfoot. The cone snail tanks had been cut neatly, a large circle removed. The water still spilled through the hole. A few bewildered blennies darted back and forth in the few inches of remaining water.
The hall was empty.
Sounds of a struggle came through the arch at the far end. They ran, dodging large exhibits of the Bounty of Nature: sponges, corals, sea squirts and mussels, sea hares and puffer fish.
A scream, protracted and harsh, was abruptly cut off; a figure fell t
hrough the archway at the far end of the room. Chazz paused only long enough to recognize Patrolman Wallace. His throat was crushed, his head at an angle.
Chazz dropped into zanshin without thinking, extending his senses. Close. He could feel them close, the other side of the wall.
There were too many places to hide. The light was indefinite, imparting vague shadows to anything that moved.
Takamura and Handel would have made their way up from the storage and delivery area downstairs. They were either in the exhibit halls or the research offices along the south side of the building. They would have heard the scream.
Chazz placed the ball of his left foot on the carpet before him and slowly shifted his weight. Beside him the aerator of a tank bubbled. Just the other side of the wall, someone was breathing. Chazz could feel the air, moving in, moving out. He felt Sammy Akeakamai behind him, controlling his own breath, the tiny .38 peeking out through his fist. He took another step.
He felt the attack coming. He did not lose his awareness this time. The man had stepped to the right, spun for a roundhouse kick. Chazz stepped inside, pivoted with it inside the archway to the side hall, picking up the momentum of the kick, guiding the leg without holding it. He gave some extra momentum, and the kicker flew into an aquarium at the back of the hall. The glass shuddered a moment from the impact, then cracked. A trickle of water leaked a moment, turned to a spray, a fountain, then the glass gave way, and a deluge dumped from the tank as the man rolled away to the side, out of the stream. He was on his feet again, turning to face Chazz. Water poured out onto the floor between them. A few fish leaped and gulped in the mess, then fell back twitching, their mouths opening and closing.
The man yelled and stepped forward, ready for another lightning kick, but as he spun he stepped on a fish and the kick went wild. Chazz did not move. The man was big and blond, and Chazz knew he was the one with the bad leg.
The soldier snarled and pulled his pistol from his belt. He raised it, and Sammy Akeakamai said quietly, “Drop the gun.”
