Primal Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  It was some hours later before she saw the dismembered limb that had frightened tourists at the Blow Hole. Parry had met her when she'd exited the autopsy room, her neck and shoulders giving way to great pain now, so intense had been the work. “You might've told me about Marshal.”

  “Thought I'd let you two get on on youown.”

  “We managed, but just barely. What an ass. I take it you haven't informed him about the girl's arm.”

  “Did I say it was a girl's arm?”

  “I... assumed after showering me with those pictures...”

  “In answer to your question, at this point I saw no reason to involve anyone else, particularly Marshal.”

  “What story'd you circulate for the tourists? That it was a prank? A mannequin, maybe?”

  “Alert of you to guess.”

  “Problem is I'm far from alert now to do much good here. I'll take a quick glance at the body part, but I'll have to beg off till tomorrow.”

  “Deal.”

  “Mamma said there'd be days like this.” He lightly chuckled. “Mamma was a smart lady, too?”

  “Actually, it was my father who said there'd be days like this. He was an M.E., too. Mother died when I was fairly young. Daddy raised me on his own after that, never remarrying.”

  “Find anything of interest in there with Hilani or Kaniola?”

  “Early to tell; now we run tests. I hope you've got good lab people.”

  “The best. Don't worry there.”

  They entered a laboratory where a few white-coated techs greeted Parry with broad smiles. One or two faces were distinctly Polynesian.

  “Mr. Lau,” called Parry, “this is Dr. Coran, from Quantico, Virginia.”

  “Ohhhh,” said Lau, coming quickly to her and taking her hand. “I have read much about you. Doctor. Extremely impressive, extremely. I tol' Parry, we need somewon like you.”

  “How about someone exactly like her, Lau? How about her?”

  “That's what I mean.”

  Parry laughed good-naturedly. “So, where's the muttonchop, Lau?”

  “In safekeeping, this way.”

  He led them to a refrigeration chamber and pressed a button, and a drawer eased outward sending a cascade of smoke as the super-cooled air hit room temperature. Below the cloud of cold a thick glass container held the object of Parry's concentration. Jessica, too, stared at the lone, thin, pathetic shoulder, elbow and forearm. The fact that the hand was missing only added to the gruesome object. It was a mangled hunk of flesh, pounded, bruised, blue not simply from the cold but from dark patches where it had been battered, parts of bone showing through.

  'Tomorrow, I want you to determine the age, sex, height, race, time of death—and anything else you can decipher from that, Dr. Coran.” She gave Lau a look that told him he could close it up, and the short, stocky young man did so, a sad look in his black but radiant eyes. She saw that Parry was staring at her, and this made her a little uncomfortable. What did he want from her, a magic act? To make immediate pronouncements about the body part in the freezer?

  She caught a glimpse of Lau telling the other technicians who she was. Lau was in charge of the techs, the equipment and the lab in general, and it was to him that the techs had brought the various test materials from the adjoining autopsy room, each labeled in Jessica's meticulous hand.

  'Tomorrow, then,” she croaked. “Meantime, Lau and the others here can work on the slides and samples taken from the police officers.” Well, so far, so good,” Parry said. “Allow me to see you to your hotel.”

  “Thanks, but I'm sure you have more important things to attend to.”

  “Right now. Doctor, you're the most important thing on the island. We're very aware of your track record, what you did last year in New York City in the Claw case, and the time before that... that sicko vampire in Chicago.”

  His eyes had come to rest on her cane. “We're hoping you'll stick it to this guy, the way you did those others.”

  “Don't get your hopes up. I don't think I found anything useful today, and I'm not sure that muttonchop as you call it in there belongs to any of your missing girls.”

  He nodded, biting his lip before presenting her with nine manila folders. “Homework,” he said, shrugging apologetically.

  “How soon you want these back?”

  “They're duplicates, so no sweat.”

  “Have you had a profile of your supposed serial killer drawn up?”

  “It's included, but I'm not so sure I trust it entirely.”

  “Don't trust your own profile team?” She halted and stared at him for a direct answer.

  He cleared his throat and said firmly, “There's no team on it. Ahhh, just me.”

  “You're kidding.”

  “Wish I were. We've been understaffed and well... see, to date, it's been of low priority for the bureau. Back burner all the way. I haven't got D.C.'s backing, only a nod from your pal, Zanek, to pursue it.”

  “Paul Zanek,” she said aloud. Thinks he'll put me back to work, take my mind off myself. “Indeed a pal.” Her sarcasm, not meant to escape, had bolted free.

  “We've just had so damned little to go on—”

  “And since no one but the kanakas were missing women,” she interrupted.

  “Whoa up there! Hold on. We just didn't have the facts or the manpower to move on it. You trying to tell me it's different in

  D.C.?” She bit her lip and nodded. “Touche.” He walked along with her. “Just look over what I've managed to scrounge up on my own and you tell me .

  Tell you what?”

  “If I'm on or off the mark here.”

  “I'll look it over.”

  “My car's in the garage. Come on,” he said. “I'll see you to your home away from home.”

  “If you insist,” she replied, making as if to take the folders from him, but Parry insisted on carrying the hefty load for her.

  “So who amassed all these files then?”

  “Agent Gagliano—Tony and myself—with the help of the HPD missing persons bureau of course.”

  “For back burner, you've been working pretty hard. HPD looking the other way on this?”

  “Some might say so.”

  She nodded. “What do you say?”

  “You wouldn't know it to look at Honolulu from the standpoint of a tourist, Dr. Coran, but it's teeming with lowlife, crime's rampant, drugs everywhere. We've got our ghetto wars, poverty, ignorance, beastiality, our brain-dead, our wanna-be victims, just like Baltimore or New Orleans or a thousand other American cities.”

  “Paradise Lost comes to mind.”

  “Exactly so, Doctor.”

  “A place of such beauty and opulence—”

  “So's New York, L.A., Chicago or D C. if you don't have to look at it from a radio car or through the eyes of a ghetto kid. Like all cities, there's two faces to Honolulu. There's the glittering coastal palaces along Diamond Head and Waikiki, sure, but there's also the seamy side.”

  “ 'Look under any yacht and whataya got?' my father used to say. 'Slime and barnacles.'“

  “Sounds like a sensible, practical person, like yourself?” Pany ventured, but then he quickly returned to the subject. “Yeah, it would be a paradise, these islands, if it weren't for the people.”

  Parry's tone spoke of a deep wound, she imagined, but he quickly squelched any further words, indicating the direction they had to take along a final corridor, and then to his unmarked Ford LTD, where they got in without another word. He quickly busied himself with seat belt and radio, tapping into the system and reporting into FBI Dispatch, informing them of his whereabouts and movements.

  Jessica stared across at him, studying him without his knowledge, wondering about James Kenneth Parry, his past and his current dreams.

  4

  Dark Care sits enthroned behind the Knight.

  Horace. Odes

  “So, where's home, James Parry?” she asked as they bullied their way through the thickening afternoon soup o
f traffic in downtown Honolulu.

  “Grew up in West Bend, Indiana. Most of the family's still there, 'cept for my brothers and a sister. All of us wanted bigger 'n' better and far away. West Bend was great as kids, but as we got older, it turned into the pits.”

  “It would appear you won.”

  “Won?” He was puzzled.

  “You don't get much farther away than this.”

  “Actually, I've got a brother who lives in Auckland, New Zealand, and my sister's in Tokyo!”

  She laughed. “Wrong again.”

  “Hey, look, I'm sorry if we've made you feel as if you're, well, on trial here. We just... we don't have anywhere to turn. We're used to dealing with white-collar crime, street crime, rape, even murder, but this... this is different... something bizarre about this whole thing, something... I don't know... can't finger it...”

  “Something ritualistic, maybe?”

  He stared across at her. “Funny you should use that term.”

  “Why's that?”

  “Just that it occurred to me and Tony on separate occasions. I think there's a connection between the victims, something ritualistic, patternistic.”

  “Sounds like you two've given up a few nights' sleep over it. When do I meet Tony?”

  “Tomorrow, and damned straight we've lost sleep.” He fell silent for a time before opening up again. “I figure it this way. Seven disappearances last year over a three-month period. Here it is July again, the trades are peaking, and two already missing, two that we know of... and I expect there'll be five more before season's end.”

  “That what you mean by ritualistic? A killing season, you figure?”

  “Like he's gone and bought his license, yeah.”

  “I've heard of slave rings operating out of this part of the world. You sure these girls just didn't fall prey to various methods of shanghaiing? With no bodies turning up, it's got to be a possibility.”

  “We've scoured the wharves. Shaken out spiders 'n' lizards 'n' rats, sure, but it doesn't play that way, Doctor.”

  They arrived at the beautiful Rainbow Tower in the Hilton Hawaii Village in Waikiki, and Parry drove into the winding circle drive, dropping her at the door. “Listen,” he said, his voice taking on a near-conspiratorial tone, which was both curious and pushy at once, “if you need an escort, someone to have dinner with... well, give me a call at either of these numbers.” He handed her his card and sped off.

  Her eyes took in the heady, exciting capital city of Hawaii, the seemingly unreal mountain faces carpeted with lush, dense green, reminding her of a visit to Ireland only on the sunniest of days there. Pivoting to her west, she could see the deep azure blue of the Pacific peeking from between the skyscrapers, and she felt the firm touch of the trade winds as they swept over her skin. The winds were so strong that she imagined it would be easy to lift her arms and fly off to wherever winds ran away to.

  She felt an urge to rush out to the sand and surf of the beaches here, a desire to return to the sea from which Parry had plucked her, to run from the city, from Parry, from the FBI and her responsibilities here in Oahu. Why not, she desperately wondered. Hadn't her shrink told her that quitting the FBI was one option she could exercise? That such a change in her lifestyle might help quell her bouts with depression and fear?

  But her father didn't raise a quitter, so instead she marched briskly into the hotel where she was immediately caught up amid the bustle of tourists both coming and going. She wasn't surprised when, asking for her key at the desk, she was informed of several messages from the mainland—from Quantico, Virginia.

  Maybe later she'd get down to the pool, try out that new bathing suit she'd found in that little shop in Lahaina, Maui... maybe...

  Somewhere in Honolulu the same night

  He shuffles around his place where the furniture is ancient and large and heavy, the end tables made of old crates used to haul grocery items, crates he once thought to turn into rough-hewn works of art, except that the stain had gone too dark and he never could get the polish to take effectively. The lamps are likewise homemade, built of sturdy wood he's gotten for nothing, scrap parts at the mill. The old canvas-covered couch nestles between two enormous lamps carved with the faces of Hawaiian gods, lamps that seldom see use since he is adverse to the light. The floors are gummy with dirt and filth, blood and other seminal matter. He isn't much of a housekeeper and part of the stickiness and the stench is endemic now, ground into the floors, particularly one corner caked with blood.

  He is antsy, angry with himself and with circumstances. For so long now he has gone undetected, his work known only to the dark lords of the islands. But now everyone in Honolulu is either reading of, or listening to, news reports on their TVs about his latest work, the killing of two local cops, both Hawaiian—as bad luck would have it. This means an uproar that isn't likely to soon die away. The only hope he has is that someone else might be arrested for the crimes. Local police are now hinting that arrests are forthcoming.

  He enjoys learning about the politicizing of his crimes, the furor he has caused between the races. Still, not a word about the disappearance of his latest Kelia. He's read one or two items about the so-called Trade Winds Killer, a phantom stalker on the islands between April and August, but to date nothing has linked him to the crimes, and police have not recovered one shred of evidence to prove the murders have actually taken place. They can only point to “disappearances.” So long as they find no bodies, he reasons, they can never find nor prosecute him, even if they know! With the lack of physical evidence and eyewitnesses, nothing whatever to link him—or anyone, for that matter—with the deaths, a U.S. court of law would not dare touch such a case. God bless the Blow Hole and the U.S.A.

  Policemen, a white guy and a Samoan, spoke to him once, for a statement, when they were canvassing the district for any possible witnesses to a killing he'd committed the year before, but they never returned.

  They still don't know how he does it, or the kind of weapon he uses on his victims. He means not to make the mistakes of other killers. He means never to give his enemies the least satisfaction or opportunity or magic to hold over his head....

  Have to get some sleep, he tells himself now. His dreams have been disturbed by roaring gods since his stupidity: drawing the attention of the two Hawaiian police in the first place, and then having to kill them. He dreams of landscapes littered with his own serated flesh and blood, of cavernous tunnels into which he's been cast, where demons of bizarre shape, size and lurid color give chase, trampling him and tearing parts of him away. These caverns are interconnected, the walls running with a yellow, stewy gruel, and the moment he escapes one, he finds himself trapped in another, sliding down a wall, unable to stop his spiraling progression downward toward yet a deeper prison, a filthy hole. Dante's Inferno or someplace only the Hawaiian gods knew of, Kehena?

  Such troubled sleep will not help him on the job tomorrow, or when he goes cruising. He has a number of other sacrifices to make between now and when the trades decide to leave the islands. The winds could be capricious. They might leave at any time.

  Maybe warm milk with a dollop of cocoa, tinged with a tad of vanilla extract, he thinks. He's read somewhere that sleep is helped along by some chemical in hot milk. Trypteeo-something.

  He steps into his ramshackle kitchen in the dingy and cramped bungalow, its black memories and dark corners echoing in his consciousness. He snatches open the small icebox and pulls forth a quart of aging milk.

  He pays no attention to the odors emanating from his icebox, closing it on the collection of hands he's kept as souvenirs of his conquests. He now quickly warms his milk to a temperature most men could not tolerate. Once the cocoa is prepared as he likes it, he wanders about the empty, wailing house he once shared with Kelia. The shadows, even the wood and the wood grain in the walls, are alive with Kelia's many ghosts who scream at him. Kelia has long ago left him, deserted him. She had to die for that indignity and she has.... At least in his
mind, he has killed her many times over now. He would like to kill the real Kelia, but he knows he can't, at least not now, perhaps never unless she comes back home....

  He fervently misses their former life together on the island of Maui and later here on Oahu. She was alive and well, living with friends on the mainland in California, afraid one day that he would come for her. But if Kelia were ever to be murdered, the family—everyone—would know who had killed her.

  So he kills Kelia by killing the others who are—or were—like Kelia.

  He occasionally wonders if Kelia hasn't at some time snuck back onto the island of Oahu without his knowing. He gets reports from relatives now and again, but they are vague, unsure. His people don't come around him. Most think him strange. Most of them think that he lives too much in the past.

  He is a big man, although short at five-ten, stout and strong, proud of his strength, his barbells always nearby. His living room is taken up by his equipment and he routinely works out here until his muscles bulge.

  He must keep in shape for his self-esteem and for the passionate work he does for his gods.

  He likes to keep the house dark. Without A.C. or the hope of air-conditioning, he keeps the place cavelike and cool, accepting the dankness over the heat. He once had a dream of building a house into the side of one of the mountains, for natural cooling and heating. He'd dreamed of building it for Kelia. God, that was so long ago, when he and Kelia first lived together on Maui. He realizes the old dream is in ruins; only his new dream can come to pass now.

  He lifts his long sugarcane knife, his favorite of several he owns. He has a rack of such knives along with several Japanese swords he has purchased over the years. He has a fascination for shiny steel blades; he likes their feel, the cool evenness of the metal as it is ripped from its scabbard, the way it cleanly slides into flesh and out again without disturbance to the metal. A powerful knife is like the phallus a god dangles between enormous legs, and lately, he has begun to think of his own body as a steel blade to be put to use by the gods of Oahu and the islands.