Primal Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Yeah,” Tony agreed, “the bastard.”

  Trying or succeeding? Parry wondered. It was an all-too- familiar story in these days of sex, scandal and betrayal in the American classroom.

  “I want to meet this guy Claxton,” said Parry.

  “He's got morning classes only. Disappears at night. Nobody knows where....” George's Sherlock Holmes intonation didn't help his credibility.

  Outside, Tony said to Parry, “Damned if you didn't shake something out of that punk, but what's with the book? You copped it from Linda Kahala's room, didn't you? And why'n hell didn't you tell me about it?”

  “Picked it up from Lina's room the other night, and—”

  “Now you're calling her Lina?”

  “She went by Lina, the Hawaiian equivalent. Guess she preferred it. So maybe we should, too.”

  “If it'd make a difference...” Gagliano began, but let it go.

  “I took the book home with me that first night.”

  “You might've told me about it.”

  “Did a little bedtime reading. Wasn't sure how I might use it until I saw Georgie's smug face. But after laying it on him, I agree, he's not our killer.”

  “I knew that much.”

  “Now we locate this Claxton character.”

  “I wanna know why you didn't tell me about the Shakespeare, and why you didn't hash it over with me, Boss.”

  “I didn't know if it was relevant or not, and the case didn't need another confusing dead end, Tony; simple as that, all right?”

  “You're raising your voice, getting angry at me for asking about an oversight on your part?”

  “I thought it best to keep her private thoughts private if they held no bearing on the—”

  “Private? Christ, Jim, private?”

  “Yeah, private, you remember the word?”

  'There's nothing in this world that's private when it comes to a murder victim, Jim. You know that!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know that... sorry, Gag.”

  Like silence broken the moment you said something, privacy was shattered the moment a crime was committed.

  9

  The state of man: inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.

  Blaise Pascal

  Midnight July 16, 1995

  Claxton wasn't in the phone directory. They found the name of the Dean of Faculty on a placard in front of a closed and darkened administration building of gleaming steel and glass. Parry telephoned the dean, identified himself and asked for the whereabouts of Dr. Claxton. The dean, shaken by the late night call, finally gave him the home address for a Dr. Donald G. Claxton. He lived within walking distance of the campus and they were soon on his doorstep, pounding away like a pair of Nazi Occupation troops.

  Claxton was a big man, filling the doorway. He was also a belligerent bastard who refused to allow them inside where the sound of some less-than-classical music blended with heavy breathing, the telltale blue cast of a video screen rising and falling. Parry caught sight of someone hastily dressing and stumbling around behind Claxton's large frame, no doubt another of his students catching up on some late assignment.

  Claxton was bearded and balding with the appearance of a man once active and involved in sports. Nowadays it appeared that boredom, beer and coeds made up his sporting life, and if his students were good sports, they'd receive good grades; otherwise, they got what was considered in college the ax, a grade of C. Parry recalled that Linda Kahala had gotten a C in her Shakespeare course, but had done superbly well in all of her other English classes.

  Parry quickly introduced himself and Tony. “I want to talk to you about Linda Kahala.”

  Claxton was immediately on the defensive. “Yes, of course, I'd heard about her disappearance. Tried to locate her about a grade conference but, well, some kids don't want to be found. Has she? Been found, I mean?”

  “Found, yeah, she's been found.” Parry watched intently for any reaction to this news.

  “Thank God. It must've been a nightmare for the parents.”

  Either Claxton was an extremely cool character, or a sociopath—which their killer must be—or the man had no idea that Linda Kahala had been brutally murdered. At this point, Parry didn't want to disturb his line of questioning with the fact the girl was found dead. “I understand she had a problem with you, Dr. Claxton?”

  “Problem? Oh, well, she wasn't too bright; she failed to do well in my class, but—”

  “Why's that, Doctor?”

  Tony snidely asked, “She didn't do well on her orals or what?”

  “Because she didn't pass your goddamned sex exam?” Parry bluntly added, having agreed on the ride over to press the man this way.

  Claxton visibly reddened there in the dark doorway. “What the hell is this? I'll thank you to leave now, you gentlemen of the law.”

  “We know all about your classroom tactics, Claxton,” Parry retaliated. “And now one of the girls you sexually molested has turned up dead, mutilated beyond recognition and—-”

  “Dead? Mutilated?”

  “—and that's a bit too much to overlook, Doctor, even for a man of your refinement and reputation. Now, are you going to cooperate, or do I have to get a warrant to search, and maybe a second to arrest?”

  He stood there breathing heavily, pondering his options. “All right, all right, what the hell do you want from me?”

  “We'd like to come inside, look around,” said Tony. “ 'Less you got somethin' to hide.”

  He looked over his shoulder, eyeballing his guest. “It's really a bad time for me. What about coming back tomorrow, say two in the afternoon?”

  Parry pressed on. “You gave Linda a book of sonnets?”

  “I give a lot of books away.”

  “Did you or not?”

  “What if I had? What's it to you?”

  “This book?” Parry's sleight of hand with the book impressed Tony, whose eyes bored into Claxton, his fists clenched.

  “Yeah, maybe... I suppose I may've given her a book. I give away a lotta books.”

  “When? Before or after you raped her?”

  “Raped her? Are you guys nuts? What rape? There was no... never any rape. She... consented.”

  “Yeah, right,” muttered Tony.

  “Right there in your office, Doctor? Where you backed her into a corner?”

  “God damnit, do you know how many of these kids with poor grades go shouting sexual harassment these days?”

  “She's told others about the incident,” Tony added.

  “It's her word against mine.”

  Tony instantly corrected him. “Was... was her word against yours.”

  “And who's a court to believe, Doctor? You or a poor dead girl whose life was shattered first when her professor put his hands all over her, from where she spiraled down to the street?” asked Parry.

  “What exactly do you fuckin' cowboys want from me?”

  Parry and Tony heard the noise of a back door closing. “Go get that person, Tony. Maybe we'll have a talk with her, too... corroboration, maybe.”

  Tony started away. Claxton called out. “All right, all right.”

  Tony stopped at the foot of the stairs. Parry motioned for him to return.

  “Now, Dr. Claxton, I want you to tell me where you were on the night of the 11th when Linda Kahala disappeared.” Claxton backed from the door and pushed it open for them to step inside, saying, “Look around. Does this look like the house of a maniac?”

  Parry stepped in, followed by Gagliano, who said, “You got any coffee?”

  Claxton ignored the request.

  They went through the necessary questions and as they did so, Parry began to feel that Claxton, while a scum, was no killer. He finally asked Claxton, “Have you any students, particularly male students, that Linda gravitated to in class? Was there anyone she worked with in particular, studied with, say on a class project, anything?”

  “She was dating some guy in my nine o'clock. That's all I know.”

 
“We know about the boyfriend, Oniiwah,” replied Tony. “He's clean.”

  “Anyone else she might have shared a book like this with?” pressed Parry.

  “A guy, huh?” He had lit up a cigarette and now he blew out a long stream of smoke. He sat back on his lounge chair in his robe, naked beneath, rolls of fat making a spiral of snakes about his relaxed midriff. “I couldn't say... I don't know... I'm no mind reader... Don't pay that much attention to these kids, you know. Besides, I have a lot of classes and students.”

  “Sounds like the Albert Schweitzer of academia, don't he?” asked Tony.

  Parry said, “This would be a guy in her class.”

  He shrugged. “I can give you the roster; you take it from there. I didn't notice anything in particular going on with her and another student. Course, I don't pay that much attention to the private lives of my students.”

  “No, I guess you wouldn't. You're just interested in their private parts.”

  Claxton started to protest but thought better of it.

  “Let me have the roster. Fact, let me have all your rosters.”

  Claxton nervously bit at his inner jaw, but went to a desk and ripped several computer printouts from a book. “Here, take them. I got others.”

  “Jesus,” moaned Tony as he stared over Jim's shoulder at one of the lists which numbered three hundred students.

  “This the way Shakespeare's being taught nowadays?” asked Parry rhetorically as he made for the door, anxious to be rid of Dr. Claxton.

  “It's a fucking introductory level course.” Claxton pursued them, as if it were important for them to understand him better. “It's bottom-line, product-centered, factory mentality in the bloody womb of academia, thanks to the bureaucratic assholes in administration whose primary concern is to suck every cent out of their pockets! Whataya want from me?” Claxton bellowed as the door slammed in his face.

  At the car, Gagliano began a coughing and spitting jag. Parry asked him if he was okay, his right hand pounding Tony's back in mock concern. “Come on, it wasn't that bad.”

  “I'd rather deal with the rats on the wharves than a puke like that. Guy turns my stomach.”

  “You carry Rolaids; use 'em. For now we'll split the lists into four evenly divided, Tony. I'm getting additional manpower and if the Trade Winds Killer is on that list, I intend to get to know him up close and personal.”

  Parry then took the list from Gagliano and ripped off the first of the four sections.

  “You've got to be dead on your feet, Boss,” offered Tony. “What can you do tonight?”

  “Narrow the list to all Caucasians first. It's a good bet our killer is white; also look for the killer to be older, a good deal older than Oniiwah, upper twenties to middle age marks the kind of organized, controlled killer we're dealing with here, if the statistics mean anything. It's unlikely this guy's a kid. He's too deliberate, too careful to be a kid strung out on drugs, or some hot-tempered punk who'd leave a trail any idiot could follow.”

  “Given the deliberateness of his remaining in the shadows, the fact he's left no crime scene for us to work, yeah, I got to agree on that score.”

  “He seems to know enough to cover his ass, all right. Tomorrow, start with the registrar's office, get every bit of vital information on every male on the list their damned computer has, and have it play kiss-face with our mainframe, got that?”

  “It's called in-your-face, Boss.”

  “You mean innerface.”

  “Who'll you be recruiting?”

  “Haley's expressed an interest and so has Terri Reno.”

  “Kalvin Haley, that big Aussie?”

  “He's had experience with serials, and he was practically born here, part Hawaiian even if he won't admit it. Could really be of help to us.”

  Tony remained skeptical. “Yeah, but Reno, a mainlander?”

  'Tony, you're going to have to work with her, all right?”

  “Whatever you say, Jim.”

  “She's got to get experience somewhere, and who knows more than you, Tone?”

  “Whatever you say, Jimbo.”

  “I say don't call me Jimbo, okay?”

  “Whatever you say,” he repeated.

  “I say get me back to my unit so I can take myself home. Tomorrow noon, I want to feed the computer the breakdowns on these names—sex, age, height, color of eyes, nationality of each person on the list. Run 'em all through the Honolulu Police I.D. files, our own files... see if we get lucky.”

  “Whatever you say, Jim.”

  Tony sensed the foul mood Jim Parry had fallen under, and so he wisely fell silent. The drive back to the street where the Kahala house stood didn't improve either of their moods as they looked past the lifeless, darkened house to where Jim's car stood stripped and smashed. It looked as if there'd been a block party, everyone issued a sledgehammer and given a license to attack Parry's car. But first the more prudent had ripped out the radio, popped the trunk and made off with a pair of expensive Kevlar bullet-proof vests along with several boxes of ammunition for his .38 and an expensive Remington 12-gauge shotgun; his tires had been punctured, the moon hubcaps gone, every window smashed, the street littered with the raining pellets. The hood and top of the vehicle were destroyed beyond recognition, and beneath the hood expensive necessary parts had been stripped away. A siphon hose extended from out of the gas tank, likely the only reason the car hadn't gone up in flames, as several bullet holes had cut paths through the metal.

  Parry was stunned. “That call we heard,” he said, the words tumbling out as hard round marbles, Parry not feeling his throat muscles, tongue or lips moving.

  “You sons of bitches,” Tony bellowed to the night.

  Parry cursed the street as well and gained as much response as Tony had. The two FBI men felt eyes on them, imagined the glee in the hearts of those watching, and in a moment began to feel vulnerable. “Where were the city cops when my wagon was being annihilated? It must've taken twenty or thirty minutes at least to do this kind of damage, damn!”

  “We can't do squat about it now, Jim,” said Tony.

  “The hell we can't!”

  “Come on. We'll send a wrecker for it tomorrow.”

  “Gutless bastards!” shouted Parry, shaking his fist.

  “Jim, standing here and shouting at the pavement's not going to get us anywhere.”

  “Where are you now?” Parry continued to shout, venting his anger.

  The dark little street responded with a few lights going on here and there, but no one came outdoors to claim any victory. Parry scanned the windows, Tony tugging at him.

  “Forget it, Jim. Come on.”

  “Don't take it so personal, huh, Tony? Well, fuck that!”

  “Jim, these people're frustrated. They struck out at what we stand for, not who we are.”

  Parry paced around the hulk of his destroyed vehicle, gritting his teeth over the sight of its stripped interior and slashed seats, mutilated with machetes and knives. He realized it was just over a century ago that native sovereignty had been wrested from Queen Liliuokalani in a bloodless takeover backed by 162 sailors and Marines from the U.S. Boston, then docked in Honolulu Harbor. It was on January 17, 1893 that a group of powerful white businessmen and plantation owners took up arms, calling themselves the Hawaiian Rifle Militia. They forced the queen to abdicate, and soon after Hawaii became a U.S. Territory, and in 1959 the fiftieth state in the Union. To a sizeable number of Hawaiians this was not ancient history, and although the white mind could not conceive of ever rending the intricate tapestry of economic, industrial, technological and cultural fabric woven out of this tortured paradise by returning Hawaii to its sovereign status, as Hong Kong was slated to be returned to China, there were many prominent Hawaiians actively seeking just that, along with ten billion dollars in reparations, an apology and a return of their lands used as U.S. government holdings, including Pearl Harbor.

  Now the grand and long-standing debate between the U.S. and Hawai
ian nationals, coupled with the recent spate of disappearances and probable murders of Hawaiian women, seemed to have all congealed here on this street tonight and the frustrations of several generations had come down heavily on Parry's unfortunate vehicle.

  “The unit's ruined.”

  “It can be repaired.”

  “I've had that car since I became bureau chief.”

  “I know... I know...”

  Tony managed to dance him back to his own car and Parry got inside. “Where the hell you suppose the police were?”

  “Probably no one called it in, Jim.”

  “We heard a disturbance call, remember? Christ, should have responded ourselves.”

  “The disturbance call was a 10-6, remember? No big deal, but this—this had to've happened after the cops came and went, is all I can figure, unless—”

  “Isn't this sector routinely patrolled by Hawaiian cops? Right, and all they saw was a block party, right?”

  Tony, who had pulled from the curb only to hit the opposite curb with his wide U-tum, drove away now. He was trying on a smile when he said, “Hey, Chief, it could've been worse.”

  “Oh, how so?”

  “You could've been in the frigging car when it happened... or worse...”

  “Or worse?”

  “It could've been my unit.”

  Parry shook his head and held back a laugh. “It's just a machine, I know, but you do get attached to what's yours. Even if it does actually belong to the bureau, you know.”

  “We aren't talking horses here, Sheriff. At least the machine didn't feel any pain.”

  “So what, Tony? Does that mean I shouldn't? It pisses me off, all right?”

  “Let's just get out of this area before someone takes a shot at us. Feel like a sitting duck here.”

  He put his foot to the floor, the engine roaring. Tony nervously glanced in the rearview where he saw a crowd of dark-skinned youths gathering like corporeal shadows behind them, thankful that Chief Jim Parry didn't look back or hear them.