Primal Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “You are closely related to Joseph Kaniola?” she asked.

  “Closely? No, not closely.”

  “But you are related?”

  “By blood, no.”

  “Marriage then?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know your work here must remain confidential at all costs; you know that, and yet you told Kaniola details that should not have left this office.”

  Lau's brow creased and he found a stool to sit on. Shaking his head as if to say no, he replied. “I only told what was already public record.”

  “No, you told him about our cane-cutter theory.”

  “And you told him more than that,” he said defensively.

  She stared back at the impenetrable black eyes of the small man. “I am an investigative member of this team as well as a forensic expert, Mr. Lau. You are the manager of a lab. Are we clear on that?”

  His jaw tightened, but he said, “Yes, of course.”

  “Chief Parry knows that it was you who divulged the fact the killer uses a cane cutter.”

  “Kaniola promised me it was off the record, that he would not use such information.”

  “Right,” she said, but she could believe the little man, too. “So what're you saying, that Joseph Kaniola was forced into printing all that he knew?”

  “Who do you think funds his paper? You know business? Politics?” A little shrug of the shoulders and Lau felt he had explained all.

  She nodded. “All right, so far, so good. Kaniola is pressured by the nationalist party members to tell all to the people. Who's twisting Kaniola's arm?”

  “The Honorable Provisional Government of our people, the PKOs, those who will take over power of the islands when your government has lost our many standing suits in your courts.”

  She could almost forgive Lau his idealistic and naive dream that the U.S. Government would one day benevolently return all native lands and properties to the Hawaiians. It was about as likely as one day seeing Arizona returned to its native population there. With the capital invested in Oahu alone, in the Waikiki strip alone, the islands of Hawaii were inextricably bound to the economic and social fabric of the U.S., and nothing would ever change that, despite the agreement to return Hong Kong to China by Great Britain in 1977—or perhaps because of it.

  Jessica could almost forgive Joseph Kaniola now, knowing that his own “provisional government” ties could make life hell for him and the rest of his extended family, and that such a government wasn't above using a man like Halole Ewelo anymore than her own might. As for Ewelo's part, he must've been promised much for the role he'd played in the drama—his attempt to lead the investigation to a white male suspect, namely Professor Claxton, knowing that hanging a white teacher for the murders of island girls would spell out a victory for the nationalist party. But perhaps no one could know just how far Paniolo Ewelo might take his deadly interrogation techniques.

  “Who are the PKOs?” she curiously asked.

  “Kahoolawe preservation society. They want everything to return to traditional ways.”

  Jim had mumbled something about this PKO group in the car on their way back. She had to get Jim on the line, explain her newfound knowledge to him. See if he did not concur that both Kaniola and Lau were being squeezed, and that these men were both in an impossible position. But for now she had Lau to deal with.

  “Now we have another dead Hawaiian, Mr. Lau, thanks to politics. Do you really think the deaths of all these young women have anything to do with political matters on the island?”

  “No, of course not, but your government—whom you work for—is desperate to use the killings, to point to the heathens living here—”

  “I've got no such orders!”

  “—to bring home the fact we can't conduct our own affairs—”

  “I've had no such instructions, Mr. Lau, and neither has Parry,” she scolded.

  “—that we are little more than pagan children still to be Christianized and colonized and Westernized and homogenized.”

  “You can't believe this, Mr. Lau.”

  “If your government can show this, then they take back Kahoolawe and all lands and titles we have fought to regain over the years.” A kind of native islander's paranoia had infiltrated the man's voice.

  “Damnit all, Mr. Lau, we—people such as you and me—we have an obligation to the truth first and foremost. In the laboratory there are no bloody politics, only science... only fact. That's true in every state of the Union, including this one!”

  “Noble words, sister American,” he said calmly, “but all we do, all we say, they wait to pounce upon and twist to whatever expediency may suit them. Read the Congressional Record.”

  Christ, she silently admitted, he did understand the Great White Way. “You can trust Parry.”

  “Can I?”

  “Yes, damnit, and you can trust me. The only question remaining is, can either of us trust you?”

  He hesitated answering. “It is a small island still in many ways. We have modern skyscrapers. Western high-tech businesses, the computer revolution confronting us, all this speeding change in a handful of years, change which your country and people have had a hundred years to assimilate to. We still struggle and stumble. And I must live here after you and Parry and others are gone.”

  “I need your help to catch a killer, Lau; that's all that matters inside this lab.”

  His steely eyes bore into hers, and she allowed her own to send forth a vivid fire of determined anger. “Are you willing to give your full support to this investigation? And to keep what is confidential in-house? I must have your word, your guarantee; otherwise there will be more George Oniiwahs.”

  “No one wished Oniiwah dead, least of all me.”

  She saw the pain he'd concealed. “Mr. Lau, if anyone's to blame for Oniiwah's death, it's the man they've jailed for it.”

  “No, the fault belongs to us all,” said Lau, “to the climate we've all contributed to here, one of fear and desperation and political unrest.”

  “Yes, I believe so,” Jessica agreed, extending a hand. “I want to trust you again, Mr. Lau.”

  “Now it is Doctor Lau,” he replied, taking her hand and vigorously shaking it, “as of today. I received news of my final review and dissertation acceptance.”

  “Congratulations.” Her smile was genuine. “It was being held up... for political reasons.”

  She shook her head over this, realizing that it was due the ineptitude, mistrust and jockeying of Lau's so-called superiors— white men—that he had become the enemy beneath their noses.

  “Then we are all guilty after all,” she conceded. “Will you trust me, Mr... ah, Dr. Lau? And can we work as scientists, together, amid this turmoil, keeping no secrets from one another?”

  “I would like that very much, yes.”

  She demonstrated her trust by giving him the details of the death of George Oniiwah and asking him to finish the lab analysis of Oniiwah's blood type, so she could be in attendance at a meeting of all the FBI agents involved in the ongoing search for the Cane Cutter.

  Lau took the samples and promised to have results back to her as soon as humanly possible. She knew now that they could start over, on firm ground.

  As she was about to leave, he said, “Oniiwah was not supposed to be killed. How it happened? Only this man, Paniolo, can say.”

  “He was not under orders to kill the boy, we know.”

  “No, no such orders, ever.”

  “But he was ordered to interrogate the boy?”

  “For information, that is all.”

  “Dr. Lau, you tell these people for me that, under U.S. law, it is they who are legally responsible for contributing to the boy's abduction, violations of his civil rights, and ultimately his death.”

  “These people, Dr. Coran, do not recognize U.S. law, unless to do so helps in their cause.”

  “These people, Dr. Lau, will recognize it when they see it from behind bars.”

  �
�You will never find them to lock them up. They are umalu and 'uhane, shadows... spirits.”

  “You just tell your brother-in-law that I want to meet with him, that I want to talk.”

  “He will contact you,” Lau assured her.

  “Good... good. Then can I expect results on the blood in the next twenty-four hours?”

  “You can.”

  “And you expect it will match the stains taken from Paniolo's place?”

  “I am certain it will.”

  “Prove it then, and what happens to you, Dr. Lau?” 'The same as Kaniola. I am in the middle. We are all of us Hawaiians in the middle.”

  She nodded, stripped off her lab coat, grabbed her cane and walked from the lab, somehow confident that Lau could be trusted for the truth.

  12

  Something has licked my heel

  Like a sturgeon

  And I have a problem

  With my right foot and my life.

  James Dickey. “Snakebite”

  FBI Headquarters, Honolulu

  At 8 P.M., a late evening meeting was called by Parry, who'd rounded up the principal agents working the case. With Jessica looking on. Parry warned that they were a far cry from a conviction against Hal Ewelo as either Oniiwah's murderer or the serial killer who'd been terrorizing the city.

  “Having any of you rousted Ewelo before? Have any of you given consideration to the possibility that Ewelo could be the Trade Winds Killer before his arrest on the Oniiawh charges?”

  Amazingly enough, several had pursued leads along this line after tips and informants had suggested the notion, including Tony, but he, like the others, had come up empty-handed. “Except for his petty crimes, drugs and prostitution,” said Tony, “Hal Ewelo's clean. No murder charges. Always has an alibi that checks, and he

  doesn't own a history of violence reserved for women only, since he spreads it around.”

  Jessica had to agree that Ewelo did not fit as neatly as they'd all like to make him fit. “The nature of his type of violence is considered to be within normal parameters by any law-enforcement standard, and certainly well below the 'norm' of mutilation set by the Cane Cutter.”

  “Whoa up there, Doctor,” said Parry. 'This man had George Oniiwah's sex organs sliced off while the boy was bound to a chair.”

  Jessica had found traces of blood and feces in the hastily wiped chair when gathering evidence at Paniolo's.

  Parry's statement silenced the room, but still no one who'd responded to Jim's call tonight believed Ewelo was the Cane Cutter. Parry went on like a desperate prosecuting attorney, trying to convince the others of Ewelo's guilt as a serial killer with a lust for mutilation murder. 'The man's record places him in Maui during a period when seven women there disappeared, their bodies never recovered.”

  This got a few rethinking Paniolo Ewelo.

  “The man also worked for a time in a cane field.”

  “Beggin' your pardon, Chief,” said Haley, a big Australian-born American agent, “but what kanaka hasn't worked a cane field at some time in his bleedin' life?”

  This brought laughter to the group, all except Jim. “Something's got to break,” shouted Parry to his people in the debriefing room. The wall was lined with the photos of young victims. “We've got to share our snitches, pool our knowledge. Is there anyone here who has any leads whatever they have not shared with command?”

  “What about this business in the press, Chief?” asked Terri Reno, the well-formed blond agent who'd been walking the Waikiki strip in a brave effort to bait the Trade Winds Killer. “Any truth to it?”

  All eyes went to Terri, who was in full dress as a hooker. Parry replied cryptically at first, saying, “Some, yes.” He then quickly separated fact from fiction in the Ala Ohana article.

  As Parry spoke, Terri combed out her long, black wig. Then she paused and said, “You know, Chief, I've been getting nibbles, but no bites; we got quite a few lockups for solicitation, but nothing of the caliber we're looking for, not that I'm complaining. On the other hand...”

  “What?” pressed Parry.

  “There's this one guy... kinda strange.”

  “Strange how?”

  “We got tapes on him, if you want to listen. Just that he never does anything. Flirts, says he would rather not have to pay for sex. Wants it given to him freely. Imagine that, telling a working girl that. So I brushed him off the first time, but he keeps sniffing around like a dog in heat.”

  “But he never does anything except talk,” interjected her partner, Haley.

  Parry was interested. “Did he ever give out with a name, Terri?”

  She blinked and shook her head, saying, “Robert, I think, yeah, Robert... that's all, Boss.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “Sorry.”

  “He never invited you elsewhere to 'talk'?”

  “Sure, every time. Wants me to walk to his car with him, go to his place, he says. Says he thinks I'm pretty; say's he'd like to take care of me, shit like that, but when I mention money and tell him he can have me for an hour, he backs off and repeats himself. Then he tells me I shouldn't sell myself on the street like common garbage, tells me that I could be happy being taken care of by a man like him.”

  Her partner, Haley, laughed at this. “Pip-squeak.”

  “Compared to you, Haley, everybody's a pip-squeak,” replied Gagliano.

  Reno went on. “And last night I answered with how I could use a place for the night, because my pimp's been looking for me to beat the shit outta me, and he says he knows the guy.”

  “Knows the guy?”

  “Yeah, and get this... says his name is Paniolo. You believe that?”

  Parry's eyes lit up. “You didn't say Paniolo first?”

  “No, I swear.”

  “And you were wired? You got this on tape?”

  “Damn straight, mate,” said Haley.

  “Any film on the guy?”

  “No, we're not budgeted for film,” Haley said with a moan.

  “All right... go on, Terri.”

  “Course, at the time, I didn't know Paniolo from shinola, but I said sure, that's the guy, so Robert says that he'd be happy to put me up for the night.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Weirdest thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He wanted to know what I was.”

  “What you were?” Jessica asked before Parry could.

  She nodded, the comb in her hand at a standstill now. “My nationality. Wanted to know if I was even part Hawaiian, and I told him I was one-quarter Hawaiian, part French — 'cause I thought that would turn his burners up—and part American.” She was punctuating with the hairbrush now. “I figured he'd never believe me if I told him I was Hawaiian, you know.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “He didn't come back. Said he had to go get his car, which he said was over by the park, and — “

  “The park?”

  “Fort DeRussy, I took him to mean. Anyway, I asked the guys on the mike what rating they'd given the guy.”

  “Rating?” asked Jessica.

  “On the nut scale. One to ten. Anyway, they just gave him a mild rating, so I waited, not particularly interested, and when he didn't come back, I figured he'd thought better of crossing this guy Paniolo.”

  “How many times did he come back to speak to you on the street?”

  “Last night? Just the once, but others, whew... and if he wasn't speaking, he was watching. Spooky guy, really, but I took him for a mental, and since they're generally harmless, well...”

  “How many times in all did this guy approach you?” asked Parry, clarifying Jessica's question.

  Reno pursed her lips and thought about this for a moment. “Hmmmmm... four, maybe five different nights.”

  “Consecutive nights?”

  “No, no... scattered.”

  “You haven't been out there more'n a week,” sa
id Tony Gagliano, getting the picture.

  “And he'd come up to me two or three times a night to just make small talk until I brushed him off, telling him I had business to attend to and how he was cramping my style. Now I hear about this guy Paniolo here, and suddenly I'm wondering all over about this guy I thought was a nerd, that maybe he could be the Cane Cutter.”

  Parry was instantly at her. “I want you to sit down with Don Myers, get as good a sketch of this guy as possible to put in Kaniola's paper and the Union Jack News. And Tony, you and I are going to be backing Terri out there tonight, and if this toad shows, we're going to corner his ass. The connection with Paniolo is just too sweet.”

  “It's the bottom of the ninth and two outs,” said Jessica, “and we're due for a little luck.”

  “I don't get this,” said Haley. “I've seen this guy. He's a kanaka worm.”

  'Then he's Hawaiian?” asked Jessica.

  “Would figure if he's acquainted with Ewelo,” Tony Gagliano put in.

  Parry asked, “A worm in what sense?”

  “Slinks like a goddamn worm, Chief. He's hefty, eats well, I'd say, works out maybe, but he's low to the ground and he's mealy mouthed. Hell, even Terri scares him.”

  'Terri scares me,” joked Gagliano, breaking the others up.

  Terri threw her carefully brushed wig at Tony.

  Haley continued after all had settled down. “I figured the Trade Winds Killer for a ladies' man. Chief, not a worm.”

  “He's dysfunctional where women are concerned,” corrected Jessica.

  “And he bides his time like a damned spider,” Parry stated. “Crawls in and out of the darkness to locate food, goes back in, comes back out again. He spends hours, no, days, laying it out, planning, lulling his victims into the same complacency you and Terri're in, Haley, making his intended vies think he's a harmless little shit. This guy's exhibiting the very traits of our killer, Haley, and you don't even recognize him. He's like a street lamp to you, a garbage pail, and he's damned glad you see him that way.”

  The room was silent after Jim's emotion-laden lecture, thick with Parry's accusation that the hardworking agents weren't thinking clearly, weren't seeing even though they were looking.

  Terri Reno swallowed hard, thinking of what might have happened had she gone to this thick-necked, thick-armed creep's place with him last night. According to information Jessica had released to them on the killer, once he had his victim where he wanted her, he struck so ferociously and quickly that she could be killed or maimed for life before anyone could break in a door.