Primal Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Nate heard the abducted girl call her abductor Lopaka. I had Gagliano check with the registrar's office at the university, and he found that there was a Lopaka Kowona registered part-time at the same time that both Kia and Linda Kahala were enrolled. Nate also wrote down half a license plate number and a check with DMV shows it registered to a Lopaka Kowona. Enough to get a warrant? Probable cause? You bet it is, and now we've got a door to kick.”

  “I'll be damned,” she said, a feeling of relief washing over her. It was probably too late for the pretty little girl she'd read about in the Union Jack that morning, but this could mean an end to a seven-year reign of terror about the islands. The series of lucky strokes was almost too much to believe. “I want to be there,” she demanded.

  “If we can nail this guy Kowona, and Ivers and Claxton both I.D. him, we put the lid on his coffin without cutting any deals with Ewelo. That'd be the crowning glory.”

  She pushed aside the paperweight and realized how like a dragon the series of humps that made up the islands were.

  “Don't get your hopes up too high, Jim. It sounds like we'll still need Ewelo as corroborating—”

  “To hell with that.”

  “What?”

  “Try this. A maroon sedan's sitting in this guy's driveway as we speak, and it stinks of a gasoline rupture. HPD has had an APB on the description of the car all night, and with one of their own hospitalized, they look that much harder.”

  “Damn, then maybe we do have the bastard dead to rights after all? I want in.”

  “You realize this girl, Hiilani, could well be in that house?”

  “Let's hope she is. Otherwise, she's at the bottom of the ocean, and if that's the case, we'll have a hell of a time proving our case.”

  “Not if we can find enough trace evidence inside the car and the house.”

  “I'm with you.” And she was. Many cases today were being solved even in the absence of a body by virtue of the magic of DNA, blood, and serum typing, fiber and trace evidence.”Meet me at the garage, and bring your bag, and I've got an ambulance on standby,” Parry said. “I got a bad feeling about this one... think we're going to need a lot of plastic bags.”

  Everyone was in on the kill. And everyone who wasn't wanted to be. Terri Reno and her burly partner Kalvin Haley were on hand, along with Tony Gagliano, Jim Parry and Jessica and everyone in the Hawaii FBI who had worked the case, plus a couple of HPD squad cars, one carrying Police Commissioner Dave Scanlon. They had all collected out front of the remote little bungalow on this bright Hawaiian day, the sun blinding in its intensity, the heat sending up a searing mix of gasoline and blood that mingled in the few feet between home and auto. Something about the house and the loud music coming from inside the crumbling little structure, its deserted location on a dead-end street, the terminus a crevasse looking two miles back down toward the city, and even something about the dark maroon car spoke clearly to Jessica that this was it.

  At the door, there was no answer to Tony Gagliano's insistent pounding. Tony called out, “FBI, open up!”

  The waiting seemed a lifetime before Parry abruptly shouted to Gagliano, “Kick the sonofabitch in.”

  “You got it, Boss,” said Gagliano, relishing the moment. “It'll make me feel useful.”

  Everyone had a gun drawn. With all his might, Tony made a clean strike at the lock, sending the door in on its hinges, wood splintering going up against the door frame creating spiked lances. From within, the blare of a Hawaiian radio station hammered out an old favorite, Jim Croce's “Leroy Brown.” Swelling up also from within the dark little interior was an odor like nothing Jessica had ever encountered, not even in an exhumation. The odor wafted past the door, which, swinging on its destroyed hinges, made an eerie irk-irk-irking sound.

  “Smells bad,” complained Gagliano, whipping out a large red bandanna to cover his nostrils and mouth before stepping through.

  “Don't touch anything,” Jessica warned from behind Parry, who quickly followed Gagliano inside, using a flashlight to illuminate the place. The incredible sunlit brightness of the Hawaiian street outside was at such great odds with the bleak hole of the doorway, so that every shadow inside was plunged that much further into darkness. Jessica's skin crawled as she stepped past the dangling door, her nostrils now flaring at the thick, pungent odor of death emanating from inside as if the odor were a living creature that had taken up residence permanently and was about to pounce shadowlike from a comer. Her eyes battled to adjust to the lack of light. When her eyes won, she found Gagliano and Parry staring back in her direction, Gagliano playing the flashlight over the wall behind Jessica's head and to her immediate left.

  The place was a pigsty, she was thinking when she heard Jim's warning: “Don't turn around, Jess.”

  She did exactly as instructed not to do, turned and gasped at the mutilated woman dangling there, her features torn from her, making it impossible to readily identify her as the young store clerk listed as missing. Jessica's immediate reaction was one of horror and fright, but at the same time she saw the telltale signature wounds she'd come to expect from the Trade Winds Killer, each slash a meaningful symbol to the insane man. These body art marks created by Lopaka had until now been mere speculation, since all previous victims had been swallowed up by the sea.

  She shuddered at the enormity of the suffering that was apparent. Parry grabbed onto her shoulders and tried to usher her out.

  “No, no, Jim,” she said, pulling free of him. “Have to protect the... integrity of the crime scene... learn everything we can about this sadistic monster.”

  “Just step out and get your bearings, Jess.”

  “Going out at this point'II just make it doubly hard to step back in, and it'll just make breathing tenfold harder. No.” She remained adamant. “Just get me some decent illumination in here and the best equipment you've got.” She was panting, trying to gain control of her autonomous reflexes. “And... and for God's sake, Jim, don't let anybody walk through here until I'm finished.”

  He looked deeply into her eyes, biting his lip and biting back his own sense of horror and insult, and recalling for a moment her tenderness of the night before, tried to reconcile that with the woman he stood before now.

  “Do it, damnit. Get me some field lights in here and one of those newly developed ultraviolet reflective imaging systems if you've got one. We'll intensify the light in here seventy thousand times and maybe, just maybe we can find some usable prints in this pigsty, but whatever we do, we're going to find enough evidence to bury this bastard. The death penalty in effect in Hawaii? God, I hope so.”

  “Sorry, no can do... not even the chamber,” replied Tony, shaking his head. “And if we ever needed it...”

  “Too good for this guy,” countered Jim Parry.

  On the wall, on an elaborately constructed bamboo and wood “meat” rack, hanging by her wrists, her legs dangling free, Hiilani's corpse was like an agonizing, deafening scream that drowned out anything Jessica or anyone else had to say. The body, somehow like a stone object with soft, human eyes, might be made of papier-mache and paint, ketchup and fake blood, except that the caked-on stuff was real and the flesh was responsive to the touch, the vitality of the cells having returned after rigor had come and gone, releasing the corpse from its stiffness, allowing a kind of supple “life” to return at the cellular level. Naturally, all of the lividity was in the lower extremities, all the blood having rushed there. She might appear mannequin-like, but she wouldn't feel that way, not when Jessica had to touch and prod the corpse for wound measurements, specimens and samples and slides and swabs.

  She thought of the stark bone-fragment evidence brought in by the Navy guys, and now this. “You wanted evidence,” she muttered to no one in particular, staring at the leis made of teeth and native hair, predicted by the old man.

  “Not like this,” replied Parry.”Careful for what you wish...”Gagliano had staggered about the small enclosure trying to train his eye on somethin
g—anything but the mutilated China doll on the wall. In doing so, like Jessica, he began to go to work, scanning for anything that might be useful. He immediately zeroed in on a rack of swords and knives on a wall the other side of the room. “Jesus, look at these,” he said, pointing, about to reach out and touch one of the blades before catching himself.

  “Check the refrigerator,” Jessica told them.

  “What?” asked Gagliano.

  “Mutilation murderers... lust killers, they often keep 'trophies' on ice. Like the ropes he used on her.”

  “What about the ropes?” asked Jim, coming closer and shouting at Terri Reno, Haley and the others at the doorway to stay out, that it was already too damned crowded inside. Reno shouted back, “Do we have the son of a bitch or not?”

  “We know where he kills,” Parry replied tersely before turning his attention back to Jessica, who, using a scalpel pulled from her jacket pocket, sliced one of the restraints holding the victim. This brought both victim and rack further from the wall, but everything held.

  She held out the twisted rope. “It's human hair, most likely from his earlier victims.”

  “Jesus... and teeth, human teeth.”

  Gagliano moved to the icebox and snatched the door open to find it relatively empty, the little light coming from it reflecting off the dead girl on the wall, making her look like an odd specimen in a house of horrors display. The fridge compartment revealed a man who didn't live on food.

  “Check the freezer compartment,” said Jim, holding onto the black-hair rope which might well have been Lina Kahala's hair.

  Gagliano swallowed hard before snatching open the freezer door. He did so a little too abruptly, and out flowed a stack of frozen female hands complete with rings and painted nails. Tony hopped back, gasping and swearing when the solid, iced hands hit the floor like so many T-bone steaks.

  Parry called to the others who'd remained outside daring only to poke their heads beyond the perimeter of the broken door. He called for field generators and to have Dr. Lau dispatch all the evidence-technician support he could muster.

  The men outside fought over who'd get to do this chore. Along the narrow street outside, nearby residents had begun to assemble, stare and point.

  Jessica thought of the old man on the mountain, Kaniola's great-granduncle, and his predictions. How true to form was this? she wondered. Had he been speaking in symbolic epigrams? Was the red path that led to the sun here on the caked and bloodied floor of this awful place that led to the sunlight outdoors? Had he foreseen this? Hadn't he called the killer Lopaka? Had he known this Lopaka Kowona all along? Was Lopaka Kowona the child in the story the old man told of a chief who had killed one son for his deformities while another watched? Serial killers were bom of man and woman, many bom of much less pain than this Lopaka suffered on seeing his crippled brother destroyed in a dark wood by his father, and later burned in the village pyre-slash-garbage dump, his bones unceremoniously dumped in the ocean where the sacrilegious and demonic were cast out.

  She wondered how much of this “legend” and ancient history had to do with the real killer. She wondered how much—if any—of her visit to Kaniola's seer she wished to share with Jim; wondered whether now it had any relevance or not. All Parry and company need do now was to locate the whereabouts of Lopaka Kowona. As soon as the Hawaiian community learned that one of her own had been at bottom of the Trade Winds killings, as soon as Lopaka's name was made public throughout the islands, he would either be cornered by the authorities, or murdered quietly the way George Oniiwah had been. She had no illusions anymore about Joseph Kaniola's agenda. She knew that he would be, if given the chance, the one to ram the spear through Lopaka Kowona's heart, to end the life of this vampire who preyed on young Polynesian women.

  Had Kaniola known of Lopaka, suspecting him for some time now? If the university professor Claxton and the lowlife Ewelo both knew of Lopaka, then the all-knowing, nosey newsman must've had some inkling, especially after Lopaka's police sketch and description were handed to him. Joe Kaniola was among the first in Hawaii to get this description, and his very next move was a friendly visit to his great-granduncle's shrine? Had he simply been using Jessica to loosen the old man's tongue? Perhaps and maybe, she thought, recalling the tape recorder at Kaniola's side.

  Kaniola had been shrewd throughout, shrewd and determined to see that his son was avenged. Revenge was best served up cold, the old saying went, and it would seem that Kaniola's every move since his son's death had been quite cool, quite calculated.

  “Jim, I've got to tell you about something,” she finally said, while Parry, evidence bags in hand, was scooping up the dismembered hands of each victim of the Trade Winds Killer.

  “What's that, Jess?”

  She quickly surprised him about her early morning visit to the guru on the mountain.

  “I've heard of the old man, but I didn't know he was related to Kaniola,” Parry finally said. “Explains your new look.”

  She stared, her shoulders rising, her eyes questioning.

  “Your cane. I noticed earlier that you were liberated from it. I was just naive enough to think that maybe I'd had something to do with its... disappearance.”

  “Yeah, well... maybe you did. Anyway, I had to give the old man something.”

  “In return for a handful of fifty-fifty generalizations any palm reader might've handed you?”

  “He was extremely close to Lopaka Kowona's description, Jim. Pouting, large lips, flame-red hair, dysfunctional.”

  “But he couldn't give you a name and address...”

  “No, but he may very well have given it to Joe Kaniola.”

  “Whataya' mean?”

  “I think Kaniola went there hoping the old man would verify his own suspicion that you and I were wrong about Ewelo being the killer, and that the old man would confirm his conviction the killer was not in custody.”

  “So, you think Kaniola's going after this guy Lopaka?”

  “If he finds him before we do, we'll be trying Joseph in a court of law instead of Lopaka,” she said with certainty. “And as for the cane, Lomelea needed it more than I did.”

  He nodded, understanding. “I'll see where Kaniola is and put a tail on him.”

  “Good idea. Meantime, I'll do what I can here.”

  Watching Parry lift the bag of hands to give to Gagliano before he stepped back out into the light made a powerful image in her mind. This side of the door was like being in the looking glass; this side of the door was some rung in the spirals of Hades described in Dante's Inferno; on the other side of the door there was light and paradise waiting. She wondered what was hardest, stepping out or staying in. In Jim's case he'd go out to his car now, make some calls on his radio, feel the ocean breeze and God's warm hand in the form of sunlight against his brow, but he'd have to climb back into this red hell a second time. She and Gagliano remained this side of the mirror, in the bleak shadow world of evil and death and madness.

  Her bag was passed through to her as if she and Gagliano were down inside a deep hole and those outside were providing a source of hope and sustenance from above. Still, none of the others wanted to climb down into the hole, content to watch from the other side of the looking glass.

  Gagliano reached out to her, placing his meaty paw on her shoulder, and said, “Doc, I have to admit... you've got some grit.”

  “My father called it sand.” She was privately pleased that Jim's best friend had finally accepted her.

  Jessica now forced all annoyances, images, sights, sounds and odors and her own encroaching fears and phantoms from her consciousness; she pushed Jim and Tony and the racket of the others from her mind. She snatched open her valise and pulled forth her white lab coat and gloves. She searched next for the necessary tools of her trade. It was time to do her part.

  18

  First-rate intelligence is the ability to hold the test of a two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to functi
on.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

  Dr. Asa Holcraft and others at the academy had taught her that there was no such thing as the ideal crime scene, but here in Lopaka Kowona's murderer's den, she and Parry had come damnably close to perfection. With the help of the FBI's Major Crime Scene Unit and ident techs from the HPD, the hours-long search now under the blindingly bright lights went ahead. Through-out the lair they uncovered much that would insure that Kowona would go down quickly and efficiently, unless defense counsel saw the fantastic opportunity presented him, deciding the Kowona case would mean a major leap forward for anyone capable of proving Kowona innocent by reason of insanity. She imagined some hotshot lawyer calling in his shrinks-for-hire one atop another, to attest to Kowona's inability to know right from wrong, good from evil or pain from pleasure, muddying the waters just enough forjudge and jury with sad tales of civil-rights violations to the defendant, stories of childhood molestation, split-personality syndrome and a hundred other euphemisms for animal behavior. They'd done exactly that in the Matisak case and countless others. An eager young F. Lee Bailey could make Kowona out to be the victim, leave a jury believing that the real victims here—Lina Kahala, Kia, Hiilani and countless others—didn't much matter in the grand scheme of jurisprudence. Like the photos taken by the killer himself, which would likely be labeled as inflamatory and prejudicial and therefore inadmissable. Didn't matter, she kept telling herself, struggling to do her part to counter all the possible scenarios that lay ahead of them.

  In order to convict, she had to do a painstaking job here and now.

  “The ideal situation is the one you don't have,” her M.E. father had once confided. “Whether it's a tourist attraction at Disneyland or a Georgia swamp. All you can do is your job, which is to protect the integrity of the crime scene and the gathered evidence, even from the fools who think it's their scene and evidence, too.”

  She had done a fair job of keeping control here, knowing there was no such thing as total control. Fibers, hairs and minutiae from the living would find a way into Hiilani's innumerable wounds. Hell, even a single open wound at the crime scene acted like a vacuum for all the microscopic debris floating by. The CSU guys at least knew enough to strap on aprons and hair nets just like the ones she'd pulled from the side pocket of her black valise. Still, Lau and his staff would have their hands full back at the lab. Everyone remotely near the body, including Jessica, would have to be ruled out as suspects when the specimens were examined under microscopic conditions. Evidence of Kowona's hair, fibers from his clothes were what was needed here, to corroborate the gruesome photos heedlessly left by the killer. At least the crime-scene photos taken here by FBI and HPD photographers could not be held inadmissable, not since Jim had been so careful about securing a warrant to search on probable cause.