Primal Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Chief,” she called out to the stooped and broken men who walked ahead of them, “all peace in the islands can be kept if...”Speaks too much, your woman,” said the chief to Parry.

  “Yes, yes... I know, Chief Kowona.”

  She glared now at Parry, who kept talking. “But she's not an ordinary woman. Chief. She is a doctor, a medical examiner for the FBI.”

  “Hmmmmmmmm,” he intoned, mulling this over. “A doctor woman, yes... and holds she secrets?”

  “Many... many secrets, yes.” Parry had found his voice and was trying desperately to help Jessica's case, feeling confident that he knew what she was driving at. “She is like your own kahuna—a priestess.”

  “Hmmmmmmmmm, and knows she the secret to peace in the islands?”

  “If you will allow me... us... to return with your son's body—” Jess began, but Parry cut her short with a hand cupping her mouth.

  “Shuuuuuut up!” he firmly told her.

  “What will your woman doctor do with my son's body?” asked Kaniola, translating the question for Parry.

  Parry cautioned her to remain silent, to allow him to do the parlaying. “She can show conclusively that this is the same man who terrorized Oahu.”

  “But this is well known,” said Kaniola, who said the same in Hawaiian to the chief.

  “Not officially. Only circumstantially. She can prove it beyond any doubt, by the bodily fluids, his DNA. You know that, Kaniola.”

  Kaniola relented his personal objections and spoke at length with the chief in their native tongue. Then the old chief looked to Parry and Jessica, his enormous eyes fixing them in place. “Your government...” He struggled with the words. “... requires this...” It was a statement, not a question. He seemed deep in thought now until he said, “No bettah way to foul Lopaka's body than give over to da fishes, 'cept for one way.”

  The old man stared at Jessica now, understanding now exactly what kind of a doctor she was. He had believed there could be no worse desecration of his son's body than he had already inflicted until Joe Kaniola had explained the nature of an autopsy to him.

  “You are strange people. My son's body you want. For au... au...”

  “Autopsy,” finished Jessica, making Jim blanche and seethe through his teeth. “Autoop-sie,” the chief repeated. Parry nodded approvingly. “Will you allow us to take your son from this soil?”

  “The haoles will think you are a butcher, Uncle,” said Awai. “That you butchered your own son. They will... will think our people pagans. This could cause us problems with the U.S. government.”

  Jessica exploded at this, pushing into the chief's face, saying, “You are a chief, and so is Mr. Parry. Between the two of you, between your governments, certain problems exist. I assure you, sir, that if you cooperate, there'll be no further prosecution of this matter and—”

  “Jess,” Parry interrupted her, taking her aside and whispering, “we can't make these kinds of blanket promises, not even to a chief in a protected territory.”

  “Not even to a chief who holds our lives in his hands, Jim? And face it, Jim, without the body we can't officially close the case; we can't prove any of this ever happened. It'll remain on the books forever.”

  “In the Hawaiian scheme of things, our closing our books doesn't mean shit, Jess.”

  Kaniola, going between the chief and the FBI agents regularly now, said, “All right, Chief Parry. You take the body back and you don't get too technical about how he died, right, Dr. Coran? Is that a compromise you can live with?”

  Jess wasn't absolutely sure she could live with such a lie, and yet it appeared that lies were the only avenue off Kahoolawe at the moment. The concern clearly painted on her face was making Ben Awai edgy.

  She glanced into Parry's eyes and he said, “We could say he fell off a cliff while we were in pursuit, or a pack of wild quarry dogs got hold of him and tore him from limb to limb before we could get to him.”

  “Dr. Coran?” asked Kaniola. She looked around the encampment, seeing the volatile Ben Awai and the painted faces of Chief Kowona's followers.

  “We... we...” she began, “we can do better than cliffs and quarry dogs, Jim.”

  “What's that?” he asked.

  “I think it'd be fitting, even poetic, if the readers of the Ala Ohana and other island papers learned that Lopaka died as a result of suicide.”

  “Suicide?”

  “That he tried leaping into the Spout on Maui where not only his body was recovered by divers, but a cache of bones belonging to his victims?”

  “An excellent story,” agreed Kaniola at once.

  “Yeah... that'd make great copy, huh, Joe?” Parry asked.

  “And I'll do all within my power,” she continued, “to see to it that the autopsy reflects how he died.”

  “We'll keep a lid on the powder keg, Joe,” added Parry. “Is that what you want to hear?”

  “I have your word?”

  “You do.”

  “That will best serve the press, the PKO, even the U.S., so we all remain one big happy ohana.”

  “And there's no further trouble?” asked Ben Awai.”Chief Kowona?” asked Kaniola.”The carcass take, but keep we Lopaka's head.”

  “What,” asked Jessica.

  “To display in the village until it rots,” explained Kaniola. “Barbaric perhaps, but effective.”

  “You wanted his head on a stick, remember?” Parry said.

  “Chief Kowona—” she began to argue.

  “Jess,” cautioned Parry.

  “Chief, we need the entire body for this thing to work,” she said, continuing her plea.

  Kaniola translated. Kowona appeared crushed now. Finally, after some thought, Kaniola translated his words in a cold counterpoint to the Hawaiian he spoke. “I have personally seen enough of my son's defilement, but my followers have to know that when they take life, they will be punished harshly. This is a lesson for the generations.”

  “They've got to know that by now, especially the children,” she harshly countered. “Hell, you've lost two sons already and—” Know nothing you people of this? No, one son only.”

  “But Lopaka... the legend... all I've learned about the story says you had two sons, one born deformed, a child you destroyed.”

  “Christ, Jess, now you've done it.”

  “Legend, story... all it is... all it ever was,” said the chief. “It was in our village in the rain forest on Molokai.”

  Kaniola hastened to fill in the blanks. “Lopaka had no brother, but a friend in the village that he treated as a brother contracted a terrible illness. Some today believe it was spinal meningitis. Anyway, he was a boyhood friend, not Lopaka's brother.”

  “We want the entire body,” Jessica insisted.

  “That's not to be,” said Awai.

  'Take it... take it all,” replied the chief. “If peace it will keep, take it.”

  “And you are going to allow these two haoles safe return?” Awai asked of the elder Kowona. “After their desecration of Hana where the ancient village stood?”

  “The bones disturbed there were all of the sea,” countered Kaniola. “You said so yourself, Ben Awai.”

  “So?”

  “You don't know as much of the old ways as you think, Awai.”

  “Meaning what, Joe?”

  “Meaning that sea bones tell of the damned only, the shamed, and the lawless ones like Lopaka who were not fit to be buried properly alongside the good and clean among us. We care nothing for the bones we cast into the sea. They hold the souls of men who will never find peace, whose souls wander endlessly with the tides, unable to find Ku.”

  Jessica realized only now that Lopaka's contempt for the surrogate Kelias in his life had naturally led him to dispose of them via the sea, that he was familiar with the Spout, and knew of its counterpart on Oahu long before he moved from Maui to the metropolis of Honolulu for fresh game.

  “Ku cannot find the ones whose bones are below the waves, so h
e cannot take them into his kingdom, the water blinds even Ku. So it purifies his kingdom, keeps it free of the vile,” continued Kaniola.

  “I once knew that. Uncle,” pleaded Awai, “but I forgot.”

  “You have done well this day, Ben Awai. You are one of us,” Kaniola assured the bigger man. “Then you will allow us to return the body?” asked Parry.

  “On one condition.”

  “Yes?”

  “That his remains be returned to the sea after you've finished all your tests.”

  “Consider it done,” said Parry. “A burial at sea can be arranged.” One way or another, he was thinking.

  Jessica nodded, her eyes meeting those of the stern chief and Kaniola's grim countenance beside him. From the well of anguish she found there, she knew that both fathers had suffered and anguished over their decisions of the past few days, and that the old chief no doubt had suffered over the years in untold ways at the hand of his child.

  Still, she wondered just how screwed up in the head Lopaka was that he could confuse in his mind's eye a boyhood companion with a brother, a childhood disease with the taking of a life. She remained unconvinced of the authenticity of Kaniola's version of events.

  Perhaps, with the end of Lopaka's fevered brain, the ghosts of the past should also be buried with him. Either way, the old chief wasn't long for this world. She could see it in his dark, sunken eyes and the ashen and flaxen skin about the cheekbones, and in his spiritless gait.

  “We will prepare for your departure with the body now,” Kaniola assured them.

  “I suppose you want our thanks, Joe.”

  “Hey, not necessary... only your word that you'll hold to our bargain. But I tell you this, people, if I hadn't been here, there's no telling what would've become of you two. Awai's brain isn't screwed on right, and neither is the chief's these days.”

  “So, in essence,” she summed up, “we witnessed a monster- maker kill his own creation last night, and we just let this Dr. Frankenstein walk off to his hut and go to bed?”

  “Either that or never leave the island. Remember, you aren't exactly in Kansas anymore here. You understand me?”

  “Let it drop, Jess,” Parry pleaded, and when Kaniola stepped off, he whispered, “Maybe at some future time, we can pursue a course of action against the old man.”

  “If he doesn't kick it in the meantime.” She relented, feeling the return of Ben Awai's eyes on them.

  She smiled sweetly at Awai. But the big man's grim look was set in stone for the time being. Kaniola organized a party to take the body from the rack and to collect Lopaka's hacked and dirtied head.

  Dawn, July 21, the Island of Kahoolawe

  The body of Lopaka Kowona, reeking of blood and perspiration, was cleansed and packed in a large canvas and deposited in an enormous weaved basket along with the man's head. Such cargo could easily be misconstrued if it fell into the wrong hands, and they could be faced with many hours' delay before all was sorted out. She and Parry planned on contacting the Navy for military transport back to Pearl the moment they set foot again on Maui. The working relationship between Jim's office and the military was a close one, and they'd respond to his requests without question when he, over a pay phone, would require them to fly into Kahului Airport with an empty coffin in order to return the body of a fugitive from justice brought down at the Spout, just outside Hana.

  Jessica and Parry were escorted back to the waiting boat and raft. Lopaka's body was boarded and soon they were heading back to Maui with their grim cargo.

  Neither Joseph Kaniola nor Ben Awai had anything further to convey to the FBI people, and so they spoke no more, Awai accepting his final payment and his inflatable raft in stony silence. At the harbor in Maui, Parry used his badge and influence to commandeer a nearby storage locker in a meat-distribution warehouse, and there Lopaka Kowona's body was safely stored until an ambulance could be arranged for. Parry hovered about the storage facility, half afraid news would leak out, in which case their clandestine operation involving Kahoolawe would be ended. Parry also hovered over the paramedics when they arrived, bent on their handling the incident with the utmost discretion as they removed Lopaka from the ancient carrying vessel and placed him in a body bag. The medics were curious and questioning, but Parry sternly controlled them with threats nonetheless.

  The medics were aghast at what they saw. They'd seen badly mutilated bodies before, heads severed in automobile accidents, but this kind of butchery was not an everyday occurrence. Still, they were Hawaiian men and with Joe Kaniola's help, they remained stoic in the face of what they witnessed. Parry instructed them to transport the body to the airport at Kahului and not to unload it until Parry met them there and directed the exchange from the ambulance to the military transport.

  Jessica had little time to freshen up and change before Jim stormed into their room at the resort and told her they had to go. Everything was hinging on Parry and her now, and in a matter of hours, the case of the Trade Winds Killer would be officially closed.

  All the way to Kahului, Jessica could sense Jim's primary concern was to bring an end to Oahu's longest-running serial killer case ever, and an end to the great suffering caused here by the fevered mind of Lopaka Kowona. Only a public announcement, stating they unequivocally had the body of the serial killer in their hands, and that there was clinical evidence to link him to all the murders, would quell all the fears of the Hawaiian Islands. It was ever more important that Dr. Katherine Smits back on Oahu identify the bones forwarded to her via Dr. Lau as those of victims on Maui. Such forensic truth, along with her own findings regarding Lina Kahala's arm, would corroborate the unequivo- cable wall of facts which she and Jim had worked so hard to uncover.

  She had watched Jim at work from the moment she had met him; watched him care for his island and its people. Now, racing back across the island on the highway that had brought them here, back toward Kahului Airport, Jessica felt a great sense of well-being flood in, a feeling of closure, that it was finally over. It flooded in with her fatigue. Weak from lack of sleep and the long night on Kahoolawe, she easily dozed in the car during the one-and-a-half-hour-long drive to the only airstrip on Maui capable of handling military jets.

  “You can sleep on the transport back,” Jim had promised her, but she didn't even make it that far.

  Even as she slept, in the back of her mind there was a nagging voice telling her that she couldn't truly rest until she proved to herself, beyond a shadow of a doubt lurking there, that she and Jim actually did have Lopaka Kowona's body in that basket.

  From the disfigurement of the facial features, there still remained some doubt in Jim's mind as well as Jessica's. Could the wily old chief have been playing out a charade, his final performance? And Kaniola? Had he, too, been duped, or was he part of the masquerade? Could they've been playing out a sting operation, a magician's switch, on Kahoolawe, substituting another for the true son's life, to spare that royal blood no matter its transgressions? A hundred what-ifs remained swirling amid Jessica's dreamscape....

  The thought that Lopaka, for whatever inscrutable reason, might be harbored and someone butchered in his place to appease the white race both infuriated and defeated her, but a part of her mind screamed that there was no way the two of them would then have been allowed safe passage back with a ringer's body. Kaniola, Awai and the others knew that such a hoax would be impossible, that it would be discovered quickly in the lab. On the other hand, such a falsehood played out against the FBI would not only prove embarrassing, but also show that she and Jim had violated international agreements between the Hawaiian natives and the State Department. Could Kaniola be that shrewd? And could they've found such a close double for Kowona?

  Such questions hounded her, and Jim as well, she suspected, all the way back to Oahu. She kept trying to reassure herself, and when she came awake only a few miles from the airport, the ambulance in the far distance ahead of them, she realized that Jim Parry had fixated on similar doubts, havin
g had only the interior of the car to commiserate with. Was it really Lopaka in the body bag?

  Soon they reached Kahului Airport, not the most modem facility by anyone's standard, and the waiting ambulance drivers looked on with such inexplicable eyes and nonchalance that Parry and Jessica began to wonder just what Kaniola had said to them back in Makena at the warehouse. Parry cautioned the two men once more to remember nothing of their trip from Makena to the airport. They assured him with nods and grunts that they had no problem with silence.

  “Where was this body transported from?” he asked one of the men.

  “Hana Town.”

  “At the Spout,” added the second man firmly.

  “Good... good...”

  But Jessica sensed that Parry wanted to tear into the two youths, throw a scare into them, see what spilled out.

  “If I have to come back because you men've lied to me in any way,” he warned, his large finger rising to their eyes when a jetliner crashed over, drowning out the rest of his words.

  “No lie, Boss.”

  “No lie...”

  In a matter of fifteen minutes and two cups of coffee, the military transport came to a smooth landing on the strip and taxied over to the hangar where the ambulance waited, getting directions from the tower as to the exact number on the tarmac over which they must come to rest.

  The body, loaded from the ambulance, was left in the body bag, and deposited into a Navy-issue coffin. Parry and Jessica boarded, and the plane was given immediate clearance, holding up an incoming Aloha Airlines jet filled with tourists, forcing the commercial flight to make a second pass over the island as a result.

  News throughout the island—that “Parry had his quarry”— spread like wildfire ahead of them.