Death of a Messenger

by Robert McCaw

  ‘Ōpua’s presence at the house was a surprising pilina, a connection. Two antiquities cases springing up together with the same actor appearing in both. His thoughts kept returning to ‘Ōpua’s fancy boots, and the boot prints they’d found out at Pōhakuloa.

  For reasons quite apart from Reggie Hao, Koa decided that he would have a follow-up interview with ‘Ōpua, alone. After all, a man known to hunt for native artifacts in one place could well have found other places to look.

  CHAPTER TEN

  FROM THE PRINCE’S castle Koa went to the doctor’s office. After he had waited in reception long enough for fear to grow into a palpable thing, his turn with the doctor came. He stared at the surgeon’s big hands and long, bony fingers. He’d heard Dr. Brower’s words about preparation, anesthesia, recovery, and wearing a plastic collar afterward, but he could think of nothing but those fingers—fingers that would cut his neck and mess with his spine. What if they slipped?

  “Listen, Doc, just tell me your success rate. How often does this surgery work?”

  “It’s all about the diagnosis. If we’ve got a good diagnosis, we have a 98 percent success rate.” The doctor paused, taking a long, hard look at Koa. “But it doesn’t do a goddamn bit of good to take out the wrong disk.”

  Christ, Koa thought, he didn’t even smile as he said that. “And my diagnosis?”

  “We know exactly what we’re going after. You’ve got cervical osteophytes. In plain English it’s a bone spur on your C7 vertebrae, and it’s abrading the nerve that runs down your right arm. I showed you on your MRI. You’re going to be okay, and a couple of months from now you’ll be almost as good as new.”

  “So, I’ll be able to compete in the Moloka‘i Hoe?” Koa asked, referring to the grueling annual thirty-eight-mile outrigger canoe race across the Ka‘iwi Channel from Ka‘iwi Bay on Moloka‘i to Waikīkī Beach on O‘ahu.

  “I said almost, Detective. If you’re going to put seven-plus hours of unrelenting stress on your neck, we can schedule a second surgery for three years from now.”

  Ouch. But what choice did he have? “Okay, Doc, when do I go under the knife?”

  The surgeon checked his calendar. “Two weeks from today. First thing in the morning.”

  Like a man awaiting execution, Koa had hoped for more time. “Okay, Doc.”

  Upon returning to police headquarters, he found Detective Piki practically jumping up and down in his office. “Boss, we got a lead on the Pōhakuloa victim. About time we nailed it.”

  Although Piki’s instant conclusions didn’t always justify his enthusiasm, the possibility of a break in the case lifted the dark mood Koa had brought with him from the doctor’s office. “What have we got?”

  “A Miss Julie Benson from the Alice Observatories filed a missing-persons report on Keneke Nakano, a twenty-nine-year-old Hawaiian astronomer. And,” Piki added with a flourish, “he’s been out of touch for the past ten days.” He handed Koa a copy of the report phoned into the Honoka‘a police substation.

  Koa scanned the document. The ethnicity and the timing fit. Pōhakuloa wasn’t that far—only about twenty miles—from the observatories on Mauna Kea. Piki was right: they might have nailed it. Within minutes, he had secured the license number of a nine-month-old black Isuzu Trooper registered to Keneke Nakano and directed Piki to put out an APB for the vehicle.

  Koa’s thoughts turned to Nālani. If the deceased were from the Alice Observatories, she’d likely know him and might have valuable insights. He tried her cell, but got no answer. She was probably in the dust-free “clean” room working on parts of the telescope’s mirror. If so, she might be unreachable for hours.

  The missing-persons report listed next of kin, and Koa immediately called Kimo Nakano, an uncle of the missing astronomer. Kimo agreed to accompany the police to his nephew’s house in Honoka‘a, a forlorn old sugar town north of Hilo. Koa collected Sergeant Basa, retrieved the key found at the Pōhakuloa crime scene, and headed for his Explorer.

  “My guys have been practicing hard. You’re gonna be paddling in our wake,” Basa said.

  Still caught in denial, Koa wasn’t ready to tell his friend that he wouldn’t be paddling. “You better practice so maybe you don’t finish behind us like the last Moloka‘i Hoe.”

  “Shit, you know we got caught in a squall and pushed off course,” Basa protested. “Otherwise, we would’ve beaten your team by twenty minutes.”

  “Would’ve, could’ve. Excuses don’t win races,” Koa retorted with good humor. “You guys should have a good caller, like yours truly.” Koa normally sat in the caller’s seat, the number-two seat in a six-man canoe, determining how many strokes his paddlers would take on one side of the canoe before switching to the other side. The caller’s skill kept the canoe racing forward without rolling over in heavy surf.

  “We’ll clean your clock next time, Koa. You just wait,” Basa warned.

  Being younger, the sergeant was more passionate about winning. Plus, they both knew that Basa and his crew were stronger. That’s why Koa derived so much enjoyment from beating them. But now his racing days, at least for bruising open-ocean contests, were likely over.

  It took Koa and Basa only a few minutes to reach Kimo Nakano’s house south of Hilo. A short, elderly gentleman with white hair and a leathery face answered the knock. His left sleeve hung empty where an arm had once been.

  “Mr. Kimo Nakano?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “I’m Chief Detective Koa Kāne. We spoke on the telephone.”

  “Oh, yes. You called to say my nephew is missing and you want me to go up to his place in Honoka‘a with you.” The old man spoke in a concerned but scratchy voice. “I’m ready.” He pulled the door shut behind him and started down the walk toward the police vehicle. He made his way slowly, hobbling in obvious pain.

  “Automobile accident?” Koa asked as the old man levered himself into the rear of the Explorer.

  “Heartbreak Ridge in eastern Korea, a little south of what’s now the DMZ.”

  Koa nodded. As a former Army officer and student of military history, Koa knew the horrors of the battle that left thirty-seven hundred casualties on the American side. Koa admired the men who fought there. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  Sergeant Basa easily steered through the sparse late-afternoon traffic on the Belt Road along the northeast coast. “Tell us about Keneke,” Koa said, pulling out his notebook.

  “He comes from good roots. His grandfather, my father, carved wood the old way, like his father and his father’s father. Had a workshop, just a shed, really, near Hāwi. The gods guided his fingers.

  “Keneke’s parents were good people, but his father, my brother, he didn’t have the gift. Miko couldn’t carve, not like Keneke’s grandfather. I don’t have the gift either. Few men have. Miko managed a store in Hāwi, and Keneke’s mother helped. They got along, not fancy, but okay.”

  “Where can we reach them?”

  “They are with Keneke’s grandfather. Miko passed away four years ago. Keneke’s mother joined him within six months.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It happens that way when two people are very close. Keneke, their only child, gave them great joy. The gods blessed that boy. Blessed his mind. He had a gift for numbers, calculus, physics. Don’t know where he got that gift, not from his father, maybe his grandfather.” The old man began coughing, and it was several moments before he resumed talking.

  “Keneke worshipped his grandfather. He used to sit in the old man’s workshop for hours, listening to the old man talk story. His grandfather sure could talk story. The gods blessed him that way, too,” Kimo noted with pride.

  “The old man doted on Keneke. I guess it was natural. The boy was his only grandchild. There was quite a scene when the old man took sick … suffered a stroke. The old man was really agitated. At first, I thought he was afraid of dying. But that wasn’t it. He wanted to see that boy.

&nbs
p; “Keneke was at UH in Honolulu. Flew back to be at his grandfather’s side. The old man was in a pretty bad way, but he had to pass his hā.”

  “His hā?” Basa inquired.

  “Hawaiian for breath or breath of life, but it means much more than that. The old man literally breathed into Keneke’s mouth, passing his mana, his life’s power, to the boy. Kind of a last will and testament.”

  Koa had a long familiarity with the Hawaiian concept of mana. As a native healer, his mother treated the mana in sick neighbors with herbs, exercises, and a focus on what she called the good spirits within people.

  Kimo fell silent, and when Koa turned around to look, he found him staring out the window. Seconds ticked by, becoming minutes, before he resumed speaking.

  “Keneke led in his classes at UH, studying the stars. I remember him talking about black holes. I couldn’t understand, but he did real well. Got himself into the University of California on a scholarship. Held his fellow students in awe … said he had to work three times harder than the smart ones from big-name colleges.”

  “When did he return to the Big Island?”

  “He dreamed about working at Alice, but he always said he didn’t have much of a chance.”

  “But he did end up working at Alice.”

  “That’s right. He called me the day he got the job offer. It must have been about nine months ago. He mau maka loa‘a ‘ole, eyes not easily obtained. That’s what he said. Kind of a play on words, I guess. Just the sort of thing his grandfather would say, always toying with words,” he noted with a chuckle.

  “He came back here in July or August last year. I asked him to come live with me, but he wanted his own place.”

  “How often did you see him after he moved back here?”

  “I only saw him three or four times. Felt bad about it, too. My brother would have wanted me to look after him, but Keneke worked hard—spent a lot of nights on that mountain.” The old man tilted his head toward the rugged skirt of Mauna Kea rising to their left. “I tried to get him to spend Christmas with me, but he had a girlfriend in California, an Asian girl, another astronomer. Met her at the university. He went back to Berkeley to spend Christmas with her. Seemed pretty serious about her.”

  By the time Sergeant Basa had driven past the last of the abandoned cane fields that stretched along the highway, evening shadows covered Honoka‘a. The town had bad memories for Koa. His father and grandfather had sweated out their lives in backbreaking labor at nearby sugar mills. One of those mills had crushed his father’s life in a horrible accident. He’d slipped—or so Koa had been told—while loading sugar cane into the hopper and had been crushed, like the cane, between the giant steel rollers that squeezed the sweetness from the stalks. It had supposedly happened so fast that no one had been able to stop the machinery.

  His father’s coworkers had told a different story. They told Koa, sixteen at the time, that Anthony Hazzard, the mill manager, had arranged the fatal accident after a heated argument with Koa’s father about labor issues. That had led to another turning point in Koa life—the killing of his father’s murderer.

  Basa turned the police Explorer into an unpaved driveway beside a modest duplex. An empty bird feeder stood on a pole not far from the steps. The blue bubble light atop the police vehicle immediately caught the attention of four neighborhood children, who gathered around as Koa, Basa, and Kimo climbed out and walked toward the house.

  “You here to see Keneke?” one of the children called. Koa turned to a small bronze boy of about six, wearing only dusty white shorts. Koa sat down on the wooden steps, deliberately reducing himself to the same height as the child. He smiled.

  “Yes, we’re here to see Keneke, have you seen him?”

  “He do a bad thing?” Fearless but inquisitive eyes searched Koa’s face from beneath an inverted bowl of straight black hair.

  “No, we just want to talk to him and make sure that he’s okay,” Koa reassured him. “Have—”

  “I helped him feed the birds.” The child pointed toward the bird feeder. “He taught me their names: silverbill, mannikin, and ‘amakihi.” The child’s face lit up with wonder. “One day we saw an ‘amakihi. We really did. Really. But the seed’s gone and the birds don’t come anymore. They went away.”

  Koa finally got a word in. “When did you last see him?”

  “It … it was a long time ago,” the child responded hesitantly, spreading his arms to show a big space. “He promised he would come to my lā hānau an’ bring me a special present, but he never came. He broke his promise.” The child looked down in disappointment.

  “Hau‘oli lā hānau.” Koa wished the child happy birthday. “Maybe it wasn’t his fault,” he added, sensing that he was nailing down the Pōhakuloa victim.

  Basa ruffled the kid’s hair. “You get a gold star for helping us.” The boy screamed in delight and ran off to share his good fortune.

  Turning away from the children, Koa approached the door to Keneke Nakano’s little home and knocked loudly. No answer. After securing permission from his uncle to enter, Koa tried the Yale key from the Pōhakuloa murder site in the keyhole. The key turned effortlessly in the lock, and the door opened. Koa experienced a little jolt of adrenaline, while his brain asked how a twenty-nine-year-old astronomer could be dead for more than ten days without anyone, other than a six-year-old neighborhood kid, noticing.

  “Where did you get the key? There is something that you haven’t told me, Detective,” Kimo protested. “Something terrible has happened to my nephew, hasn’t it?”

  Koa put a hand on the old man’s shoulder and gently guided him into the house. He helped Kimo to one of the wooden chairs in the living room and waited patiently while he lowered his arthritic frame into the seat. From the moment Piki had shared the details of the missing-persons report, Koa suspected Keneke was the Pōhakuloa victim, but he’d delayed telling Kimo until he was sure. Koa now looked the old man straight in the eye. “There is no easy way to say this, so I’ll tell you straight out. We think your nephew was murdered. We found a body a couple of days ago in a cave out at Pōhakuloa. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

  Kimo’s weary form sagged under the weight of the news, and he suddenly appeared more ancient, more frail. “The key …” Koa started to explain, but the old man wasn’t listening. Koa watched him intently, fearful the shock might provoke a heart attack. Basa knelt beside the old man, checking his pulse, before nodding to Koa that Kimo was okay.

  Koa turned his attention to the room. He stood for several moments, soaking up the feel of his surroundings. Beauty and history seemed somehow intertwined in the polished surfaces. Koa ran his fingers across the richly grained surfaces of the reddish koa wood furniture and felt a connection to his own ancestors.

  He focused on a wood-framed oil painting hanging next to the staircase. It pictured an old man, intently shaping a wooden bowl with a traditional Hawaiian k‘oi.

  “Is that your father?” he asked Kimo, pointing to the picture.

  Still coming to grips with his grief, the old man nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  “And he made the furniture in this room?”

  The old man nodded again. “He had the gift. The gods guided his …”—the old man’s voice cracked—“his hands.”

  “An exceptional gift,” Koa noted, although the praise sounded false, given the awful context.

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor. A four-poster carved koa bed occupied one end of the large, open room. Sitting on the other side of the room were an oversized roll-top desk, its tambour curtain closed, and a bookcase. Books, carefully arranged in categories on the shelves, offered further insight into Keneke Nakano. Astronomy and astrophysics selections filled more than half the bookcase. Koa recognized titles by Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, but none by any of the other authors.

  Keneke had a collection of Hawaiiana and had devoted nearly half a shelf to materials on Kaho‘olawe. Congressional hearings, newspaper sto
ries, maps, pamphlets from Protect Kaho‘olawe ‘Ohana. Keneke had obviously been interested in Kaho‘olawe. But why? Could there be a pilina, a connection, between Keneke, Kaho‘olawe, and Hook Hao’s son, Reggie? Aikue ‘Ōpua had shown up in both cases … and now these books.

  Making his way to the roll-top desk, Koa lifted one of the wooden handles, surprised at the ease with which the massive serpentine tambour rose in its wooden channels. Four objects were arranged on the richly grained desktop—a wireless modem, a silver-framed picture of an attractive Asian woman, a telephone answering machine, and a rock paperweight. The rock grabbed his attention. Although smaller than the preform found at the crime scene, it resembled the partially completed adze found near Keneke’s mutilated body.

  “Do you know where Keneke got this rock?” Koa asked. By now the old man had come upstairs and was sitting on the bed, his shoulders slumped forward, his chin cupped in his bony right hand.

  “Huh?” Looking up, the old man spoke with tears in his eyes.

  “Do you know where Keneke got this rock?”

  “I’ve no idea … from childhood, I guess.” The old man’s voice was barely more than a halting whisper. “He collected antique things … his grandfather collected things, too.”

  Koa looked around for a computer but saw none. Did he use a laptop? He examined the answering machine, noting that it registered the correct time and date. With the eraser tip of a pencil, Koa pressed the button to play back its messages. The dates ran from January 20 to January 27, when the tape ended. Keneke had received numerous and increasingly desperate messages from a woman, Soo Lin, imploring him to return her calls.

  Replaying the tape for a second time, Koa noted calls from Thurston Masters on January 21, asking for a return call, and Gunter Nelson on January 25, requesting Keneke to reschedule a meeting. There were also two calls from Basically Books, asking Keneke to pick up a book he had specially ordered. Koa extracted the tape and slipped it into an evidence envelope. “We’ll return the tape to you.”