Death of a Messenger

by Robert McCaw

He was right, Koa had to concede. He had reason to avoid identifying himself.

  “You touch anything in that cave?”

  “The cave smelled of evil and I left.”

  The man had again avoided a straight answer, and Koa pursued the question. “Did you touch anything in the cave?”

  ‘Ōpua hesitated. “No.”

  Koa sensed a lie. “You sure?”

  “Positive, Detective.”

  “Did you know Keneke Nakano?”

  ‘Ōpua stiffened and his eyes bulged. “You just used the past tense. Did something happen to him?”

  “He died out at Pōhakuloa.”

  “Ko‘ele nā iwi o Hua I ka lā.”

  It was an odd historical reference, meaning trouble would befall those who destroyed the innocent. “So you knew him?”

  “Kawelo Nakano’s grandson. He was ‘ohana huna.”

  The secret family, the same words that Hook Hao had used to describe Reggie’s group. “When did you last see him?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Was he part of your Kaho‘olawe activities?”

  “That’s a question for the Maui police, Detective.”

  And, Koa thought, I’ll be asking them, but he let it slide for the moment. “Any idea who killed him?”

  “No.”

  “But you told Prince Kamehameha about the body, didn’t you?”

  “You’ll have to ask him, Detective.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE NEXT MORNING, Koa looked up to see Police Chief S. H. Lannua standing in the doorway to his office. As always, he was in uniform with all the creases pressed, as if his garments had just come from the dry cleaners. Given the sticky humidity in Hilo, Koa sometimes wondered if Lannua kept an iron in his office. The chief’s tall, strapping presence surprised Koa because his boss usually relied on his senior staff to update him and rarely roamed the halls. In fact, Koa couldn’t remember ever seeing Lannua in his office before.

  Apparently, the chief likewise had no recollection of being in Koa’s office because he looked around the room, taking in its contents. As its head, Koa had the detective bureau’s only private office. Although it was no bigger than the offices senior detectives typically shared, the absence of a second desk and its end-of-the-corridor location with windows overlooking Hilo Bay made the room almost spacious.

  Koa had chosen sparse decorations, replacing the usual official-issue pictures of the governor, mayor, and the police chief with a banner above his desk proclaiming: I ulu nō ka lālā ike kuma … Without our ancestors we would not be. The chief mouthed the words and nodded. Two framed Escher prints hung opposite Koa’s desk. In Reptiles tiny crocodiles emerged from a pad and climbed over a book, a cube, and a brass cup before reentering the pad. In Relativity three sets of stairs arranged in a triangle created pathways into sideways and upside-down places. To these prints he’d added an eight-by-ten photograph of Nālani.

  His colleagues understood the banner, reflecting Koa’s respect for the people and history of the islands. His colleagues didn’t disparage native Hawaiians in Koa’s presence. To those who questioned his taste for Escher prints, Koa explained that Reptiles reminded him of the chameleon-like aspects of human nature, while Relativity taught him to think outside of the box. No one who knew Nālani questioned her presence.

  Koa’s battered wooden desk held only a stainless-steel thermos, a coffee mug, a telephone, and two stacks of papers, one of messages and the other of files.

  Koa stood up. “What do you need, Chief?”

  “The mayor heard about this Pōhakuloa killing and wants it solved.”

  Typical, Koa thought. Politicians expected him to produce results with a snap of his fingers. “It’s a tough one, Chief, but we’ve identified the victim as a young astronomer.”

  “That only makes it more urgent. As usual, I’m counting on you to get the job done, Detective.”

  Koa massaged his neck as the chief retreated down the hall. He was no stranger to political pressure. It came with the turf. Just wait till he told the chief he was scheduled to go under the knife for the pinched nerve in his neck. He grimaced and turned back to the piles on his desk.

  He poured coffee from the thermos and started in on the smaller pile, a sheaf of messages and reports from various police offices. The APB for Keneke’s black Isuzu Trooper had so far produced nothing. Traffic stops on the Saddle Road and inquiries at the Army barracks at the Pōhakuloa Training Area had led nowhere. Koa had just turned to the files when Sergeant Basa appeared in his doorway. “Hey, Boss, I got a question for you.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Out there at ‘Ōpua’s ranch, he really had it in for you. What was with that ho‘ohaole stuff?”

  Koa flipped his hands outward in an exasperated gesture. “You know these sovereignty types, they’re like that. They feel dissed by Western culture. Makes ’em confrontational, even with their own people.”

  Basa still seemed dissatisfied. “I thought it might be more than that. Figured he was trying to provoke you, maybe even create an incident so he could lodge an official complaint.”

  Koa, whose criminal past normally made him suspicious of others, realized that he hadn’t paid sufficient attention to ‘Ōpua responses. He leaned forward and encouraged Basa to elaborate.

  “That’s possible, but to what end?”

  “I think ‘Ōpua knows more than he let on.”

  Koa caught Sergeant Basa wistfully eyeing the thermos on his desk.

  “Go on, Basa, help yourself.” With mock reluctance Koa pulled a mug and a box of sugar packets from his drawer and pushed them across his desk. The sergeant uncorked the thermos and poured coffee almost to the brim of the mug before emptying four sugars and stirring it with his finger.

  “Damn good coffee.” Basa grinned. “Thanks, Chief.”

  Koa held his tongue about all that sugar and pushed Basa to explain his assessment of the activist. “So, what was ‘Ōpua hiding?”

  “I’m not sure, but he was evasive. I think he touched something in the cave.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t know, but he didn’t answer your question and then he hesitated. And what was with that Hawaiian saying? I mean, he didn’t seem all that surprised someone he knew had been murdered.”

  “You’re right,” Koa said, mulling over that point, “and neither he nor the prince asked about the murder victim.”

  As Basa left, Koa turned his attention to the old case files, looking for crimes committed with a similar MO. Then he stopped, overcome. His shoulder and arm blazed with an angry ache. Bone rubbing on a nerve between the vertebrae in his neck caused referred pain—that’s what the doctors called it. It was similar to the way a short circuit in one room could kill the lights in another room. Yet if it was only referred pain, why did it hurt so damn much? He reached for his painkillers—not the Tylenol that had stopped working months ago, but the prescription Percocet stuff.

  Koa needed to lie down. He locked his office door, moved the stack of files to the floor, and stretched out on his back where he could still reach the papers. He’d be better in twenty minutes.

  One by one Koa read through an encyclopedic array of the island’s most heinous crimes from the past thirty years. Drug-related killings, a kidnap-murder, the gang rape/slaying of a young tourist. At the bottom of the pile, he found several old cardboard case jackets, stuffed with police, laboratory, and medical reports, as well as dozens of faded yellow newspaper clippings, so old they’d begun to crumble. He soon came upon one that riveted his interest. “Damn,” Koa swore softly as he began to read with intense concentration.

  On February 14, 1983, four hikers, exploring the western slopes of Hualālai Mountain, had noticed noxious odors wafting from a hole in the ground. Investigating, they had discovered a mutilated, partly decomposed human body and summoned the police, who had recovered the remains of a fourteen-year-old boy, stripped naked and tortured to death. The Valentine’s Day murder, as
the press had dubbed it, had become an overnight sensation. “Child Tortured in Lava Tube.” “Bloody Valentine’s Day Victim Discovered.” “Teenage Male Molested, Hacked to Death in Mountain Cave.” The initial headlines started a feeding frenzy, not only on the Big Island but throughout Hawai‘i.

  The police had called in medical experts. Their findings bore an uncanny likeness to the report that Koa would soon be receiving from Dr. Cater. The doctors had detailed a brutal killing in the style of ancient Hawaiian human sacrifices. Multiple lacerations across the chest. Deep and straight, made with an antique whalebone dagger. “Like railroad tracks,” it read. Exactly the same words Sam Cater had used. The cause of death grabbed Koa’s attention—a six-inch puncture wound into the left cerebral cortex, administered with an ice pick-type instrument through the left eye socket.

  The police had arrested one George Ray, who eagerly admitted to torturing and killing the youngster, but claimed to have done so at the behest of ancient spirits. Koa read the transcript of his confession with horrified fascination. Ray seemed to be from a different era and society. He called himself Pā‘ao, a priest from Tahiti, and claimed: “I, Pā‘ao, danced with the spear of the pueo and tattooed his eye.”

  Koa felt clammy when he finally stood and set the files aside. Walking to the window, he stood for a long time, looking out over Hilo Bay, thinking about George Ray. The human mind could pursue such peculiar paths. The real world, he had learned, was even more twisted than Escher’s Relativity. When he finally turned from the window, it took him three calls and forty-five minutes to learn that Ray had died in 1995 while confined in the state hospital for the criminally insane. It was only an outside shot, anyway.

  He then dialed Shizuo’s number. When he finally got through, Shizuo responded with hostility. “I hope this isn’t about that Pōhakuloa stiff.”

  “Shizuo, I need some help, okay?” Koa sounded more irritable than he felt, but his words had the desired effect.

  Resignation resonated in Shizuo’s voice. “Tell me what you need.”

  “Did you check for a brain injury? A deep wound to the brain?”

  “X-rays did not show anything like that.”

  “Would X-rays show a puncture wound to the brain?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I’ve been researching case files and found an old one where some weirdo killed a boy. The killer raved about a ritual practice—tattooing the eye with the spear of pueo, that’s what he claimed. The cause of death was a deep puncture wound through the eye socket.”

  “We weren’t specifically looking for that, and X-rays might not show a puncture wound without bone involvement.”

  Koa didn’t miss the use of the past tense, as though Shizuo considered the case over. “I want you to look specifically for such a puncture wound through the left eye socket.”

  “I suppose I can do that. I’m seeing patients this morning, though—”

  “I need an answer this morning, Shizuo.”

  “No can do.”

  Koa stifled a sigh. He knew how to turn up the heat. “I’m briefing the chief, who’ll be talking to the mayor later this morning. Shall I tell him you ‘no can do’?”

  “One of these days you will ask too much of me and I’ll …”

  Koa wanted to say retire, but he held his tongue.

  Once the phone call ended, he returned to his former musings. He ticked off the similarities in his mind. Both corpses in lava tubes. Both bludgeoned beyond recognition. Both with an eye gouged out. Both sexually mutilated. Both cut in straight lines, like “railroad tracks.” Both likely tattooed with the spear of pueo. The perp in the first killing had died, so this had to be a copycat killing. With one difference. He’d found no whalebone dagger at Pōhakuloa.

  Going back through the file, Koa found a picture of the dagger used in the Valentine’s Day murder. He suddenly had a vivid image of the knives on the wall in ‘Ōpua’s ranch house—steel knives and whalebone daggers. Everything clicked.

  ‘Ōpua had touched something in the lava tube. He had taken the pāhoa … now displayed in his ranch house.

  Had he used it on Keneke? That was the question.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LATER THAT SAME day, patrol officer Johnnie Maru reported finding Keneke Nakano’s black Isuzu truck in the Hilo airport parking lot. Finding the victim’s vehicle at the airport puzzled Koa. He wondered whether Keneke had left it there or whether someone else had parked it at the airport to mislead the police.

  If Nakano had parked the vehicle, he must have been planning to leave the Big Island. That would mean an airline reservation. Plus, if Keneke had been abducted from the airport, there should be witnesses. Koa instructed Basa to check the airlines for a reservation and have his men canvass the airport for potential witnesses.

  An hour later Koa was standing under arc lights in the Hilo police garage. The blackened floor, sticky with oil, pulled at his shoes. The damp air was ripe with the smell of grease and transmission fluid. He watched a tow truck haul the black Isuzu Trooper into the shop.

  Mickie Durban, a crime scene specialist, walked around the vehicle checking for prints before opening the driver’s door. Unlocked, he noticed. “That’s odd,” he said. His voice had the rasp of a heavy smoker. “Most folks lock their cars at the airport.”

  He pulled the door open and whistled. “Better have a look, Detective.” Mickie pointed to the passenger seat where car keys lay in plain view.

  Koa pondered the implications of this unexpected discovery. Had Keneke been in such a hurry he’d left his car keys? Had the victim been abducted as he was leaving the car and dropped his keys? Had the killer parked the truck and left the keys, hoping a thief would steal the vehicle, creating a false trail for the police? It would help to know whether Keneke had made an airline reservation.

  “Okay, Mickie. Let’s see what else we can find,” Koa directed.

  Mickie dusted the steering wheel, door handles, gearshift, and other obvious places before searching the glove box and map pockets. When he climbed into the back and looked under the front seats, he found a large, thick envelope addressed to Keneke. It contained a book—a dog-eared copy of Martha Beckwith’s translation of the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian creation chant. Inside, they found a handwritten note on flowery feminine stationery:

  Dearest Keneke:

  Thank you so much for loaning me your book. I had such a fabulous, wonderful, marvelous time with you at the hotel. Until next time.

  Linda Harper

  Linda Harper. Was that Charlie Harper’s wife? Had the serial harasser’s wife enjoyed a fabulous, wonderful, marvelous time with Keneke at some hotel? Were Keneke and Charlie Harper’s wife having an affair? He recalled Nālani’s reference to Charlie’s bad marriage. He’d relish arresting Charlie Harper. But he reminded himself, sexual harassment wasn’t murder.

  Koa and Mickie spent another fruitless hour on the interior of the Trooper before Mickie closed all the doors in preparation for hoisting the truck up on the grease rack. “You know what’s missing, Detective?”

  “The entrance ticket to the parking lot,” Koa responded.

  “Yeah, he musta stuck it in his pocket. It woulda had a time stamp, showin’ us when he parked the truck.”

  “Damn strange to take the parking ticket and leave the keys,” Koa mused.

  After raising the truck on the lift, Mickie scraped samples of dirt and dried weeds from its undercarriage. A police photographer, waiting on the sidelines, snapped pictures, popping his flash and adding blue-white illumination to the surreal brightness of the arc lamps.

  “Detective Kāne,” Mickie’s raspy voice called across the enclosed space, “you better have a squint.”

  Koa moved in close behind the technician, who pointed a screwdriver at a broad swath of bright metal where some hard object had gouged the bottom of the differential.

  “The driver bottomed out this baby on somethin’ hard, like a concrete curbstone.”

&
nbsp; “Recent, too, would you say?”

  “Yeah, it’s recent. Lucky the son of a bitch didn’t rip the differential out.”

  Koa remembered the jagged lava outcroppings along the Pōhakuloa jeep trail near where Keneke Nakano’s body had been recovered.

  “Take some scrapings or whatever you need. Check with Sergeant Basa and see if you can match these scrapings to the jagged lava outcroppings on the jeep trail in the Pōhakuloa Training Area.”

  “You got it, Detective.”

  Koa had no sooner mentioned Basa than he called. “Koa, I checked the airport,” Basa said. “Keneke Nakano had a reservation on United to LAX on January 21, but, here’s the thing. He never made the flight. A Robin Archer booked the reservation. She’s at the airport now if you want to talk to her.”

  Koa dialed the number that Basa provided, and Robin Archer answered.

  Identifying himself, Koa asked, “Ms. Archer, can you remember when Mr. Nakano made the reservation?”

  “It’s right here.” Koa heard the clicking of a keyboard. “January 21 at 07:42 hours.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Nakano.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He made the reservation by phone.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I made the reservation for him myself.”

  “You remember the phone call?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “You must make a lot of reservations. Is there some reason you remembered Mr. Nakano’s phone call?”

  “Well, sort of. He made the reservation at 7:42 for an eleven o’clock flight, and when he didn’t show up, the gate agent made an announcement for him to board. That’s why the name came back to me when your Sergeant Basa called.”

  “Did he happen to say where he was calling from?”

  “Not that I recall, Detective. I usually ask for a contact number, but according to the reservation record, he didn’t give one.”

  Koa thought for a moment. “Well, how did he pay for the ticket?”

  “Credit card. Issued in his name. Visa authorized the transaction, and I issued an e-ticket for him.”