Fire Prayer

by Deborah Turrell Atkinson

  “What happened?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “It’s over. We’ve all paid, especially Tanner.”

  “I’m not blaming.” Storm leaned toward him. “But I don’t think it’s over. Do you?”

  “You mean Tanner’s mental health?”

  “That’s one way. How about Connor?”

  “My brother is a fuckup, but he’s a follower. And he’s finally getting his act together.” His eyes flashed a warning.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Storm said. “You happen to know if he passed my message to call along to Tanner? I asked him when I dropped by yesterday.”

  Skelly’s shoulders dropped a notch. “How ’bout I radio him later?”

  “That’s okay. He may have told him. I heard Tanner has a hard time calling people.”

  “That’s true.” Skelly looked at his knuckles, and Storm noticed for the first time that some of them were swollen, and the back of his right hand had a long scratch. He looked up at Storm and held her gaze. “Some of us have had our problems, like I said. It’s better if the outside world lets us work them out.”

  “The world’s a small place these days.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, since you’re from Honolulu, it’s different here.” A tiny muscle twitched under his left eye, though his face was impassive. “A few of us have been dogged by suspicion, even here, for ten years. Every now and then someone has the courage to ask a question about the past, but usually not. And that’s worse, because they don’t meet my eye, and then they talk behind my back.” He clenched his fists. “And I’m not alone.”

  “I’m sorry.” She didn’t have to remind him that when she said it wasn’t over, that’s what she meant. Others lived with it, too, and at what cost? It was time for her to go.

  “Hey, thanks for your time.” She held out her hand. “Good luck.”

  Skelly took her hand briefly and let it drop. Storm could feel his eyes on her as she left. The screen door made a sighing noise when its springs eased it closed.

  Skelly sat without moving until the truck and horse trailer made its careful U-turn in his wide lot and turned onto the highway. Then he picked up the phone and hit speed-dial.

  “She’s leaving here now.” He listened to the reply.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Storm was quiet on the drive to Halawa Bay. She could tell that Aunt Maile and Uncle Keone noticed her reticence, but she didn’t want to explain her thoughts right then, and they apparently understood. Though her eyes flicked past the pristine, aquamarine shoreline, she didn’t see the white sand beaches and black lava rock, often next to each other in extraordinary contrast. At any other time, she’d have been fascinated at another chance to examine the calm, clear, manmade coves of igneous rock, fishponds in the ancient Hawaiian tradition. Moloka‘i was the only place where large fishponds, constructed as they were a thousand years ago, dotted twenty-some miles of prime coastal real estate. On most of the world’s inhabited islands, oceanfront land was too expensive to lie open and unencumbered. This was what Moloka‘i people wanted so desperately to preserve, Storm thought. These open expanses of fine white sand and sparkling reef, uneroded by private sea walls, and accessible to whoever ambled along to relax, hunt shells, or cast a fishing line. No one would think to come up and say, “Move along, you can’t do this. It’s private property.” This was what Poele and his friends fought for.

  An hour passed before Aunt Maile said, “Maybe it would help to think out loud.”

  “I’m spinning my wheels.”

  “It has to do with the fire sorcerer?” Uncle Keone asked.

  “Maybe.” Storm frowned. “It all goes back to the fire, whether it was started by a sorcerer or not.”

  “If you knew who started it, would you know who killed Brock Liu and Jenny Williams?” he asked. “And is it the same person?”

  “It would help. From the information Hamlin got from the ME, their deaths appear to have been caused by the same weapon. And I think it’s Poele’s sculpture.” She thought for a moment. “But I don’t know if the killer is the same person who started the fire.”

  “The sculpture was in Poele’s hands, right?” Uncle Keone asked.

  “Not necessarily.” Storm explained how Skelly and Connor had possession of the sculpture, too.

  “Maybe it broke when he clobbered Brock Liu,” Uncle Keone said. “Then he gave it to the Richards brothers for an alibi.”

  “Then why did one of the Richards brothers, or both of them, for that matter, kill Jenny Williams?” Storm said, though as she said the words, she recalled the letter Jenny mailed to Alyssa Bennet. She told her aunt and uncle about it, which plunged the trio into minutes of quiet thought.

  Aunt Maile broke the silence. “It could be any of the three.”

  “If Poele killed Liu, would he use a gift from his lover? Which could be easily traced to him? The guy sits alone up there and reads. He’s not stupid,” Storm said.

  “Let’s go back to whoever started the fire,” Aunt Maile said.

  “The fire sorcerer connection is tempting, but it points to Makani, and of all the people I’ve talked to, he’s been the most cooperative,” Storm said. “Not so much about the fire itself, but about the people involved and their relationships to each other. For example, he told me Tanner had his breakdown after the fire. And that fits with when Jenny quit doing her sculpture and got a job at the hospital. This made her angry and bitter.”

  “You think Tanner killed Jenny?” Uncle Keone asked.

  “I don’t want to, but it’s a possibility.”

  Aunt Maile said, “That makes four possibilities. Five, if you think Makani started the fire.”

  Storm chewed a hangnail on her thumb. “It bothers me that Skelly seems closer to Tanner than his own brother.”

  “You get that impression from Makani or from the visit you just made to Skelly?” Keone asked.

  “They’re childhood friends, aren’t they? Connor’s a couple years younger,” Aunt Maile added.

  “Both,” Storm said in response to Keone’s question, then included Aunt Maile’s comment in her next thought. “I think Skelly gave Connor his black eye. Plus, Makani and Poele both alluded to Skelly’s and Connor’s estrangement.” She reflected a moment. “But something is eating Poele. He had a relationship with Jenny, and though he’s a bit of a flirt, I think he truly cared about her.” She related his distress over the broken sculpture.

  “Maybe that’s from guilt, not sadness. Can you tell the difference?” Uncle Keone asked.

  “Good question.” Storm shook her head. “I’ve just come full circle, haven’t I?”

  They rode along in silence for a while, then Storm spoke again. “Makani made me think that no one really knows who lit the fire.”

  “And what about Dusty’s daughter?” Aunt Maile contemplated out loud. “Is her disappearance tied to the fire?”

  “I think it is,” Storm said.

  “That devastated him,” Uncle Keone added.

  “So did the fact that she was having Alika Liu’s baby.”

  “Really?” Keone asked.

  “Really what?” Aunt Maile asked. “The fact that she was pregnant or that it was Alika’s?”

  Keone chewed on the side of his cheek. “He never told me it was Alika’s.”

  “I hope he didn’t take it out on Tia,” Aunt Maile said. “She didn’t do anything he hadn’t done a couple hundred times.”

  “Yeah, well. Women pay a higher price.” Uncle Keone’s eyes flicked sideways to see if his wife might hit the roof of the cab.

  She glowered. “Makes me spit fire, though it’s true.”

  “Watch out.” Storm’s hand shot up to point out a blind curve, where a large white van was rounding the corner. The road had been growing progressively narrower over the last few miles, and there wasn’t room for the two large vehicles to pass each other. The driver of the white van waved and pulled of
f onto the shoulder.

  As they pulled abreast, Uncle Keone had to creep onto the shoulder himself just to keep the side-view mirrors from scraping. He gripped the steering wheel in his effort to hold the vehicle steady while he judged the inch of space between the trucks.

  Storm peered over at the driver of the van. “Thanks, Connor,” she shouted. “Wait a sec.”

  Uncle Keone pulled ahead a few feet and looked with surprise at his niece. “Another stop?”

  “If you don’t mind,” Storm said, and opened the passenger door, nearly banging it against a boulder. She crab-walked part of the way and climbed over several rocks to get to the back of the trailer, where the van had stopped.

  Connor had his door open, and was talking to the people inside, who looked out curiously. “Hi, Storm.”

  One of the kids in the back seat levered his window open. “We’re making him go slow so he doesn’t hit another rock.”

  Storm caught the flush that rose from Connor’s neck. His black eye was less swollen, but also more green and purple than it had been yesterday. The split lip wasn’t nearly as noticeable.

  “That how you got that shiner?” she asked Connor, but she could tell from his brief and wordless nod he knew that she knew how he got it.

  “You going riding?” he asked.

  “We thought we’d go to Halawa Stream and back in the valley a ways. How you doing? Did you see Tanner?”

  “Sure, I took over from him yesterday afternoon. We had a great time.” With that, he looked toward the van, as if for confirmation. The people all looked satisfied. And curious.

  Storm took a step toward the front of the van, where they’d have a bit more privacy. His eyes looked more alert and his skin was clearer. A good sign he was weaning himself off the steroids.

  “You know if Luke got there?” Storm asked.

  “No, but Tanner left in a hurry. He was worried.”

  “Connor, how do we get to the cabin?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve only been there once, and I’m not that good at directions.” He shoved a rock around with the toe of his shoe.

  “I’m not going to bother Tanner. I just want to see if he and Luke need help. Luke could be really sick.”

  “He cut his hand badly, too. There was a lot of blood.” Connor let the air hiss through his teeth as he seemed to reach a decision, then he heaved a sigh. “From the bay, there’s one path leading into the valley. A couple of miles in, you’ll get to a fork. Go right. The path is going to get narrower, until it’s just a game trail. Hunters use it—and Tanner, but he makes sure it stays overgrown.” He met her eyes. “It’s going to be tough going at that point on horseback. You may have to tie them up and go on foot.” He kicked the rock hard. “Storm, you can’t tell anyone I told you this. Not ever.”

  “I won’t,” Storm said. “I promise.”

  Connor’s eyes bored into hers. “Try to keep in mind where the ocean is and head east. There are tiny little notches cut in some of the tree trunks, but you’ve got to be looking for them.”

  “You’re not bad with directions, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Hey, Connor?”

  He looked at her with sad eyes, full of doubt.

  “Whose idea was it for those guys to all get tattoos?”

  “My brother’s.” Connor’s voice was so low she could barely hear him.

  “You don’t have one, do you?”

  “No,” he said, and turned away. He got back in the van without looking at her, but his hand rose in the open window as he drove off. The tourists waved with more enthusiasm.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Luke gave himself an insulin dose after breakfast, helped wash the dishes, then went back to the sofa. Tanner had already put away the bedding, and Luke looked around for the blanket he’d used. A chill had come over him. He couldn’t find the blanket and Tanner was outside checking the tanks where he cultivated and dried seaweed samples, so Luke dug through his backpack and put on another shirt. He also got out his copy of From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. He liked the book, and he might as well do his homework. In fact, he’d probably missed the weekend assignment. He shivered again and curled into the arm of the couch.

  Luke was having a hard time concentrating, despite the fact that he loved the descriptions of the museum where Claudia and Jamie, the characters in his book, were hiding. So different from his life. Maybe he should write a story about a rainforest. He was pondering how to work an evil, tattooed character into his own novel and shivering with the thought when his father’s hand on his forehead woke him up.

  “You’re burning hot.” Tanner loomed above him, frowning. “I’ve got to look at that hand again. Stay here.”

  Like he was going anywhere. Unh unh, no way, he was just too tired. And his head ached, though the hand didn’t hurt much at all. Or at least not as bad as his head did, especially right behind his eyeballs, which throbbed like his hand had yesterday.

  Tanner woke him up again. “Stick this under your tongue.” He jammed an old, mercury-type thermometer in before Luke could even get his mouth open, and Luke gave a grunt of protest. Tanner rummaged through Luke’s backpack, which elicited a louder complaint. “Where’s your glucose kit? Oh, here.”

  Luke’s eyes popped open when his dad poked his finger. “Ow.”

  “Sorry, I should probably let you do that. Son, can you stay awake long enough to help me use this?”

  Luke peered at it, but the numbers were blurry. He squinted, and Tanner turned the gadget so that the boy could see better. Luke still couldn’t see the numbers very well. Looked like 48 mg/dl, but that must be 148 mg/dl. He’d just had breakfast, hadn’t he?

  “What time is it?” Luke mumbled.

  “You had breakfast two hours ago. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  “What’s that number say?” Luke asked.

  “Forty-eight. What’s it supposed to be?”

  Luke blinked a few times and his dad grabbed his chin to look into his eyes. He then took Luke’s injured hand in his and unwound the gauze bandage.

  Tanner was being a little rough, Luke thought. His hands were shaking a bit, too. But Luke’s mom had told him that it was okay when his dad’s hands shook because it meant he was taking his medicine, so Luke let his eyes close again. Medicine was necessary, and Luke was careful about his. Took his insulin just like the doctor told him, on time and the right dose.

  Tanner poured a lot of peroxide over his cut and Luke jerked at the sting. The wound was foaming like the beers Skelly liked to drink. Luke used to get to pour for him. He hadn’t done that for a long time, though.

  “This doesn’t look too good,” Tanner said, more to himself than to Luke. “Hey, son? What’s your blood sugar supposed to be?”

  Luke forced his eyes open. His voice sounded slurred, even to him. “One-thirty to one-fifty. I think.” He made himself think for a moment. “I ate two hours ago, right?”

  Tanner didn’t answer. Luke peeked at his father and noticed that his eyes looked big and dark against his white face. His hair looked messed up, too, which struck Luke as funny.

  Tanner got up and ran into the kitchen. He came back with a glass of orange juice. “Can you drink this?” Tanner held it to Luke’s lips. “All of it.”

  “I’m not hungry. My head aches.”

  “Luke, your blood sugar is too low. We’ve got to get to the doctor.”

  “Call her. I want to take a nap.”

  His dad left him alone for a few minutes, but Luke could hear him banging around the house. A few cupboard doors rattled, then he came back.

  “Luke, please. Put your backpack on.”

  “C’mon, Dad, let me sleep.”

  “No, now.” Tanner spoke sharply. “And eat this.” He handed Luke a granola bar. This time Luke recognized the edge in his father’s tone as fear instead of impatience or anger. He took a bite of the bar while his dad wo
rked his arms into the straps of the newly stuffed pack.

  Tanner toggled a switch on a radio, and Luke watched his father shake his head with disgust. “Shit, the battery’s dead. I should have plugged it in last night.” Tanner almost never swore, and his voice cracked, almost as if he wanted to cry. He gave Luke’s shoulders a gentle shake. “I’m going to carry you piggy-back. You understand? Your job is to hold on. If you need to stop, you tell me.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Uncle Keone parked the horse trailer at the end of the road. A couple of other cars lined the shoulder, too, probably fishermen and hikers, but the people were no longer in sight. Storm hopped out of the truck, with Aunt Maile close behind. The two women walked around to the back of the trailer while Keone locked up the cab.

  Storm clucked her tongue. “We’re here, fellas.” A horse nickered in response, and she opened the gate. Three alert heads turned toward them. Moonlight was the closest.

  “Hey, buddy. I thought you weren’t coming. You’d better not get spooky and dump one of us.”

  Uncle Keone walked up. “Dusty’s been working him on the lunge line, dangling all kinds of stuff in front of him. Grocery bags, rubbish bin lids. He should be okay.”

  Keone had been around horses his entire life, and he still worked with them. More than she did, so Storm knew better than to question. She also knew that no one, no matter how much experience he or she had, was exempt from Murphy’s Law, especially where horses were concerned.

  “Want me to ride him?” Storm asked, though she knew the answer.

  “We’re considering buying him for Parker Ranch, so I’d like to give him a try. Maybe we can swap when we turn around.”

  “Makani wants to train him more.”

  Uncle Keone didn’t say anything, but Storm caught the flash of annoyance in his eyes when he led Moonlight out of the trailer. She was butting into his kuleana, and he was proud of his expertise.

  Storm gave a shrug and went after the second horse. He’d forget in about two seconds as long as she didn’t raise the topic again. She’d tried. Not that she was any better rider than either her aunt or uncle, but she was younger and she’d rather have her own tailbone get bruised than one of theirs.