So much for the element of surprise, thought Kaniola. After having words with Officer Hilani, Joe veered off and into the parking area, which by day was jammed with visiting tourist buses and cars of every size and stripe so that it was a hazard to dare drive in. Here tourists, by the busload, fought for position along the man-made paths and rails to see the famous Blow Hole some thirty or forty meters below, the spray from it wetting their camera lenses.
Most of the tourists were Japs, lamented Kaniola. Like most Hawaiians, he had a lingering hatred of the Japanese and their attack on Pearl Harbor, which had killed many civilians as well as American enlisted personnel. Kaniola's grandfather had been a victim of that attack, and the stories surrounding that day were as fresh as yesterday's sea catch. Young Hawaiians and part- Hawaiians were taught to never forget the treachery of the Japanese, no matter how big the tip. It was confusing for Hawaiian boys and girls of mixed Japanese blood.
Nowadays Hawaii had become the Rio de Janeiro of the South Seas, playground of the wealthy Japanese who converged on the islands every year in greater and greater numbers. Newlywed Japanese couples actually married and honeymooned in the islands in order to save the enormous costs of a wedding back home, for if they married in Japan, they had to invite every single member of their far-flung, extended families on both sides. It was no dishonor, however, to elope to Hawaii…Of late, much of the property of the islands had fallen into the hands of wealthy Japanese business interests, replacing to a large degree the historically white economic choke-hold on the islands' wealth; at the same time, native Hawaiians owned little or nothing of lasting value in their own homeland, so disenfranchised had they become at the hands of the English and American haoles decades before. Still, like most Hawaiians, Kaniola preferred the Americans and British to the Japs. Through it all, few Hawaiian full-bloods were as happy as depicted in the tourist literature and Bimbaum's Guide to Paradise.
Many Hawaiians found solace in booze and forgetfulness; others worked hard to acquire Western paraphernalia to closely imitate the white man's ways, to become if not wealthy, at least capable of providing for their young in an ever more dangerous world. Still others found their native humor, dark and gritty at times, was the best medicine against Western progress, which had long since engulfed Oahu and the city of Honolulu, the Miami of the South Pacific, in particular.
Alan Kaniola had taken two years of college before enlisting in the police academy in an attempt to bring fortune to himself and his small family of five. Usually, he enjoyed the work and seldom had to use force against anyone, the uniform alone doing most of the talking for him. But Honolulu's crime rate rose steadily each year, now rivaling anything on the mainland. When necessary, he could deal with the toughest of the street element or the Pearl sailors on their own terms. He particularly liked arresting American sailors and Japanese tourists, but whenever he did so, he found himself admonished by his superiors for having too heavy a hand. It was likely this, along with his ancestry, that had kept him from making detective the month before.
“ Much safer to arrest a Chinese or Japanese prostitute,” he once told his father, who ran a small Hawaiian-language newspaper which was pro-native and pro-environmentalist. One of the last of its kind, the paper was called The Ala Ohana, The Pathway of the Extended Family. His old father was old-fashioned, and a dreamer, always with his face to the moon, thought Kaniola.
Alan flooded the lone vehicle before his patrol car with his searchlight and cautiously got from his car and inched toward the dark Buick with all due care. There appeared no one inside. Thom Hilani stepped briskly along the other side of the car and both men moved in silence.
At the same moment, each spied the bundle of oil-stained clothing in the rear seat. There were also multiple dark stains on a blanket in the front seat of the car. Hilani made as if to reach inside for the bloody bundle in the rear, the windows being wide open, but the more experienced cop halted him, lifting the garments in his own hands and smelling the coppery odor of the purple stain, realizing at once that it was blood so fresh that it wet his hand. “Go back to your cycle, Thom, and call for backup. I think we may've caught the Trade Winds Killer.”
“ No shit, yeh, auwe, heh? Maybe, huh? Dis gonna make dem okole-holes at headquarters sit up, yeh, damn man!” Thorn always reverted back to the easy rhythms of pidgin English whenever there were no haole cops around to hear.”Hurry, get help, Thorn. This guy could be armed.”
A blast rang out and Hilani's body hit the pavement so hard that Alan Kaniola heard his friend's skull crack. Kaniola searched for where the shot had come from, but saw only blackness all around, realizing that his own headlights made a perfect silhouette of himself. He dove for cover just as a second shot rang out.
He was unhit. If he could just get to his radio, call for assistance. The distance between the Buick and his radio car was too great. He had to think fast.
It figured that the killer was somewhere along the path to the Blow Hole, likely depositing his night's work, a body. What a place to dispose of it, the policeman thought. Damned clever bastard. He tried now to concentrate his night vision along the mouth of the path, and he began firing at what appeared to be the outline of a man. Another shot hit Kaniola in the right shoulder, the impact tearing his firearm from him. He lay helpless alongside the suspect vehicle, bleeding and weakened, clutching the bloodied clothes he'd held in his left hand, pressing them into his wound, desperately trying not to pass out.
He heard the other man's footsteps nearing, and he saw from below the right fender of the Buick a pair of silver-tipped boots rounding the car. Kaniola had no feeling in his right hand, but he reached for the gun he kept strapped and hidden against his ankle anyway, guiding the hand like a stump. He could feel his strength draining with his blood. He felt his fingertips just reach the second gun when the man's boot came viciously down on his hand.
The killer stood over him, grinning, a jackal's laugh escaping him, the bastard's features dark and distorted by light and shadow. Kaniola met his dark, disturbing eyes, and in a flash of hope he imagined Thorn getting up, taking aim, and killing the lunatic. Instead, a lightning flash occurred before Alan Kaniola's eyes, the flash of an enormous cane cutter, the huge blade sluicing easily through Kaniola's dark wide throat, painting it and his lapels with his blood.
The killer quickly tore Kelia's bloodied clothing from the dead cop's contorted fist and returned it, along with the big cane knife, to the safety of his car. There was no telling how many other cops were on their way, and so he hurriedly jumped into the car and wheeled out of the deserted parking lot, leaving the dead cops alone with their gods. He hadn't wanted it to come to this, but they shouldn't have pursued him here. They'd brought it on themselves, he reasoned.
He turned on the radio and found some soft Hawaiian traditional music, so soothing and real. He forgot about the incident with the policemen, and instead relived in his mind how he had made the girl suffer for what she had done.
The big sugar cane knife had been cruel and gigantic and shining against the light in her small black Hawaiian eyes. Now there was no light in those eyes, nothing left of her lithe little body, those creamy-skinned legs, or that mocking mouth, thanks to the sea.
Only a handful more to go, he silently reminded himself.
2
I will ransom them from the power of the grave;
I will redeem them from death…
Off the coast of Maui, below the ocean at Molokini underwater crater, the following day…