Parry let the jet black eyes know, with his own gaze, that he knew that they knew. As soon as the onyx eyes disappeared, a commotion could be heard in the rear, the music having died.
George Oniiwah recognized Tony Gagliano from their earlier talk. Now George stood, making a show of it, saying, “Awww, man, haven't you pigs got anything better to do? Damnit, I'm sorry 'bout wha' happen' to Lina, sorry as all hell, but I didn't do it, and I don't fuck-king know who did! You cops're like maggots. I've got you crawling all over my ass. First you, den the Honolulu cops, now you again? Shit, man!”
“ Beat it,” Parry told the other young people.
“ Hey, man, you don't tell my friends what to do.”
“ Get out,” Parry shouted, and the three others vacated without a word.
“ Now, Georgie boy, we're going to talk.”
From one corner of his eye, Parry saw the bartender return with a heavy carton and begin to refill shelves already stocked to overflowing. He heard Tony belatedly introducing him to Oniiwah. “This here is Chief Parry, George.”
“ I already told this FBI mother-”
“ Watch your mouth!” ordered Parry, his eyes burning into the kid.
“ I… ah, already tol' Agent Gagliano all I know.”
Parry instinctively disliked Oniiwah, knowing him for a selfish, priggish type of islander who had spent his entire life trying to be cool and to put on a good show, to look, speak and act Western in the MTV sense, and to pretend he had some political leanings that didn't show him for the sapling-blowing-in-the-wind that he was.
“ Search your soul, Georgie,” Parry said, realizing this kid didn't have much of a search ahead of him. “Search it and tell me about this.” Parry handed the book of sonnets across a blackened wood table that'd been carved with the names of hundreds of students who'd sat here before George Oniiwah. “Check out the marked pages,” continued Parry. “I think- no-I know that Linda was trading poetry with someone. She mailed letters almost every day. Was she sending these to you?”
George Oniiwah was a thickly built young man with a handsome face; he wore the most expensive designer clothing. His father was a merchant, doing extremely well on the strip. “No, she never sent nothing like this to me, man. She never talked like this, ever. She… this isn't the Lina I knew, man, no way.”
“ She had her dark side,” Parry began. “Least she was interested in the darkness, death maybe, maybe had suicidal tendencies, maybe?”
Oniiwah sat before him like a stone, expressionless.
“ Well, damnit, did she?”
“ No, she didn't ever talk that way round me, man, never.”
“ All right then, who do you know that might've encouraged her in this?”
He set his teeth, understanding where Parry was going, grateful that Parry's questions didn't center on him self. “I don't know. Kia was like that sometimes, depressed, you know. Maybe it was her.”
“ But she disappeared, too.”
Kia Wailea, the other university student who'd disappeared and who was the subject of another of Parry's case files, continued to be listed as a missing person.
“ George, you've got to see why we are suspicious of you; the fact you knew two of the victims? That kind of news gets around.”
“ Hey, man! If people think I killed those girls… Geez, I could find myself in a body bag. Why don't you guys leave me alone?”
“ Killed? Who used the word killed? Did you say anything about these girls having been killed. Agent Gagliano?”
“ No, not once,” replied Gagliano.
“ That's bullshit,” cried Oniiwah over the sound of the heavy metal of Poison coming out of the box now. The guy at the bar, trying to appear busy by wiping it down, leaned in to try to hear more of the conversation between the government men and Oniiwah, who continued to protest.
“ Everybody knows them girls gotta be killed. They been missing too long, and nobody was fooled about that business at the Blow Hole, about that leg being a store dummy's.”
“ Leg? Who said anything about a leg? Tony?”
“ No, Boss, not a word. Besides-” Besides, it was an arm, Georgie boy,” continued Parry. “Supposing it was Linda's arm, you want to tell me about it?”
“ What?” he nervously blurted out. “I don't know what you want.”
“ Know anything about something missing from her arm, Georgie? Something you keep in your little fridge in the dorm?”
“ Goddamnit, man, I don't know what you're talking 'bout, man!”
“ Supposing Kia and Linda were tortured to death, their bodies horribly disfigured and mangled. Don't you know that we need somebody to put away, to show that we're doing our job? Suppose you won our little lottery, Georgie?”
“ This is nuts! I didn't do anything like that to Linda or Kia or anyone else!
“ There's got to be someone you know that Linda and Kia also knew, someone who could have kidnapped, tortured and murdered them. Among your friends, Georgie… someone you fucking know. It's in you, this knowledge, buried but it's there. Now, I want you to search for it. Try… try, damn you, you little fuck!”
The music in the box ended just as Parry swore out his threat. Parry was almost across the table, his eyes flaming with intensity, his fists white and pounding the table for splinters. Tony tried to calm him. The college boy put his hands to his head and gave the appearance of trying to tear from his mind the information Jim sought. “There's nobody like that, not that I know, no one that could make all those women disappear like-”
“ Mutilate, Georgie, try mutilate, disembowel, eviscerate. They teach you all them big words here at the university, Georgie?”
“ No one… nobody I know could do a thing like that, none of my friends.”
The music came back up, a freakish clatter of horns over steel guitars and a screeching rapper that Parry could not place.
“ Friends? Who the hell said anything about friends? Did I say that the bastard had to be a friend?” Parry asked Gagliano, turning to his partner for help.
“ All right, maybe he's not a friend,” suggested Tony, easing the situation a bit.
George considered this as if he'd been told for the first time that the world wasn't flat.
Brain-dead, Gagliano was thinking. We're dealing with a brain-dead. “Just someone you would all have had to come into contact with at some time, maybe somebody employed here at the college?”
“ Well… no,” he reconsidered. “Naaah.”
“ What naaahl Who? Give or the chief going brok' yo' face, kid,” pressed Gagliano.
Oniiwah looked stricken now. “Claxton.”
“ Who's Claxton?”
“ Dr. Claxton just popped into my head, but no, that's not possible. “Who's this guy?” pushed Tony.
“ Her English professor,” said Parry. “Shakespeare, right?”
“ Shakespeare?” asked Tony.
“ Yeah, Shakespeare. Tell me, George, why'd you mention Dr. Claxton?”
“ Well, he's sometimes kinda scary, you know what I mean?”
“ No, why don't you explain to me what the hell you mean?”
“ He's a huge man, for one, but it's not even that; it's how he talks when he gets the least mad at you; makes bad, awful jokes, sometimes about your family, your nationality, stuff like that; and the guy's morbid, real graveyard-bound, man.”
“ Give us an example of graveyard-bound, George.”
George squirmed in his seat. “I don't want this getting back to me, man.”
“ Don't you worry, George,” said Tony.
“ Well, he's into heavy-duty heavy metal, satanic shit, really.”
“ So's a lot of people,” Parry pressed.
“ And once, I swear, I was an eyewitness to this, once he took a kid and threw him out of class and-”
Tony laughed. “Real bad dude.”
“- and smashed his face into the door first; said it was all an accident, but it wasn't an accident. And nothing was done about it, and a time before that he… he made a move on Lina.”
“ What kind of a move?” Parry was instantly interested, as was Tony.