Parry went to work, orchestrating a surveillance, his people watching every drop point for a full month, while he and Tony, spelled by others, watched what ought to be the killer's next and last drop point, according to the computer program tracking the bastard. They got lucky one night when a large vehicle consistent with the tire marks found at the other locations drove calmly off U.S. 61 passing the darkened surveillance vehicle on the far side of the road, placed at some distance away. Parry and Gagliano called for backup and drove into the woods, following at a safe stretch until their headlights hit on Lewis, his arms filled with overstuffed garbage bags, the trunk of his car popped, the light from the trunk setting off his features into a mosaic of contortion.
For a moment he looked relieved, waving to them as if he'd expected them long before. Still, he stuffed what he'd lifted from the trunk back into the vehicle and slammed home the lid.
Gagliano turned the spotlight on the man, who was wearing a pullover sweater and jeans, his hands smeared with a red substance that was unmistakable. A body was indeed inside the spacious trunk of his roomy Lincoln Town Car, the one he did regular business in. Wilson Lewis put up no resistance, standing aside like a child staring down at the valuable vase he'd broken, the damage irreparable.
“ Whhhhhh-y'd it take youuuuuu so… so… so long to… to st-st-stop me?” He stuttered.
“ Read him his fucking rights, Tony,” Parry had said, his eyes riveted to the horror encased in the man's trunk, his mind going over the question put to him by the insane.
Why had it taken them so long to stop him? he wondered. How could they've been so blind?
All of Lewis's victims had been prospective clients, many taken right from their homes at midday, all of them single and living alone. Records indicated that Lewis had no previous police record, but a careful scrutiny of his life later unearthed the troublesome nature of this man whom no one liked, not his neighbors, not his relatives, not his former bosses, of whom there were many. He had a long list of jobs from which he'd been fired, often for “odd, lewd or strange” behavior in one form or another. He had all his life been building toward vengeance against women, for women were, in his estimation, the cause of all sin on earth, the mothers of ruination, since his own mother and the mother of his children were satanic.
Parry's handling of the case effectively threw out several HPD “convictions” and so-called confessions, which both the press and the public had been screaming for. A police detective in any state in the land lived or died by the number of cases he closed, so Parry's victory was not as welcomed as it might otherwise have been by detectives who had followed the other, now patently useless leads. Not only were the detectives below Scanlon embarrassed, but so too were the ranking officers, Scanlon included, who had okayed the arrest, confession and indictment of a partially retarded itinerant pineapple farmer.
Since then Parry had begun a secretive crusade of sorts, aimed at indolence and incompetence within the HPD. He began with unsolved missing-persons reports, carefully reviewing the case of Sinitia “Cynthia” Toma the year before, which led to Kololia “Gloria” Poni. The trail led to a list of seven missing within a span of a few months. He'd heard of a similar situation on Maui the year before this. In Maui he learned the girls' names: Ela, Wana'ao, Kini, Merelina, Kimi, Lala, and Iolana. Of course, there were other missing persons, even during the period of these vanishings; however, all of these young women were not only natives, but they shared a common appearance, down to the long-trailing black hair and light-filled wide eyes, as well as size, general age and weight. Parry had made it a pet project, reviewing all information authorities had on the cases, searching for any pattern, any link between them. The first obvious such link was that the victims in Honolulu vanished along a trajectory that was bounded by the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific known as the Punchbowl, the University of Hawaii and the Waikiki Beach resort area. Searches among the foothills, along deserted mile markers off the Pali Highway and elsewhere, turned up no clues at the time. The proximity to the air force and naval bases continued to lead Parry to suspect someone in uniform. Whoever he was, this guy left no trace either of himself or his victims. Yet the geography was always the same, that rectangular wedge of island centering on busy Waikiki. The killer must spend a lot of time there, possibly working in the area, living on its perimeter.
Now Dave Scanlon stopped his lionlike pacing, gave a glance to Dr. Marshal, who'd come in with him, leaned over Parry's desk and got in Parry's face, saying, “We're not going to allow any history between us, Jim, to color what we do here now, are we?”
“ History? History's history,” Parry replied sharply. “All I care about is what we're going to do about this damnable business now.”
Parry stared down at the Ala Ohana newspaper. He could make out enough Hawaiian to know that everything Scanlon had said about Kaniola and his paper was true-and then some. It was a story so hot it fairly burned the hands to hold it.
“ Just read the crap there about the HPD's not doing a damned thing while two of our own cops are murdered in cold blood.” Scanlon pounded his fist over the newsprint as if to do so could change things.
“ Get hold of your self, Dave,” Parry said, trying to counter the bull's rage. “It's just a pile of innuendo and half-truths gathered up by a grieving father who-”
“ The appearance of impropriety, the mere appearance of wrongdoing, Jim, and we're in the stocks down at HPD. You damned well know that, and so does Marshal here.”
Dr. Walter Marshal tried to console his old friend. As the U.S. M.E. from Pearl, he had a lot invested in the case as well, but he wasn't having any luck in calming the HPD Commissioner of Police, so he turned to Parry instead and added kerosene to the fire by saying, “You can bet your ass the mainland'll get this.”
“ Christ,” continued Scanlon, pacing for emphasis. “We've got every uniform, pulled every detective, every sergeant and lieutenant in on this, but old Joe Kaniola makes it sound like we're all sitting around masturbating ourselves! And he's got the inside dope, that top sources with the FBI claim the only man ever to get near the killer was his son who didn't have proper backup! Christ, what a lot of horse shit! And how'd he get information about the blood, Parry, news you didn't even share with me! And what's all this about the supposed killer being most likely a white male? And possibly having some connection with the U.S. military? Christ- a-minny!”
Parry tried to defuse Scanlon as much as possible by repeating himself. “Kaniola's got nothing. A handful of assumptions and innuendos any number of people've been slinging around, Dave.”
“ You just tell that Dr. Coran of yours to keep her mouth shut, or we'll have a full-blown race riot on our hands in the south central quadrant,” Scanlon hotly replied. “I thought she was a pro! I thought she knew what she was doing. I thought you knew what you were doing when you called her in on the case, Jim.”
“ Scanlon, Dr. Coran's remarks to Kaniola were off the rec-”
“ Not any fucking more!” Scanlon paced anew. Parry went instantly to Jessica's defense. “Dr. Coran did not disclose anything to Kaniola intentionally, and so far's I know not a word about the arm, the racial makeup of the killer, or that he could be military. We don't any of us know that.”
“ Bullshit! Then who did?”