No one suspected that the demon was the boy who'd lured Alaya into those woods with promises; no one suspected-least of all the other children-not even those whom Lopaka had practiced his little tortures on. No one but his father. Yet Lopaka simply braved it out, strutting about, pretending to be his father, the little keiki ali'i, doling out justice and punishment at the court of his peers just as he'd seen his father, the ali'i kane, do a thousand times The gods sometimes told him that his father was not his true father, that they were; that Lopaka was spawned from the seed of the supernatural. He didn't at first believe this, but as he grew older, more and more signs pointed to the fact that he was not in any way like his father.
His first killing was unintentional. He was hardly into his teens at the time, and Alaya was a trusting eleven-year-old. He might not have killed her had she not had such a vile temper and nasty tongue, had she not screamed out what everyone else thought of him…
He recalls now with a cold and clear memory, like a photographer interested in light and shadow, just how slowly he eased the knife into the child's limb only to maim. She fainted immediately, and he, using one of his father's ceremonial blades, continued to cut. He had learned much from his father, how to get the most out of a torture victim. Still, it surprised him to learn when the little girl's blood gushed forward that he was moved to a higher plane of feeling. The next wound and subsequent ribbon of red lace over her throat so excited him that he was filled with delirious joy, a kind of ecstasy that forced a ritual dance from him.
He was sexually aroused by the little girl's pain, the suffering making him stiffen in his private parts, the blood begging him to taste of death, to take it on his fingers and lap it up…
The entire attack lasted only a few minutes, but within that compressed moment he'd stabbed the girl thirty, perhaps forty times before he was completely spent, using his blade as his penis, totally destroying her. The act blotted out all of her kind-anyone who dared question him or despise him.
It was the first time that his subconscious had authenticated the trinity, the three-way link between the voices in his head, his need for sexual arousal, and the fact he could only reach it through physical violence. Before this, any sexual arousal had been lukewarm and minimal at best, but now it was fiery and fullblown.
Memories, he thinks now, sitting behind the wheel of his clean, air-conditioned bus, have a place, but he prefers memories that arouse him sexually, so he draws most on memories of his recent bloodlettings.
The little bus he drives now bumps off busy H-l, Kamehameha Freeway, and runs the familiar and crowded off-ramp to Pearl Harbor. The bus winds its way around to the lawns of the well-kept entrance of Pearl Harbor, toward the site of the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, with its bones entombed underwater. Lopaka's passengers, fully two-thirds being curious Japanese citizens with cameras in hand, are prepared to record what they consider their history, regardless of what American textbooks say about the war in the Pacific.
So together, American and Japanese tourists, along with Australians, New Zealanders, Europeans and others from around the globe, will go by solemn Coast Guard cutter out to the sunken World War II battleship. There, shoulder to shoulder, they'll read the list of names in alphabetical order on a “wailing wall” monument, the names of privates and noncoms, officers and marines, from H. Aaron to M. Zwarun, Jr. Then the tourists will stand over the underwater tomb of over eleven hundred men, a 184-foot crypt of shattered metal seen clearly through the crystal waters of the harbor only four feet below the concrete platform built over the forecastle of the sunken ship, a liquid rainbow of leaking oil still rippling over the stern after fifty years.
The bus comes to a jerking stop, and the door opens with a swishing sound; Lopaka gets off the bus with his passengers, leads them like children to the gate and haggles with the ticket-handler for twenty-four discounts for his tour group, discounts they're to receive for riding the Enoa Bus Line. He sleepwalks through the process and then tells his passengers where and when to meet after the sightseeing is finished. This done, he returns to his bus and takes it out of the entrance lanes, to park and wait and think more about tonight, about Hiilani, whom he has finally chosen.
11
Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns…
1:05 P.M. July 16, 1995, Panlolo's bar. Honolulu
The raid on Paniolo's bar and grill near the university netted some suspicious blood spatters and other stains lingering after what appeared a hasty cleanup, but no ready evidence of George Oniiwah's having been held hostage there was turned up. Nonetheless, employees and any standing clientele were all arrested on drug charges, as both cocaine and heroin on the premises were sniffed out by dogs trained in the art. A little time in interrogation, a little wheeling and dealing, and someone in Paniolo's employ or sphere of enfluence would give the cretin up, or at least spill something about the missing boy, or so Parry believed.
Somebody heard something. Somebody saw something. Somebody knew something. Meanwhile, Professor Donald G. Claxton was offered protective custody but refused it, leaving Parry to put a couple of men on him, reckoning that if Oniiwah had given up Claxton as the possible killer in the Linda Kahala case, then Claxton would next disappear. And if a white man, however despicable of character, happened to be beaten or killed by kanakas…
All efforts at locating Oniiwah looked bleak until news came over the wire that the body of a young Hawaiian male was found floating in relatively remote Waimanalo Bay just northwest of Makapuu Beach Park and the Sea Peace Museum and whaling village at Waimea Falls.
Parry grabbed Jessica and drove as if possessed through the Pali Tunnel on State Route 63. The tunnel, carved through the dark bowels of the mountain, took them to the other side of the island. There they sped southeast on State 72, Parry praying they wouldn't find the body of the hapa Japa he'd rousted at Paniolo's the night before.
They arrived at a scene already secured by uniformed officers from the district, finding the usual curious onlookers edging closer to have a better look, necks craned, the crowd absurdly held at bay by hundreds of yards of black and yellow plastic ribbon. The streamer tape formed a series of U's and W's where it dangled and flailed in the wind, extended at intervals between coconut trees along the mile-long stretch of beach.
Jessica could tell two things at a distance: Her cane would be useless in the sand, and the body was extremely fresh. She left her cane and heels in Parry's new vehicle-a sporty-looking new Dodge Stealth-pulled a lab coat over her blouse and slacks, grabbed her medical bag and trudged after Parry, who'd not bothered to wait, anxious to know the truth he feared.
She'd sensed his growing anxiety as the day had worn on, and with no sign or word of George Oniiwah until this, Jim was understandably concerned.
If it was Oniiwah's body out on the sand, Jim would bury Hal Ewelo. Jessica had caught a glimpse of the man in lockup, and had found Halole “Paniolo” Ewelo not at all like Joe Kaniola. Joe, despite grief over his son, despite his frustration and the fact that he'd lied to her, had never displayed a fraction of the malevolence found in Ewelo's eyes. Paniolo was a big, burly man whose leathery face-never the same twice-folded with light and shadow as he walked through the dimly lit corridors between holding cell and interrogation room. He looked powerful enough to snap a boy like George Oniiwah in two, and his smile, which could not be wiped away by his predicament, was that of a crocodile.