“ Then who discovered the limb?”
“ It was almost eight by then, and so we cleared out and allowed the first tourist buses to enter the park area.”
“ I see.”
'Tourists-biggest business on the island, you know, and well, when they went to watch the Blow Hole do its thing… well, you can imagine the rest.”
“ The piece came spewing up?”
“ That's about it. Landed on the rocks alongside. We had to rig up a safety line and get a rock climber to go down on that slippery surface after it.”
“ So the rest of the body, and likely all the others, could well be buried in that cavernous area below the sea at the Blow Hole?”
“ Likely pulverized to Jell-0 by now, but we got lucky this once.”
She pointed to the photos. “So which of the girls is the most recent disappearance?”
“ That's not the way it works; you're supposed to tell me who's on first, remember? I'll provide you with files on each of the women, you match the limb from there, if you can. Wouldn't want to influence your decision. Wouldn't look good in a court of law, and we are going to get this bastard before a court of law- whatever his nationality or color.”
“ What're you saying, that the crimes are somehow related to the social climate hereabouts? That our killer's involved in hate crimes?”
“ What do I know? Social climate, maybe. Physical climate, most certainly. April to August last year with the coming of the trades. As far as that hate-crimes thing… I never understood that redundancy, Doctor. Aren't all crimes crimes of hate?”
“ I suppose you're right, but I meant racially motivated as opposed to sexually motivated or due to some hatred of the gender.”
“ We don't know,” he said simply, staring her in the eye. “Right now, all we've got is the arm, two dead Hawaiian cops, and nine missing Hawaiian girls, some of mixed blood, some Japanese. And we've got an island of jumpy people and the rumor mills are grinding daily along with the newspapers.”
“ So you want the investigation to remain tightly controlled. I understand, Inspector.”
“ I've been here for eight years, two as bureau chief, and I'll be honest with you, Doctor, I don't begin to understand the Polynesian or the Oriental mind, except to say that they respect and understand cold, logical justice, an eye for an eye, so to speak. Well, nine of their women have vanished, and now two of their boys are dead, and so they want justice, and they look to the sailors at Pearl, and they look to the high muckety-mucks on Diamond Head who've pretty well made a fortune a thousand-forty times over by parlaying their lands out from under them, and they look to us white cops for reasons and pretty soon, they'll be looking in the same direction for compensation.”
“ You got someone who can get my bags over to the Rainbow Tower?”
“ Sure.”
“ If so, I'll go with you to have a look at the corpses and the girl's limb. Meanwhile, what're the chances of getting divers into the water and searching the area around this Blow Hole for more body parts?”
His laugh was without mirth, the laugh of an islander who is trying desperately to understand the logic of a malahini, a newcomer. “Any attempt to go near the Blow Hole could pulverize a diver in seconds. It's a vortex of water, the speeds of which have been clocked at hundreds of miles per hour, and it never calms. There's no way to dredge a volcanic hole in the sea like this one. It was dumb luck we got to the one gift before it was washed back inside.”
“ So there's little chance this hole'll be giving up any more such evidence?”
“ Seriously doubtful. Still, we're maintaining the safety tows and I've got a man out there watching for just that.”
“ And he's also lying in wait for a possible return visit by the killer?”
“ I've got tag teams out there, yeah, but since he left the two dead cops, we're not very hopeful of his return.”
“ Then get me to your morgue. I'll see what I can do to shed some light.”
“ That's all we ask.”
On the way over to the morgue she assessed Parry. He was as tall as she, with firm-set features and piercing eyes. His facial expression gave little away, however, no doubt from years of dealing with press and public on sensitive cases. None more sensitive than this, the most delicate of all kinds: a mass murderer about whom the authorities had next to no idea.
Later that same day
Thorn Hilani had been shot through the back of the head, the bullet entering at the base of the skull, indicated by a clean, round little hole, and exploding outward at the point of exit, leaving a five-inch circumference between the eyes, the epicenter of the outward explosion making mush of the soft tissues of both the frontal lobe and the man's eyes. He'd died instantly on impact, the large abrasion to his upper forehead and skull an obvious sign that he'd fallen like a tree onto the pavement there at the promontory overlooking Hanauma Bay. At least he'd not suffered.
Jessica's trained eye told her that the killer knew something about marksmanship and ammo, that he'd intentionally used what was termed on the streets as a “cop-killer” cartridge in a cowboy's gun, a. 44 or a, 45-caliber weapon.
A thorough autopsy offered absolutely nothing more, other than what Officer Hilani had had that evening for dinner on his night watch.
Kaniola was a different story. He'd been shot but not mortally, and a hidden “throwaway” gun was still in its secret holster tied about his ankle. Parry had promised that absolutely nothing had been disturbed about the body of either man, and perhaps he could be taken at his word. It was unusual, however, that other cops, friends, hadn't seen fit to discreetly remove the illegal “throw- down” weapon which cops used whenever they might find themselves in a situation requiring them to quickly place a weapon at the side of an assailant to warrant the use of deadly force; the second gun was also seen as backup on the street, should a cop lose control of his service revolver.
It appeared from the trajectory of the bullet, which ripped through Kaniola's upper right shoulder, bursting forth near the left shoulder blade, that he would have had a difficult time unholster- ing the second firearm, and if he had reached it, it might have been impossible for him to apply the pressure necessary to fire it.
The killing wound sustained by Kaniola had come as the result of an enormous blade that had cut an entire swatch of throat from him, severing the jugular and very nearly the head. Without instruments, Jessica gauged the blade to be between two-and-a- half and three inches in width, making the weapon something along the order of a sword or machete. She presented the picture of science now in her white lab coat, her hair tied tightly back. She clicked on the overhead tape recorder and announced the time and date of the autopsy, the name of the deceased and his morgue identification number, followed by her own name before beginning the autopsy on Joe Kaniola's son.
Momentary flashes of Kaniola's father entered into her thoughts as she worked: the man's leathery face, the folds of his skin like aged crinoline, the rugged wrinkles like caulk lines on an ancient vessel. She imagined him in his late fifties. Most likely he'd worked tirelessly his entire life to better the lives of his children, and now one of them had come under her grim care. Despite what Parry said to her or the senior Kaniola, she had the distinct impression she would see the tough newsman again.
She continued to meticulously probe now the two major wounds to Kaniola's body. No longer eyeballing it, but taking precise measurements, keeping log on it for anyone who might follow up or relieve her of this onerous case, she began to wonder how long the assailant stood over the uniformed officer, delighting in his helplessness, before sending the pendulum of death across his throat. She wondered if the killer had taken unusual delight in watching the man then convulse in shock and bleed to death. Or did he only take such pleasure with the women whom Parry suspected of being his victims of choice?