“ Find anything of interest in there with Hilani or Kaniola?”
“ Early to tell; now we run tests. I hope you've got good lab people.”
“ The best. Don't worry there.”
They entered a laboratory where a few white-coated techs greeted Parry with broad smiles. One or two faces were distinctly Polynesian.
“ Mr. Lau,” called Parry, “this is Dr. Coran, from Quantico, Virginia.”
“ Ohhhh,” said Lau, coming quickly to her and taking her hand. “I have read much about you. Doctor. Extremely impressive, extremely. I tol' Parry, we need somewon like you.”
“ How about someone exactly like her, Lau? How about her?”
“ That's what I mean.”
Parry laughed good-naturedly. “So, where's the muttonchop, Lau?”
“ In safekeeping, this way.”
He led them to a refrigeration chamber and pressed a button, and a drawer eased outward sending a cascade of smoke as the super-cooled air hit room temperature. Below the cloud of cold a thick glass container held the object of Parry's concentration. Jessica, too, stared at the lone, thin, pathetic shoulder, elbow and forearm. The fact that the hand was missing only added to the gruesome object. It was a mangled hunk of flesh, pounded, bruised, blue not simply from the cold but from dark patches where it had been battered, parts of bone showing through.
'Tomorrow, I want you to determine the age, sex, height, race, time of death-and anything else you can decipher from that, Dr. Coran.” She gave Lau a look that told him he could close it up, and the short, stocky young man did so, a sad look in his black but radiant eyes. She saw that Parry was staring at her, and this made her a little uncomfortable. What did he want from her, a magic act? To make immediate pronouncements about the body part in the freezer?
She caught a glimpse of Lau telling the other technicians who she was. Lau was in charge of the techs, the equipment and the lab in general, and it was to him that the techs had brought the various test materials from the adjoining autopsy room, each labeled in Jessica's meticulous hand.
'Tomorrow, then,” she croaked. “Meantime, Lau and the others here can work on the slides and samples taken from the police officers.” Well, so far, so good,” Parry said. “Allow me to see you to your hotel.”
“ Thanks, but I'm sure you have more important things to attend to.”
“ Right now. Doctor, you're the most important thing on the island. We're very aware of your track record, what you did last year in New York City in the Claw case, and the time before that… that sicko vampire in Chicago.”
His eyes had come to rest on her cane. “We're hoping you'll stick it to this guy, the way you did those others.”
“ Don't get your hopes up. I don't think I found anything useful today, and I'm not sure that muttonchop as you call it in there belongs to any of your missing girls.”
He nodded, biting his lip before presenting her with nine manila folders. “Homework,” he said, shrugging apologetically.
“ How soon you want these back?”
“ They're duplicates, so no sweat.”
“ Have you had a profile of your supposed serial killer drawn up?”
“ It's included, but I'm not so sure I trust it entirely.”
“ Don't trust your own profile team?” She halted and stared at him for a direct answer.
He cleared his throat and said firmly, “There's no team on it. Ahhh, just me.”
“ You're kidding.”
“ Wish I were. We've been understaffed and well… see, to date, it's been of low priority for the bureau. Back burner all the way. I haven't got D.C.'s backing, only a nod from your pal, Zanek, to pursue it.”
“ Paul Zanek,” she said aloud. Thinks he'll put me back to work, take my mind off myself. “Indeed a pal.” Her sarcasm, not meant to escape, had bolted free.
“ We've just had so damned little to go on-”
“ And since no one but the kanakas were missing women,” she interrupted.
“ Whoa up there! Hold on. We just didn't have the facts or the manpower to move on it. You trying to tell me it's different in
D.C.?” She bit her lip and nodded. “Touche.” He walked along with her. “Just look over what I've managed to scrounge up on my own and you tell me.
Tell you what?”
“ If I'm on or off the mark here.”
“ I'll look it over.”
“ My car's in the garage. Come on,” he said. “I'll see you to your home away from home.”
“ If you insist,” she replied, making as if to take the folders from him, but Parry insisted on carrying the hefty load for her.
“ So who amassed all these files then?”
“ Agent Gagliano-Tony and myself-with the help of the HPD missing persons bureau of course.”
“ For back burner, you've been working pretty hard. HPD looking the other way on this?”
“ Some might say so.”
She nodded. “What do you say?”
“ You wouldn't know it to look at Honolulu from the standpoint of a tourist, Dr. Coran, but it's teeming with lowlife, crime's rampant, drugs everywhere. We've got our ghetto wars, poverty, ignorance, beastiality, our brain-dead, our wanna-be victims, just like Baltimore or New Orleans or a thousand other American cities.”
“ Paradise Lost comes to mind.”
“ Exactly so, Doctor.”
“ A place of such beauty and opulence-”
“ So's New York, L.A., Chicago or D C. if you don't have to look at it from a radio car or through the eyes of a ghetto kid. Like all cities, there's two faces to Honolulu. There's the glittering coastal palaces along Diamond Head and Waikiki, sure, but there's also the seamy side.”
“ 'Look under any yacht and whataya got?' my father used to say. 'Slime and barnacles.'“
“ Sounds like a sensible, practical person, like yourself?” Pany ventured, but then he quickly returned to the subject. “Yeah, it would be a paradise, these islands, if it weren't for the people.”
Parry's tone spoke of a deep wound, she imagined, but he quickly squelched any further words, indicating the direction they had to take along a final corridor, and then to his unmarked Ford LTD, where they got in without another word. He quickly busied himself with seat belt and radio, tapping into the system and reporting into FBI Dispatch, informing them of his whereabouts and movements.
Jessica stared across at him, studying him without his knowledge, wondering about James Kenneth Parry, his past and his current dreams.
4
Dark Care sits enthroned behind the Knight.
“ So, where's home, James Parry?” she asked as they bullied their way through the thickening afternoon soup of traffic in downtown Honolulu.
“ Grew up in West Bend, Indiana. Most of the family's still there, 'cept for my brothers and a sister. All of us wanted bigger 'n' better and far away. West Bend was great as kids, but as we got older, it turned into the pits.”
“ It would appear you won.”
“ Won?” He was puzzled.
“ You don't get much farther away than this.”
“ Actually, I've got a brother who lives in Auckland, New Zealand, and my sister's in Tokyo!”
She laughed. “Wrong again.”
“ Hey, look, I'm sorry if we've made you feel as if you're, well, on trial here. We just… we don't have anywhere to turn. We're used to dealing with white-collar crime, street crime, rape, even murder, but this… this is different… something bizarre about this whole thing, something… I don't know… can't finger it…”
“ Something ritualistic, maybe?”
He stared across at her. “Funny you should use that term.”
“ Why's that?”
“ Just that it occurred to me and Tony on separate occasions. I think there's a connection between the victims, something ritualistic, patternistic.”
“ Sounds like you two've given up a few nights' sleep over it. When do I meet Tony?”