Opolo has to bow his neck a little to get under the low lintel of the door.
‘Jessie Opolo. Paul Madriani.’ She makes the introduction, unsure how I’m going to respond.
‘Glad to meet you.’ He smiles. I wonder if it’s as artless as it looks or the face of Polynesian guile.
I won’t be an asshole, so I take his hand.
‘A pleasure,’ I say.
‘How long have you been here?’ she says.
‘Since this morning,’ he tells her. ‘Coptered in about nine.’
‘Anybody with you?’
‘Two agents,’ he says.
It’s a fucking army, I think. I’m waltzing away, rolling my eyes.
Dana can read my mind. ‘I assume you’re keeping a low profile.’
I have visions of Humvees with recoilless rifles mounted on the back.
‘The other two agents are in the room,’ he says. ‘The only thing we’ve done is check the post office for the package.’
‘What package?’ I ask.
‘The ring,’ he says.
I’d forgotten about this. The ring Kathy Merlow mentioned in her letter, the one she wanted Marcie to send to her.
‘It was picked up yesterday afternoon,’ says Opolo. ‘Unfortunately we were too late.’
‘Did anybody sign for it?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’ He pulls a small notebook from his pocket and opens it, then unfolds a sheet of paper that’s been placed inside it. It’s a copy of the postal receipt.
‘It was addressed to Alice Kent, and the receipt was signed in that name.’
‘Can I see it?’
He hands the sheet over.
I flatten it on the table, then take out the note from my pocket, the one sent to Marcie Reed by Kathy Merlow, and compare the handwriting with the signature on the form. Like peas in a pod.
‘She’s here,’ I say. ‘She signed for it herself.’
Dana looks at me. ‘Maybe we’re halfway home.’
Dana and the agents are huddled in the next room around a coffee table, discussing methods for locating the Merlows. The adjoining door between the rooms is open, so I watch from a distance. They’ve already exhausted several avenues of search. Utility records, telephone, and power show no new hookups under the names Merlow or Kent. If they’re living in the area, they’re using another alias. They’ve checked the rental car agencies, figuring that the Merlows would need wheels.
‘If they rented a car on the island, they used some other identification,’ says Opolo. ‘No record of a rental in the name of Merlow or Kent, and no charges on George Merlow’s credit card since the couple disappeared from Capital City.’
Dana was right about one thing, Opolo and his agents have been able to gain access to information that we could not: personal credit-card data.
‘I think we talk to the carriers.’ Opolo wants to concentrate on the mail carriers who service the area around Hana.
‘It’s a small place. Even if they don’t deliver mail to these people, they might know who’s new and where they live.’
‘There’s six carriers. Five are out on their routes. We can’t get ’em all until later this afternoon.’ One of the agents has already checked this out.
I’ve drifted into the room, standing in one corner like the proverbial potted plant.
‘There’s the grocery store, and the little ranch market,’ says one of them. ‘The only places to buy food for two hours in either direction. They gotta eat,’ he says.
‘Maybe,’ says Opolo. ‘People may have seen them in the stores, but will they know where they live? The Merlows aren’t going to volunteer this information.’
‘We could stake out the stores,’ says one of the agents. He’s young and eager.
Opolo looks at him, wrinkled eyes of skepticism. ‘An army of strangers loitering outside the market?’ he says. ‘We’d stand out like bumps. Word’d be out in an hour. This is a small town.’
‘That’s charitable,’ I say.
‘Okay, so it’s a village,’ he says. He smiles at me.
‘Still, if one person talks,’ he says, ‘a clerk at the post office, one of the employees at the hotel. In an hour everybody in town’s gonna know who we are, that we’re looking for somebody. The word won’t take long to spread. If Mr. Madriani is right, the people we are looking for know how to lose themselves. We won’t get a second chance,’ he says.
Despite Dana’s going behind my back, I’m warming to Jessie Opolo. Maybe she was right.
‘What about the realtors?’ he says. ‘The ones who rent out houses and cabins? The Merlows would have to obtain accommodations from somebody. Do we have any pictures of them?’ he says.
This sends one of the other agents scurrying through an open attaché case.
‘Not a great copy,’ he says. ‘We got this from the mainland. State DMV. Faxed this morning.’ He hands Opolo two poor-quality fax transmissions, tortured pictures like Rorschach cards of human images, so bad the subjects would not recognize themselves.
‘Nothing better?’ says Opolo.
‘We can try to get wirephotos,’ says the agent. ‘It would take a while.’
‘Fine. In the meantime we run down a list of realtors in the area,’ says Opolo. He looks at his watch. ‘We meet back here in an hour to go talk to the mail carriers.’
They’re up on their feet, going over a few last-minute details. Dana and Opolo in one corner talking privately. I take the opportunity to slip back into my room.
I’ve ditched my coat in the closet. Even in winter the Hawaiian sun is too hot. I slip my hand into the patch pocket and remove the photograph of the little church. Two seconds later I’m out the door, heading up the path toward the office. It’s a five-minute walk, and by the time I reach the shade of the lanai near the office I am wet with perspiration.
One of the employees, a young woman, is sitting at a table, like a concierge, tour books and pamphlets spread before her. She greets me warmly, a paying guest.
‘I have a question.’
‘Of course. If I can help,’ she says.
‘I have a picture here. A little church in the area. I wonder if I showed it to you whether you could tell me where it is?’
The smile fades a little from her face. ‘I could try,’ she says. ‘There are a lot of churches.’
‘I noticed.’ Dana and I passed a half dozen on the way in, none of them resembling the one in the picture.
I show her the photo. She studies it for several seconds. Looks at me, up and down, a tourist on the prowl. There’s a spark, a fleeting moment where I think she’s going to say something, then hesitation. She changes her mind. ‘I don’t think I recognize that one,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’
‘Is there a phone where I can make a long-distance call and bill it to my room?’
‘In the library. Just pick up and wait for the operator.’ She points the way.
It’s a large room, a couple of club chairs and some rattan furniture, tasteful, quiet, and cool. One wall, from wainscot to ceiling, is a glassed-in bookshelf. I find the phone, take a seat, and wait for the operator, perusing titles on the spines of books stacked on the shelves, and a framed picture on a shelf behind the glass, a black-and-white glossy print.
The operator comes on the line, and I give her the number in Capital City. Harry answers on the second ring, the backline. It’s after hours on the mainland. He’s been waiting for my call.
‘How’s it going?’ he says.
I don’t tell him I’m camped with the FBI. I wouldn’t need a phone to hear Harry’s ridicule.
‘Fine,’ I tell him. ‘Anything from Mason’s?’
Charles Mason amp; Co. is an old-line photographic studio in Capital City. In days past they did daguerreotypes of whiskered gents from the gold rush. Today they do family portraits, wedding pictures, and in my case, large poster-size exhibits that I use in court, enlargements of documents, and in this case a major blowup of one photograph. It is the errand I ran on my way home from the office yesterday afternoon before meeting Dana.
‘They took it out to twelve magnifications. Nothing,’ he says. ‘Just a lot of dots.’
‘Any name on the church?’
‘No. The picture’s of the side of the church,’ says Harry. ‘The phototech at Mason’s figures any name would be on the front.’